June 23, 2082, Jade had been travelling for 10 days; he would teleport a few times a day and searched for monster territory to decimate. He had gained approximately 661 million en-codes in the process, which he used to fill his physical stats equally.

Jade noticed that there were a lot more aerial monsters outside of Lagos than inside Lagos, which made him wonder ‘Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? Monsters that can fly should have been more in Lagos since Lagos has higher security. I wonder why?’

He had not seen any improvement in his stats since he never had time to train them. Most of his day was spent picking up monster corpses. His en-code stats were:

[En-code state:

Strength: 165,263,988/1,000,000,000

Agility: 165,263,988/1,000,000,000

Stamina: 165,263,988/1,000,000,000

Durability: 165,263,988/1,000,000,000

Intelligence: 0/100,000,000,000

Senses: 0/1,000,000,000

Energy: 0/100,000,000,000

Unattributed: 0/205,000,000,000]

On this day Jade found a horde that was made by a Rank 7 monster. How did he know that it was a Rank 7 monster’s horde? The horde didn’t have undead, it only had rock monsters that were in the shape of apes of different shapes and sizes, the golems all had shining green patterns on them. The horde had made their territory around a very large hole in the ground which Jade didn’t know the cause of. Jade noticed what type of energy flowed through the patterns ‘Aura, this is going to be tough’

Jade during his 4 months of experimentation had researched aura and discovered the properties and behavior of aura. Most monsters only had one color of aura and even that color they weren’t able to use as the intelligence of the monsters although superior when compared to humans was geared toward instinct rather than ingenuity.

All the monsters that Jade had fought hadn’t discovered that aura could be activated and when it was activated it gave a significant advantage to the user. Jade had been able to produce all the basic colors of aura with his energy technology so he knew their properties and from that he knew that the monster that made these golems was smart.

[Excerpt from Jade’s aura research]

[Aura proficiency: the measure of how much aura and how much control of aura an entity has. The greater the proficiency the stronger the aura’s attributes and the more freely these attributes can be used when the aura is activated.

Aura activation: aura in its dormant state converts a small part of itself into the energy that surrounds it and can replicate and maintain the magnitude and direction of the forces exerted around it.

Hence it hardens the entity when the entity isn’t moving, by improving the molecular bonds of the entity and when the entity moves it projects the movement onto the surrounding. When aura is activated it behaves in a certain way depending on its color. Aura can be selectively activated and deactivated.

Activated aura properties

White: consumes energy and retains the energy’s attributes, the more concentrated it is the more energy it can draw and absorb.

Red: extremely destructive aura, it increases the entropy (Chaos) of whatever it is applied to. The amount of destruction is dependent on the aura proficiency; from cracks in glass to breaking down of atomic and molecular bonds.

Orange: consumes molecular bonds to increase its amount which leads to it being able to consume more bonds; basically a fire that softens instead of burning.

Yellow: it causes explosions when the user activates it by sharply increasing the entropy of the target for a short moment.

Green: consumes energy in the environment to grow after attaching itself to the target, it doesn’t harm the target but the aura controller can control the aura and what it is attached to by extension. The common way to extinguish it is to provide it with more energy than it can absorb.

Blue: blocks energy and matter from passing through it; basically a shield.

Indigo: attracts energy and can be used to redirect or manipulate energy, the more energy it holds the more aura is required to hold more; basically an energy conductor.

Violet: extremely defensive aura, it reduces the entropy of whatever it is applied to which hardens the target. Excessive usage can damage the target. Depending on the proficiency of the user and the complexity of the target, the aura can have a permanent effect.

Black: repels energy, the more concentrated it is the further away energy stays from it.]

‘This is gonna be a tough one, no wonder there were almost no Rank 7s all these past days. It must take a considerable amount of strength to be Rank 7’ Jade though as he proceeded to slaughter the golems.

…

‘You have killed 337 Rank 1 infant ape golems, 562 Rank 2 juvenile ape golems, 853 Rank 3 adult ape golem, 269 Rank 4 stone monkeys, 234 Rank 4 stone baboons, 281 Rank 4 stone gorillas, 136 Rank 5 jewel monkeys, 145 Rank 5 jewel baboons, 158 Rank 5 jewel gorillas, 1 Rank 6 aura baboon statue, 1 Rank 6 aura monkey statue for a total of 173,127,132 en-codes’ the IP told Jade when the Rank 7 monster came forward.

Jade had slaughtered his way through the golem horde. When he was killing the golems, the higher ranked golems would only interfere when he had killed a certain amount of lower Rank golems.

‘This is weird, I thought this monster would have already come by now, it should be able to judge that I can defeat anyone of its spawns right, or is the golems having green aura a coincidence?’ Jade thought as he fought the golems while ensuring to avoid their aura.

There were 3 Rank 6 golems, when Jade had killed one of them he heard the rumbling of the Rank 7 monster as it ascended the hole it was sleeping in. Jade managed to kill another Rank 6 golem before it came up.