We made contact, and it created a shrill, piercing bang. A forceful blast, accompanied by a searing wind, sent me reeling. Overwhelming heat and light blinded my entire field of vision. A second later, I watched a blue flame shoot into the sky. It scorched the air with fire. It was an all-out explosion!
Marie screamed. I raced over to her, but she had just fallen on her back. I gave a gasp of relief and looked up to see that the fire had faded away. Fortunately, there we no traces of damage in the garden.
“Wh-what was that?” shouted Rose, the bucket of water still in her hands.
Marie sat on the ground and stared blankly in shock.
My heart was racing. I could’ve never imagined this outcome. Why? How did the addition of mana cause a full-on explosion? It just didn’t make sense.
The explosion would’ve contained an outstanding amount of energy. Marie could only cast about half of my mana, if not less. That amount of extra mana didn’t add up to the dramatic increase in force we had just witnessed. What was the explanation for that much energy generating from her simple addition of mana?
I helped Marie to her feet, then faced her and Rose. “Are you two all right?”
“I…I’m fine,” Marie said. “I was a little surprised. But I’m not hurt.”
“Shion, did you know that would happen?” Rose asked.
“No, of course not,” I said. “I thought maybe the fire would burn a little stronger, that’s all.”
“Really. Then what in the world was that crazy wind?” Marie asked. “All I did was add more mana.”
“It certainly doesn’t correspond to the amount added,” Rose said.
It certainly did not. We just witnessed a literal explosion. It was like setting fire to TNT. Was mana the equivalent of explosives, too? Could that really be?
Hang on, I said to myself. I had to slow down. I already figured that mana possessed mutable properties. In fact, I was practically sure of it, but something was off.
Mana burned when it touched fire, and discharged when it touched electricity.
Flammable substance, oxygen, fire. Electric current, electric discharge, lightning.
Hmm…electric current? Oh…
Once I had the realization, I hurried over to the thundercite in the corner of the garden. Marie and Rose raced after me. I cast some mana into the thundercite. I knew that mana conducted electricity, and that electrical current flowed in a jagged shape—hence why lightning bolts look the way they do. When I finally considered why electricity flowed in that shape, my fog of confusion blew away in a mighty wind.
Yes. Why do lightning bolts look the way they do when they shoot through the atmosphere?
I gathered more mana into my palm. Was the faint glow gathering there also mana? That’s it. It was mana, but it also wasn’t.
“That’s it!” I shouted. “This isn’t mana! It’s not mana!”
“Shion, what are you talking about?” exclaimed Rose. “You’re the one who told us that what you’re holding right now is mana!”
“Yes, you’re right. I did say that. It is mana, but it’s not! It’s actually mana reacting to the air!”
I stared at the light in my palm, full of conviction. When you emitted mana, it glowed around your body in the form of Magicoat. However, that wasn’t its physical appearance—that was its reaction with the atmosphere. It was amplifying light and U.V. radiation, in the form of a faint glow, and infrared radiation, in the form of a faint heat. All of which came from the sun.
This alone wasn’t enough evidence; however, I knew without a doubt that lightning magic had trouble traversing the air. So maybe what was really happening was that the mana reacted to two phenomena at once—that of electricity, and of the atmosphere itself.
This experiment wasn’t enough evidence. I knew without a doubt that Flare didn’t require oxygen, and that when burning with mana alone, it exploded when additional mana was applied. I followed this line of thought into the next problem. Why didn’t mana explode when applied to a normal fire? Probably because a magical fire had different properties than a normal one. These two forms of mana or magic interacted with one another. What happened when my mana touched the goblin’s mana during the attack was a fairly similar occurrence. It all added up: when mana was applied to mana that had already reacted with the air, the result was an explosive amount of force. In other words, what we had just witnessed between my Flare and Marie’s mana.
“Wow! I got it! This is huge! I found it—the breakthrough I’ve been looking for! Hah!” My excitement overflowed into confidence. I stood at the doorstep of a considerable breakthrough. I was on the verge of a huge new development.
“Oh boy, now he’s making that face,” Marie said.
“At least he’s happy.” Rose giggled.
“But he can’t go around in public with that face, can he?” Marie laughed.
“Maybe he should! It’s him at his best, after all. It’s such a big expression of happiness that I can’t help but to feel somewhat joyous myself.”
I didn’t hear a word they said—I was trying to get Marie’s attention. “Sister! Over here, I need your help!”
“Okay. What should I do?”
“I want you to cast your mana into my lightning magic.”
Marie paused. “Won’t it explode again?”
“Not if what I’m thinking is correct,” I said, but then stopped myself. “Still, maybe stand back a bit.” I was so excited that I could hardly formulate words. I couldn’t stop myself either.
I produced my staff-shaped mana and then signaled to Marie. She shot an orb at the tip of the staff. After that, I inserted my mana into the thundercite. The electricity flowed straight forward and didn’t flow to the opposite end of the staff where Marie’s mana was.
“Huh?” Marie looked confused. “Why didn’t the electricity flow the other way?”
“That’s strange,” Rose said. “It’s totally different from what happened with fire magic.”
“It’s because of the air resistance,” I said. “Mana reacts with the air that it touches and that stops the flow of electricity, or so I think. This pretty much proves it. When mana is touching air, it’s replicating the various properties of air, including oxygen.”
“Air resistance? Oxygen?”
“I have no clue what you mean.”
The confusion was visible on both Marie and Rose’s faces. That was reasonable. It would be weirder if they did understand me.
“I don’t really get it myself,” I said. “But there’s something that I’m close to discovering.” I couldn’t hide the excitement in my voice. I felt wired.
Rose and Marie just watched me in my zone with satisfied expressions.
This is it, I thought. These are the moments I live for.
I often struggled and became stuck during the course of my magic research. But sometimes, progress was made. This feeling of breaking through was fun and exciting. I wondered if researchers got hooked on this emotion. It felt like stepping into a whole new world. I decided to call my new discovery “Compound Magic.”