Chapter 570: Pleasantly Surprised

Julius needed a little bit of time, so he slung half a dozen spikes of mana at the incoming swordsman. His opponent demonstrated impressive speed, closing the distance in mere seconds.

The spikes that Julius sent at his opponent were either dodged or parried aside by their sword, and they continued dashing forward. He didn’t bother to hide his teleportation skill. His opponent should already know that he had one.

However, instead of using it to get closer or to attack his opponent, he teleported backward. He still needed some more time to prepare. His kinetic skills were all slowly weaving together into his makeshift technique.

[Kinetic Shell] finally formed around his body, the blue swirling light sparkled as it thrummed with energy. It was only then that he used his teleportation skill to close the distance. His fist was already closing in on the swordsman’s face.

However, his opponent reacted with astonishing swiftness; their sword was already flicking upward to slice his wrist with an expressionless look in their eyes. Julius frowned when he was forced to back off and parry the sword to the side with his gauntlets. Sparks of blue mana flaked off from the surface of his constructs.

He could feel the sword dig into his gauntlets deeper than he would have expected. Then, before Julius could think about it any more, his opponent swung their sword down in an attempt to slice his forearm.

Julius pulled back and let the sword pass him by before closing the distance. His [Kinetic Shell] helped absorb a lot of the force of the blow, but whatever concepts the swordsman had at his disposal helped limit how effective it was. These concepts literally cut through the shell with little resistance.

It wasn’t that surprising, since the skill was still only a rare-ranked skill. He had this same issue during his last fight with Liam. The skill was good, but when facing off against some of the best talents in the Empire, it wouldn’t cut it. The skills it was going up against were probably epic skills. The fact that it was still somewhat effective demonstrated that it was a good skill for its rank.

He just needed to catch up with the rest of his skills. Luckily for Julius, he had something else to help him now.

[Graveforce Impact]. His new shiny skill.

He was being literal in that sense. The skill shone purple with each movement he made with it.

He expanded his shell outward, making it as large as possible while maintaining its potency. When he detected a sword strike coming at him, he activated [Graveforce Impact], using [Kinetic Shell] as a medium.

A strong blast of kinetic energy ripped out from his shell and knocked the sword off course and his opponent off balance. Julius didn’t capitalize and let the man regain his footing. He had already sensed some kind of skill prepared to hit him if he had tried to attack.

Plus, he wanted some more time to practice his new technique. It was still sloppy by his standards.

With that being said, [Kinetic Shell] made his kinetic attacks much more fluid and extremely quick. This also seemed to apply to his new skill. It worked way better than he could have hoped.

In the past, he had been forced to use his kinetic skills to either absorb or dissipate force. There were some pretty obvious drawbacks to that strategy. For one thing, there was a limit on how much force he could handle at once.

Another was dealing with opposing concepts like his opponents’ concepts at the moment. However, why did he have to bother with absorbing the force? Why could he just counteract his opponent’s attacks with attacks of his own?

Thus, his new kinetic technique was born.

He would intercept each attack that entered his shell with kinetic blasts of his own. And with a dedicated offensive skill like [Graveforce Impact], his idea actually became feasible.

Of course, this new technique relied on many factors. One of the biggest factors was the need for exceptional perception and reaction speed. Thankfully, he had [Absolute Spatial Perception] to aid him with this. He was able to sense attacks from every direction and use his [Kinetic Shell] in combination with [Graveforce Impact] to intercept them.

He was quite proud of himself.

He dodged to the side and set off another blast of kinetic energy, intercepting another sword strike, but was forced to lean slightly to the side when it was about to clip him on the hip. His opponent was really skilled with a sword. That much was clear. They were already adapting to Julius’s technique.

Julius also realized something else. He needed some reach, and so he created a stick of mana when he got some space.

His opponent paused for a moment, tilting his head as he examined the stick.

“Is that just a regular stick of mana?” The other teen asked with confusion. All signs that he had just been trying to remove Julius’s head with his sword were gone. The dead expression was replaced with one of befuddlement.

“Yeah, it’s just a stick,” Julius confirmed.

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“Why?”

“I need some reach,” Julius answered honestly.

“Hmm. Okay,” the guy said with a nod.

“Yeah, so now we are talking. Do you mind if I ask you a—”