Chapter 399: Not Funny Anymore

Julius didn’t do too much to help them out. They appeared to have things handled for the most part. He only took out the monsters that the others hadn’t sensed. It was a simple task to snipe them out of the air. Most of them were Tier 3s, and he hadn’t detected any Tier 4s making their way toward them.

Things were going well until a sudden explosion rocked the field. Thankfully, they were far enough away that they weren’t injured, but he looked up to see that the missing Tier 5 monster had made its appearance.

While hidden by whatever stealth skill it had been using, the beast released a violent attack onto the Tier 5 that exploded everything within a hundred feet of the Tier 5. The shockwave alone injured the nearby Tier 4s and the few Tier 3s brave enough to stay around such powerful people.

The explosion had saved the other Tier 5 lightning monster, who had been getting slowly whittled down by Simon, the Tier 5 from the Adventurer’s Guild. And now that there were two Tier 5s for the man to deal with, it became much more dangerous.

This new monster was quite fascinating. It was all grey and looked similar to a goblin in terms of physical features, but Julius could tell from the way it managed to disappear that it was ridiculously fast. Additionally, it seemed to have the ability to attack with blasts of highly condensed aura.

This is what had caused the earlier explosion and what Simon was having to deal with.

Julius was so distracted by the ongoing fight between the three Tier 5s that he almost didn’t detect the incoming missiles of mana coming from the sky.

He quickly realized that these missiles weren’t from a Tier 3 and promptly created a dozen spikes over his shoulder. He didn’t wait a moment longer and sent them screaming toward the oncoming missiles, using his advanced control of his mana to intercept them.

He then exploded them once they were close enough to the missiles. He was pretty successful, as the explosions were sufficient to destabilize the projectiles. Only a few managed to get through, and he quickly created a barrier over his arms, blasting himself upward to block the missiles with his body. Whoever had sent the attacks was strong, and he grunted as he barely managed to enforce his barrier as the projectiles slammed into him with a deafening boom.

He heard the others shout in panic as they saw him get blasted, but calmed down when the dust cleared and he was alright. Julius looked off in the distance where the attack had come from and spotted a man floating in the air just above the trees.

He wasn’t that surprised to see another human attacking them. He already knew that this was a part of someone’s plan, but he was surprised to see that he was the target. While he knew that the Conclave and Clan Genshen wanted him dead, he didn’t think they would go this far to kill him after House Violet’s warning.

He also wondered how they figured out where he was. Did someone manage to tell them?

Julius was about to zip over to the mage off in the distance to get some answers when he froze.

It was only because he had been worried for their safety, but he had dedicated a piece of his mind to watch over his friends. That was the only reason he managed to perceive a small spatial ripple directly in the middle of his friends. He didn’t even give himself time to think. He subconsciously used his Space Concept to connect with this spatial ripple and used his aura to delay whatever was trying to come through.

Then, he used [Void Step] and appeared directly in front of the spatial ripple. It was only then that he released the restraint he had over the pinhole in space. A thin man swinging a sword appeared from this spatial ripple, and the man’s eyes widened in shock when his sword sliced into Julius’s chest instead of his original target.

However, before the assailant could react, Julius had already shoved his blade into the man’s torso in return with a blade of aura woven mana.

As he was doing this, he couldn’t help but feel immensely surprised that someone was able to use a spatial skill inside the forest. As far as he knew, teleportation was hard to do inside the barrier. And while he had heard that short-range teleports like [Instantaneous Step] were allowed, the distance was heavily restricted. The fact that this man was able to appear from outside his sphere of perception meant the distance was greater than a couple of hundred feet.

There had to be some trick. However, he shook his head, reminding himself to stay focused on the attacker.

Speaking of the attacker, they still had Julius’s blade stuck in their chest, but they also reacted quickly.

Julius was staggered backward when they sent a concentrated blast of mana infused with their Authority at Julius. The moment they did this, it became clear that this man had a Concept revolving around Death or Corruption. Thankfully, it wasn’t that effective since Julius wasn’t there anymore.

He had used another [Void Step] to reappear at the man’s back and slammed into the man’s chest once more. The man let out another groan of pain but whipped around quickly to grab hold of Julius’s arm.

The moment the attacker grabbed hold of his arm, Julius felt as their Authority wrapped around him and tried to prevent him from escaping with his spatial skill. However, if Savath couldn’t stop him from teleporting away, then this man was sorely mistaken to believe that he could.

Julius vanished into thin air and reappeared above the man. Wings of mana were formed from the thick bands of mana he had been preparing since the monsters attacked, and he kept himself afloat with kinetic energy.

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The others who had been shocked by the sudden attack had already backed away from the enemy and were in the middle of throwing everything they had at the man. Julius felt the attacker was about to activate the same spatial skill he had used to teleport close, but Julius chose to use this moment to explode the blade he had left inside the man’s chest.

The combination of his aura and compressed nature of his mana meant the explosion was enormous. His aura also ensured that the man’s skill was disrupted at the last moment, leaving him desperately activating a barrier to protect himself from the deluge of attacks.

The barrier was strong and withstood these attacks as they slammed into it. Not even Derek’s lightning-covered spear, which he had thrown, was enough to pierce the barrier. Still, this wasn’t too much of a surprise because the man was a Tier 4 after all.

However, Julius felt Lily send out a powerful surge of psychic energy that caused the man to stumble, and for a brief moment, his control over his barrier wavered.