Chapter 97: ... should have expected that
The moment Isaac got a good read on the screamer’s [Aura], he knew what had happened. The man quite literally burned with rage, and that wasn’t merely a metaphor.
Flames streamed off him as he ran at Isaac in a [Skill] boosted charge, glaring at the nameplate above his head.
Isaac hadn’t done anything wrong per se, but for a person so inclined to fly off the handle as to get an [Aura] based on just that, it still sufficed as a reason for this level of aggression.
Sure turning his behavior to date into ‘Foreigner walks right in, lacking the usual access cards Guild members had on their belts, proclaims himself a Sage and stands around as if waiting for someone to wait on them hand-and-foot’ took some mental gymnastics and should by no means result in this kind of aggression, but sometimes, someone just wanted a fight and picked the first fight that seemed even remotely justified.
Isaac had been well aware of the fact that calling himself ‘Sage’ might rub a few people the wrong way, but there were no universally praised titles that had been used in reference to him, so he hadn’t been able to choose them. It had just been poor luck to run into such a hothead without Yoo-jin next to him. Even this guy should have been smarter than to pick a fight with a man being escorted by the Guildmaster.
Isaac teleported a few meters to the back and side, dodging the rush, but he needn’t have bothered. ‘Screamer’, as he’d begun calling the man in his head, came to a stop right next to where Isaac had been. If he hadn’t moved, Screamer would have gotten right up in his face.
“You dare come in here, proclaiming to be one of great Sages and ...”
Yeah, in hindsight, unequipping that title might have saved him a lot of trouble. Then again, most people wouldn’t fly off the handle like that at the mere sight of it. Of course, there was always the distinct possibility of the whole thing having been set up like this, with a hothead in place to pick a fight with him. The arrival of the ‘foreign experts’ had not only almost certainly been announced ahead of time, there were undoubtedly elements that had been rubbed the wrong way by that. And given that Screamer had been yelling in English, with the clear assumption that Isaac didn’t speak a lick of Korean.
Someone was cruising for a bruising, and normally, he’d have been willing to oblige, but that would have been the wrong way to handle this.
Reaching out with his [Aura], Isaac poked Yoo-jin a few times, hoping to get him out of the office and out here. Unfortunately, those offices were soundproofed, so no one within had been aware of the mess out here to date. Isaac supposed that this place could get rather noisy at times, so the soundproofing was a great idea for most of the time, but it was really fucking inconvenient at the time.
“... so kindly get the fuck out of here, and take that fucking title off your nameplate, you arrogant bastard!”
Right, while there were ways to see whether a Title had been given by the general populace or chosen by the bearer, but Isaac’s ludicrous level of information defense had made that impossible.
“First of all, I earned this Title, it was given to me by the [System].” Isaac said, poking Yoo-jin five times in under a second, hoping to properly convey the urgency of the situation.
“Your claims are worthless!” Screamer, well, screamed, glancing over at the blast of cold air that accompanied Yoo-jin storming out of the office “And now you’ve had to drag the Guildmaster into this, have you no shame?”
“Well, I wanted to make sure he knew that I didn’t pick a fight the instant he wasn’t next to me.” Isaac explained in fluent Korean “So, can we please not escalate this?”
“You!” Screamer snarled “Coward!”
A flaming fist flew towards Isaac’s face, accompanied by the same rush-[Skill] that might have seriously hurt ... had it actually come anywhere near its intended target.
Isaac flowed to the side like water, Old Reliable appearing in his right hand, extending to its full form, and then he smashed the flat of the blade against the back of the man’s legs, sweeping his feet out from under him. From there, it came around before Screamer could even start to fall, hammered down from above, enhanced by a [Power Strike], spiking the jackass right into the ground.
In the split second before the impact, Isaac switched over to the [Aura of the Crimson Dawn], creating a large, flat platform beneath him. The ground here, while somewhat reinforced, couldn’t hold a candle to the sheer durability of places built to be fought in. And yes, he could have afforded to have it fixed after the fight, but shattering the floor like a frozen lake that had had an anvil dropped on it would not have made a good impression.
Screamer slammed into the ground with insane but still perfectly survivable force. Isaac had also slammed the blade into his gut, just below the ribs, thoroughly knocking the wind out of him.
Isaac just walked towards a bench and sat down to wait, fully aware of all the eyes on him, some hostile, some sympathetic, some appraising. None one approached him for a long while, but eventually, a broad shouldered young man approached, an [Aura] that felt like a mountain wreathing him, but it felt weak. Like a heap of cracked and broken shale, rather than a true monument of nature that could stand for millions of years.
“So, the Guildmaster says you’re pretty good with [Aura], huh? How would you go about using an [Aura of the Enduring Mountain]?”
Isaac nodded thoughtfully and swept the man with his sensory [Aura] in such a way that made it obvious to everyone here that he’d actually done so, rather than putting the information out of his ass.
“I’d focus on the idea behind that name. Mountains don’t move, at least not in the timescale us mortals deal in. But they also don’t change, able to endure far more than any edifice built by human hands, use that as your inspiration. Don’t create a flexible shield if you don’t need it to be, create a shape and expression you’re happy with and solidify that. Who could withstand the might of a mountain in motion?”
A thoughtful expression flitted across the man’s face, which was quickly followed by a shift in his [Aura]. The manipulation was crude and basic, but perfectly serviceable and even after merely a few seconds, it was already starting to show strong improvement.
“So, it’s that easy to improve your [Aura]? Just focus on the name?” another person asked.
“No.” Isaac shook his head “It’s important to understand the meaning behind the name. There’s a reason the [Auras’] descriptions are practically essays on certain aspects of reality, those tend to be very helpful.”
“Can I ask what’s yours?” a third person asked.
“Hope, the idea that there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel, even if sometimes, you need to stand up for what you believe in to reach it. But there’s always hope.” Isaac lied through his teeth. Knowing the exact idea behind an [Aura] could be exploited, so he hadn’t told everyone about just what his [Aura] represented, but given them a nice and plausible alternative that also made him look rather good.
That turned out to have broken the dam and he was soon inundated with questions and advice, but only part of the crowd was interacting with him. There were still quite a few people who looked unhappy, or just plain afraid.
There was another burst of [Aura] from the office into which Yoo-jin and Sehan had disappeared into, but it quickly vanished again. Damn, those two were still fighting? And how the hell was that idiot still not seeing sense?
Another ten minutes after that, a portal irised open outside the training center’s doors, spitting out everyone who’d stayed behind in the administrative building. Professor Kim was the first through the door, but the moment she saw the scorch marks on the floor, she froze.
“What happened?” she asked sternly, giving the people closest to the entrance a hard look.
“The Guildmaster showed up with an expert in [Aura] and one of the hotheads picked a fight.”
Bailey slowly picked his way through the crowd to Isaac and likewise gave him a stern look “What exactly happened here?”
... right, he hadn’t understood a word that had been said so far.
“Eh, some guy took offense at the title and picked a fight, it went a little further than it should have, and now I’m giving little [Aura] lessons to everyone while the Guildmaster is cleaning up the mess.” Isaac said, voice contrite.
“Well, damn. Everyone alright?”
“Yep.”
“I suppose there’s nothing to do but wait, isn’t there?” Bailey sighed and headed back to the others.
There, Amy and Hak were already deep in conversation about how their very similar [Classes] could be used to their full effect, while Professor Kim was practically being mobbed a group of people with various magic [Classes], looking for advice. Eh, at least the time spent waiting wouldn’t be wasted.
