Risen World

Chapter 200: Experimenting with Aura and another Visitor

After setting up his guild and heading back home Joshua was thinking about what he should do with the rest of the time he had off. He did spend a lot of his afternoons meditating and messing with Buster. The Fenrir seemed to have grown a bit more once again and Joshua was starting to be able to sense its emotions more clearly. It was getting to the point where Joshua could imagine he'd be able to talk to buster soon enough. There were a few questions Joshua had about soul beast and he planned on asking Thoren next time he came by for a visit. He had a feeling that no one on earth was anywhere near close enough to worry about their soul beast evolving anytime soon so he put that to the back of his mind for now.

At the moment Joshua was at a crossroads on what to focus on until the next expedition came up. He still had a couple days left until the group would gather up to head back to James Town and he needed to figure out what he wanted to focus on during his free time while he had the chance. Adrian was of course busy training his sword play like usual and making progress so that he could be more useful in upcoming fights in the future. Joshua had a good feeling he had yet to see the best of his three friend's strengths at this point. The fact that the scorpions were probably the worst type of enemies for them to face if they wanted to show off was the main reason for that.

Aito was off doing his own thing and apparently that somehow involved working at Vivian's restaurant. He seemed to be completely focused on training his cooking skills at the moment and it showed by the tired eyes he showed up with the last time Joshua had seen him at the training area. Joshua hoped it was all worth it for his friend and it would also be great to have someone else help him with cooking from now on. Adrian and Henry were both average cooks at best that wouldn't get much flavor out of the delicious meat from the evolved beast they came across, Lilly was alright but in all honestly her cooking was more geared towards making food for her animals than for herself or anyone else, and when it came to Amy there wasn't even a question when it came to her "talents" in cooking.

Henry was busy with getting a set of Architects lined up to help him with building up the rest of James Town. The last thing that Henry had set up in town before they came back was a teleport location in town for them to go directly to instead of appearing on the outskirts of the walls where other creatures could attack them if given the opportunity. This way he could bring in help under the protection of the town itself. Of course He'd have to set it up so the defenses of the town wouldn't attack them when they showed up, but Joshua had given him access to that so it wouldn't be a problem. Hopefully by the time they had finished their next expedition they would come back to a town that was on the verge of being completed. After all with the system robots there to help put things together it would go much smoother.

With everyone off doing their own thing Joshua was left to his own devices and during his time meditating he finally came up with an idea of what exactly he wanted to do. There was one thing Joshua had been focusing on since the boss fight with then Scorpion Prince and it was the fact that the creature had such great control over its aura. That was something he wasn't expecting to see in any enemies any time soon since according to Tank most bosses that had such great control over their aura were past level hundred like he was before he was placed in that sealed state.

Even though the Scorpion Prince was able to use its aura in such an interesting way unlike most other creatures that usually just used it to enhance their killing intent, the uses the Scorpion Prince had with its aura were still incredibly limited. It was used in a completely defensive way even though the boss was always on the attack. It never once used its aura to attack from a distance or to enhance the force of its blows which could mean a number of things. Maybe it wasn't intelligent enough to understand how to empower its attacks with aura, it could have not had enough control over its own aura to do so in the first place, or it could even possibly be that its aura was defensive in nature and couldn't be used offensively. Joshua had no idea what the correct answer was, but in the end it didn't really matter since they were able to put down the creature for good because of it.

Now Joshua wanted to figure out how to use his own aura in a similar manner to how the Scorpion Prince was able to. In the end he was an aura user and had just as much aura as that beast had if not more while having a better control over his own aura. Up to this point he had just been going with the flow when it came to his aura. When he first unearthed it with meditation it sprung to full on its own with a little concentration and ever since he's just been letting it lose when fighting. His aura shroud protected him in its own way even though he didn't control it in particular. The only time he had ever really controlled his aura in any way was when he used it to cover his weapons when attacking. This definitely made his attacks more powerful, bust that was mainly due to the enchantments placed on his scale blade that was empowered whenever placed in contact with aura and not the aura itself.

Joshua knew he was going to have to change the situation if he wanted to be more useful in upcoming fights. If he could learn how to control his aura on a much higher level then he might just be able to reach an entire new height of strength that he would definitely need in the coming explorations. So to get started on this path that he was thinking of he started to feel out his own aura. It was something he hadn't really done since the first time he learned how to use his aura in the first place. He could feel the warmth flowing around his body and the strength he always felt when he brought out his aura shroud. It was the inherent strength he gained from using it in the first place and it always gave him an amazing feeling.

Now Joshua was focused on figuring what made that feeling come to be. Why the aura strengthened him and why it protected him in ways like nothing else that Joshua had heard of to this point. His aura nullified half of all incoming attacks while strengthening his bodies attributes at the same time. That was a lot when you thought about it, but for the most part it didn't seem to have a substance to it like the aura of the Scorpion Prince. Anything that would hit Joshua would just have half of its force taken away while passing through the shroud, nothing else. The aura of the Scorpion Prince on the other hand felt as if he was hitting a wall that dispersed the force of his blows entirely. It was a completely different feeling. For a while Joshua pondered on how he could copy the feeling he had gotten from the Scorpion Prince and then the solution just hit him like a ton of bricks. In fact it was so simple that the surprise shocked Joshua out of his meditation and he opened his eyes once more to find himself sitting in the grass out front of the waterfall in his training area.

A giant grin spread across his face as the solution to his question kept running around in his head before he decided to put it to the test for a moment. It was such a simple answer and Joshua wondered why no one else was able to do such a thing. In the end the answer to Joshua's problem was the fact the he wasn't actually generating enough aura while fighting. It wasn't in the sense that he was weak, but in the sense that he was using the bare minimum of his aura when it came to his shroud. He often used his aura in large burst when he used other abilities such as aura pulse which sent out his aura into the surroundings in large amounts or aura blast which concentrated his aura into a blast like attack. Both of these techniques were a form of concentrating aura and letting it burst out even if they ended up having different results.

Now that he had an idea of how to go about things Joshua surrounded himself in his aura shroud like usual and he looked into the water of the pond in front of him to watch the shroud cover him. He noticed that his hair was starting to glow a silver color whenever he used his aura shroud to go along with the already spreading strands of silver hair that were becoming somewhat prominent on him. When the shroud covered his body in full and he saw the familiar ethereal wolf like head surround his face he was certain that his aura shroud was in full effect. He took a moment to inspect it and still could tell that the aura itself seemed like nothing more than air whenever he waived his hands through it. There was very little resistance and he could feel the difference between his aura and the Scorpion Prince's.

With everything set up Joshua took in a deep breath before he started concentrating. He was doing something similar to whenever he used aura blast since aura pulse was on the weaker side. He wanted to get as much strength and aura gathered as possible so he took a moment to let the aura flare up. Instead of focusing on one point in his body he let it flow all around him as if he was surrounding himself with an aura blast instead of just a fist and when he opened his eyes he could see that his idea was working splendidly. The aura that surrounded him was far more condensed and actually obscured his body from view a bit. He could see the pressure his aura was giving off drift into the surroundings as it created a strong breeze that flooded the area.

He couldn't be sure how well his idea was working until he took a hit or gave one, but he didn't really have anyone to test himself against at the moment so he just kept up the feeling as long as possible. Soon he made it so the aura wasn't stagnate, but constantly flowing around his body in a fashion similar to the boss he had faced. That was most likely the reason why whenever they attacked the Scorpion Prince the force would be spread out in the first place. One other thing Joshua noticed while keeping up the aura was the fact that it was incredibly draining. From how fast he was burning through his aura he was certain he could at most hold his current state for ten minutes before he'd run out of aura and have to wait for his natural aura regeneration to fill up his supply once again.

Joshua did think that he could probably use an amount similar to his aura pulse instead of his aura blast to lighten the load on his aura a bit, but it wouldn't be as effective and could probably be torn through by extremely powerful attacks. He also had the feeling that the more blows he took while in the state the faster the strain on his aura would be forcing him to go back to his normal aura shroud faster than the ten minute mark that he was originally feeling he could handle.

After around ten minutes Joshua finally let go of the state and fell to one knee from exhaustion at holding it for so long. His body was covered in sweat and his breathing was a bit ragged, but he could already feel his aura starting to refill itself although it would take a while for him to get to the point where he could use such a state again, but after a couple of minutes he could use his regular aura shroud once more. While Joshua was resting he heard footsteps coming from behind him and turned around to see a fairly tall horned woman with a large jug of what he assumed was liquor strapped to her waste and a lackadaisical smile on her face.

"Well seems like you've figured out something interesting squirt. Why don't we have a drink and talk about it." Garlin said with a big grin.