Novel - Site
Chapter 370 Upset (1)
"Do I even ask what is it that you discovered?"
If Makary's eyes could kill, the two of us would instantly fall prey to it and die.
"Honestly, I'm not exactly sure," I offered Makary no word of explanation. "How about I get you back tomorrow on the issue?" I suggested before putting on a huge act as I looked out of the window. "It's already dark in here, so I don't even want to know how late it is on the other side," I announced, snuggling sleeping Fay into my arms and raising her up as I prepared to leave the car.
Those fewteen minutes it took us to get back were more than just fruitful. For on earth, with only a few hidden experts capable of wielding aura, its flow was extremely simple and straightforward.
This was the one thing I discovered when I finally looked back at Irene's hints.
Instead of sensing my own aura and then the silent, steady mass of the unused world's mana, I've grown aware of the countless tiny strings, streams, and entire flows, all connected with simple nodes.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om
Looking at Makary would yield the same image as before for he knew not of aura…
But Fay, for example, shone with a bright cascade of colors that somehow all merged together in just the right way to form a perfectly pure, pristine white glow.
I could see myriads of tiny aura nodes peppered throughout her biology, her soul, and the depths of her own power.
Between those nodes, the small strings weaved complex structures otherwise appearing as flows.
Just like mass would gravitate to mass, the strings of Fay's aura gravitated to each other, all trying to flow downstream between the two, closest nodes.
Even if there were some specific rules to how those strings weaved together, the picture before my eyes and right within my arms was simply too complex for me to make out any patterns or tendencies.
Still, the streams of aura formed by the weave of aura strings all converged into four concentrated points within Fay's existence, turning into the major flows.
And all of that was merely the second level of perception that I've unlocked.
The third level was even wilder.
By keeping in mind not only my flow and Fay's flow but also trying to sense the purpose behind the complex weave forming all over Fay's soul.
There were three burning cores at the very center of Fay's aura system.
Three suns…
But with every breath, Fay brought in more and more fuel to a new, incomplete fourth sun.
And with every breath, she came closer to completing it.
'Is she about to advance?' I thought, instantly falling into a state of panic.
'Shit!'
"I'm sorry," grabbing Fay tighter into my grasp, I jumped out of the car and rushed down the short path leading to the hangar.
In a mere flash, I arrived at the guarded entrance and went past the gates, long before they even realized I'd approached.
Seeing how Fay was merely a few breaths away from her advancement and thus the inevitable rebirth, I had to get her somewhere properly isolated and safe!
Having no time to even take a single look at my own state with my newly improved perception, I rushed down the hangar and then through the gate, ignoring all the guards as I went.
By the time I was running down the main road, the alarms from both sides of the gate started. And by the time I've reached the lovenest Fay worked so hard to create, those alarms died off, likely taken down by Makary's order.
"Just a little bit more," I whispered over Fay's hot, bothered face.
Reinforcing the door barrier behind us and then spreading my own aura to reinforce the room and building itself, I laid Fay down on the mossy, wet floor of her own creation, right by the tiny, freshwater spring.
"I'm sorry for making you hold it back for so long," I continued to coax Fay in her sleep.
Even with all my rush, I wasn't anywhere fast enough.
By now, Fay's fourth aura core imploded only to then ignite and with the furious might of its explosion, push back against the implosion of aura concentrated into the core.
Just like a sun, the burning hotspot of aura consisted of two forces balancing the process, forces that an ascender or supreme could upset to unleash their mystical might.
Yet, looking at Fay's weave, even though I couldn't make out a single rule, a single pattern of how it formed… I could tell that all of it made sense.
The first three suns fit just right into the general flow of Fay's aura.
But now that the fourth sun appeared, the balance of Fay's entire system went into disarray.
Unrooted in Fay's aura system, the fourth sun started to tear the tapestry of Fay's aura, shattering the nearest of her flows and taking over more than half of the streams it consisted of.
I took a deep breath… and looked away.
As much as it pained me not to dive with my aura sense head-first to support Fay in any way I could…
I took a moment to look down at my own weave of aura.
'Oh shit.'
I… fell.
That was the only way in which I could describe the feeling.
If Fay's aura mixed into this beautiful, incandescent flame…
Then my weave of aura served as a well, an endless pit of morphed space that dragged me down the instant I dared to gaze upon it.
Even though there was no air around, I could feel the wind whistling in my ears and storming through my hair.
But as I fell, I forcibly focused again…
And there it was.
A fractal-like, infinitely repeating pattern. A weave that created an optical illusion of endlessly downward morphing of space. And a weave that used this illusion to create an illusory darkness from which I could draw from.
My entire aura array flowed in an organized manner toward one, central node.
'The darkness core.'
The 'gift' from Irene.
A nearly lethal parasite that she somehow planted on me and that my system…
My eyes suddenly turned wide.
That was the one element that I was missing all along!
For all the wonders of aura that I've discovered just now, there was this one thing that kept bugging me.
This world, I had no right to make any sense of. No laws of physics or common sense operated in the world of aura. And yet, I could somehow figure out the parts that I had no first idea about.
But now that I looked at my own weave, all spiraling downwards into the endlessly hungry dark core but then brimmed with energy it fed back into my flows, streams, and strings…
The one element that allowed me to somehow anchor myself in this world couldn't be any more obvious.
There was no physical way for me to be born with such a perfectly organized structure for the flow of my aura. It had too much thought put into its complex weaves and simple founding ideas.
Just like there were hardly any right angles occurring in nature, the layout of my aura array was too schematic not to be a construct of a logical vessel.
And what else was there with traits like that if not my dearest system, who announced loud and clear when it incorporated the core into my own flesh through one hell of a painful experience?
'Still.'
I shook my head and lowered my eyes, cutting off the endlessly interesting feed of my own inner state to turn my attention back to where it should be.
By now, Fay's fourth sun brought a total and complete ruin to Fay's own tapestry.
If not for the mist of her aura still somehow holding the pieces together, her entire weave threatened to collapse.
She was still holding on…
But as I looked deeper, and deeper into her soul, smashed the gates of our bond to its limits and immersed all of myself into her being…
I came to be above some sort of stadium, where a tiny, cute fox stood in opposition to a massive, end-game boss-looking figure. A deviation sporting thick plates of truck-sized plates of organic armor, seventeen different heads, and thirty legs.
There were flames, poison, smoke, and ice oozing out of four of the mouths, but all of the beasts' eyes zeroed in on the tiny, trembling white fox.
A pup that I only wished to put in my palm and cuddle to death.
But as I forcibly rushed all of my system-gifted intelligence to reached into even deeper levels of perception, everything finally started to make sense.
And while there was a silver lining to this new perspective…
The things were, generally, infinitely worse.