[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 234 – Aura Shaping

Rolling waves of meager pressure emanated from Sam’s form as sweat beaded and rolled down his body, across his sculpted arms, and down his back.

At the Empress’ urging, he had removed his armor.

Her reasoning, suspect though it was in his opinion, was that his armor was already saturated with his mana and would impede his aura’s progression.

As weak as his aura control was, Sam would need every advantage he could muster in order to press onward.

Even Komachi took off her armor and began to slowly remove the [Bronze Mail +1] he created for her. She seemed most reluctant to part with that and looked between both Sam and the Empress for affirmation before finally removing that too.

At least he still had on his undergarments. A simple shirt and shorts. Not the most comfortable things in the faint coldness of the ruins, but better than being naked.

“You do not have recovery garments?” the Empress asked when she saw the pathetically ordinary clothes he had.

“Yeah, I don’t know what that is,” Sam told her.

“I question the caliber of your Alchemists back home.” She sighed and pulled off her armor, tossing it to the ground with a heavy CLANK! that rattled Sam’s seat and caused Komachi to do an involuntary backflip.

Beneath her dark armor, she wore a seamless black catsuit. In the dim light, Sam couldn’t see everything, but he could sure as hell see a lot more than he had expected.

And he thought the cleavage window was bad.

The Empress’ catsuit, which she called a “recovery garment” clung to every curve of her body. From his position it had the faint luster of velvet.

“Heh, hongabaloongas,” Komachi said with a snicker.

That wasn’t at all the correct word for the reference, but Sam understood her meaning all the same.

The Empress spun in place, showing off the garment.

Conspicuously, there were only two major places it did not fully cover. Most of her back, and from her collar down to her ample cleavage despite her neck being completely sheathed in the garment. Her feet and hands were also kept bare.

“So, I see you don’t need it on your back or your chest?” Sam asked huskily.

The Empress looked at him with hooded eyes. She turned away and lifted her blonde hair away from her sculpted back.

Komachi snickered again, then suddenly jabbed a paw threateningly at the Empress as if she was of two minds on the matter. “Don’t be a homewrecker! ‘Machi sees them two Christmas hams you smugglin’ in there!”

“If you must know, mass is immensely useful for handling Beast Magic.” The Empress glared over her shoulder at Komachi. She softened her gaze slightly for Sam and pointed to draw his attention to the bare, tanned skin of her upper back.

Sam wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be staring at, but he obliged and was rewarded with an interesting sight. A tattoo–that was the only word he could come up with–materialized across her back.

Taking up almost the entirety of her bare skin, was the symbol of a two-headed snake. Sam tilted his head. Perhaps it was two snakes joined at the tail?

Large as life, the dark tattoo of the twin snakes had their conjoined serpentine body coiled around the handle of a large half-moon axe, their fangs bared away from each other.

“This is the Mark of Zarak,” she told him, turning around and dropping her hair. A similar mark, though miniaturized and with some marked changes to the iconography, also appeared on her upper chest from her collarbone down to the top of her sternum.

“I want a fancy tattoo too,” Komachi said. “Maybe on my b-hole.”

His brain caught up to the words that came out of Komachi’s mouth. He slowly looked over to stare at her.

The Bard appeared utterly innocent, grooming her paw.

“So, as you can see,” she said, donning her armor once more, “the bared skin is not without its purpose. In order to fully utilize the mark, I must have the skin unencumbered. My armor is designed to allow such mana to pass, but that would be antithetical to a recovery garment.”

Sam thought about what she said. He didn’t say anything for quite a while as he chewed on his words carefully.

Finally, he said, “Sounds like a lot of work to make it so you can show your cleavage, and doesn’t mention why your back is armored.”

Unbothered by his remark, the Empress collected two cube items from a banded chest on the far wall and brought them back. “The placement of the mark matters. I can channel the mark on the back to that on my chest. I do not know about you, but I, for one, would prefer to see a weapon coming than to constantly worry about defending an open back.”

She handed a cube to Sam and Komachi. “Thread your mana into these. Provided they are still operational, the garments should customize themselves to you.”

Komachi took the cube in her paws and reverted to typical cat behavior. Rolling on her back, she batted it around.

Sam hefted his cube, but looked up at the Empress. “What sort of weapon was that? It looked like a half-moon axe…only the blade was perpendicular to the shaft instead of parallel.”

“It is called an amood,” she explained. “They are a favored weapon of the Imperial Regiment. You’ll not find a better weapon capable of slashing defensively from a distance.”

Sam thought back to the odd design of the weapon and had to agree, without worrying about the physics of creating such a weapon with Earth-grade methods, a weapon like that could be quite useful.

Especially if you were swinging it with superhuman Strength and Dexterity.

Sam looked down at the cube in his hand and did as Zarishna asked. The little box unfolded, revealing a tiny square of tightly folded black material.

Laughing, thinking it a joke, Sam unfolded the item and then laughed more when it didn’t expand any further. “This is about the right material to cover my hand,” Sam told her.

“You’ll fit,” she assured him. “The Emperor does, and you’re smaller than him.”

Sam somehow doubted that. He didn’t necessarily like the comparison, however, and didn’t press it further. Despite how much he wanted to.

Bet I could take the guy in a fight, Sam thought sourly. Once I get some proper aura control, at least.

He didn’t believe a word of the thoughts, but they did soothe his wounded pride somewhat.

The Empress at least gave him some privacy, though she did glance back once at Komachi, who was struggling. First it was on the wrong end, then she was wrapped up in it.

He could just imagine Raiko walking over and helping Komachi get suited up. The Empress did no such thing.

The [Recovery Suit] looked like something you would put on a toy doll, but Sam shrugged and took off his clothes, seeing as the Empress was now keeping her back to them.

He put his foot in tentatively, surprised to find how much it stretched. Every moment he thought it would hit a breaking point, but the material never bunched. It never grew uncomfortably tight. Sam was pretty sure that he could have stretched it across a building to no ill-effect.

Once it was on him, he did have to agree that he felt somewhat better. Focused in a way that he couldn’t quite grasp. It covered him from the neck down like a second skin made out of black velvet. It diffused the dim light, and thankfully didn’t show literally everything.

That was when Sam thought to examine the item.

[Recovery Suit]

(Undergarment) (E-Class)

(★ Common)

Enhancements

Mana Recovery V | Movement Speed V

Aura Control I | Omnidefense II

Self-Repair X

The standard garment belonging to the Immortals of Alzahan, the [Recovery Suit] provides a suite of benefits for control and recovery of magical essence as well as a slight modification to the wearer’s defenses. Thanks to the material’s inclusion of [Ix’ril Fibers], movement is not only easier, but requires less effort while providing a self-healing effect native to the Ix’ril.

“Do I finally got it?” Komachi’s voice came muffled through the material that completely covered her upper half.

The suit, once again, was put on entirely wrong. Sam had no idea how she managed to get it wrong every time.

“Nope,” Sam said.

“Dang it!”

Sam knelt, gently extricating Komachi from the half-tangled suit. Meowing loudly, she fought back like she used to in his apartment when he was trying to give her a dose of medicine.

“Calm down, Komachi!”

“Maachiiiii!”

It didn’t matter. She was defiant to the last.

But Sam was just as, if not more, stubborn. He gently, but firmly, guided her paws and tail into the appropriate sections and then finally pulled her head and ears out of the hole meant for her head.

“There you go.”

“It was dark!” Komachi cried, then wrapped her furry limbs around Sam in a hug. “My animal brain took over!”

She brushed up against him for some additional thanks, then took off like a mini-rocket, greatly enjoying the speed boost the equipment offered.

Sam couldn’t help stretching and moving his body around as well. Every motion snapped like he had springs assisting him on both the extension and retraction.

“This is going to take some getting used to,” he said.

“Yet it is comfortable, yes?” The Empress said.

Sam couldn’t get the voice of Flander’s saying “it’s like wearing nothing at all…nothing at all…nothing at all…” out of his head. He winced for a moment in a futile attempt to purge the thoughts.

Zarishna lifted a brow curiously.

He waved off her concern. “It’s like…it’s–” Sam fought the urge. “It is comfortable.”

It’s like wearing nothing at all…

“Riiight…”

Clearing his throat, Sam got back to training his aura control.

The suit helped more than he wanted to admit. Before, he had been struggling for the most meager control, but now he could not only visualize the threads of mana coming out to join the greater whole, but manipulate them as well.

The minutes, hours, and days passed without much awareness. Sam was wholly devoted to his training, as boring and trying as it was.

It would have been accurate to say that time lost all sense of meaning, if it hadn’t already. Whether it was a few hours, a few days, or even years was impossible to tell.

Sam’s sense of time had ground to a halt until he could only guess. Even using his own heartbeat as a clock was unreliable. Whenever his concentration was broken, he lost count of where he was and had to start over again.

By the time he reached 3,000 heartbeats and he lost track, he stopped bothering. Besides, counting your heartbeat for nearly an hour straight wasn’t the most entertaining or enriching of activities.

Even Komachi was unusually steadfast and resolute. It was surreal to not see her sleeping several hours out of the day.

It was hard to tell whether she was grumpy about that. His cat seemed just as determined as him and trained just as much.

After an indeterminate amount of time, Sam stood up to his full height. He clenched his fist, willing his aura to manifest in force.

A faint, silvery-white stream of energy rolled out and encompassed his bare hand. He stared, mesmerized by the rolling steam-like motion that was his aura. It never left his body completely. Acting like something between a flame and steam, it wavered and rolled across his fist but never dissipated as he would have expected.

His hand felt as strong as a block of hardened steel. Far more powerful than it would normally be. All because of an aura? Sam couldn’t help but question.

“Yes,” Zarishna told him, “all because of your aura. The worrisome damage I first sensed in your foundation is gone as well. Whatever you did to yourself prior to arriving here has finally healed. You should think of your aura as an extension of yourself. Two parts of the same whole. Fighting without an aura would be like attacking with your fists, but not your legs, or vice versa.”

Sam thought about the pain he felt while fighting the ogre. He clenched his fist tighter and his aura surged out of control, roaring higher and higher in silvery-white flames before he was able to bring it back under his conscious control.

For those few scant seconds, he felt as if he had opened a vein of mana and half his MP poured out.

“Not bad,” Zarishna said. “You managed to bring it back under control before you passed out. Few Azure Recruits are capable of that. But, manifesting it is just the first step. Now the next phase of your training can begin.”