Chapter 138: Why Is She Staring?

Aubrey walked up to Julius and grabbed his shoulders forcefully. “What did you choose? Please don’t tell me you chose the skill evolution option,” Aubrey started to panic.

“What? That’s not the best option?” Julius tried his best to sound genuinely ignorant.

“You fucking idiot. In what world does that sound like the best option,” Aubrey reprimanded him while vigorously shaking him like a rag doll.

He looked over to see the other’s reactions. Derek and Edgar both looked equally upset and slightly disappointed. Kyle and Lily on the other hand didn’t seem particularly worried at all.

Lily even had a slight smirk on her face as she watched Aubrey shake him apart in frustration. She was most likely picking up on his emotions at the moment, so she probably knew that he was teasing them.

Kyle on the other hand had always been a good predictor of Julius’s behaviors. He was the most perceptive person outside of Lily when it came to Julius’s actions. It would be of no surprise that Kyle had guessed that Julius was messing with Aubrey as revenge. He even gave Julius a little amused nod when they met eyes for a moment.

Eventually, Derek seemed to pick up that Lily wasn’t worrying like she would have if she thought Julius was telling the truth and released his tense shoulders. He walked over to Aubrey who was still shaking Julius and scolding him. “Calm down, Aubrey,” Derek told the irate girl trying to pry her fingers from Julius but ultimately failing.

“Calm down? I can’t believe he would be this stupid. I know nobody had probably explained it to him yet, but still, I would like to think that he would be smart enough to know that out of all of the options, that one was the worst. Literally, any other reward would have been better,” Aubrey exclaimed loudly.

Julius turned to Lily with curious eyes. “How many options did you guys have? And how many is normal?” He asked her casually.

Lily just gave him a half-chastening look but answered him regardless. “We got four options. The skill evolution option, the soul-nourishing option, the Concept enlightenment option, and the skill slot option. Most people usually get all of these options. They are pretty standard.”

“The first and last options are self-explanatory, but what about the other two? What does the soul-nourishing and Concept option do?” Julius asked still ignoring Aubrey’s shaking.

“The lesser soul-nourishing option is really ever used for those with particularly weak or injured souls. Still most of the time you can find an expensive soul treasure to consume instead, so it’s rarely worth it. The Concept enlightenment option is quite interesting. Some people find it very difficult to connect with a Concept and this reward allows them to get one without much issue. However, a lot of the time the Concepts acquired are much weaker than a Concept you developed naturally,” Lily explained to him, also ignoring Aubrey.

“What are you guys talking about? That’s not important right now,” Aubrey said, still frantic. She turned back to Julius. “I don’t know if there’s a way to reverse it, but I will ask my mother. She might know of some treasure or method that might be able to fix it.”

Finally, Edgar also seemed to observe that Lily, Derek, and Kyle were surprisingly calm about it. He frowned and squinted his eyes a little before he stood up straight and realization lit up in his eyes. He didn’t say anything yet, but he just turned to look at Julius with a slight grin.

Julius saw him look at Aubrey who was still freaking out and then back at Julius. Edgar thought for a moment. Then he shrugged and decided to stay silent, but now he was sporting a smile of his own as he enjoyed the show.

Eventually, it was Lily who felt bad for Aubrey. “Aubrey, stop. He is teasing you,” she said with a sigh to the wild-eyed woman.

“Huh?” Aubrey stopped shaking Julius.

“He was lying. He didn’t choose the skill evolution option,” Lily told her.

Aubrey turned back to Julius and began shaking him again but for a different reason this time. “You little shit. Why would you play games like that? You actually worried me.”

“Eh, to be fair you kind of deserved it,” Edgar said from the side.

Aubrey whipped her head to him. “Why? What did I do?”

Edgar shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, the usual things. Being too pushy, not taking into account someone else’s feelings, and like when you invited those girls over just to make Julius uncomfortable.”

Aubrey at least had the self-awareness to take the reprimand on the chin. “Yeah, I guess I deserved it,” she said with her head down.

***

Julius spent the next Sunday working on his newly found ability with his aura and his Concept. It was something he believed would be very important to him down the road. Luckily, he had someone who was very good in their own right with aura control willing to practice with him.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Lily was a very good instructor when it came to aura. She taught him all types of exercises to help improve his control. Apparently, her family had taught her methods that weren’t that boring. Julius had been just sitting by himself on a mat in the dark whenever he practiced his aura.

However, Lily showed him games the two of them played that trained their aura and certain aspects of it. She had even shown him a game that resembled an aura version of hide and seek that was more tricky for him than the other games she showed him. He was good at the tug-of-war game she showed him, but for anything that needed finesse, she obliterated him.

Everyone had a general tendency for how their aura was used. For Julius, it was destroying other auras and being overall strong. However, just like how his mana control had been, he was lacking the finer and more subtle arts of aura control.