The Greatest Sin is Weakness; The descent into madness
Waking up the next morning, Starry noticed that Nephim had fallen asleep hugging him. He didn't think much of it as she was practically his best friend at this point and it would be weird for him to harbor such thoughts about her. Additionally, Nephim didn't have anyone to talk to other than him, and he had just ignored her for two weeks. If a hug was all it took for her to properly forgive him and return to her usual energetic self, he would gladly give her one.
Starry then turned towards her and looked her deep in the eyes for a few seconds before poking her in the face, causing her to abruptly wake up.
"Huh? Starry? Where are we?" Nephim asked, still half-asleep.
"Home. We're home Neph." Starry responded.
"Why are you crying?" Nephim asked, a hint of worry clear in her voice.
"Hmm? Oh. I suppose I am." Starry said as he felt his tears hit the soft bedsheet.
"Are you still mad at me?" Nephim asked, her facial expression turning sad,"Of course not. I could never be truly mad at you."
"Anyways! Time to get up. Time for me to train. Only one more week before the entrance exam." Starry said, quickly getting up from the bed and wiping his tears away with his hands.
Starry then quickly got up, went to the restroom, and changed into his exercise clothing. He wore a black compression shirt, and long dark sweatpants. After fixing his hair a little before the mirror, he exited the restroom and walked downstairs, greeting Seraphine, Maelis and Ryan.
"Today instead of our usual workout, we are going to be training Aura control and Manipulation. All three of you, pick up a stick off of the floor and coalesce the ambient Aura into the stick. Passing score is reinforcing it to withstand a half-strength blow from me. Every time you fail you run around the city once. Are we clear?"
"Yes Master." Maelis respectfully said.
"Yes Sir!" Seraphine said, her voice practically brimming with youthful exuberance.
Starry did not respond to the man's question but no one paid any attention to this. The three of them then walked around the garden and picked up one stick. They then spent close to one hour reinforcing the stick with Aura. After one hour passed, they all returned back to the same spot for Ryan to test them.
Maelis went first, her stick was snapped in half without warning, thoroughly shocking her.
Seraphine went second, although her stick bent, as steel would when struck with an extremely strong force, it held. Starry went third, his stick snapping in half before Ryans fist even reached it, being destroyed by the air pressure of his strike.
"You two," Ryan said, pointing to Maelis and Starry,"Get to running." Continuing, he said,"And you Seraphine, pick up a leaf and reinforce it with aura. Passing score is withstanding a half-powered strike from me."
"
Seraphine grumbled but eventually walked around and grabbed a leaf off the ground and started reinforcing it.
After ten minutes, Starry and Maelis both returned from their run around the city. Again they attempted to reinforce their sticks just for them to be broken and have to run again. This process continued for the rest of the day, reaping no significant benefits for either. Seraphine on the other hand had almost fully strengthened her leaf and had already made significant progress in the completion of her Aura Body.
The next day, the same exact process repeated. Seraphine however did not manage significantly to strengthen her leaf to withstand a strike from Ryan. Both Maelis's and Starry's sticks were broken, although they had gotten much sturdier.
The next day, Maelis strengthened her Stick enough to barely withstand Ryan's half-powered strike. Although Starry was making significant progress in grasping how to use Aura to strengthen external and internal objects, he felt like he was missing the last step on how to fully strengthen them.
Trying to strengthen the stick with Aura was like trying to overfill a container that was full of holes. The Aura constantly leaked out of the stick, and even when filled completely wouldn't harden enough to withstand Ryan's blow. Starry felt for the flow of the Aura, feeling it slowly flow out of his body and into the stick. But whenever his Aura flowed throughout his body and into the stick, a sizable portion was lost. If only there were some convenient method to direct Aura a certain way.
"Do you need me to spell it out for you? You need to create an Aura Array." Nephim said, currently watching Starry try and fail to imbue his stick with Aura from the back porch.
"Creating an Aura Array is easier said than done Nephim. You should know this best."
"It's your only option. Unless you wish to take the path that Maelis did."
"What did Maelis do?"
"She waited until she could instinctually sense the Aura flowing around her body and guide it. Trying to attempt this method without her monstrous level of talent is like trying to find a needle in a haystack."
"Oh. That's out of the question then. What did Seraphine do then?" Starry dejectedly asked.
"She created her own personalized Aura Array. That's why she's able to control the Aura much better than you."
"Neph, are you sure it's possible for me to create an Aura Array? I would have to create one from scratch for god's sake!"
"I mean, one of your sisters did it just fine. I don't see why you can't."
"Both of them have ridiculous levels of talent! Comparing me to them is like comparing a world class fighter to an average man!"
"You're such a baby."
While Aura Arrays were usually formed using the ancient language as inspiration, it wasn't entirely necessary to use the ancient language to form them in the first place. The reason why people typically used the ancient language to write out Aura Arrays was because the ancient language carried power. That was why names were special words within the ancient language that carried special power.
Therefore it was entirely possible for Starry to create an Aura Array from scratch like Seraphine did, but it would take his full undivided concentration to form the array, and hypothetically speaking if he even could form it, he would have to understand it fully before being able to utilize it to its full potential.
Even though it seemed like an impossible feat to Starry, it was a necessary feat that he had to complete. He only had three months to complete his Aura Body and Aura Soul, so he was going to have to pull off a couple more miracles before he could take the special bloodline.
Starry sat down, stick in hand and began forming an Auray Array in the shape of a circle. He jam packed it with information on how the Aura was supposed to flow, and how it would strengthen the stick. To nobody's surprise, it shattered. He had overfilled it with information and thus rendered it too costly to maintain.
Next attempt. This time he tried to write less information, and decided on extremely simple inscriptions for the Aura to follow.
Failure.
Another Attempt.
Failure.
Next attempt.
Failure.
One more attempt couldn't hurt?
Failure.
Giving up is for losers. Next attempt.
Failure.
Undeterred, Starry lay in the grass, utilizing his full concentration to form Aura Arrays. With each consecutive failure, he learned something new. Eventually after an hour, he didn't fail when he always had. This time he had formed an Aura Array! Only, its design was much too simple to be of any actual use when directing Aura into the stick. After two more hours, he formed an actual working Aura Array and memorized the formation process into his head. He then used the surrounding Aura to materialize the Aura Array onto the stick, embedding it with the Array. Then, he directed the Aura within his core to flow into the stick. The Aura then all flowed into the stick without leaking any excess.
"Master. I've completed it." Starry said as he picked up his stick and walked over to Ryan.
"Let me check." Ryan asked as he raised a fist to strike the stick.
This time around when he struck the stick, nevermind breaking in half, the stick sustained a slight dent before repairing itself. The reason why it had repaired itself was because that was an additional feature that Starry had incorporated into the Aura Array, as if he added too much Aura, the stick could be damaged.
"Impressive. Next you move on to the leaf."
At this point, Seraphine had already completely reinforced her leaf, being able to withstand a half-force strike from Ryan. The last stage that they had to complete was to reinforce parts of their bodies to be able to sustain strikes from Ryan.
Additionally, Maelis had made some progress in strengthening the leaf, but because she had not formed an Aura Array, she wasn't able to properly guide the Aura.
Starry then started on the leaf, utilizing his Aura Array to significantly boost the leaf's durability. But after he tested the leaf's ability to withstand a strike from Ryan, it failed to hold up. Frustrated, Starry tried to improve upon his Aura Array, spending the next two days improving his Aura Array. It could now move and absorb ambient Aura up to 15% more efficiently. Additionally, he had improved the resistance to physical damage by up to 10% and resistance to Aura related attacks by 5%. His Aura Array would be considered a pseudo-Improved Starter level Aura Array at this point, as its bonuses were somewhat higher when compared to a starter Aura Array.
Regarding Aura arrays, there were many different classifications that they had. They ranged from Starter, Improved Starter, Intermediate, Improved Intermediate, Advanced, Improved Advanced, Master, Improved Master and Grandmaster. The difference between each class of Aura Arrays was like the difference between the strength that a virtue bestowed. The bonuses that intermediate Aura Arrays could provide to their user and weapons were nothing compared to what an Advanced Aura Array could provide. Even though Auray arrays were extremely useful, they were also extremely hard to form, and the highest level Aura Array a human had ever formed was one hundred years ago, with a sovereign ranked person accidentally creating an Improved Advanced Aura Array.
Even though the bonuses that his new Aura Array provided didn't seem to amount to much more on the surface, these small bonuses were what made the difference between his leaf breaking and its holding.
During these two days, Maelis had created her own Aura Array and had already reinforced her leaf enough to withstand a strike, now focusing on reinforcing parts of her body to form an Aura Body.
Seraphine had also made a decent amount of progress in forming her own Aura Body, but was lacking in understanding of the human anatomy, of which the knowledge was extremely important when forming a personalized Aura Body. One needed to know of the inner workings of their own body when forming an Aura Body to form the best possible one. While a person could in theory copy the same Aura Body that someone else had formed previously, it lowered their future potential and exterable strength greatly at the trade off of less time and effort expended towards creating an Aura Body.
They would have to wait until they returned back to the Academy to learn more about human anatomy. Once they had the knowledge of the inner workings of humans, they could then utilize that knowledge to familiarize themselves with the various parts of their own bodies more efficiently compared to before.
Currently, Luna Academy allowed all students to partake in a one month break of non-necessary school attendance. While they could come in and attend the classes, it wasn't necessary during this time. While the reason for the break was non explicitly stated by the Academy itself, nor the government, it was rumored that the war between the various races was intensifying, causing many instructors to take to the frontlines.
Starry knew that he wasn't going to be able to form his Aura Body within such a short time, but he could make considerable progress within the process of forming it as he had considerable knowledge about human anatomy. Forgetting about these other matters, Starry imbued his leaf with his new and improved Aura Array, and walked over to Ryan, intending to move onto the next step.
"Master. I have completed the task."
"Give it here." Ryan said as he picked up the leaf that Starry was holding.
Ryan then inspected the leaf closely before attempting to bend it. While he could bend it slightly, it automatically resisted his bending by process of automatic repair.
He then set it down on a log, and struck the leaf.
To his surprise, Starry's leaf held up considerably well. It had only sustained minor denting and bending, and had already slowly started the process of Auto-repair.
"You just keep on surprising me Starless. Just a month ago you could barely control Aura, let alone use it to strengthen things. Now all of a sudden you are catching up to your monstrously talented sisters. Perhaps your parents were right."
"You overpraise me master."
"Perhaps this is so, but you have made significant progress in control over Aura, so much so that it impresses even me.
"Thank you master. What is my next task?"
"Next you are to reinforce various parts of your body in preparation of creating an Aura Body. You have three days."
Starry then walked inside the house to grab a cup of water. He drank the water, then walked back outside into the backyard. This time around, instead of strengthening an external object, he would have to strengthen his body. The process was vastly different when compared to strengthening the stick or the leaf. Instead of guiding the Aura outside of his body and attempting to control it outside, he instead had to coalesce the ambient aura outside and inside of his body into one specific part of his body. This process was exponentially harder, and two days passed by before Starry could even reinforce an entire limb.
At most, he could coalesce 70% of the Aura in his body into a limb, and only 40% of the ambient Aura. Needless to say, he could forget taking a hit from Ryan. He would be lucky if he could even take a hit from Seraphine or Maelis at full force. The Aura Array that he had created wasn't especially useful for use within his body, as it was mostly designed to transfer Aura into something external. While Stary could attempt to create another Aura Array to facilitate the transfer of Aura through his body, he would require heaven-defying luck to do so.
The fact that he had already created a pseudo-Improved Starter Aura Array could be considered extremely impressive, especially considering his age and lacking knowledge of Aura. Luckily, the process of creating an Aura Body was much more straightforward than the process of forming an Aura Core. Unlike the Aura Core, the Aura Body and Aura Soul were directly tied to the Prestige. This meant that when attempting to create one, a person would receive a completion rate of their Aura Body/Soul.
So, once a person reached a satisfactory completion rate, they could accept the rate and complete their Aura Soul/Body. One would need to achieve a 90% completion rate to reap all the benefits an Aura Body could offer. Anything over 90% would yield significant benefits when it came to Aura. Even though he wouldn't be able to form an Aura Array within his body that provided significant results anytime soon, he would be able to tweak his body and the formation of it as much as he wanted until he reached a satisfactory completion rate.
Two days went past in the blink of an eye and the day had arrived. It was time for him to take the Entrance exam to Luna Academy.