"Not just any smartphone," Alicia said with a conspirational tone and approached. "An alien smartphone," she whispered.

"Are you sure that's wise?" he insisted, ignoring the half-assed joke.

She straighted up, crossed her arms, and gave him a level look. "Look, nothing against you, but I don't like people telling me how to spend my own damn money. Not even if you think it's well-intended."

He sighed as he immediately understood. Alicia had gotten her parent's inheritance stolen by her aunt and uncle with the help of corrupt government officials. "Fair enough," he conceded.

Meanwhile, what looked like a high-end smartphone from human making had materialized in his hand. It responded incomparably faster than anything he had used before—instantly, really. He quickly logged in on his online accounts.

Many people were trying to reach him, but he ignored them all for now. The time would come for that if Earth survived.

He left the device over a nearby abandoned car and turned to Alicia again. "So, I got an aura—"

"Don't you say," she cut him. "Can you really not turn this shit off?" She was doing better dealing with his aura, but it obviously still gritted on her, especially when he mentioned it.

He smiled apologetically. "As I was saying, I felt ten other D-ranks with auras in the rift. Their auras went against mine, but it was too fast, and I'm not sure what happens when auras clash. I need to run some tests."

"Sorry to break it to you," Alicia interrupted again, "but I have no aura."

Indeed, she definitely wasn't boding well with his aura.

"I know," Shen replied. "But that's not the only gap in my knowledge. I don't know exactly how other things, like spells, interact with my aura either. I had no time to spare experimenting mid-battle. Besides, I want your perspective on fighting an aura-user so we'll know how to train whoever answers my call for help. We must prepare well for the incoming battle, and to do that, we must understand as much as possible about ourselves and our enemies."

"Fine. What do you have in mind?"

"Let's start with the basics. Get out of my aura range and shoot a fireball at me. Let's see what happens."

"I can do that," she said quickly and walked so fast to leave his aura that it became apparent she was doing all she could not to just run away.

Shen smiled as he watched her go. Killing enemies and improving himself was fun, but he had missed simply talking to his best friend. Even if she was cranky, she was doing her best to stay inside his uncomfortable aura range just to stay by his side. That was all he could ask of a friend.

It was to allow, preserve, and protect moments like this, both for himself and for the rest of humankind, that he needed power.

He felt his resolve strengthen as he vowed to himself, once more, to walk his Path to the very peak.

----------------------------------------

A ball of pitch-black fire surrounded Alicia. Shen smiled as he approached. His aura touched her spell.

"Fuck," she complained.

Shen kept walking. Her flames being dark usually meant she was applying her Concept to it. Unlike her common spells, which dissipated as soon as his aura touched them, the spells with her Path empowering them resisted his aura. Only when they were seventy yards into his aura—of the over three hundred total—did they cease to be.

There was no willpower expenditure in an aura versus spell clash. In fact, it cost them almost no willpower at all, though Shen had it even easier. He could easily go on like that for days, while Alicia could withstand a few hours—as long as her willpower didn't clash with anyone else's.

However, she got a headache any time her willpower touched his aura. It didn't affect her beyond the annoying pain, but it was still as much a distraction as any other headache.

Shen, on the other hand, felt nothing.

He kept approaching. Alicia started moving her flames furiously around him, and even black lightning appeared in the fiery hurricane to try to destroy him. However, no matter what she did, it all died when it was well over two hundred yards away from him.

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Shen reached the spell's epicenter, where Alicia waited.

She had left a few feet around her empty so she could see him approach and react physically. As soon as he entered the "void zone," she tried to stab him with her sword.

Shen used his qi.

His aura worked at 40% of his full qi-powered potential. When he added his qi to it, it had an additive effect, going as far as 140%. Suddenly, his aura became over three times as powerful as when he wasn't empowering it with his qi.

His will clashed with hers, and she held only for a few instants.

Shen's willpower had recently gone through the fires of despair and been forged in the blood of crushing guilt. Yet, he had survived physically, emotionally, and psychologically, and come out stronger. That had left a mark on him but also bolstered his will.

Alicia's flames simply disappeared as she froze in place, held by his will.

To be honest, he was impressed she didn't faint. By her lost eyes, it was obvious that she felt dazed for several seconds, but her focus came back, and she looked at him with angry intensity.

She tried to move her mana-filled body. It clashed with his qi-powered aura. Usually, her body would have an advantage—which he had previously used against enemies trying to hold him down with spells—but his aura also assisted him on this front.

Shen felt his willpower draining away to keep her in place, like a liquid leaving a bottle in his mind. Alicia, on the other hand, was only spending her patience.

The more she tried to move, the more he had to use his willpower to keep her in place, but there was no clash of wills. He couldn't pierce her soul defenses, and she wasn't using mana outside her body. Therefore, he could only kind of spend a mental resource to deny her attempts to escape as her soul tried to go against his will.

That was a great find. It was a weakness of aura that could be exploited. Unfortunately, it required someone stupid enough to freeze too many people in place and they all tried to break free.

Yet, even if he would eventually run out of willpower, he didn't have to wait that long.

Shen lightly tapped her neck, proving he could've killed her, marking the exercise's end.

He stopped using his qi and holding her with his aura, and she fell to the ground on her knees.

"This is so much fucking bullshit," she complained, panting.

"Indeed," he agreed as he moved away to give her some reprieve from his aura.

Shen recalled his fight against the orc boss, who had had an aura. Back then, Uk'Gaar had merely suppressed Shen's stats a little. The cultivator could tell now that the orc hadn't used it to the utmost, either by choice or because of tutorial-enforced restrictions.

Shen's current cultivation stage was about nurturing his body and soul with qi until he could use qi without ever running dry. During his stay in the US, he had barely reached the point where he could strengthen his body with qi for twelve hours before running out. In battle, that translated into much less, maybe not even one hour depending on the circumstances, because he had to use so much more energy to overcome obstacles.

His aura, on the other hand, gave him so many possibilities and so much power for free.

It was really something else.

The more Shen treaded his Path, the more he realized that what he thought he knew about cultivation was but a drop of water in an ocean. The Keeper of Knowledge position he had been so proud of was really only useful if the clan was all but extinct. He had known the bare basics to revive the clan in case of total obliteration, nothing more.

The actual, official Keeper would know more than a cripple in training like him, of course. Yet, Shen now also realized—probably thanks to his learning ability—that even the Keeper wouldn't know much more. If the clan was being destroyed, they would rather all their advanced knowledge be destroyed with them than fall into enemy hands. An ignorant Keeper was a Keeper that couldn't be tortured to expose any secrets. Only now did Shen finally understand why the Keeper's seat in the feasts wasn't very high up except during the Ritual of Founding.

Of course, there was another possibility. The Keeper of Knowledge might have hidden functions that only became relevant in emergencies. Unfortunately, he had no way of finding out at the moment.

Shen finally reached a distance where his aura couldn't touch Alicia and heard a sigh of relief. He stopped and turned to her to expose his guesses.

"Auras are an expression of parts of Reality itself being funneled through me to affect the surroundings more than they should," he said. "That's why it's so powerful and costs me so little; Reality is doing the work; I'm just guiding it. When you sent your own Concept against my aura, you made another small part of Reality clash against 'my' parts. And because your willpower is fueling the Concept while I'm just directing other Concepts against you, you have a limited advantage. Therefore, you can pierce over a fourth of my aura."

"Great fucking advantage," Alicia replied annoyedly, massaging her temples as she sat down on the ground.

"That is good for humankind," Shen countered. "We'll have to check if multiple people with one Concept or someone with multiple Concepts can dig deeper, but I believe the answer will be yes for both. We have a chance against the aura users. It's a shame we can't exploit aura's greatest weakness."

Shen couldn't turn his aura off, but that didn't mean it was always protecting him. It didn't react automatically to anything. He had to will it to go against approaching projectiles or enemies.

In his case, his aura had replaced and improved upon his Battle Sense. He could feel things much better than before, so surprising him wasn't an easy task. That said, he would be more vulnerable while asleep or meditating, or if the approaching danger was too fast for him to react.

"I feel like a child swinging a toy sword against an adult and getting punched in the fucking face for the audacity," Alicia complained, massaging her temples more vigorously.

"Well, rejoice then because we tested everything I thought about," Shen said. All in all, they had learned very few new things, but they were good things to know. He put his hands behind his back. "Testing is over, so let's get to training. Try to hit me. I'll limit myself to peak E-rank stats from what I remember."

Alicia rolled her eyes. "Oh, right, because that will go totally different from me feeling like a child brandishing a toy sword at an adult."

"I'll not use my aura either," he explained. "Or a spear."

She looked doubtful for a moment, then sighed and shot a fireball at him.

He smiled and ran at her.