Chapter 165: Breakthrough
In the lore of Artemis Online, an Aura Master was a physical combatant capable of wrapping their entire body in dense energy, turning their bare skin into indestructible armor and their fists into mountain-splitting weapons.
’And also they’re capable of using Aura Sword...’ Klaus thought, he felt a bit excited about being able to use that. ’Well no more time needs to be wasted.’
Klaus raised the glowing orb toward his lips, eager to swallow it immediately and claim the power.
But he paused.
He was currently driving a moving carriage through the Haunted Winterlands.
If he took a Tier 5 consumable right now, the sudden surge of energy might cause his body to react unpredictably.
Klaus set the orb carefully on the leather dashboard for a second. He tapped into his divine core, pushing a steady stream of white Soul Mana into the control panel.
VWOOM!
Outside the carriage, the protective, spiked dome of Soul Mana snapped back into existence around the vehicle, spinning with high-speed razor-sharp lethality.
Up front, the bone-plated mountain bear let out a low growl, its muscular legs churning through the snowpack as it maintained a steady rapid pace toward the northern portal.
With the carriage secured on autopilot, Klaus unlatched the iron door, cracking it open slightly.
The moment the door opened an inch, a mouthwatering savory aroma wafted directly into his nose.
In the main cabin, Mirela was standing over the alchemical stove, boiling thick marbled cuts of the Ice Phoenix meat in a heavy iron pot filled with herbs and spices.
Klaus looked through the crack at the three girls. Mirela was stirring the pot, Tasha was sitting on a stool wiping down her father’s sword, and Anya was sitting neatly on the bed, holding the massive blue Ice Phoenix egg securely in her lap.
"I’m going to be out meditating in the control room for the next several hours," Klaus announced with his deep voice carrying smoothly across the cabin. "Do not disturb me under any circumstances, no matter what sounds you hear."
Mirela turned around, offering him a sweet affectionate smile. "Understood, Master! We’ll save a huge bowl of the phoenix stew for you when you finish! Good luck with your training!"
"Be careful, Master Klaus," Tasha added, bowing her head respectfully.
"Father’s spiritual breakthrough is proceeding as calculated," Anya reported deadpan, nodding her head once.
’How do you even know about that?’
"Right," Klaus grumbled.
He pulled the heavy iron door shut, locking the latch securely from the inside.
He raised his right hand, painting a thick triple-layered barrier of soundproof white Soul Mana over the iron surface to ensure no energy or sound could leak into the girls’ cabin.
Klaus turned back to the center of the control room.
He picked up the glowing Tier 5 Glacial Soul-Core Orb from the dashboard, sat cross-legged on the iron floorboards, and closed his eyes, taking a deep, restorative breath.
CRACK-ZAP!
A tiny spark of blue electricity and a node of crimson energy flared beside his shoulders.
Sparky and Valeria materialized out of his soul, hovering in the air beside his head.
"Are you really going to swallow that thing whole, Boss?" Sparky asked, her high-pitched voice buzzing with a mixture of excitement and concern as she hovered around his ear. "That’s a ridiculous amount of raw elemental density! You better not explode and ruin my tunic."
"The King’s physical vessel is divine," Valeria chimed in smoothly from his left shoulder, a bratty superior smirk on her face as she adjusted her miniature rifle strap. "He will easily digest the energy, unlike a weak, noisy spark-bug like you."
"WHO ARE YOU CALLING A WEAK SPARK-BUG, YOU USELESS GHOST?!" Sparky shrieked with her spiky yellow hair instantly bristling with violent blue static.
Sparky spun mid-air, shooting forward and grabbing Valeria squarely by her ethereal neck.
The two chibi elemental spirits tumbled and spun through the air in a chaotic noisy wrestling match, flying in circles around Klaus’s head.
Klaus let out a low amused sigh, not even opening his eyes. "Calm down, both of you. I’m starting."
He looked down at the glowing sapphire orb resting in his palm.
Without hesitating another second, Klaus opened his mouth, popped the Tier 5 Glacial Soul-Core Orb straight onto his tongue, and swallowed it whole.
VWOOM!
Simultaneously, Klaus flooded his skin with a dense protective barrier of white Soul Mana, sealing his internal pathways off from the environment.
For the first two seconds, as the orb slid down his throat into his stomach, nothing happened.
Klaus leaned his head back against the iron wall with a dry thought crossing his mind.
’Hmph... My reconstructed vessel is too strong to even feel a Tier 5 core. I’m not going to get knocked out by a simple—’
KRA-THOOOOOM!
The thought didn’t even get to finish forming in his mind.
The exact second the Tier 5 Glacial Soul-Core Orb hit his internal core, the solid sapphire shell violently detonated.
An overwhelming tsunami of pure, compressed cold-water mana and golden combat Aura exploded outward from his stomach, violently flooding every single organ, blood vessel, bone, and spiritual pathway in his body simultaneously.
"Gah—!" Klaus gasped with his eyes instantly rolling back into his head as his consciousness was forcefully snuffed out.
His massive frame went completely limp, slumping back against the iron wall of the control room.
Inside his dormant body, a terrifying biological and spiritual reconstruction began.
Because his magic capacity was being forcefully shoved up two full ranks... from a Tier 2 Apprentice straight to a Tier 3 and then a First-Class Wizard.
His internal mana pathways were violently expanding.
The unnatural pressure caused his pores to open wide as a thick foul-smelling and pitch-black liquid... the accumulated physical impurities and rotted residue from his past sickly body began to pour aggressively out of his skin, coating his broad bare chest and shoulders in dark sludge.
Klaus’s divine instincts fired automatically even while unconscious.
A soft white coat of Soul Flames erupted across his skin, instantly burning and vaporizing the black sludge as fast as it spewed out, preventing the foul liquid from staining the room.
CRACK! SKRRRT!
Simultaneously, the golden combat Aura delivered by the Tier 5 orb flooded his skeletal structure.
The raw energy began to violently break his bones on a microscopic level... fracturing his ribs, collarbones, and spine only for his Soul Vessel to instantly re-fuse the bone fibers back together ten times denser, coating his skeleton in an unbreakable golden aura.
CRACK-CRUNCH!
His bones broke and re-fused continuously in a gruesome silent cycle of physical elevation.
Above his slumping smoking body, Sparky and Valeria stopped wrestling.
Sparky hovered in the air, her tiny mouth open as she looked down at Klaus’s body snapping and burning under the Soul Flames.
She blinked her glowing blue eyes, then looked over at Valeria.
"Well," Sparky sighed while crossing her tiny arms. "He’s definitely not exploding."
"Naturally," Valeria smirked, floating back up to hover near his ear. "The King is simply shedding his mortal limitations."
Satisfied that he wasn’t dying, the two tiny spirits turned right back around, Sparky tackling Valeria back into another chaotic noisy playfight as they tumbled around the ceiling.
Hours passed in uninterrupted silence.
When Klaus’s consciousness finally began to drift back toward reality, he didn’t immediately see the ceiling of the carriage control room.
He wasn’t sitting in the leather captain’s chair.
Klaus opened his eyes, and found himself standing in a vast, terrifying, endless domain of roaring flames.
The sea of fire stretched out for miles in every direction with the sky painted in a dark blood-red hue.
Floating in the distance, standing tall in the center of the roaring ocean of flames, was a colossal pitch-black double door... the towering eldritch gates of the Akashic Library.
It was the exact same place he had been dragged to not too long ago... the terrifying boundary where his divine Soul King authority threatened to overflow his mortal vessel.
Back then, Anya had been forced to use her spatial magic to forcefully snap his consciousness back to reality, warning him that if he ever walked through those black doors or touched their surface, his mortal existence would be forcefully elevated to a higher conceptual plane, resulting in immediate physical death.
Klaus stood in the ocean of roaring fire, staring at the colossal black doors in the distance.
He didn’t feel fear this time nor any sort of attraction as he looked at the ancient eldritch gates that were trying to claim his soul with an annoyed expression settling over his handsome features.
"I’m not ready to die yet," Klaus stated, his deep voice echoing with authority across the sea of flames.
He raised his right hand, making a lazy dismissive flick of his wrist toward the ancient doors.
"Begone," Klaus said.
VWOOM!
The colossal black doors froze.
The entire dimension of roaring red flames began to ripple and warp like a puddle of water struck by a heavy stone.
The eldritch landscape shattered into millions of sparkling translucent fragments that dissolved into nothingness.
"Haah!"
Klaus’s eyes snapped open.
His vision cleared instantly as he wasn’t in the ocean of flames anymore.
He was sitting cross-legged on the iron floorboards of the carriage control room, looking straight at the locked iron door leading to the main cabin.
He took a long restorative breath of air that filled his lungs with cool oxygen.
The agonizing pain in his bones was completely gone.
The black sludge that had poured from his pores had been burned away by his Soul Flames, leaving his bare muscled skin completely clean, unblemished, and radiating a subtle golden-white luminescence.
Klaus slowly stood up to his full towering height.
The moment his boots stood firm on the iron floorboards, he froze.
He felt weightless.
His entire body felt infinitely lighter, stronger, and more fluid, as if the physical gravity of the world had been reduced by half.
Klaus raised his hand, running his calloused fingers through his long silver hair to pull it back from his face.
The long luminescent strands cascaded all the way down past his waist, brushing against the small of his back.
Klaus let out a low sigh, looking at the long strands in his grip.
"My hair is really getting too fucking long..."
It was cool and majestic having waist-length, luminescent silver hair that blew dramatically in the wind, sure, but there was a limit to everything before it became an annoying physical inconvenience during combat.
He was definitely going to need a trim soon.
He turned his head, looking toward the iron dashboard.
Outside the windshield, the dark, star-filled night sky had returned to the Winterlands.
Sitting on the leather captain’s chair, curled up tightly against each other, were Sparky and Valeria.
The tiny Lightning Fairy and the miniature Crimson Sharpshooter were fast asleep, holding onto each other like two sleeping kittens, humming soft little snores.
Klaus looked at the two sleeping chibis with a genuine soft smile touching his handsome face.
’Cute,’ Klaus thought.
He turned his attention back inward, closing his eyes to inspect his newly upgraded core.
The microsecond he focused his mind, Klaus’s breath hitched slightly.
His internal magic reserves weren’t just higher... they were higher to an absurd terrifying degree.
The foundational mana pathways running through his core had expanded into wide, open rivers of pure crystalline energy.
He had officially broken through, ascending directly from a Tier 2 Apprentice to a First-Class Wizard.
He could finally feel the true overwhelming weight of what it meant to be a Wizard.
And beneath that massive reservoir of magic power, sitting in his physical muscles and bones, was his new Aura.
Klaus flexed his right hand into a fist.
VWOOM!
A dense glowing golden coat of energy instantly enveloped his entire right forearm and fist.
It wasn’t magic... it was pure refined physical vitality compressed into a indestructible combat shell which was the signature authority of an Early-Stage Aura Master.
With this golden Aura coating his skin, Klaus felt like he could punch straight through a mountain peak without scratching his knuckles.
"Incredible..." Klaus whispered, deactivating the golden Aura with a thought.
However, as he evaluated his overall combat tree, he noted a clear imbalance.
"Fuu..."
Compared to his massive, divine magic capacity and his Soul King authority, his physical Aura techniques were severely lagging behind.
He had the raw stat capacity of an Aura Master now, but he didn’t possess any specialized high-tier Aura martial arts or combat techniques to fully utilize the energy efficiency.
’Hopefully when I spin the Gacha wheel once we reach that town...’ Klaus thought in his mind, ’...I’ll pull some high-tier Aura techniques and advanced spell books.’