I blinked a little bit, surprised that he actually picked me. I walked into the circle and stood in front of the instructor. Usually, it’s close to impossible to sense the aura tier of an individual. But for him to be able to somehow sense that I am the most ‘powerful’, he must be very in tune with his aura and the mana all around him.

“Go to the rack and pick a weapon of your choice, then come back and begin when you’re ready.”

I walked over to the weapons rack and picked out a generic straight sword. Then I walked back to the instructor. He pulled out the sword from his waist and waited for me to begin. I took a deep breath and centered myself.

I took a stance with my feet shoulder width apart and my sword in front of me, slightly bent my knees, then launched myself to him. I pulled my sword above my head and brought it down quickly. Immediately, his sword was in the way and we clashed. I brought my leg to deliver a kick but again his knee intercepted me. Then we exchanged multiple blows with our swords clashing against each other.

Suddenly he bucked and pushed my sword off his, sending me sliding back.

“I’ve gotten a vague sense of your base, use aura from now on.” I nodded, and was about to start when he motioned for me to stop.

“Have you achieved an aura blade?” Aura blade was an intricate technique that coated your weapon with aura. At higher levels you can extend the length of your blade with aura, mask your aura to make misinterpreting the length of the blade more difficult and even send out aura blade attacks to target people at a distance. Of course, after conceptualizing aura, you can change the properties of the aura blade with the concept.

I allowed my aura to flow through my body and encase my blade, letting my actions speak for itself. I saw as he allowed his aura to encompass him as he smiled.

“Good, attack.”

This time, I employed a basic movement technique using aura before I lunged. I heard gasps as I disappeared from the perception of all the students. The instructor also disappeared and we both appeared in the middle of the arena and clashed, smiling at each other while wind and pressure escaped us. Faster than most of the children could perceive, we entered a deadly dance that saw me at the receiving end of quite a few small scrapes. I created some distance between us and launched the most basic aura blade and he just leaned a little to the left. I skidded backwards, dug my feet in and launched myself at him again.

Our dance continued again, but I wanted to land at least one blow on him. As our blades clashed once again, I brought the aura to just the surface of the blade and applied an advanced aura technique to make it invisible to most senses. Then in a split second, I extended the invisible aura blade and weaved my sword around his. A cut appeared on his cheek and I immediately dashed back.

He had this intense look in his eyes and I sensed his intent, It was about to get a lot more difficult. Then he immediately mellowed out and smiled.

“I hope you were all paying attention, this is your benchmark this year. As for you, you won’t learn anything in this class, this is for the basic level. I’ll give you full marks for the course this year you can leave now.”

‘Well, that was unexpected.’ Free period I guess.

As I walked over to the racks to drop my sword and leave, I felt the eyes of all the students on me as I left. I entered my room and sat down on my bed.

‘I think it's time.’

Before sparking your divinity, you first have to master your concept and there are some concepts that require harmonizing with the natural surrounding mana to create a feedback loop and strengthen the connection to your concepts. These usually involve concepts that can be traced back to nature, well ‘nature’, as some ‘natural’ concepts are very abstract like space, time, and cold for instance.

I sat in silence and willed my mind to go blank once again. I allowed my aura and chi, tainted with my concepts, to stretch beyond my body and interact with the surrounding mana. It took a while before the surrounding mana responded to my aura. The mana just outside of my aura took on the qualities of my concept in its entirety before it looped back into me and was stabilized with the concept of my chi.

I repeated this cycle hundreds of times before I stopped. When I opened my eyes, I immediately felt the difference. I noticed that my aura has taken on more of the qualities of my concept, but I decided I would not spark divinity before reaching 100% saturation in both my aura and my chi.

It is possible to do so, sparking divinity before then that is, but it usually results in a weaker divinity and inefficiency. However, on the other hand, getting to 100% saturation of a concept is usually seen as ludicrous and impossible. People usually shoot for 65%, the benchmark for the birth of a sorcery, greater than 80% is usually seen as a genius and the birth of a powerful bloodline. It is hypothesized that the emperor went above 90% saturation and that is what made him so divinely powerful that no vessel could bear his children. Of course, this is all hearsay because no one but you knows your saturation. It's an instinct ingrained in the self, however, people can make vague guesses again by the quality and uniqueness of the aura.

I knew that to grow the concept of my aura, currently 14%, I would need to complete more of those natural mana cycles and to do the same for my chi, 20%, I could just need to maintain cyclical balance.