Chapter 5. Curses And Aura, How Would You Mix Them?
| Jaune POV |
Thwack.
I tossed the thick, leather-bound hardcover book onto the wooden table. A small cloud of dust kicked up from the impact, dancing in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the massive glass windows of the Beacon Academy library.
I rubbed my eyes. My retinas were burning.
"Bullshit."
The word slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it. Fortunately, I was sitting in the most remote, forgotten corner of the restricted section. No one was around to hear me.
Two weeks.
It had been exactly two weeks since I woke up in this gangly, pathetic excuse for a body. Two weeks of waking up at the crack of dawn, getting my ass handed to me by a Spartan girl with a friendly smile and a ginger with a hammer obsession. Two weeks of sitting through painfully boring classes taught by men who liked the sound of their own voices entirely too much.
But mostly, it had been two weeks of me sitting in this exact chair, reading every single text this school possessed on the subject of 'Aura'.
I glared down at the cover of the book I had just thrown.
The Light of Our Souls: A Guide to Aura Projection and External Defense.
It was a complete, suicidal load of garbage, just painted over with some pretty flowery word to dress it up nicer.
I leaned back in the creaky wooden chair and crossed my arms. Over the past fourteen days, I hadn't just been reading. I had also been interrogating team. Carefully, of course. Playing the part of the ignorant, clumsy village boy who needed everything explained to him like a toddler.
"Pyrrha, how does Aura actually block a sword?" I had asked her three days ago over a plate of awful cafeteria eggs.
She had smiled that bright, patient smile of hers. "It acts as a physical barrier, Jaune! Your soul projects slightly past your skin, creating a hardened shell. It absorbs attack so your body doesn't have to."
I had nodded and smiled back. Internally, I was screaming.
Then I tried Ren. "Ren, what happens if your Aura breaks? Does it hurt your Soul?"
The quiet ninja had sipped his green tea, looking perfectly serene. "Not permanently. The soul is merely exhausted. It retracts to recover. At most you'll feel fatigue, but your Aura is fine, just slowly recovering."
Idiots.
Both of them. Everyone in this entire damn school. No, this entire damn world.
They were playing with matches while sitting on a powder keg, entirely oblivious to the explosion that could happen.
I raised my right hand, staring at my palm.
I concentrated.
A dark, pitch-black energy, jagged and malicious, sparked to life around my fingertips. It crackled silently, absorbing the light around it.
Cursed Energy.
Then, I focused on my left hand.
A bright, warm, blinding white light flared to life, coating my skin in a soft, gelatinous glow.
Aura.
I held my two hands up, looking at the two entirely different power systems currently inhabiting my single body.
Let's break this down. Let's do a little Curse Sorcery 101 for the class of idiots currently running Remnant.
Cursed Energy is fuel. It is the byproduct of negative human emotion. Stress, anger, grief, malice, fear. It leaks out of humans like exhaust fumes from a cheap car engine.
As a Sorcerer, my job is to use the negative energy inside me, compress them, and use them to punch things really, really hard.
It's a resource. You can burn through all your Cursed Energy and be perfectly fine. You'll just be tired and out of ammo.
Now, let's look at Aura.
Aura is not a byproduct.
Aura is the core itself.
It is the literal, fundamental essence of a living being. It is the soul.
These absolute lunatics in Remnant take their soul, pull it out of the safety of their physical body, and smear it over their skin like a layer of cheap sunscreen to block punches.
When a Grimm hits a Huntsman, it doesn't just hit a magical forcefield. It hits their soul.
The Aura acts as a buffer, yes. It possesses a frankly ridiculous amount of durability and regenerative potency. I'll give it that. The sheer density of the Aura Pyrrha unlocked for me is staggering. It rivals the total energy output of some of the best Sorcerers I knew back home.
But potency does not excuse terrible methodology.
By projecting your soul outward, you are leaving it completely, agonizingly exposed.
Ren said the soul just 'recovers' if the Aura breaks. That's because he, and seemingly everyone else on this godforsaken planet, has only ever fought Grimm or other humans who just attack with physical damage.
If a Jujutsu Sorcerer—any Sorcerer worth their salt—fought a Huntsman, the fight would end in one second.
If I wrap my fist in Cursed Energy, I am wrapping it in pure, concentrated malice.
If I punch a Huntsman's Aura shield, my Cursed Energy doesn't clash with their forcefield. It ignores the physical projection rule of this world. It views the Aura as exactly what it is: an exposed, raw soul.
Even a normal Curse Enforced punch becomes a soul attack because these madmans have their soul covering their body, instead of having it inside them.
I proved this on my first night when I caved that senior bully's ribs in. My punch went straight through his blue shield and hit his physical body and his spiritual self simultaneously.
Projecting your soul outward is a death sentence against the wrong opponent.
I closed both my fists. The black sparks and the white light vanished.
"I refuse," I muttered to the empty library aisle.
I refuse to fight like a Huntsman. I am not going to turn my soul into a punching bag for giant scorpions.
But at the same time, I would be a complete moron to ignore the massive battery of power Pyrrha had unlocked inside my chest.
Cursed Energy is excellent for outward defense and offense. Curse Reinforcement—coating my skin in negative energy—acts as a far superior armor because it doesn't risk my spiritual self if it shatters.
But Cursed Energy on its own doesn't heal; it only enhances. The only way to use it to heal is through Positive Cursed Energy, which it seemed I'd have to unlock all over again. As despite my best efforts, it still wasn't manifesting.
Aura, on the other hand, possesses an innate and fast healing factor. It naturally seeks to repair the body it inhabits.
So, what is the solution?
Simple.
Keep the Cursed Energy on the outside to act as the armor.
Keep the Aura on the inside to act as the engine.
But you can't just let Aura slosh around freely inside your body while you fight. If you don't project it outward, it naturally pools in the center of your chest. To get it into your arms and legs to boost your physical strength without letting it leak through your skin, you need to channel it.
I picked up a pen from the desk and began drawing on a piece of scrap paper.
A crude outline of a human arm.
I am a bit of an academic thief. I didn't invent this concept. I read about it from some mangas and animes I enjoyed back in my old world, an urban fantasy with a different type of Sorcery system altogether.
The concept I was borrowing was what they called 'Magic Circuits'. A pseudo-nervous system created within the physical body to channel magical energy safely without blowing yourself up.
I don't have Magic Circuits.
But I have a nervous system. Millions of them. Wiring my entire body from my brain down to my toes.
If I can't project my Aura outward safely, I will force it to travel along the physical pathways of my own nervous system. I will convert my nerves into permanent channels for my soul.
Aura Circuits. Name pending.
I tapped the pen against the paper.
It sounded doable on paper. The theory had merit.
The execution, however? Yeah, I didn't need to be a doctor to tell you that would probably just cripple anyone that tries to do it. The amount of precision needed is simply inhumane.
I tapped the pen against the paper. The theory had merit. The execution, however? I didn't need to be a doctor to know that it would probably cripple anyone who tried it. The precision required was simply inhumane.
Fortunately for me, I was what my old world considered a "freak of nature." I could cheat.
While my Domain Expansion and Reverse Cursed Technique were currently out of reach, my base Cursed Technique wasn't. My Operation Room was still with me.
Operation Room was a technique that allowed me to create a massive, invisible sphere of influence around myself.
Inside my Room, I had the ability to alter and interact with anything I could perceive. From switching locations with an object for teleporting, to hardening the air into a barrier, to amplifying the force of a punch a hundredfold—I could even pull your head off non-lethally and place it on your ass if I felt like it.
It was one of, if not the most versatile Cursed Techniques of the modern era.
Even the Ten Shadows didn't touch it in terms of pure utility.
So, creating a Room to micromanage my own biology and survive the process was doable.
Sadly, "doable" didn't mean "painless." The process of forging just one Aura Circuit caused such an agonizing amount of pain that I nearly blacked out the first time I tried.
My left hand twitched involuntarily, a phantom ache echoing deep in the marrow of my forearm.
I vividly remembered that first attempt four days ago.
It was 3:00 AM. I was sitting on the cold tile floor of our dormitory bathroom, the door locked. I had a small Room erected and a rolled-up towel stuffed entirely into my mouth to muffle my own screams.
I had chosen a single nerve on my arm. I visualized my own Aura as a needle. Then, I mentally grabbed the nerve in my right arm—the one running from the armpit down to the palm.
And I shoved the Aura directly into the nerve.
Flesh and soul are connected, but they are not the same thing. Nerves are designed to carry tiny, electrical signals to tell your muscles to twitch. They are not designed to carry the dense mass of a human soul.
The exact second the Aura entered the nerve, I thought my arm had been thrust into a vat of boiling acid.
My vision went white for half a second as every single pain receptor in my right arm fired simultaneously.
It felt like someone had peeled my skin back, wrapped my nerves in barbed wire, and hooked it up to a car battery.
It felt like having molten metal flowing through inside you.
I bit down on that towel so hard I tasted blood.
My body tried to reject it. The physical nerve began to tear under the sheer pressure of the spiritual energy. But the nature of Aura is to heal.
So, as the nerve ripped, the Aura instantly stitched it back together.
Rip. Heal. Rip. Heal. Rip. Heal.
Thousands of times a second.
I sat on that bathroom floor for three hours. Sweating profusely, while I had to maintain absolute, flawless concentration. If my focus slipped for even a fraction of a second, the Aura would burst the nerve completely, crippling my right arm, possibly permanently.
It took nearly everything I had. Every scrap of willpower inside me.
But right before the sun came up, I felt a distinct, solid snap inside my arm.
The pain started to lessen as the nerve finally stabilize.
I spit the ruined, bloody towel into the sink and leaned back against the bathtub, panting like a dying dog.
I looked at my right arm. No bulging veins, just a single glowing line above my skin showing it was active.
The nerve had been fundamentally altered. It was no longer just a part of a nervous system. It was a permanent, reinforced Circuit for my soul.
An Aura Circuit.
I sent a pulse of Aura from my chest directly into the new circuit. It didn't leak out of my skin. It shot down the nerve instantly, flooding the muscle fibers of my right forearm and fist with pure spiritual power.
I clenched my fist.
The physical strength in that single arm multiplied by a factor of ten. The muscle was infused directly.
I uncurled my hand, the tension leaving my arm as I let the memory fade.
Currently, I have three.
Just three.
One in my right arm. One in my left leg, running down the femoral nerve. And one major trunk line running straight up the base of my spine.
Three nights of absolute, annoying soft porn self-torture in a locked bathroom. Three bloody towels tossed into the incinerator chute down the hall.
And it is already paying massive dividends.
When I activated the Aura Circuit in my left leg during this morning spar.
The muscle potency tripled in a microsecond. The bone hardened. The joint locked with the force of steel.
When my kick hit Nora's arm, I felt the force travel up my leg. Nora hits like a runaway train. Without the circuit, that block would have shattered my tibia, Aura or no Aura.
But with the internal circuit infusing the muscle? I barely felt a sting.
And when I shoulder-checked Nora after? I didn't project my Aura outward to push her. I activated the circuit in my spine, routing the energy into my back muscles, increasing my own physical weight right before impact.
It is incredibly versatile.
When you project Aura as a shield, you are bleeding energy into the open air. It takes constant upkeep. Constant focus. It drains you.
My circuits don't leak. They store the energy. I can pre-load Aura into my right arm and just keep it there, acting as a secondary battery. When I punch, all that stored energy releases internally, amplifying the physical force of the blow without wasting a single drop of soul on defense.
Offense on the inside. Defense on the outside.
I picked up the pen again, drawing a cluster of tangled lines on the scrap paper.
But three circuits are not enough. Not even close.
I have a weak body. This Jaune Arc kid was fed garbage and never exercised. His muscles are pathetic. If I want to thrive against the possible freaks in this world—and eventually find the bastard controlling the Grimms—I need to upgrade the entire body.
I'd need a dozens of circuits.
But more than that, I need an end goal.
I drew a circle around the tangled mess of lines on the paper.
The Crest.
That is my endgame.
Currently, managing this dual-power system is an annoying drain on my mental processing speed.
In a live fight, if someone swings a sword at my head, I have to consciously think about two entirely different things simultaneously.
I have to route Cursed Energy to my skin to create armor to block the blade. And, at the exact same time, I have to route Aura through my internal circuits to reinforce the muscle so my arm doesn't snap from the recoil.
It takes about ten percent of my active focus.
Against a Beowolf? Easy. Against an idiot like Cardin Winchester? A joke.
Against someone like Gojo?
I would be dead before my brain sent the signal to my arm. Manual control in high-speed combat is for rookies. It is a fatal flaw.
I need it to be automatic to the point I don't even need to think about it.
That is where the Crest comes in.
A Crest isn't just a single circuit. It is a dense, concentrated cluster of nerves in a specific part of the body. Usually the back or the chest.
If I can convert a large enough cluster of nerves in my central nervous system, I can weave them together into a spiritual processor. A secondary brain designed exclusively for managing Aura.
Once the Crest is formed, I won't have to think about routing energy.
Just by trying to punch, my Aura would already reinforce my arm.
The Crest will automatically calculate the necessary amount of Aura, route it through the specific arm circuits, infuse the exact muscle groups required, and simultaneously deploy Cursed Energy to the knuckles for impact protection. All in a fraction of a millisecond. Completely bypassing my conscious thought process.
It will be a spiritual motherboard embedded directly into my flesh.
I stared at the drawing of the Crest on the paper.
If it succeed, it would be brilliant.
And creating it is probably going to put me in a coma for a week.
Creating one single circuit nearly made me black out from the pain. Fusing twenty or thirty nerves together into a massive, centralized cluster? The sheer agony of forcing the soul to mutate a chunk of my nervous system that large might actually trigger cardiac arrest in this weak ass body.
I need to get stronger first. Physical endurance training with Pyrrha and Nora. Slowly converting one nerve at a time until the network is robust enough to handle the central hub creation.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I dropped the pen on the desk.
"Patience," I muttered to myself, rubbing the back of my neck. "Rome wasn't built in a day."
It was annoying. I hate grinding. I hate starting over from level one. I was at the absolute peak in my old life, and now I'm hiding in a library plotting how to burn through my own nervous system just so I don't get gored by someone here.
But I am breathing.
And as long as I am breathing, I refuse to be a victim.
I'm not going to be a Huntsman. I'm not going to be a team player standing behind a glowing shield of my own soul waiting for a Grimm to break it.
I am going to be a Sorcerer.
I reached forward and grabbed the heavy leather book I had thrown earlier.
Aura Projection Basic: Vol 1.
I flipped it open, tearing out a blank page from the back of the book, and began to carefully transcribe the anatomy of the human spinal cord. I needed to map out the exact entry points for tomorrow night's circuit creation session. The back of the neck looked promising. Highly dangerous if I messed up—paralysis was a real threat—but massive potential safety against decapitation.
Just as I finished the sketch of the vertebra, a loud, obnoxious voice echoed through the quiet library aisles.
"Jaune-Jaaaune!"
I closed my eyes. A massive migraine immediately blossomed right behind my temples.
The sound of rapid footsteps slapped against the carpeted floor of the library, completely ignoring the strict 'No Running' signs posted on every single wall.
"Found you!"
Nora Valkyrie popped her head around the edge of the bookshelf, a massive, brilliant grin plastered across her face. She was holding two stacked trays from the cafeteria in her hands.
"What are you doing hiding in the boring book dungeon?!" she demanded in a whisper-shout, marching over to my desk and unceremoniously slamming the trays down directly on top of my spinal cord sketches.
"I was studying, Nora," I said flatly, not opening my eyes. "And enjoying the peace of not being near you for five minutes."
"Boring!" Nora declared, waving a hand dismissively. "You can study how to kill things later! Right now, it is time for team bonding!"
I finally opened my eyes, glaring at the food trays. They were piled high with an absolutely absurd amount of pancakes, drenched in syrup and whipped cream.
Ren walked around the corner a second later, carrying a much more reasonable plate of grilled fish and rice. He offered me a silent, apologetic nod.
Pyrrha trailed behind him, a stack of heavy combat manuals in her arms. She beamed at me. "We noticed you missed lunch, Jaune. So we brought it to you! We thought we could study together."
I looked at the three of them.
My 'team'.
I looked back down at the pancakes. The syrup was already starting to leak onto the desk.
I let out a long exhausted sigh.
"Fine," I grumbled, grabbing a fork and stabbing a pancake. "But if any of you get syrup on my notes, I'm making you run extra laps tomorrow morning."
Nora cheered, immediately shoving a whole pancake into her mouth. Pyrrha sat down across from me, looking thrilled, while Ren simply took a seat and began eating his fish with his usual fake zen expression.
What group of brats I got stuck with.