Chapter 126 - Testing Pyro Magic

Chapter 126: 126 - Testing Pyro Magic

The first thing Adrien noticed was how different Pyro felt from Aqua or Zephyr. Mana gathered at the end of Umbral Root and began taking the structure he had learned from Kael, though understanding every part of a spell through Absolute Comprehension and casting it cleanly remained two different things.

The sphere of fire formed slowly, roughly the size of his head, bright orange around the outside with a denser yellow core. Its surface flickered unevenly for a moment before it held steady, and Adrien kept the staff aimed at the nearest training dummy.

[Fireball]

The spell crossed the clearing in a straight line and struck the dummy squarely in the chest.

BOOM!

Flames spread across the wooden torso as the impact tore part of the outer surface away. Adrien watched the fire burn for several seconds before the remaining mana scattered.

[Fireball | 2 Stars | Novice 2%]

’Simple enough.’ The cast had still taken longer than he wanted. Holding the sphere together during formation demanded more attention than a Two-Star spell normally should, not because the structure was complex, but because Adrien had almost no practical familiarity with Pyro mana.

He cast again. The second Fireball came out nearly identical to the first, same size, same shape, roughly the same mana. Adrien instinctively tried to compress it before release, and the structure wobbled enough that he stopped interfering at once.

’Right... Too early.’ Frost Lance had grown flexible because he had cast it thousands of times and pushed its mastery as far as his rank allowed. Fireball was new, and for now the spell wanted to exist in exactly the form he had learned.

Adrien let it. He fired several more at targets set at different distances, first ten metres, then twenty, finally thirty. The first two flew clean, while the third reached its mark with the outer edge of the sphere already losing cohesion.

Past that range, accuracy and stability would turn unreliable at his current mastery. That was not necessarily the limit of Fireball itself, only the limit of what he could control consistently right now.

[Fireball | 2 Stars | Novice 7%]

"Good enough for now."

The raw damage could not compare with Lightning Bolt, though measuring a Two-Star spell against a Six-Star one made little sense. Fireball was cheaper, quicker to prepare and gave Adrien something his Frost spells never had: heat and explosive fire at range.

He wanted to test that heat directly. Adrien moved to an open stretch of the field and reached down through his mana, drawing moisture out of the earth and air in the familiar pattern.

[Ice Wall]

The ground cracked as a slab of blue-white ice rose already solid, taller than Adrien and about as thick as a door. He walked around it once, came back to the front and raised Umbral Root toward its centre.

[Fireball]

BOOM!

Fire rolled across the ice before fading. The wall did not shatter, yet a wide patch around the impact turned wet almost immediately, water running down the surface while several centimetres of ice softened and melted.

Adrien waited until the flames died out completely. The melting slowed quickly afterward, which made the result clear: Fireball hurt the wall through heat far more than through the force of its impact.

A second Fireball struck beside the first. More water ran down the slab and the two damaged patches began joining as the surface softened, though breaking through an Ice Wall of that thickness would still take repeated casts.

’Useful, but not fast enough for this.’ Adrien left the damaged wall standing and switched spells. Flamethrower was Three Stars and felt more demanding at once, since there was nothing to simply form and release. The spell had to stay connected to him while mana fed the flames without pause.

His first attempt failed almost instantly, a short burst reaching less than half a metre before collapsing, so Adrien rebuilt the structure and concentrated on keeping the flow even.

[Flamethrower]

WHOOOSH!

A continuous stream of fire erupted from Umbral Root. Heat struck Adrien’s face even from behind the spell, while the flames stretched roughly a metre and a half before losing cohesion and spilling outward.

He held it for three seconds, then five. The mana cost stayed manageable, but keeping the structure alive took noticeably more concentration than Fireball, and whenever his focus loosened the end of the stream pulled shorter.

[Flamethrower | 3 Stars | Novice 2%]

’One and a half metres. That’s all for now.’ It was extremely short range, though Adrien had watched Kael demonstrate exactly why that did not make it useless.

With an enemy already inside sword distance, an unbroken stream of fire could be far harder to avoid than a projectile.

Adrien walked toward the Ice Wall until he stood comfortably inside that range and cast again. The flames crashed against the frozen surface, and this time the difference showed immediately.

Water poured down the wall. Its smooth outer layer turned glossy, then uneven, while steam gathered where the constant heat met the ice. Adrien held the spell until controlling it started to grow uncomfortable, then cut the mana.

A broad section had melted inward far deeper than either Fireball impact. He waited for the heat to fade before touching what remained and found the surface wet, rough and noticeably thinner.

’Fireball for range. Flamethrower when something gets close.’ For now that was information enough. Neither spell carried the mastery for Adrien to safely alter its size, output, shape or structure, and forcing any of that this early would only make them unstable.

He dismissed Ice Wall and let the damaged slab collapse into water across the training ground. Adrien had just begun shaping another Fireball when Absolute Mana Sense caught a familiar presence coming up behind him.

Ariane walked onto the field moments later and stopped when she took in the scorched dummies, the wet ground and the last of the heat still rising through the air.

"I wanted to surprise you with something, but you just surprised me with another Affinity."

Adrien lowered Umbral Root. "What do you think? I learned it the other day. I only started practicing, so it’s nothing impressive yet."

Ariane glanced at the burned dummy before bringing her attention back to him, and Adrien tilted his head toward her. "What were you going to surprise me with?"

Ariane stepped farther into the training field. "I’ve been practicing with Mother. Look."