Frieren: Aura’s Ability, the Scales of Obedience, Explained! How Can Someone Counter It?

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is a manga and anime series currently among the most popular anime airing. It has perfectly combined Japanese fiction’s artistry with Western fiction’s tropes to create a wonderful fantasy work that is extremely popular worldwide, and for a good reason. You can understand that various characters and types of characters appear in this fantasy series, and among them is the infamous Aura the Guillotine. In this article, we are going to talk about Aura’s special skill, The Scales of Obedience, as we are going to explain what they do and how they can be countered in the series.

The Scales of Obedience are a powerful but risky spell

Aura is a strong female demon that, half a millennium ago, joined the Seven Sages. Even though Frieren claims to be stronger than Aura, we can tell that she is powerful even though we haven’t seen much of her in the series. Her subordinates also regarded her highly, demonstrating she was a formidable Demon. She also needed to be strong for the Demon King to have granted her a place among the Seven Sages of Destruction; otherwise, she would not have been accepted.

She carries a weighing scale with her, which has become a hallmark of hers because she is incredibly wicked and possesses a potent trademark spell called Auserlese, also known as Scales (or Spell) of Obedience. She can use it to calculate the mana of two bodies and give lordship to the one with a higher mana. She has nearly total control over her minions, so she uses “decapitation” once done with them.

The Scales of Obedience are a very powerful spell. Aura uses them to measure her mana and compare it to the mana of her opponent. If her mana is higher, the weaker opponents become her obedient puppets for the rest of their lives. Graf Granat has explained that Aura’s ability is quite objective. While she might be an evil creature, the Scales of Obedience are objective and will properly measure the level of mana of the persons involved, disregarding that Aura is the caster. Thus, it provides Aura with absolutely no advantage in battle.

Luckily for Aura, she is an exceptionally powerful entity. In that aspect, there aren’t many characters who have a higher level of mana than her, so she usually “wins” in the scaling, but if she were to measure her mana to someone whose mana is higher, she would lose, i.e., she would become that person’s obedient and loyal puppet until her death.

This is why the Scales of Obedience is such a risky spell – it is incredibly powerful, but with that power comes a great risk, as Aura has absolutely no advantage. And that is all we have to say about her main spell in the series.

The rest of her powers are unknown, but seeing how Aura managed to command a whole army and some very powerful Demons were completely loyal to her, we assume that she was an exceptionally powerful Demon and was well above average in terms of her powers and abilities. Still, she was no match for Frieren in the present timeline.

How can one counter The Scales of Obedience?

Although one cannot generally do much against the objective evaluation of The Scales of Obedience (not even Aura can do anything about it), there is a way to counter its effect, if only temporarily. Namely, as Graf Granat explained to Stark and Fern, The Scales of Obedience have objective criteria.

Still, if someone’s willpower is strong enough, he can reject the control given to Aura if their mana levels are small enough. Sadly, the effect is only temporary, but it can sometimes be enough to inflict some damage on Aura, as she does not expect it.

Have something to add? Let us know in the comments below!