The entirety of the Terron estate was on fire, with many of the servants dead or dying, the screams of the commoners originating from the nearby town reverberating across the sky alongside the roars of their attackers.

I was in a daze, unable to believe what I was seeing, as I was dragged out of the only home that I ever knew by the Knight captain, Gael, and my maid, Leyla.

“Leyla, I have a carriage prepared near the main gates. Take the young master and go to the territory of Duchess Aquatia and seek refuge.”

“But, what about you?”

“Don’t forget that I am a 1-Star Aura Master, I can take these Infernal Drakes but I can’t protect you two at the same time.”

No. Stop him, Leyla. He will not live after this assault if he goes to fight alone. He will be killed by the Elder Drake for the Terron mountain.

“…Alright. Be safe, Sir Gael.”

The knight nodded and headed back towards the territory as Leyla dragged me towards our escape.

And yet, it was not to be.

As soon as we arrived at the location where the carriage was supposed to be, we were attacked.

Three cloaked figures, all of them wielding black daggers which were aimed at me. Their cloaks hide the true nature of their Aura, stopping us from identifying them.

“W-who are you people-“

It was over as soon as it began. Three Aura users against a civilian and an untrained noble child, the result was clear.

And yet, they failed in their objective.

Because Leyla used the only teleportation scroll that she had to send me away, taking the three daggers straight to her chest in my place.

It would take me three weeks to gather myself and travel out of the forests around the Terron territory that I was teleported into and to find the corpses of my maid and the Knight Captain who was torn apart by the Elder Drake.

The image of their bloodied corpses would continue to haunt my memories from that point on.

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

With a start, I woke up from the nightmare, realizing that I was reliving my worst moments once again through my dreams, just like I used to when I was first pulled to the Earth.

“Young master? Did you have another nightmare?”

“..It’s ok Leyla. I am fine.”

I looked away from Leyla, as her form was momentarily replaced by the image of her corpse, her heart torn open by the daggers of our attackers, and her limbs torn apart by the Infernal Drakes that the enemy commanded.

This time around, I will not allow something like this to happen.

When the family fell and I was forced to survive on my own, I always wondered why Layla had sacrificed herself for the man who always tormented her, often in ways that not even the townsmen did when she was an orphan.

Leyla was abandoned by her parents for having been born with white hair and silver eyes, features associated with the Demons of the First Era. And it was not just her parents, people like her were despised and discriminated against by the entirety of the Luminarion Kingdom. If it were not for my mother, the Dutchess Elysia Terron, who took her in when she was a 10-year-old girl and made Leyla her personal maid, then there is no doubt that Leyla might have been killed by the superstitious people without even reaching her teenage years.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

There was no doubt that she owed her life to my mother, but that did not tell me why she was willing to give her life for me. Is it because I am the son of her saviour and hence she is willing to put up with all the abuse? I did not know, and I never found out the reason.

But what is clear, is her loyalty towards me. So, I will show her the same loyalty.

Ignoring the worried maid, I stepped out of the carriage and headed towards the camp set up by the knights that were accompanying us.

Father has already left before us with his own group, leaving me with Sir Gael and his subordinates.

“Sir Gael, I require your help.”

“What do you need? Young master.”

“I need you to teach me Aura.”

“….Are you joking? Did you not say that Aura is for the uncouth and that as a noble you did not need it?”

“I have changed my mind and I wish to learn it.”

“..No. I have tried to teach you before, however, you don’t respect the art so you don’t deserve to learn it.”

I winced at his clear dismissal. If it were anyone else, I could have used my status to intimidate them like I used to when younger, but this man is Gael Shieldheart of the Shieldheart family, the Knight family that has served the Terron family for countless generations alongside the Stonewave mage family.

While it might look like a mere knight defying his lord’s son, things were much more complicated.

The Kingdom has three Duke families, six Marquis families, and many lower-level nobility. But within this hierarchy, there is a special rank that belongs to the Knight and mage families attached to the Duke families.

Each Duke family has one Knight family and one Mage family that has sworn loyalty to their master’s house. And since their masters were Dukes, this put the Knight and Mage families on the same level as that of a Marquis family, causing no small amount of friction between them and the actual Marquis families.

This was the reason why Gael could easily get away with directly rejecting my request for training, not to mention the fact that I held absolutely no trust in the eyes of my father, making his words have more weight than my own.

But I cannot give up just yet.

“If you don’t teach me the proper way, I will practice by myself.”

“What! Are you insane??”

“I don’t know, you tell me, Sir Gael.”

“If you try to use Aura without any training, you might end up experiencing deviation and destroy your heart, killing you on the spot!”

“I don’t care, Gael. Either you teach me, or I train by myself.”

The hushed whispers from the surrounding Knights grew louder, some claiming that I had gone insane while others were wishing for me to die while trying to train by myself.”

The fact that Gael did not silence those knights meant that he somewhat agreed with their statements, a sad fact for someone in my position, but something that I cannot blame them for.

Of course, the chance of my dying through Aura deviation is extremely low if I really did train by myself.

Back on Earth, I had spent seven decades, moving from place to place, learning all kinds of disciplines related to the arcane arts. Among those many arts were the Martial Arts belonging to Daoism and other Eastern arts, which were very similar to the Aura techniques of this world.

In some ways, it can be said that the Aura arts are a bastardized version of Qi Cultivation from Daoism. Instead of taking in the mana from the world, which the Chinese called Qi, and concentrating it in a metaphysical place above their Dantian, the Aura users condense this mana into highly concentrated points of mana located around their heart.

While I was no cultivator, thanks to the fact that my spiritual roots were considered to be extremely poor by the Daoists on Earth, hence unsuitable for cultivation, I was allowed to study their techniques and ways in exchange for a powerful artifact I got from my journey across the Earth.

It is this knowledge that gives me the confidence that I can figure out the Aura of my world and incorporate it into my own powers.

As inferior to proper Cultivation as it is, Aura is still the primary way of this world, and no matter how powerful I become, if I can’t use my family’s Aura technique, I will not be able to gain any kind of recognition from my peers and neither can I gather the political power necessary for my future plans.

“Fine! I will teach you Aura. But, do not think I will be gentle with you. I will train you just like one of my Knights, if you complain even once, you are out.”

“Agreed.”

“No time as the present, run around the camp until I tell you to stop.”

And without any hesitation, I started to run.

There is still a month’s time until we reach our destination, it should be enough time for me to learn Aura.

And it should be enough time for me to make plans for what is to come.