Aurora

"Aurora"

It was a name he had heard tossed around often since his descent here. Yet he never knew what it meant, Until now. Up to this point, he had assumed it was some commonly spoken word that just so happened to sound like his past life's light show.

Yet now that he stared upon a book almost the size of him himself he realized this was all wrong. It was more akin to the word 'magic' yet it actually existed as a fully developed concept here. It had taken him 7-months to find this book and he was practically giddy to find what lie beneath its cover.

His eyes were wide and hopes were high as he turned page by page in the close to half a thousand-page book "A short guide to Aurora"

'yeah right! short my ass!'

It was an amazing concept yes. Just the fact that it was something akin to a law-bending existence that could be wielded by him if he put in enough effort was amazing, beyond words. Wonder filled his soul as he awaited the glory of information to come.

'Incredible! Simply incredible'

Aurora worked similarly to many other magic systems in its base concepts. Some of which gave him worry and some excitement. To start off, the amount of aurora you are born with is typically decided by genetics. However, it can be changed but only at an early age. Typically below the age of 5 with some variation depending on person to person.

A key aspect of the entire system he'd have to note was the fact that the limits were mainly genetics. But beyond that, it was only your imagination. It was also an incredibly complex system compared to what he had assumed.

'So many mechanics just to make a small spell' he had guessed that it was a simple mana channels system, just drag your aurora here, have some control, and boom you've done it! And while that was an aspect of it there was so much more he had to account for.

First of all, there were aurora channels. They were an etheric property in his body separated from his physical one. However, it wasn't as simple as he had thought. 'No wonder it said there's so few mages'

According to the book, statistics showed that anyone could become a mage given enough time, but only one in about ten thousand that had even attempted such a feat had the drive and talent to actually fulfill the subject.

'Circuits huh? Well, that makes things a little more complicated

yes, according to the script, You had aurora channels. But inside these channels, you also had "Aurora circuits" Aurora circuits were like circulation centers that powered the flow of aurora within your channels. A single circuit connected multiple channels together. On top of just pumping your Aurora through the channels, however, they were also the functions that gave it property.

You see, doubt it or not you couldn't just tell aurora to turn into flames through the power of friendship and imagination. No, that wasn't quite how it worked, and sadly it wasn't that easy.

Unlike most fantasy novels, you actually needed an external force to change its properties. The amazing thing about aurora was that it had the potential to become anything, space, time, fire, water, anything. But it couldn't achieve that feat on its own.

The Aurora circuits acted as pumps that pushed your aurora from one another, you had hundreds of thousands of them. Sometimes even millions. And they were also located in every fiber of your body. But they also acted as printers. You put aurora in as a blank sheet, and it comes out as something different. Words were printed on it that told it what to do. Giving it a property, this could range from setting a specific color to your aurora when it's exported from your body to adding a rose smelling essence to it. And much, much, more.

So the more aurora circuits you have, the more variation you can attain, and the more of the same circuit you have, the more it can be used over the area of your body. At least from what he understood.

According to the book, you can have tens, hundreds, and on rare accounts, thousands of the same circuits across your body. Allowing you more versatility in how you use that property.

There were two types of circuits. With the only thing separating them determining if they were connected to an exporter. An exporter was basically a pore on your skin but its use was limited to exporting your aurora and all its ethereal properties into a physical property you can wield. Or otherwise known as an outer circuit or inner circuit. With the outer connected to an exporter and the inner not.

'Ah it's not spell it's formation huh?'

And it went even deeper, you see to cast a formation you must have all the supposed circuits just so happen to be in the correct spot. Because if even one wrong circuit were to be let into your formation it could ruin everything. And there was no shortcut to getting your aurora through one circuit to another if they weren't directly connected by a single channel.

Luckily the coordinates of your circuits could be altered. But only after you had an incredible control over aurora. It was through a technique known as "spacial detenation" which basically had other circuits rapidly pump aurora to a single spot in your body in a single direction to move either a channels pathway, or aurora circuit through the sheer overload of pressure on a single point.

And talking about aurora control, it was incredibly hard to coordinate as you had to be in constant manipulation of your Aurora circuits, pulling in, and pumping it out in the desired direction. Just gaining control of such things to the most basic of degrees in a finger of your body could take anywhere between 2-10 years.

'There's a lot to take into account' firstly he had to get used to the circuits he had available to him and see what uses they provided. Then he had to see what results they'd produce by being mixed with one another. He also had to make sure that they all just so happened to be aligned in a usable path and could be exported. All this while also having the control to even make such a thing possible. But there was more.

"The power of a formation is amounted by how much aurora it is fueled by" as the book went on it went into how you could alter the density of your aurora by executing a mechanic known as "reverse circulation" a process that had a circuit suck up as much aurora as it could, and pump it inwards. This action of pumping your aurora inside the circuit itself, to the center of a circuit's mass forces the aurora to condense at the center. Similarly to how gravity worked. Where it naturally stays in such a state. The power and speed at which you can do this are determined by your aurora control.

If you do this technique at a constant rate while absorbing more aurora, you will essentially have a conversion rate that makes your exported aurora more effective in whatever properties are granted. There is a limit to this, however. if you overdo it, the sheer potency of your aurora will burst your aurora channels and the ethereal bubble. Causing whatever properties to enter your body in a physical form. A quick instance of death.

Which brings Atreyu to the next page. "Aurora reset. A mechanic that allows one to rid of all properties in all aurora channels" it made sense. You couldn't use Aurora which had been building up properties your entire life inside a formation. It would bring far too many backlashes.

According to the book, the phenomenon wasn't a step-by-step process like all the ones previous. It was more of a distinct mental switch you could just turn on and off whenever. Like moving a limb.

"Imagine you have an empty pillowcase, the outside representing your built-up mana. Now invert that pillowcase, the outside is now the inside and you have a fresh pillowcase. New Aurora with no properties. yet when you invert it back to its original stance you also have a fresh pillowcase once more" Those where the words of the page.

'It seems this will be a lot more trickier than I thought' yet he was determined! That terror had shaken him to the core, he never wanted that again. He wanted to live a life free of limitations. And it seemed mage-hood was the only way of that.

He had been searching for answers for months now! And after 7-months in this world, he was finally ready to start.