121 The Fight (3)

'I don't know if it's possible or not, but there's not a reason I shouldn't try it.'

While still dodging the general's nonstop onslaught, Matthew tried feeling his aura core and when he felt the connection, he tried to push out more aura from his aura core to his whole body.

Matthew felt more aura flow out from his aura core and they went to all parts of his body, but even though Matthew felt the aura reaching and going through his whole body, he didn't feel that his power was enhanced even further than before.

Although more of his aura is being used, Matthew only feels that the aura was being freely released to his surroundings rather than making the aura covering his whole body denser and thicker like the general's aura.

But trying to manipulate the aura in his body and constantly blocking and dodging a constantly moving sword is not an easy feat to do. Matthew's little experiment caused him a new wound on his scutes as he miscalculated the general's sword thrust as a slash and used his scutes to block the thrust rather than dodge it.

'Sh*t I can't think of anything properly like this!' Matthew cursed inwardly.

But Matthew quickly pulled his body backward and did a flip to dodge another slash coming from the general's sword. And with the aura that covered the general's sword being no less sharp than the actual sword, Matthew can't just narrowly dodge the general's sword-like before and needed to move an extra distance away to make sure that he minimized the chance he would receive another wound.

Matthew kept on trying to pour out more aura and make the aura covering his body denser, and although he keeps on succeeding in achieving the former goal because of his constant training of activating the aura abilities, the latter had always failed as he didn't know how to use the aura inside his body without depending on the aura abilities.

And hence why Matthew didn't know the reason why although he had pumped more aura to his body, he didn't feel his aura getting stronger.

'Where did I go wrong? Does this mean that aura can only be used using an ability? But the kobolds and this human used the aura to enhance their attacks, even if it was an aura ability if both the humans and the kobolds could use it, why can't I?'

Matthew then observed the aura that was covering the general's body from top to bottom and tried to see whether he could learn anything from it.

Still, doing it while trying his best to constantly move around and away from the exact thing that he is trying to observe is not easy. Nevertheless, because of Matthew's vision that is able to see a blade of grass from 20 meters away, trying to observe minute changes from something that is on point-blank range from his is still doable.

Matthew noticed that the thick and dense aura that covered the general's body was constantly moving. But rather than moving outward from the general's body, the aura moved in a circle around the general's body.

'Does this mean that I also need to control where the aura is going after I release it outwards?'

Matthew then tried doing just that and the result was he utterly failed.

Matthew could easily release his aura outward since sending his aura towards one direction was easy just like throwing a rock from his hand and how the aura ability works were similar as he only needs to throw his aura towards a certain part of his body and the aura ability will assist him in the activation process of the ability.

Just like when Matthew used his wolf's aura ability, the aura that had been changed to have the wolf's aura properties are easier to control hence why he can manipulate the wolf's aura to cover his whole body. And when the wolf aura had covered his whole body, the wolf aura ability was constantly maintained on its own without Matthew needing to guide the aura manually.

But when he tried to control the aura without the help of the properties from the beasts' aura abilities, Matthew needed to manually control his aura to constantly pour out from his aura core and circle around his body, which is a very complicated and taxing task to do even when he was only sitting still, let alone doing it while moving his body around non-stop here and there to dodge and block his opponent's relentless attack.

'There's no way I could control that much aura at the same time to do a complex movement…'

'But wait, if it's only a small amount, can I do it?'

Matthew then tried to pour out less aura and tried to control it to circle around his body, but he still failed as even controlling the least amount of aura needed to cover his whole body is still not small by any means.

'Then if I also reduce the area that I need to cover, can I do it?'

Matthew tried again, but this time, instead of trying to cover his whole body, he tried to cover one of the most important body parts that are currently under constant stress, which is his hands.

Pulling out aura from his aura core before sending it to his hands, Matthew already felt that it took him less focus to control his aura to only go towards his hands.

'And now I need to make the aura constantly go around my hands and prevent them from flowing out from my body.'

Matthew started to manipulate his aura to go from the topside of his wrist to his claws and back to the downside of his wrist.

As the aura connected from and to his wrist, Matthew could finally see the aura covering his hands slowly becoming thicker and denser than before.

Matthew's eyes lit up as he saw the aura in his hands look very similar to the aura that the general used to cover his body and along with the feeling of even more strength gathering in his hands, Matthew was 90% sure that he had succeeded in imitating the general's aura. But to make sure that he really did gain more strength and toughness from the thick white aura that covered his hands, Matthew decided to try and block one of the general's attacks.

Matthew had been dancing along with the general for some time and he had already gotten used to the similar pattern that the general used to attack Matthew, and some of those attacks were particularly powerful that Matthew needed to dodge them rather than block them and he decided to try his newfound strength to block one of those.

The sword thrust that the general used to injure him from time to time is out of the options since a thrust still looks scary for Matthew and he didn't want to risk getting another wound from the thrust.

So Matthew decided to try and block the general's overhead swing that made his hands numb earlier.

Matthew then saw the telltale signs that the general used before doing a heavy overhead swing and prepared himself.

He poured more aura towards his hands and made sure that he didn't waste a single drop of aura. The thick and dense aura on his hands became even bulkier. If the wolf's aura ability gave him something like a medical glove and when he initially pour some more aura into his hands giving him a winter glove, now that Matthew give his hands even more aura than before, it looked like he is wearing a gauntlet made of aura.

Matthew put up his hands and prepared himself to receive a huge shock from the general's sword.

But the powerful blow never came as Matthew only felt a slight push on his hands. He didn't even feel the sword come in contact with his scutes before the sword was repelled by the thick layer of aura on his hands.

Matthew blinked a few times while looking at his hands with a dazed face as he confirmed that what just happened did indeed really happen. But he didn't even have the time to ponder and he also didn't need to as the general continued his attacks and instead of dodging some of the heavy attacks, Matthew used his aura gauntlet and blocked all of them with ease.

'I did it… I really did it!'

The gauntlets that were made of aura were both tough and looked heavy as they easily deflected the general's heavy sword swings and even his sword thrust. But the heavy-looking gauntlets were not even the tiniest bit heavy as it was fully made of aura. In fact, it even boosted the toughness, speed, and strength of Matthew's hand due to the inherent nature of aura that enhances the user's physique.

'But how did the general make the aura covering his sword sharp? My aura gauntlet doesn't seem to be sharp at all, instead, it felt really strong and sturdy… Maybe because I imagine the aura to be able to easily block the general's sword that it changed into this shape and properties.'

Matthew is currently still blocking the general's attacks which had become way easier with the aura gauntlet, Matthew knew that if he will eventually win by waiting for the general's aura to run out and looking at how the general had been rampaging and attacking nonstop with the thick aura covering his body, it doesn't seem will take a long time.

Even Matthew felt that his aura gauntlets were consuming a considerable amount of aura constantly and looking at his aura core, he didn't think he could keep it up for more than 10 minutes.

Matthew didn't know what magical pill the general had taken that gives him the sudden burst of aura and how long it will last and whether he or the general will run out of juice first.

And besides, Matthew knew that he couldn't waste any more time when he looked at the growing black smoke in the distance.

'I need to end this as soon as possible…'

Matthew had been balling up his fist when he used the aura gauntlets and now that he wanted his aura to have a sharp property, Matthew opened his fist and thought of changing the fingers on his gauntlet into the shape of his claws.

But imagining it and actually controlling the aura into 5 sharp claws was easier said than done, and changing the shape of his condensed aura while also still blocking the general's attack is harder because the aura kept on going slightly out of control whenever the general's sword hit Matthew's aura gauntlet.

But after failing a couple of times, Matthew gave up creating 5 sharp claws with his aura, instead what he did was,

'If I just want something, anything that is sharp, then just f*ck it and make a f*cking sword, stupid Matthew!'

Then, instead of imagining 5 sharp claws replacing the fingers on the aura gauntlets, Matthew just imagined all five fingers of the gauntlets merging into one and made their tips pointy, flat, and sharp just like a sword.

In the end, Matthew got a hand-blade in each hand that extended about 15 cm from the tips of his five fingers that were also lined up beside each other and shaped like the aura blade.

Matthew then tried blocking the general's sword with his new hand-blades. Although now that the properties of his aura changed and he could now significantly feel the force of the general's heavy swing, Matthew could also see that his aura hand-blade had cut through the general's thick aura that covered his sword and even chipped the edge of the steel sword.

Realizing that he could make his condensed aura stronger than the general's aura, Matthew knew what he should do to quickly finish the fight.

Matthew then observed the general's movement carefully and waited for the same overhead slash that he had blocked earlier.

The general moved his left foot forward while simultaneously slashing his sword diagonally from the top to bottom before taking another step with his right and bringing his sword up by giving Matthew a straight upward slash.

Recognizing what the general was about to do for his third sequence of attack, Matthew gritted his teeth and clenched his fist as he prepared for his counterattack.

When the general's sword missed his upward slash, the general didn't back down and readjusted his stance, instead, he gripped his sword tighter with both of his hands, moved his body forward, and brought down his sword using all the momentum in his moving body and aimed it at Matthew's head.

Matthew had been moving sideways to completely dodge this attack or either crossing both of his hands forward to block the general's overhead slash, but now that he got a hand-blade attached to his hands, Matthew was given another option.

Instead of crossing his hand blade on the front of his face to block it, Matthew crossed his hands and positioned them on the front of his stomach to be able to gain momentum for what he was about to do.

When the general's sword was about 15 inches away from Matthew's face, Matthew took a step forward, lessening the gap between him and the general. And in the next moment, Matthew poured out even more aura into his hands which caused his hand-blades to almost looked solid as a rock before bringing them upward, slashing both of the general's wrists.

The aura that was covering the general's body didn't even slow down Matthew's aura blade and it easily sliced through the general's wrist, cutting both of his wrists off.

But Matthew's didn't stop there. Matthew adjusted the position of his hands which were facing outward and turned them inward before pushing them down at an angle that was aimed towards the general's neck.

2 aura blades from both left and right slashed through the general's neck cleanly.

The lopped head then fell to the ground and was followed by the headless body a few seconds after.

-Level 24 Human Sword Knight Killed-

-Congratulations, you've reached Level 20, you can now evolve-

-Needed amount exp for level up reached, please evolve to further level up-

Under normal circumstances, Matthew would be jumping with joy like there is no tomorrow after winning such a hard fight, but right now, he didn't even look at the system's notification and he quickly dashed towards the forest.

But when he was about to go past the clearing and into the forest, the invisible barrier was still there and blocked his way without even budging.

Matthew looked at the general's dead headless body on the ground and he was sure that the general was indeed dead.

"BUT WHY IS THIS THING STILL HERE!?"