Chapter 794 Choices

Julius really pushed himself. His body was at its limit for how much [Lord of the Dying Sun] could reinforce it with mana. He hadn’t pushed the limits until now, but it was clear there was a limit.

Still, he finished off the remaining enemies before the ones chasing him could join the fight. Unfortunately, the time he wasted let them close the distance more than he would have liked. He didn’t have much time left and needed to investigate what his perception had picked up.

He dashed over and looked around, extending his senses to see whether a fruit was anywhere nearby.

For a moment he didn’t think he would actually find one, but then all of a sudden a slight shiver of kinetic energy caught his attention. His eyes darted to his right and quickly shot over to a weird-looking courtyard.

He passed through some sort of spatial fluctuation, but he didn't sense any malicious intent or anything targeting him, so he let it be.

The courtyard was quite large, but that wasn’t the weird part. The weird part was the lone shack sitting in the middle of the empty courtyard.

He didn’t sense anyone inside with [Absolute Spatial Perception]. But he did see something shaped like a fruit sitting on a table inside. So, despite the courtyard's odd atmosphere, he ventured forward.

He made sure every skill at his disposal was ready to go and pushed the door open.

What was inside surprised him. His senses had detected no one, yet a young man sat on a chair beside the fruit. He didn’t look much older than Julius, with medium-length, soft white hair that fell over his shoulders.

However, it was the eyes that really stunned Julius. Instead of typical eyes, two glowing orbs of white light stared at him, sparkling with little black stars and shining like an inverted image of the night sky. A mysterious, handsome young man.

Julius didn’t even hesitate. He turned around and walked back to the door without saying a word.

However, to his consternation, the door was gone. All that was left was a flat wall. To make sure it wasn’t some sort of illusion, he lifted his hands and patted the wall where he could have sworn the door was.

When he didn’t find it, he stepped back.

“Hmm,” he murmured, frowning. He flicked his gaze to the man who hadn’t moved so much as an inch and was still staring at Julius with those eerie eyes of his. Then he immediately tried to teleport away, but nothing happened.

He looked down at his cloak and made sure it was still active. But it seemed intact. He didn’t feel like anything was targeting his mana or his ability to activate the skill either. What disturbed him was that he couldn’t get a sense of a location his skill could latch onto.

He had heard of anti-spatial enchantments before, but with [Void Step] he had never really experienced what they were truly like, since he could pass through them with little effort.

However, at the moment, he believed he was feeling something similar, only this time around, his void abilities were actually being restricted in a way that he had never experienced before.

He didn’t panic, though. It helped that he wasn’t detecting any hostile intent from the man at the table, but that still didn’t stop Julius from shifting his attention back to the wall and pulling back his fist, loading it with kinetic energy.

“Sit down,” the man suddenly said, sounding exasperated.

Julius turned and lowered his fist. He saw a chair at the other end of the table that hadn't been there before. He narrowed his eyes while he stared at the man. A thousand questions flooded his mind, but instead of asking them, he stayed silent and pulled out the chair, sitting down calmly.

The white-haired man said nothing and kept staring at Julius.

He knew this strategy and didn’t react. The only thing he did was pull out a small meat-filled pastry that reminded him of an empanada. The flaky exterior was nice and buttery, and despite his best efforts to stay quiet, he let out a soft hum of appreciation.

The man still didn’t show any reaction. His eyes were still eerily measuring every inch of Julius. But not wanting to be rude, and hopeful that this man was susceptible to bribes, he took another empanada out, placed it on the table, and gently pushed it across.

The man was somehow able to ignore the delicious packet of meat and buttery layers of dough with a level of restraint that impressed Julius.

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That being said, it didn’t stop Julius from polishing off his pastry with a satisfied murmur.

After several long minutes of weird silence and no reaction from the man, Julius decided to take out his tea set. He slowly set out the teapot that he bought from a random merchant. The woman claimed the teapot had several powerful enchantments that enhanced the tea's flavor.

It was complete bullshit. He could only detect a simple heat and self-cleaning enchantment on the item. That being said, he still paid the several gold she had asked for. He mainly did it because he wanted to feel rich and throw his wealth around, but honestly, the teapot made some delicious tea.

He heated water and, once it reached the right temperature, slowly dropped in the tea leaves, gave it a gentle stir, then let it steep for a few minutes. While he waited for it to finish, he took out a few tea snacks. Some of them were little shortbread cookies from his lunchbox, and some were fancier treats he bought from various bakeries in Goldmere.

At this point, he wasn’t even looking at the mysterious man. It was clear he wasn’t going to talk to Julius before he wanted to, so Julius had no reason to stress about it. It was better to relax and regain some mana.

He used his nose to alert him when the tea was ready. Just as it was at its peak fragrance, he poured himself a cup. He even prepared a cup for the weird man sitting across from him. Though he didn’t give him one of his good teacups, he gave him one of the cheap ones that he didn’t care about. Just because he was being generous didn’t mean he had to use one of his favorite cups on the man.

He didn’t say anything, but pushed it over before taking a sip of his own tea, letting the floral fragrance seep into his nose.

As he took another sip, the man finally spoke again.

“What is your purpose here?”

The young man’s voice was deep and slightly gravelly, but it also had a lightness that practically whispered into his eardrum, making him shiver.

Julius finally turned to look at the man, set down his tea, and then looked down at the fruit that had been there the entire time he’d been sitting.

“That.”

“You only want a Kinetic Starfruit?” the man asked, almost sounding like he didn’t believe Julius.

“Pretty much; that’s why I entered this rift,” he confirmed, noting that the fruit was called a Kinetic Starfruit. He didn’t know if anyone from Clan Dawnfield knew the fruit's name, and they had simply hidden it from him. That, and he wondered if they even knew about the mysterious man inside their rift.

The man stared at Julius for a few more moments, his white eyes inspecting him with such intensity that Julius felt it within his soul.

“If that’s the case, then take it,” the young man said, gesturing toward the fruit, and, to Julius’s amusement, he reached out and picked up the cup of tea with practiced grace. He took a moment to smell it before sipping.

“Not bad,” the man noted with a slightly surprised twist of his lips.

“It’s the pot,” Julius said, deadpan.

“Hmm, must be a good pot,” the man said with a nod and reached over to grab the pastry left on the table. He gave it a quick sniff before taking a bite. The faintest hint of a pleased smile flickered over his face.

Julius smiled too, though for a different reason. He had mostly left the tea and food out for his own enjoyment, and thought it would be rude not to at least give the man the option to eat some. But he also wanted to see if the man was real.

His spatial senses clearly didn’t sense the man as a physical object, but the way he interacted with tea and food said otherwise. So either the man was acting like he was eating the food, or he at least had a physical body.

“Is this normal for the fourth floor?” Julius finally decided to ask. He got the feeling that this man didn’t mean him harm.

“No, I normally don’t show myself to anyone. But the rift seems to be drawn towards you,” the man explained.

“Drawn to me?” Julius repeated with a confused expression.

“Indeed. Whether that’s a good thing or not, I’m not sure. But when you left the third floor, the rift almost whisked you off.”

Julius pressed his lips tightly and tilted his head. “What does that mean?”

Instead of answering, the young man asked him another question. “What do you know about this rift?”

“Almost nothing,” he admitted shamelessly.

“Well, did the people who allowed you in at least explain that you aren’t supposed to enter the fifth floor?”

“Sort of.”

“Did they explain why?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

The young man nodded as if this was to be expected. “Well, there’s a reason why the fifth floor is forbidden. But that is even more true for someone like you.”

“Someone like me?”

“Someone who has been marked by someone with such strong kinetic energy.”

Julius winced. Yeah, he hadn’t even thought about that. Cain placed his mark on him when he accepted Julius as his apprentice. But then again, nobody had been able to detect it so far.

Not even someone like Cassandra or the other Grand Elders of the Burning Sun Sect.

“That is likely the reason for the rift's interest in you,” the man continued.

“Hold on, you speak as if the rift is sentient,” Julius interjected.

“In a way, it is. But it is also not exactly a rift.”

He paused, and his forehead furrowed deeply. “What is it then?”

Unfortunately, it seemed the man thought now was the best time to go mute again. He simply stared at Julius with a flat expression, clearly with no intention of answering.

“Can you at least tell me why you brought me here?” he eventually asked.

“To offer you a choice,” the man said solemnly.

Julius frowned, leaned back in his chair, and threw a cookie into his mouth.

“What kind of choice?”