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Of Arms and Arcane: Chapter 13
🕑 Added 2023-10-10 06:28:09 +0000 UTCI feel a hot sensation spread from my solar plexes all the way to the extremities of my body, and immediately, everyone’s head snaps to me, their eyes in disbelief at what they are witnessing.
I feel what I can now confidently say is stamina energy igniting throughout my body like propane catching fire. I feel… powerful… for about 10 seconds before slumping over, feeling all that power leave my body.
While I can hear chairs being roughly shoved aside and glass shattering on the floor, my head is slumped sideways on the built-in table of my booster chair.
And what I see in front of me is my chubby arm losing its baby fat at a visible rate. Which is definitely not a good sign.
From the moment I slumped over, I tried to cut off the flow of stamina, but I could not. The moment even a sliver of stamina is produced by my body, it is consumed by the Aura ignited in my body.
Not even 2 seconds after I slumped on my booster table, which felt like a long time to me, I was yanked out of my booster seat and was in Dad’s arm while he was pressing his index and middle finger to my belly.
Grandpa literally jumped over the dining table, knocking the tea set over without a care, and placed his hand on my chest.
While this was happening, Mum broke out into tears while shouting, “What's happening to my baby?! Help him!”
Grandma had to run around the table to hold her back while Dad and Grandpa diagnosed my situation.
After a few seconds, Grandpa spoke up first while examining my thinning body, “The Aura is consuming more stamina than he can produce, it is eating his body, can you do anything about it?”
Dad nodded and replied quickly, “His Aura is rampaging, and he is too young and untrained to control his stamina. I will attempt an Aura purge, be prepared to heal him, the purge will do some damage.”
Dad pressed his index and middle fingers into my solar plexus and I felt a pulse of Aura that was not my own spread and canceled out my own Aura.
As Dad’s Aura spread through my body, I felt a burning sensation along with Dad’s Aura, and not the good kind of burning when I ignited my own Aura. His aura saturated my whole body but stopped before it touched my brain, heart, and lungs and then the Aura retreated back into Dad’s fingers. A couple of seconds after that, besides me feeling weak, my everything started to hurt, really bad.
After Dad was done, he passed me to Grandpa, “I have done what I could, but the purge took a toll on his whole body, I avoided his brain, heart, and lungs, he may die if I forcefully purge Aura from those places, you will need to accelerate the healing for the rest of his body.”
Holy shit… I think I fucked up big time. I can still feel the Aura around my heart is still burning weakly. Soon I felt the Aura in my brain start to fade as it ran out of stamina to burn, the Aura died out and I almost fell unconscious from the most lethargic feeling I ever felt in my 2 lives, the only thing keeping me awake was my whole body hurting.
The next to run out of stamina to burn was my lungs, which forced me to take weak, short, and shallow breaths to even breathe.
That was when I felt the Aura around my heart start to get stronger, and as the saying goes, nature abhors a void, and the rest of my body was now a void of stamina or Aura.
So as Grandpa started healing me, the Aura from around my heart started to spread to the rest of my body. I have to stop this!
With pained and labored breaths, I put into action the breathing technique I formed yesterday to slow down the flow of the stamina-turned Aura.
Dad who noticed that my breathing rhythm changed, placed his fingers back onto me, “Luke is slowing down the pace of the spreading Aura!”
Which was followed by a surprised “What?!” from everyone else in the room.
As I was healing, Grandpa, noticed my thin body was getting paler and called out to my Mum, “Amara, Luke needs food, the healing is also taking a toll on his body.”
Without hesitation or care for modesty, Mum whipped out a tit for me to suck on. At first, I was suckling weakly, but the moment the first drop of milk hit my stomach, I started sucking with all I had.
While I was feeding, I was keeping track of the Aura spreading through my body, and even though slowed down, the volume of flow was still the same, I think it is still too much from my current body to handle. I need to reduce it more. But how?
That was when I had a eureka moment. Aura is the ignition of stamina using mana, what if I further reduce or stop the flow with mana manipulation also?
I gathered what willpower I had left from my lethargic mind and tried to contain the spread of Aura.
This time it was both Dad and Grandpa who were surprised, “He is containing the spread of Aura, how?”
“He is using mana manipulation to contain the aspect of mana in the Aura. but this cannot go on for long.” Grandpa replied.
What? Why?
That was when I felt it, I was essentially making an Aura pressure cooker, and I could feel my mana grip on the Aura starting to slip, and I did not want to see what would happen when it exploded, so I started slowly releasing my hold on the Aura and let it continue spreading. But this cannot go on, otherwise, I will be back at square one.
Ok, if I cannot contain it, what else can I do? If I cannot contain it, maybe I can siphon the mana from the Aura.
So using my mana manipulation, I started draining as much mana as I could from the Aura, which was not as easy as it sounds, especially when I was tired.
It did not amount to much mana because Aura mainly consists of stamina, but after draining what mana I could, it did have a drastic effect.
And as I was concentrating on siphoning the mana from the spreading Aura, Dad and Grandpa were getting more and more worked up as they did a live-action commentary.
“That's a bold strategy, Alden, Let's see if it pays off for him.” Grandpa said to Dad.
When I was done, siphoning what mana I could from the aura that had spread to my whole body by now, I did not feel the hot sense of power I felt when I first activated Aura, or the overwhelming weakness when I crashed 10 seconds later.
What I felt was the warm flow of low and slow-burning Aura safely flowing out of my body and dissipating into the environment, while my body was absorbing the small amounts of mana siphoned from the Aura. when I was confident my Aura was not going to exhaust me to death, I was too tired to do or think of anything else and finally fell asleep.
