Chapter 153 - Consumption

"Hey Jun, are you sure he's going to be alright? It's been 6 days since he passed out. He hasn't eaten nor moved during that entire time. Are you sure he's going to make it back to us? I know you believe in him because he's your student but there are times where you must accept the truth," said the librarian as she spoke to Jun who was still watching over Julius in the empty library of the limitless.

"Yes I know. Just give him one more day, he'll be back. I know he will," said Jun as he prayed for the safety of his student.

"Please Julius, just come back already. It was my fault that I allowed you to go this far. I sent you in an impossible mission because I believed that you could do anything. I should have known that everyone has their limits. I over estimated you," Jun said to himself as he held back his tears of sadness from feeling like a complete and utter failure.

…

"Why aren't they dead yet?! We've killed so many of them and they still keep coming. How many of time are even there?!" Julius complained to the glowing white figure as the stood back to back from being surrounded by the monsters.

"Wait! That might be it. Julius, use the dagger in your pocket and create the largest solid ball of fire around the area we're in," said the glowing white figure as he thought that he might have figured something out.

"But why? Isn't that just a waste of my stamina? I can't afford to waste all of it on an attack that might not kill them due to its attack potency being lowered due to the size of it," Julius replied.

"Don't try to get smart with me! Just do it!" the glowing white figure yelled back at Julius as he held back the monsters that were charging at the both of them.

"Okay fine! Don't complain when we're both death then," said Julius as he quickly pulled out the dagger which Zo had given him from his pocket.

"I didn't actually think that I could bring the objects from the outside world inside here. Well at least it came in handy," said Julius as he activated the special trait of his weapon.

<<Special Trait: Purgatory>>

Due to Julius already being used to his blade and having extraordinarily status points in all of his aspects, he was able to control the burst of flames and change their shape to resemble that of a large ball as it covered all of the monsters that were present in the empty void.

"Wow, it actually worked!" Julius said as he had managed to cover the area he had wanted. After a few minutes of the burning ball existing and stealing a seemingly endless amount of of Julius' stamina, Julius was forced to deactivate his mass area attack.

To no surprise, a large amount of monsters were killed but those were only the weaker ones. The monsters which were already strong or hadn't been weakened by either the shadow monster nor Julius stayed alive.

"I-I told you that it would be no use," said Julius as he gasped for air from exhausting himself.

"Nope, you're wrong. Look up," said the glowing white figure which Julius in fact did and he was faced by a single figure in a burned cloak that was floating above everyone as he continued to move his fingers in a weird motion. After closer inspection, Julius realized that the figure was a shadow monster and in its fingers were strings.

"Is that a monster?" Julius asked the glowing white figure as he was beginning to lose his vision from exhausting himself so much.

"Yes it is. From the looks of it, that's the puppet master. I believe that he's controlling the already weakened or dead bodies of his comrades. Of course if they're clearly dead, he won't use them since that would blow his cover. That's why we haven't figured it out until now," said the glowing white figure. As he was talking though, the same shadow monster which Julius had broken the legs of began to walk towards the tired Julius before snapping both of Julius' forearms to the point where Julius couldn't move them anymore. However instead of yelling out in agony, Julius simply flinched before kicking the shadow monster which had broken his arms on the head. As such, instantly knocking out the monster with a single attack.

"Hey, are you alright? I can take it from here. Why don't you just take a break?" the glowing white figure said as he fought off the monsters which were approaching him but was not able to get a single break himself to stop the one controlling them all.

"N-No," Julius said as he tried to catch his breath.

"I need to take care of something," said Julius as he leaped in the air while doing multiple summersaults in the air before finally stopping and landing a devastating headbutt on the puppet master.

For a moment it seemed like black lightning was coming out of their heads as time itself stopped. As would be expected the both of them passed out as Julius has landed an attack which would have been enough to basically kill the monster and he passed out due to pushing himself past his limits for over 6 days.

After landing the attack, everything stopped as all of the monsters stopped moving and fall to the void as they had already either been pushed past their own limits or were already dead.

"You did good Julius. You've impressed me," the glowing white figure finally admitted.

…

When Julius woke up once again, he saw Jun staring a him with eyes that looked to be dead while tears flowed out of them as if they were a water tap. It was as if Jun had accepted that his student had already died.

"Can you stop crying on me? Look at my cloths, you've gotten them wet," said Julius in an annoyed tone.

"Y-You're alive."