Chương 7: Boulder

The inside was nothing more than a large chamber, with walls surrounding the entire place and a single massive boulder sitting in the middle. I slowly walked toward the boulder, and as I got closer, I noticed that something had been written across its surface. The inscription was written in a language I couldn't understand, but I already knew what it said.

"To you, bearer of the noble lineage, prove your worth." In simple terms, I needed to destroy the boulder if I wanted to reach the next level. The problem was that this wasn't some ordinary boulder that I could simply punch a few times and break apart. It was nearly 10 feet tall and around 15 feet wide, making it large enough that I could probably fit multiple humans inside it. Normally, destroying something like this would have been a ridiculous task. But I did have something that could help me.

I opened my status window and looked through my traits before selecting Aura Master. AURA MASTER DESCRIPTION A trait that grants the user absolute control over their own aura, allowing them to freely manipulate, compress, expand, and shape their aura according to their will. The trait greatly improves the efficiency of aura usage and allows the user to condense their aura into an extremely dense state, increasing its destructive power without requiring an equal increase in energy consumption.

With sufficient mastery, the user can coat their body in aura, reinforce their physical attacks, release aura externally, and even concentrate their entire aura into a single point to produce an attack with overwhelming penetrating power. The stronger the user's aura and control, the greater the effect. I stared at the description for a few seconds. Then I clicked on my skill Imperial Swordsmanship. Another window appeared in front of me.

IMPERIAL SWORDSMANSHIP — LEVEL 7 DESCRIPTION The swordsmanship of the Imperial Family, developed through generations of battle and refined to its absolute peak. It focuses on overwhelming the opponent through precise sword techniques, efficient movement, and the perfect combination of physical strength and aura.

At Level 7, the user has reached a level of mastery where every movement of the sword can be performed with almost complete control, allowing the user to draw out the maximum power from their body and aura with minimal waste. The higher the user's physical abilities, aura, and understanding of swordsmanship, the greater the power of Imperial Swordsmanship becomes. I looked at the description for a moment before closing the window. It was actually very hard to use Aura Master.

Even in the game, Aura couldn't simply be used without a proper medium or a way to channel it, and since there had been quite a few characters who possessed Aura Master, I already knew exactly how the skill was supposed to work. Aura was different from mana. Mana was simply a natural force that existed throughout the world, something that could be sensed, gathered, and manipulated by those capable of using it. Aura, however, was something completely different.

Aura was born from the inability to use the world's mana. In the ancient times, there had been humans who couldn't use mana no matter how hard they tried, and instead of simply accepting that weakness, they continued to push themselves beyond their limits, refusing to give up even when they had no other path forward. That Will eventually became something of its own. Aura. That was why not every human could use it. Having a strong body wasn't enough, and simply wanting power wasn't enough either.

To truly awaken and control aura, a person needed an incredibly strong will, the kind of will that could continue moving forward even when their body and mind were telling them to stop. Aura came from me. From my body. From my will. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. And controlling it required me to bring all of those things together.

But when I combined that with Imperial Swordsmanship, one of the finest swordsmanship techniques in the Ossraith, the result could become something completely different. Swordsmanship provided the method. Aura provided the power and my body was strong enough to handle it. In fact, perhaps that was the real reason why this body had such ridiculous physical abilities in the first place. The stronger the body, the more aura it could withstand. The stronger the will, the more aura it could produce.

And with Imperial Swordsmanship guiding that power into a single attack, destroying the boulder was as easy as killing an ant. I looked at the massive boulder in front of me, then reached underneath my black coat and pulled out a knife that was around 15 inches long. I slowly unsheathed it and held it in my right hand. I took a deep breath and concentrated, allowing my mind to become completely quiet as I focused on the power sleeping inside my body. I activated Aura Master. [Aura Master activated.] The moment the trait activated, I felt the aura inside my body begin to move, and instead of allowing it to spread throughout my body like it normally would, I started compressing it toward my right arm, slowly forcing more and more of it into a single point until the muscles in my arm began to tense from the pressure. The aura kept gathering. Until even I started to feel the tremendous force that was being compressed into such a small space.

I continued controlling it with Aura Master, carefully preventing the aura from leaking out while using my understanding of Imperial Swordsmanship to guide the power toward the knife, because I didn't need to cover the entire blade with aura, nor did I need to release some massive attack that would destroy everything around me. I only needed one point. The tip of the knife.

I slowly raised the blade and looked toward the enormous boulder, and at that moment, I could somehow feel every part of it, the uneven surface, the countless cracks hidden inside the stone, and even the point where the entire structure was weakest. This was what Imperial Swordsmanship gave me. It wasn't simply about swinging a sword harder than my opponent. It was about controlling every movement, understanding where to strike, and using the smallest amount of movement to produce the greatest possible result.

I took one step forward. My aura compressed even further. Then, using the movement of Imperial Swordsmanship, I released everything I had gathered into a single strike. The knife touched the surface of the boulder. For a moment, nothing happened. Then a tiny crack appeared exactly where the blade had touched. My eyes narrowed as that single crack rapidly spread across the surface, branching in every direction like lightning before the entire boulder suddenly began to tremble. CRACK!

The sound echoed throughout the chamber as the crack continued spreading, and within the next moment, the entire boulder split apart from the point of impact, the massive stone collapsing into countless pieces that crashed onto the ground with enough force to shake the entire chamber. Dust filled the air, covering everything around me, while pieces of stone continued falling from what remained of the boulder. I slowly lowered the knife and stared at the destruction in front of me.

The massive boulder that had been blocking my path was completely gone.

"..." Holy shit… I looked down at the knife in my hand, and despite the amount of power I had just released through it, the blade didn't even have a scratch. Did I use too much aura? I honestly had no idea, because I had never actually used Aura, so there was no way for me to know whether what I had just done was considered normal or completely ridiculous. I simply put the knife back underneath my coat and looked at the broken boulder in front of me. And then suddenly I felt something. It was happiness.

Pure, uncontrollable happiness that suddenly erupted from somewhere deep inside my body, and before I could even realize what I was doing, I had already started dancing in place like an idiot.

"Oh my god!" I looked at the destroyed boulder with my eyes practically shining.

"That was so freaking cool!" I couldn't stop myself anymore. I jumped once, then twice, before throwing my hands into the air like I had just won the biggest victory of my life.

"I wanna do that again!"

"Ahahaha!" I laughed loudly as I looked at the destruction I had caused, completely forgetting about my usual composure for a moment.

"So cool!" I had seen countless characters in the game use incredible abilities, and I had always thought they looked cool, but actually doing something like that myself was an entirely different experience. The feeling of concentrating all that power into a single point and then watching a massive boulder explode from one tiny strike was simply... Amazing. I wanted to do it again.

If there had been another boulder in front of me, I probably would have destroyed that one too just for the satisfaction of seeing it happen again. After a few minutes of dancing around like an idiot, I finally started to regain my composure.

"Enough bullshit. Let's get to the next stage." I looked around the chamber and only then noticed that while I had been completely lost in my little world of happiness, another passage had appeared in the place where the massive boulder had been. I walked toward it and entered. The next room was completely different from the previous one, being much larger with water covering a large portion of the floor, and for some reason, just looking at the place already made me feel slightly disgusted.

I slowly moved forward, carefully looking around as I tried to figure out where the next path was, and after walking for a while, I noticed another passage further ahead. But before I could move toward it, something caught the corner of my eye. A small, completely disgusting-looking toad. I stared at it. It stared back at me. Then another toad crawled out of the water.

One by one, more and more toads began emerging from the water until the entire room seemed to be filled with them, and the strangest part wasn't even their numbers, but the fact that every single one of them was staring directly at me. Then they began making strange, terrified noises in unison.

"Croak... croak..." Their voices echoed throughout the chamber. I froze. For some reason, a sudden wave of terror ran through my entire body.