The ogre’s aura increased further in response; the reddish-black smoke thickening and expanding outward with greater force.
It was stirring a subtle but notable wind that rustled the hanging vines, fluttered delicate flower petals along the palace walls, and sent a faint chill sweeping through the otherwise warm and fragrant hall.
However, Benjamin didn’t react much physically at all.
His posture remained relaxed and his expression was neutral and composed;
He simply held the handshake steady while the two opposing forces pressed against each other in silent contest.
The other won present: Titania, Isabelle, Vaelora, and the standing ogre bodyguard, they all imdiately understood that sothing significant was unfolding between the two clasped hands.
Without a single word spoken among them, they fell completely silent and waited with their eyes fixed on the scene with tense anticipation.
[Ah, this is complicated... I seriously know next to nothing about how ogres actually handle these kinds of interactions. She just noticeably increased the volu and density of her aura. What exactly am I supposed to do now in response? Or... is it possible she’s deliberately trying to intimidate with this display?
[That can’t really be the case, though. With that unremarkable aura, she wouldn’t even scare a full-grown bear, let alone soone of my level. She should know that. So maybe she’s just testing sohow, trying to see exactly how far I can release in return? But I can’t go all-out here; if I do, the massive reserve of aura I’ve been carefully keeping tucked away in the sky might start to leak and beco a problem to everyone.]
{Notice: the aura Master tucked in the sky is no longer there.}
[Eh?! Really? How co? When did that happen?]
{Due to events, it has mixed with the individual known as Titania’s aura and fed sothings at the edges of Fairylynch.}
[Huh? Fed things? That sounds... ominous. Whatever, we’ll talk about that later. So you an I can release so considerable aura now?]
{I have developed the capacity, from the gifts of creating that fool’s vessel, to contain both Master’s magic and aura. Thus affirmative; Master can better asure and release his aura.}
[Fool’s vessel? Are you referring to Vaelora? You don’t like her? Anyway, let’s reply to Dynamis and have her maybe like !]
’...Good. He suddenly went quiet there,’ Dynamis felt a small victory bloom in her heart, ’He must understand the hierarchy of—?!’
She was interrupted in her thoughts when her retracting hand was caught by Benjamin’s again, his fingers closing firmly around hers once more, halting her withdrawal entirely.
He then squinted his eyes slightly, his blue irises glowing with a bright, eerie shine that cut through the space between them like twin cold flas.
With Sys’s influence and precise calculations guiding the effect, everyone around them was isolated imaginatively in an instant.
The room, the vines, the watching won, the palace itself; everything faded into hazy irrelevance until, for all intents and purposes, only Benjamin and Dynamis remained in sharp, vivid focus.
At least, it was made to seem like that to Dynamis for greater effect.
Then Benjamin released a large pool of aura locked up in his body.
It rolled outward like steam rising from a cooling forge, thick blue mist unfurling in slow, deliberate waves that pressed back against her reddish-black smoke with overwhelming presence.
’D... Does he intend to kill ?’ Dynamis pondered, as she observed carefully, Benjamin’s every subtle movent.
SLAP!
But before it could go further, the other ogre slapped off Benjamin’s hand imdiately.
However, if one were to take a closer inspection, the guard’s jaw was clenched so tightly that the muscles along the sides of her face stood out in sharp relief, cords of tension running from her neck down into her broad shoulders.
What she had just done, striking the wrist of a god-touched in the middle of that overwhelming aura clash, felt to her in that frozen instant like nothing less than a deliberate suicide attempt.
In all honesty, she knows her head could roll, and she’d be dead before she even realizes it.
Her scarred knuckles still tingled from the impact; and her palm burned as though she had slapped bare lightning.
"Ah, sorry," Benjamin said, blinking once in genuine puzzlent as he flexed his slapped wrist and glanced at the towering red-haired ogre. "Were we not just greeting each other?"
The guard did not answer.
She only stared at him with eyes that had gone flat and murderous, bloodlust rolling off her in thick, palpable waves that made the air around her feel hotter and heavier.
"Greeting?" Dynamis repeated, one dark brow arching slowly upward in skeptical amusent.
She had already withdrawn her own hand and now rested both forearms casually on her powerful thighs, her golden arm-bands catching stray glints of palace light.
"You suddenly flashed a frivolous amount of aura at ," Benjamin explained, his tone light and earnest, as though he were rely pointing out an interesting cultural quirk. "I thought you were greeting or sothing. That’s how ogres do it, right? A little power display to say hello or sothing."
Dynamis blinked slowly, the way large predators sotis do when they realize the small creature in front of them is not behaving according to any known pattern.
’What?!’ she thought, thrown off for the second ti since entering the palace. ’I agree it wasn’t even close to my full reserve... but that pulse was more than enough to make an ordinary human’s heart seize and drop them unconscious where they stood. And I directed it straight at him, focused and sharp, for maximum effect. Yet he calls it frivolous...?’
Out loud she asked, with her voice asured but carrying a new undercurrent of curiosity:
"God-touched... You gained more power over the past week, didn’t you?"
She lifted one hand in a subtle gesture toward the guard to stand down.
The red-haired ogre hesitated a heartbeat longer than protocol demanded, then stepped half a pace back, though her fists remained clenched at her sides.
"Oh, you noticed?" Benjamin’s face lit up with a bright, childish smile, the sa one he might have worn if soone had complinted his new shoes. "I think I got...uh..."
{Answer: Master has grown up to 10 tis the power he had at that ti.}
[Thanks, General Sys!]
"Yes," he continued without missing a beat, still smiling as though announcing the weather, "I grew ten tis more powerful than I was then. And I’m an arch human now."
He said it with the casual pride of a child showing off a shiny new toy he’d just bought at the biggest store in town, not simply just boasting, but flashing genuine delight.
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