Proprioception.
The body's ability to perceive its position and movement in space without relying on the five traditional senses. Often referred to as the "sixth sense," proprioception works automatically, much like the other five senses. For example, if a person closes their eyes and is asked to touch their nose, they can do so without difficulty. This applies to any part of the body; in short, you're always aware of where each part of your body is, independent of sight, hearing, taste, smell, or touch. Even if someone loses their sense of touch entirely, they would still be able to touch their nose without looking, because proprioception operates separately from the five senses.
However, while proprioception allows you to know your body's movement and position in space, it doesn't help you relate that information to your surroundings. Without sight, for instance, you cannot gauge the distance between yourself and objects around you.
I can’t see!
Aurora's vision blackened. Her other senses flared to life as she raised her hands defensively.
Tap.
Tap.
The sound of approaching footsteps reached her ears. She quickly deduced that both Zero and En were closing in.
Thwick~!
It's Zero.
She spun around as the sound of a blade piercing her barrier reached her left ear. Before the assailant could push through and disrupt her defense, Aurora lunged toward them, aiming a punch. Simultaneously, one of her wind whips struck at the attacker from above.
Whoosh~!
As her fist sliced through the air, her vision abruptly returned, and her eyes widened in shock (one of them still shut). Standing inches away, instead of the white-haired man she expected, was a golden-haired man in a white military uniform, holding his sword in a reverse grip like a dagger. Their bodies were on the brink of collision.
Instead of swinging his sword at her, he had purposely pierced forward as though using a dagger, leading Aurora to mistakenly believe it was Zero, since he was the only one carrying a dagger. Realizing this, Aurora slid her foot forward, gripping the ground to kill her momentum. She turned sharply, attempting to retreat, only to find herself face-to-face with Zero, who had already moved behind her.
How did he…?
She wondered, now sandwiched between the two. She quickly gathered her mana—both were now within striking distance. Due to her miscalculation, she had closed the gap between herself and En, and because Zero had not launched any attack, he had slipped past her defenses, bypassing her barrier and entering her personal space.
With both of them now dangerously close, Aurora decided to end the fight. Still facing Zero, she glared at him, her eye filled with intense focus. A palpable bloodlust thickened the air, and her eye morphed, the pupil narrowing into a cat-like slit. In the coldness of her stare, Zero’s eyes widened in surprise and Aurora whispered,
“Die.”
Slice~!
The sound of wind tearing through flesh echoed as blood splattered into the air. Zero fell back in slow motion, a deep scar running from his stomach to his chest, and finally across his neck. Without pausing, Aurora stepped forward, her fist clenched, wind swirling around her hand as she prepared to deliver the final, killing blow. She rushed toward him, but just as she did, Zero smiled.
Aurora ignored the taunt, refusing to react, but then Zero opened his mouth, revealing a small blade resting on his tongue. In the same instant she saw it, he spat it out.
Swoosh~!
The blade flew toward her face, aimed directly at her left eye—her remaining good eye. Despite its speed, Aurora swiftly tilted her head to the right, dodging the attack without losing momentum, still closing in on Zero. In the next moment, something unexpected happened.
“!?”
The sensation of a blade piercing the top of her head hit her, and her body froze as she jerked her head back. Chills ran down her spine as a blade skimmed past the right side of her forehead, grazing the side of her face. Due to the blind spot on her right side, she hadn’t seen the blade falling right beside her.
En?!
She wondered, but as she evaded backward, she spotted the blade that had almost impaled her—a dagger, free-falling from the sky. At that moment, she realized something: Zero wasn’t holding anything.
What the heck?
He had thrown the dagger into the air just as she initiated her wind-slice attack. As she rushed in, he spat the small blade from his mouth, aiming for her left eye, forcing her to dodge right. Unbelievably, the spot she turned toward was exactly where the falling blade was descending. To make matters worse, it landed in her blind spot—her closed right eye—meaning she couldn’t see the blade in her peripheral vision. A perfectly calculated attack.
Seeing this, Aurora frowned, watching Zero on the other side as he suddenly dashed toward her, lowering his body as he closed the distance.
Was the cut too shallow? she thought, watching as Zero snatched the dagger from the air, just inches before it hit the ground, and then—
“!?”
He teleported directly in front of her. But before she could even react, he leaped back just as quickly, pointing a finger upward. Aurora, her mind scrambling to keep up, looked up to see thousands of golden lights descending on the battlefield, as if the gods themselves were raining fury upon them.
Damnit, Aurora cursed to herself as the streaks of light neared. Her body moved swiftly, dodging each beam, while her barrier shielded her vital points. She danced agilely across the battlefield, evading the deadly assault.
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Right shoulder. Hand. Hand. Leg. Stomach. Several streaks struck her, each leaving a small cut, as if sliced by a sword. In the midst of dodging, Aurora suddenly had a revelation.
Zero’s ability isn’t to disable a person’s senses. In reality, it goes beyond that.
He can temporarily affect all forms of perception.
He had tampered with her binocular vision, distorting her depth perception and causing her to misjudge the distance between them. That was why her attack, though it landed, didn’t cut deep enough to take him out. Similarly, he had appeared as though he was right in front of her earlier, but he was just manipulating her depth perception, making it seem like he was moving faster than he actually was.
The same effect was happening now. As she dodged the streaks of light falling from above, some still managed to pierce or graze her, despite her efforts to evade. It made it seem like she wasn’t tracking their speed properly, but in reality, she was simply misjudging their distance.
Sling~!
As she darted through the battlefield, a blade suddenly swept past her face. The golden-haired man from earlier had closed in for close-range combat, while the golden streaks of light continued their relentless assault.
“You’re using your apprentice’s moves now?” En said, swinging his sword toward her. Aurora blocked the strike with her palm, pushing the blade aside with a gust of wind to disrupt his rhythm.
“She’s my sister!” she retorted, moving in to exploit the opening. But as if anticipating her move, several streaks of light fell in front of her. She paused, stepping back to dodge, narrowly avoiding the lights aimed behind her too as she continued weaving through the battlefield.
The fight itself wasn’t the main issue—it was how long it would take to kill Zero and somehow knock En unconscious.
Should I just...
She began to wonder, her thoughts drifting as she evaded En while keeping Zero, who stood nearby, in her line of sight.
Fully recovering her mana before clashing with Hiro wasn’t her primary concern. Instead, she worried about the restrictions placed on some of her unique skills. The cooldowns for these powers didn’t depend on mana or energy. Even if she were at full strength, with all her mana restored and her injuries healed, the cooldowns would remain the same, requiring a set amount of time before the skills could be used again.
I was naive.
Aurora thought to herself, coming to an abrupt stop. Her face grew serious, and the atmosphere on the battlefield shifted with her. It wasn’t an intense bloodlust, nor a surge of overwhelming mana, but rather, a soothing breeze that swept over the battlefield. Like the natural mana in the air—calm, neutral, and unclaimed—Aurora’s mana spread across the battlefield so swiftly that the process itself was invisible.
Pure mana.
En and Zero, both well-versed in this type of mana, watched in silent anticipation as the world seemed to slow around them.
Thwick~!
The familiar sound of the barrier’s counterwind echoed through the battlefield. Streaks of light continued their assault on Aurora, but stopped just short of the barrier’s edge. This time, however, something was different. Different speeds, different strengths, different angles—no matter how varied the attacks, they all stopped cold, none of them slipping through, causing the onlookers to stare in surprise.
Aurora’s expression remained calm as she spoke.
“I didn’t want to use this,” she said casually.
At that moment, a realization struck Zero. “
Heh... I see... Hahaha!” He burst into a psychotic fit of laughter, his whole body trembling as his eyes lost focus. En frowned, trying to comprehend what was happening, watching Zero’s unhinged state. Despite his state, Zero still turned to En with a grin.
“It seems I was mistaken. This woman... She never used any of her skills in the first place,” he said, sending a chill down En’s spine.
En looked back at Aurora, who stood unfazed, her barrier effortlessly parrying the golden streaks of light still assaulting her.
So she was manually performing the spell? En thought, immediately halting his attack as the golden streaks of light vanished.
When an individual creates their own original spell, it only manifests as a unique skill after being used thousands of times, honed to near perfection. Once it becomes a unique skill, most of the spell’s workings become instinctive, to the point where simply thinking about the skill can trigger its activation and subsequent steps, without requiring much concentration from the user.
However, to further improve the level of a spell, the best method is to perform it manually, refining the smaller steps involved—steps that are usually executed subconsciously when casting the spell as a skill.
For example, a "fireball" spell might require steps 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 to perform. But after mastering it to the point of turning it into a skill, you can bypass the intermediate steps, jumping from step 1 directly to step 5, since the other steps become automatic and no longer need conscious input.
This entire time, since the battle began, Aurora had been casting her spells manually. She wasn’t using any skills but was instead performing each spell step-by-step—something that consumed an immense amount of mana and required an extraordinary level of concentration in the heat of battle.
“You were right when you said it’s a difficult spell to perform,” Aurora said, letting out a sigh as she glanced at Zero, “but that’s only true when you cast the spell, not the skill. I didn’t want to use it here since it would mean I’d have to fight Hiro without it.”
Zero seemed intrigued, though no fear appeared in his eyes as he responded,
“Well, that doesn’t matter. I’m still going to kill you here,” he said, smiling as he brandished his daggers and took a low stance.
But just as he was about to rush in, he suddenly stopped, standing upright. For the first time since the battle began, a cold sweat formed on his forehead. He chuckled nervously and muttered,
“Hehe... that doesn’t look right,” Zero muttered to himself. Aurora, noticing his reaction, looked at him with an oddly sad expression as she explained,
“As the head of the Dragnok family, I should possess the skills to subjugate and kill every single family member. It might not be enough as she matures, but this skill was meant to block attacks that exist outside of our normal plane of existence.” She pointed to her eye, its pupils slit like a cat's.
Unlike long-range spells that scattered a user's mana across the battlefield, spells that directly affected an opponent’s internal state utilized the surrounding natural mana. This meant that, instead of stretching a person’s mana to reach a target, the spell could be cast, and the natural mana—acting as a courier—would instantly deliver the effects to the intended target.
Is there really a way to kill this monster? En wondered to himself, watching as Aurora stretched. Then, in an instant, she dashed forward—not toward anyone on the battlefield, but northeastward, continuing her path.
En glanced quickly at Zero, who didn’t give chase and simply watched her run off. Sensing his gaze, Zero turned toward him and said,
“If it’s a perfected version of what she’s been using, then there’s no attack in the world that will slip through. Millions—no, maybe even trillions—of micro counterwinds, working in quick succession. She’s no longer just countering specific incoming forces, but every phenomenon that tries to reach her, including natural mana itself, which effectively nullifies any authority cast directly onto her. I estimate it’ll take up to three hours to reach its limit. I’ll just catch a flight and wait for her ahead.”
He casually sheathed his daggers, pulled up the hood of his cloak, and started walking in the opposite direction from where Aurora had headed. Instead of feeling discouraged by the absurdity of what he’d just witnessed, he was already thinking ahead. Even then, he didn’t believe he would lose.
En considered taking Zero down on the spot, but after how the battle had played out, he was certain that the only way to fully subjugate the Dragon Princess was to force her into a fight with that man. Using his better judgment, he started running after Aurora, whose pace, although fast, was noticeably slower than before—likely because she was maintaining the barrier constantly.
By his estimation, it would take at least another 17 hours to reach the border, meaning he needed to find a way to stop her before then.
I’ll have to stop holding back.
He thought, a dark, sinister aura rising from his body. An uncharacteristic smile crept onto his face as he muttered,
“Lend me some power, you scummy devil.” He spoke to no one, his entire demeanor shifting.
~