Of Magic, Ki And Aura

It's been more than half a year since I've arrived in this world and therefore started this battle royale. If you ask me in which field have I made the most progress, my answer wouldn't be in the physical domain.

It would be in the magical field.

Compared to the growth my body went under and still goes under, my growth in everything related to magic or any other source of power that weren't available to me in my past life is incomparable.

Because I had nothing to stand upon in the first place.

Although the intensity and the number of work out I had to go through to improve were exponentially higher than what I did previously, I still had information about how to grow in that direction. For the magic, I had nothing, and everything was an unknown for me.

Turns out that the more I learned by myself and with the help of the system, the more I realized how vast it was and how I probably wouldn't be able to explore all the possibilities with magic in 100 lifetimes. Good thing that I was virtually immortal as a devil.

Thanks to the natural attunement of devils towards magic, I was able to make constant discoveries about how magic works in this world. I wasn't as lucky with Aura and ki, but I was confident that one day I would eventually discover all there is to learn.

Magic was mainly an energy that comes from one's soul. Like all matter in life, there existed a magical particle. This particle was the smallest amount of magic one could manipulate. The 'operation' that was the easiest to do with this particle was to move it.

Every magical creature can use magic with just intent; some can even use imagination to conjure devastating spells. Devils fit in that category.

The reality was that this universe was nothing but a set of planes of existence, with the human world being the lowest and what I call the Aether being the highest. The density of magic in the air, in the soil, in everything, including life forms, increase the higher you go through these planes. Devils were born quite close to the Aether, as any creatures born in the underworld.

Every creature in this world expect humans had a natural connection to the Aether. This meant that they had an equivalent in the Aether. That equivalent was the one able to manipulate mana because mana didn't exist in any other world other than the Aether. The 'feeling' of mana was but the shadow the higher plane that is the Aether weighing down on the inferior planes.

The mana particles were rejected by every plane other than the Aether, so you couldn't use pure mana anywhere expect in the Aether, which was inaccessible by your primary conscience. One's appearance in the Aether meant much more than one's presence in any other plane. Contrary to in any different plane, your presence in the Aether was the 'truest' you could get, it was the colour of your soul, the symbol of your virtues and the projection of your sins. The amount of information one could get just being seeing another's appearance in the Aether was immense.

Being able to bring your consciousness into the Aether would mean becoming you in the purest form. According to my experience with the realm, it would instantly dissipate whatever trace of you in any other realm.

You could be stuck forever in the Aether, endlessly searching for a way out if you could even move, or there were other effects. I couldn't know about it nor anyone else since once you've entered this realm, there should be no way out. But that didn't mean you couldn't interact with it. Aether was the realm of the souls in their most real form, a realm untouched by the hand of deities, even those related to souls and death, supposed to bring yours in their domain once you die.

Humans didn't necessarily have a connection to this realm because their home was on the plane that was the furthest from it, and the one that rejected magic the most. That meant that those born on Earth could only hope for a connection to the Aether. Those that had one weren't even able to use magic on a fundamental level; they weren't able to use mana instinctively; they couldn't automatically bring forth mana into this world. An act that I could only describe as pitting your being against the might of the world as a whole.

Every time you tried to manipulate the plane you were in, you had to call forth your representation from the Aether into reality, with your intent, this representation acted onto whatever you wanted at the price of losing a bit of 'yourself'.

Mana was mainly a particle that didn't interact with any realm other than the Aether, so you had to change the properties of the plane you were in into those of the Aether first, before applying mana. The moment your representation from the Aether returned from where it came, the mana changes into the desired particle that could interact with reality. Conjuring any simple spell was a complicated process for those that couldn't do it instinctively.

Thus, mana was also a particle with metamorphic properties, that could transform into anything you knew of. How it didn't cause any significant problem, or possible dangerous reaction was probably due to the rejection of each plane of magic. It allowed supernatural creatures or humans blessed with the gift of magic to use mana without having to worry about the consequences safely.

It also allowed for an interesting phenomenon that I guessed previously with the subject of Ajuka's Kankara formula. Human mages had to use magic sequences to safely use a spell while supernatural creatures didn't have to. This meant that human mages had a conscious understanding of both the realities they wandered into and the link between the Aether and the multiple planes they could walk in. Supernatural creatures, on the other hand, had no understanding of any plane but had an instinctual understanding of the link between the Aether and the other planes.

Give enough time to a human mage, and no supernatural creature would be able to stand in their way. No wonder talented human mages were very prised for peerage that wanted to make their way into the leaderboard of the peerage game.

Since I was able to understand that much by myself, another major question popped up in my mind immediately as I was making these discoveries. Aura was supposed to be the manifestation of one's soul, but in this realm, it was mana.

The manifestation of Aura in this world was like the constant presence of your representation in the Aether from what I could deduct. Mana was the energy of this representation, the 'ki' of your phantom while Aura was you protecting yourself with your soul. It would be considered incredibly dangerous for others since their soul wouldn't be able to recover, and any damage would be permanent. For those in Remnant, it wasn't the case so that they could use their soul in such a way.

When I used Aura for the first time, I was covered in a very thin golden layer that represented my soul. I was then able to realize that trying to increase the amount of Aura I had by 'exercising' was close to useless. The increase in the level of my Aura manipulation skill, however, made the amount of Aura I had skyrocket.

I also learned that Aura was much more efficient at defending from physical hits than from magical abilities. The use of Aura used the property that the reality of each plane and the Aether plane don't coexist, so any physical attack was close to negated by Aura because while the Aether could encroach onto the physical world, the material world couldn't do the same to the Aether. On the other hand, mana could pierce through my Aura like it was butter, although it indeed negated the damage. Aura was a shield that would negate every damage until it broke and the activation was near-instantaneous.

With these attributes, it was no wonder that I would be able to kill enemies way above my level.

The utilization of Aura made me gain a boost in healing abilities, although I couldn't control it. I wasn't able to attack with Aura yet, but I certainly learned the sensory boost. It wasn't applicable in the real world, but I could now guess what kind of existence the people in my surroundings were. Humans had varying soul strength, which would represent the amount of Aura they would be able to use if it was awake, but their amount was relatively low. Other races, however, couldn't be put on the same level.

I knew that even though my Aura barely covered my body, the amount and strength of the Aura I was manifesting was leagues above any human. If I was transmigrated into Remnant instead of here, I did not doubt that very few would be able to harm me based on my defensive ability.

Ki, the third resource that was available to me, was more straightforward. It was the equivalent of mana in the real world. If mana was the energy of my soul, then ki was the energy of my body. As such, one would feel tired if his ki was getting low. Injuries would reduce the amount of ki one had, so it would not be unusual for fighters to become out of ki very quickly during a fight.

It was energy able to distort reality on the same scale as magic but for a lesser cost in energy. The downside was that the amount of Ki was volatile on your condition, and was harder to increase by natural means. I suspected that I had an enormous amount of Ki compared to most supernatural races that had access to this resource based on what I was. The life-force of my body was incomparable because I was both a devil and an Hanma.

Especially an Hanma.

My life-force was like a torrent of flame that coursed through my body. I felt as if every single second the temperature of this fire was increasing and the fire itself was growing, feeding on nature itself. I supposed that sages, being with enormous power able to contend with gods with just their ki, were able to draw ki from their surrounding to aid. I couldn't do it, but I felt as if I was consuming the energy of nature itself, constantly slowly growing. It was possible that whatever my body was doing was considered dangerous or taboo for those attuned to ki, so my concealment abilities were one of the skills that I consistently trained.

I exited my meditation session, something that I started doing to try and manipulate the various energies in my possession and kept doing once I found the benefits of it. It was a bit hard to enter such a state of mind at first, but with enough repetition, I was able to reduce the time needed to start my meditation significantly.

I opened my eyes as soon as Rias appeared in front of my door. I purposefully lowered the barriers today because Rias wouldn't be able to find my home otherwise, and the moment I felt vile energy appear nearby, I recognized it as being Rias' and stopped meditating.

As she knocked, I opened the door.

" I've come as you asked Mr Aellias. " she smiled at me, but I couldn't help but pause a bit when I saw her outfit. She wasn't wearing the school uniform I expected, but she was wearing a somewhat revealing attire.

What did she think was going to happen in here?