Fated Antagonist

101. Awesome New Toys

Ranking up my Elemental Magic after such a long time is a nice milestone and one I’m super pleased about. What sort of delicious new spells will I gain access to? I’ve only very recently seen what dumping all of my Gravity Magic into a bomb can do, and whilst it’s obviously mega powerful, I can only shoot one of them! I need other options, which is the whole reason I worked so hard on the basic Elemental Mana Skills!

As the trickling sensation blooms in my brain, I eagerly reach for the knowledge that is being created there, grabbing it in dribs and drabs as the Skill upgrades.

Oho! Some juicy things indeed!

And so many spells! New combinations of elements that I couldn’t perform before! More potent, more destructive, more awe-inspiring DEVASTATION!

Muahahahahaha!

Wait! Is that the long-suppressed resurrection of Dark Anthony? Down! Down, you fiend! Back into the pit from whence you came!

Now. New magic, what can I do?

Bubbling away in my brain, new spell forms continue to take shape, and I enjoy the process as they blossom into their final forms. Sometimes, ranking up in magic just makes you better at it, helps you handle the existing spells and constructs better than you could before, and sometimes, like on this occasion, new spells come into play, but I didn’t expect to see this many. I suppose it makes sense, since I’m technically ranking up eight different Skills at once.

Blue Fire, Ice, Stone, and Gas Magic being the four foundational elements and their combinations making up the rest.

The first new spell I investigate is one that seems to hold a lot of promise. A blend of Fire and Air, it takes a lot of mana, but can devastate a wide area with what looks like a fire tornado. Nasty. A base of twisting wind, a sprinkle of combustible gas, and a rip-roaring fire when mixed correctly will produce a towering pillar of wind that burns with a furious heat.

I’ll need to experiment somewhere safe, obviously, but it appears as though it won’t stay in one place either, moving over the terrain in a way I may or may not be able to control. Going to need to keep an eye on that.

The second is a rather unusual cocktail of Water, Gas, and Ice. This spell is also very resource-intensive, which I’m starting to suspect they all will be, and requires forming a wide spray of water that is then frozen, trapping an unstable gas inside. The end result is a metric boatload of finger-length, deadly missiles that will shatter with surprising force on impact, sending shards of magical ice all over the place.

Ouch. Probably not effective against more powerful monsters, but hey, with the sheer number of projectiles created with this spell, you never know. If I managed to compress the Water Mana before releasing it, the resulting ice may have more penetrating power than I expect.

I’ll call it, Concussive Needle! Or something.

The next option takes me by surprise. A flash-hardening technique that makes use of Stone, Mud, and Ice. Weird. Effectively allowing the caster to shape something out of Mud Mana, then harden it near instantly. Perhaps not as flashy as some of the other spells, but I can see a hell of a lot of applications out of combat and more than a few in it as well. I haven’t made much use of mud in the past, mainly because I felt it would be fruitless to slap something with wet dirt. Now that I think about it, there’s probably a lot more applications than I considered. Turning the ground beneath an enemy into mud? That’s a classic! And now I can take it a step beyond. I can bury an opponent under a jet of mud and harden it around them before they can blink.

Come to think of it, if I hit someone with mud, I can turn it into stone basically any time I want. Ooo, I think this one’s going to be tricky. Quick thinking in a fight hasn’t been my speciality, outside of my reflexes, of course. That doesn’t mean I can’t improve, though.

What else have we got in here…

There’s a rather deadly combo of Gas, Air, and Fire. This spell looks a lot like the flamethrower effect I can already pull off, except turned up well past eleven and closer to fifteen. With the combination of an air funnel and Gas Mana providing more oomph for the flame, it should burn hotter than I can make Fire Magic on its own.

I might call this spell Dragon’s Breath. It’s going to look rad as hell. It probably only tickles demons, considering how fire-resistant they are, but hey, I can see plenty of use for it.

And for the last one, well, this spell seems… different, compared to the others. Let’s see here. Lava? Lava is cool as heck, I want to use more lava. And we combine it with, Stone? It’s already part stone. What do we do with it, though? We create a highly pressurised pocket of lava underground. I mean, cool? Is that supposed to be some kind of lava landmine? Then why the heck does it require so much Earth and Stone Mana? Like, a lot.

Wait a second.

Is this… a volcano? I think it is!

Once the pressure below ground reaches a certain point, the spell creates a massive shift, driving the pressure upwards, which should result in a massive upswell as the lava bursts forth, sending flaming rocks and rivers of lava everywhere. With enough mana investment, I could make an actual, full-blown volcano.

But… we are talking about a ton of mana. More than I could handle in a day, probably.

If we tunnel underneath the termite nest… and somehow remain undetected, then I could gradually build up this spell directly underneath their mountain. I’d need help from other mages to conceal such a massive concentration of mana, but it could be doable.

If it all came off, we could destroy the termites without even having to fight them, the spell would flood their tunnels with lava and shatter the mountain from the inside.

Not a nice way to go, but all is fair in war against termites.