I was 24 years old when I was first pulled from my world to Earth by a Satanic ritual gone wrong.
Waking up, surrounded by crazed Satan worshipers and human sacrifices was one of the most horrifying moments of my long life.
“W-What is this?? who are you?”
“…..A human? But, the ritual went perfectly?”
“It doesn’t matter, he will serve well as another one of the sacrifices.”
“Sacrifice?? are you Blood magic users??”
This time, the leader of the group flinched in what I assumed to be a surprise.
“A mage? What is your affiliation? Who sent you? Avalorian Order? The Celestian Monastery? Or maybe the New World Arcanum?”
I did not recognize any of those names and was prepared to defend myself when a strange noise rang out from outside the house followed by a booming voice commanding the group to surrender.
“Shit, it’s the police. How did they find us?”
“Those damned smartphones and the camera technology have made us into rats scurrying in the sewers. Kill the hostages and destroy the circle, leave behind the fake ones to throw them off.”
One of the men pulled a ceremonial knife and started running towards me, intent on killing me.
But Fortune was on my side as a crack rang out in the air followed by a man teleporting into the room.
And then, everything descended into chaos.
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“Good, your form is solid, but your Aura is weak!”
“Of course it is! I only learned it a few days ago!”
“No excuses.”
I lashed out with another palm strike, intending to disarm Gael. But the Knight twisted to the side, letting my palm sail past him, allowing him to move into my guard and strike me in the stomach with the pommel of his Aura-infused sword, causing me to nearly vomit due to the force.
Stumbling back, I once again settled into the basic Hung Gar stance, preparing to strike once again as Gael got into his own stance, his silver Aura raging around him like a shield, a trait unique to his family.
“That’s enough, Sir Gael. You are going to cause bruises to the young master!”
“Miss Leyla, please stay out of this. No interruptions during training.”
“he is right, Leyla. Please stay back.”
“But-“
“Leyla.”
At my forceful tone, she finally relented and backed down, allowing us to go back to our training. With no further distractions, I fell back into the Hung Gar stance, the martial art that was associated with the element of the earth back in the Shaolin Temple where I learned the techniques. A perfect complement to the Earth element Aura that the Terron family is renowned for.
However, I don’t know how Father will react when he learns that I had forsaken the sword art of the family in favor of an ‘unknown’ martial art.
It was not a decision I made because the martial arts of Earth are superior to my own world, even if it is the truth. No, the reason was much simpler than that.
I was never any good with a sword.
Before I was pulled to Earth, I had given up on Aura training, not because of the reasons that everyone believes, but because I knew that I would be nothing but a disappointment in the eyes of Father even if I tried to learn it. I knew I had no talent in the art, not like my dead older brother who was killed on the western borders of the Kingdom.
In fact, one of the many reasons why I was a good-for-nothing back in my youth was because of my petty rebellion against my father’s expectations, and his tendency to try and compare me with my dead brother in everything I did.
It was only when I lost everything that I truly started to work hard and gain power. But it was already too late by then. In the end, at the age of 24, before I was pulled to Earth, I amounted to nothing more than a mediocre swordsman with a 3-star Aura Novice rank.
But this time, I will not waste time in such a way. Especially with all the advantages I have thanks to all the knowledge I accumulated on Earth.
Gael dodged the swift strike from his young master, the palm strike generating a wind force thanks to the Earth Aura enhancing his body.
In fact, Gael did not actually need to dodge, even though his young master was abnormally strong for a 1-star Aura Novice and his Aura manipulation prodigious, Gael was still a 1-star Aura Master, one of 120 Masters across the entire Kingdom. Even if he allowed Cedric’s strike to land on his body, Gael would not even feel it.
The ranks of Aura users existed for a reason.
When an Aura user accumulates his first star around his or her heart, they are called a 1-star Aura Novice. As the number of stars increases through painstakingly meditating and gathering the energy of the world, their rank increases. Once a user accumulates three stars, they form a protective barrier around their heart, and in turn, their entire body, giving them the official rank of a Peak Novice. Then, as they continue on their journey and start accumulating even more stars, they reach the next step.
From Novice to Adept, from Adept to Master, and finally, Master to Grandmaster. While there did exist a few stages past the Grandmaster level, the information on them is kept secret by the Imperial family for some reason. While each stage is divided into three stars respectively, the difficulty of accumulating stars around the Heart increases exponentially with each star formed. This is why it is extremely hard to find Aura Masters and Aura Grandmasters across the Kingdom.
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The difference between a single rank of Aura users is so large that it might as well be the difference between the Heavens and the Earth. This was why, Gael did not even need to dodge Cedric’s attacks if he chose to.
The only reason he did, and using his full speed as an Aura Master at that, is because of his desire to train his young master.
If it was the Young Master Cedric, the hooligan that used his family name to commit all kinds of atrocities from a month ago, Gael would have knocked out Cedric in the opening strike and be done with it, just like he did when Cedric first demanded Gael train him in Aura usage. But ever since that night when he woke up from some kind of a nightmare before their journey began, Cedric had been behaving strangely, as if he were an entirely separate person.
In fact, Gael suspected that his young master may have been replaced by someone from the Demonic Cults. It would not be the first time that those bastards tried to infiltrate the Kingdom by replacing people.
So he performed tests to confirm the identity of the person in front of him.
The Demonic Cult, and the true Demons, utilize arcane arts like blood sacrifice and other such cruel methods, giving them tremendous power, but making them vulnerable to the power of Aura and pure mana that is utilized by Mages.
That is why, while helping Cedric learn Aura, Gael pushed his own Aura into his body. If he was someone from the Demonic Cult, his body would instantly be burned by the power of Aura and expose his identity.
Thankfully, all of his suspicions were for nothing since he did not find anything wrong with his young master, which only confused the loyal knight and his companions even further.
What could be the reason for the young master’s sudden change?
He did not know, but since he was trying to change himself, Gael would fulfill his duty and help him as much as he could.
Cedric sent out another palm strike, aiming for Gael’s head which the Knight dodged, but it turned out to be a faint as Cedric used a sweeping kick to destabilize Gael’s footing, and he would have succeeded as well if Gael had not used his Shield nature Aura to anchor himself to the Earth.
“Let’s stop here for today.”
Cedric nodded and sat down on the ground, exhausted. But even then, he did not forget to concentrate on replenishing his Aura since Gael felt the pull of the energy of the world being sucked into Cedric’s body.
A sight that would make anyone feel stupefied if they knew that Cedric had only been training with Aura for a month.
Truly, if Cedric had started training like every other noble child at the age of eight, his name might have been spread across the Kingdom by now as a monstrous talent.
Oh well, better late than never.
The moment Cedric sat down, Leyla did not waste any time on starting to fuss over her young master who just chuckled and dissuaded her worries.
Gael still did not know why the girl was so loyal to Cedric even after all the abuse she suffered at his hands.
Sure, she was saved by Cedric’s mother when she was a child, but that did not explain her blind loyalty to the teenager.
Shaking his head, Gael headed back to his knights who were watching the show from before, and started to ask questions about what Gael thought about the sudden change in the young master’s behavior.
As Gael set about discussing things with his knights, there was one thing that was clear to him.
The coming four years were going to be very interesting, and he could not wait to share the good news with his master about their young master.
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“Young Master, take this juice.”
“…Leyla, this is getting excessive. I just had training, not a life and death battle-“
“Don’t even joke about that, please. Anyway, I have already instructed the cook to hunt a Rage Deer for dinner tonight, it should restore all your fatigue from today’s fight. I’ll be right back.”
Without letting me get a word in, Leyla stepped out of the carriage and made a beeline towards Gael, no doubt to chew him out about the fight and his supposed heavy-handedness.
Chuckling at their overprotectiveness, I shook my head and got back to my meditation, using my knowledge of Daoism to guide the mana of the world into my body.
Honestly, I did not actually need to gain Aura, I could just use my mastery of Celtic Runes, Vedic magics, Onmyodou, and the Druidic arts to achieve my goals, but it would be very suspicious for those around me to suddenly see me using advanced and foreign forms of magic that they had no understanding of. Especially since I did not know how magic worked in this world thanks to the fact that I was never even given the chance to learn magic after my family fell.
This was why I decided to start learning Aura, being in a different way compared to what others in this world are familiar with.
Turns out, using the Daoist techniques that I studied in Shaolin was much more effective at Aura manipulation than I ever estimated.
Instead of blindly pulling the mana from the world and forcefully compressing them into stars around the Heart, I used the Daoistinc teachings to gently guide the mana through the extremely poor spiritual roots that I had, dividing the energy into two parts, one concentrated within my Dantian while the other was guided to my Heart, forming the star that the others in this world were familiar with.
This process allowed me to gain twice the results at a quarter of the effort compared to every other Aura user.
All of this was achieved through the usage of spiritual roots that the Shaolin temple deemed to be completely useless in Cultivation. Just imagining what would have happened if I had the blessing of having average or above-average spiritual roots is truly mind-blowing.
With a familiarity born from decades of learning meditation, I cleared my mind and opened my senses to the world’s energy, forcing me to concentrate lest I lose myself in the sheer density of mana in the atmosphere.
Unlike on Earth, where the density of mana was in a decline, and by the time I was pulled to that world, on the verge of being completely extinguished, the mana of my world was in a league of its own.
Perhaps, this density of mana was the reason that many species of supernatural beings still thrived in my world whereas on Earth, every other sentient race that was naturally attuned to mana had gone extinct before the recorded history of modern humanity.
Getting up from my seat in the massive carriage, I got into the Hung Gar stance and started to slowly move according to the technique, from Tiger to crane, to butterfly, to phoenix, to eagle, and finally ending at the Five Dragons Eight Diagrams fist before beginning all over again, all the while I maintained my connection to the very earth beneath the carriage, harnessing the very element’s mana into my spiritual roots.
It was this form of practice that allowed me to harness Aura in a single month while it would normally take someone at least a year before they are able to even sense the energy of the world, much less harness it.
As far as I am aware, the only exception to this rule is the eldest prince of the Kingdom, Valerion Altaire, who achieved the rank of 1-star Aura Novice in a single week of training when he was eight years old.
I can only speculate on the monstrous talent that the prince must have to have such an achievement despite the crude methods of Aura cultivation in this world.
Really, it is baffling just how backward my world is compared to Earth despite the fact that humanity in my world has existed for nearly ten times longer than that of Earth.
I was brought out of my thoughts and training when the door to the carriage opened and Leyla stepped in.
“Young Master. We have received a letter from the lord. He wishes for us to increase our pace and journey through the night.”
“Why? Even if we don’t go in such a hurry, we should still be able to arrive at the capital by tomorrow night at worst.”
“I do not know, but the lord has ordered the Sir Gael to make preparations. It is such a pity, the cook even caught the Rage Deer that I asked of him.”
“….That is what you are worried about?”
“Of course! It is my duty as your maid to make sure you are healthy and presentable when we arrive at the capital.”
“Do whatever you want.”
Decades of search for a way home had made me forget, that Leyla is extremely obsessed with carrying out her duties to the very end, and in the case of my previous life, literally to the end.
Hopefully, I can find a way to bring her out of this lifestyle of hers.
Sometimes, I wish I had learned psychology on Earth instead of the Europian magics when master first rescued me from the Satanic Cult in America.