Chapter 34: New Skill

Julius had all four of the limbs splayed out as he used the dredges of his mana to heal himself and tried to recover as much mana as he could.

Nothing went according to how he thought things might go. He had expected that he would have to fight the big bad troll chieftain in the end, but honestly, it was hard to believe that even it could survive that catastrophe.

Julius stayed on the ground for over an hour. He had already completely healed by now and his mana had recovered a decent amount in that time as well. He had checked his notifications as waited.

[Savage Dance lvl 11 -> lvl 14]

[Arcane Construct lvl 5 -> lvl 8]

[Pure Compression lvl 4 -> lvl 7]

[Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal lvl 5 -> lvl 9]

[Kinetic Augmentation lvl 1 -> lvl 5]

It was the greatest improvement he had seen while in the rift. Numbers-wise, it might have not been the largest increase, but considering that all of his skills were rare, the improvement was significant.

He even got a new skill offered.

Would you like to learn the skill [Fighter’s Will] (Uncommon)?

Julius didn’t know what to expect from a skill like that. He didn’t even know why he got offered it. Was it from participating in so many dangerous fights? Or maybe it was because of his dumb stunt? He didn’t know. However, he didn’t see any reason not to accept it.

He almost thought about not choosing it just because it would mean his status would no longer have all rare skills, but quickly whacked himself over the head.

Congratulations, skill [Fighter’s Will] (Uncommon) acquired.

Even after he acquired it, he still didn’t have any idea what the skill did. He guessed it would take some experimenting to find out. Julius had bigger problems to solve though.

For one, he was expecting some sort of exit would appear. Most times when a rift was cleared, a portal appeared, taking the delvers back to the real world. However, Julius had not seen any signs of a portal yet.

Could there still be other trolls in the valley? Or maybe the chieftain is still alive.

Julius knew that some rifts were only considered completely cleared once the “boss” was killed. But looking at the mess of the aftermath, he could not even begin to guess how or where the boss might be.

Getting back to his feet, Julius made his way to the destroyed remnants of the mountain. He had always planned to create some sort of landslide as a contingency but nothing on this scale. He thought it would be useful in getting away, but it was way more effective than he could have dared hoped for.

He was lucky that the direction of the landslide wasn’t where he was blasted off. If it was, it was very possible that he would have been buried alongside the trolls.

Once he made it to the base of the mountain, he used [Spatial Perception] to its limits, trying to sense anything living underneath. The skill was undoubtedly one of the most useful skills he had, but he was having a difficult time picking up anything through so much rock. It was hard to differentiate what was rock and what wasn’t.

It was only when he was almost directly over a troll, that he could sense it. It was also very tricky navigating through the rubble. Julius had to climb over boulders and be careful not to slip on the uneven terrain. A twisted ankle was funnily enough, not a big issue for him anymore, but it still didn’t mean he could just run across the debris.

Not surprisingly, he ended up finding some living trolls buried deep underneath the rock. He put them out of their misery with a wedge of mana or sent an additional blast of kinetic mana on the rock burying them, and smushing them for good. The trolls were persistent, he would give them that. But still had not found the chieftain or the mage.

Julius spent several hours picking through the ruins but still had zero luck. At this point, he was almost certain the chieftain had made it out alive. He found that there were a lot more trolls who survived than what he originally thought. It really highlighted their impressive survivability abilities. However, there was still no chieftain or mage and it worried him.

Even after constant searching, Julius came up empty-handed. But he at least was able to take care of the many stragglers stuck in the landslide, so that was a plus.

It was getting close to early morning and Julius was tired from the stress of the day, so he headed back to the ravine.

He was casually enhancing his body with [Kinetic Augmentation] jogging back as he thought about the day’s events. He still didn’t quite understand some of his actions. During the heat of the moment, he had decided to completely derail from his carefully made plans.