User of the violent world energy
Undoubtedly, the strongest fighting force on Eval are mages. This comes as no surprise since mana, the world energy used to supply magic, is the most prominent of all of world energies.
However, mana is not the only world energy. In Eval, there are exactly 2 prominent world energies, with countless others being obscure.
The first prominent world energy is mana and it flows through virtually anything. Animals, objects, beasts and even people. Mana reaches all edges of the world.
People who channel and utilize mana by bending it to their will to cast spells are known as mages. They are able to create different phenomenon with these spells such as creating fire or altering the environment.
However, despite mana flowing through people's bodies, not everyone can become a mage. This is the reason why mages are so highly respected.
Then there's aura, the second most prominent world energy and the most violent of them all.
This world energy is used to reinforce the body, tempering it to superhuman levels, allowing the user to achieve an extremely high vitality and physical strength. It can also be used to reinforce other objects, such as weapons and armor.
At a higher level, aura can be manifested and solidified. This allows projectiles to be formed and even allows for a coated aura armor.
And at an even higher proficiency, aura can take the shape depending on the user's beliefs. Needless to say, it has a wide variety of uses. It is second to none when compared to mana in terms of application.
Aura did exist back in my second life when I was a magic swordsman, but back then it was just a number on the screen you accumulated when leveling up. It didn't allow for such wide uses.
The only thing I could really say it boosted were my physique, by helping me get more refined muscles, and the strength in my sword attacks.
Safe to say, this world's aura is vastly different from my second life's.
The people who wield aura in Eval are known as aurors. Most of them end up learning aura either because they do not have enough talent to channel mana, or they just have better talent in controlling aura.
The Kursia kingdom that was written about in the book I found was known as an auror kingdom. They had vastly more aurors than mages.
Because of this, I have gotten to know more about aurors than wielders of other world energies through the book.
Similar to mages, aurors do have different "ranks".
However, unlike mages, aurors don't really have a way to track how far they have advanced like the mana heart. Thus, they came up with the following classification.
Firstly, the lowest stage of aura wielding is known as a pawn. This stage allows one to utlize aura to reinforce objects and also prepares the body for the second stage by tempering the muscles.
The second stage is known as knight. At this stage, the auror's body goes beyond their limits and starts to temper itself by reshaping the body.
The third stage is bishop. Similar to the second stage, it tempers the body up to a superhuman level, but this time it reshapes the bones as well, hardening them even further.
Upon reaching this level of mastery, aurors will highly likely be subjected to excruciating pain due to the shaping of the bones.
At this level, manifestation of aura also becomes possible, thus allowing one to churn out bullets or create spikes on their bodies using aura. This is a huge jump from only being able to gather aura within their body and applying it to objects.
The fourth stage is rook. At this point, the auror becomes powerful enough to manifest their aura in their own shape.
However, this is completely different from the bishop stage's manifestation. The rook stage allows the auror to completely manifest the of their own expression and envisioned beliefs.
The aurors call this an "extension".
Last but not least, the strongest and highest level of aura is known as queen. At this stage an auror is capable of releasing and spreading their manifested aura beliefs around the surrounding battlefield.
They call this "domain".
There wasn't much to say about this in the book other than the fact it was incredibly strong and no one would be able to survive it unless they were stupidly strong themselves.
I guess the only other detail to talk about was the reason for the last stage's name.
It appears that the reason why the highest level of aura was named "queen", is because the first ever auror was a queen of an ancient kingdom that predated even the Kursia kingdom.
But, you may have realized by now, unlike mages who have 9 ranks in total, aurors only have a total of 5 stages.
As explained earlier, mana is by far the most prominent and important world energy. Auror comes a close second with everything else coming afterwards.
However, even if you were to combine all the remaining world energy and merge it with the amount of aura present within the world, there still wouldn't be nearly enough to match the influence of mana.
Thereby, aurors are naturally inferior to mages as their world energy quantity is incomparable to mana.
With all this information in mind, it was easy to deduce that the man standing in front of us is at least bishop stage since he was able to freely extend his aura and manifest it.
I'm not sure about him being a rook because I didn't see anything like a flashy extension coming from his attacks.
In terms of mages, his power matches that of a first class mage.
"Who are you people?!"
The man growls and yells at us.
"ANSWER ME!"
He points up his sword and a green aura could be seen emanating from it. From the looks of it, he's extremely on edge and a fight could break out any moment now.
Jargon readies his sword while Zalfious calls forth his shadow pet. They both step forward while using their hands to gesture me to step back.
Well, I don't need protection but thanks anyway.
Meanwhile, me and Lyndis are standing at the back like a bunch of side characters.
The man readies his stance, stepping back with his right leg whilst positioning his great sword over his right shoulder. The air around him is starting to become much more dense as he fixates his gaze on the two men confronting him.
He gets ready to swing his massive blade.
Just then, out of nowhere, Lyndis nonchalantly steps forth and unveils herself by taking of her hood.
She stares at the man and from the looks of it, begins shedding a tear.
"You...youuuu"
The man looks like he's in a shock from seeing her.
"Aren't you-"
"Uncle Zonn!"
Before the man could even finish his sentence, Lyndis dashes forth and runs into the man's arms. He was so stunned he didn't know how to react.
Seconds pass and Lyndis still hadn't let go, the man drops his huge sword on the floor and finally proceeds to embrace Lyndis her by wrapping his giant arms around her.
"My sweet niece..."
"Oh my sweet sweet niece..."
He was weeping while holding onto Lyndis. Who would've thought that just a few seconds ago, that defenseless crying face was in an outrage.
Zalfious and Jargon both begin to disarm themselves, but remain cautious at the sight of this touching scene.
So he's a soft man on the inside. What a touching reunion.
Although I wouldn't want to break up this scene, at the back of my head I'm itching to fight this man since I haven't fought an auror of his level before. Most of the ones I fought were below the knight stage.
I wonder what it'll be like.