Chapter 86: Fighting Edgar

Julius could understand why Edgar was considered one of the best fighters at Goldencrest. Strength, speed, skill, he had it all in spades. He had a perfect balance of offense and defense. His fire affinity did an amazing job of giving him the necessary explosiveness and intensity, while his earth affinity gave him the stability and fortitude to withstand any attack.

It wasn’t like Edgar’s use of aura was that amazing. For the most part, Julius thought that he himself had better control in certain aspects of aura manipulation. He had to admit though, that seeing Edgar fight and fighting him were two totally different things.

Julius didn’t quite fully grasp how fast Edgar was until he was on the receiving end of it. The only thing that gave Julius the advantage was how condensed he could make his constructs and how [Empowerment of Will] protected them from any outside influence.

He had seen how one of Edgar’s skills had blown apart the other’s constructs and had felt him try to do the same thing to Julius’s. If Julius didn’t have that thing going for him, he would have lasted much shorter than he did. However, once Edgar got close enough, it was always over with a quick exchange of strikes. Even with his improved physique and how much more mana he could charge into his body, he still fell short. He had really thought that Tier 2 would allow him to fight on his level, but there was much more he could learn.

Edgar was a much better hand-to-hand fighter than Julius, and it showed. Julius also quickly realized that he was not fully leveraging his newfound strength and Tier 2 body as he should have been. Just because Julius had been able to push so much more mana and aura through his body, didn’t mean that he was doing it correctly or the most efficiently.

He felt like a lot of it was going to waste. He believed that with how much power he was cycling through his body, he should have been able to keep up better with Edgar. Edgar thought the same thing as well.

So as Julius was backpedaling, avoiding a sweeping leg, he focused on lowering his output but trying to maintain better control over it. It was still more than he could previously flow through his body, but he worked on slowly integrating precision over his enhancements.

He was attempting to get more space between him and Edgar, but [Spatial Perception] picked up on a subtle use of earth mana behind him.

A thick pillar of stone launched itself out of the ground and tried to smash into Julius’s back. It missed, thanks to Julius noticing it before it was too late, but it still did its job. Just that slight opening and time Julius had to allocate to dodging it was enough for Edgar to send a rippling burst of fire mana out of his fist and catch Julius in the gut with it.

Julius found himself getting burned by the fire mana much to his surprise. He thought that he would have a good chance of siphoning the fire because of his affinity, but Edgar’s fire had a touch of his aura inside of it which made it difficult to take control of it before the attack hit.

It was painful almost like he was really getting burned, only the simulated combat bracelets saved him from receiving any actual injuries. Edgar didn’t let up either, he understood that if Julius got enough space and had enough time to prepare something, he could actually hurt Edgar, so the big guy blitzed Julius with a ferocious stream of strikes.

Unlike, Aubrey’s more graceful onslaught, this was pure savagery. It wasn’t like it was out of control, the opposite in fact. However, it did mean that every strike, every attack was aimed to do the most amount of damage as it could.

No matter what Julius did and how hard he tried to fend Edgar off, it didn’t end well. He always found himself lying on his back, beaten thoroughly.

I did say I wanted him to take me seriously. So I can’t be complaining, because he is definitely not taking it easy on me. Julius thought to himself.

They had fought several times at this point and each time Julius managed to do a little better. Lasting a little longer and learning a little more. However, losing this often was not doing his confidence any good. He had to keep reminding himself that he was facing someone who was a whole tier and a bit above him.

Not only that, but he wasn’t fighting someone who was an average or weak Tier 3 either. Edgar was one of the best at Goldencrest and expecting to best someone like him was not achievable at the moment. The best thing he could do was learn from him.

Thinking about it, he didn’t even think he could defeat Aubrey if it came down to it. He didn’t think she would be able to consistently defeat him either, but her skills made it really hard for Julius to put her down if she wanted to play cat and mouse with him.

Aubrey did have a few ranged attack options that she had rarely used during their spars, but against Julius, she found them pretty useless. So she hadn’t been using them that often. Her reason was she had been trying to learn how to fight better up close for the better part of a couple of years now and she only used her range attacks in conjunction with her clone and stealth skills when she was ambushing someone.

She didn’t think that they would have been all that effective against Julius anyway, with his perception skill and mana senses, so she didn’t really use them all that often. But if she decided to sit behind a bunch of trees or use hit-and-run tactics against him, he didn’t think he would be able to catch her without bombarding every inch of the surroundings.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Edgar walked over to where Julius was lying on the floor and sat down beside him. To Julius’s credit, Edgar was out of breath as well, Julius made him work for his win.

Julius reached over to Edgar, pressing a hand on his shoulder, and used a little bit of life mana on him, healing him of his fatigue. Then he did the same to himself, bringing him back to normal. Julius did notice that the changes he felt from his life mana weren’t transferred over to Edgar.