Air Aura

~

"Now that we have brought down the casting time by a lot, let's make some new moves because I think we need to learn to be more versatile with our mana." Ky told Ariel.

It was now 2 pm and the duo was well rested and full from their lunch.

"Okay. Do you have anything specific you're going to try?" She asked.

"No, not anything specific. I want to make it so my control over the mana is so good that I can make a wind domain around me that would allow me to control the air within a certain radius."

"Sounds cool. I should probably work on something similar with my earth attribute."

Ky agreed so he nodded his head.

'I should probably start small. I'll try to make a wind barrier around my body first.'

Ky stood in the backyard with his hands in front of him, palms upturned.

He willed the mana from his core to travel to all parts of his body.

It only took 5 seconds now because of the casting time training Ariel and Ky put themselves through the past few days.

The mana empowered Ky as it traveled throughout his body.

Once every part of him had mana running through it, from the crown of his head to his toes, Ky tried to make his mana turn into wind and expand from his body.

"Wooooshhhhhh!"

Immediately, strong gusts of wind started circling his body.

It was like there was a very small tornado in Ariel's backyard, and Ky was the cause of it.

"Wow."

Ky opened his eyes and looked at the air flowing around his body.

The source of the air was of course Ky's body and mana, but the air didn't take anymore of his mana to control.

He just needed the initial mana to produce the air, none was taken after that.

'It's like an aura made of air.'

Indeed it was.

Any person who saw this air aura around Ky and had bad thoughts towards him would feel scared.

It was very menacing.

Ky then started practicing his control over the air that was circling him violently.

'Let's try taking away the air around me.'

He tried to force the air to move away from him and leave a vacuum like space around him.

The only thing that happened was the air violently spread out from Ky's body.

'That might be useful, but that's not what I wanted to do.'

It was very forceful and could definitely be useful for crowd control in a fight, but Ky's original idea would be much more useful.

The wind mana Ky was controlling ended up being dispersed after he made it spread out, so he had to refill his now empty core.

He used all of his mana to create the air aura, which is one of the reasons why it was so powerful.

'Maybe I went about it wrong?'

Ky sat down and started thinking about how his mana worked.

'Ah I got it! If I want to do something like take away the air, I can't use the air that I added.'

When Ky made his mana expand out of his body and turn into air, he was creating his own supply of air from his mana.

The way attributes work in humans is different from monsters. Monsters have a core that automatically produces attribute mana. This causes them to only be able to use attribute mana and not pure mana.

Pure mana is a combination of all of the attributes, causing them to cancel themselves out.

One molecule of pure mana will contain molecules from every single other attribute, but using pure mana won't allow you to tap into all of those attributes unless the human has a part of that attribute in his core.

The only way to obtain attributes as a human is to be born with them because of genetics, or to get a scroll to drop from a monster with a core.

Humans must force the pure mana they are controlling to activate the attribute they want to control to make the pure mana change.

The way Ky produces air is by adding the wind attribute from his core into the pure mana.

This causes an imbalance in the pure mana because more of the wind attribute is added.

The imbalance makes the wind attribute active and dominant over the others.

Once the wind attribute is active, the pure mana molecule turns into an air molecule that is controlled by Ky.

When Ky decides to release the air molecules he is controlling, they disperse and return to being pure mana in the air.

The only way to create a vacuum like space is to attach mana to the air in the area you wish to affect.

Once the mana from Ky's core attaches to the air molecules it will activate the wind attribute in the mana and combine with the air molecules.

The wind attribute isn't exclusively for oxygen, it can do this with any gas. As long as the user makes the mana attach to the gas it can control the molecules.

Ky gathered the mana from his refilled core and spread it out into the air as far as he could go.

The farthest he could reach is one meter in diameter around him.

He then attached the mana to the air around him. He willed the mana to get rid of the oxygen in the air.

The effect was immediately shown.

Ky could no longer breathe. He would normally freak out about this, but as it was his own doing he was very calm.

There was now only nitrogen, hydrogen, and other gasses around him meaning he couldn't breathe.

'This is going to be really useful once I can increase the range.' He thought.

The range of Ky's attacks was very small.

He could only send out attacks like the wind ball 5 meters before it dispersed, and he could only actively control his mana within a 1 meter radius before his control over it was lost.

Ky kept experimenting with sending his pure mana out and using it to control the air around him.

He could use it to cause a similar effect to the air aura, but the air was much less violent.

Using the air he could produce was much more violent, but much harder to control.

So, if Ky wanted to do something precise like moving something from one spot to another without breaking it he would use the already existing air.

Ky decided to name this his wind domain.

It was now 7 pm, so Ky stopped.

The first few hours were spent learning and messing with his air aura before he was able to figure out how to make his wind domain. The rest of the time was spent using the wind domain and figuring out its limits.

Neither was very useful right now, mostly because of their terrible ranges, but it was good practice for his control over his mana. Also these moves would become very useful once he was able to increase the range of said moves.

~

Over dinner Ky and Ariel discussed the things they worked on and what they were able to figure out.

Ariel figured out that sending out a smaller amount of mana allowed it to reach a larger range. She was able to increase the range of her stone bullets from 5 meters to 15 by using less mana to form the bullet.

This would allow Ky to use his air aura, wind domain, and other attacks at a larger range but on a much smaller scale.

For example, if he wanted to make a vacuum around someone's nose his range would most likely be able to reach 10 meters, but that vacuum would be very small and only able to cover the person's nose.

Ky shared with Ariel how he attached his pure mana to the already existing air and was able to control it.

This meant that Ariel could do the same with the earth, which she hadn't tried before.

Previously she was just turning her own mana into earth and then using it to attack.

With the knowledge she had now, Ariel could be much more versatile.

The two discussed many different options for her such as creating pitfalls in the middle of fights or using the earth to propel herself.

At the end of their dinner Ariel suddenly said with a sly smile, "Hey pretty boy, since we're both going to sleep through the night tonight, wanna sleep in the same bed?".

Ky's face went red, and for a second he just stared at her blankly.

"Sure." He finally said.

Ariel's eyes went wide.

She didn't expect him to actually say yes.

Neither person was willing to actually form a relationship just yet, and it was obvious to the both of them.

The flirting was just fun for them because both liked to tease people.

"U-Um okay." Ariel stuttered.

Ky had to try his best to stop the smile from forming on his face.

'Haha. That's just what she gets.'

The two young adults made their way to Ariel's room where they slept like babies through the night.

No other activities went on, and the pillow line that separated their sides of the bed, that was set up by Ky, would not allow any other activities anyway.

Ariel giggled when she saw him setting up the pillow barrier, but had no objections to it.