Path to Transcendence

Professor Rowe had stopped talking, his smile was wiped off of his face like it had never been there. His posture was no longer slouched and relaxed. His eyes were deadly still, as he observed the still-talking students. It was a dramatic change that caught the attention of many students who were watching.

Julius just sat back and waited to witness what happened next. Finally, one of the students in the group noticed that nobody was talking except for them and nudged his friend who was still joking around with his group.

The guy had long blonde hair lying over his shoulders and according the Julius’s senses was one of the students who were already Tier 2. The blonde guy looked around and saw that everyone else was looking at their group, some with annoyance and some like Julius with anticipation. They wanted to see what Professor Rowe was going to do.

Julius was glad to say that Professor Rowe didn’t let them get away with it, unlike Professor Edwards.

“You there, the one who doesn’t want to stop talking, what’s your name?” Professor Rowe demanded.

The guy to his credit, calmly responded, “Jacob Rolands sir.”

“And why are you interrupting my lecture? You guys were laughing pretty loudly, so it must’ve been funny. What was it?” Professor Rowe said with a stern tone.

“I’m sorry Professor Rowe, it won’t happen again.” This time it was a different girl in the group who apologized.

“I wasn’t talking to you Ms. Abernath. I was talking to Mr. Rolands.” Professor Rowe admonished her.

The girl acted like she had just gotten slapped, and quickly backed away. Julius was more surprised that the professor knew her name in the first place.

“It was just something stupid professor, I am sorry.” Jacob also apologized.

“So it wasn’t even important? The reason why you thought it was appropriate to interrupt the entire class with your giggling and chatter was for something stupid?” Professor Rowe asked them.

The guy didn’t seem to know to answer to that. He just nodded his head while looking at the floor under his feet.

“You and your friends are free to leave.” Professor Rowe told him while pointing at the door.

“What but we weren’t doing anything,” another guy from the group protested.

“Mr. Collins you can forget about coming to tomorrow’s class as well.” Professor Rowe told the guy.

The guy who spoke up didn’t say another word, but you could see the anger burning in his eyes as he stared down the shorter professor. The blonde guy, Jacob took his friend by the shoulders before he did anything he would regret and left alongside his entire group that was being disruptive.

Once they had all left, Professor Rowe went back to his jubilant self. “Okay! Now that we don’t have any more disruptors, we can get back to business!”

For the first hour, Professor Rowe explained the general gist of the class and answered many of the student's questions regarding what they would be doing throughout the year. According to the professor, the class would be doing basic combat training for the first couple of months, it was only after that they would start doing more advanced combat training such as rift delves or full contact sparring with simulated combat devices.

During the last hour, Professor Rowe took them around and showed them some of the facilities, before taking them to a large area where he had them change into their training uniforms. For the rest of the time, the professor had them go through some basic footwork drills before he let them go for the day.

Not much happened throughout any of his classes except for some drama with some students, but it was a very similar experience to schools in his old world. The main difference was that his last school didn’t have magic.

His next class was his swordsmanship elective with Sarah Hashen. Unlike mandatory classes, electives could be taken by every year of students. Professor Hashen’s class was apparently quite popular because Julius saw many underclassmen and upperclassmen all funneling into the training yard where the session was held.

Julius checked his status for a minute and was surprised that he had some notifications that he had missed.

[Mana Layering lvl 3 -> lvl 4]

[Empowerment of Will lvl 3 -> lvl 4]

He had been practicing [Mana Layering] last night, but Julius must’ve forgotten to check if it leveled up afterward. He was more interested to see that [Empowerment of Will] had leveled up throughout the day. He didn’t know if it was because of the incident with Liam, or the fact that Julius had been trying to sense a lot of people’s aura, but something must have worked because it was now level 4.

Julius let himself get distracted for a moment before he remembered why he was checking his status in the first place. He wanted to know what his [Swordsmanship] was at and how close it was to evolving to uncommon.

Name: Julius Von Hyperius

Tier: 1

Skills:

• [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal lvl 12] (Rare+)

• [Empowerment of Will lvl 3] (Rare+)

• [Spatial Perception lvl 19] (Rare)

• [Savage Dance lvl 17] (Rare)

• [Arcane Construct lvl 14] (Rare)

• [Pure Compression lvl 13] (Rare)

• [Kinetic Augmentation lvl 13] (Rare)

• [Mana Layering lvl 4] (Uncommon)

• [Swordsmanship lvl 8]

Level 8 wasn’t bad, especially considering how little time he spent using a sword. The main thing that had helped a lot was his experience fighting bare-handed. There were many similarities between fighting with his fists and with a sword.

Both relied heavily on footwork, parrying, and distance control. The primary thing that was giving him trouble was that he wasn’t used to the feeling of brandishing a sword yet.

However, he knew that would come with experience and time.

Another reason why Julius was looking forward to this class was that it was a class about technique and control, which meant that physical ability wasn’t as important. He was planning to learn the sword using either no enhancement like in Physical Training or he would use about half power, as he did with Orus.

He would prefer that he didn’t start relying on his superior enhanced strength to win him fights. He would much rather win a fight using superior technique and skill. He believed that only when he had the proper skill, he would be able to take advantage of [Kinetic Augmentation] and [Empowerment of Will].

Julius was waiting with the rest of the students in the training yard when Professor Hashen and several other people following her showed up. By the looks of them, Julius was guessing these people were her assistants.

Some of the other professors mentioned that they would have assistants as well once they started to pick things up during the year, but Professor Hashen was the only one who brought them to their first class. She walked up to everyone in the yard, and told them, “Everyone is to separate yourselves by years. First years start on the left and then make your way to fourth years. Hurry up!”

Professor Hashen was much more pretty than Julius had pictured in his head. He had been imagining a large muscular woman, but instead what he saw was a woman around Lily’s stature. Her voice was light but carried easily over the training yard.

Second years and up all formed lines quickly and with efficiency. The first years though, were struggling to place themselves in an orderly manner. There were even a few of them who ended up in the fourth-year group and had to be escorted back to the first years.

Julius recognized a couple of first-years from his classes today. He saw the cute brunette and the guy who looked like he could have been Edgar’s brother, both of whom led the pack of his Physical Training class standing next to each other. Then he saw several other students that he recognized from either his Intro to Mana or Tier Advancement classes. He didn’t know their names yet, but apparently, they used swords too.

Professor Hashen didn’t waste any time going over what they were going to do like most of the other teachers today. Instead, she instructed the students that they were going to split off into their year groups and each group would have an assistant or two helping them out.

She made sure to remind them it was a temporary situation. As the year progressed she would change the groups around based on where she thought they stood in rankings of skill. She said that many students were taking this class in the second or third year, but had little to no experience with swords.

She didn’t embarrass them or make these older students feel bad though. She made sure that everyone knew that one of her only rules was that everybody worried about their own progress and to not mock other students for their skills.

Professor Hashen would primarily be teaching the fourth years, or the advanced group, but would often make rounds throughout the entire class during the hour they were there. The fourth-year group didn’t waste any time with drills or whatnot. All of them had already had experience with sword fighting. The three younger groups on the other hand had to go through some standard drills and forms.

One of them was the Imperial Sword Art, the one that Frederick, Tristan’s father was showing him before he met Julius. It was a comprehensive set of sword forms that established many basic techniques that one will build off of as one grows as a swordsman.

Julius hadn’t been learning the Imperial Sword Art from Orus or Declan before he came to Goldencrest, but he did learn many forms that were very close if not identical to the ones in the Imperial Sword Art.

As they went through them, the assistants went by and examined each student to see where they stood relative to other students. If they thought a student was ahead of their year, they would send them into the next group. If they thought the opposite they would send them down.

The day was about finding out where most students stood so that each student was placed in the appropriate group where they would find the most value.

Julius saw many second and third years get dropped down into a lower group. The assistants didn’t care if they were Tier 2 or Tier 3, they only focused on if their technique was solid or if it was lacking somewhere.

He noticed that many of the ones who were new to swordsmanship were either mages or non-combat students who thought learning sword skills would be of beneficial use to them. Julius respected that they showed up to learn something they knew they weren’t good at. Most of them, with the exception of a few embarrassed students, understood the reasons why they were moved down and took it with grace.

Julius had no expectations of being brought up into another group. He noticed that most of the students were much better than him in technique. That didn’t mean they would beat him with a sword in combat, but their strikes were typically more clean and their movements were more precise.

The boy and girl from his Physical Training class were brought up immediately to a higher group. Julius observed them for a moment and was very impressed by their skill. They definitely had a sword skill that was either an uncommon skill that was in the upper half of the rank, or even a rare ranked sword skill.

They both had different styles though. The girl was more fluid and used her footwork to dance around her target, while the boy was straight-aggressive. Not even aggression like Julius, but like smashing his own head into a wall type of aggression. It reminded him of a Viking and how they would have fought.

It was honestly quite impressive how much endurance the guy had. He had a massive broadsword that he used to great effect. He had been swinging that thing nonstop and he was still going strong. It was a simple style, but those usually had fewer weaknesses than others. Julius had a sneaking suspicion that this guy was going to be a monster once he got to the higher tiers.