Luis was currently sitting cross-legged on the floor of his room, and his hands rested on his knees. Uncle Raien's house was very big, Luis was even given his own room. The walls were made out of wood, some parts from the tree, some manually placed in. This room was bigger than Luis's previous room. It had a double-sized bed, all for himself in the middle of the room. There is a desk on the wall in front of his bed. To the left of the desk was the door leading into the room. To the right of the desk was a closet that ran along the wall.
Luis sat in front of the left bedside table; there was more than enough room for him. His dad was a few feet in front of him, sitting on the chair from the desk.
Luis was thinking about the last events from today. He had met Uncle Raien, a mythical tier aura user. Luis expected mythical aura users to be scary and have a terrifying presence.
He had also met Uncle Raine's wife, Zira. Her silver eyes stood out to him the most. She was at the grandmaster tier, same as his parents. Luis had also met Uncle Raien's daughter today, Emberlyn.
Luis's siblings and Emberlyn instantly clicked after meeting. It looked like they had always been friends. Luis just watched over them while they went outside and played.
Noah brought Luis out of his thoughts. "Okay, it's time to begin."
Luis nodded, straightening his back.
"You already got past the hard part, and your body naturally accepts aura now," Noah said. "Your control is already good enough, You should have been able to tell with your fight with the Sand Strikers. Now, all you need to do is reach the next tier. You should not need any guidance."
Luis closed his eyes and focused on the cores within his body.
The darkness faded, and Luis could see two glowing cores in his body. The cores were full of aura.
One core had a reddish gold tint to it, with lightning streaks dancing outside of it, because of the Lynx blessing and the Phoenix essence.
The other core was a darker color. It was brown in color, and it felt heavy, earthly—the blessing from the rock golem.
Luis couldn't quite explain it, but compared to before, his cores felt… alive.
Luis could feel the aura way more now, unlike before. Their existence felt more prominent. The flow of aura in his cores was clearer now. He could feel how they moved and feel the warmth from them.
Taking a slow breath, Luis focused on the reddish-gold core first.
Like before, when trying to reach the next tier, Luis started with the outer shell of the core. It slowly began to crumble. Then, from inside the core, the particles drifted upward and downward outside the cracks of the core. They were the size of small sand grains.
This part was easy; Luis hadn't struggled with this before, either.
Breaking the core part was always easy, but the next part was always hard.
Luis watched as the aura from the core began forming into two new cores below and above the original core. This part had always felt strange. Whenever Luis tried to control the new cores to keep their shape, they would break apart and go back into the original core.
It was like Luis had grown a new limb; he was unable to control it.
But this time, it was like the limb had always been there but was always asleep. Instead of controlling a new limb, Luis was moving an old, weak one.
Slowly, the two new cores began to solidify until the original disappeared. The new cores were double in size but only a quarter full. That was fine, though Luis was halfway done now.
Luis was now focused on the second core, the one with the golem blessing. The aura felt a bit heavier to move because of the strain it took for the first core, but it wasn't as hard as before. The core wasn't pushing back against Luis like before.
Luis repeated the same process with the next core. Slowly crumbing it until the dust from it formed two more cores. Luis took his time because if he failed now he would have to start all over again.
After a long, agonizing process of slowly guiding the aura to make two new cores, Luis finally did it. He had four cores now, and all that remained was to stabilise them, another important step.
Stabilising them was the most important step.
Because the aura in the new cores still remembers the old structure of the two cores. The aura would want to go back to how it was previously—trying to drift towards the orginal position and trying to rebuild back into only two cores.
The cores were trying to drift inwards to merge back again.
Luis gritted his teeth. He was almost there, all his concentration just needed to go there to stop the cores from rejoining.
Luis didn't know how long he had been doing this. He couldn't focus on the time; every second, he had to remain focused on the cores, making sure they didn't rejoin.
There was only one thing for him to do now, and that was to wait.
Wait, stabilise the cores and focus.
Wait, stabilise the cores and focus.
Wait, stabilise the cores and focus.
Luis didn't know if it had been a few minutes or hours, but the aura in the cores finally started to stabilise. It didn't try to move to the original spot. The cores stopped drifting. Luis could feel it: there was no tension anymore, like a long storm had finally ended.
The aura did resist. It stayed there like it was home.
Luis opened his eyes.
Luis took a small breath. Looking across from him, he saw Noah smile. A smile he usually gave when he was proud of Luis.
"You did it, Luis, you reached the Advanced Tier."
.........
Aura Tiers
Novice - 1 core
Adept - 2 cores
Advanced - 4 cores
Intermediate - 8 cores
Elite - 16 cores
Master - 32 cores
Grandmaster - 64 cores
Legendary - 124 cores
Mythical - 256 cores