PoV Ben
The next day, I was woken up by the sound of an explosion. I then rushed to the window to check what caused that explosion and saw that someone was fighting the golden soldiers.
He was wearing a camo suit and had four arms. His skin was red, and his hair was white. He was using a weird object made out of small cubes as his weapon. He would then manipulate the cubes to create various objects he would use in battle. Sometimes it was a shield, then blades, a fist, some wings, and so on and so forth.
The soldiers were having a hard time piercing his weird weapon with their cannons. He was stalling fairly well while waiting for his companions to arrive. They appeared thanks to a blond man who was constantly appearing and disappearing. He was transporting his allies, two at a time, onto the battlefield.
They soon started overwhelming the golden warriors with many kinds of magic. Some of them were shooting light out of their bodies, while others had fire and other elements. One particular golden soldier was approaching the group of mages at full speed, gracefully avoiding all the projectiles they would throw at him.
Using quick, small adjustments in mid-air, he was able to dodge all incoming attacks. As soon as he got too close, the red-skinned guy intercepted him by creating a wall between the mages and the soldier.
The golden soldier reacted quickly and pointed his arm cannon towards the red-skinned dude. The other dude used part of his wall to create another section to use as a shield. He was then shot multiple times by the soldiers above that managed to aim at him while being pursued by homing magic projectiles.
The barrage of projectiles took out both his arms on the right side of his body, made a huge hole in his left leg, and also took out one of his arms on the left side of his body. He then used his weird weapon to create new arms in place of the ripped-out ones. I noticed that the "tool" also stopped the bleeding.
The blond guy then appeared close to him, probably ready to send him somewhere safe, but he couldn't react as one of the soldiers came from behind a building, passing through each building like they were made of butter, dropping the red-skinned guy into my house.
"Havil!" screamed the blonde guy.
Suddenly, the earth beneath him surrounded him and completely covered him before a barrage of lasers came down from the soldiers.
The amount of coordination they have is impressive. To be able to shoot so precisely even when chased by the enemy's attack is also shocking.
Then many spikes pierced my house from the inside, hitting and grazing my arm. The spikes were made of that weird black matter made of cubes. After a short while, the cubes simply stopped functioning and fell to the ground, leaving many holes in my house. As I took a quick peek at what happened, I saw the golden soldier from before, gravely injured in his left arm, while the red dude had been decapitated.
'Fuck! If this continues, I'll die in the crossfire. Is there a way I can safely get out of here?'
I tried picturing in my head a scenario where I would climb up the holes in my house and run for my life, but at any moment, those people could run me over without ever realizing I was there. Then I tried imagining a scenario where I would ask them to spare my life, but there was no way they would even acknowledge my presence. I could try to rally all the people that lived in the neighborhood, but they were probably too scared and weak to really make a difference. I saw no way out of there. I could maybe go to the basement and pray to be able to survive there, but that's just wishful thinking.
As soon as I tried to climb towards the hole left in my wall, chains appeared and violently dragged me outside. I realized almost immediately that they belonged to my father-in-law.
He was also trying to escape the scene with his family.
"Ben, are you ok?" Aisha asked me while tightly hugging me.
Her horns were pressing hard against my chest. It was her way of showing affection to me. She'd always made sure her horns were directly in contact with me.
"Now it's not the time! Hurry up! " She shouted at her father, dragging her daughter with his magic while she was also tying me up with hers.
While they were carrying me somewhere safer, I turned back only to see the number of mages had increased. This time, there were more than a couple of warriors there to protect them from anyone who got too close to them.
One was wielding a pole weapon; I could barely distinguish its shape since he was constantly rotating it, while the other one was using some chains with some weight attached to both ends.
Then the blond returned with a redheaded tall man, who seemed to be the strongest we've seen so far. He was able to fly and match the speed of the soldiers and was one-sidedly crushing them until one of them took off his armor.
When that specific soldier took off his armor, his strength and speed drastically improved, to the point where I was not even sure he was the same person. His armor wasn't even that heavy, so I was a bit confused why putting that off would change that soldier so drastically.
He was too fast for my eyes to keep up with his every movement. They were bouncing from building to building without any care for the damage they were causing, but he still wasn't able to overwhelm the red-headed guy. They were completely covered in blood as they continued to clash with buildings left and right.
At the same time, the mages were about to finish off the defeated soldiers when suddenly a wall made of cement appeared and protected them from the incoming barrage of fire.
In the sky, a massive purple portal appeared, and two people came out of it. One was black with long blue hair, while the other was much smaller, white, and blonde.
As soon as they came out of the portal, everyone froze in place, even us who were trying to escape the crossfire. It had probably something to do with mana, something I couldn't really feel.
The black guy then started talking. In the middle of his speech, the mages decided to attack him, only to get killed in an instant. I couldn't even see what killed them. During all of that, the black man didn't stop talking to them.
Then the warriors charged at the blonde guy. The black man moved his finger in a circling motion, and suddenly all three of them were on their knees.
'We're safe! Thank God!'
Then the blond guy created a portal in front of us and suddenly appeared in front of us.
"You... you from... hmmmm... here, right?" He seemed to struggle with talking in our language.
"Y-yes." Answered my soon-to-be father-in-law. He was clearly scared of them.
Soon after his black companion used the portal to come in front of us, the blonde whispered something in his ear, so he got close to me, sniffed my hair, and checked out my entire body before nodding to the blonde guy.
'What's going on?'
He then put something green inside my head before disappearing into the portal.
"What just happened?" I asked as soon as they were gone.
"Don't ask now; we need to find a new place to stay." father-in-law responded.
His white hair really stood out to me. He was probably the only hybrid with non-color-changing hairs, but he was also one of the few that still had a tail.
Aisha was the complete opposite of him: no tail, dark eyes, color-changing hair, and a huge quantity of mana. So much so that she can completely dwarf even the legendary Valis in terms of pure quantity. If her family wasn't as influential as it is, she would've probably suffered the same fate.
I don't know much about her mother except that she abandoned them soon after giving birth to her. From what Aisha told me, her mother was trying to use herself for a selective breeding project, and once it failed, she killed herself.
We spent a lot of time walking around, searching for a safe place to stay. The city was in a miserable state: trash all over the place, people that were barely hanging on to their lives resting at the side of the streets, blood puddles left and right, and animals had invaded the streets.
Countless pigeons and other kinds of birds were trying to gouge my eyes out, and if it weren't for both my fiance and her father, they would have succeeded in doing it.
In the end, we managed to find what looked like an abandoned villa, and since it was in a pretty isolated zone, we decided to use it as our new house.
It had three floors, a massive garden around it, and a greenhouse in the back. At the entrance, it had an elevator that also led to the basement. It had a couple of floors under the ground. All the doors had a sensor that automatically opened them as you got closer. Some doors require an eye and fingerprint scan.
The first thing I discovered was that the house wasn't abandoned. The house owners or residents had gunshot wounds. The corpses were left rotting and gathered on the first floor of the basement.
Weirdly enough, the lights were still working. The same goes for water and the internet. A couple of hours later, we received our breakfast.
"This is weird. Usually people who step outside don't get the food." I thought out loud.
"Maybe simply being inside a house is not the only criteria for getting food." Said Aisha.
She was sitting on top of me, leaning towards my shoulder, poking my right cheek with one of her horns.
For breakfast, I had some toasted bread with tomatoes and tuna and, as a drink, orange juice, while Aisha had a croissant with milk and cookies. Her father had made a purple slime with some water and a yellow paste that he mixed in with the water.
"He called himself God of Combat, so I think it also has something to do with combat capabilities or potential, Aisha get off of him." He said this, getting up.
Before I could even answer, Aisha attacked him. She froze him to death with her mana.
"Aisha what-" Suddenly, I felt completely drained of any energy and passed out.
'Why are you doing this?'
That was all I could think of before my eyes closed.
PoV Diego
"Satsui, I don't think this is the right way to train myself." I said this while holding a flame in front of my face.
"It uses the same concept as your previous training. It'll be faster this way." He said this while picking up nearby rocks.
"Even Forren made huge progress thanks to your method." He added this while inspecting a rock he recently picked.
"Don't hate me for this, okay?" He shouted while preparing himself to throw it at me.
Dubir: Be careful! He's using aura.
'What-'
I got hit in the hand by the rock in my left hand. I heard some cracking sounds.
"FUCK! FUCK!" That was all I could shout in pain.
"Are you ok?" asked Satsui.
"DO I LOOK OKAY TO YOU?" I shouted back while holding my hand to my chest.
"You look good enough to keep going." He said, then took the stance, ready to throw once more.
I expanded the flame to cover both my hands and my face. I also increased the intensity of the heat. It was all for nothing, as I got hit in the nose. Immediately after I got hit in the face the second time, I got hit in the neck, left hand, and finally the right eye.
"Reset!" I shouted to warn them.
As I let out the gas, Tsuitame managed to gather all of the gas, compress it into a small ball, and throw it as far away as possible.
"Round two, don't get distracted!" He shouted before throwing what would be the fastest rock of that day.
I simply used my ability to make it pass through me.
"Hey! What's the point of this training if you use your ability instead of improving your control of your aura!" Said Tsuitame.
"Sorry, force of habit." I responded by throwing a rock at him.
He was hanging from a tree with Forren. Forren was repeatedly dropping himself to improve his control over his aura. He dodged the rock by simply ducking.
"Enough chit-chatting, get ready!" Satsui threw another rock without warning.
This time, instead of trying to create a wall, I threw a fireball at it. The rock passed through the fireball and hit me on my left shoulder. Before I could even react, another rock hit me in my temple and knocked me out on the spot.
When I woke up, I had a massive headache. I was laying on the floor next to a tree while Satsui and Tsuitame were still training Forren.
'Mother-'
Was the first thing that came to mind while looking at Satsui training Forren.
'Is this really worth all the effort and beating I'm taking? Wouldn't it be easier for me to just learn how to fight using a sword or spear?'
Fury: I'm not saying you should become an aura master, but you should learn it until you can traverse any environment with ease thanks to it.
'What a pain.'
Dubir: You'll come to accept this kind of pain.
'It's just that… How can I say it?'
Dubir: Don't worry, we can read your thoughts; we know how you feel. Just endure it a bit longer, and then we'll change to something that gives us more concrete results.
She said it in a sweet, low, slow tone.
'Have you seen what we did today? Nothing but rubbish! I think we should go back to our own lessons; I think we learned enough from him.'
Fury: Are you sure? The only one here who knows about auras is Dubir. Also, it's a good opportunity to bond with your teammates. You've always been so detached from them.
'Detached?'
Fury and Dubir: Yes!
'Me?'
Fury: Yes! You're always friendly with them, but whenever the topic of fighting comes up, you isolate yourself from them; you barely even consider them while fighting. It's always you! You! You! You! You and no one else! Even that little girl has noticed it. You're their leader, yet you don't act like one.
'Yeah, yeah, everything in due time. Now let's focus on growing stronger.'
Dubir: He's right; gaining power is our top priority as much as it's theirs if they fail to recognize that they're just dead weight on our shoulders!
Fury: You two… Is power really the only thing on your mind?
'I thought you could read minds?'
Dubir: Not all weapons can read thoughts; we do feel your emotions, though, and that's enough to guess sometimes.
'So she's malfunctional?'
Fury: Fuck you, I guess I'm to blame for being too nice to you two.
I got up and started creating a flame in the palms of my hands.
'How do I make this solid again?'
Dubir: I told you, just keep a steady yet fast circular flow. Then minimize the shape to about 1 centimeter square, that is the standard, whatever solid you want to create will be made by lots of those things.
And why that way of all things?
Fury: It's because it makes the surface untouchable, as it will grind away at basically anything, but it also requires a lot of concentration.
'Then how can I wield it?'
Dubir: You create a handle; to do that, you would need to compress a large amount of aura and stop its flow.
"That seems like a lot of work." I blurted it out.
"What did you say?" Asked Satsui, curious.
"Nothing! Nothing…"
Fury: for starters I think you should just know how to make a solid aura, a technique that can be applied to every type of aura. Once that is done, we can advance to more complicated methods. The method Dubir explained is used by all experts but requires an absurd amount of focus.
'Sooo… what am I supposed to do exactly?'
Fury: Compress it and stop it.
'stop its flow?'
Fury: That's the term used to describe the constant movement the aura makes, as it's never still.
Dubir then proceeded to compress the flame, making it smaller and more dense. He then completely stopped the flow.
"See? It's not that hard." Satsui said this while pointing at the cube in my hands.
Dubir: Try copying this for now.
'It kind of feels like touching glass.'
Dubir: It's probably more malleable than glass and just a bit sturdier, but I wouldn't count on it to stop a bullet.
I then began gathering the aura in the palms of my hands. I tried to shape it as a sphere, but due to my lack of experience, I ended up creating an oval shape. As I tried to compress the flame, the aura started spinning around itself faster and faster. The flame then suddenly became blue.
Dubir: Easy there! You have to apply pressure evenly, or it'll start going crazy. Now throw this failure away before it starts spinning faster, preferably burying it so we don't have to worry about causing wildfires.
'Got it.'
Dubir: See? It's not that hard?
'But it's not as easy as it sounded earlier.'
As I tried to stop the flow of aura, it somehow turned the other way and continued to spiral into a ball.
"Satsui! CATCH!" I said, throwing the fireball at him.
He managed to safely grab it and absorb it.
"Try closing your eyes to put all your focus on the feelings and keep the shape simple." He said this, scratching the back of his left ear with his left hand.
'How did he absorb my aura, or fire specifically?'
Satsui then started talking, but I didn't listen to him as I was talking to Dubir.
Dubir: I don't know; I have a few speculations, but there's no point in explaining them to you now.
'Is it common?'
Fury: Not at all; as a matter of fact, it's something I never heard before, and we lived for centuries.
"I think I grasped the concept. Now I only need to put it into practice." I said to Satsui, trying once again to stop the flow.
To describe the feeling, I would compare it to forcing two magnets together when they're facing the same charges. It's like a strong magnet. It's hard, and it feels as if it could slip away at any moment, and when it slips away with such force, it becomes impossible to reverse the outcome.
At first, I managed to stop the flow for a moment, but as soon as I compressed it, it started spinning.
" Well, I'm off now; you can come to me once you've learned how to solidify your aura." He said this while heading back to the camp.
I tried a second time; this time I tried to compress only the sides to see what would have happened. The result was weird. Instead of spinning like crazy, the flame changed shape. As its sides were compressed, the aura began extending vertically, but after a certain point, it collapsed and turned into a sphere. It was still spinning, but at a snail's pace.
'Is this a solid?'
Dubir: Meh, half and half. The consistency is not that solid, so it will not protect you from most things thrown at you, but it should be hot enough to be used against weaker opponents.
He then tried to mimic the technique I just showed him. He didn't have trouble stopping the flow of aura, but as soon as he tried to compress it, it started spinning in a different way than usual. Instead of creating a spherical shape, it created a cylindrical shape. It was a mini-tornado made of flames that he was holding in both hands.
"I guess this can also be used as a weapon." He mumbled before throwing it at a nearby tree.
While the mini twister was flying, Dubir compressed the flame till it was the size of my pinky, and when it made contact with the tree, instead of burning it, it started shredding it, throwing fragments all over the place.
'What the-'
Thankfully, Dubir created a wall to protect me.
Fury: What was that?
'What kind of property is that? This doesn't make any sense!'
Dubir: It's a stupid little trick I learned on the way to learning aura. Technically, it's a failure, but it's still good enough that it can be used as a weapon.
'Simple and effective, I like it!'
Dubir: You can thank me later; now go get back to training!