Ch.352347 – Aura Aptitude

“The Lineless Ice Gorge is a land of silent death. If you don’t wish to be forgotten by the world, don’t even think of setting foot there.”

A barren land where not a single blade of grass grows.

A safe zone devoid of monsters due to the murderous cold.

The human specimens who drift here are diverse.

Serial killers, rebels, suicidal hopefuls—mostly cases where life has hit rock bottom.

At an altitude of 2400m, with an average temperature of -60°C.

From a dizzying high cliff where clouds seem within reach, a young boy’s battle cry echoed.

“HYAAP!”

BOOM!

The snow-capped mountain roars like thunder in response to the boy’s sword dance, stirring up a blizzard.

The wave of snow grows as it devours clouds, and the exposed mountain rocks crumble into tiny pieces, washing away with the avalanche.

After the earth-shaking rumble ends, silence returns.

Despite the cold that cuts like a knife through flesh, the boy was shirtless.

The boy, bathed in the sun’s blessing, gathered his strength and cautiously looked around.

“I think… I did… pretty well…”

The kidnapper wiggled his finger and said:

“Fall down and climb back up again.”

“Yes…”

“Answer properly.”

“YES! I’LL FALL RIGHT NOW!”

The boy held back tears and stepped off the cliff without a moment’s hesitation.

During the 18-second fall, the boy poured out his emotions and tears.

Where exactly had it all gone wrong?

When he recklessly went to the capital to meet his benefactor who had rescued him from prison?

When he hesitated despite knowing the bounty on her head was enough to buy an entire castle and more?

One thing was certain—by the time he realized she was an imperial princess and direct descendant of the Demon King, it was already too late to escape.

Those ominous golden eyes don’t even permit death.

The boy regretted his foolish actions as he fell from the cliff.

* * *

Swift, Heavy, Strong, Gentle, Illusion.

Dominance, Change, Sharp, Elastic, Explosive, Vortex, Absorption.

The rise and fall of Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter (mythos).

Logos, Pathos, Ethos.

The arche (ἀρχή) of Fire (ignis), Water (aqua), Earth (terra), Air (ventus).

I sent Emika these movements containing 77 fundamental elements.

Every human has the potential to use aura.

However, finding one’s potential in daily life is like finding a needle in a sand dune.

Our brains and aura hearts can only grow by enduring discomfort.

That’s why learning is painful and effort is bitter.

[NoName: Crossing the Han River now. Should arrive in about 20 minutes.]

I left a message for Emika while enjoying the sparkling river view from the taxi.

[Emika: (๑°ㅁ°๑)‼✧]

[Emika: (´×д×`三꒪д꒪ ;)]

[Emika: ๐·°(৹˃̵﹏˂̵৹)°·๐]

This normally poker-faced person uses quite cute emoticons.

I think I understand the situation.

I flipped my phone over and immersed myself in the fresh spring breeze, lost in old memories.

I remember when I first taught Klaus.

True to his hero nature, he based his fundamentals on the principles of “Spring.”

Spring’s mythos centers on descent followed by ascent, separation followed by reunion.

Klaus was certainly talented, yet simultaneously utterly talentless—a peculiar case that frustrated me while teaching him.

I wasn’t completely without guilt regarding my teaching methods.

Poor, pitiful thing.

But the fact that I still can’t think of a more efficient method means…

I’m never wrong, as usual.

NoName remains undefeated.

My mood naturally lifted with the recent streak of decent weather, unusual for Korea.

After getting out of the taxi, I rang the hotel doorbell and waited for someone to open it.

“Hello, Name-chan! Here to see Miss Katsuhata again today?”

Some martial arts students returning from shopping greeted me cheerfully.

“Yes, hello. How is Miss Katsuhata doing?”

“She seems to be struggling with the training assigned by the master.”

“Yeah, yeah. She even skipped dinner last night saying she couldn’t digest anything.”

“We bought pork belly for dinner—hope she eats some today.”

“Name-chan, go give her a massage. The young miss is avoiding our hands now, maybe it’s puberty.”

“Sob sob, I can’t touch Emika’s cheeks anymore. I’ll have to be satisfied with Yui.”

These people seemed to relieve their training stress through endless chatter.

I endured the imminent bleeding from my ears and entered Emika’s quarters.

She was diligently following the movements I had assigned as homework in front of a large mirror.

From this perspective, she looked somewhat like a middle school girl practicing idol choreography.

“Emika.”

“Ah, Name-chan, you’re here? I was practicing hard.”

“There’s still about 10 minutes until 4 o’clock, so I’ll wait until you finish.”

“Until I finish? I’ve been so busy with training lately… I don’t think I can finish on time—”

“Just try not finishing. We’ll see what happens.”

“I’ll do my best!”

Emika flailed her flexible body around, working hard.

Despite the powerful air conditioning, she was dripping with sweat.

‘Ah, that’s not how you do that.’

I suppressed the urge to give pointers and mentally recited a Buddhist prayer.

99th movement.

Emika jumped into the air like a ballet dancer, extending her legs forward and backward.

There’s a similar movement in actual ballet called the grand jeté.

“ARGHHHH!”

Emika grabbed her groin and rolled around on the floor.

“Oh, 100.”

“100 points? Nice, hehe.”

“99, 98, 97…”

“What? You’re counting seconds? Hurry, last one, last one!”

The final 100th movement.

It’s a double air track technique where you rotate twice in the air and land on both hands.

Emika watched the demonstration video with dead eyes.

“…”

“What are you waiting for?”

“I-I’ll do it!”

Emika did a handstand on the mat.

It’s a simple technique—just tilt your upper body slightly and alternate hands to rotate your body.

“GUACK!”

But she couldn’t even complete half a rotation before landing chest-first, making me smack my forehead.

“Are you physically uncoordinated? That would be problematic.”

“I’m not uncoordinated! It’s weirder to expect someone to copy this after seeing it just once.”

Emika raised her voice in self-defense.

Then, exhausted, she collapsed and buried her face in the mat.

She might have dozed off briefly from fatigue.

I climbed onto Emika’s back as she lay face down and pressed her trapezius muscles with my thumbs.

“Hnnngh…!”

“Emika, did you not sleep properly yesterday? Your eyes have been unfocused since earlier.”

In this state, we couldn’t properly conduct the lesson.

While there’s no pressure point to prevent drowsiness, I massaged her back muscles to relieve tension.

“Too much homework, hnnnng!”

“Don’t make weird noises.”

“I can’t help it…”

“Fine, I’ll be gentler. Just listen while I massage you.”

“Why do we have to do these movements? Honestly, they don’t seem helpful for combat at all.”

“I was planning to explain that today. I deliberately withheld information to avoid influencing the results. So don’t doze off and listen carefully.”

“Hnng…!”

“Can you at least respond properly?”

I brought over a hologram from across the room to review the movements she had recorded earlier.

“This is a kind of aura aptitude test.”

“Aura aptitude test? Weren’t those all fake?”

“Tests based on birth dates or names are all fake. This is a real aura aptitude test. Of course, not everyone can do it—you need excellent joint mobility like Emika.”

There’s a reason I never skip yoga or stretching, not even for a day.

“The key is having the potential to perfectly execute the movement. If you can accurately identify the principle closely connected to that movement, it can help with external manifestation. Don’t doze off—listen carefully.”

“Ack!”

When I pressed on Emika’s external obliques, she jumped up like a fresh fish.

I maintained my balance on top of her and calmed the girl down again.

Then I pointed to the 8th movement that was playing.

One-finger push-up.

“This typically involves the principle of ‘Sharp.’ People with talent in Sharp aura can perform this movement with a very high probability.”

“Oh, I kind of understand! It’s like how in MBTI, people who enjoy staying home are likely to be classified as I, right?”

“Roughly speaking, yes. But you did this one relatively easily.”

“Yeah, they make us do this in our school too.”

“That’s what makes this difficult to discern. Since movements can be performed through training, we have to take that into account.”

“So is there a method?”

“Keep observing. Think of it as solving 100 probability differential equations with 100 variables.”

Adella awakened her external manifestation through Venus principles.

Such people can naturally do handstands better than others without special training.

That’s because Venus’s axis of rotation is flipped 180 degrees compared to other planets.

People in this world couldn’t possibly understand such absurd correlations.

It was a conclusion drawn from folk wisdom in my previous life, where mana was extremely abundant.

I carefully observed her movements while massaging Emika’s soft shoulders.

“Name, I have a question.”

“Yeah, what is it?”

“How can you be good at everything? Don’t you need specific talents?”

“Didn’t they teach you in Taoism? All streams return to the sea. This is common sense in both Eastern and Western philosophy.”

“Ah…! All streams eventually unite in the ocean!”

“Spring, summer, autumn, winter—they’re all seasons, time, the cycle of life. A fixed moment in time creates countless illusions in different time periods, hence ‘Illusion.’ It returns at the same time every year, hence ‘Dominance.’ Yet the environment changes unpredictably, hence ‘Change.’ Similarly, the ways humans handle aura are ultimately just wordplay.”

Once you know how to handle external manifestation, connecting it to other principles is very easy.

People just don’t bother because it’s troublesome and unfamiliar.

After reviewing all 100 movements, I closed my eyes and focused on calculations.

This was the first time I couldn’t see the pattern at a glance.

If it wasn’t among these 100, today would be a complete waste.

Having failed to find the needle in the desert, now I’d have to search Antarctica.

But the eureka god helped me.

Finding this was purely luck on my part.

“Sharp…”

“Sharp? So as Master Koizumi said, I have talent in thrusting techniques? I’ve heard that so often it’s not even surprising.”

“It’s Sharp, but with ‘cutting-edge’ attached.”

“Huh? That means…”

Cutting-edge.

After much deliberation, I made my diagnosis.

“Emika, a lightsaber suits you better than a bamboo sword.”

If Master Koizumi or Master Katsuhata heard this, they’d be grabbing the backs of their necks in shock.