Chapter 56: Aura Skill Evolution

When Julius got back to his room, the first thing he did was feed little Drasil some life mana. Like usual Drasil inhaled the mana, like a fat kid eating Oreos. Julius had to admit it was somewhat impressive to see. It wasn’t just a little bit of mana either. It was much more than he used for each usage of [Pseudo-Phoenix Renewal].

It was getting late, but Julius still wanted to check out the training areas. He locked his door and headed for the first-year training area. It wasn’t a far walk, so Julius got there in a couple of minutes.

He had to scan his school badge to get in. When he walked through the doors of the facility, he was surprised to see other students there as well. The training area was huge, it was about the size of a gymnasium. Various activities were portioned off from each other, weight lifting, sparring, agility, meditation, you name it and they had a separate room for it.

He walked past another first-year who was busy lifting weights and headed to a private room that had dummies installed. He wasn’t planning to do any hard training right now, he wanted to finish reading the books he got today. He didn’t think holding off on evolving his [Mana Manipulation] for too long was good. The two books he read already narrowed his choices down, but he wanted to read some more before he made a choice.

Julius tested out the dummies, giving them a few strikes to see how well they held up. He was quite pleased to see that they were of much higher quality than the ones at the guardhouse. These even had an option that would allow them to attack you. They weren’t very graceful but it sure as hell beat hitting a stationary object.

Once Julius felt comfortable, he started to crank up his power. The first thing he did was to use [Kinetic Augmentation] to the max. After some warming up, he was rocketing his fists and legs into the dummy at a blistering pace. Much faster than when he was fighting Gabriel the other day.

Then Julius began to slowly add aura into his strikes, enforcing his attacks even further. Heavy punches and kicks smashed into the dummy, each strike compacted and neat, just like Gabriel. His style was different than Gabriel’s. Julius’s style revolved around using his speed, aggression, and perception to punish opponent’s openings, while Gabriel was a steel wall, not allowing anything through him. Both were effective strategies that relied on their strengths, but Julius wanted to take some of Gabriel’s methods for himself.

The one thing that impressed Julius was how few openings Gabriel left open. Even the ones that seemed open were baits. Throughout their fight, Julius realized how that worked. It all played off of Gabriel’s striking.

Gabriel was able to use aura to compact his strikes and create a resonating force through his blows. This allowed him to keep his swings short and neat, not allowing any room for counterattacks and never overextending himself.

Julius’s first thought was that he wouldn’t be able to generate enough speed or torque, but aura solved that. With a generous application of aura, he was able to replicate Gabriel’s aura strikes. It required Julius to expel it at the right moment, but he already had practice with something like that. Kinetic energy needed the same timing.

Julius completely ended up forgetting about his plans to read the books tonight and got so absorbed with the new technique that he spent many hours practicing the same strikes over and over. He unleashed aura strike after aura strike at the poor dummy, he even had it start moving so that it was more challenging to time up his attacks.

But he quickly got the hang of it. He was soon able to recreate the resonating force that Gabriel had demonstrated, he didn’t know how effective it was, but he felt like even if he punched someone wearing full plate armor, the resonating force would definitely transfer beneath to their bodies.

It was only after this did [Fighter’s Will] finally tipped over that threshold.

[Fighter’s Will lvl 14 -> lvl 15]

Skill [Fighter’s Will] has reached level 15. Would you like to evolve [Fighter’s Will]?

It wasn’t even a question.

Skill [Fighter’s Will] is evolving… possible advancements: [Warrior’s Will], [Aura Strengthening], [Aura Sense], [Empathy], [Empowerment of Will], and [Aura Strike]

Finally, after many sleepless nights, he was able to evolve the skill. He was getting worried that he might have needed to tier up before he was able to evolve it.

He was glad he didn’t.

Julius reviewed the possible advancements.

[Warrior’s Will] was the direct upgrade, but also a good option. He liked how [Fighter’s Will] had overlapped with [Savage Dance] and let him focus even more.

[Aura Strengthening] was predictable, it most likely would be a skill that focused on improving his physical abilities with aura from the inside. If he really wanted to go the close combat route, he should definitely consider it.

[Aura Sense] must be like [Mana Sense] but for aura, he didn’t think he would need something like this. He already had [Spatial Perception] that allowed him an easier time to detect aura usage along with his improving ability using it. It might make it easier to do so, but he hadn’t been unable to detect an aura probe yet. Declan doesn’t count, because if Declan doesn’t want you to notice his probe, you won’t. He said that not many people, even some Tier 5’s could detect his aura.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Julius would rather choose another skill. Then there was [Empathy], which was one of the most interesting skills Julius had been offered. He suspected that his adventure through the market using aura was the reason for this option.

It sounded like it was a skill that would allow Julius to know what people were feeling. It might not sound that impressive, but Julius could already imagine several uses for it. For example, if he got good enough he would be able to tell when people were lying to him. He might also be able to know how someone was going to attack. Emotions are powerful things, and being able to read them might be a useful ability.