Do You Know the Blade?
In the end, Klein woke herself by washing her face in the cold water a servant had brought. It was three in the morning, still long before the first crack of dawn.
"I'm sorry."
The first thing Klein did the moment she came to was flatten herself against the floor. Half-asleep or not, she had launched a blow straight into Lupin's forehead, and there was nothing else for it. Of course, Lupin's body was hardly the sort to ache from Klein's Water Fist, and Lupin let the whole thing pass as if it were nothing.
"Save the apology. Teach me how to cultivate aura."
"That is..."
Klein turned it over carefully. Does she even need to cultivate aura in the first place?
She could not claim to know everything about a Star Apostle, but she knew at least this much. A Star Apostle was not human. They thought like humans, looked like humans, bled like humans, and ate like humans — and yet, in the end, they were nothing more than artificial life the stars had fashioned with the authority of creation.
A human gathered the aura that naturally dissolved into the blood, sealed it in the heart, and slowly expanded their reserves. An Apostle had no need to do any such thing. The Apostle herself was already brimming with pure star-energy. Aura was only a byproduct that seeped naturally from the Holy Arks binding the Fragments of the Stars, and beside star-energy it fell woefully short in both refinement and purity. Candy, set against thin sugar water. Why would an Apostle go out of her way to cultivate an inferior energy?
If there was a reason, it could only be to imitate human techniques.
I don't really know why... but I ought to help her, shouldn't I?
Klein's petty kindness might set the entire continent ablaze. Even so, the Heavenly Mandate Cult would survive the flames. That was all Klein wanted, so she decided not to worry about what came after.
"Then... sit here cross-legged, for now. Give Klein your wrists."
She took Lupin's pulse, and still she felt no aura. All of it was star-energy, a higher power, and Klein simply could not sense it.
"Here."
"Try summoning a pigeon with the hand Klein pointed to."
"Easy enough."
With a crisp snap, a pigeon launched into the air and landed neatly on Lupin's knee. The flow of aura remained impossible to feel.
So even when she bargains with spirits, she does it with star-energy, not aura...?
Calling Frederica would change nothing. She would have to try another way.
"From here on, I'm going to pour aura into Lupin's body and run it through one big circuit. Try to feel that flow."
It was something one almost never attempted unless the two of them trusted each other absolutely. In the Cheonghwa style, the method was called True Qi Guidance — because aura introduced from outside could utterly ruin the body of whoever received it. For Klein, it was also an opportunity. She did not even consider taking it. Poke the wrong place, turn over a dragon's reverse scale, and then... ugh.
Klein knelt facing Lupin and laid a hand upon each of her wrists.
"First, it'll travel from your hands to your heart."
At those words, Lupin's eyes flew open. Something squirmed inside her arms, ticklish and stinging all at once.
"Oh— whoa, wah. So this is it!"
"Now from the heart to the lungs."
"Hee, heheh. Eheheheheh."
The insides of her breasts itched so badly that the laughter spilled out on its own. Teeth clenched, Lupin followed the path Klein's aura traced as it moved through her.
"Past the lungs, back to the heart. Now it's going to your legs."
"Euhee— hyahat. W-w-w-wait!"
As the aura rode her meridians downward and passed near her tailbone, Lupin very nearly let out an indecent moan without meaning to. How could her lower belly not throb with that sharp, buzzing ache? It was a sensation she had felt the day she opened her first treasure chest, and her nerves issued a perfectly clear warning that this was dangerous.
"Could you cycle it a little faster? Past the legs, back to the heart."
"Got it."
"Ugyagyagyot!"
Klein's aura whipped around her legs, shot back to her heart, and returned toward her hands. She had meant to run it through the head as well, only to find something blocking the way. Lupin trembled for a long while before she finally managed to speak.
"R-right. So this is how it feels. Like some pine caterpillar crawling around inside me."
"You can feel it, can't you? Now try to reproduce it yourself. This is as far as I can advise you."
With that, Klein drew the aura that had toured Lupin's body back into her own heart.
Thump.
"Kkh?!"
Her heart suddenly lurched, as if it meant to smash her ribs and burst free. Klein clutched her chest and curled up on the floor, and Lupin asked in alarm.
"Hey, what's wrong? What happened?"
"N-no... just a moment..."
The aura she had circulated inside Lupin had come back plastered thick with star-energy Klein could not even perceive. It was like slamming a hundred cups of coffee and snapping into a state of hyper-awakening.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Her heart thundered as if it might explode, and only after several minutes did it settle even a little. The moment Klein managed to push herself upright, she seized the chance and threw herself into aura cultivation, driven by the fear that if she did not melt the star-energy down into aura, the qi and blood throughout her body might twist out of true.
And so Klein barely folded into a cross-legged seat and sank into cultivation, leaving Lupin on her own.
Seol Baekhwa, who had been sitting back-to-back with Lupin all the while, tilted her head.
"What's wrong with Big Sister Klein?"
"Looks like she suddenly feels sick. You just stay put on my back. Let me concentrate."
"Okay. If I get sleepy, I might just fall asleep like this."
"Yeah, go ahead and sleep. You only grow tall if you sleep at night."
"Tch. Fine."
With Seol Baekhwa draped across her back, Lupin closed her eyes.
"So..."
Was it the feeling of sending something itchy flowing through her body? But where was she supposed to draw it from?
At times like this, there was a line Lupin shouted out of habit.
Big Sis Star, Big Bro Taechang, help me!
...Naturally, no answer came back.
Right. This was exactly how prickly Big Sis Star was supposed to be.
"Let's focus..."
She had just cleaned out a Secret Safe, so her concentration was not merely plentiful — it was spilling over. The appointment was tomorrow afternoon anyway. Sleeping a little late ought to be fine.
Lupin drew a deep breath, slow and long, then brute-forced strength through her whole body, wringing her arms and legs as if she were dragging up even the strength she had possessed at the breast.
Wow, our dear Lord Aura is really hard to get a look at!
"Mmmmmngh...!"
It began as a small sting. Not on the skin — deep inside, a sharp little prick, as if a ligament had torn. Then came a strange sensation, as though something were flowing along her blood vessels.
That's refreshing.
Why is it refreshing?
It was nothing at all like the aura Klein had sent through her. Still, Lupin had felt this kind of coolness climbing her veins once before. Was it the time she had collapsed from overwork, taken unpaid leave, and gone in for an IV? She had napped, felt the strength come back, gone home, and cracked open a mountain of treasure chests. The difference now was that the coolness was not stuck in one place. It spread past her hands and kept creeping outward.
Before she knew it, the strange sensation had passed her shoulders, reached her heart, and burst apart in every direction with a soft pop. Little mint bombs dissolved in her blood and scattered through her whole body in a rushing wash. This time, every last one of them had succeeded in announcing itself.
I know exactly where you are.
Right.
But...
...Is this it?
Just as the blankness threatened to swallow her again, Big Bro Taechang tossed her a perfectly timed assist.
This choice cannot be undone, and it will affect the Star's growth.
As if he had been waiting for just this moment, Big Bro Taechang had arrived.
"This is it! Aura culti— huh?"
It had come bundled with a strange Growth Value called Aura Transmission. She did not really understand it, but it did not look good, did it? On top of that, the Aura Cultivation on offer was Grade XII — a level she had never even seen before.
Wow. I am so curious.
Lupin knelt in the exact posture Klein had taken and lifted both hands until they barely brushed Klein's wrists. The refreshing energy still filled her body. Was she supposed to pass it on to Klein?
Like summoning a pigeon... sending the energy in my body out through my fingertips...
Huuuuuu—.
Something slipped out of Lupin's body. Just as when she had circulated aura inside herself, this too was a feeling she had known once before: the day she had gone to donate blood to save someone's precious life. They had told her AB Rh-negative was desperately scarce, so please come often. They would give her as many game coupons as she wanted...
Don't tell me I worked myself to death because I donated too much blood?
The nurse said it was fine, though?
The memory struck, and dizziness crashed over her all at once. Her whole body began to pitch forward.
Growth Value Aura Cultivation XII acquired.
Growth Value Aura Transmission I can now be unlocked.
Having barely clawed her way free of qi deviation, Klein let out a long sigh. The refreshing energy filling the room told her that Lupin had succeeded at aura cultivation.
An Apostle really is an Apostle.
Aura refined for one specific person made everyone else uncomfortable, and sometimes choked the breath right out of them. But the aura pouring off Lupin's body had been worked from pure star-energy. Set beside the aura a Holy Ark released into the earth, it was no different, so even Seol Baekhwa, who knew nothing of such things, was perfectly fine.
As if that were not enough, Lupin seemed able to transmit aura to someone else without dying to do it. That was supposed to be a dying master's last spark of life — the moment they clutched a disciple and cried, "I die here, but you must live on and carry out a greater will!" And she could simply keep doing it.
Klein was learning firsthand why the saintesses led by the Second Apostle, the Holy King, had been described as gorillas charging about with a greatsword in each hand.
With aura like this, she'll touch Grade 10 before long...
Seol Baekhwa rocked the face-down, unmoving Lupin back and forth, worry thick in her voice.
"What do we do. Big Sis fainted."
Klein held a hand beneath Lupin's nose, then let out a soft little laugh. A faint breath tickled her fingers.
"She'll wake up perfectly fine in a few hours."