Some among Roderick’s forces yet lived, having avoided the attack or simply not having been among its targets… For a few seconds. The undulating lightning-bound chain of blades had retracted to its mistress to defend her once again, but by the time it did so, Roderick bore witness to three dozen more of his subordinates being torn limb from limb by invisible force. It wasn’t just them, but their surroundings as well, stones and shingles torn from buildings, gashes and tears made by nothing.
In utter stillness, after the undulating mass of blades that was her weapon returned into a solid form, the woman stood… And nothing could touch her. Even as his forces redoubled their assault, their weapons were torn to shreds by invisible forces. Those who strayed too close - which was much further away from Her than one would expect - were, just the same, torn limb from limb. Neither the ground, nor the buildings and lamp posts were spared. She was utterly calm, yet her aura struck out with the violence of someone who had succumbed to berserk.
He had seen something like this before.
A Sword Saint’s first epiphany, the rampaging Sword Aura slashing anything in the immediate vicinity. It was just like that. But… The range of such a side effect was normally far more limited, and a Sword Cultivator typically had their first epiphany at a point just after one could qualify to be an inner disciple. Not to mention, this wasn’t Sword Aura. It was far more akin to Beast Aura, yet at the same time, it had a wholly different degree of focus. If he were forced to describe it on the spot, he would say it had the brutality of Beast Aura with the precision of Sword Aura.
“Such strength, you possess, and yet only now you’ve had the epiphany necessary to exert your aura directly upon the world! What are you, some humanoid cultivator-beast?!” he exclaimed, throwing his voice, half in disbelief and half trying to confirm a hypothesis. He’d met cultivator-beasts with more convincing human disguises than this one… And this situation was frankly too absurd for him to believe any other possibility. The only other reasonable option was that this woman had cultivated her aura to this advanced degree without ever learning any external techniques, even the most basic expression of it. The absurdity of such an idea was doubled by the fact that the two publicly-known Survivor Sects were both fairly aura-focused due to deriving their manuals from fragments of the Severing Scripture.
“I’m afraid not. I have merely been focused wholly on other facets of my cultivation up until now, you may consider me a truly unorthodox cultivator. Why, I fought against a remnant of one of the Divine Generals without being aware of what aura even was!” she laughed in response.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Roderick felt a sharp stabbing pain in his liver and bile rising in his throat at that ridiculous proclamation. The Divine Generals must’ve truly fallen far if that was the case, yes, that had to be it.
----------------------------------------
It didn’t feel like some great breakthrough to Zelsys. Rather, she felt as though she had managed to figure out how to directly control a particularly obstinate, well-hidden muscle… And now that she knew, she put it to task right away. She had only studied some rudimentary Armament Aura techniques out of curiosity, but combined with this newfound deeper grasp of Predator Aura…
“Anything can be my fangs. Even the air.”
With just a stare, she ripped out a man’s throat. Not only that, with a mere glance, she made another freeze dead where he stood, like a rabbit desperately freezing in the face of a wolf. It was inefficient. Wasted effort, like glamour lifting, better put to task in a more practical application, but she would have been a filthy liar if she pretended for a second that she didn’t immensely enjoy this transcendent sense of power.
Now that she knew how to do it, it was simple. So, so very simple, by comparison to wrangling lightning. And yet, she knew that the skill to externalize her Predator Aura would find its greatest strength in reinforcing her existing abilities, building upon her existing combat style. Anything could be her fangs, that was true. However, just as a Sword Saint preferred his own sword over all others despite being able to use anything as a sword, there were no fangs greater than those which were truly her own.
She pulled her aura back in, wanting to attempt at least a semblance of efficiency.
At that moment, she felt that with her epiphany something had changed, deep within.
The world came to a dead halt, at the peak of what felt like a deep breath of the soul. Zelsys felt an all-encompassing shiver pass through her; muscles, tendons, veins and nerves, the very cells of her being shifted and settled, and the self-same thing occurred within her spirit. Her connection with the Primordial Self suddenly felt an order of magnitude stronger. If before it had been a small window, it now became a doorway, roughly carved open by savage claws. This was the least of the ensuing changes.
In some way, somehow, beyond her understanding of essentia mechanics, the fulguric reaction within her second stomach collapsed. A pang of ache came from her heart; not the organ, but the orb which floated within it, her wellspring of Metallum, the Hammerforged Heart. It drank up every last ounce of Fulgur she could give, drained her of all she had, and it strained her spirit as if it were spitting out enough Metallum to form a tidal wave of swords. Like a starveling beast, the ravenous spark that had just been born within Zelsys consumed all it could… And in the very next instant, it erupted with a fulguric outpour of magnitude and intensity she could scarcely believe. The world returned to its normal flow, and she realized what had changed.