Chapter 290: Teacher Julius

Tia had shown up not long afterward and asked to join their little session.

“So you and the princess, huh?” Tia asked with a knowing grin on her face, immediately going for the throat.

“Why do you care so much about that? That’s like the fifth time you asked me about it since I came back.” He said to her.

“Because it’s such a romantic cliche,” she said with a cheery smile.

Joshua scoffed from the side. “What? Get pulled through a dangerous spatial trap and find themselves stranded inside a Tier 3 rift? Oh yeah, and almost dying as well. Sounds very romantic to me.”

“You know what I mean,” she argued before turning to Julius. “Also, I have seen the two of you together. I know it’s not just me who sees how close the two of you are.”

He shook his head at her but couldn’t argue against her. He had heard people talking about it, too. Some of the rumors have been getting quite out of hand, though.

“Are we going to practice, or are we going to gossip the entire time?” He asked her.

“Okay, okay. But just to let you know, I am going to ask you again after this,” Tia promised with an evil grin.

He ignored her, but that only seemed to invigorate her.

***

“You’re still using too much mana. Maybe you should take a break. You are getting a bit sloppier than you were earlier,” Julius commented to Joshua across the room.

“What do you mean he is using too much mana?” Tia asked as she worked on some of her skills.

“It means he is using too much mana,” he said plainly.

She sighed exasperatedly at his sarcastic answer. “He is already using so little mana. Isn’t that good enough?”

He paused and let Polux’s fist connect with his shoulder, not worrying too much about it because even though it was quite powerful for a Tier 2, the punch didn’t even penetrate his defenses.

“He is wasting a bunch of mana because he is letting a good amount drift off into the air,” he said while pointing at all of the wasted water mana he sensed drifting from Joshua.

She gave him a disbelieving stare. “How can you even filter out the water mana and sense it? I certainly can’t.”

“Well, that might be something you should work on,” he said as he ducked his head to avoid the overhand right from Polux and threw a frontkick at Polux, sending the wolfkin boy flying through the air. He still hadn’t completely forgiven the other boy yet. Or rather, he didn’t want to. He enjoyed hanging it over the wolfkin boy and using that as an excuse to be rougher on him during their sparring.

“That’s what Domains and Authorities, to an extent, are meant for,” the girl said to him with a deadpan stare, clearly not liking the tone of his response.

“I don’t see a reason why you can’t start now though. Plus, you won’t be able to get either of those if you don’t already have some proficiency in those areas,” he said to her much more politely, realizing how terse he might have come across.

“Because it would probably take me focusing on my perception skill for the next couple of months even to get close to making any kind of meaningful progress. The prelims for the tournament are next week, I have to focus on my strengths,” she said with a frown.

He sighed. He quickly found out that Tia loved plants and skills that revolved around that. However, for anything else, she was very unwilling to put in the effort. He didn’t know if it was because she didn’t like practicing something she wasn’t good at or if she just found it boring, but he was confident this would be something that would keep her behind the others in the long run.

She couldn’t just focus on plant magic the entire time. She needed to round out her skillset just a little bit. Her physical abilities were quite substandard, as were her general perception abilities, not just for mana but for aura and threat detection as well.

Additionally, he found out that her aura control wasn’t that great; with his new skill, he was able to read her intentions practically without much work. It would always be at a huge disadvantage if she ever fought someone with good aura senses like Polux. The wolf boy could literally read her like an open book. It was why she never won in their mock battles.

“Look, I know you want to win the tournament, but I am going to be honest, like you asked me to when you joined this training. Currently, you don’t have much of a chance of winning against someone who can avoid your plants. If you don’t pin them down, it’s pretty much over. That is why I have been advising you to add something to your toolkit. It doesn’t have to be mana sensing. It can be something else. But it needs to be something that can help you when your main weapon is ineffective,” he explained calmly to her.

“But the tournament-” she tried to argue, but he quickly cut her off.

“Forget the tournament. Think about what is going to happen in the real world when you come across a monster you can’t pin down with vines. What is going to happen to you? Are you going to rely on your teammates every time? I thought you said you want to be as strong as Edgar?”

“I do!” She said fervently.

“Then prove it,” he said before turning away. This wasn’t the first time he had a similar conversation with her this week. Only this time, he wasn’t as patient with her. She was just stubborn and didn’t like to listen to other’s advice. He didn’t entirely blame her either. He was ‘just’ a Tier 3 to her. While it was a mutual agreement that he was stronger than her, she probably thought he was stronger merely because of the tier difference.

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As he was walking away, Polux came up to him, rubbing the front of his chest where Julius had kicked him.

“Don’t you think you were a little harsh on her?”

“She was the one who asked me to,” he said with another sigh.

Polux nodded his head. “Fair, but she is stubborn. I have found that out the hard way these past several months.”

Julius looked over to where she was still playing with plant magic.“Then she will fall behind, I guess.”

“Why don’t you spar her for real?” Polux offered.

“Yeah, but what is that going to prove? That I am stronger?” He asked Polux.

“No, don’t just beat her. Beat her in the same way other people are going to. Force her to acknowledge that she needs another method of fighting. I try to work with her, but she says that I am too fast for her vines to work. I don’t think she realizes that someone of significant skill can avoid her vines without being extraordinarily fast or strong,” Polux stated.

That isn’t an awful idea, he thought to himself.

“And you think I can?”