Chapter 30

When Serpens opened his eyes, he was standing in a new space.

“What is this place…….”

Darkness was everywhere.
It was a black space without a single point of light.
He could not be sure whether his eyes were closed or open.

“Am I dead?”

He hurriedly pinched himself here and there.
Fortunately, he felt pain.
He was not dead.

Then, a familiar voice came from behind him.

“This is your inner world.”

Serpens turned around.
Sean was standing there.
No, he was floating.

It was clearly a strange situation.
Sean, now translucent, was floating in the air.
He looked closer to a ghost than a person.
Even so, the boy was accepting this situation as something natural.
It felt somehow like being in a dream, where anything would be possible in this space.

“……Inner world?”
“That’s right. Look over there.”

Sean pointed ahead with his finger.
Serpens turned his gaze.
And-

“……!”

In the middle of the dark space, a faintly wavering ray of light entered his sight.
It seemed to be quite far away.
Even so, the light wavering irregularly felt incredibly alluring.

“That’s the Aura inside ya.”
“There is Aura inside me?”
“All humans have Aura. The important thing is whether they can manifest it or not. That’s the difference.”

Serpens slowly approached his Aura.
Only then did he realize that he too was floating in a translucent state like Sean.

The strange feeling of floating through the air.
Perhaps because of that, this place felt even more like a dream.

After approaching the ray of light, Serpens slowly reached out.
But.

Doong-

An invisible barrier blocked his hand.

“It’s blocked.”

Serpens muttered.
Even when he changed direction and used more strength, even the tips of his fingers couldn’t reach the light.

“I can’t use Aura because this is blocked? And I have to break it to use it?”
“That’s how it works. There are many people who reach a certain level and still can’t break that.”

Serpens blankly looked at the barrier.

“…….”

Then he clenched his fist.

Bang!

The boy struck the barrier hard.
But the wall didn’t budge.

Bang! Bang!

He swung his fists in succession.
But not even a small crack formed.
After repeating it several more times, sweat formed on Serpens’s forehead.

“This…… how in the world am I supposed to break it……?”

Despair surged in.
A light he could not reach no matter how much strength he used.
That light was his Aura.
The strength he had longed for was right before his eyes, yet he could not reach it.

Sean asked Serpens, who was blankly looking at the light.

“Why do ya want to become stronger?”

Serpens caught his breath.
It was a question he had already thought about.

“……There are people I want to protect.”
“People ya want to protect?”

He remembered the young beggar who had been getting beaten in Oratio.
There were people for whom not having their food taken mattered more than being beaten to death.
Serpens knew about them better than anyone.

A life of enduring each day amid hunger, cold, and fear.
A life where one lowered their head when the strong passed by, and could do nothing even when they saw the weak suffer.
Every hour, they had to desperately endure in order to survive.
He wanted to stop others from ever experiencing such misfortune again.

The reason the boy wanted to become stronger came from there.

And after first meeting Lucas, he had eaten a meal that filled his stomach, slept in a bed, and worn new clothes.
He had learned that what felt like a dream to Serpens was something very trivial to someone else.
He wanted to make someone’s dream of that trivial thing come true.
Heroism? A sense of justice? Serpens himself didn’t know the exact reason.
Only his heart and reason were shouting that he wanted to, and that he had to.

The reason he had to become stronger.
Without strength, he couldn’t protect anyone, and he couldn’t make a better world.

Serpens clenched his fist.
He knew well that the process would not be easy.
That was why Serpens had worked hard without missing a single day.
He had set aside rest and focused only on his goal.
Even so, the possibility was still slim.

Serpens swung his fist once more.

Bang-

Because the possibility was slim, he was all the more desperate.
Because he was desperate, he made an effort.
Because he kept making that effort, he could hope for results.

The boy’s fists continued to move.
At that sight, an unreadable smile spread across Sean’s lips.

Bang-!

And how much time had passed?
His fists gradually grew faster.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Cracks began to form in the solid barrier.

The following blows gradually widened the cracks.
At that moment, the light leaking from the cracks flowed into Serpens.

Crack-

At last, the barrier that had blocked the boy shattered.
Light spread out as if exploding.
Serpens smiled as he was enveloped in that light.

When the brightness of the light faded, Serpens opened his eyes again.
The two had returned to the sanctuary.
Serpens was feeling the pounding of his heart with a blank face.

“Wow…….”

The blue light wavering over the sanctuary.
The warm wind blowing in.
In addition, he could sense various things in nature in greater detail.

“It seems you succeeded.”

Lucas spoke to Serpens indifferently.

Even at those words, the boy only looked at his hands for a while.
A strange energy wrapped around his muscles, passed through his blood vessels, and reached all the way to his fingertips.
It was an unfamiliar sensation he had never felt before.

“Is this…… Aura?”

When Serpens opened his palm, a faint light wavered.
A light that sometimes shone white and sometimes trembled black.
Lucas and Sean stared at that light for a moment.

“You’ve finally taken the first step. But this isn’t the end. It’s the beginning.”

Sean said with a grin from beside him.

Serpens took a deep breath.
He didn’t know how he was supposed to use this power.
Just in case, he swung his sword here and there, but nothing special happened.
Only the feeling that the “sense” Lucas had been training him in had grown sharper.
And the ability to make light waver in his hand.
That was exactly the level of Serpens’s current Aura.

Thud.

Lucas placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
Then he pushed down with strength and made Serpens sit.

“Serpens. Try gathering the unfamiliar sensations you feel in your body into your heart.”
“Huh?”
“I will teach you how to control Aura.”

Serpens tilted his head.
It might have been his imagination.
But he clearly felt impatience from Lucas.
It was a very faint change.
But because Lucas usually revealed no emotion at all, a small change came across more clearly than it would from others.
There was also the fact that the boy’s sense had become sharper because of Aura.

‘What’s going on?’

Even so, thinking there must be a reason, Serpens mulled over Lucas’s words.
Then he nodded.

‘Gather it into my heart?’

Serpens closed his eyes and slowly focused on his heart.
When he inhaled, he felt as if the Aura spread throughout his body was gradually gathering.
But it soon scattered.

He focused again.
Carefully, cautiously.
He felt Aura.
As if each part of it held its own will, it was actively exploring the boy’s body.
Serpens’s face crumpled.
Even when he tried to gather the Aura, it wouldn’t gather.
It kept slipping away like sand escaping his grasp.

He repeated it for a long while, but Serpens could not even get a sense for it.

“Damn it…….”
“Do not be impatient. Awakening Aura at your age and skill level is itself an impressive thing.”
“…….”
“Be greedy one step at a time.”
“Yes.”

Lucas nodded toward Sean.
At some point, the hand pressing on his shoulder had changed.

“It will sting for a moment.”

At that moment.

Pajijik-!

Pain like being struck by lightning pierced through the boy’s body.

“Khak!”

Serpens twisted his body.
Goosebumps rose, and every nerve felt as if it were burning.
Even though he was clearly gritting his teeth, a scream leaked out.

“There. The urgent part is handled.”

When Sean removed his hand, Serpens gasped roughly.
His mind went blank.
What had that pain just now been?
More than that, what had been so urgent?

“Here, eat this.”

Thud.

Serpens looked at the object thrown onto his stomach.
A golden bead he had seen once before.
Unlike in the past, when he had doubted whether it was all right to eat, now he was only glad to see it.

Crack-!

The seed of the Golden Mandragora.
A medicine known as a panacea.

“Lie down and rest for a bit. I’m going to talk with bro for a bit.”

Serpens lay spread-eagled and waved his hand as if he had no strength to answer.
Sean looked at the boy and gave a bitter smile.

“You saw it too, bro. That guy’s Aura.”
“……Yes.”
“It’s black. As you know, that’s…….”
“Enough. I know even if you do not say it.”

Lucas glanced toward Serpens.
It meant Serpens was listening.
Sean understood what he meant and only sighed.

The two looked at the boy lying there for a long while.
Sean’s words circled in Lucas’s head.

‘Black Aura…….’

Aura served to reflect its user.
Aura was the visualization of the power used to achieve the goal one desired.

Elves, who valued harmony with nature, often had colors in the blue range.
Dwarves, who valued the growth of strength, and humans, who valued the achievement of personal goals, usually had colors according to those goals.
But black was different.

As far as Lucas knew, Serpens’s goal was a great cause.
Something about not letting others end up unfortunate like him.
It was true that the boy held a good intention.
But black was not the color of those with that kind of wish.

Revenge.
The Aura of those who craved the blood of others was the same as Serpens’s.

Lucas knew that better than anyone.
Because his own was black Aura.

Also, there was one more kind of being that gave off black Aura.
Not revenge, but simple slaughter.
The enemy of the three empires, who enjoyed domination.

The Aura of monsters was like that.

Serpens was experiencing hell.

Rough waves created by the fierce winter wind.
Those waves were shaking the ship.

“Uweeek.”

Because his Aura had been unlocked, Serpens’s senses had become extremely sharp.
His seasickness, which had already been severe before, had become twice as painful.

The only consolation was that land could be seen not far away.
The end of the two-week voyage was approaching.

“Lucas……. Can we travel on foot for a while instead?”
“We will.”
“Thank you.”

Serpens emptied his stomach, looking like he was about to die.

Lucas looked down at the boy.

He was still a child.
It was foolish to judge a person by looking at only one part of them, especially one part of a child who was not yet grown.
Even if he became a being that craved blood someday, he was not that yet.

Twelve years old.
Though he had borrowed another’s power, unlocking Aura at this age was unprecedented for a human.
A genius. Perhaps it was something even beyond that.
If a child like this grew in the wrong direction, the influence he would have then……

‘No. Let’s not worry about the future.’

Lucas slowly shook his head.
No matter how great his talent was, and no matter what color his Aura was, in the end, he was currently only a child suffering from motion sickness.
Raising such a child was entirely up to him.