It took about four hours for the delivery vehicle to get to the Hub and the looks on the guys faces were priceless. First because they were clearly confused about the unusual way the sandstorm was behaving. Second because most of my team besides Gaia, Yani, the little one and Hades could be seen easily. Finally because the Hub was obviously something special and they knew it. Anyways after dropping off the stuff and having me sign a delivery form stating that I got it they left in a hurry.-

No doubt they were going to go spreading rumors about the Hub but even if others came to check it out Gaia wasn't likely to let them in without going through the sandstorm. I had already told Gaia that the next visitors shouldn't show up for another few days at minimum and that it would only be two people so if it was more or less than that she could leave them to the storm. With my furniture here I got to work installing it all and while it wasn't the nicest to look at it did it's job well enough.-

'Now I just need to get a reliable contact in Agate village, Pyrite town and Mt. Battle in order to finish up the objectives of my quest. Before that though I should get these two ability tickets out of the way. May my random lord RNGESUS bless me on this draw.' I thought praying to the only god I believed in and using my two tickets. I tore the two rainbow colored tickets and the roulette wheel appeared in the rainbow smoke before spinning for a minute as per usual. Since I used two tickets at once though the wheel didn't go away after it landed on the first ability I would receive but rather that option rose from the wheel before the wheel began spinning again.-

When the second ability was chosen the wheel burst into a vast amount of rainbow smoke and poured into my body. Immediately my aura began to surge and roil within me as it began to expand painfully before with a sickening pulse condense into a small spark of luminous energy within me no more than an ember compared to the raging inferno it used to be. The reason for this change was because both of the abilities I got were aura related and finally pushed my aura past quantitative to qualitative change.-

Before I get into that however I should explain what my two new abilities were. From this draw I received the [Mine] and [Water creation] abilities. The second ability was literally explained in the name but was quite weak all things considered as it barely let me create a cup of water. [Mine] though was both powerful and useless at the same time for me. Let me explain, see the way it worked was that I could create a sort of energy imprint on anything I touched that exploded when disturbed.-

Powerful because those explosions were like a grenade going off at point blank range but useless for me because the imprints couldn't be moved so I couldn't just stick one to say a baseball and lob it at an enemy. In case it wasn't obvious I wasn't exactly the setting traps type person and was more reactive in how I did things. All in all unless these abilities got an upgrade I didn't see myself using them very much. Regardless of that however I was still thrilled at receiving them as they were the perfect means to transform my aura from it's normal state into a higher form of energy like I had long theorized.-

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I even figured out HOW it accomplished this transformation as well thanks to experiencing it first hand which was massively valuable information. The process was honestly rather mundane to be honest but made perfect sense. Basically all living things be they humans, animals, pokemon or even plants have aura within them. However the bodies of these living things can only contain so much energy before they simply can't hold any more. In order to handle this energy my body did the most logical thing it could, it condensed it all into a much smaller but higher quality energy that didn't take so much space.-

A good analogy was that it was like my body was a jar and the energy was pure carbon being stuffed into it in gas form. Once no more gas could fit the carbon was pressed together into a single drop of liquid carbon. It was still the same amount of carbon as before but in a much smaller area as it was condensed. My aura had effectively done the exact same thing and was thus greater qualitatively than it was before.-

Oh did I feel the difference too. Before my aura felt wispy, light and airy like fog but now it was like a drop of rain had fallen onto my hand. It had more weight to it and with that weight came power. There was one glaring issue however that was quite bothersome, the amount I had now was abysmal. I could feel it growing still as my body was still in shock from having so much more usually but once it adapted that growth was bound to stop.-

Realizing this I wasted no time at all gathering my team for a group meditation session in hope of reaching at the very least a usable amount of energy before my body adapted to these new circumstances. Which unfortunately revealed a new issue as well, my meditation was much slower working than normal. It wasn't hard to figure out why either as it was simply a matter of using outdated or obsolete methods to achieve modern outcomes. My current situation was brand new in all the history of aura which means that the old methods while not totally ineffective WERE inefficient as they weren't designed with this in mind.-

I was now in the dark about how to train my aura skill from here as I was the trailblazer for this new path in it. All the old stuff still worked but I now no longer knew for certain what lay ahead in the future for this skill and that was exciting. I felt like crying when my body finally adapted a few hours later but I had only managed to get a candle sized flame of energy. It really wasn't a lot but it wasn't all bad news as while I couldn't be wasteful with my energy usage like before the effect the energy had was multiple times stronger than before as well.-

All of my abilities got a large upgrade in power despite still using the same amount of energy which I guessed was because the "fuel" they used had become much better. A hard lesson I learned however was that while my body had adapted to containing the new energy it was NOT able to handle it's reinforcement. When I first attempted it after this aura evolution my muscles, bones and skin immediately tore and cracked which let me tell you fucking hurt.