BANG!
A thunderous strike echoed across the hill, reverberating through the hill air like the war drums of an ancient battlefield.
BANG!
The sound came again, more forceful than before, carrying with it the desperate fury of someone who refused to accept defeat.
BANG!
The noise roared one final time, ringing through the crisp afternoon atmosphere with such force that birds scattered from distant trees, crying out in alarm as they fled to safer perches.
The sun blazed mercilessly overhead in the mid-afternoon sky, a golden tyrant that showed no mercy to those who dared train beneath its burning gaze. There was no wind to offer relief, no cloud to provide even momentary shade from the heat that made the air shimmer like liquid glass. Sweat ran down Fenix's body in constant streams, soaking into the weighted metal cuffs strapped around his wrists and ankles until they felt like instruments of torture rather than training aids.
For six grueling days, this hill had been transformed into his personal battlefield. The same cursed hill, the same impossible boulder, and always the same maddening test from his enigmatic mentor: strike until something breaks... or break yourself trying.
Fenix stood before the massive six-foot-tall boulder that Ghost had summoned from deep within the earth through methods that still seemed like dark magic to his untrained eyes. His breathing came in ragged gasps, chest heaving like a bellows as his lungs fought to process the superheated air. But his eyes - his crimson eyes burned with an intensity that had nothing to do with the oppressive heat.
He still hadn't managed to crack the stone. Not so much as a hairline fracture. But today felt fundamentally different from all the others.
The truth was, he had been learning far more than Ghost realized. His mysterious mentor hadn't acknowledged it, hadn't even hinted that he was aware of Fenix's growing understanding, but the boy knew with absolute certainty what he was truly facing.
The boulder wasn't just stone. It was cloaked in layers upon layers of Ghost's personal aura, wrapped in what felt like an almost indestructible cocoon of violet energy that seemed to mock every desperate blow he landed. But despite its seemingly perfect defense, it wasn't completely flawless.
On that very first day, when he had pressed his palm against the cold surface in frustrated exploration, he had felt something that barely registered at the edge of his consciousness - a subtle vibration, a rhythmic pulse that seemed to emanate from somewhere deep within the stone itself. It had taken him days of careful observation and growing desperation to finally put words to what he was sensing.
'Wavelength.'
The revelation had struck him like lightning. Aura wasn't just raw, unformed energy that could be shaped through willpower alone. It possessed its own unique frequency, its own patterns of movement and tone, a distinctive pulse that resonated directly from the deepest core of the user's soul. Every person's aura was as individual as their fingerprint, as personal as their heartbeat.
Fenix's crimson aura was wild and chaotic - burning hot and desperately volatile, like captured lightning trying to transform itself into living flame. It moved with the frantic energy of someone who had clawed his way back from death itself and refused to ever be powerless again.
But Ghost's violet aura was something entirely different. Still as deep water, patient as stone, methodical as the turning of seasons. It didn't push against obstacles with brute force - it pulled them in, surrounded them, absorbed them with the quiet confidence of a hunter that had learned to wait for exactly the right moment to strike.
The difference was subtle, almost invisible to casual observation, but Fenix had noticed something crucial during his days of futile attacks. The boulder didn't actively reject his crimson energy when he struck it. Instead, it seemed to try drawing his aura inward, as if Ghost's violet coating was somehow reacting to his presence. The interaction was almost... submissive, like recognition between two parts of a greater whole.
But despite that strange resonance, the stone had never shown so much as a single crack.
That's when the impossible idea had first taken root in his mind, growing like a seed planted in fertile ground.
'What if I could somehow mask my aura signature? What if I could match his exact frequency, make the boulder's defensive coating think my energy actually belonged to him?'
He didn't even know if such a thing was theoretically possible. No training manual had ever mentioned "aura masking" as a legitimate technique. Ghost had certainly never suggested it as a viable approach. But logical impossibility had never stopped him before, and it wouldn't stop him now.
Fenix settled into his meditation posture, crossing his legs with practiced ease as he prepared for what might be the most dangerous experiment of his short life. Ghost, who had been lounging nearby against the ancient sakura tree with his usual mask of bored indifference, raised a single eyebrow in curious interest. What was the boy planning to attempt now?
Crimson light erupted from Fenix's body like a volcanic explosion, his personal aura surging outward with violent, uncontrolled intensity. The energy blazed around him like wildfire given physical form, scorching the grass in expanding circles and making the very air tremble with barely contained power. But unlike his previous displays, this wasn't a show of force designed to intimidate or impress. This was something far more complex and infinitely more dangerous.
He was going to completely disassemble his own aura signature.
The process was like trying to unravel a tapestry while it was still being woven by invisible hands. Thread by thread, wave by wave, he began dissecting his own aura as if it were strands of living fire that fought him with every attempt at control. The crimson flames were chaotic by nature, resisting his efforts to impose order on their fundamental wildness. But he persisted, driven by the kind of desperate determination that only came from having absolutely nothing left to lose.
Each strand of energy he managed to separate felt like tearing away pieces of his own soul. Sweat that had nothing to do with the afternoon heat poured down his face as he worked, his entire body trembling with the effort of maintaining conscious control over forces that wanted nothing more than to burn everything in sight to ash.
But once he had successfully unraveled the basic structure of his aura, the real work began. Now he had to weave something entirely new - a perfect imitation of Ghost's still, patient violet energy that would fool even the most sophisticated defensive measures.
Three grueling hours passed in this state of absolute concentration. His clothes became completely soaked with perspiration that stung his eyes and made his skin feel like it was on fire. The ground around his meditation spot was scorched black from the constant overflow of uncontrolled energy, creating a perfect circle of devastation that looked like a miniature battlefield.
Ghost was no longer lounging casually against the tree. He stood now with focused attention, his ancient eyes watching every subtle shift in Fenix's energy patterns. What had started as mild curiosity had transformed into something approaching genuine concern mixed with professional fascination.
Then, in a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity, it happened.
Fenix's aura underwent a fundamental transformation that defied every natural law Ghost thought he understood.
A sudden chill shot through the superheated air like winter wind cutting through summer heat. The temperature around them dropped so rapidly that visible vapor began rising from the scorched earth. Then came the sound - a thunderous crack that seemed to originate from reality itself as the ground beneath Fenix cratered inward, unable to withstand the concentrated pressure of his transformed energy.
But the crimson flames hadn't disappeared. Instead, they screamed upward toward the sky like a beacon designed to challenge the gods themselves, blazing with an intensity that made the afternoon sun seem pale by comparison.
Ghost shot to his feet, his eyes wide with genuine shock for the first time in decades.
"His aura signature just spiked to Novice+ level," he whispered to himself, his voice carrying notes of disbelief. "But that's not..."
He stopped mid-sentence, his enhanced senses detecting something that shouldn't have been possible.
Something was fundamentally wrong with what he was observing. Or perhaps, more accurately, something was different in ways that challenged his understanding of how aura was supposed to function.
The power radiating from Fenix didn't feel like Fenix anymore.
It felt like...
"Me," Ghost breathed, taking an involuntary step forward as his voice trembled with a mixture of awe and barely controlled fear. "That energy signature... it's perfectly mimicking mine."
His analytical mind raced through the implications. "Aura masking... he actually managed to achieve aura masking. A technique that doesn't officially exist, that shouldn't be possible for someone at his level..."
Fenix rose slowly from his meditation posture, every movement flowing with newfound grace and power. He flexed his fingers experimentally, feeling electricity dance along his nerve endings as transformed energy coursed through his body like molten lightning. His aura no longer raged outward in uncontrolled fury. Instead, it coiled tightly around his form like a second skin, dense and focused and absolutely lethal in its compressed intensity.
He took a single step toward the boulder that had mocked his efforts for six endless days.
His right hand ignited with crimson fire, but this wasn't the wild, chaotic energy he had wielded before. This flame was compressed and concentrated at a single point - his clenched fist - until it became something that transcended mere aura and approached the realm of concentrated destruction.
Without words, without hesitation, without any ceremony whatsoever, he struck.
The punch tore through the air itself, creating a visible shockwave that trailed behind his fist like the wake of a ship cutting through water. The sound was beyond thunder - it was the roar of reality being forced to accommodate power it was never designed to contain.
His fist connected with the boulder's surface.
For a heartbeat that lasted an eternity, nothing happened.
Complete, absolute silence.
Then -
BOOM.
A secondary shockwave erupted from the point of impact, delayed but infinitely more devastating than the first. The sound was like the world's largest bell being struck by a giant's hammer, reverberating through the mountain air with such force that it could be heard for miles in every direction.
A roar of crimson energy exploded outward from the boulder in expanding rings of pure destruction, engulfing the massive stone like a controlled detonation that turned solid matter into its component atoms.
The boulder didn't crack.
It didn't split.
It didn't break.
It 'shattered' - exploding into billions of individual grains of sand as if it had never been solid matter to begin with, as if the very concept of its existence had been retroactively erased from reality.
Ghost appeared beside Fenix in less than an eyeblink, his presence sharp with professional disbelief and something approaching genuine amazement.
"His power level just spiked again," he muttered, his enhanced senses struggling to process what they were detecting. "Intermediate rank? That's impossible. No one advances two full levels in a single afternoon..."
But before he could complete his analysis or voice any of the dozen questions flooding his mind, Fenix's transformed body began trembling violently.
The boy clutched at his chest as if something inside was trying to claw its way out. The perfectly controlled aura surrounding him began spiraling into chaos, collapsing inward with the devastating force of a black hole consuming itself. His face went white as bone, then gray as ash, as the backlash of his impossible technique finally caught up with him.
His knees buckled, and he began falling toward the scorched earth.
Ghost moved with inhuman speed, blurring across the space between them to catch Fenix's unconscious form before it could hit the ground. The boy's breathing was shallow but steady, his pulse rapid but strong - signs of severe energy exhaustion rather than any permanent damage.
With another flicker of movement that bent the laws of physics, Ghost vanished from the hilltop entirely, reappearing moments later in Fenix's simple bedroom within the estate. He laid the unconscious young man gently on his narrow bed, taking care to position him so that his breathing wouldn't be restricted.
For several long minutes, Ghost stood motionless beside the bed, staring down at his student with an expression that had completely abandoned its usual mask of cold indifference. In its place was something that looked suspiciously like pride mixed with anticipation and perhaps just a trace of concern for what they had unleashed.
"You really are something unprecedented," he murmured to the sleeping figure, his voice carrying notes of genuine fondness that would have shocked anyone who knew him. "You've just revealed a technique that could change the fundamental nature of aura itself... and this is only the beginning of what you'll be capable of once you learn to control it properly."
He turned toward the window, gazing out at the distant hilltop where a perfect circle of devastation marked the site of Fenix's breakthrough. Somewhere out there, mixed with the ordinary dirt and grass, were billions of sand grains that had once been an "indestructible" boulder.
"Sleep well, kid," Ghost said quietly. "Tomorrow, your real education begins."
As he prepared to fade back into whatever shadows had spawned him, one final thought crossed his ancient mind:
'If Fenix can master aura masking at Novice rank, what will he be capable of when he reaches Expert? Master? Grandmaster?'
'Perhaps... perhaps it's finally time for the world to remember why the Ackerman name was once spoken with fear.'