Path to Transcendence

It would seem that they weren't the only ones who had sensed it. There was a signal to halt all of the wagons resounding throughout the caravan.

All of the wagons swiftly came to a stop and as they did, everyone except for the merchants got out of the wagon. Matt's entire team had taken their weapons out and prepared their equipment very quickly, jumping out of the wagon with serious faces. The previous joking atmosphere was no longer present.

Julius was not surprised to see that all the other teams were filing out of their wagons as well. There were a couple dozen fighters who were participating in this mission, quite a large number for a simple escort mission.

He turned to look back in the direction he had felt the surge of aura.

The first thing his mind assumed was that this was the Conclave making a move on them. But after a minute, he realized that it would be silly if they announced their presence this easily.

Furthermore, the auras he sensed did not feel particularly well controlled. This made him believe it was some sort of group of monsters instead.

"You don't have to worry," Stephanie said to him reassuringly. "It's probably just a random group of monsters who sensed all of us."

Beck gave him a pat on the shoulder, the time spent in the wagon talking seemed to make Beck much more friendly. "It's pretty common to see if this area. A lot of monsters like to roam these parts. That's why having an escort is important. Don't feel bad about hanging back to see how the other teams deal with them. We probably won't even have a chance to fight unless the mages miss everything," he said with a laugh.

Julius didn't try and argue with the man. He was more than fine with staying back and allowing the rest of the people to handle this. His mission was to fight the Conclave, not some random monsters. Although the battle-crazy part of him really wanted to test out his new body enhancement skill and he had to cram that part of him back down into its hidey-hole.

It wasn't time for it to play just yet.

"Stephanie! Take Pamela and go help the other mages," Matt ordered calmly while pointing at the area where some of the other team's mages were congregating.

"See? What did I say? This is the best part about having mages on your team. You can just sit back and let them do all of the work," Beck whispered to him as Stephanie and her teammate jogged off to the other group of mages.

"You can go along with them too Beck if you are going to keep on talking," Matt warned the man.

The man held his hands up pleadingly. "I'm good. You know that I don't really have many options for long range attacks. I would just be wasting mana."

"That's why you should go, perhaps it would be good practice for you. Your [Firebolt] could use a lot of work anyway."

Julius stifled a laugh as the man visibly deflated at the statement. "You didn't need to bring that up," the bearded man said depressingly.

"Well then be quiet and pay attention in case they need us," Matt told him.

Interestingly, it worked and Beck no longer said anything else.

Soon after, he managed to get a good visual of the monsters that were coming toward them.

There was a surprisingly large number of them. At least several dozen monsters were running on four limbs. If he had to guess, he would say that they were some sort of canine monster around the size of a large human.

These monsters also had light green fur which helped them blend into the tall grass that surrounded the area. From what he could tell from this distance, there wasn't any monster above Tier 3. But it was also too soon to tell.

Julius watched as the assembled mages lined up and faced the incoming monsters.

At this point, the monsters were full-on running at them now and were impressively fast.

However, that made little difference to the mages as a large number of attacks were released toward the monsters in a dense stream of multi-colored light.

He watched in awe as the entire horde was torn apart with brutal efficiency. The first attacks to make contact were several large-area spells.

A large blast of frost was detonated from the center of the group, covering a significant portion of them with ice. The following large area attack was a bomb that released some sort of black misty substance. This substance floated in the air and was absorbed into the monsters' bodies.

Honestly, just these two attacks might have been enough on their own. The frost caused significant damage and also managed to slow down the monsters by a lot. Then the black substance was even more insidious.

Whatever skill it was, it was terrifying to see. The black flecks literally ate away the skin of the monsters and rapidly grew like some sort of infection. Until finally, the monster's flesh was gone like it was dumped in a vat of acid.

The following salvo just took care of the stragglers.

"I see Pamela's acid attacks are just as scary as ever," Julius heard Beck mutter. And he had to agree with the man. Seeing that black mist of acid corrode the monster's flesh was not a pretty sight.

George, the man who had been with Stephanie when she met Julius heard him and commented too. "For such a sweet woman, she has some very evil abilities."

"I know, but we should just be glad that she's not evil. Otherwise, that would be a much more terrifying thing to imagine," Matt added with a happy smile.

***

The cleanup and departure went off without a hitch. It was done with extreme precision and he could tell was something that was only possible due to their experience.

All of the monsters were broken down for their materials or what was left of them anyway. And most importantly their cores. These cores were then distributed evenly throughout the mages who participated.

With Pamela getting a larger amount, unsurprisingly.

Julius, making sure he stayed back and out of the way, just watched. He took notes on how the various teams all worked together and got ready to depart with such efficiency. It was something that might be useful later down the road.

Several hours after they left the scene where they were besieged, they stopped on an open plain to rest for the night.
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There was plenty of food and the entire caravan set up an entire kitchen as well as many grills for people to cook some meat on. While some people were still on duty, making sure nothing snuck up on them at night, the rest of the people were relaxing and decompressing from a long day of travel.

Julius tried this as well, but ended up bickering with Beck about the proper way to use a grill and how he wanted his meat cooked. The bearded big man insisted on cooking his meat until it was black and covered in charcoal before smothering it in his 'famous' sauce he brought along.

"I can see why you like Plopski's now," he grumbled while aggressively tearing through the blackened piece of meat.

Beck waved the pair of tongs at him, from where he was cooking more. "If you want to give it a shot, you are more than welcome to."

Julius shot up faster than a kid on Christmas morning. "Okay," he said quickly before the man could take away the offer.

He had actually been pestering the man to let him grill for all of them, but Beck had insisted that he was the grill master. Something, he noticed that not all of his teammates were too thrilled about. Some of them even walked away to find other grills to eat from.

When he finally got ahold of the tongs and the grill, the first thing he did was to take control of a bunch of fire mana and absolutely torch everything that had touched the grates of the grill.

He didn't want anything Beck touched to remain. When he was done, there was nothing left except for ash that floated away into the night sky.

He then used his mana to give it a nice scrubbing before he took out an apron that Aubrey had bought him a while ago while they were shopping in Heston and put it on.

While he hadn't taken any of the skills needed for cooking, he still had a fire affinity that was perfect for times like this. As such, he didn't bother to use the provided fire enchantments to cook the food and instead used his own.

It was better anyway since he would be able to control the temperature much easier if it was his own mana. Or at least better than Beck's own failed attempts. For a man with a fire affinity, the Beck's control over temperature was quite substandard. But he was a tank after all, so he couldn't expect much else.

"Nice apron," Stephanie said while struggling to hold in her laugh.

He dutifully ignored her and the others chuckles. He was wearing it because he liked it and because it was a gift. Waving off the jeers, he stood over the grill, and with Beck watching over him with a critical eye, he began to show the man how to actually cook meat.

***

A couple of days went by without too much trouble. Sure, they were attacked by a group of monsters a few times and just recently they were attacked by a lone Tier 4 monster, but it wasn't anything too dangerous.

Admittedly, the Tier 4 was a bit taxing for a brief moment, it took almost the entire group of mages and a few of the more powerful Tier 3 members to take it down. But after some time, they managed to overwhelm the monster with sheer quantity.

Still, they were never at any real risk. Rolus was still right there, ready to jump in whenever he needed to. The only reason he didn't was to let the other Tier 3s get some experience and improve their skills against a higher-tiered opponent.

Julius, as he had been for the past couple of days, did nothing. In fact, he would barely consider himself a part of the fighters at this point. It was more accurate to say he had been designated as the group's cook.

Something he enjoyed teasing Beck about immensely. After the first night, his entire team decided to not let Beck pick up the tongs again. They adamantly demanded that Julius be the one who grilled their food.

It would seem that they enjoyed food that didn't have so much… carbon on it. He still did end up using the man's 'famous' sauce at least. He had to give Beck credit for that. While he couldn't cook for a damn, the sauce was quite tasty and went well with grilled meat.

He didn't mind being forced to be the group's cook either. Since he wasn't doing any of the actual fighting, cooking at least gave him something to do to drive the boredom away. Plus, it was always good practice for his mana control.

That was why he was currently setting up to make a quick lunch for the rest of them. Rolus had thought it was a good idea to rest a little bit after the Tier 4 fight since it was around lunchtime anyway.

"You're mana control is surprisingly good," Stephanie complimented him as she watched him manipulate the flames. The rest of the others were horsing around just a few dozen feet away while he got things ready, but the woman had made it a habit to always stay by him for some reason.

"Surprisingly?" He asked in a mock-offended tone.

She smacked her head. "Sorry, that came out wrong. I didn't mean it like that. I was just surprised that someone your age has such fine control."

"I wouldn't call it 'fine', he said, downplaying his own skill.

She gave him a blank stare. "I'm a mage and a healer, a pretty good one too. Trust me, I can see the signs of a well-practiced mage. You don't let any of the residual mana go to waste, making sure you are reusing it at all times. You also are independently controlling several different sections of mana at once with precision. That's not something even some of these mages here can do with as much delicate control."

He turned away from his food and looked at the woman who apparently had been keeping a closer eye on him than he thought, his apron flapping in the wind. "Why are you so interested?" He asked.

"Because you mentioned that you were primarily a close-combat fighter. But you don't really see many close-combat fighters who have better mana control than a dedicated mage," she while giving him an inquisitive stare.

"I like playing with mana," he said simply and truthfully.

"I can see that," she said with an amused grin. "I just can't help but wonder what other kind of surprises you have hidden away."

He didn't respond and returned his attention back to the food he was preparing, deciding that no answer would be better than any other one he could think of.