"Welcome back everyone, especially to those of you whom I haven't seen since before the third assessment. Higher than some or lower than others, you have all reached a satisfying enough level in your [Mastery] and [Aura Pathways], so, well done in making it this far. Now, is where the real work begins."

Nar sat beside Gad, with Kur sitting on his either side.

He did his best to appear utterly focused on the Master of Aura's words, and ignore the glances that the rest of the party was shooting his way. Gad had promised to handle the rest of the party, and to keep them off his back so to speak, and though he felt bad about mistreating the party's genuine worries for him, he didn't want to have those conversations multiple times. At least not for now.

Past the heads of the gathered apprentices, the Master of Aura addressed them from the little raise at the front of the Aura Hall. Lop, the short, pale Teacher of Aura Mastery stood a step behind her and to her right, his pink, flesh-colored and cloudy eyes apparently lost in the far wall behind the apprentices.

"Going forward, we will focus on strengthening what you have thus far achieved in order to allow you all to advance to the next stage of auramancy," the master continued, sweeping the gathering with her bright, light blue eyes. "At the moment, most of you will have already reached a plateau in your [Mastery], a blockage through which you cannot get past, no matter how hard you try, correct?"

Around him, Nar saw heads bobbing, and even Kur and Gad nodded in agreement to the master's words.

Oh… Really? He asked, surprised. He hadn't noticed anything like that.

"Don't worry about this. It's natural. It simply means that you have reached the limit of what you can currently sustain within your pathways," the master explained.

Ah, that explains it, Nar thought, nodding to himself. My [Pathways of the Champion] have kept me going… Or maybe it's because that skill is already at level 7.

As far as he knew, Kur and Gad for example, had their [Aura Pathways] skill at level 3 and 2 respectively, and he doubted that, other than the casters, most other apprentices had anything higher than that.

"Once you improve your pathways, it will be possible to improve your [Mastery] in tandem, but in order to improve your pathways you must do one of three things. One, you create more pathways. You have all opened the five main pathways as well as the pathways within the brain, but there are many, many more pathways that you can establish. The average auramancer has, at minimum, twenty pathways running down their arms alone."

"Twenty?" Tuk whispered. "Crystal…"

"That's a fuck ton," Mul muttered.

Cen predictably hushed at them.

"Other than creating more pathways, you can strengthen the ones you already have, both widening and deepening them in order to increase their capacity to carry more aura," the master continued. "And lastly, and much more difficult to achieve, you can create smaller cores within yourself."

A whisper rippled throughout the apprentices.

"More cores?" Nar mumbled, stunned.

"You can do that?" Kur asked, frowning at the master.

Gad merely stared at the Master of Aura, her expression as inscrutable as always.

"Yes, indeed you can do that," the master said, answering everyone all at once, the beads on the braids that covered half her skull glinting in the light beaming from above. "But not in the way you think. Here, as ignominious as it is, it's best to borrow from our aethermancers counterparts… Rather than cores per se, it might be easier to think of them as reservoirs across your pathways, which are able to store additional aura that you can then use whenever it pleases you. Unfortunately, this is not something that all auramancers can achieve. Not even aethermancers can, even with the help from their bonded spirits."

She scanned the crowd with her ageless, blue eyes. "In order to create these reservoirs of aura, you would need a control and understanding of your aura such that… Well, I don't think more than a handful of you here today will ever reach that stage. And if you do, it will certainly be at least past level 150, so you might as well forget about it."

Crystal… Here we go again with the crazy levels, Nar though, pursing his lips.

On the podium, however, the master smiled.

"Of course, for exceptional cases of extraordinary talent and hard work, it might be possible, and do so earlier than that," she said, grinning. "This is a matter of hard work, not inane talent. So if this is something that calls out to you, then by all means, strive for it."

Nar shook his head and chucked the cores, or reservoirs, into the Pile where he had thrown all the other stuff that was currently out of his reach, such as his enhanced [Instinct], his sword, and whatever else his masters and now Tys were still keeping from him.

"Therefore, of the three, the first two, pathways strengthening and increasing their number are the ones we'll be focusing on," she said. "And we're going to start with strengthening your pathways first. So, over the next half year, even while you're in the Brightnight, you will all work hard to deepen and widen your pathways. And we're doing that instead of opening new pathways because I have found that having a strong, solid initial network of pathways will help you long, long into the future. So, up you get, and into the aura pods everyone!"

"Oh! We're doing it now?" Tuk said, surprised.

"Race you to the pods!" Rel said, elbowing him.

"What? Hold on!"

She smirked at Nar as she dashed forward, Tuk in tow, and he managed a smile back.

There was less rush in finding a pod this time around. There were less apprentices on board, and since the aura classes were still divided into two turns, there were lots of spare pods available now. Nar found a free one nearer the end of the hall, and sat within the circle, the green barrier rising around him to encase him as usual.

"Strengthening your pathways is actually quite the simple, even tedious, process once you get the hang of it. Though it is a little bit painful," the master's voice spoke from somewhere and nowhere around him.

Of course it is, Nar thought, rolling his eyes. Is there anything in this Creation that is easy and painless to earn?

"Start by taking a hold of the maximum aura that your [Mastery] allows you. And then, try to take in a little bit more than that," she instructed. "Then, and for the tricky part, focus it and bundle it together within your core. A ball is usually the easiest shape to achieve."

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Nar frowned as he closed his eyes to better focus and see the aura within him.

The core, blazing with its enormous ball of aura that now was easily three times his size was easy to observe, and his pathways, shimmering with faint shifting gray across his legs, arms and up his head was just as easy.

He took hold of as much aura as he could from the bright, bright ball of aura that was his core, then, tightening his jaw, he pulled a little sliver extra, not daring to try and go too far without first knowing what the Master of Aura intended for them.

Even with just that little bit extra, the smooth aura turned raging and violent inside him, snapping and yanking at his control in an attempt to break free.

Right. Next, bundle it into a ball? He thought.

He tried coercing the raging aura into the shape he needed, but the aura only hissed at him.

Wow… So angry.

"It might be easier to imagine that the aura is a shape in your hands, one that you can freely mold," the master said.

His eyebrows raised, Nar tried doing just that. To his surprise, he did manage a rough sphere without too much trouble.

"Then, if you managed that, keep a hold of it and the rest is simple enough. Pull that ball of aura into one of your pathways, and slowly, ever so slowly, move it across its entire length," the master said. "Once it becomes too easy and boring, try giving your aura a spinning motion. And don't worry when it hurts! It's meant to, since you're forcefully carving your pathways wider and deeper… But make sure to only train within the pods over the next month. You can accidentally hurt yourself in the early stages, and these pods are equipped with safety measures to prevent that."

As always, it felt as though she was right there with him, within his very core, and he had to resist the urge to open his eyes to check if he was actually alone in his pod.

Focusing back on keeping just the stationary ball shape for now, Nar cycled it ever so slightly past his core and into his right arm's pathway, the one he assumed he used the most in a fight to cycle into his sword, and he doubled over, coughing, and immediately lost control over the aura as raking pain screeched within him.

What in the Pile? His sight swam before him for a moment, and he tasted cooper in his mouth.

"Indeed. There's some pain," the master said.

Some?

"Ugh!"

It had been foolish to expect that after three nights at Tys' hands that all other pain would've paled in comparison. Pulling the ball of aura into the right pathway had felt like dragging a fistful of aetherium shards across his lung and heart, and the blood he tasted at the back of his throat was not a good indicator either.

He had to wonder if this level of pain was due to his much higher [Mastery] and cycling capacity, or if it was the same for everyone else.

"Keep an eye on your HP. If you happen to take too much damage, then stop and resume once you've healed. And for the healers now sitting amongst you, be careful not to wound yourselves further in an attempt to heal your parties. Make sure you heal yourselves first and that you're in a good enough condition to heal in the first place," the master said. "And for the most part, that's it really. Take it slow and steady, and don't try to rush all the way through the pathway or you'll really regret it. This is a slow process, back and forth, slowly moving alongside the pathway, and when you've managed to quickly do this without any pain, you will know that you are done. And when your [Mastery] increases, you can start again, on and on, for as long as you live, and as far as you wish to take it for your own ambitions. Just know that if your ambitions are not ambitious enough to satisfy me, that you will be punished."

Nar exhaled wearily.

"But, overall, you got the gist of it. Try to enjoy the process, yes? The more you embrace it, the more you put into it, and the faster you'll progress and the more benefits you'll reap. And reaping benefits is always in your best interest."

Nar sighed and shook his head.

It's always like this.

He closed his eyes and formed the ball of aura again.

*********

Nar groaned and rubbed at the side of his chest and shoulder. He almost expected to find it raw and bloody, from how it had felt to move that ball of aura across his chest and into his right pathway, and in what had been around an hour, he had barely managed to reach his shoulder.

He still had the whole arm to do, and he was far from being able to cycle that ball across the pathway's entire length with the smoothness the master had described.

Four more hours to go… Then dinner and then back to the arena, he thought. Oh well, a little break won't hurt.

He pulled a bottle of water from his inventory, something they had all gotten into the habit of carrying around after being given bottles in preparation for their third assessment, and opened his eyes to…

"Gah!"

"Hello, Nar. Being lazy, are we?"

The Master of Aura stared at him. Her chin rested on her left hand, which in turn was propped on her left leg, and she looked bored. Very, very bored.

Nar hadn't even heard her come in or sit down, and he didn't bother trying to waste brainpower to understand how she had done it or in guessing how long she had been there.

"Uh… Hello, master. How are you?"

"Hmmm," she mouthed. "Alright, I guess. You don't look too shabby yourself either. Though it feels a bit early to be taking a break, don't you think?"

Nar tried not to think that it had been a whole hour of scouring pain on top of everything else he had already done that day, and that he was just taking a sip of water for Crystal's sake, which of course resulted in him thinking about it and the master obviously reading it out of his mind.

He grimaced. "I'll go right back to it, master."

"No need. I've come to chat," she said. "And to see how you were doing after your dream got ripped right from your hands."

Ouch.

The older woman whose age he still could not place smirked at him with ageless mirth.

"Tiptoeing around it only makes it worse, but I'm glad you talked it out with Gad. She's a good one," she said, squinting at something in his chest. "Yes. I think that talk did you some real good."

Nar sighed. "Were you worried, master? Or feeling guilty?"

"Ohh! Blunt! I'll allow it, though," she said. "But yes. To the first, one at least. I'm glad to see that you're doing better than I feared, but I don't feel guilty like your idiot Master of Blades. We did what we had to do, and had we not, you wouldn't have progressed as hard and fast as you did. And as a result, you and your entire party would be dead now, wouldn't you?"

"That's fair, I guess," Nar said, leaning back against the pod's green wall of solid light. "And in that case don't worry, master, I'm fine."

Her eyebrows rose at his sarcasm and she made a show of looking him over.

"I can see that… But like I said, you're looking better than I expected. And I'm glad that girl hasn't managed to break you yet. Or that you ran away from her."

Girl? he thought. Tys?

"Yes, girl. It's some audacity to swoop in and take someone else's apprentice like that," the Master of Aura continued. "I already had it all planned! And there was no need for all of this torture nonsense either!"

She tutted. "Always taking the brute path, these people. But I guess it's no wonder, given her own teacher…"

The master rubbed her forehead.

"But I suppose there's merit to her methods, of course," she conceded. "And I won't be changing any of my plans anyways. I was already planning on teaching you how to passively recover aura! Pah! The audacity to be questioned at my age!"

Nar blinked at his master. He had completely lost the plot.

"Then again, I guess I can't blame you. I wouldn't turn down an Ascendant's offer either," she said, her tone almost… Mocking? "And definitely not one as powerful as Tys. She's going to get that title. I have no doubt about that."

"Right…" Nar said, completely lost.

"Anyways, back to work. Just because you're ahead in your pathways, doesn't mean you get to relax. You've still got a long way to go before you can actually make proper use of that massive aura of yours, and you're certainly still very far from the minimum requirements I demand of you in order to teach the actual interesting stuff I got planned for you," she told him. "So, keep at it. Besides, the better your pathways are, the faster you'll be able to heal yourself… Which is a very powerful and coveted skill indeed, but one that very few are willing to actually work for."

She shook her head, her braids beads glinting green, and rose to her feet.

"What are you staring at? Get back to it! And if you don't get that ball all the way to your hand before class is over, I'll show you that there's worse ways to inflict pain that don't involve jamming fingers in anyone, or resorting to liquid aether."

Nar sighed. "Yes, master."

"And don't forget that I can hear you if you curse at me!"

I wouldn't dare, master, Nar thought, not bothering to speak it out loud.

Good. And don't you forget it.

He sat up straight, shock stealing his breath away. The barrier closed once again, and his master's mental chuckle receded into the back of his mind.

Crystal Almighty, he thought, unable to stop himself.

As always, the Master of Aura was impossible to get a read on.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.