He was very, very close to becoming a level three aura warrior, he just had to focus, keep taking steps along the path and manage to evolve in his own mind, shattering those huge doors that were locked shut.
His reasons to grow stronger were more than the gods and goddesses could even imagine.
To protect his sister for the rest of his life. To create an adequate life for himself and those he cared about, even if he no longer cared about the world. To eradicate the concept of racism. To unite all races against the real threat. To find the woman he cared for in his old life. To rescue his former comrades as he would have done in the Kingdom of Akairon.
And so much more was on his plate. He had promises to make, and business to take care of, which was why he was going to the Kingdom of Akairon in the first place.
He wanted to save someone he could risk his own life to save, someone who didn’t even know him in this life.
Fate was working as if it was something that was left with gaps and had to be filled by innocent people. This must be what is called the debt of fate.
He had to do every one of them. All the help he had received from others...every single thing he had done in his previous life...every single one of them had to be paid in full.
Every one of them was a promise to someone else, and Atlas had to keep moving forward, even if he didn’t want to be a hero, even if he would rather see every human die, and even if he thought nothing but death about all races, especially humans.
He had become a bad person. He wasn’t too bad. He didn’t rape or molest or steal things like some bandits, but even though Atlas Shorekeeper was the first Duke of the Fourth Ducal house of the Epsilon Empire and a student at the Hero Academy Globe, he didn’t have a single heroic aspiration.
It would be ideal for him if everything burned to the ground. Unless, of course, the end of this fire would not reach him and those he cared about.
Three months had passed since he started his training. In that time he had managed to perfect each of the thousand techniques Perseus had given him. He had recorded more than a thousand spells in the Encyclopaedia of Magic and had even managed to improve his alchemy and make tonnes of potions and pills.
However, he had pushed the capacity of his aura energy to the limit and his body was overflowing with aura energy.
He knew very clearly that the time had come.
After a long shower and a good meal, he was finally out of his room after a long time approaching four months.
This week, exactly two days later, the semester phase of the academy, the ’Colosseum Exam’ was going to start.
Atlas, on the other hand, had work to do.
Word spread quickly through the academy as he passed through the corridors and all the students focused on him. After locking himself in his room for almost four months, Atlas Shorekeeper came out.
When the student committee members and Elise approached him, Atlas made only one request of them:
"Call my master here, I’d like her to watch me."
Atlas asked the student committee members to summon a Sage and then the MOST powerful being in the world to come to his feet.
Even as each member of the student committee trembled at these words, Elise herself went to Cordelia’s room and returned to the arena, or coliseum as it was also called, with not only the lady but the other six Sages in her room.
7 Sages were looking at Atlas, trying to understand what was going on.
Atlas breathed calmly.
He bowed to Cordelia, his teacher, bowed to Cassandra, who looked at him with happy eyes, told Juliet, who was worried that something had happened, that she should calm down, and nodded his head in thanks to Bellatrix, who was ready to protect him just in case, and indicated with his eyes that he would give a good show to Talon, Constantine and Cain, who were waiting excitedly.
Immediately after that, he reached for his inventory among the students who were looking at him with excitement and took a position in that space, taking out the Sacred Swordman’s Holy Sword as if he was not hiding anything.
His aura energy was at the limit, he had enough energy to seriously shatter those huge locked doors, let alone enough to unlock them.
The show could begin.
Atlas had gathered all the aura energy in his body right around his heart, the most sensitive point of his body, the magic heart and magic rings.
After that, he passed all his aura from around his heart to his arm and then to the holy sword in his hand.
At that moment, an incredibly great pressure spread around. It was one thing for Atlas to use his Starry Night ability to fake a higher-level aura and quite another for him to use a real aura.
One was to take the power of the goddess and move forward for a while, and the other was to break through his limits with his human skills.
His power fluctuated. An aura so large that every blood cell in Atlas’s body, every vein affected by the Diamond Body, every part of his nervous system, and every muscle was evolving and swelling to the point that it could be seen with a careful look.
At that moment, the expected happened.
Atlas realised the two huge doors that had formed in his mind. He could see the two huge doors, locked but now filled with cracks.
He had only one thing left to do.
Atlas...swung his sword.
The two huge locked doors that had formed in his mind were cut in half and disappeared. The blood red and incredibly malevolent energy behind the doors came out.
The holy sword in Atlas’ hand was covered in two colours, blood red and jet black, and the wall at the end of the coliseum was destroyed by his aura.
Atlas...had become a Level Three Aura Warrior.