Chapter 369: Hear It Out

The man tried to hide his alarm at all of the undead bodies littering the floor, but Julius could tell that it had unsettled him. Julius didn’t blame him for his reaction. There were a lot of undead. At the time, it didn’t seem like there were that many undead, but now looking at all of the bodies around them, the number was quite large.

Perhaps, it might have been better not to come along with Kuro. However, he reminded himself that he wasn’t in the same situation as he had been a year ago. While people still wanted to kill him, it wasn’t like he couldn’t defend himself.

As the failed assassination attempts had proven, he could take on a Tier 4 even at Tier 3. Sure, hiding his real power had helped him a lot. But the days when he would go out of his way to hide his power were slowly coming to an end.

He kept on doing it mainly out of habit, and it was useful. Fighting someone who underestimated him was much easier than fighting someone who was prepared for all his skills.

He looked at the man, who was trying his best to avoid bringing up the elephant in the room. Julius could tell that he wanted to ask him what had happened, but he held back out of politeness or some other reason.

In the meantime, Julius watched as Kuro used some kind of soul magic to extract the essence from the undead. This essence then funneled into the lich’s core like it was the most natural thing. But he couldn’t understand what the man was doing to achieve this.

It was almost like a more advanced usage of aura. Instead of using aura to directly influence something, soul magic felt a lot more sneaky, like carefully carving your way into something only to later exploit it.

Despite his proudly earned aura abilities, he didn’t think he would be able to accomplish the same thing that Kuro was showing him. It was an entirely different type of magic than the one he was used to. He knew his limits. Unfortunately, he didn’t know if he would be able to use soul magic.

At least not in the way that he saw in front of him. Perhaps there was a more rugged version that let him brute-force it like he did with many of his techniques. He would probably be pretty good at that.

It was actually quite generous of Kuro to let Julius watch his skills up close. Most of the time, these types of skills were quite private. The fact that Kuro was letting him inspect them was an odd display of trust for someone he didn’t know.

Julius actually had a feeling that there was something he wasn’t getting. Something that made Kuro trust Julius, or at least had him being overly nice to Julius. He suspected that it had something to do with the man’s soul magic. Perhaps, there was a way to find out what kind of person someone was by using some kind of skill.

Or maybe the man could see how strong Julius’s soul was and was attempting to get closer to him. That was also a real possibility. However, he didn’t see why Kuro would do such a thing. It wasn’t like a powerful soul at Tier 3 was enough reason to be so nice. There must be something else.

“How did you manage to kill all of these undead?” Kuro finally couldn’t help himself and asked when they came across their hundredth body.

Julius smiled at the man. “With great effort and sweat.”

All he got in return was a dubious look toward the piles of bodies in front of them.

***

“You got a flying familiar?” He asked Kuro with awe as he admired the beautiful bird before him. Its feathers were of the softest white and glowed with a slight teal energy. It was also quite large, or at least large enough to hold several people at once.

The man held his chin up proudly. “Yep! Pretty cool, huh?”

“Absolutely, does it make traveling through the forest easier?” He asked curiously. He could imagine how much travel time would be lessened when you didn’t have to traverse through the trees and dense brush of the forest.

“It does, but it also can be more dangerous,” Kuro commented.

Julius frowned. “Dangerous?”

“I mean, not around this area of the forest. But as you go deeper in the forest, there are other monsters who can fly and often hunt from the sky. She has the power of around a Tier 4, which dissuades most monsters from attacking, but there have been times when she has been attacked while flying around,” Kuro explained to him.

“Oh, that doesn’t sound very pleasant,” Julius said with a wince. He hadn’t been that deep into the forest yet, but from what he had heard, it was common to see powerful beasts roaming around once you left the outer ring.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“It’s fine. She is really fast,” Kuro said with pride while patting his familiar on the back.

“What’s her name?”

“Syla.”

“Pretty name for a pretty girl,” Julius complimented her, and got a cheerful chirp from her in return.

Kuro laughed and gestured towards her. “You can get on if you like. She won’t mind. You said that you were heading back to Peralt, and it will be much faster if we ride on her.”

Julius used a few moments to think about it, but the allure of flying on a majestic creature was too hard to decline and he quickly found himself climbing aboard Syla’s back with eagerness.