Chapter 28: Evolving [Restoration]

After dealing with the trolls, he quickly retreated to the ravine before any trolls spotted him. He was still a little shaken at what he had done and hadn’t even taken the time to collect their cores.

Killing things with large explosions was normal for Julius, it made sense that big boom meant big damage. It was why most of the weapons in his old world were the exploding kind. Yet, for some reason, being able to slice through something so effortlessly had demonstrated how much power he had in his hands.

I can’t recall any invention from my old world that could slice through something that cleanly. Maybe only a diamond-edged blade or something fictional like a lightsaber, Julius thought to himself.

“Huh… a lightsaber.” He asked aloud with a contemplative look on his face.

He wondered if it would be possible to recreate a lightsaber. He had a fire affinity and a lightsaber should be made out of plasma so it might be possible. However, he would need to somehow get his fire that hot. Even when he had accelerated the movement of molecules to create that scary powerful blue [Firebolt], he still didn’t think that was close to enough heat to replicate a lightsaber. Eh, it doesn’t matter, he thought to himself. He put the silly thought aside, bookmarking it for a potential experiment in the future.

Going back to his original musings, Julius was still a Tier 1. Although he was able to reliably kill the Tier 3 trolls, he had to remind himself that he still had a long way to go. He also couldn’t let himself believe that he was able to take on any Tier 3 yet. The trolls were a good matchup against him. They didn’t have any long-range abilities and their movement speed was quite slow for their tier. The main thing that made them a real danger was their regenerative abilities. For most people, this would be extremely troublesome.

However, Julius had an unbelievable advantage when it came to damage output. There was no way a Tier 1 should be able to have enough power to effectively kill the troll before it was even able to heal. With that being said, due to his combination of skills, affinities, core, and knowledge from his old world, he was able to achieve this.

He couldn’t help but wonder how powerful a Tier 5 like his uncle was. He wasn’t able to appreciate or even sense the abilities they used during the assassination attempt at the mansion. But now that he had gotten a taste for real combat he couldn’t help but question how close he was to actually dying that night. The more he learned the larger the gap seemed to become.

The reality was that all those worries shouldn’t matter to Julius. He had larger problems staring at him in the face. Like his missing hand for one. He still hadn’t thought of a way to heal it yet. He knew the trolls could regrow limbs, he had seen it firsthand. So how could he achieve it?

The most promising options were either he advanced to Tier 2 and hope his Body Advancement fixed it on its own. Or he could evolve [Restoration] and hope there would be an option to regrow limbs similar to the troll’s own skill.

However, until then, he would be stuck with a nub for the time being. It was annoying, but the pain no longer bothered him and he didn’t exactly need a hand to fight anyway.

When I think about it, the nub is just a smaller closed fist with no knuckles, Julius thought to himself as he tried to make himself feel better.

Julius was about over halfway to Tier 2 by now. He could feel the mana accumulating within his body strengthening his connection with it. The constant days of fighting and stress had hastened the process to an impressive level. But evolving [Restoration] seemed like it was the best choice at the moment.

For now, he wanted to try to create a prosthetic. [Arcane Construct] should be able to create some sort of hand-like construct with practice. Sitting down, he focused on his missing hand. He used his remaining hand as a template to create the prosthetic.

Unlike his attempts at creating realistic-looking constructs in the past, [Arcane Construct] was able to facilitate the task and helped adjust some of the finer details using his imagination as a base. His first attempt didn’t look that bad considering everything. It looked like a red smudge with five pointy sticks, resembling an eldritch horror’s hand from nightmares.

His second attempt was slightly better. The smudge had turned into a sphere and the sharp pointy sticks became more rounded. Now it looked more like the Michelin Man’s hand.

He kept on trying different versions, trying to get it to resemble his left hand as close as he could. After a while, he had lost count of the number of attempts and had finally created something that had the proper proportions and aesthetics of a hand. The main difficulty after he created it was the hand was a completely solid construct, which meant that while it looked like a hand, it wasn’t able to function like a hand. Julius couldn’t grab anything with the fingers, couldn’t bend them, or even make a fist.

The only way around this was to keep the construct in a semi-complete state, which allowed it to maintain some flexibility but required constant focus to keep it together. Otherwise, it would fall apart with the slightest lapse in concentration.

Julius kept experimenting with his construct throughout the night without stopping. By the time morning came around, he had decided on a construct that looked like a closed fist and was hardened so that it didn’t require any attention to keep it together. However, he also made sure whenever he wanted to grab something or maneuver the “fingers”, he could soften the construct so it was malleable. Then he would use pure manipulation to create five digits to imitate the capabilities of real fingers. It was quite challenging to pull off, but he could already feel himself getting the hang of it.

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He was still planning on healing his hand. Even if he managed to heal his hand entirely by tomorrow it was still great practice and he had learned a lot from the experience. He had even gained a level in [Arcane Construct] during the night.

[Arcane Construct lvl 1 -> lvl 2]

He was hoping that by either tomorrow or the next day he would evolve [Restoration]. It was at level 14 and he could feel it only needed a nudge to tip it over the edge.