Aura Suppression

The next morning he was awakened by the sound of his alarm.

*F**k is it already 8 o'clock? *, he couldn't help but curse when he saw the time on his interface. Since he was so tired before going to bed yesterday he now had the feeling that he had absolutely not slept enough and he fervently wanted to sleep a bit more.

Sadly his mentor had told him to come to the training room at 9 so if he wanted to take a shower and eat some breakfast he could only grit his teeth and get up.

After a hot steamy shower he went downstairs to the cafeteria which he had used ever since he started living here. Even though the food wasn't anything special it was filling and most important free.

As always the breakfast consisted of some eggs, bread and bacon. On one of the dispensers he got a glass of orange juice and then went towards his usual table. Surprisingly there was already someone seated at it. That had never happened before, since all the inhabitants of this dorm had silently divided the tables among them.

"Good morning.", Ivan greeted the elderly man sitting at the table before placing his tablet down.

The man looked up and surprise flashed through his eyes, but it was to fast for Ivan to see.

"Morning.", he then answered. His voice was old but still full of vigor and there was a indescribable fluctuation in it with seemed to pressure Ivan.

Without another word Ivan then sat down and started to devour his breakfast.

* This young one isn't bad. Let's see how he fares in the tournament in one month.*, the elderly man opposite of him thought to himself.

Ivan hurriedly finished his breakfast since he had spent a bit to much time under the shower. But how could he resist the heavenly feeling of hot water running down on his body? Before his adventure he hadn't felt this way, but now his view had changed.

At exactly 9 o'clock he arrived at the training room where Van Bergen was already waiting for him. Then after greeting each other they entered the room.

"Do you remember what Julia told you about aura yesterday?"

"Of course."

"Good then we can directly move on to the ways to suppress your aura."

"There are different ways?"

"Of course, after all suppressing your aura is a form of aura control and even though the way to do it is the same that is to not let it outside of your body there are different ways to go about it. So to be exact you won't be learning a skill to suppress your aura but one to control it."

"So one can utilize ones aura?"

"Of course. Didn't you listen yesterday? Julia clearly told you that ones aura has an subconscious effect on ones surroundings so why shouldn't one be able to make this effect conscious? Of course it isn't easy and it needs much practice but it is possible to focus some elements of ones aura to influence the minds of others. For example if you were able to extract your killing intent from your aura and then focus it on a person you could induce fear in this person. Which if you have a strong enough killing intent and the target has a weak enough mind could even kill it. So tell me if it could be useful?"

"But shouldn't the ones capable of being ones foes have similar mental strength?"

"Sure, and then it wouldn't be of much effect, but it can still help. But besides that the most terrifying thing in the wilderness aren't the strong monsters, because it is usually possible to avoid them but the weak ones that arrive in extremely large hordes. If they surround someone there is no way that one could use ones mana or stamina to completely kill all of them, even escaping would be hard.

These are the situations killing intent is most useful in, since it cost only small amounts of mental strength to emit it for a long time and if it can kill these weak monsters one can even use it to completely exterminate such a horde."

Ivan was able to understand what his mentor meant and nodded while thinking about how scary such a large horde of monsters would be.

"Good, then lets get started. First you have to sense your aura. For that you have to first enter your mental space."

"Mental space?"

"Oh, I forgot that you wouldn't have gotten that far in school yet.", he slightly hit himself with his palm as if in disbelieve that he could make such a mistake.

"You know about the inside of your mind from your lessons about mana right?"

"Yes.", they had learned about it in their first lesson and since then he had instinctively always accessed it when he used mana.

"But I am sure you haven't tried to enter it with your mind ever since then right?"

"Yes.", Ivan was a bit embarrassed since even though he had always practiced controlling his mana he had never returned to the source of it.

Seeing the embarrassed blush on his face the corners of Van Bergens mouth curled up.

"Don't worry about it. Most people don't do it after the first success and to be honest there isn't much use either since we can access our mana without doing it."

"But shouldn't it be better to control the mana directly from its source."

"Better yes, easier no. You can experiment with it later. For now go enter the inside of your mind."

Ivan started to follow the mediating routine his teacher had thought him and soon he got the feeling of hovering in a small void. It was spherical and completely black with only a small blue ball at the center.

He then tried splitting his mind so he could talk to his mentor and ask how to proceed.