After huffing one last irritated look at Caius, Talia turned her focus completely back to the newcomer and decided it was finally time to begin the actual lesson.
To be perfectly honest, Talia wasn't entirely certain how she was supposed to break this down for a beginner.
For her, the concept of spiritual energy was as natural as breathing.
She was a natural-born werewolf—both of her parents belonged to the bloodline, as did their parents before them, and her entire developmental youth had been spent surrounded by her mother's side of the family.
That specific heritage meant she was deeply rooted in the ancient traditions of the Lenape clan.
Because of that cultural upbringing, she had been raised in the old ways.
She knew how to track across miles of unbroken wilderness, she had successfully communed with her inner spirit animal before reaching maturity, and she possessed a flawless understanding of how to survive in the brutal elements.
Forty years of continuous immersion in that raw, spiritual lifestyle does things to a person's baseline awareness.
Her indigenous heritage ensured that she remained in constant, harmonious contact with the rhythm of nature and her own inner self.
That seamless spiritual alignment made it significantly easier for her to tap into her internal aura reserves on command.
James, on the other hand, presented a completely different challenge.
He had spent his entire existence surrounded exclusively by humans, functioning in a concrete jungle until he was abruptly turned into an Alpha werewolf just a couple of weeks ago.
While his biological affinity for supernatural forces was staggeringly high—arguably the highest Talia had ever witnessed in her lifetime—the fundamental problem remained.
His entire developmental foundation was built on a human framework.
The probability was exceptionally high that he was completely out of touch with his spiritual core.
It wasn't necessarily that humans as a species were biologically incapable of attuning to their souls; rather, humans who lived their lives trapped inside modern cities were usually entirely disconnected from that internal frequency.
Talia let out a tiny frown, stepping directly into his personal space to break his concentration.
It was an invasive habit James was quickly realized he just had to get used to around these wolves.
"Alright, ignore the peanut gallery over there," Talia instructed smoothly, gesturing with her hand for James to sit cross-legged on the torn grass and begin a standard meditation format.
She wanted him to completely tune out Mira's mocking nonsense.
"Let's focus entirely on isolating your aura," Talia explained, her voice dropping into a guiding rhythm.
"Like Caius mentioned, standard magic is a composite pool, but your raw aura is like pure spirit. It is the literal, unfiltered manifestation of your personal will. To call it out properly, you need to let the energy smoothly coat your skin like a second layer of tissue. But before you can even attempt that, you have to relax your physical vessel."
'She's simplifying the math a lot,'
James thought internally, closing his eyes as he followed her instructions.
He already possessed a solid theoretical grasp of what an aura was by this point.
Between the clinical explanations he had received from Selene, the overwhelming physical demonstration Luna had forced upon him, and Caius's recent lecture, he had mapped out the basic taxonomy.
Every single living organism in existence emitted this energy; it was fundamentally the soul's natural vibration, a unique biological frequency radiating outward.
It wasn't exactly the same as magic.
Rather, aura was merely one of the core ingredients required to synthesize magic.
From what he could gather through his own deductive reasoning, magic was an advanced alchemical fusion of the soul, the spirit, and the physical cells of the body working in perfect unison.
To make the concept even more complex, the scale of that power seemed heavily based on standard genetics.
If your biological parents possessed a massive internal reservoir, those advanced pathways would naturally be passed down to you.
Furthermore, the output depended heavily on how much an individual was blessed by ambient nature, alongside how physically gifted their baseline vessel was.
James also harbored a strong, unverified hunch that magic shared a distinct connection with the historical journey of the soul. For example, if a person happened to be the literal reincarnation of an incredibly powerful entity from the past, maybe they would naturally inherit a massive, god-tier magical pool in their next life cycle.
Mind you, absolutely none of the vanguards had explicitly told him this.
He was simply assuming the parameters by using all the supernatural data he had managed to collect so far, combined with the fact that Caius had told him every human myth contained a smidgen of objective truth.
He was just doing the logical thing.
The reverent way these supernaturals spoke about the soul proved that the entity existed and held massive structural importance, and the way Selene had discussed spiritual frequencies confirmed as much.
Piecing all of this together, aura was essentially one of the three primary pillars that allowed magic to manifest.
James's brow furrowed slightly as a sudden, nerdy thought sparked in his mind.
If one single component of magic like aura can function perfectly fine on its own, what happens if a person figures out how to isolate the other two pillars independently?
The raw body and the pure spirit?
The sheer theoretical possibility made him feel giddy—like an anime protagonist standing on the absolute precipice of unlocking a broken new sub-system.
With that intense focus anchoring his mind, James closed his eyes completely and began to look deep within his own internal biology.
"I am going to slowly inject a tiny micro-dose of my own aura into your pathways," Talia warned softly,
"just so your system can get a distinct feel for the correct frequency."
She placed her open palm gently against the center of his bare back.
Her hand felt surprisingly warm against his skin, yet the exact millisecond her flesh made contact with his, James felt the spiritual connection lock into place with absolute clarity.
Something incredibly hot, vibrant, and distinctly wild began to steadily pump into his internal grid.
"No, don't tug on it!" Talia snapped quickly, her eyes widening as she felt his internal pathways immediately violently contract, instinctively trying to siphon the incoming energy.
She swiftly pulled her hand away from his back, breaking the link.
"There. Your system should at least have a temporary taste for what the energy feels like," she said, catching her breath.
"Now look for that exact same frequency inside yourself."
Talia watched him closely. His brow furrowed heavily, his eyes tightly shut as his consciousness dove into his own spiritual anatomy, searching for the spark.
Suddenly, a localized ripple of energy destabilized the air around his body.
Talia felt his raw magic surge outward, wrapping around his physical frame in a thin, shifting layer of dark, ambient pressure.
While it was an impressive showcase of control for a beginner, it wasn't the right energy pool.
"Not your magic, James," Talia corrected calmly, displaying a surprising amount of instructor patience.
She tilted her head, thinking deeply about how to bridge the cultural gap for a city-born human.
"When you feel that warm, familiar sensation of your mana pool flowing naturally through your veins... I need you to look even deeper beneath that current. Your aura is sitting directly underneath that reservoir. You just have to look past the surface."
James focused his mind, tuning out the external environment.
He could feel the warm energy circulating through his chest, and he could feel the ambient mountain wind brushing against his face.
To his own surprise, he found it incredibly easy to locate his baseline mana pool.
The problem was the sheer scale of it. His magic didn't feel like a small, manageable pool—it felt like a massive, raging river.
An absolute flood of raw, pressurized mana was constantly surging through his newly transformed system.
Trying to look past it was like trying to peer through a roaring waterfall.
Determined to find his aura, James pushed his consciousness even deeper into the core of his soul, forcing his mind through the heavy current of his mana.
But his lack of technical training became an immediate hazard.
The moment he tried to force his way deeper, his absolute lack of control caused his internal gates to completely fracture.
The massive reservoir of his magic didn't just sit there—it violently leaked outward.
BOOM.
A wave of pure, unadulterated magical pressure exploded out of James's physical frame like a kinetic shockwave.
The ambient oxygen in the training ground instantly vanished, replaced by a suffocating, crushing weight that slammed directly into the atmosphere.
Talia, who was standing less than two feet away from him, took the absolute brunt of the spiritual displacement.
Her eyes shot wide in pure shock as the sheer volume of his leaking mana physically forced her back a step, her boots digging into the dirt as her own aura instinctively flared to protect her from getting crushed by the passive weight.
Twenty yards away, Mira's playful expression instantly vanished, her brow furrowing deeply as her posture went completely rigid.
Even Caius, who had been completely immersed in the final chapters of his manga, froze mid-page.
He smoothly closed the pocket-sized book, slid it onto the bench, and stood up to look at James with a completely re-evaluated gaze.
The sheer, unchecked density of the magic rolling off the newborn Alpha was actively rattling the loose gravel across the clearing.
Down the mountain slopes, the heavy wooden doors of the primary estate's kitchen creaked softly, the sound cutting through the domestic warmth settling over the long dining table.
"I am so incredibly happy you actually made me dinner, Luna."
Alpha Aldric—the usually stern, unyielding sovereign whose very presence could silence a council room of hardened warlords—looked as though he were on the absolute verge of tears.
His broad, heavily scarred shoulders relaxed completely, his rugged features softening into an expression of pure, unadulterated fatherly pride as his daughter smoothly set the porcelain plate down before him.
Luna didn't offer a dramatic response. Her gaze drifted slightly toward the stone floorboards, a rare, faint flush of pink dusting her pale cheeks as she crossed her arms defensively over her chest.
"I am simply glad you like it," she murmured softly, turning her head away.
Aldric was all smiles, digging into the home-cooked meal with a level of enthusiasm he hadn't displayed in nearly a decade. His daughter was evolving beautifully.
Her combat instincts were growing sharper, and her internal magical pathways were becoming noticeably denser by the day. At the rapid speed she was currently progressing, she would comfortably catch up to his echelon of power within a matter of a few decades.
Give her another fifty years of refined experience, and she might just reach his absolute personal level.
The mere thought brought a booming sense of warmth to the Alpha chest.
Perhaps by the time that era arrived, the two of them could physically lift entire tectonic continents together.
Though, the random mental concept of manipulating the massive kinetic weight of a shifting landmass briefly flicked a specific, ancient memory into his mind—a memory of a certain, long-forgotten individual from the old world.
Aldric dismissed the thought instantly, shaking his head. Oh well, that person won't be an issue for our pack anytime soon. It was time to simply enjoy his daughter's cooking.
Yet, just as Aldric raised his silver fork to take another bite of the food, the ambient air inside the kitchen suddenly turned heavy.
The oxygen in the room seemed to contract violently, a distinct hum vibrating through the glass windows.
Luna's silver eyes instantly flashed, her expression sharpening in immediate recognition of the specific magical signature.
Opposite her, Aldric's fork paused completely mid-air.
His thick brow furrowed deeply, his supreme predatory senses flaring as he registered the distant, yet immense pressure of raw, unfiltered magic bleeding heavily into the pack's atmosphere.
It was a massive, completely untapped reservoir of primal energy waking up somewhere near the northern training structures.
A slow, highly intrigued grin pulled at the corners of the Alpha King's mouth, his eyes glinting in the afternoon light.
"Well now… ain't he just full of surprises…"
Now, Aldric was genuinely curious. A magical reservoir that vast wasn't something a normal werewolf could just inherit through basic genetics or train into physical existence over time.
In Aldric's mind, there were only three logical scenarios to explain this sudden spike: either one of the boy's human parents had secretly been an undercover supernatural powerhouse blessed directly by nature, a horrific dark blood sacrifice had been executed somewhere along his lineage to store that much raw essence inside his DNA, or the kid had simply won the ultimate cosmic lottery and Mother Nature had decided to hand him a god-tier hand at birth.
Meanwhile, at the absolute highest precipice of the mountain peaks.
Inside the grand, open-air Moon Temple, the atmosphere remained thick with the rich scent of burning white sage, crushed lavender, and ancient, weathered stone.
The architecture was an absolute astronomical marvel, constructed entirely out of luminescent white marble that possessed a unique property—it seemed to actively absorb the daytime sky, mimicking the pale, ethereal glow of the night even under the midday sun.
At the perimeter of the vast circular temple stood eight monolithic pillars, arranged in a flawless celestial ring to map out the eternal cycle of the lunar phases:
The New Moon Pillar: Carved entirely from a deep, light-absorbing obsidian, representing the shadow phase where the Moon sits perfectly between Earth and the Sun, its visible face trapped in absolute darkness.
The Waxing Crescent Pillar: A fragile sliver of pristine white marble intricately etched into the right side of the dark stone, showcasing the first birth of light.
The First Quarter Pillar: Split perfectly down the middle with mathematical precision, the right half brilliantly illuminated by embedded moonstone while the left was cast in heavy shadow.
The Waxing Gibbous Pillar: A swollen, heavy bulwark of light, where more than three-quarters of the stone pulsed with a steady, growing radiance as it chased the peak of the cycle.
The Full Moon Pillar: The apex monument of the sanctuary, crafted entirely out of flawless, iridescent pearl-stone that radiated a constant, soothing glow into the temple.
The Waning Gibbous Pillar: Where the celestial light began its slow, inevitable retreat, leaving the far right edge of the pillar dim while the rest held onto its brilliance.
The Last Quarter Pillar: The mirror inverse of the first quarter, leaving only the far left half illuminated by the waning magical frequency.
The Waning Crescent Pillar: A fragile, dying sliver of light clinging to the far-left edge of the monument before the cycle dissolved completely back into the dark.
The massive pillars were mathematically aligned with the heavens above.
They were positioned in such a precise geometric layout that whichever phase the moon currently occupied in the sky, the corresponding pillar would align perfectly underneath its celestial vector, drinking in its direct, unfiltered rays.
In the exact center of this monolithic ring sat the Heart of the Temple: a wide, bottomless reflection fountain carved directly into the ancient bedrock.
Its waters were supernatural—perfectly still, entirely undisturbed by the howling mountain winds, acting as a flawless liquid mirror for the cosmos.
Deep within the inner sanctuary, a high elder of the pack—a blind woman draped in ceremonial silver silks—finished her rhythmic chanting.
She bowed her head deeply, offering her final whisper to the moon spirits and the ancient ancestors of the first wolves.
Suddenly, the perfectly still water in the central reflection fountain began to violently churn.
The blind elder snapped her head up, her sightless, milky eyes widening in shock as a resonant, low-frequency hum rattled the stone floorboards beneath her feet.
Above them, the midday sun seemed to pale as the fabric of the sky thinned.
Down in the churning water, the reflection of the moon didn't just appear—it exploded with a vibrant, blinding luminescence that shattered the shadows of the temple.
The pillars of light shot violently upward from the pool, striking the grand statue of the First Ancestor situated in the center of the room.
The stone figure lit up from the inside out, its carved eyes flaring with a brilliant, pulsing power as the ancient temple officially recorded a massive, sudden shift in the world's magical balance.
A/N...hopefully he does not get slimed, next chapter tomorow, this should be like 2.7k words long
People of webnovel and scribblehub, do please remind me if i forget, but, there should be an image of the temple, if its not there, its cause i forgot.