Birth of the Legendary Battle Mage

Chapter 9

“Wow, this is a lot of stuff, my head nearly split open.” Julius said after jumping out of his sleep. His face showed a genuinely shocked expression as one hand was placed on the head, trying to fight the lingering headache. “Li, how come you know so much? With this, you would be considered the most powerful person in your world. Too bad you possessed extremely bad talent.”

Since Li was utterly weak, he spent most of his time reading a variety of books, finding ways to get his hands on different techniques in hopes of improving himself. He even became best friends with a high-ranking official of the Beggars Sect that specialised in information control. Basically, they knew almost everything about everybody, even the most secretive information. He would get discounts on information and cultivation techniques of other sects, eventually having a pile of knowledge that he couldn’t even use. Fortunately, he found Julius to take on this knowledge. Now he could die in peace.

At this point, Julius’ body was strong enough to maximize the effect of his cultivation by at least two and a half times more than it was. For example, he could only leave a c***k on a boulder before, but with his conditioned body, he could now shatter a boulder the size of a chair. With this, he sat back on the ground, ready to begin cultivating. “Hmm, the best technique to continue with would be…” he thought to himself as he ran through the numerous foundation building techniques that were in his head. ”Ah, this one seems to be the best option according to Li.” As he said that, the turned to look at Li, as though requesting for confirmation on his judgment. Li nodded slightly with a smile on his face. Li’s translucent body had become almost transparent now, with the orb of smoke that acted like his core reducing in thickness as time went by. Julius started his cultivation, and with a week he broke through into what he knew as the Qi gathering stage, in another one and a halve week, he broke into the Qi refining realm and entered the second stage directly.

Such fast progress was possible because of the quality of mana in the forest which was close to the River of Ends. Right now, he was still very close to the river because he couldn’t leave this area that had the most and the purest mana. After this place, going outward, the beast range from the strongest to the weakest. Trying to leave would only be suicide. Opening his eyes, something felt strange to Julius. The familiar feeling he always felt within the cave was gone. He looked around the cave worriedly, but sadly Li’s soul had already decimated. “It must have happened while I was cultivating.” This wasn’t the first time losing someone, the emotion could barely be seen on his face as his head fell to his chest. “Farewell my friend.”

After that Julius cultivated some more till he broke into the Bone Forging realm first stage, which took longer than the previous realms. After a little practice outside the cave, he figured out a way to utilize the mana in his body more efficiently by structuring his mana veins in a way that they could both take mana in and out. This made the flow of mana within his body even faster and more smother. One of the things he worried about, after receiving Li’s memories was that the dantians were not completely open after the initial opening, so one would need to take special pills that help in opening up the dantians. There were also pills that helped strengthen them by making them more rigid and flexible. Initially this worried him, but he was soon put at ease as the artifact once again took care of the first part, for the second part, he used a secret technique that was designed just for that purpose, and with that he resolved that problem.

At that time presently, Julius was strong enough to lash out an attack that weighs around five to six hundred kg, that was more than the power of a 3 tier magic ‘Flying Gauntlet’ that summons and throws a man sized gauntlet made of stone towards a target, truly remarkable. The fact that he could produce such raw destructive power using his body was something he would have never thought of. Cultivation was astonishing.

“Alright, I’m starving. Time to hunt.” Julius said with a grin on his face as he moved deeper into the forest, away from the river. He had thought of a plan, since he could basically outrun a cheetah two times over in his current self (Cheetahs can run up to 100-130kmps or 60-70mph), he would just past all the strong mana beasts if he encountered any, and just hope he didn’t face any speed oriented beast, because there were a couple of beasts that could run faster than the speed of sound (for reference, sound travels at a speed of 760 mps or 1225 kmph, which is 343 m/s). on his way, he ran into a number of Grandmaster Class beasts and one Ascension Class beasts, none showed any hostility except for one, but before it could cast any spells, he was long gone. At the moment, Julius could run at full speed for 30 minutes straight before tiredness kicks in.

As he moved away and towards the far edges of the forest where mana starts to return to normal, he deactivated his precious tattooed artefact, mainly so that he would be able to feel how close he was to the outside. On the way he ran into some human explorers that would often enter these forests in search for treasure, and avoided them cautiously. After hours of travel, he got to a spot where he deemed good for hunting. He would have stopped a while back and hunt weak mana beasts, but not all mana beasts were suitable for eating, and he didn’t have his magic anymore, so ‘detoxification’ and ‘taste improvement’ which he specially created so that he would be able to eat more mana beasts, were out of the equation.

Julius decided to spend a night there around the outskirts of the forest. The next morning he took all the meat he hunted the previous day, bundled them together, then zoomed with them. He caught enough meat to suffice for a week or more, concealing the scent of blood with herbs with stronger aroma, so that he wouldn’t attract the attention from mana beasts. This schedule continued for about a month and halve while simultaneously cultivating, although not as much. He also spent some time practicing magic. Although he was physically strong, fast and overall enhanced in all aspects, as far as his physiology and anatomy was concerned, he still needed the versatility of magic. There were many techniques that he could think of using the knowledge he inherited from Li, but most of what Li learnt was focused on techniques that improved one's cultivation, and battle techniques that could be used during fights, these included both defensive and offensive techniques. The only problem was that, since Li’s world was a low tier planet at the backyard parts of their star system, most of their techniques followed certain laws that were not present or applicable in this world.

There was a set of techniques that stuck out. They were gotten from the Forgotten Dragon God Sect, and from Li’s memories, each technique pleaded to one of the 12 dragons before they could be activated, and someone of very high cultivation who had overcome the Dragon God Tribulation would be able to use it directly without having to beg the Dragons for their power. These techniques were the most powerful offensive techniques according to Li’s memories (it could be out of preference if we consider that Li might have had a thing for the ‘Dragon Techniques’), the strongest of them all ‘Wrath of The Dragons’ was powerful enough to swallow the moon and destroy the earth which was just unbelievable. Of course, Dragons do exist in this world, and a majority of them are capable of speech, having their own language the Dragon Tongue, while being able to speak Human language, breathing fire, possessing an intelligence sometimes above human capacity (this is for the high ranking and ancient dragons, other dragons are of average or good intelligence, just like humans) and all that stuff. These were all badass, except.

“I tried these f*****g techniques a thousand times but they still don’t work!!” In a sobbing voice he continued, “I thought I knew dragons, but I know nothing. Compared to Li’s Dragons, dragons in this world could as well be considered babies who still suckled on their mother's breasts. I thought we had powerful beings in this world, but I was wrong. Bunch of dogshit!. This is embarrassing, too embarrassing!”

Most of the techniques were like this. Julius also wanted to follow the Path of cultivating a Dragon, but the same problem stopped him from doing that. He had to return to his old partner, magic. Coupled with the fact that these techniques he had inherited weren’t much of a help outside fights, excluding movement techniques, disguise and the rest, there wasn’t much versatility when it came to other aspects of life.

Using magic wasn’t all that difficult, since all he had to do was to draw out mana from his inner space instead of his mana core like he would normally. There was a slight setback though. He couldn’t use 'quick cast', and had to call out the full spells or sometimes shorten them. This did not last long however, as he soon was able to cast his magic just by saying the name of the spell, and later returning back to his former glory, utilizing wordless casting.

“Now I have martial arts and magic on my side. No one can stop me. I seem to be able to cast some spells without the normal backlash, hmm. It seems the law of magic have become different for Me.” Normally, a Mortal Class magician would not be able to cast any second tier spell, and even within the first tier spells, some were very powerful and not all Mortal Class would be able to cast it, even though they had the qualified amount of mana. But Julius at the first stage of the Core Formation real could use seventh tier magic, which would not even be possible for a Grandmaster Class Mages or even for most Ascension Class Mages, with the exception of Julius who is the only Ascension Class Mage to cast two 6th class magic simultaneously and another Seventh Class magic later in the same day.

While Julius was enjoying his cultivation journey, the outside worlds was also progressing, and the people of Esnok, together with the enemies of the Kingdom, mourned and celebrated the death of Julius. With new heroes rising up, and old enemies readying their fangs to bite, the world continued to move.