Chapter 452: What You Wanted?

Julius walked away and over to Marcus. He had taken it easy on the poor girl in the beginning, but had to increase his effort slightly. He hadn’t been planning on it, but he had been forced to use his aura. He couldn’t really use his other dangerous skills, not during a meaningless spar, and he didn’t trust himself only to use kinetic energy just yet. He would feel terrible if he somehow blew her up because he was unable to control his output. It wasn’t like he was sparring against Arthur; if she failed to handle the influx of energy, she would pop like a balloon.

Although, to her credit, she had demonstrated some fascinating abilities. That field of lightning was very intriguing. He suspected that it would serve as the foundation for her domain if she ever reached Tier 5. Which, in all honesty, wouldn’t surprise Julius. She was definitely one of the more powerful Tier 3s he had come across.

Her Lightning Concepts had taken a slightly different direction than Derek’s. In her case, she had infused many other properties into the actual lightning. Whereas in Derek’s case, he had pushed his lightning to do as much damage as possible.

For example, she had managed to stack multiple effects into her lightning. There was the physical stun effect, which seemed to be the normal effect of lightning magic, making it harder to move one’s body. She also infused a disruptive effect into the lightning itself. It wasn’t as powerful as he had seen from other specialized mages, but for a passive effect, it was quite strong. If you took into account the stunning as well, then it was doubly annoying.

Then there was the effect of shocking one’s mana. He noticed that her lightning had this weird ability to not only stun the body, but also one’s mana. Furthermore, there was a fascinating property that allowed her lightning to hone in on him. He wondered if she managed to take advantage of lightning’s natural tendency for conduction to achieve this.

All of this wasn’t even considering the sheer damage her lightning did to someone just by itself. If he was being honest, he was quite impressed. He believed that if Derek managed to learn some of these same techniques, he would become drastically more dangerous. He would have to mention something to his friend later.

It was just a shame that her body lagged behind. He was able to tell right away that her mind worked faster than her body could react. While she had a teleportation skill to move around, it would only help so much.

He hadn’t even chosen to disrupt his teleportation attempts like he could have.

Julius approached Marcus. “Is that what you wanted?” He asked the man blankly.

Marcus shrugged. “Essentially. I would like to mention that your aura control has improved really nicely. Your ability to hold back the more dangerous aspects of it while still utilizing it efficiently is impressive,” Marcus complimented.

Julius did his best not to show his appreciation of the praise. He had worked quite hard for the past several months on making sure he had perfect control of his aura. While he hadn’t quite gotten there, there was clearly a large difference between his control now and what it was a few months ago.

“Is that all?” He asked.

“Well… I was hoping to see more of your improvements, but it seems you want to stay secretive,” Marcus admitted with a grin.

“Too bad,” Julius said flatly.

“We have time,” Marcus said with a confident smile.

Julius sighed, and they quietly stood next to another before Julius spoke again. “You didn’t need to taunt her like that,” he rebuked the one-armed man, while glancing back at where the girl was standing, sort of stunned as if she had been hit by one of her own lightning attacks.

Marcus shrugged uncaringly and glanced at her as well. “Honestly, the two of them needed to see that there were levels beyond them. I was given the order to help them improve as much as possible, but their belief that they are at the top of Tier 3 holds them back and makes them harder to teach.”

“So you wanted to use me to show them that isn’t the case?” Julius asked with a narrowing of his eyes.

“Yep.”

Julius rolled his eyes. “You are unbelievable.”

“I try my best,” Marcus said, barely hiding a grin. Julius would have retorted, but he stopped when he sensed the girl, Christina, approaching them. Both turned toward her.

He was going to say something first, but she beat him to it. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly and with a deep bow.

“For what?” He asked, confused by her actions. If anyone should be apologizing to him, it should be Marcus.

“For my conceitedness,” she said with her head still down.

He waved her off. “It’s not even your fault,” he said and pointed at Marcus. “This donkey was just trying to rile you up. He likes to play too many games,” Julius insulted Marcus.

“Donkey?” He heard Marcus mutter to himself, sounding less offended and more puzzled by the insult.

Christina looked worried when Julius insulted Marcus, and waited a moment to see what the man would do to Julius. She looked baffled when Marcus didn’t do anything.

She chewed on her lip. “Regardless, I wanted to say sorry either way.”

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“Water under the bridge,” Julius assured her.

An awkward moment of silence stretched between them, and Julius was about to walk away when she reached out to stop him. “Um, actually, I would like to ask you some questions, if that is alright?” She asked hesitatingly.

“Sure, go ahead,” he said, feeling a little confused.

“Can you show me how you did that?” She wouldn’t look him in the eyes and appeared a little embarrassed to be asking that.

“The last aura attack?” He asked to make sure he understood what she was asking.

She nodded in response.

He could tell that she was being sincere, so he didn’t have any issues with that. “Sure, but be warned, I don’t know if you will be able to replicate it. I got a unique aura, but it should be possible to mimic some of the effects,” he explained to her.

She looked up with excitement. “That’s more than fine!”

He saw Marcus looking pleased with himself off in the corner, but he ignored the man. Julius had a feeling that this was also Marcus’s intention. He hid the sigh that tried to come out of him and proceeded to show Derek’s cousin some aura drills he had developed to oppress others’ abilities.