Aura (2)
After a rough lunch, Arnold and Orion headed for the training grounds.
As promised, it was time for Orion to learn how to use Aura.
"By the way—teaching aside, you're my secretary starting today, right?"
"Why would I be?"
Arnold's face was pure iron. Not a flicker of shame.
Orion bellowed at the top of his lungs.
"What!? You said if you lost, you'd be my secretary!"
Arnold adjusted his glasses. His expression did not change by so much as a degree.
"Do you have proof?"
"Wow. You said it yourself, with your own mouth, right then and there."
"I have no recollection of that. Produce physical evidence. Or bring a witness."
"……Huh."
This kid used to not be like this.
Did he actually hit his head?
Then again, watching him lift that middle finger, maybe not.
Orion snatched his middle finger mid-rise.
"Aaaagh!!! It's going to break!!!"
"Raise that finger one more time and I snap it. Got it?"
"…………"
"Answer."
"…Yes, sir."
Arnold nodded in meek surrender, and Orion let him go.
"…I'm filing a report for assault between men."
"What was that?"
"I said nothing."
Arnold played dumb and went to adjust his glasses—then flinched. He glanced at Orion's face, then tried to lift his middle finger with the other hand—
"I'll kill you."
—and failed.
Orion tipped his chin.
"Show me a demo."
Whether that counted as the attitude of someone receiving instruction was debatable. Still, Arnold feared his strength enough to do as he was told, and stepped forward.
"Hss."
He took a proper stance, sword in hand, and drew a deep breath. A white radiance bloomed around his body. The energy traveled down his arm, through his hand, and at last sank into the blade.
He set his feet shoulder-width apart, dropped his center of gravity, and lined the sword's path up with the target.
A wooden dummy twenty meters away.
Whiiish—!!!
He swung.
A pure white blade of energy tore through the air with a crack of parting wind—too fast for the naked eye to track. The dummy split along a clean cross-section and fell in two.
To an ordinary person, it would have been over in the blink of an eye. The dummy had practically been cleaved the instant the sword moved.
"Tch."
Arnold clicked his tongue. The result left him unsatisfied. He'd been so busy lately that his training had suffered.
"Whoa. That was insanely cool."
Arnold turned his head. The reaction was not what he'd expected. Orion was staring at him with eyes lit up, full of praise.
"…This much is basic literacy for a knight."
"Come on. Grab any random member of the order and tell them to try. Nobody's pulling that off."
"Well… that's true."
The corner of Arnold's mouth lifted. Praise, after all, could make even a whale dance.
"Hey. If I learn this, can I do it like you?"
Arnold answered with swelling confidence.
"The use of Aura is not something achieved overnight. To refine it as precisely and delicately into swordsmanship as I have is harder still."
A little chuckle slipped out of him.
"However! Faster than anyone! More meticulously than anyone! Under my instruction, there is nothing you cannot accomplish!"
Arnold stretched a hand toward where Orion had been standing.
"Come. Someone of your caliber would do well to receive my teachi—"
The words died. Orion was no longer where the hand was reaching.
Arnold looked around and found him standing a considerable distance away.
"Why did you go over there?"
That was when the voices drifted over.
"What's the Commander doing?"
"Has the paperwork finally broken him?"
"Should we call a doctor?"
Orion averted his eyes with the look of a man who had just witnessed something pitiful.
"Yeah, no. I don't want to get lumped in and become a laughingstock too."
"……………"
Arnold's outstretched hand slowly sank. After that, red-faced, he adjusted his glasses.
One way or another, the lesson began.
"Aura, in essence, is the art of dissolving the power of mana into a weapon."
"Mana?"
"Yes. The latent force that flows within the body."
Arnold let mana pour into his hand. A pure white radiance gradually rose from it.
"In this way, every person carries mana within them. There may be differences in quantity—more or less—but there is no one whose mana is entirely zero."
As if a thought had just struck him, Arnold continued.
"Ah—correction. If one exhausts all of one's mana, the amount can temporarily drop to zero. That condition is called mana deficiency."
"What happens if you use it all up?"
"Mana recovers naturally, but until it does, severe pain accompanies the process—headaches, vomiting, and the like."
"And if it never recovers?"
"You die."
"Hurghk."
Orion lifted his own hand and studied it.
I've got mana too, right?
Given that he was still alive, he must. No—he had to. Otherwise he couldn't use Spatial Slash.
"Hm?"
A lightning bolt of a thought flashed through Orion's mind.
"Then does this world have magic too?"
Arnold nodded.
"It does."
"What!? For real!?"
In novels and the like, people used mysterious forces like mana or magical power to hurl meteors and such, didn't they?
Holy crap. Does that mean I could throw fireballs too?
His chest filled with excitement. What he heard next, however, was rather crushing.
"Of course, we cannot use it."
"Aw, why! Even if you can't, maybe I can?"
Arnold gave a short snort of a laugh. There was mockery in it.
"It is not that the possibility is nonexistent. We have not tested you, after all. But the odds are exceedingly slim."
"How slim?"
"One in twenty million."
"…What?"
One in twenty million? Even the lottery was only around one in eight million…
"The population of the Ruthenia Empire is roughly one hundred million. Of those, the number of people who can use magic is exactly five."
"So, uh. Isn't there some kind of training that lets you use magic? If I put in enough eeeeffort, couldn't I manage a little?"
"Impossible. Whether one can use magic is determined at birth. Nothing done after the fact will change it in the slightest."
Somewhere far overhead, Orion's imaginary fireball sailed off into the sky.
They said effort never betrayed you. Turns out there were things you couldn't even attempt to work at.
Orion let out a sigh.
"Haa. Fine, whatever. I'm happy enough just being able to use Spatial Slash."
It wasn't as if fate had handed him a golden ticket. He'd leave the brief fantasy of raining meteors from the sky right where it was.
"So how do you actually feel mana, then? Do you just flex real hard like a Super Saiyan and a yellow glow shows up?"
"Super…? What?"
Orion plopped down on the spot.
"Kidding. You meditate or something, right? Watch me and tell me if I'm doing it right."
Arnold tilted his head.
"Pardon? If I were simply going to have you meditate, why would I say I would teach you?"
"Huh? You said it doesn't happen overnight. What, you're not about to put your hand on my back and help me sense the flow of mana or some crap like that, are you?"
Did two grown men really need to go that far?
Orion pulled a disgusted face. Arnold mirrored it exactly.
"Ugh…. Why would I dirty my hands like that?"
"What was that, you little—?"
Arnold pulled a white liquid from his pocket.
"…What is this?"
"A beverage that makes the flow of mana easier to perceive."
"…Where'd you get it?"
"From my room."
Orion's face went pale, half-convinced it was something unspeakable. Arnold pressed on before he could spiral.
"Haa. It is a medical product used to treat mana deficiency. Drink it, and the mana in your body begins to boil, making its location far easier to sense."
"That so?"
"Yes. So drink it promptly. Setting all else aside, this is the only method for grasping the flow of mana. Otherwise, as I said earlier, you can sit and meditate until the end of time."
Orion made a low groan and accepted the cup.
This is milk.
Having thoroughly rationalized it, Orion downed the pure white liquid in one go.
From the moment it hit his throat, it burned like seventy-proof whiskey. Soon his entire body began to heat up. A scorching energy spread outward from his lower dantian.
"This is all mana?"
"Yes. Most likely."
If one could feel every drop of blood in the body, it would probably feel like this. Not only his arms and legs—he could sense even the parts he never paid attention to, in exquisite detail.
"Ugh, it's hot. So what do I do now?"
"You envision it."
"Envision what?"
"Feel the flow of mana, and envision which part of your body you wish to wrap it around."
He'd figured it would be something like that. What the hell did "envision" even mean?
Orion clicked his tongue and shut his eyes.
His vision went black, and he felt pure white threads of light racing every which way. First, he decided, he would focus them into his hands.
Something scorching swirled and traveled down his arms. It felt as if he had plunged them into boiling water.
"Nnngh…."
His blood vessels felt like they were expanding. It was a pain he had never felt in his life.
"Endure it. That is how it always is the first time one handles mana."
"Holy hell. This hurts like crazy."
He wanted nothing more than to dunk his arms in ice water. But Spatial Slash shimmered before his mind's eye. Orion clenched his teeth and held on with everything he had.
At last, every scrap of mana that had traveled down his arms settled into both hands.
"Oh, shit."
He opened his eyes—and a dreamlike sight unfolded before him.
Pure white energy rose in thick, billowing waves. It was more than three times the size of Arnold's.
"Tch."
Arnold clicked his tongue. The sound was thick with envy at how quickly Orion had succeeded.
"Whoa. I've got talent."
Orion shot to his feet and bolted—straight for the wooden dummy.
"Hsssss."
He brought both hands together and chambered them at his waist. The white energy gathered in his palms; then his arms shot forward, the power blasting outward.
"Wave Fist—!!!!"
Whoosh—!
The sphere of energy punched clean through the wooden dummy—
KRA-KOOM—!!!
—and punched clean through the wall behind it as well.
"Huh?"
Arnold, who had come chasing after him a beat too late, saw the aftermath and his jaw dropped.
Orion scratched his head and muttered,
"Well, that's fucked."