Chapter 376: Spirit Fortification

He was extra glad that he decided to stretch out his fight because he learned that the wraith had more tricks up its sleeve. It would sometimes use some sort of skill to teleport using the surrounding fog.

There was obviously some sort of cooldown, but from what he could tell, there was no mana or aura cost to do so. It completely relied on the huge quantity of fog to do so.

It was quite the fascinating technique, one he doubted he would be able to learn without help from another person to explain it to him. It was such a shame that he wasn’t a prodigy like some of his friends.

He kept on letting this wraith bombard him with slashes. Each time the monster broke through his barrier of mana, he made some adjustments. Some worked better than others, but what remained the same every time was that the wraith slashed right through it.

This made him feel both wildly confused and curious as to how this creature managed to break through something that Tier 4s were unable to. It wasn’t like the monster was stronger than these people. It was just that its skill seemed supremely well suited to cutting through things.

The best way to protect yourself from its attacks was to avoid getting hit altogether. He might have found himself in danger if it had longer claws.

It would appear that the only actual way to block the attack was to create a barrier with just aura. The problem was that aura wasn’t that great at blocking physical attacks compared to mana. Thankfully, he came up with a workaround.

He could inject his aura into his mana barrier.

However, this wasn’t as easy as it sounded. The first thing he tried was to cover his barrier of mana with aura. It was the simplest way he could think of accomplishing this, but it didn’t work that well. He might as well not even have done anything.

The aura barely hindered the claws from reaching the mana barrier, and like it had for the past several minutes, it tore right through it.

Next, he tried to create mana channels throughout the barrier and inject aura into the shield that way. It was quite simple, and because of his prior practice with the technique, he managed to fill it up without difficulty and with decent speed.

To his excitement, this seemed to work. Admittedly, it didn’t work amazingly well, but it withstood the claws for a few moments. Unfortunately, like the prior times, it eventually failed.

The failure points were the places where there wasn’t any aura. The channels didn’t flow throughout every inch of the barrier. There were small pockets where plain mana still resided. This was where the claws made it through.

What he likely had to do was to create individual threads of mana and weave aura into each individual one. So that was exactly what he did.

***

He didn’t care that the wraith kept on slicing him up. He had a healing skill to rely on and honestly, the cuts weren’t even that deep. It barely took any mana to heal himself, which was why he felt comfortable doing this.

Weaving aura into his mana was an extremely difficult thing to do. He thought it would be similar to weaving his mana, but he was wrong. It was much more difficult. He ended up with something more akin to a toddler’s first attempt at sewing a blanket. It was ugly work at best, but he couldn’t help but laugh because it worked amazingly well.

The wraith, who had been tearing through his mana barriers, found itself unable to even touch him. He smiled brightly and watched with satisfied eyes for several minutes as the wraith desperately tried to get through.

It had already been tiring at this point, the physical exertion of constantly slashing at him must have taken its toll. He continued to make some improvements to his new creation. Some adjustments to places where the woven aura was fraying at the edges.

The aura not only prevented whatever attack the wraith was using, but also strengthened the entire construct. It also had a weird effect that he believed originated from his ruinous aura. Whenever its claw got near it, the aura which was woven into the barrier automatically broke it down. It was fascinating to watch, and not what he had planned when making it.

He kept on making small changes, and it was only when it was barely able to stand that he finally made his first real move.

Taking some inspiration from his recent technique, he took control of his barrier and molded part of it into a small spike. He then charged a lot of kinetic energy along with his Sharpness Concept.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The wraith must have realized what he was doing and was already trying to escape. However, Julius wasn’t going to allow it the chance. How dare it try to run away now that it was on the back foot? He had been letting this monster wail on him for so long. It was his turn now.

He used these emotions to power his aura and wrap it around the wraith. It took a lot of effort, but he was able to prevent it from moving or teleporting away long enough to send the spike screaming at the monster. The newly created spike tore through the wraith with ease.

However, what was surprising was that it didn’t just go right through. No, the spike for some reason detonated the moment it entered the monster’s chest and exploded the wraith into dust. He barely had a chance to examine what the spike did.

He let out a deep breath as he looked around. He still had his protective bubble of aura around him that kept the fog away, but he couldn’t sense anything else around. He didn’t know if he actually defeated the monster or not.

He wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t. It was such a weird creature after all.