Insect Tamer's Ascension-Chapter 347. Manifesting AURA! (2)

Theo tried again and then again. The more he tried, the further he managed to reach.

He leveled up once more when he felt like he was finally getting a grasp on drawing the aura to his fingertips. Yet the toughest part was still ahead. To guide it into the hilt of his sword and then into the blade itself.

A full day passed in training, and the baron never once left his sight.

By then, Theo was able to hold the aura right at the fingertips for a prolonged period, which earned him another level up.

Still, there was a blockage, something the baron vaguely hinted could only be surpassed through deeper understanding.

Knowing how bad his father was at teaching, Theo decided not to wait for him to explain further. Instead, he questioned him relentlessly, trying to learn everything that he thought would be necessary.

Two days later, Theo stood before the camp. His eyes were wide, his focus fixed onto the blade in his hands.

His level was now at 3, and his understanding had improved significantly.

’I punched past my fingertips a moment ago... I could feel it...’ Theo thought as he tried again.

But despite five consecutive tries, he failed However, on the sixth attempt, he finally felt the aura leaving his fingertips.

Using all his mental strength, Theo pushed forward and could feel it form a connection outside his body.

His gaze snapped to the base of the blade. There was no mistaking it. A thin, shining layer covered the start of the blade.

The layer was so faint and thin that it could have easily been mistaken for a reflected light.

But Theo was sure about it.

Then he lost focus again.

The blade aura retreated back into his body, only to stop at the elbows, till where Theo was still able to control it freely.

He felt his vision wobble for a second, and his footing grew unstable.

’This is frustrating,’ Theo thought with frustration. ’I have so little control, and it’s already putting this much pressure on my body... I need to do something about it.’

Nearby, the baron was cooking some Monarch meat over the campfire. When he glanced toward Theo, a faint smile formed on his face, one that only Clara noticed before his expressions went back to normal.

Clara seemed perplexed. She remembered saying some really harsh words to the Baron while Theo was unconscious. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Her thoughts always drifted to how daring she had become back then. There was a time when even lifting her head while the baron didn’t even look at her felt unbearable.

And now she had nagged at the baron twice.

It made her feel like she needed to stop pushing the baron’s patience.

She was certain that there would come a day when he would behead her, but she just couldn’t prove it yet.

Theo tried several more times after that, then finally sat down to do some meditation to calm his exhausted mind.

That night, he looked over the progress the ant colony had made, something that always seemed to be of great entertainment for him.

Theo noticed how much larger the newer generations of ants had become, and for some reason, the difference in size between the last batch and the next was explosively drastic.

The ants were still the same length as before, each now roughly as big as Theo’s palm.

But the real change was in the width and the height of these ants.

The ’looked’ a lot bulkier now, which made Theo feel that the losses they had suffered and the running away had something to do with it.

The mantis was currently underground, hunting what he liked the most now: the gigantic crawlers.

It would always find a solo one while they roamed through the large, loose cavities they created. According to the mantis, it had never been trapped inside the earth by a collapse of those tunnels, but Theo didn’t know whether testing that claim by himself would be a good idea.

With its increasing intelligence, the Mantis’s ability to hide lies had improved as well, much like a human child slowly learning such stuff.

The next two days passed the same. Theo managed to get the blade to illuminate halfway and hold it there for as long as he could.

During this time, he discovered that the aura in his heart wasn’t infinite. Eventually, there would come a time when the output would simply deplete, and this made Theo fear that the aura might just vanish completely, forcing him to train again to regain it.

But according to the baron, once the heart began refilling itself with aura, it was impossible for it to stop doing so, unless some disease interfered with the body.

It was like a canal carved by the river’s currents through sheer effort. Once fully opened, the water could flow into the canal endlessly. It was rare to see such a canal dry up, as the river supplied it with water constantly.

But by the third day, Theo gathered all the other three people in the camp to watch him. Even the beasts approached curiously, wondering why everyone had gathered if they weren’t eating.

"Alright, I will start now," Theo said, gripping the hilt of the blade with both hands and fixing his gaze on it.

Clara and Elias had already seen Theo train before, but this time, their hearts raced really fast with anxiety for him.

The baron, however, remained calm, watching Theo’s still and composed eyes.

Theo pulled the aura from his heart swiftly until it reached his wrists, then slowed its pace.

He guided the aura into all ten fingers, and then came the complicated part.

But Theo was already past that stage. Even he didn’t know why he could do it naturally now. He pushed forward, and the aura began seeping into the hilt.

Only when it started reaching the blade did everyone’s eyes light up with excitement.

A thin layer of shining cloud started moving up the base of the blade, slowly traveling until it reached the blade’s tip. By then, Theo was already huffing in exhaustion.

He looked at his father once, and there it was, that big old grin etched across his face.

It was the day Theo finally felt that his father was starting to feel okay.