BOOM. The wind blew hot while sparks showered through the air. The explosion packed enough punch to send small animals flying.
“Whoa! Holy hell!”
Thanks for the nice reaction, Graste. I smiled.
“What was that?” Dad said, frowning. “That wasn’t Flare.”
“Y’see, Dad…” Marie chimed in to explain what happened. It didn’t make his expression relax, though. I couldn’t blame him, given the force of the explosion. Anyone would assume that was dangerous. I owed him an apology later.
Next up, I activated Flare in both my right and left hand. I released the right-hand Flare forward, and then once it reached a small distance away, I shot Flare from my left hand so the two would collide. When they did…nothing happened.
Apparently, once mana was activated as fire magic, the combining of two sources of mana didn’t produce any results. Both fireballs maintained their individual shapes, wavered, and disappeared.
“So, what the heck does that mean, huh?” Graste was dumbfounded.
“I have no idea,” muttered Marie.
Rose smoothly stepped in. “I suspect Shion was testing what would happen when two types of magic are combined. What he has discovered is that nothing happens whatsoever.”
“That makes sense, I guess,” Graste said. “Wow, you sure are clever, little lady. Speaking of, we haven’t met before. Should’ve introduced myself.”
“I should have done the same, so please accept my apologies.”
While Rose and Graste introduced themselves to each other behind me, I decided to focus on myself. Marie stood next to them looking dissatisfied while Dad explained the results to Mom.
Turns out that combining different types of magic together produced nothing. Oh, well, on to the next test! I concentrated mana into both of my hands. I wanted to combine the two orbs of mana before I turned them into magic.
As I did, the two orbs of mana smoothly merged into one. Well, how about that. Apparently two different pieces of mana could safely combine in their current state of amplifying the properties of the atmosphere. Now I had to activate this combined atmospheric mana as magic. I snapped my fingers and lit a fire.
A fireball about twice the size of Flare appeared. It traveled about ten or twenty feet before stopping, burning brightly all the while, and took about fifteen seconds to fade away. As suspected, the increased mana load had boosted the power and properties of the fire magic, both in power and longevity.
Typically, Flare wasn’t particularly hot or powerful, but the compound Flare felt at least as hot as a live hearth fire. I intuited that touching it with a bare hand would leave a serious burn. Suddenly, I literally had powerful fire magic on my hands.
“Does that mean he just combined two sources of mana to make a stronger Flare?”
“I’m almost certain. Don’t you think so, Mr. Gawain?”
“That’s what it looks like,” Dad said, “but sheesh, look at him—my boy carefully examining every possible combination. Look at his serious expression as he’s deep in thought. He looks all grown up!”
“To me it just looks like he’s making a sloppy expression. Kinda creepy, to be honest.”
“That’s what you used to think too, Dad,” Marie said.
“Do not tell me this means I’m going to eventually be impressed by that look on his face?”
“I’ve always thought it was a wonderful expression, darling,” Mom said.
Ignoring the background chatter, every inch of my body quivered with excitement. The results so far had been beyond my expectations. I burst into elated laughter.
I mean, anyone, regardless of age, can’t help but get this excited when they achieve something, right? I was just the same as anyone else celebrating their successes, right? Right?
I needed to run more experiments. Specifically, I wanted to test out the effects of Compound Magic on Gas Flare. As with Flare, I found that combining two different Gas Flares did nothing. While combining one Gas Flare with one orb of mana caused an explosion, combining two pieces of mana into one Gas Flare produced a more high-powered Gas Flare. It was strong enough to possibly open a hole in metal. This made me start to think of it like a burner.
That was enough tests on Flare—they had just been appetizers, anyway. Now it was time to move on to the main course. I asked Graste to make the Spark Gauntlet for creating lightning magic, after all. These buffs to fire magic were all freebies.
Up until now, it was almost impossible to move lightning magic where I wanted it to go. The most I’d managed was to draw the electricity flow towards me with my mana staff. The only way I knew how to get electricity to strike something was to create a mana staff long enough to go through a piece of thundercite and touch the target. Then I ejected the mana staff so that its center collided with the thundercite and the target at the same time. It was a pretty impractical scenario to pull off. The Spark Gauntlet should solve this problem for me, and I was moments away from finding out just how well it worked.
I faced my hands toward one another. I turned my back to one side while resting my hands close to my waist. Then, as I shifted back to face forward, I held out my hands and combined each palm’s mana together into the shape of a staff. I extended the mana staff forward and pushed my wrists together, then twisted my palms so that they both faced forward. It was basically a Kamehameha pose from Dragon Ball Z.
Once in this formation, the Elecsteel in my Spark Gauntlets were close enough to interact and produce an electrical discharge. The newfound electrical current passed through the mana, and conducted forward in the direction that I released the mana staff. In other words, it zapped in where I wanted it to. A red light flashed and crackled and shot forth a small lightning bolt.
“I did it! I did it, I did it, I freaking did it! I created lighting magic, and I dub thee ‘Bolt!’” My hands trembled and my voice shook as I ecstatically screamed at the top of my lungs.
My wildest dreams had really come true. I’d been troubled for a long time by the mixed bag of results from my experiments. Not today, for finally my labors had yielded true, undeniable fruit.
My first magic item, the Spark Gauntlets, and my first lightning magic spell, Bolt, were complete. I had also discovered Compound Magic, which led to all sorts of new possibilities. Everything had gone so, so perfectly well. All the slow days of progress up until this point were suddenly rewarded, and magnificently so.
“Wow, that was crazy! So that’s lightning magic, eh? Serious business right there!”
“That was the most amazing magic so far…Shion?”
“Shion! Are you okay? Are you injured?”
Marie and Rose ran up to me. I was completely unresponsive. Marie laid her hand on my shoulder.