Fwoosh
Flames flickered in my palm as I activated my profession skill, [Cosmic Forge's Flame (A)]. Weirdly enough, this flame was divided into two colors, blue and red, and yet instead of fusing together into purple, they seem to be incapable of mixing together.
"Profession skills are able to be activated with just a thought. That's because they were imbued into your brain in the exact moment your profession was unsealed on the day you awakened."
Andrew circled me as he looked at the flickering flame with curiousity.
"That is why, no matter the percentage of proficiency you have indicated on your status window, you will always be able to use those skills. Still, it is better to know how to use them."
He looked around the training grounds and spotted a rack of wooden weapons. He walked over to it and picked up some of them.
"That is why we will train your limits and compare them to the limits of my copy."
Saying that he created his own multicolored flame, only his was blue and a slightly transparent gray.
"First let's see what exactly you can change in an object."
He threw a wooden sword. I caught it with my hand and prepared to imbue it with my flames.
It was a quick process. The red and blue flames completely swallowed the wooden sword. I visualized the finalized object and observed the results.
The flames that had initially swallowed the wooden sword had, of course, the vague shape of the object they had been imbued into, until that wasn't the case.
The flames started changing their shape into that of something more similar to a polearm.
Until they stopped changing. The multi-colored flame started burning brighter, its colors slowly merging together into a fantastic shade of purple, until in a flash of violet light, the flames were dispersed and in their place stood a new object.
A wooden polearm that possessed a sword's crossguard.
"Oh~, nice going. It was a bit slow, but that can be easily worked on. For now, it seems that you have a lot of control over the features of the object you want to change, however, you cannot discard them. You tried to discard the crossguard that was originally from the sword, but you were only capable of slightly shortening it. Perhaps if that had been your intention from the start, you could've shortened it more, but this was the result."
He reached for a wooden sword himself.
"My profession allows me to visualize in my status window a new tab called Copied Skills. Right now, the skill you just used has been imprinted there as [Fake Cosmic Forge's Flame (B)], and although it has been demoted a rank, I'm still an A Rank awakened, the power output that I will release with this skill will be much larger than yours, still."
Similar red and blue flames erupted from his hands and engulfed the sword. Just like it had happened with me, the form of the flames and the wooden sword started twisting into a new one.
In his case the form was much smaller than the original sword, resembling more a dagger or a combat knife. Soon the flames also merged into a purple color before dissipating in a violet flash of light, revealing the finished product.
"Hm. As I thought. If one has a higher output, they can accomplish more with the skill."
In his hand was not a wooden dagger, but rather a dagger made out of steel and other materials, with only slight hints of wood in certain parts.
"You changed the materials?"
"It is rather simple, but because I am not the owner of the skill and the fact that it was not your A-Rank version, I couldn't do much, and well, that weird way to use Mana and Aura together. Which is weird since you don't see many professions that deal with Aura, let alone both Aura and Mana. With some training, you should be able to do this quite easily."
He spent some time looking at the dagger he had made before shifting his attention back to me.
"Now, the next step is to see just how much you can escape your skill's intended purpose. Think of it like this: skills have a certain way to be used. Your skill's intended use is to change the form and material of an object, but what other things can you do with it?"
He rolled the sleeves of his shirt.
"That's what we are going to see. Your skill uses both mana and aura to function, so what exactly happens when you don't use one of them? Let's start with mana, you should already be able to feel it and control it better than aura."
I looked at my hand and concentrated on activating the skill. Like always, the process seemed so much more natural to use. It took some effort to not activate the skill in autopilot and take the reins of the process.
However, I wasn't able to do so.
Fwoosh.
"Still red and blue, did you succeed?"
"I don't think so."
"That's to be expected, after all, even if you can control mana better than aura, it is still something that you don't normally use. But that's what practice is for. Keep trying, if after a certain number of attempts you still haven't succeeded, then let's stop."
Hearing that, I decided to keep going. Again and again I tried activating my skill without using both mana and aura. Again and again I tried holding back the flow of mana that was going towards the use of the skill.
I didn't succeed, however, there were signs of improvement. The red color of the flames was more prominent than the blue part. And that also affected the way the flames behaved.
For starters, it stopped being capable of reforming objects that it was imbued into, instead it became a destructive flame that destroyed the things it touched, just like an improved fire.
It was quite useful in certain situations, I reckoned.
Anyway, with this we were able to reach a safe assumption. If the balance between mana and aura in the skill was broken, the flames that were conjured would lose their original effect and become slightly more powerful flames.
Andrew also experimented with the skill, discovering that when only mana was used on it, the conjured blue flames were harmless to physical objects but incredibly destructive against magical phenomena.
This meant that now I could burn magic spells that were thrown at me as well as magic circles themselves. And in the funny case where said targets were conjured through magic, he could burn water and feed other magical flames to my own.
It was incredible. In the original novel, Marcus mostly used the purple flames, allowing him to use both properties as well as use some techniques that involved shaping his weapon as he pleased.
In other words, [Cosmic Forge's Flame (A)] was an incredibly powerful skill with various uses. Still, it was not the main skill that came with his profession.
It was [Cosmic Forge (SS)].
The ability to use cosmic energy to recreate any material and adjust it in a way that said materials formed an item.
Since this skill was impossible for Andrew to copy, we would have to try and make it work with my lack of control over the two energies needed.
"Before we focus on that. It's pretty obvious that the biggest problem here is your mana and aura control. What are your tutors doing? What are they teaching you?"
"Ah. They are teaching me about what exactly mana and aura are and how to make use of them."
"That can be taught in a single lesson tough."
He was not wrong.
Mana and Aura were both types of energy that were born from one's awakening. Mana was the conjunction of the ambient energy in the surroundings, in the past called breath of the world, with the soul power that came from our soul.
After awakening, humans were capable of unconsciously going through this process, and that gave birth to the Magic Stat.
Aura, on the other hand, was pretty rare to be used. Most of its users were either pretty physically strong people or had professions that directly dealt with it.
It was born from the mixture of physical energy, a.k.a. how much energy your body could produce through physical effort, and once again, soul power.
And yet there was no Aura Stat on the Status Window.
Most people measured their Aura through their Strenght Stats and other physical-related stats, however, there were cases of people with the same levels of physical energy having different aura pools, leading to the belief that the process was not that certain.
"So, we will go through some exercises to improve control and let you get a little more familiar with aura."
And so he pointed towards the ground, gesturing for me to sit down and copy everything that he did.
And so we started the exercises.