Sorry for the delay. I had a big emotional block and couldn't write at all.

Good part: Next week's chapter is secured now.

Please Enjoy :)

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Volume 1

Chapter 5

It started with grandmother teaching us a new aura control technique.

I didn’t understand it very well at the time, but it seems mother has asked her to teach us.

The technique itself is very interesting. It relies heavily on focused breathing and assuming certain postures, but it makes perceiving aura very easy. Then, one needs only to focus on moving their aura consciously by merging their attention and the aura itself – which is done by feeling both at the same time and then just…moving it? I cannot explain the feeling. How can you explain how to move your fingers to someone who doesn’t have fingers?

I guess it’s the same principle.

Mainly it means your aura moves to what you are paying attention and want It to move to. So if you’re paying attention to your right arm and gives the mental command for it, it moves there; if you’re paying attention to your left arm and commands, it moves there.

It’s pretty simple in practice once you get the aura feeling, and one of the first steps needed to do the qigong exercises I do every night. I had no idea grandma knew something like this.

On the bad side, just this much isn’t enough to empty my aura. In fact, this exercise’s aura consumption rate is so extremely low even the faint heavenly energy I can absorb from above is enough to replenish it all.

Also, mother has forbidden me from using aura as I was using. She said the “exploding swords” I was doing were bothering the neighbors.

Well, I have to admit the sound made by me swinging the sword is a bit noticeable. It obviously isn’t a sonic boom like the first time, but you can hear the wind being cut. Like a firecracker.

But it’s just a couple swings every morning, and I bet the neighbors can barely hear it.

So I’m a bit unconvinced, but mother didn’t want to tell me anything more. No matter how much I pressured her and asked again about the subject, she would just say I shouldn’t have been bothering the neighbors or attracting attention.

That it’s okay to be good at something, but that I shouldn’t expose myself.

…seriously, only this much is already something which exposes me?

I guess mother has some reason for that. Something she is more reluctant to talk about than sex.

Let’s trust mother for now and ask again when I’m older.

So, with this kind of problems I had the idea to try and improve grandmother’s technique in order to be able to use all of my aura by morning without getting too much attention.

Originally grandma’s technique isn’t meant to expend aura, however, being able to move it with attention and thought is pretty useful.

I’m usually unable to move it outside of my body, and grandma’s technique is just the same, but I remember being able to do it a few times in my previous life. Just a truly few, by accident, and just on the scale of what could be done at that time. But enough for me to know it should be possible, seeing how similar qi and aura are.

The trick is how to get sensitive.

Being able to accurately sense the qi is the first step to be able to manipulate it. Inside the body that’s easy to do. As long as you can sense qi with your body, you can sense it inside of you. But once some gets outside of the body you will stop feeling it, if only your body is sensitive.

But this can be dealt with if you become entranced with it, making it so the qi itself becomes an extension of your sensitivity.

Once you become able to sense with the qi itself, as if it had nerves, instead of just sensing its existence – that’s when a person becomes able to take it out of their body and still control it.

In this matter grandmother’s technique surely is useful. Using controlled breathing and body positions to be able to grasp aura easier. This is another cheat the world has just thrown on my lap.

Thank you world. Now I shall use it to become an even cheatier character.

***

Winter is approaching fast. The first snows have fallen already, and mother is certain this will be a very cold season.

I’m not amused with the perspective of having to go outside to use the toilet, but at least mother has decided to let me use some clothing, since it’s starting to be very cold now.

She has also been putting me in diapers just in case, but I’m not so cheesy as to make use of them.

No sir. I’m out of the disgraceful position of having someone take care of my poop, and I don’t intend to go back.

Still.

Damn this is cold!

There is no toilet seat to freeze my butt, but the whole toiled is as cold as it can be.

I wonder if I could use aura to make my body warmer?

The qigong exercises I have been doing don’t have this kind of effect as the expected result, but I have been drenched in sweat a few times after doing them.

Also, monks and yogis in earth should be able to do it, right?

If it’s this weird world were even common people can manipulate aura, then I should be able to do it as well.

But how do I do it?

Qi is supposed to be warm by nature, but I cannot dump it on the environment yet. I have been training hard to be able to take it out of my body and dump it somewhere else, but so far the results are coming slow. I can at most irradiate it out of my body, and it takes an awfully long time to get it all out.

Really long time.

Well, maybe aura itself can make my body more resistant to the elements?

I mean, if it can resist kinetic energy from an attack, it probably can also resist thermal energy from fire. Maybe.

But if can do it, then can it avoid energy leaving my body?

It makes sense if I think in terms of aura being some kind of force field or whatever.

It won’t hurt to try.

Like that I expanded my aura a little bit, just like when sister pretended to throw me in this very same hole I’m crouched above.

And that is how I discovered that aura is capable of protecting against environmental hazard, even if it has quite the consumption and makes the air around you chisel and undulate a bit.

In the end I keep losing energy to the environment, but it’s from the aura and not thermal energy from inside my body. The laws of thermodynamics can’t be overwritten so easily after all.

But it’s a way to avoid getting cold and would even be a good way to get rid of my aura, were not for the fact of it being flashy with all these small sounds and air undulations.

Still, having a stronger gut make you finish your business a lot faster.

So, no more worries when going to the toilet.

***

And so a week has passed.

Winter is officially here, and I have gotten my head around the whole “how to get rid of my aura” thing.

First, yes, I have been able to extend my aura beyond my body and control it. I have even been able to insert it into stones. I was thinking on making a species of battery, but the stone broke after I put around two meal’s worth of aura in it.

It wasn’t a big stone, but it became serious brittle after the first load and just became dust after the second.

I also tried with fruit and grains, but the apple seeds just started to germinate and the grains as well started to grow roots.

Then, on my last trial, I injected it on an earthworm. I also stored it in a wood pot with some dirt on it, just in case.

It held huge loads of the stuff without problems.

Day after day for the whole week it had been absorbing all of my morning aura.

Until today.

As soon as I opened the pot, the thing there wasn’t a simple earthworm anymore.

It was seriously huge and weird.

It has grown to be almost triple the size, and when I poked it with a stick the thing bit into it.

It has teeth now. Carnivorous, dangerous teeth.

This thing just became a monster.

I thought of taking it to father, but then how could I explain it?

Maybe he would get panicked if I said a monster just appeared on our backyard. I can see him excavating the whole place to try and see if there is any more of it laying around.

I dealt with it.

It wasn’t pretty.

It wasn’t nice.

I felt horrible, as if I had just committed an awful sin.

After all, I was the one responsible for turning a simple earthworm into that thing. And then I had to kill it because of my own short sight.

Still, if I’m to get this depressed every time something goes wrong, I will be without a reason to live anymore.

After all, I’m a cheat character in a world of sword and magic!

It’s bound to backfire on me sometimes. I just have to be careful not to let the damage become too big.

Today was a single earthworm. No big deal, right? It may make me a bad person for doing such a thing to it and then killing it because of what I did.

It was just an earthworm. I shouldn’t feel this bad.

…

The feeling haunted me for the rest of the day.

***

I have decided to stop trying to get my aura out on living things. It was useful to learn how monsters are born, but I don’t think that was nice.

So I was back on trying to put it on inanimate objects.

And that is how I screwed up again.

First I discovered water to be a nice base to absorb aura.

I dumped three days of aura in a single pot of water, and it absorbed that much with ease.

Then I tried sipping a drink out of it.

After all, if the water had absorbed all of that aura, it should hold some of it still, right?

I was right, and one third of the cup gave me back only a little less than a whole day’s worth of aura.

So that was almost 100% conversion rate. And I had just invented an aura recovery potion.

I was happy with that, and kept doing my thing.

Then, the next day the water just moved and jumped on my face.

Since I’m three now I have been much less accompanied by mother’s or sister’s glares. This is how I have been able to keep this cup under my bed and do this kind of experiment every day.

But I didn’t expect for a slime to be born out of it!

It’s just a water slime, so it’s trying to suffocate me to no avail.

I have a cheat body which doesn’t need to breath, so it’s main weapon is useless against me. Also, even if it has a strong acid inside it takes time to secret it, so I’m not being digested or anything.

Slimes, with only very few extraordinary exceptions, are weak creatures in this world, which feed by being very specialized on how they do what they do. Father said they are the kind of monster which is easiest born, being found even on places with just a fair amount of environmental aura saturation.

Sorry buddy, but you won’t be able to kill me.

And like this I pushed the outer edge of the slime’s body towards the inside, reached my mouth and bite into it. It’s a bit weird, but my teeth are the sharpest thing I have now and slimes are almost immune to blunt attacks. So this will have to do.

The slime’s body collapsed into a puddle of water.

It seems I have been doing nothing but mistakes recently.

I’m glad that rock I had been testing with just broke, instead of becoming a rock monster or something.

…or has it?

By the gods I hope I haven’t released a monster out there.

But this makes my training more difficult.

If I can’t put my aura into things without the risk of creating monsters, then how am I supposed to get rid of it in order to strengthen my body?!

Not to mention I have been producing more and more of it recently.

I have asked father and he said it was the result of doing exercise with my aura depleted.

That it would make my body stronger until it hit a certain limit, and also increase my aura production speed at the same time.

By the way, it seems sister has hit her limit a long time ago. She definitely doesn’t give of the feeling of a bodybuilder, but father said everyone’s body has their own limits and that is that.

…

Isn’t he just unaware of how someone can train with weights?

I mean, all I have seen sister do is calisthenics. Even if she hit her limit with that, this is just because she has become strong enough to deal with her own bodyweight.

I tried asking something about weight training but father said it was too dangerous.

“Training by lifting heavy things can make your bones bend the wrong way and give you diseases on your joints. Even dojos avoid applying this kind of technique if they can.”

Of course. There are no gyms in this world. Or Personal Trainers and Coaches’. Or professional equipment, special diets and steroids.

The number of people spraining their backs because they have been lifting crates or rocks to increase their bodies’ strength must not be small.

So my kind of ingenious training regimen is already used in this world. Plus, it seems it will quit being effective shortly, as I don’t intend on training with weights without having good materials to do it well done.

So, what should I do?

***

In the end that came just in time.

My parents have finally decided on my chore.

You know? Everyone gets something to do at home when they turn three years old.

Ann’s task used to be to watch the winter fire, but this became Jacen’s when he was three. Instead mother made her go outside and fetch water, since she was old enough already and starting her body training.

…. isn’t this a form of weight training?

Well, things aren’t much different with me.

Since Jacen will remain inside of the house because it’s winter, I’m not going to be taking his fire-keeping chore.

Instead I’m to make sure our firewood is dry and chopped.

That means I will have work all year around, differently from him. I have to check If there’s any humidity in the log cabin, and chop wood not only for the winter fire but also for mother’s cooking.

How this was decided to be a good task for me?

Well…

“Training by lifting heavy things can make your bones bend the wrong way and give you diseases on your joints. Even dojos avoid applying this kind of technique if they can.”

“But Pa, sister gets buckets of water every morning. Isn’t this just like that?”

“That is right. That’s also why she hit her limit with only a few years of training. But lifting buckets is something very easy, and it’s safe because of that.”

Sister showed a somewhat proud smile.

“Pa, can I do this too, then?”

“You are too young All. Besides, this is your sister’s chore.”

Mother interjected.

“But I want to get strong like sister too!”

Father stroked my head.

“That’s something you will have to take time doing. But if you want to do something that makes you sweat, how about helping Pa with the wood? You can’t lift the buckets yet, but you may just be able to use the axe. This way you can use a lot of aura and become stronger. How about it?”.

“Pa, me too!”

I seized the chance and Jacen, obviously, did it too.

***

The axe is… well, It’s over seventy centimeters long, so it’s only a little bit smaller than me and weights around 3kg, so, a fifth of my own weight.

How can I lift it without losing my center of gravity and falling ahead?

Well, I have to bend my whole body backwards and adjust my position so I can handle it without falling to the ground.

I seriously expend a lot more aura on keeping my balance than on gathering strength to raise the axe and let it fall on the wood with my body weight behind it. But I’m able to do it, and, since it’s a lot heavier than the twig I use for sword training, it doesn’t produce [exploding swords] or anything like that. Just the usual axe-cutting-wood sound.

It’s also seriously tiring. Since I have to raise this axe so many times and keep working my best to keep balance, my aura consumption has been quite formidable. Enough to exhaust it after six or seven logs are split.

Father is with me, so until now I have been just helping him, but this is seriously heavy work.

Jacen sometimes try to help too, but his aura is depleted by cutting just five logs.

At the beginning I thought he would weep and cry, or maybe try to hit me out of jealousy, but father has scolded him seriously.

“If you have energy to be picking fights with your brother then work harder on your training” and things like that.

But in the end father is the kind of person who values effort more than results. He won’t praise the number of logs I or Jacen cut, but how much effort we put into getting better.

In the end Older Brother is best at surpassing his limits than I am, so father praises him more.

It gets me a little frustrated sometimes. If this was a common situation, I bet I would develop some kind of “father why doesn’t you appreciate my results which are better than brother’s” syndrome or something.

But I’m a reincarnated person, so I can see the broader spectrum. I have a cheat body, and I am much younger. Jacen is just a kid, but he has his pride as my older brother. And it is true that he can surpass his own limits better than I do. He has been doing this non-stop for a long time now, so he can feel better than me when he is at the verge of fainting from aura damage.

Even if my control is better, I admit that I may have overstepped my bonds in this matter once or twice.

Plus, father loves me just as much as Jacen, and every time I get better he indeed praises me.

It’s just that he wants for me to get better instead of simply showing results, right?

I mean, results are important as well. When I stopped at the third log one day because I had tried too hard, he scolded me.

“It’s okay to fail, but learn for it”

Hahaha… I’m not okay with this. Not at all. Reincarnated person my ass. My father is praising my older brother who is worse than me. Why isn’t he praising me instead?

…one more complicated but childish feeling for me to repress. I wonder if there are any therapists in this world.

I may need one when I grow up.

Then, after we are done cutting the logs, Jacen and I are instructed on body training by both father and sister.

They won’t be doing it since they have reached their limits already. Plus, if they lose all the aura they accumulated thought the years it may put father’s work and sister’s dream on danger.

Still, their insights on calisthenics surely is better than my own. I should learn not to underestimate a fighter’s insight on how to properly do exercise.

***

My night trainings seem to be somewhat haunted recently. I have just realized that weird apparition is back.

I have seen it spying on me from the cracks in the window.

Creepy.

Really creepy.

When I asked father about ghosts and things like this he said he had never seen one. It seems some exist in places with extremely high concentration of aura, but a ghost shouldn’t be able to appear in a common place.

Because what kept ghosts in this world was the aura remnants they still had, and which allowed them to manifest even without a body.

Then again, I have been seeing this apparition ever since I was a baby.

It shouldn’t be harmful, right?

…

Right?

***

Today me and sister have been pestering father since morning.

Because almost half of winter is gone already, and he still hasn’t taught us how to use the spear.

His first excuse was about how me and Jacen should be focusing on body training now, instead of learning how to use a new weapon.

Well, if it’s the two of us together then we can take care of the firewood splitting task alone. I do most of the work, but it’s true that I wouldn’t be able to do all of it without Jacen’s help.

…so much for my jealousy of him. I should try and let this feeling of camaraderie grow bigger than the complex feelings from earlier. Wish I had better insight on how to do it.

Anyhow, wood splitting isn’t a problem anymore!

Then he said he had to find us good batons to serve as spear dummies. According to him, differently from how one can use a twig the size of a sword from young age, if me or Jacen try to use a normal spear not only would it be impossible to move it appropriately, as it would also make us learn things the wrong way, since spears are supposed to be more mobile than swords and work by paying attention to their length relative to the person’s height.

Then yesterday he finally presented us with our dummy spears. They are just short twigs, each one head smaller than each of us, with a small ball of leather on one end, but he said this should be enough as training material.

And like this me and sister finally got him to start training us.

My daily routine changed quite a lot.

Now I spend most of the day together with brother. We start by eating breakfast, then chopping wood for half of the morning, then doing calisthenics right after.

Normally we should eat something after chopping all of that wood, but that would get in the way of our body training, since we would produce aura like that.

Me and Jacen are supervised by dad on this until lunch time, and then the entire family eats together. We are usually hungry at this point, and both of us have gotten into the habit of asking for seconds.

Afternoon is dedicated to sword swings followed by spear training until noon approaches. I get a light snack between the swings and the spear training.

I help mother with preparing dinner and we all eat together again.

When night falls everyone goes to their own rooms.

Father and mother sometimes do what couples do, sometimes don’t, but I just wait until everyone is asleep.

At this time, I sneak out of bed and check if Ann and Jacen are really sleeping soundly.

They usually are, so I proceed to do qigong training. It’s progressing with hiccups, but I can see some improvement already.

I would say five hours of connection to the infinite gives me around one meal worth of energy.

How am I not bored out of my mind every night?

Well, I ask myself the same thing.

I guess it’s just how this body works. I feel good being home, listening to my siblings sleeping in a very quiet place.

I mean, I have always liked Ann. She is strong, have an iron will and… well, I do like her for other reasons as well. Instinctive reasons as a male who hasn’t developed the due taboo for his sister.

But I have started to enjoy Jacen’s presence as well.

Of course, he’s still a little prick, but he is weirdly diligent and really does his best. He is constantly improving, thriving to be better. At first I thought it was just so he would receive more praise from father, but even at the moments father isn’t looking and in small tasks like cleaning the dishes, he is always trying to be better.

I also thought it may be just so he can feel proud of himself for having surpassed me… but even at taking care of the winter fire, he is always looking for the best and safest way to keep it lit all the time, so he can safely train.

On another words, even though he is trying to surpass me with all of his might, he won’t abandon his duties.

Compared to him the only reason I’m stronger is because of my cheat reincarnated body.

I wonder if I shouldn’t be learning from him in this aspect.

Foolishness.

This is just a damn 5-yrs-old who wants to get praised. Why have I built such a dreamy delusion of him?

… obviously it’s to justify why I’m starting to enjoy being around this idiot of a brother.

I guess just have grown used to quietness. And like this I can do things like meditating for long periods of time without feeling the need to run around or do stuff.

It’s just silence colored by the breath of people I like a lot.

It’s good and soothing, so let’s forget about poop-brother and just enjoy it.

… goddamit that weird apparition thing is looking at me again!

***

Winter has progressed as usual. We heard folk tales, sung, and spent some quality time together.

Every day by morning me and brother would get to wood splitting, but father eventually said Jacen should let me do it by myself.

Taking care of the wood is my chore after all.

At first Jacen was a bit disappointed, thinking his body strengthening training would be cut off, but father got a way for him to deplete his aura in the mornings as well.

That is by using an advanced version of grandmother’s technique.

Before you say it, no, he didn’t teach Jacen what I discovered by myself. What he taught him was a technique called “sword strengthening”.

It’s an intermediary-level technique which uses the aura-moving ability to clad the surface of one’s weapon with aura.

This way the weapon itself becomes more resistant.

Father said this is needed to be able to kill some kinds of monsters which are immaterial, as well as a way to prevent one’s weapon to be damaged in middle of battle.

Immaterial monsters include things like mist monsters and phantom slimes – one of the most dangerous kind of special slimes, born when a great amount of aura condenses by itself, without “something” to cling to. Those little fellas can become immaterial and drain someone’s aura away, including the basic energy needed to move the body.

They are like energy vampires which can’t be hit unless you know how to control your aura. Scary. Luckily father said the chance of ever encountering one of those monsters is almost null. They only exist in places where not only the aura concentration is insane but also there is nothing for it to cling to. Not even air.

Or course, father doesn’t expect for Jacen to find or fight one of those, but the endurance increase is needed on swords and, above all, spears.

Spears are just wood batons with an iron top after all. A good hit from a monster’s or even beast’s pawn and it’s gone.

That’s why Jacen has been learning how to clad his twigs with aura. I believe I can do that much if I want, but I never thought of doing it before. Since I trained my aura control to be able to expel aura from inside of me into the environment, it didn’t come to me to use it to clad stuff.

I should have thought of it, since it’s one of the uses father listed when he first talked about aura to me.

Anyhow, Jacen is now struggling to learn it. It seems to be a technique which increases substantially the aura consumption, since it needs to be make hard in order to increase the weapon’s hardness.

It also doubles as a technique to learn how to make your body actively tougher, that is, how to increase one’s body toughness by actively expending aura to make it hard.

It’s a very efficient technique which combines the capacity of learning how to make oneself tougher, how to harden your weapon and also how to control aura to a finer degree.

Me?

Well, not only have I a bigger load of wood splitting to do now that brother has been relieved of this work, I also have been denied by father!

He said it should be impossible for me to learn it with my current level of Aura Control, and that I should reach at least three blows before trying.

Since I haven’t shown him my achievements in this area, he is clearly treating me as the untalented brother this time.

…

So this is how it feels. It’s not much pleasurable. I want to take my twig and show him the degree of aura control I have, just so I can prove to be worthy.

It’s ok.

I will do it in a couple weeks, as soon as I have gotten used with the amount of aura needed to split all the wood we will use for a whole day.

It’s surprisingly big.

But once I reach this much skill I will ask father to teach me the technique…. Which means I will just do it in the first time, since it seems to be fairly simple compared to what I usually do.

In the end, my real objective isn’t this elementary technique after all.

What I want to learn is what lies ahead!

Prepare yourself, poop-brother! This time I will be the one surpassing you!

Poop-brother saw the determination in my eyes and is suddenly training harder.

…shouldn’t you be the type who always give your best? Have I really missed your true character this much?

Damn poop-brother.