X777. Crocus. Kingdom of Fiore.
I concentrated hard as I slowly inserted my Aura into my patient, making sure not to touch his Magic Container with my Aura lest I want his magic to reject my Aura and result in his injury worsening.
'Two Boosts should do'
Once I was sure that my Aura was saturating his entire physical body, I activated my Semblance, boosting my Aura and, by extension, the patient's body as a whole, multiplying his natural regeneration by four times.
For a few broken bones and bruising, it was more than enough.
Within a matter of a few minutes, his injuries healed to the extent that I could let the healing magic of the Knights Order medics take care of it.
"Damn! No matter how many times I feel it, your magic will always feel overwhelming to me. Are you sure you are not a high-ranking mage?"
I shook my head in amusement.
"Trust me, Zex. If I were a high-ranking mage, I would have long since decided to take on harder quests and leave the capital in search of new adventures."
Zex Drew, one of the knights from Owen's unit, chuckled at my words before he slowly got up from the bed as his fellow knights walked towards him with smirks that barely concealed their worry.
"That's right! If Jaune achieved such a level at his tender age of sixteen, there is no way those big guilds would have left him alone until now."
"Still, how powerful do you reckon he is at?"
I looked at the knights who started to gossip like a group of wives and shook my head.
"I think I am probably equal to an average mage from a big guild right now, considering my skills and magic. Dawn and Owen think that I should become stronger than that and possibly someone equivalent to a powerful mage from the guilds in a year at most."
The knights started to gossip again as I left the infirmary while saying goodbye to them.
During the past year, ever since I reduced the frequency of my quests in favor of training myself harder, I've been taking up requests from the Knights Order and other medical facilities in the city.
My original semblance, Aura Amp, was unlocked when Weiss was on the verge of death, responding to my desperation to save her.
And while my new Semblance is not as capable as Aura Amp when it comes to healing, mainly because magic and Aura have their small differences, which makes it harder for me to work my semblance, it still gives me an avenue of healing others, one I want to train just in case I ever need it.
These requests served two purposes. One is to re-train my control over my Semblance, allowing me to fine-tune my boosts and broaden the applications of my power. Another is to train my Aura reserves.
Turns out, instead of simple meditative expulsion and then Ethernano integration, my Aura reserves deepen quicker when I use my Semblance to drain my Aura.
I think it has to do with my Boost strengthening my Aura reserve growth along with the rest of my abilities, which is one hell of a boon.
For that reason, I've been using my Semblance to heal as many people as possible every day, which has been helping me increase my Aura reserves steadily.
Already, my Aura reserves have far surpassed what I had in my old life, including the years I spent in the Ever After, where my power had grown to a ridiculous level.
And yet, when it comes to classifying myself according to this world's power system, I am still only as strong as an average mage.
This is quite telling of how powerful these people are and how dangerous this world is despite its natural beauty and the lack of Grimm.
Soon, I walked into the small wooden house that I've rented out for myself for the past year as a temporary home.
However, the moment I walked in, I felt another Aura signature move towards me at extreme speeds before colliding with me like a ballistic missile.
Instantly, my Aura dropped by nearly 20%, showing the force of the attack.
But the truth is that it was no attack.
It was Juniper, who had now grown to the size of a wolf.
The moment I fell to the floor, my baby girl instantly started licking my face with happy noises while her forest green Aura slowly retracted back into her body after that sudden impact.
Nearly a year ago, Juniper fell ill and nearly died after some Dark Wizard tried to drug her and take her away to sell her on the black market.
While we quickly managed to track down that bastard with the help of the Knights Order (I personally beheaded that bastard. A decision that I don't regret even now, despite the hit my reputation took due to that incident), it was still not in time for Juniper to get out of the ordeal unscathed.
Unfortunately, as Wyverns don't make that good of a pet and they very rarely stay with humans, nobody in the capital knew what to do.
Healing magic failed on her as her natural resistance to magic reared its head at such a critical moment, and regular healing methods were ineffective.
In the end, I had no choice but to gamble with her life on the line and awaken her Aura.
I still remember it like yesterday. The fear of losing her, the feeling of her innate magic, which, while potent, was minuscule in comparison to what I am used to feeling. The anxiety I felt as my Aura slowly made its way to her soul and stimulated it, showing it how to use its innate power with my own Aura circulation as the guide.
And the relief I felt when my baby girl did not explode in gore when her Aura erupted from her soul.
My fears were completely valid thanks to the many experiments I had conducted in the past, trying to see if I could awaken Aura within the living beings of this world (The number of flying fish, Vulcans, Juvenile Hodras, and many other creatures that exploded when I awakened their Aura is enough to make even a seasoned knight shudder in disgust).
From what I learned from my experiments, Aura and Magic, despite sharing similar origins and properties, did not mesh well together when they were forced into a tight space.
For example, I could circulate my Aura easily enough even within the body of a powerful mage as long as the Magical Energy of the Mage in question has room to move around within his container when I inject my Aura into it.
However, if I forced my Aura into their Magic Container, one that is full or unawakened? A big boom would be the least of my worries.
On the other hand, I still don't know if I can awaken Aura within regular people since they would lack a Magic Container to begin with, since it would have been the height of foolishness to try something like that without prior knowledge of what would happen.
Thankfully, despite being a healthy Wyvern, Juniper's magic and container had yet to develop, which played a major role in saving her life when her Aura activated.
Although there have been quite a few interesting developments since her Aura activated, those are thoughts for later.
I chuckled before boosting myself once, allowing me to carry the small but extremely heavy Wyvern into my arms.
"You missed me that much? I was only gone for two hours at most."
The low whine she let out made me chuckle before taking her to the couch (which I made from solid metal since normal furniture can't handle her weight) and plopping down on the cushions.
"Well, I missed you too. Fortunately, there is not much work to do today compared to my daily schedule."
For some reason, things have been quite hectic these days. And from what I hear, it is not just Crocus either.
Monsters across the kingdom have been getting anxious and displaying extremely aggressive behavior, starting from midnight on the 7th of July, which was a week ago.
From what Dawn told me, the Knights Order was cooperating with the Magic Council to find the source of this anomalous behavior. Supposedly, the Council was suspecting some kind of dark ritual, possibly by those Cultists of Zeref, given what happened last year.
But my instincts tell me that something is afoot.
The last time I felt like this was before Salem's attack on Atlas.
And the intensity of my nerves is far worse than what I felt back then.
Whatever is happening or about to happen out there is orders of magnitude more intense than Salem's attack, which does not fill me with confidence.
Worse yet, it was not just the monsters that were affected by whatever this phenomenon was.
There has been a sudden increase in the number of children who have awakened their magic in the past week.
The number is not all that exaggerated from what we have seen so far. But it is still there.
And then there are the rumors flowing in with the merchants from across the Kingdom.
The news of Layla Heartfilia, the wife of that business tycoon Jude Heartfilia, whom Owen was tasked with escorting two years ago, fell ill a few days ago. The only reason this is relevant is that she was supposed to be an extremely powerful and competent Celestial Spirit Mage and should be at the peak of her health. But now, she suddenly fell ill, right after the anomalies started happening, which was suspicious as hell given that she was the only one reported to be affected by these anomalous issues in the last week.
Aside from that, there were sightings of a hostile demon from a small town in the western mountains.
Reports of strange magical energy readings from across the kingdom's skies have also been trickling in slowly, but nobody could make heads or tails of it.
The list went on and on.
In a single week, countless strange things were happening across the known world.
While some of it can be coincidences, I am more inclined to think that someone or something is moving in the shadows, and something significant has happened at midnight on July 7th, X777.
I was pulled out of my thoughts when Juniper licked me again, getting my attention.
She happily jumped down from my arms and flapped towards the door, indicating that she wanted to go out for a bit.
With a chuckle, I got up from the couch.
Yes, things are going in quite a strange direction across the kingdom, and I feel a storm coming. One that I intend to investigate to the best of my abilities.
But for now, my baby girl and my friends need me, so that is what I will do.
I will not ignore my happiness and that of my friends for the sake of the 'big picture'.
Never again.
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