Chapter 416: Routine

He established a comfortable routine, where each moment of the day was meticulously planned out. In the mornings, he would attend kinetic energy training, where he would often find himself getting slammed to the floor by his opponents. Then he would immediately head over to Freya for his daily lesson.

After that, he would go to the clinic, where Galten would show him some basics and still not allow him to use healing magic on other people, as he was worried that Julius would mutate someone.

Once he was done with that, he would have dinner and be free for the rest of the day. However, he dedicated most of that time to training his other skills, or other things, such as trying to combine the two skills.

Then he would sleep with what little remaining time he had left and wake up. Then rinse and repeat.

At the moment, he was in the middle of sparring with kinetic energy. He has tasted the matted floors more times than he could count in these past weeks, and it was all he dreamed about at night.

It had nothing to do with fighting ability. He was comfortable saying that he had a better raw feeling for fighting than anyone else. Instinctually, he never had a problem with keeping up with the other students. It was the finer manipulation of kinetic energy that he was lacking. He was so used to compensating for it by using larger amounts of kinetic energy.

But with the restrictions, he found it impossible to do that. Of course, that meant the only way he could find an advantage was to bring himself up to their level slowly. Something that everyone in the class was realizing was closer than ever before. He rarely won his fights, but each day it was more difficult for his opponents to take him down.

There were even some weaker students whom he was beginning to beat with more regularity. That wasn’t to say that these people were actually weak. Not at all.

In fact, he believed that these students were better than many of the people he encountered at Goldencrest, except for a few select individuals. Some young boys and girls demonstrated a brilliant sense of fighting, despite being only Tier 2.

However, it was due to these students' skills that he was compelled to enhance his abilities in a short period. He didn’t want to fall behind and keep on losing.

It had been over a couple of weeks at this point, and he was facing Barath for the dozenth time.

The other older boy was staring down at Julius with focused intensity. Slowly but surely, Barath had come to respect Julius. His group of friends did the same. It was almost as if they had forgotten that he was technically a healer in training and were treating him like one of the other students.

There hadn’t been a single curse thrown his way in the past week. Of course, there was still some light teasing and taunting, but compared to the first week. It was more like positive reinforcement than anything else.

Before Julius made his move, Barath had already preemptively charged in. If there was one thing that Julius worried about fighting Barath the most, it was the boy’s relentless aggression that was further accentuated with the explosive power behind his blows.

Barath was really good at maintaining every ounce of kinetic energy in his movements. Just like right now, Barath lashed out a kick at Julius’s knees, only to use that momentum to fuel the elbow flying at his head.

Julius didn’t know precisely how Barath did it, but the boy had a magical source of kinetic energy that he could access at the drop of a hat. Not only that, but he was able to extract more power from the same amount of kinetic energy than Julius.

It was likely some kind of skill or concept. It was also a stark reminder of why choosing three different affinities had its downsides. Julius likely could have chosen more powerful, specific skills if he had focused solely on kinetic energy. However, he just had to get greedy and get all three.

Not that it wasn’t going well up until this point. He didn’t want to be too presumptuous, but easily beating Tier 4s was clearly a sign that something was going right. However, it also meant that it was more difficult for him to stand on the same level against someone who specialized in a certain affinity, like Barath, when using only kinetic energy.

Julius put those thoughts to the side and ducked underneath the powerful strike from Barath. He got just close enough that he was able to siphon the kinetic energy away from him. The Tier 3 boy tried to resist, but if there was one thing that Julius excelled at more than the rest of the students, it was his willpower.

This enabled him not only to keep his own kinetic energy from being controlled by others but also to steal other kinetic energy more easily. His newly acquired uncommon skill also helped him.

None of them liked the fact that he was able to siphon their kinetic energy and always complained about it. He couldn’t lie either; he enjoyed it when they griped about it. It made him feel a little better about losing all the time.

Speaking of, Barath grimaced as there was nothing he could do as Julius took away some of his kinetic energy, repurposing it for his own attack. There was only so much he could do with it, though. It wasn’t as if he had the same skills as the others. He didn't have any fancy amplification skills or special tricks to help him.

It was just raw control and power that blasted into Barath’s face, forcing him backward. Julius took advantage of this opening and stepped into the boy’s guard. Slamming another fist into his gut.

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Barath tried to grab his arm and pull him closer, wrapping him up like a snake. The other boy knew that he was ‘stronger’ than Julius and always tried to wrestle him when it got dicey. Julius had become aware of his tricks in these past couple of weeks, though. It was why he had already cocked his head back and smashed the crown of his head into the nose of Barath, using as much kinetic energy as his restrictions allowed.

The sound of cartilage and bone breaking rang across the room. He sensed the other students who had taken some time from their own training to watch wince as the blow connected. Their matches were always entertaining, at least that was what many of the students told the instructors when they were reprimanded for getting distracted.

He wasn’t exactly wrong either. Somehow, Julius and Barath always ended up rolling on the floor like a bunch of unruly children. This typically led to Barath’s victory because of the stupid restrictions. Or rather, that was how it used to be.

Today, Julius had changed the routine, and the headbutt rocked Barath backward in a complete daze. He then used a simple burst of kinetic energy to get in close. Although Barath was stunned, he wasn’t out of the fight entirely. A dangerous compressed beam of kinetic energy tore at Julius’s face, but he had sensed it beforehand, which allowed him to evade it by a hair.

Then, before Barath could stop him, Julius’s fist flattened the boy’s already broken nose in a spray of blood. He had to hold himself back from going in for more.

This was a spar after all, and he had already gone past what was normally acceptable in terms of violence. It was only because of their usual antics that nobody stepped in.

Barath also didn’t make any further moves to attack. He knew he had lost, and surprisingly, took it better than Julius expected. Julius half expected the boy to curse him out. But instead, he looked at the ground with a depressed frown as blood poured out of his face.

Kora, the girl who was also a healer, ran over right away. She and her friends had been watching the fight unfold. But the moment the fight ended, she was already next to Barath, healing his nose with a brilliant green glow of life mana.

The rest of the class who saw the fight were all muttering to each other. This was the first time that Julius had beaten Barath. Just mere weeks ago, Julius didn’t have a chance against him. Now, he had finally won a spar. Some people were, of course, shocked. But he realized that many of them weren’t that surprised by this outcome.

“It was bound to happen one of these days,” he heard one of them mutter.

“Yeah, he has been rapidly improving these past couple of weeks. I don't know how he is doing it,” another replied.

Julius ignored the gossip and instead placed his attention back on the notification he had just received.

It had been around a week since he had gained the skill, and he had made some good progress with it. This recent level had gotten it one step closer to its threshold. He was curious about what kind of skill he would be offered. However, Cain had already told him that he would likely only receive a couple of options. It was apparently the nature of generalized mastery skills. Only purposeful intent to gain a specialized skill would impact it, something he wasn’t planning on doing.

In the meantime, he sat down and meditated. He had sensed some things he needed to change during that fight and wanted to see if he could implement them next time. As he was doing this, he wasn’t even paying attention to the rest of the class's gaze on him.

Kora POV

As she healed Barath, she winced at the damage he had taken. The bones of his nose were utterly shattered. That headbutt must have really hurt. She rarely ever saw the young talent get staggered like that.

“Are you alright?” She whispered quietly.

He scoffed and looked away from her. “Physically, yeah. But my pride might need some healing if you can do that.”

She shook her head in mock sadness. “I’m afraid I don’t have the right skill to fix that for you.”

He didn’t retort like he usually would. That was the first significant indication that something was amiss.

“Okay, what is it?” She asked, this time more seriously.

He looked at her with disbelief. “Do you really need to ask?”

“So what? You lost. You have lost plenty of times to me,” she shot back.

“Yeah, but you also have been training for a long time. He hasn’t,” he said sullenly.

“You’re surprised to see someone more talented than you?” She was startled to see Barath acting this way. He usually didn’t care about stuff like this. He had also seen plenty of talented people; this new student shouldn’t be bothering him this much.

“That’s the thing. I don’t think he is technically more talented than me,” she heard him mutter quietly, almost too quiet to hear.

“What do you mean?”

He looked up at her. “I mean, I have a pretty good affinity for kinetic, but I don’t think he does. In fact, I don’t think he even got a general mastery skill until recently.”

This shocked her. “What?” She wondered how he had arrived at this assumption.

“Yeah, it was like his skill with kinetic energy improved dramatically a week ago. Almost as if he had acquired a new skill or something. It wasn’t something powerful either, the way he manipulates it is still too simplistic for it to be a rare or epic skill,” he said with an alarming amount of confidence.

He scoffed. “Hell, I don’t even think he is taking us seriously at all. His fighting instincts are too well polished to be those of some rich noble who never fought a day in his life, like I initially believed. I also don’t believe in this stuff about him being a healer.”

She shook her head. “That is silly. I have seen him at the clinic myself. You should stop thinking that way, it doesn’t suit you. Just focus on your own training,” she advised him. However, in the back of her head, she was thinking something similar. She didn’t tell him this, but rumors about Julius were circulating among the healers.

Apparently, the boy had been getting a lot of attention from Master Galten. One of the Shattered Winter School’s best healers and one of the best healers in all of Auraulos. There were many questions about why a newcomer was receiving such favor from someone so important.

She also heard that Julius hadn’t even been allowed to heal anyone as of yet. Which further confused people. It made no sense why someone of Master Galten’s status would teach someone who can’t use life magic on someone.

If that wasn’t enough, people were talking about Master Freya being busier than usual. She didn’t know for sure, but based on the timing, people believed that this boy might also be the reason.

She didn’t know what to think. But she knew one thing for certain: there were some interesting secrets behind Julius’s appearance.