Chapter 98: Inner Layer Of The Auracle

Monica shut her eyes and focused on her Mind’s Eye, and the very next moment, she found herself within a strange sphere that covered the area around five steps from her body, which was still lying motionless on the bed.

She rose from the bed like a soul leaving its body, her translucent figure lifting effortlessly into the air as she looked toward the two figures standing within her room.

She did not actually need to move this way, but she wanted to at least experience the sensation of moving through her Mana Projection – a technique that allowed her to move within the sphere as an invisible shell and could only be perceived by herself.

Stella stood within the sphere, while Elias remained outside it.

Everything inside the sphere retained its original colors, while everything beyond its boundary had become black and white, or at least that was how it was supposed to work.

Monica froze.

Her gaze had fallen upon a strange anomaly beyond the range of her Mind’s Eye, and that anomaly was Elias.

He was not black and white.

Instead, his body was surrounded by a violent mixture of purple and red, the two colors twisting around him like chains wrapped tightly around a restrained beast.

They moved continuously, intertwining with one another as though they were struggling against something hidden within him, and at the very center of his chest was an eye.

Monica stared at it.

The eye was red, with a narrow slit resembling that of a reptile, but despite its appearance, she immediately understood that it was not something simple.

’What is this?’ she wondered, her expression becoming serious.

As a mage, Monica was quite aware that supernatural could exist anywhere and within anyone, but she had never expected to discover that her own husband would be one of them.

Supernatural was a classification given to entities or phenomena that went against the world’s natural order, things that were either regarded as miracles or feared as curses by ordinary people.

Looking at Elias’s current state, Monica could not exactly call what she was seeing a miracle.

However, the longer she observed him, the more she understood what was happening.

The violent purple and red were actually trying to surpass the eye.

Or perhaps they were trying to surpass the entity that the eye belonged to.

Yet the eye itself appeared strangely calm, as though it was completely uninterested in the struggle surrounding it. Its gaze was directed toward some distant place, staring at something that Monica herself could not see.

’How strange...’

A part of her desperately wanted to investigate.

She wanted to know what Elias actually was, what that eye represented, why those strange colors were wrapped around him, and what kind of existence could reside within the body of her husband.

But she was already pressed for time, and more importantly, there was something far more important in front of her.

Monica reluctantly tore her gaze away from Elias and turned toward Stella.

She walked over to her and stopped beside the woman, then looked at her for several seconds before her expression slowly fell.

’She is taller than me...’ Monica thought dejectedly.

Her gaze lowered.

’Hers are also bigger than mine.’

She sighed deeply.

’What kind of boob monsters did my husband marry?’

Monica shook her head, refusing to dwell on the matter any longer, and immediately focused her attention on the three red Auracle rings wrapped around Stella’s waist.

The moment her consciousness touched them, however, her entire perception changed.

Monica felt as though she had been thrown into a turbulent sea.

Storms raged around her from every direction, waves of overwhelming power crashing against one another while countless currents of energy surged through the darkness.

Her expression changed instantly.

’Oh my arcane! What is this Aura?!’

She could barely maintain her composure as the enormous pressure swept through her consciousness.

’What the hell is this amount?!’

This was precisely one of the reasons why inspecting an Auracle was considered nearly impossible.

An Auracle contained the Aura of a swordsman, and Aura was not merely some form of energy that could be casually examined. It was the manifestation of a swordsman’s will and understanding of the sword, meaning that attempting to force her consciousness through it was almost equivalent to throwing herself into an ocean filled with blades.

How was any mage supposed to face something like this head-on?

Monica narrowed her eyes.

Why would she need to face it head-on?

She was the prodigy of the Mage Tower, the woman who had once been expected to reach heights no other mage had ever touched, and she refused to believe that something as crude as an enormous amount of Aura could stop her.

’I am Monica Ragnar.’

Her consciousness condensed.

’The one who will be the greatest and strongest magus to ever live.’

She compressed her awareness into a single point, reducing its presence until it became almost impossibly small.

Within the sphere created by her Mind’s Eye, Monica could move her consciousness wherever she wished. She could travel through the surroundings, examine the structures of mana, and even move beyond the turbulent sea of Aura contained within Stella’s Auracle.

However, doing so would be extremely dangerous.

Aura was a swordsman’s will and understanding of the sword, and if Monica allowed her consciousness to recklessly pass through it, that will could tear her apart.

She therefore moved slowly.

At least, that had been the plan.

The moment she pushed a tiny portion of her consciousness past the sea of Aura, however, her entire vision suddenly shifted.

The turbulent sea, the storms, the overwhelming pressure all of it vanished.

Monica found herself standing somewhere completely different.

She blinked several times.

Her eyes slowly widened as she looked around.

’What the fuck happened?’

She turned her head from side to side, trying to understand where she had ended up, but every direction revealed the same impossible sight.

She was standing inside what could only be described as the inner layer of the Auracle.

It was vast, far too vast.

The tube-like structure was extremely complicated, with layers upon layers of intricate patterns and symbols woven together into its walls.

Monica stared at it.

Her head slowly tilted to the side, and then further.

Her expression gradually transformed from confusion into disbelief as she carefully examined the structure before her.

There was something familiar about it.

Something she had spent years studying.

Something that should have been completely impossible here.

Her lips parted slightly, and after several moments of stunned silence, she finally mumbled, ’This... This is magic?’

Her gaze traveled across the vast inner structure once more, and the disbelief in her eyes deepened.

’Magic using Aura?’ she mumbled, her expression filled with genuine confusion.

’How?’