[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 235 – Aura Shaping II

A copper-tinged aura flickered fitfully around the chubby cat that was Komachi. It guttered, as if the energy was starved of fuel, and went completely out before Komachi could muster it again.

When she did, the aura remained as steady as a candle. Not overflowing like Sam’s, but a continuous stream.

“Why doesn’t mine have as much oomf?” Komachi asked.

Zarishna studied the cat. “The Empire–”

“Took away my oomf!?” she cried.

The immortal magus frowned. “If you would let me finish–”

Komachi spun around to face him. “Sam, the Empire took away my oomf!”

Sam looked up, mock-shock plain on his face. “The Empire took away your oomf?!”

The Empress stared at them both. “Like children, the pair of you.”

“At least I’m not the Empire!” Komachi retorted. “Takin’ away people’s oomfs! Ain’t nachi.”

“It’s not very nachi,” Sam agreed. “Maybe we can convince the Empress Eternal over here to give back your oomf?”

The Empress pinched the bridge of her nose. “I did not take away–”

“Mah oomf!” Komachi cried.

“Maybe we don’t say the o-word,” Sam suggested, putting his hands gently on Komachi’s ears and bending them down to her furry little head. “For your own sake, of course.”

“As if you aren’t encouraging her,” the Empress stated.

“She’s my soul companion. You don’t really expect me to leave her hanging, do you?” Sam asked as he took his hands off Komachi’s head and gave it a gentle pet.

Her fur was even more silken and plush than normal. Which naturally made her look a bit like a stuffed animal. Even with the body suit on.

“I’m not sure what I expect anymore,” she admitted, incredulous.

“So the next part?” Sam prompted. “You said the real training could begin, so what more do we have to do?”

He was eager to see how much more he could wring out of this powerful aura. Whenever he unleashed it, he could feel his attributes sharply rising, like a force multiplier was being directly applied to every aspect of his capabilities.

It was utterly surreal, and a little bit addicting.

Okay, seriously addicting. Like the adrenaline hit I get every time I Level Up, Sam thought.

He was starting to miss those surges of power. Controlling his aura would have to be a close second for now.

“You have brought your aura out,” she told him. “Even managed a level of control for somebody so clearly used to battle rather than training. However, fighting without using your aura is as I said before: like fighting with half of your arsenal. You need to learn how to combine the two into an eternal dance. Neither using too much nor too little of either so that there is perfect balance.”

Sam nodded, expecting there was more than just summoning an aura reliably, but something else occurred to him. “How many more of these outfits do you have?”

“More than a [Stasis Container] full, I think. Why?”

“I have no idea how many that is,” Sam told her. “But I have an entire group of people back home that could get use out of them. If you have some to spare, of course.”

“Considering what you’re up against, you’re more than welcome to them,” she said. “Truthfully, so long as any Alchemist worth their salt can source the materials, [Recovery Suits] are easy enough to [Fabricate].”

“Merchant mode engaged!” Komachi eyed the banded chest greedily. “You got a crafting recipe for those?”

“I don’t even know what [Fabricate] is,” Sam confessed. “I’m guessing it’s beyond what our people can do for now. We’re all relatively new to these systems, some more than others.” Sam waggled his thumb at Komachi and himself.

The Empress looked between them. “You come from a curious situation.”

“More like an apocalyptic situation.”

“‘Machi will buy recipes!” the cat Merchant shouted. “‘Machi will buy many recipes!”

Sam put his hand on Komachi’s head. “Settle down, Komachi.” He could tell his words fell on deaf ears. She was in full merchant mode, as she proclaimed earlier.

It was like goblin mode, except she got really sweaty about buying and selling things. She wouldn’t stop until she finally made a sale or purchased something.

The Empress relented. “Never let it be said that the Empire doesn’t favor her allies.”

Suddenly Komachi was putting down coins for several recipes that the Empress was willing to part with, either from those already scribed or some that needed to be created, such as in the case of the [Recovery Suits].

“[Fabricate] is merely a form of crafting,” Zarishna explained. “These recipes and schematics might not be one-to-one, but so long as you have creators among you, it should be possible to produce.”

Komachi preened and licked her furry paw in a sign of utmost Business Cat success. Sam gave her a comforting pat on the head and then turned to the Empress.

“For the duration of these exercises, you are to keep your aura fully under control,” she told him, widening her stance.

“Why are you doing it in your armor?” Sam asked, indicating his lack of armor with his hands.

“Because my armor is advanced and has properties yours lacks,” she told him evenly. “No more interruptions!” She calmed herself and set her stance into a martial arts form. “You have already shown me that you can bring your aura out, but now you must match its strength with your own.”

Sam slowly slid into the proper stance, which was more difficult considering he wasn’t nearly as limber as the Empress was. Even Komachi could adopt the stance easier than Sam.

“While you are going through the forms I am about to show you, it is absolutely imperative that you move your aura with your physical body. You will want to move your arms and legs without the aura, and in some rare cases, your aura will try to lead your physical body. Resist both temptations. Go as slowly as you need, but always move your aura and body in lockstep.”

Looks a bit like Tai Chi, Sam thought as the Empress moved through various forms with the fluidity of a ballerina. Thankfully, there were no pirouettes involved.

Sam expected her to get frustrated with his lack of progress as he repeatedly failed to follow her lead. It wasn’t just his lack of proper control. He struggled to remember the movements properly as well.

She never showed the slightest sign of irritation. Maybe she was too checked out from this Dead Echo to be bothered by training a poor student.

Days passed while Sam slowly grew accustomed to the motions. If anything, it seemed his body did most of the work. He had stopped trying to use his aura at some point, focusing instead wholly on the movements.

It occurred to him too late that he was fighting the undergarment’s movement enhancement while trying to learn the motions of the stances, which made it infinitely more difficult to learn.

Oddly enough, this was an area that Komachi excelled at. Her aura remained weak, supposedly even for a Copper Ranker, as the Empress remarked.

But she was able to learn the moves and get them far before Sam even still.

“It often is this way,” the Empress remarked one day. They trained without hardly any breaks. Only long enough for Sam or Komachi to recover. There was no need for sleeping, eating, or much else. “Those who start the training early often have an easier time. Taming a weaker aura is a far simpler task than one that has strengthened considerably.”

Thankfully, there was something akin to a shower, though Sam didn’t much like it. Instead of warm soothing water, jets of ultrasonic air shed the dirt and soil from his skin.

Despite training non-stop, there wasn’t much. The only time he needed to drink was to replenish what he sweated out, and even then he was astonished at how little water he actually needed.

He started to wonder if he even needed to breathe, but Zarishna heavily cautioned against that line of thinking.

“It is integral to mana manipulation, aura control and core formation. And for that matter, your humanity. Do not let go of the concept of breathing, for the next thing to stop may very well be your heart.”

“Point taken,” Sam told her. “Keep breathing.”

An interminable amount of time later, he finally managed to get the first series of forms right along with his aura. There was no equivalent thing that he knew of. The closest would have been trying to write with both hands simultaneously, each one writing out the same sentence at the same time without skipping a beat to pause and catch one up over the other.

“Good,” Zarishna told him with a slight tug to her lips. “You’ve learned the first movement. We can move on to the second.”

“That was just the first?” Sam couldn’t help but ask.

“Of course.” She looked him up and down. “You did not think that was it, did you?”

“How many movements are there?”

“Naturally, there are thirteen. It is a holy number after all.”

Sam didn’t know how the unluckiest number was considered holy, but he decided to let that go. Cultural differences shouldn’t be debated, especially when he didn’t want to cause a snag. He needed this training badly. It could change everything to come.

“And it took me…” Sam frowned. “An amount of time–”

“The time does not matter,” Zarishna told him sternly. “You could take a year to master these movements and it would still not matter.”

“It would matter to me.”

“You say that, but that is a lie. Your body will not age here. Many Kings and Queens would kill whole villages for a chance at what you have.”

Hard to refute, Sam thought to himself. Technically, I can’t gain Experience, but I can train and learn skills. Even gain skill growth it seems. What does it matter if it takes me a month or ten years to learn all 13 movements? If the Empress is right–and I’m inclined to believe her–then stepping out of here, I’ll be able to take my years of training with me. Assuming it has been years.

“While I want nothing more than to be with my Emperor again and see my civilization restored, it must wait in this timeless space. Through training, you will have your greatest chance of success,” Zarishna said solemnly. “For the good of both our people.”

Despite how badly Sam wanted to know, he was aware how foolish asking the Empress how long they were here was. Sometimes he felt like he could complete the first movement in a minute or two, other times it felt like hours or even days.

Without the sun, or any other external markers, Sam had no way to gauge the time anymore. So far, he hadn’t forgotten anyone’s faces, which was a relief. Even Darren’s ugly mug came up easily.

Taking a deep breath and expelling it, he pushed out his fears and concerns about time. It would take as long as it took. There was no worrying about it. He could do nothing to alter his course now except to prepare.

“I’m ready for the second movement,” Sam told her.

The Empress’ gray eyes sparkled. “That’s what I like to hear. This series of forms will be more difficult than the first, but they should feel like natural extensions.”

Sam watched as the Empress moved gracefully from one form to the next without the slightest hitch or hesitation. She might have been practicing these same moves for a thousand years for all he knew.

Certainly looks like it, he thought as he stumbled and jerked through the first forms like a newborn colt. He wanted to complain, to thrash against the unsettling timelessness of the ruins, but he reminded himself what was at stake.

The very reason these ruins were timeless was the result of a horrible catastrophe that had destroyed everything she knew.

That could have just as easily been Earth. How would Sam feel if he had to spend eons locked away in a timeless bubble where nothing really changed?

Certainly explains her patience, Sam thought to himself.