《Story of a Killer》Chapter 13 - Aura Image
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Damon entered the class first, eliciting surprised gasps from most of the people in the classroom who thought he wouldn't be in school for a while after the beating he received from Miss Sasaki.
Miss Sasaki looked at Damon, remembering his emotionless face from yesterday and why he was like that, she left out her teasing for now.
Mika and Hikari followed behind Damon as they sat on the same seats as yesterday. The room was silent for a while, the only noise being the occasional flip of a page from Miss Sasaki's desk.
Damon continued to read the book about Aura as the rest of the class resumed talking, getting over the shock of Damon being able to walk. Mika and Hikari were speaking between themselves, Damon controlling his sense of hearing so he didn't eavesdrop on them as the conversation seemed mildly important.
After a while of reading, Miss Sasaki finally stood up.
"Okay, attention all of you!" Everyone in the class snapped their heads forward, fearing what would happen if they didn't. Only Damon was nonchalant about his actions, slowly putting down his book and slowly and calmly looking to the front of the class.
"Alright then, today we're gonna be doing a split lesson. As in, part of the class will be learning something while the other part will be learning something else. These two different subjects are Aura and Mana." Miss Sasaki picked up a few books and stepped to the center of the front part of the classroom.
"I'm going to pull in an assistant to teach the Magic side of the class, so welcome Mr. Nox." Miss Sasaki motioned her hand toward the door of the classroom.
Damon's body stiffened as he heard the name and saw the black-haired man walk into the room. Nox looked over to Damon with complex emotions in his eyes which were only further fueled when he saw that Damon was averting his gaze from his own.
Miss Sasaki stepped forward a little bit and spoke up again.
"Now, all of you listen up. If you're going to learn Aura, stand up and go to the left of the classroom and if you're going to learn Mana and Magic, go to the right of the classroom." Miss Sasaki spoke out as she went and stood on the left side while Nox stood on the right side.
Damon stood up and walked to the left side hurriedly. Both excited for practical Aura lessons and wanting to get away from Nox as soon as possible before he did something stupid. So Damon saw Miss Sasaki as a lesser problem compared to his annoyance with Nox.
Damon stood straight as an iron pillar as he stood in front of Miss Sasaki, waiting to learn about Aura.
People lined up behind him, mainly the taller girls in the class who seemed quite toned. Mika was the only exception as despite her tall height at 6'1" she walked over to the Magic/Mana line with Hikari and the other relatively shorter girls.
Miss Sasaki, seeing that everyone was in their preferred line, looked toward the Aura line while Nox looked at his own line.
"Okay then, we're going to go to the Aura Concentration Room, I'll answer any basic question on the way if you guys have any." Miss Sasaki said this before motioning for them to follow her, which they all did.
Damon nodded his head toward Mika and Hikari who seemed worried about how he would be with Miss Sasaki after yesterday. Damon, who could see their worry wryly smiled as he knew he had nothing to worry about.
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When he thought back on what she said yesterday, with his current indifference not making his insight biased or anything, he knew that Miss Sasaki was just acting the villain. She had no intent to actually hurt Ayano or Erika, she just said it to get him riled up.
Which it did.
Damon walked behind Miss Sasaki and thought about something to ask her.
"Sensei, why have we split the class up? Couldn't we do all this in one lesson?" Damon's calm voice seemed to surprise Miss Sasaki as she turned her head around and looked at Damon.
After looking at him for a while, she answered his question.
"Well, I guess I could have but I personally didn't want to mix Mana and Aura classes together. I want you guys to only know the information on your specific Energy because knowing about the other one would only clog up your head with useless information and might confuse you into making a mistake when you wield Aura or Mana for the first time." She calmly spoke and Damon got an insight on her; She seemed to actually care about being a teacher.
Damon found this person in front of him, someone who seemed to care about her students, completely different to the woman yesterday who completely crushed him without mercy while acting as a villain of some kind.
He shrugged his shoulder and resolved himself to be calmer in the future and to look at things with a clearer eye instead of going berserk at the slightest spark.
They all walked for a while longer, some of the girls behind Damon talking between themselves. Apart from one of the girls, the one right behind Damon who kept staring at him with curiosity.
Damon remembered what she looked like from when he looked at who was walking over to the left side of the classroom. She had green hair and green eyes, both of which seemed to glow and give off little bits of light. Her skin was a healthy tan color which seemed to spew vitality into the air.
Apart from her hair and eye color, she seemed quite normal to Damon's eyes but that was only until he saw the undulating green cracks spread throughout the girl's skin, like cracks on a tree's bark.
Damon was trying to ignore her staring at the minute because he was reviewing the information he had on Aura.
But he kept feeling that intense stare on his back and it kept distracting him and before he knew it, they arrived at a room with cushions on the floor.
Damon walked inside, the dim room not being a problem for his enhanced senses. Something he found out was that not everyone had enhanced senses like him, even Mika and Hikari who were Vampires didn't have senses like him for some reason.
When reviewing information he'd learned about Werewolves from Mika's library it seemed that any animal-related Manifest would have some kind of enhanced sense which seemed understandable to Damon.
Inside the room, everyone found a seat. Damon sat at the back to avoid his height and width getting in the way of the others in the room. The green-haired girl sat next to him, her green glow is even more noticeable in the dimly lit room.
Miss Sasaki seemed to fumble around with papers and setting up her lesson, so everyone started lightly talking while they waited.
Damon closed his eyes trying to calm himself down like how every book he'd read on Aura said was needed to be in the right state to learn about it.
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But like you'd expect, the glowing eyes looking at him didn't help him much when he could feel and see their stare even with his eyes closed. Damon let out a sigh and opened his eyes while looking at the girl next to him.
"What do you want?" Damon tried to sound as calm as he could but he constant staring was grinding on him and his already slightly unstable emotions from yesterday.
The girl seemed unperturbed by his question and just looked at him with more fervor. Damon's yellow eyes met her green ones, he stared into her eyes for a little bit before she spoke to him.
"I sense that you have an animalistic side to you and I saw it very clearly yesterday, you would fit in extremely well with the Nature Faction, your power is needed there." The girl's voice was calm but vigorous, soft but strong while also sounding ageless. All this kind of threw Damon off but when he realized what she was asking, he looked away from her and simply spoke.
"I do not wish to join your faction, I'm already in one." Damon's voice was polite and calm but also firm showing he wouldn't be moved from his own decisions.
The green-haired girl was about to continue persuading Damon but Miss Sasaki herself started speaking and quite frankly, the green-haired girl didn't have the confidence to speak over her.
"Okay, so let's get onto the basics of what Aura is. Any of you know?" Miss Sasaki looked around the seated class curiously and when she saw no one was willing to answers, rather they were waiting for her to carry on.
"Okay then, let's start with that." Miss Sasaki paused before continuing again, presumably giving a chance to a student to explain but alas no one did, so she continued "Aura is the life force in every being, everyone has it, even normal humans have Aura. Aura is made by the body, so a stronger body means a stronger Aura."
"Aura is stored in the Heart and that's how you start on your Journey as an Aura Practitioner; You draw all of your Aura into your heart and make an Image with it. This Image will dictate your Aura's properties, for example, if you were to make an Image of a Mountain your Aura would grow sturdy, firm and near immovable by people other than yourself but along with these Advantages there are disadvantages." Miss Sasaki left what she said to settle in before continuing again.
"The disadvantage with the mountain would be the pure lack of flexibility your Aura would have, it would be too hard to perform precise and subtle actions with this kind of aura that the user would have to constantly use brute force to win and that can work until you find someone with more brute force. So, after I show you how to draw your Aura into your heart and then make the Image, try to think about what you want and don't pick something stupid, you could hurt yourself."
Seeing the slightly paling faces, Miss Sasaki smirked before consoling her students "But don't worry, you can always dispel your Image whenever you want if you feel like it's going to backfire on you but I would advise against doing that because you won't be able to try to gather your Aura for an Image again for another few days and that'll put you behind everyone else in the class who made an Image."
Damon sat there, soaking up the information. Despite having read many books about Aura, none of them mentioned any of these things but he guessed there was a suppression on information about Aura so they did the next best thing; they hinted at the real knowledge in the books. Damon had many questions after reading the books but after listening to Miss Sasaki for a short while, most of those questions were easily answered when put with the information he already knew and the stuff from Miss Sasaki.
Kinda like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Miss Sasaki continued speaking. "Alright then, everyone close your eyes." Damon and the rest did as they were told and then waited for further instructions "Now, I'm going to let some gas flow into the room and I need you all to take big breaths of it, it's gas that'll help you sense the Aura in your body."
Damon heard a low hiss and instantly smelt the gas. It smelt like a mixture of cotton candy and burning wood; a confusing mix of smells to say the least.
But following Miss Sasaki's instructions, as soon as it was near him he took in massive gulps of the stuff. As soon as it entered his lungs Damon instantly felt dizzy and could instantly feel a warm current flowing around his body in a random pattern.
He instinctively recognized this as Aura.
'I guess having Immense Potential in Aura for both of my Races is a bit cheat-like.'
Damon then started reaching out with his mind to the strips of Aura flowing around his body. Weirdly so, despite not being able to see the Energy he knew the color of some strips was Yellow while others were Red, it was quite fascinating to Damon.
Once he grabbed the Aura he guided it to his heart where it obediently stayed, merging with other strips to form a ball, then other balls merged together to make bigger and bigger balls.
After a while, Damon gathered every little bit of Aura in his body, shutting himself off from the outside world he felt his instincts guiding him in the right directions and even then he had a faint idea of how to make an Image.
Damon started to ponder on what he wanted his Image to be, what represented him and his power.
'River? No, I never did like Water. Mountain? Brute Force would be nice but I like flexibility as well--!'
As he was thinking, a thought struck Damon's head.
'Fire. I love heat, I love warmth. So, out of everything there is, wouldn't Fire be my go-to Image?'
Damon thought for a while longer before he mentally nodded his head and started molding his Aura into an Image. His Aura's heat suddenly spiked up as it started to shift back and forth like a flame, the Aura separating into two different parts. The Red Aura becoming the red inner part of the flame, while the Yellow Aura became the yellow outer part of the flame.
It shaped slowly moved from a small flame flickering in the wind into a massive inferno of red on the inside and yellow on the outside, sporting deadly pillars of flame every now and then.
'Is this the limit? There's gotta be a stronger flame I can make, right?--Wait.'
Damon started to bring all of his Fire-like Aura together and pushed it into itself, trying to create a massive ball of fire and flames. Like a very rudimentary Sun.
The Damon's idea seemed to be taken in by the Aura Image as a mysterious force dragged the flames together. The two different Aura colors collided with each other, seeming to fuse under the immense pressure the Image was putting on itself. The temperatures started to rise and rise, even making Damon with his superb resistance to heat feel a bit stuffy.
Finally, the pieces of Aura fused in a massive bang of energy which went throughout Damon's body, flushing it of its impurities and cleaning it all. As if to follow the example of the first drops of Aura to fuse, every single bit of aura collided with another piece of Aura that was a different color resulting in a massive release of heat and energy each time.
These waves of heat and energy traveled throughout his body destroying impurities and strengthening his body at the same time.
After the two different Aura's had fused all their little bits and pieces together, Damon started to mold it into a Sun-like shape. He took the more red pieces of Aura and clumped them together into a core, a thick viscous looking thing that radiated heat and pressure. Then he piled on the rest of the Aura around the core which just stuck in place because of the pseudo-gravity the core was producing in the Image.
More and more reactions of fusion and collision were taking place, sending waves of heat and energy that constantly tempered his body. The blood that passed through his heart was purged of its impurities by the heat of the pseudo-sun, while it's 'gravity' seemed to strengthen the blood by making it slightly denser and purer each time it passed through his heart.
Damon knew none of this made a bit of sense, but it was his Image and it would work how he wanted it to.
Damon slowly opened his eyes and saw the rest of the class with their eyes closed. While looking about a bit, Damon noticed Miss Sasaki looking at him with curiosity before motioning him to come over to her by curling her finger at him.
Sighing, Damon got up and walked over to her.
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