章 49: Fangs of a Viper, Part 4

Gerald jumped on up and took a few Earth Crystals out of one of his pouches and played with them in his hands.

"Let's see, summoning a massive amount of Stone Bolts and then imbuing them with Wind magic… Hmm, hmm…" Gerald spoke to himself as he nodded, completely engrossed in his new ideas.

He was trying to simulate the whole process in his mind, before trying it in reality. Because, of course, he couldn't just start casting a spell all willy-nilly, without a proper structure. Magic could quickly become dangerous without proper control. Elemental Codex warned about that many times.

"I think I got it," Gerald smiled and then concentrated deeply.

"Stone Bolt Shower, come!" he yelled an order. The ground all around him trembled and a few dozen sharp Stone Bolts shoot into the sky. They were like arrows in the air, ready to descend on his enemies.

With the help of Magic Eyes, he was clearly able to see Mana flowing from him to each and every one of the Stone Bolts in the sky. He somehow reminded himself of an octopus, with all of its tentacles controlling each piece of stone. He was able to control all of those 'tentacles' and through them, the individual Stone Bolt.

Gerald simply waved his right hand downward, with two fingers extended. As the silent order was given, a Stone Bolt flew down from the rest. In the beginning, there was a light 'pop' that could be heard from the sky, like someone popping a balloon.

In fact, something similar to that happened. Right after the Stone Bolt started moving, a high-pressure bubble was created behind it, giving it a much-needed speed boost.

"Mm, good," Gerald commented and nodded at the result, "Now the rest, scatter!" He waved his hands as the order was given.

What followed was like a sound of firecrackers going off. It was the result of many air pressure bubbles exploding at the same time and launching Stone Bolts over a decently large area. They went so fast in fact, that they buried themselves in the ground completely.

With the assist from gravity and a boost from Wind magic, the forearm-length stone projectiles completely disappeared.

"Good, good, that's what I like to see, haha," he happily laughed at the result. Although the projectiles were more difficult to control due to the increased speed, that didn't matter much as they didn't need to change the flight course if the opponent couldn't dodge in time.

Gerald scratched his head and sighed, "Still, even though the increase in speed is good, I would prefer to have more options with Fire magic. Nothing can beat a good explosion…" His eyes suddenly lit up as an idea popped in his head, "Wait… An explosion? Explosion magic? Can I even do that? Hmm…"

He sank deep in thought as he contemplated his options, "An explosion is basically just a rapid release of unstable energy… usually accompanied by a rapidly expanding hot gas… Hey, hey, hey. This sounds like a perfect task for a combination of Fire and Wind magic!"

He started to walk in circles with a serious expression on his face as he murmured many unrecognizable words. His mind was working overtime, trying to come up with a way to combine different flows of Mana into one. It was a giant difference in combining Mana flows and just rapidly cycling between them as he did for Stone Bolt Shower.

For that, he first used Earth magic to summon the Bolts, then Wind magic for the added speed and lastly Earth magic for guidance.

Combining two different Elements was a bit trickier, but not impossible. Sera already told him that it was possible to combine Earth and Fire when they first met, so he didn't see why would combining Fire with Wind be any different.

The only problem was, that he didn't have any examples to observe and copy.

"Maybe if I gather a bunch of Mana and then destabilize it? That could maybe work…"

Without further ado, he simply extended his left hand and gathered a few points of Mana on his palm and said, "Explosion!"

Boom!

To his surprise, it actually worked. But, after the explosion happened, Gerald deeply frowned and sucked a lot of cold air through gritted teeth. Then, he roared, "Aaah! Fuck! That hurt like hell!"

The spell did, in fact, work quite well. The problem, however, was that there was no automatic protective layer like it existed when using Fire magic. Gerald was actually really close to losing his left hand right there, as the explosion happened right on the surface of his skin.

He kneeled down while holding his hand close to his chest. "Uh… Damn, this hurts so much. And I was just thinking about the dangers of improper uses of magic as well!" His hand was bleeding and a few bones in his fingers felt like they at least cracked, if not completely broke.

"Huff, huff," he was panting deeply, trying to get the pain under control and stabilize his mind. As he slowly calmed down, he was again able to use magic as he wished, so he started to recover by using healing magic. "Heal. Gaah, it still hurts… Heal, come on!"

He repeated the healing magic a few times before the pain subsided. After that, he meditated for a while to recover more of his Mana and continued to heal himself again and again.

"This was an absolutely unacceptable failure. I can't have my own spells damaging me, or else my opponent won't even need to do anything to beat me…"

When he finally recovered completely a few hours later, as bones were hard to heal, he decided to attempt the Explosion magic once more. This time, however, he was much more conservative with the amount of Mana used.

"I need to figure out what went wrong before… I'm sure there's a way to make use of explosions without hurting myself…but how? Oh well, might as well try it out, I should be able to observe it in detail with Magic Eyes."

Indeed, he activated Magic Eyes before anything else. Next, he gathered about 1LIS worth of Mana, just enough for a tiny explosion.

He extended his hand and triggered the spell, "Explosion!"

Pang!

The result was the same as before and Gerald cursed even more…

"Ow! God damn it! Why it always explodes right on my hand?!" He was huffing and puffing, completely fed up with the self-inflicted pain. "Aah! Screw it, I'm going home. This is obviously not working, I might as well use my time in a more productive way."