"To understand it, you must start with aura. Or aura skills, as the system now classifies them," Helare said.

Her subtly expressed vitriol for the system had yet to subside. It made sense. Rafe was unsure about the system too these days. It appeared to be on his side, but was it really?

How stranding him on this broken world could be considered being on his side, Rafe had no idea. He had no idea what the system wanted from him.

Rafe nodded for Helare to go with the lesson. He had told her he could listen while he worked at the forge, but the banging and the heat of course weren't the most conducive enablers for a conversation with her, so she had declined.

They had settled on him only working on the moulds and refining metals while she had the free time to teach him.

"Aura, is something we all gain naturally, as long as we are in an environment that holds essence. Our souls have Essence refining apparatus. It is processed, turned into mana and stamina and health and used to build up the life force slowly and turned into experience to help us grow stronger.

"But our souls are not one hundred percent efficient," she paused to make sure Rafe was following.

When he nodded again, she continued. "Originally, aura was the…waste. The leftovers of the whole refining process. Plus mana. The mana pool is different in that it is open ended. Say you processed a bunch of essence and filled up your mana pool. If it gets full, and yet is not being used for casting spells, well then it's full. And essence processing is a process that never stops. It is very slow under normal circumstances, but never stops. So if more mana is being refined and sent into the mana pool, and yet the old mana is still there, unused, what will happen?"

She was a good teacher. A natural teacher. She remembered to ask him questions every once in a while to make sure he was following along.

"It will overflow, I guess," Rafe said, keeping his hands busy checking on his moulds. "But I think the stamina and mana pools look alike though."

"Hmm? How do you figure that?" Helare asked, and Rafe remembered it wasn't something normal people could do, seeing souls the way he did.

"Just guessing," Rafe said with a shrug. It was easy to talk with Helare these days. Even if he didn't tell her everything, she only showed a tiny hint of disappointment and moved on.

"Well, some theories question that. And indeed, some aura skills are capable of being used for very minute body reinforcement. Apparently, this supports the theory that stamina is an important component of aura."

She was telling him. Rafe's aura skill had that ability. Though it was mostly through experimentation and such.

"Only, stamina is a very necessary resource. Even more than mana. Even mages have stamina. It is a basic requirement everyone starts with. Stamina is constantly being burned when we do any physical activity. A very miniscule amount compared to when we use skills powered by stamina, but… Unlike mana, stamina is always working, always being utilized. Which is why so little of it, if that, is a component of aura."

"I get that, I guess," Rafe said as he turned from his moulds to stare at Helare. "But I kind of had this feeling aura was a reflection of the soul. Of your stats and specs, and maybe of your class and everything. It even has hints of actions you've taken, for example how much blood you've poured."

Helare waved him off. "You know a lot, I guess. It's true, aura is all that. After all, it went through your internal Essence processor. There is a theory on the stats and specs. You know, let's say they are elastic containers, the stats. They are already full and have a shape. But you need them to expand. So you overfill them, force them to expand.

"They force out the excess of course, after a certain threshold is reached. They try to get back into their shape, but of course their shape is stretched a bit. They have grown just a little bit. The extra Essence that was forced out, the reflection of the stat is what is a part of aura."

"And the murder intent?" Rafe asked.

Helare shrugged. "You kill people, steal their Essence in form of experience. It's already processed, but not all of it will go into empowering you. The little bit of it that is excreted marks your aura forever."

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Rafe frowned. Things were getting too complicated for his poor little brain. He rubbed at the sides of his head.

"But murder intent is permanent," Rafe complained.

If he only had to excrete a bit of that experience and only one time at that, how could it affect him permanently?

"There are theories for that. Of course I haven't mastered them all. Still, are you maybe aware of excretion, as it pertains to very early F grade beings?"

Rafe only nodded, keeping his face impassive. He himself was one of said very early F grade beings, and as far as he was aware even the enchanters working with him, and even Hestus, at times visited the lavatory.

"I'm not saying late F grades and even E grades don't excrete," Helare said defensively.

"I never said you were," Rafe tried.

"Your eyes said it for you. In anycase, we excrete a lot less than children below level ten. Or so I'm led to believe. I can't quite remember it, but yeah."

Rafe had been wondering why he'd sometimes take more than twenty hours between each trip to the urinals. His body was changing. Maybe he'd soon be able to turn metallic after all.

"Anyway I just wanted to say there is a slight belief that aura, being an excretory product of essence production, does have organs specifically designed for its excretion. Well those organs are perhaps what is marked when you excrete that poisoned essence that was processed by other beings. It's like a permanent wound on your anus. Marks your faeces red forever, unless it's treated of course, but you'd need a soul architect for that."

Or a nascent soul architect. Like Rafe. Although that was somewhat a lie. Even if he hadn't been able to see his soul and therefore control a lot of its functioning, Rafe would have learnt how to hide his killing intent in the tower. As it was, Rafe figured most people he'd met here only had one aura ability. They could retract their aura whole scale, and release it whole scale too.

Rafe could isolate the killing intent if he wanted to. In fact, he did that as a default these days. But now he'd figured there were more aspects of his aura he could filter out as well. Well, playing around with his skills was one way to progress, he'd found.

"So, how does all this help with controlling the veil?" Rafe asked.

"Veils are a new thing, you know. Here on Primus, veils came with the system."

Rafe looked at her for a while, not quite comprehending. She looked like she had been expecting that.

"As I thought, there is something strange about you," she said.

"What?" Rafe asked, not understanding what she was getting at.

"You say you are from a planet in the tutorial sector, and that your planet is new to the system, yet you know about veils. You were surprised when you first hit Filoria's veil, but then you adapted to it so fast, you must have a bit of history with them. And now, you are surprised veils came with the system. You couldn't, shouldn't have seen a veil on your world before the system came. Unless your world had beings above the D grade."

Well, he had given her too much information without meaning to. Helare was good at reading people. She needed to be. For politics and stuff. She was a princess after all. He would need to be careful around her. Letting his guard down was such a rookie mistake he couldn't believe he'd done it.

"I can see the thoughts racing through your eyes. Don't worry, Rafael, I have no intention of forcing this information out of you. You'll tell me, or you won't. Just like you only call me Hel when you want to."

She was so brave saying that, so composed and in control. Rafe decided he should admire her poise for a bit. But then she couldn't bare it any longer and turned away from him like she'd been slapped, her cheeks burning.

Rafe found himself chuckling slightly.

"For today's lesson," Helare forced out, "I just wanted to tell you that veils were once part of the aura. In the old world, before the system came. Veils are a new thing."

Indeed, Rafe remembered his time on Aeon. He'd first encountered a veil, although it had been weak, when he'd fought the gargoyles in the first room of the tower. How - and why - had he been surprised that pre-integration Primus was very similar to Aeon? Earth was going to be a very different beast altogether. He wondered how his old planet was handling the tutorial.

As for Helare's statement about veils and auras having once been the same, he supposed it made sense. That was a theory he'd come up with on his own when he'd used his aura to form a pseudo veil in his fight with his first calamity beast. So then was the trick she was speaking so highly of something Rafe could already do? That would be a letdown, but at least he might find a way to make the technique better. It would save him months of trying to reinvent the wheel.

"I guess that's all for today," Helare said.

"Yeah," Rafe agreed. "So, you going to come watch us again later today?"

She blushed again. Rafe smiled in satisfaction. He could get used to this.

"I will be there," she said resolutely, though she was looking away from him.

"Don't you think it would be better to join in than to watch?" Rafe asked.

Her head whipped toward him, but then she looked away again.

"I can't touch weapons of metal," she said.

"How is that even possible? You do know there are metals processed in ice, don't you?"

"I guess you know more about metals than I do," she said with a shrug.

She didn't want to talk about it. Maybe it made her feel less than in some way, wistful, lonely, hopeful for something she would never have. She didn't even have spell focusing equipment like a wand or spell orb or anything. Then again, the way Rafe understood it, on some worlds Elemenoid hair and skins (in more barbaric worlds) were used as materials for wand crafting.

"So do you think you'd prefer to join or not?" Rafe asked more seriously this time.

She turned to him, her face forcibly impassive. Her hands were clenched on her side, and there was one moment when her body quivered subtly.

"If it were possible…with you. I'd like to…"

Rafe only smiled. "I will make it possible."

She left after that, and she did not sit on that chair that overlooked his camp. She probably had some work to do, right? That was why she was rushing like that, right?

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