Eventually the whole ritual completed and I looked up at Lord Death in time to see him smile and then crumble away as I got consumed by purple flames.

The scenery changes and I appear in the same place that I disappeared from, yet again sweating profusely. It seems that sweating heavily has turned into a little bit of a habit. At that time however, I had no room for such thoughts as my mind was mainly centred around wondering what in the hell happened and what the words that were spoken meant.

I think back to the moments right before I was covered by flames, and view the ‘memory’ playing in my head with huge detail.

Death’s hands reach back after holding my wrist and his lips corners tug, forming into a slight smile as he looks at me. His body then slowly crumbles beginning from his left side and moving to his right. His body seems to break apart into tiny pieces which vanish into the darkness of the cave.

His eyes glow with compassion when looking at me and then they change, appearing to glow and rotate fiercely as his expression changes into a look that would torment even the most powerful men. For only an incredibly small fraction of a second later, which was only remembered due to my photographic memory, I saw something that scared me almost as much as Lord Death’s expression.

Death’s plane of existence, Hell, started to shake as the walls began to crumble. Unfortunately I couldn’t see anything else as I had already been transported back at that moment. Those events in themselves were terrifying to the bone, but there was nothing to be done against them.

I clench my left hand into a fist and look at it, seeing the image of Cerberus being so clearly imprinted on it. In a moment of realisation, I also look down my shirt to verify something. Luckily for me, the ‘Death Mark’ on my chest was still in a pure black circle shape which I could only assume was a seal and unlike the raw ‘Death Mark’ itself.

I had already figured out that if the black mark was indeed a seal, it would likely be one for my power flowing out of control. Although my mind and soul would subconsciously not allow energy that is dangerous to me be released, it would still make the occasional immortal aware of my existence if my ‘aura’ flared up.

I turn all my attention onto my left arm, complete with the mark and spirals. It feels powerful, but not physically powerful, but rather as though it is another soul, a battery if you will. It seems to store so much energy and I did the next most logical, yet rash decision to find out its capabilities.

I tried to pour out a bit of the energy which felt like my own. It did not end well. My entire body felt nothing save my arm, which started having a rather gruesome reaction. Similar to how it had initially made the spirals on my arm, the mark on the back of my hand began to bleed from every edge that outlined the mark. The mark of Death also begins to glow with intense purple light.

My red blood oozed out with great intensity, differing from the prior blackened blood that oozed out when the mark was imprinted on my hand. It began to drip down, dyeing the green grass with spots of red. I dropped to my knees while my left, bleeding hand hit the ground as I felt the blood drain from my body.

When my hand was flushed and filled with ‘aura’, pulled out of the power source in my left hand, it was washed by a wave of cold, and all feeling of touch was lost. Similarly, quickly afterwards the rest of my body's temperature dropped with loss of blood.

When my left hand hit the ground, all the grass in the vicinity of the location that was hit quickly wilted and the majority of elemental particles floating around was quickly replaced with particles of greyness, likely being the particles of the death element.

Whilst all this was happening, I tried to sever the feeling of death coming out of my left hand, and after trying fruitlessly for a few seconds, I decide to make a rash decision that could be my lifesaver. I cut an incision in my left shoulder and push my wind infused elemental ‘aura’ out of my soul and outside. I used all the ‘aura’ that was available to me as I had very little that could be released at this point in time.

Manipulating the air particles, I push them into the incision and create a barrier of air, not allowing blood to pass into my arm. I simultaneously squeeze the blood veins leading to my arm and as a result disallow blood from passing through. Using the air in the haemoglobin, I similarly push my blood cells back to cycle around the body, prohibiting passage to my arm.

My left arm swiftly runs out of blood and it turns into a dried, skin and bones limb. Shortly afterwards, the mark’s glow died down and feeling that the place was  I opened a small hole in the wind blockage that was situated inside the incision. This allowed the blood that was being circulated around the body to flow back into my arm, hoping to rejuvenate it.

A few seconds after opening the small hole, I let go of the pressure on the veins, also allowing the blood inside them to be moved into my arm. I then completely released the wind in the incision, and only pressed it against wounds to prevent them from exiting my open wounds and risk losing more blood.

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My body went cold, but luckily when my body gained countless ‘aura’ veins, they also spread out to my heart muscle and other normally uncontrollable parts of the body and gave me the frightening ability to consciously control them.

Sending an ‘aura’ pulse to make my bone marrow generate as much blood as possible, in hope of making up for the litres lost, I forced ‘aura’ into my brain to make it unable to shut down due to the pain and panic.

My body that would normally die due to blood loss was barely capable of clinging on to life as long as I very slowly expanded the area where my blood circulated. About 2 hours of immobility later, my body managed to make up for blood lost during the experiment.

Not doing that again.

As I thought this, I also realised that my investment easily paid itself off, even only a short while after making it. The investment that I am referring to is the decision that I made to convert almost all my available ‘aura’ from that short while back into ones used to strengthen my body. I had initially infused my muscles, skin and bones with ‘aura’ to strengthen them to accelerate training speed.

This was because even though ‘aura’ capacity increases far slower when training in physical activities than when meditating, it had the benefit of allowing a person to increasing the capacity for a prolonged amount of time.

For example, say that I would meditate for an hour before running out of juice, since ‘aura’ capacity increase entails constant release of ‘aura’, then my ‘aura’ would eventually run dry and I would faint. Or otherwise I would get incredibly tired and would have to take a break and give time for my soul to generate the lost ‘aura’. However, if a person with a strong enough physical body attempted to train themselves physically, they would be able to practice for far longer than a mage with similar amounts of ‘aura’ capacity.

Of course, although they would train for longer, it still results in a less beneficial ‘aura’ capacity increase than when meditating. If a mage with 100 ‘aura’ at his disposal does meditative training, he could potentially increase that by 1 in an hour and simultaneously run dry on ‘aura’ to meditate with. However, if a warrior with 100 ‘aura’ at their disposal trained, he would take 10 hours of training to run dry of power, but similarly would need that much time to gain 1 ‘aura’ capacity.

The main benefit of this method of warrior training is the physical strength increase that comes with the ‘aura’. If you were to meditate, although you would gain ‘aura’ quickly, you would also not experience any physical changes with your body. An incredibly fat person could be a powerful ‘aura’ manipulator, but a warrior’s body changes with ‘aura’ infusing and strength increase naturally.

Similarly, because your ‘aura’ usage gets stretched out in time, you don’t have to rest as regularly as a mage but can still train with all your power.

This was one of the reasons as to why I had decided to invest my ‘aura’ in physical increase, but the other was to survive dangerous situations like this. As your body gets infused with more and more ‘aura’, it changes, increasing immunity to diseases and poisons, slowly genetically altering to be more powerful as your body tries to resist the strong impact that your ‘aura’ inflicts on it.

Mages don’t have such immunities and strong bodies, but they can easily remove poison or coat their bodies to create similar effects, but they have to do it consciously. If a mage's body is poisoned silently without their knowledge, unless they have powerful ‘aura’ constantly pushing outside interferences away, they will die if the poison is lethal.

However, if a warrior were to be poisoned, no matter their state of consciousness, it will likely fail unless incredibly lethal. This makes up for the warriors path deficit of ‘aura’ that they can manipulate and release outside of their bodies.

This helped me survive such a normally lethal situation, simply with the warriors path. Of course, my little ‘aura’ capacity that I have available to me helped a lot as well. As I can’t decide on which to concentrate on at the moment, I am saving up my excess ‘aura’ capacity instead of widening my ‘aura veins’ and using the ‘aura’ capacity in that sense.

I will later accordingly distribute the additional ‘aura’ capacity as required, but in the meanwhile I will save it.

Strangely however, although the body is forced into an evolutive state as it grows alongside the ‘aura’, mine still counted as that of a child and all of my bone marrow helped with the manufacturing of blood. This of course could also be due to the evolution as well, as increased bone marrow means less blood loss overall.

Since my body completely recovered, I decide to return back to the orphanage, eat to replenish energy and also check on something, something that was left unanswered during my conversation with Helra.