Chapter 94: Back on the Grind

It was fascinating how single-minded Julius could become. For the next couple of weeks, he did nothing other than train four primary skills: [Arcane Construct], [Pure Compression], [Mana Layering], and [Mana Slash]. He completely ignored everything else and stuck himself in a training room.

However, Julius was a little surprised and frustrated that [Mana Layering] hadn’t already evolved. It had been stuck on level 14 for a while, and Julius didn’t know what else he could do. There were only so many ways one could layer mana. He was at a blockade of some sort. He felt like he needed to use the skill in a new and exciting way, but nothing he had tried worked yet.

[Mana Slash] was coming along wonderfully though. It was a really easy skill to level up. There were so many uses you could use for it, Julius could see why it was such a highly desirable skill and why it was able to synergize with so many skills.

Julius had previously thought he was able to do exactly what [Mana Slash] was able to, but he quickly realized that he had been naive and ignorant. His version was a poor replication of the actual skill. When he closely compared the two, he was able to see the differences. Julius’s technique had uneven thicknesses of mana in specific pieces along the edge, and worked much less effectively, even if he used fire mana to bolster it.

Whereas, the skill version had a perfect edge of sharpened and honed unattributed mana. It was a beautiful application of mana that Julius had been trying very hard to replicate on his own without the skill. If he were to compare them to something, he would say his technique was like an iron blade made from the Middle Ages, whereas the skill was like a Japanese Katana made from the sharpest steel by the best smith in the world.

He knew he would never be able to achieve exactly the same thing on his own for a while longer. But it was good practice for his mana manipulation skills. During the past couple of weeks, he has made a few improvements.

[Mana Layering lvl 13 -> lvl 14]

[Arcane Construct lvl 16 -> lvl 17]

[Pure Compression lvl 15 -> lvl 17]

[Mana Slash lvl 1 -> lvl 10]

He had done everything he could think of to use those four skills in conjunction with each other so that they would have the highest chance of synergizing together.

Ordinarily, [Mana Slash] was only used on bladed weapons or things that had a functional edge. So Julius first used it on a sword, to test out the skill and how effective it was. He was pleased to find out that the skill did a very good job of sharpening the blade and slicing through the target.

It felt artificial in many ways. Julius could not detect or notice how the skill was applying mana in such a way that it tore open into things with such ease. It was unattributed mana too, the skill was converting ambient mana and some of his own to activate it. There had to be a reason why, but Julius wasn’t able to pinpoint it.

He didn’t stop at just using [Mana Slash] with a sword, he tried to use it with anything he could get his hands on. There had been nights where all he did for over ten hours straight was swing a tree branch trying to use [Mana Slash] with it.

At first, it was a miserable failure, hours went by before he made even a smidge of progress. But it did happen, slowly but surely.

He had been so focused on accomplishing it that he had almost missed when the branch had flickered ever so slightly with mana, running up and down its side. However, that little flicker, proved to Julius that it worked. So with a renewed sense of purpose, he continued to swing that branch for days.

He even missed his classes because he was so focused. It had worried the others because he had not told them until a couple of days later with his newly bought communication stone, but funnily enough they seemed to understand much to his astonishment. He would have thought they might be more upset with him, but then again they were all hard workers in their own right, so if anyone would understand it would be them.

He wasn’t just mindlessly swinging the branch either. Each swing was made with careful effort and intent. Being able to do it with a branch meant that he would have to be able to do some if not most of the skills job all on his own. So it was very difficult. He got close to having a complete [Mana Slash] but had only gotten a partially activated version.

He did it though. After all that time spent, he finally got it down. The mana flowed through the uneven surface of the branch and gently spun around its rough bark, creating a sharp-honed edge right along its length.

He received some notifications once he brought himself out of his concentrated state.

[Mana Slash lvl 10 -> lvl 13]

It appeared that keeping up such a concentrated state for almost a week had finally pushed [Mana Slash] enough that it leveled straight up to level 13. [Mana Slash] had almost caught up to [Mana Layering] at this point and was close to its own evolution.

The one thing that he had noticed during his obsessive training, was that [Mana Slash] had the capability to remember and adapt to what he had accomplished. This meant that while it was difficult to initially achieve, Julius could feel innately that he could replicate the same results now with more ease.

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He reached down and picked up the stick from the floor. He had dropped it because of his excitement of joy of finally doing it, but now he wanted to see if he could do it again on the first try.

He looked down at the stick in his hands. It was just a regular tree branch the length of his arm that he had found in the middle of the night in one of the many school gardens. He had spent longer than one would expect finding a branch that fit his needs, but it had served its purpose well. Though, it was barely holding together he observed.