Chapter 259: Aura Skill Advancement

It was extraordinarily difficult to keep control of his aura during all of this chaos.

He did feel the mana absorption that Beck and Stephanie had been trying to warn him about. It was a fascinating technique. If he was right, it worked so well because there was some sort of Concept backing it.

He had no idea what the exact Concept was, but it helped whatever skill that was trying to suck away his mana. Too bad for the monsters that he had an Emblem which made it impossible for them to take even a smidgen of his mana.

The Null Fiends in general were pretty strong even without their mana absorption skill. They had quite impressive defenses and as well as excellent physical strength.

After he took down one of them, he was beset by another Null Fiend, who was looking to take revenge for its comrade.

This time, instead of claws to the face he got a compressed blast of pure mana sent at his back. He felt Stephanie, who had been keeping a close eye on him about to activate a skill to protect him, but before she could, he used [Flash Step] to avoid it.

The blast ended up missing and hitting a teammate who was in front of him. Luckily, one of their mages was paying attention and created a barrier in front of them before it could hit them.

Oops, I should be more mindful of how I dodge attacks. There is no need to endanger another team because of my carelessness, he reminded himself.

Julius stepped forward and dashed at the fiend before it could send another blast. He used his kinetic restriction technique subtly, just enough to delay the monster. But a moment was more than enough for him.

He crashed a fist full of kinetic energy and fire mana into the Null Fiend, this time using a bit of his aura-burning effect as well, testing out his new aura. Their physical defenses were strong, but he had no idea how strong their aura defenses were.

He quickly found the answer. It would seem that they were not as good at aura defense because his skill penetrated the monster’s aura and scorched it. It must have surprised the monsters because it was staggered for another brief moment.

But before it could get its bearings, he got in close and clobbered it with a bunch of strikes, not giving it a single opening.

With one final punch, he crushed the monster’s head with finality.

After that, he took a step back and took a deep breath. His aura hadn’t slipped, but it had come close. It was only due to sheer willpower that he rangled it back.

However, it would also seem that had a nice benefit for him. He got a notification of something he had been impatiently waiting for ever since he got to Tier 3. It was something that he had been expecting to happen much sooner. But it was better late than never.

[Empowerment of Will lvl 19 -> lvl 20]

[Empowerment of Will] has advanced to level 20. Would you like to evolve the skill?

While he wanted nothing more than to see what kind of options he got, he reminded himself that he wasn’t in the clear yet and that there was a better time to check it out.

He looked around at the battlefield. Most of the Null Fiends had been already taken care of. The other fighters had done a spectacular job at quickly dispatching the monsters. The only remaining ones were a handful of leftover monsters at the edge of the group.

It was amusing to see that nobody intervened in these fights either. It would seem that there was a sort of gentleman’s code not to interfere with someone’s fight.

He didn’t notice anyone dead or heavily injured thankfully. The worst injury was someone who had taken a blast of mana in the back, but their healer was able to quickly heal it without issue.

He then took a look over toward where Rolus had been fighting the lone Tier 4 Null Fiend. He had kept a scrutinizing eye on Rolus and how he dealt with the Tier 4 monster. And he was happy to say that he wasn’t disappointed.

Rolus was strong, that was not in doubt. The man was able to take out the Tier 4 with little trouble. The only reason why it took as long as it did was that the Tier 4 Null Fiend had monstrous regeneration abilities. But it was quite one-sided and Rolus barely broke a sweat.

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If they had to fight the Tier 4 without Rolus, he would suspect that the group would have been in much more danger. They were lucky that wasn’t the case.

While he was feeling lucky, it would seem that the other people around him felt a bit differently.

“What is this shit luck? First, we have to deal with more monsters than usual, but then we get attacked by a group of Null Fiends?” George complained while wiping his face with a towel. Julius also spotted a pair of shortswords dripping in blood in the handsome man’s hands.

Contrarily, Beck, whose armor was covered in a bunch of fiend blood walked up in a great mood. “What are you talking about? This was amazing! I thought I would have to stay in the back the entire time watching the mages have all of the fun.”

George gave him a shake of the head. “Well if you enjoyed it so much, maybe you can deal with the next group of monsters by yourself.”