Ren had spent the better part of a month thinking about the kitsune.
Not because he was particularly fascinated by her; he had no interest in what seemed to be a fifteen year-old yokai.
He was simply fascinated by what she had shown him.
The fox-eared girl had been strange in more ways than one.
She could create illusions.
She could apparently alter how people perceived the forest around them.
She could disguise herself well enough to fool ordinary humans.
Yet when Ren had activated Spirit Vision, her aura had looked wrong.
Not damaged.
Not unhealthy.
Just…
less.
That distinction had bothered him.
Ren sat beneath a tree at the edge of the village, watching people pass along the road.
A farmer carried two baskets.
A woman walked beside a child.
An old man leaned on a wooden staff.
A pair of young men were arguing over something that appeared completely unimportant.
Ren rubbed his right ring finger.
The world changed.
White appeared first, then the colors beneath it — purple around the head, blue around the throat, green around the chest, yellow around the stomach, orange around the lower regions of the body, red around the limbs.
It had become familiar.
Almost ordinary.
Ren watched the farmer walk past.
His aura was bright and steady.
Healthy.
Balanced.
Ren had become accustomed to thinking of it that way — a healthy person had a strong aura, a sick person had a weak aura, a tired person had dull colors, someone under emotional strain might show changes as well.
It had seemed straightforward.
Until the kitsune.
Ren deactivated Spirit Vision.
His headache had not yet begun, but he had learned not to waste his concentration.
He stared at his hands.
The kitsune had looked healthy.
Yet her aura had been considerably weaker than that of an ordinary human.
At first, Ren had thought perhaps she had been ill.
Then he had dismissed that idea.
There had been no signs of illness.
She had moved easily.
Her breathing had been normal.
She had shown no signs of weakness.
Her body had simply…
emitted less.
That was the only way Ren could describe it.
Emitted.
The word had been sitting in his mind for days.
Ren had never really questioned where the aura came from.
Spirit Vision simply showed it.
That was enough.
But the kitsune had forced him to reconsider.
If she was healthy despite having less visible aura, then perhaps the aura itself wasn’t health.
Perhaps health was merely something the aura reflected.
Ren frowned.
“Then what are you?” He wasn’t asking about the kitsune anymore.
He was asking about the aura.
Ren had already learned that his Spirit Vision wasn’t some perfect magical translation system.
It didn’t tell him what something meant.
It showed him information, and he had to interpret that information.
The colors around a person’s body corresponded to different physical regions.
That much he understood.
But why could the aura itself become weaker?
Why did emotions alter it?
Why could the kitsune apparently reduce it?
At first, Ren had assumed that this was simply another difference between humans and supernatural creatures.
It was a convenient explanation, but it was also an incomplete one.
Ren sat beside the stream that ran along the edge of the village, watching the water move around the stones.
He had come here because the water was unusually clear.
Clear enough to serve as a mirror.
Ren rubbed his right ring finger.
The world changed.
Spirit Vision opened.
The ordinary colors appeared first.
White.
Purple.
Blue.
Green.
Yellow.
Orange.
Red.
They surrounded the reflection in the water.
Ren stared.
There was something strangely familiar about the sight.
He had seen those colors countless times by now.
He had seen them on farmers, merchants, children, old men, women carrying baskets, tired travelers, and people who had no idea that anything supernatural was happening around them.
Now he was seeing them around himself.
Ren frowned.
He had always known that Spirit Vision could show him his reflection.
It wasn’t difficult.
If he stood beside sufficiently clear water, the reflected image was still his own body.
If he looked at his limbs, it would also show white with a hint of red.
And therefore, naturally, the aura around that reflection was his own as well.
The strange part was that he had never really thought about it.
He had simply accepted it.
Just another thing Spirit Vision showed him.
Ren looked at the aura around his reflection.
It was somewhat brighter than what he normally saw around other people.
That made sense.
He had consumed a potion.
He had supernatural abilities.
He had more spirituality than ordinary people.
At least, that was what he had assumed.
Ren reached toward his reflection.
His fingers touched the surface of the water, breaking the image apart.
The ripples spread outward.
He waited for them to disappear.
Then he looked again.
“Everyone has spirituality.”
The thought came suddenly.
Ren blinked.
He wasn’t sure where it had come from.
Ren had spent weeks unconsciously treating spirituality as something that belonged to him because he had drunk the potion.
He had thought of it as one of the things separating him from ordinary people.
He had assumed that Spirit Vision allowed him to see something ordinary humans simply didn’t possess.
But the kitsune had challenged that assumption.
Ren stared at the faint white aura around himself.
He didn’t know how long he remained there.
Eventually, curiosity overcame surprise.
If the aura was really his…
could he affect it?
Ren closed his eyes.
He searched for that familiar sensation — the strange feeling he had come to call spirituality.
It was subtle.
Not like blood.
Not like muscle.
Not like breathing.
It felt more distant, as if something inside him existed slightly outside the normal boundaries of his body.
Ren concentrated.
He imagined that sensation gathering inward.
He didn’t know whether he was actually doing anything.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then he opened his eyes.
The white haze around his reflection had become thinner.
Ren stopped.
He blinked.
The aura was still there.
But less of it was visible.
His mouth slowly opened.
He tried again — this time deliberately imagining his spirituality becoming quieter, smaller, closer to his body.
The aura diminished.
Only ever so slightly, but it diminished.
Ren stared.
“…Interesting.” He relaxed.
The aura slowly became normal again.
He tried once more.
Reduce.
The aura thinned.
Release.
It expanded.
Reduce.
Expand.
Ren laughed — a quiet laugh, but genuine.
“That’s it.” The answer had been in front of him for weeks.
He had simply never asked the right question.
The aura wasn’t a health bar.
It wasn’t some magical outline that existed independently around living creatures.
It was something being emitted.
Spirituality.
That was what he was seeing.
The thought immediately made several other things click into place — the colors, the changes, the emotions, the kitsune.
Ren stared at his reflection.
“The aura is spirituality.” He paused.
“Or at least…
the aura I’m seeing is.”
He didn’t know the formal terminology.
He didn’t know whether other people called it something else.
He didn’t know whether Spirit Vision was revealing spirituality itself or merely the traces it left behind.
But it was the best explanation he had.
Ren rubbed his ring finger.
Spirit Vision disappeared.
He stared at the ordinary stream, then activated it again.
The aura returned.
Ren began experimenting.
He deliberately reduced his spirituality — the aura became slightly weaker.
He released it — the aura turned back to normal intensity.
He focused on one part of his body — the change wasn’t dramatic, but he could see a slight difference.
Then he stopped.
A headache had begun forming.
Ren deactivated Spirit Vision immediately.
The headache faded.
“Not worth pushing.” He had learned that lesson already.
There was no reason to turn a discovery into an injury.
Ren stood and returned to the village.
But his understanding of Spirit Vision had changed completely.
Over the next several days, Ren watched people differently.
Not just their physical condition.
Their aura.
He had spent weeks studying the colors because he wanted to understand what they meant.
Now he was watching something beneath those colors — the unconscious emission of spirituality.
That was what seemed to distinguish ordinary people from the kitsune.
Or rather, perhaps not distinguish them.
The kitsune had also emitted spirituality.
She simply emitted less.
Ren began wondering why.
Was it because she was supernatural?
Was it because she had more control?
Was it because her body naturally retained more of its spirituality?
He didn’t know.
He didn’t have enough information.
So he made the simplest conclusion available: different creatures probably emitted different amounts.
That seemed reasonable.
But it led to another question.
How much spirituality did ordinary people have?
Ren began observing.
A healthy farmer had a relatively clear aura.
A tired laborer had a weaker one.
Someone who had been working since dawn might have a duller emission.
Someone who was relaxed might appear slightly brighter.
But there were exceptions.
Ren noticed one almost immediately.
A young man who had spent the morning hauling sacks had an unusually bright aura.
Ren initially assumed that meant he was exceptionally healthy.
Then the man sat down.
His shoulders slumped.
His aura became weaker.
Ren stared.
The man hadn’t suddenly become less healthy.
He was simply tired.
The aura had changed because his spiritual emission had changed.
Ren rubbed his chin.
“So more doesn’t necessarily mean healthier.” That was important.
He had been making that mistake from the beginning.
He had assumed the aura represented a person’s condition directly.
But perhaps it represented the interaction between their body, mind, and spirituality.
The physical colors were information.
The brightness of the emission was something else.
Ren needed to separate them.
A person could have a healthy body while emitting relatively little spirituality.
A person could be physically exhausted while emitting a great deal.
A person could be emotionally excited and suddenly become much brighter.
The two things weren’t identical.
That realization made Spirit Vision considerably more complicated.
Ren wasn’t disappointed.
He was interested.
Complication meant there was something to learn.
His daily routine barely changed.
He woke early.
He worked when necessary.
He ate.
He practiced divination.
He observed people.
He occasionally helped someone with a small problem.
And every day, he spent some time practicing Spirit Vision.
The only difference was that he now paid attention to spirituality itself.
He watched how people unconsciously emitted it.
He watched it strengthen and weaken.
He tried to notice whether people could suppress it naturally.
Most couldn’t.
Or perhaps they simply didn’t know they were doing it.
Ren certainly hadn’t known.
The discovery also changed how he thought about himself.
Before drinking the potion, Ren had been an ordinary human.
Now he wasn’t.
But what exactly had changed?
He had thought the potion had given him spirituality.
That assumption now seemed wrong.
Perhaps the potion had not created something from nothing.
Perhaps it had simply increased something that had already existed.
Ren sat beneath his tree one afternoon, staring at his hands.
“Everyone has spirituality.” The statement still felt strange.
But the evidence was everywhere.
Every person he observed emitted it.
Every living person had some.
The kitsune had it.
He had it.
The villagers had it.
Perhaps animals did too — Ren had not tested that properly yet.
He made a mental note.
Then he stopped.
That raised another possibility.
Perhaps the reason ordinary humans couldn’t use spirituality wasn’t because they lacked it.
Perhaps they simply had too little.
Or perhaps they lacked the sensitivity to perceive it.
Or perhaps both.
Ren remembered the first time he had activated Spirit Vision.
The experience had been overwhelming.
He had almost lost control.
The world had suddenly become something completely different.
He had needed days just to understand what he was seeing.
That wasn’t normal.
The potion had changed him — not just by giving him an ability.
It had made him sensitive to something that ordinary humans couldn’t consciously perceive.
Ren closed his eyes.
He searched inward.
There it was.
That strange reservoir.
Not infinite.
Not even particularly large, as far as he could tell.
But considerably larger than what an ordinary human should possess.
He could feel it.
He could move it.
He could feed it into his divination tools.
He could use it to activate Spirit Vision.
He could even suppress his own spiritual emission.
Ren slowly opened his eyes.
“The potion increased my spirituality.” He wasn’t certain.
But the conclusion made sense.
The Seer potion hadn’t simply given him magical tricks.
It had changed his relationship with spirituality itself.
That was probably why Spirit Vision worked.
That was probably why his divination worked.
And perhaps that was why his Danger Intuition worked too.
Ren frowned.
He had been treating his abilities as separate things — Spirit Vision, Danger Intuition, divination.
But perhaps they were all connected.
Different uses of the same underlying power.
Spirituality.
He smiled.
“That’s useful.” It was also terrifying.
Because if that was true, then he still didn’t know how far the power inside him could go.
The next few weeks became an experiment.
Ren deliberately tried to observe people in different situations.
A child who had been given a sweet bun — yellow appeared more strongly around the child’s aura.
Happiness.
Ren watched the child run away.
A mother who saw her child return safely — orange.
Warmth.
Comfort.
A farmer resting beneath a tree after finishing his work — green.
Calmness.
Serenity.
Two young men arguing over money — red.
Agitation.
Ren had initially thought the red belonged entirely to the physical regions of the body.
That assumption had been wrong.
The color could overlap.
Physical information remained present in the Ether Body layer he perceived through Spirit Vision, but emotional fluctuations seemed to affect the aura beyond it.
Ren didn’t know the terminology for the distinction.
He only knew what he saw.
The physical body had its own pattern.
The external aura changed with emotion.
Sometimes the two overlapped.
Sometimes they didn’t.
A person could have perfectly healthy limbs and still have a great deal of red around them because they were angry.
A person could be physically tired while their aura became brighter because someone had made them happy.
Ren began to understand why Spirit Vision couldn’t simply tell him this person is angry.
It was giving him clues.
He had to learn the language.
And the language was not fixed.
That made it more difficult.
But it also made it more interesting.
One afternoon, a shopkeeper received unexpected good news.
Ren happened to be nearby.
The man’s entire demeanor changed — his shoulders relaxed, his face brightened, his aura shifted.
Yellow became much more pronounced.
Orange appeared as well.
Ren watched carefully.
He wrote the observation into his memory.
Yellow — happiness.
Orange — warmth and comfort.
Green — calmness and serenity.
Red — agitation.
Purple was rarer.
Much rarer.
He had seen it around the head many times as part of the physical structure he had already associated with the brain and head.
That was different.
Ren had occasionally seen a faint purple cast appear around people who seemed detached from what was happening around them — someone sitting alone and refusing to participate, someone staring into the distance while others talked, someone behaving as though they were emotionally separated from the situation.
Detachment.
Estrangement.
Ren wasn’t sure whether that was always what purple meant.
There weren’t enough examples.
And despite being in a village this size, there simply weren’t many opportunities to observe it.
Ren decided not to force the conclusion.
That was another lesson he had learned.
Not everything needed an immediate answer.
Sometimes the correct response was: I don’t know yet.
One evening, Ren sat beside the stream again.
He activated Spirit Vision.
His reflection stared back.
The faint white aura surrounded him.
Ren deliberately reduced it — it thinned ever so slightly.
Then he let it expand — it brightened.
He smiled.
There was something oddly satisfying about seeing himself.
Not his face.
Not his body.
Something else.
Something he had never known existed.
Ren wondered what his aura would look like to another person who drank a potion.
Would they see it?
Would they understand it?
Would they know that he was different?
Would they be able to tell that his spirituality was much stronger than an ordinary person’s?
He didn’t know.
But he suspected they could.
The kitsune had noticed something.
She had not understood what it was.
But she had noticed.
That meant supernatural creatures could perceive differences.
Perhaps not consciously.
Perhaps not accurately.
But they could.
Ren looked down at the water.
The thought made him uncomfortable.
He had spent the past month thinking that Spirit Vision gave him an advantage over everyone around him.
Now he was realizing that there might be others who could see him just as clearly.
Or more clearly.
Ren deactivated Spirit Vision.
He watched the ordinary reflection.
The boy in the water looked completely normal.
Just another young man.
No supernatural aura.
No strange power.
Nothing remarkable.
Ren smiled faintly.
“That’s probably better.” He stood.
The stream continued flowing.
By the end of the month, Ren had changed his understanding of Spirit Vision several times.
At first, he had thought it was a magical medical examination.
Then he had thought it showed physical health.
Then he had thought stronger aura meant greater health.
Now he understood that all three assumptions had been incomplete.
Spirit Vision allowed him to perceive spiritual information.
The physical colors were connected to the body and its condition.
The external aura was an unconscious emission of spirituality.
Emotions could alter that emission.
And different beings could apparently emit different amounts.
The kitsune had proven that.
His own experiments had confirmed it.
Most importantly, everyone possessed spirituality.
Ren leaned against the tree and looked toward the village.
People passed by.
They were ordinary.
As far as they knew, they were ordinary.
But every single one carried something invisible.
Something they couldn’t consciously manipulate.
Something Ren could now perceive.
He smiled.
For the first time, he didn’t think of himself as someone who had gained something completely foreign.
He had gained access to something that had always existed.
The potion had simply pushed him far beyond the normal threshold.
It had increased his spirituality.
It had increased his sensitivity.
And it had given him the ability to use that spirituality.
Spirit Vision was one expression of it.
Divination was another.
Perhaps there were others.
Ren looked at his hand.
He still didn’t know the proper names.
He didn’t know what a supernatural being’s spirituality was formally called.
He didn’t know what the different layers of his perception represented.
He only had his own observations.
So he would continue using the names that made sense to him.
Spirituality.
Spirit Vision.
For now, that was enough.
Ren rubbed his right ring finger.
Spirit Vision activated.
The village transformed.
White.
Purple.
Blue.
Green.
Yellow.
Orange.
Red.
And beneath those colors, something subtler.
Spirituality.
He watched a woman greet her husband — orange and yellow brightened.
Children who ran past them — yellow flared brightly.
Two men argued over a cart — red spread through their external aura.
An old man sat quietly beneath another tree — green settled around him.
Ren smiled.
He was beginning to understand.
Not perfectly.
Not even close.
But enough.
He had once believed Spirit Vision showed him the truth.
Now he knew better.
It showed him information.
The truth still required interpretation.
That distinction would matter.
A great deal.
Ren deactivated Spirit Vision before the headache could develop.
He looked toward the road.
The village was beginning to feel familiar.
He had spent weeks here.
He had helped people.
He had practiced.
He had learned.
And he had discovered that the supernatural world was much larger than he had imagined.
Somewhere beyond the forest, there were probably more creatures like the kitsune.
Perhaps gods.
Perhaps devils.
Perhaps things he didn’t even have names for.
Ren wasn’t eager to meet them.
But he wasn’t terrified either.
He had a power.
He had a growing understanding of how to use it.
And, most importantly, he had learned something fundamental.
He wasn’t the only one carrying spirituality.
Everyone did.
The difference was that they lived without knowing it.
Ren could not.
The potion had made him sensitive to the invisible world.
It had opened a door.
And Ren had no idea where that door ultimately led.
He suspected he would find out eventually.
For now, though, there was still work to do.
He had a reputation to maintain.
People came to him with questions.
Some wanted lost objects found.
Some wanted to know whether a journey was safe.
Some simply wanted to test whether the young Seer was really as accurate as people claimed.
Ren was learning to answer them.
He was also learning when not to use Spirit Vision.
And when to stop.
His headache had become a useful warning.
The danger intuition that followed was an even better one.
He had no intention of finding out what happened if he ignored either.
Ren looked at the road one last time.
Then he smiled.
“One thing at a time.”
He began walking.
Behind him, the stream continued to flow.
And beneath the ordinary surface of the world, countless living beings continued to unconsciously release tiny traces of something Ren had only recently learned to recognize.
Spirituality.
He could understand it a little now.
And he suspected that, eventually, he would learn how to see much more.
********************
A/N: Someone commented that the conversations sound very robotic, and I very much agree with you with all the one, two words question and reply.
1.
Ren isn’t the type to be a chatterbox even with close people, not to mention strangers, so he usually tries to get straight to the point.
2.
Personally, I’m an introvert who don’t talk to people often so asking me to make a conversation interesting is a bit hard too XD
I’ll try my best to improve, so do bear with me a while longer as I try to improve my writing!
These chapters are all already written, so you’ll only truly start seeing minor changes from chapter 14 onwards.
Klein learned almost everything he needed to know within one hour of consuming his potion because he had Neil to teach him everything, from brewing potion, spirituality, how to activate his Spirit Vision, the taboos of looking at and listening to pollution, and the common sense of the Beyonder world.
Ren defintely doesn’t know any common sense (for both the dxd supernatural world and his LOTM potions), so he would be going on a journey to figure it out.
Danger intuition is stronger here than in Klein’s case because I desgined it to be his “tutor” to let him know if he’s going down the wrong path.
It doesn’t show him the correct one, but it helps him go back to the correct path if Ren ever deviates too far away from it.
But I’ll try not my best to not make it much stronger than Klein’s case.