酷视

Fay\'s voice echoed for a moment before disappearing into the silence of the morning.

"I see…" Loraz sighed heavily before shaking his shoulders and then his head. And by the time he raised his eyes and looked at Fay again…

All the hints of familiar love, respect, and desire to protect were gone without a trace, replaced by nothing but the look of a perfect resolve.

Whatever this man settled on in his mind before, he has now reaffirmed his goals, after facing the opposition from an angle he hoped to avoid.

\'What a father he is,\' I thought when the man made his first step.

Yet, rather than focusing on his advance or getting amazed over how finely Fay controlled the mana that surged towards her…

I put all the processing power of my brain towards this one problem, one equation that I was so desperate to figure out.

There was no skill I could use to fight Loraz off. And even if I managed to replicate the same state we were in with Fay just before…

I still wasn\'t sold on the idea of actively and seriously harming Fay\'s father. And unless Fay\'s life would be on the line, I couldn\'t really see myself changing my mind on that point.

Still, there had to be something I could do.

And as my mind rushed to figure out some sort of a new deal, a new approach that would change the odds in our favor…

Three things happened at the same time.

Done with his doubts and hesitations, Loraz leaped forth, ready to finish the entire conflict with just one more strike of his fist. As he did so, the aura swirled around him, infusing itself into a fist to the point the man\'s hand started to glow, as if taking on its bestial form with just the condensed projection of the man\'s aura.

A feat even greater than Fay creating her domain with her hair, for Loraz, provided no physical anchor to the illusion of his growing fist.

At the same time, Fay\'s aura exploded outwards, expanding into a half-sphere of roughly three meters in every direction. And quite noticeably, her once again sparking, divine aura… didn\'t diffuse into its thinner, more natural form.

And lastly, as both Loraz and Fay were dead-set on solving their conflict in the most brutal way possible, my fingers fell on the handle of a random knife dropped by one of the many fallen human soldiers. And out of all the things in the world, it was the gritty texture of some sort of leather wrapped around its handle that finally provided me with one last clue to connect all the dots.

For but a single instant, I saw all my skills for what they truly were. An established path that swirled my aura in extremely complex, compounded ways to bring forth a certain effect.

Those skills thought…

Even though I could see their forms flashing in forms of three-dimensional blueprints… or rather, their illusion that suddenly appeared all over the void my mind was still in… There was no freaking way for me to decipher their meaning or the uses of various parts of their structures!

The pathways of my skills were far beyond a human ability to comprehend. And even with the processing power of my brain reaching beyond the limits of a human ascender thanks to my skill…

When I thought three things happened at the same time, I lied.

Or rather, when I thought it, I was yet to be made aware of the fourth element of this single instant, one that came into play only once the void of my half-awake soul filled with the blueprints, allowing me to crudely figure out the general sense of logic behind them.

And the very moment I did so, I noticed a strange discrepancy in two things.

First, my blood tribute felt… weird, out of the usual when compared to my other skills. One of its parts was overly complex, elaborate far beyond any practical use… A part that I could easily replace with a part of another skill of mine that simply felt correct.

And so, in the void of my imagination, I made a perfect copy, a perfect replica of my blood tribute skill\'s blueprint… only to decisively cut away its overcomplicated part.

The very moment I did so, the entire blueprint suddenly… faded.

Not physically, though. I could still see and perceive it as fine as before… but its intensity greatly decreased, making it seem as if it was about to collapse and fall apart, turning into nothing more but strands of my imagination.

Before that could happen, though, I stuffed the gaping hole in the skill\'s structure with the element of my Darkness core that just felt right for the spot.

[Created Skill: Aura Tribute]

[Morphing Skill: Elemental Aura Tribute]

[New tribute: Dark Aura Tribute

+4 Darkness affinity]

[New skill!

-Elemental Aura tribute

- By sacrificing one\'s elemental aura, the wielder of this skill can morph temporal forms]

- Can morph time and space at an increasing cost to the wielder\'s aura

- The cost of the skill gradually restores upon the collapse of the morph]

In a sense, this was one hell of a discovery. For me to be able to change the nature of my skills to alter them and gain new abilities… Was one hell of an important information and promise of rapid growth.

But from a calmer perspective… this discovery was actually much greater.

My current understanding of aura was extremely low, based on feelings and instincts and only a few logical assumptions. But what obtaining this new skill brought for me, save for the skill itself, was a slightly better understanding of the underlying laws that controlled how aura behaved.

And with this, my vision appeared to change.

The glow of Loraz\'s fists turned from just a condensed aura to an entire ocean of swirling flows that one had to look extremely closely to notice. The movement of his aura around his body also gained a new meaning, now allowing me to understand how it actively reinforced the man\'s physical ability.

But most importantly of all, I\'ve just gained a new skill. And with Fay and Loraz about to strike each other down…

There was no time for me to figure things out. Right now, was my last opportunity to intervene in this fight!