Chapter 4310: Imagination and Willpower (Part 2)

Several runes formed in his mind, accompanied by a discordant choir of voices that made it impossible for him to understand a single one.

"Fuck me sideways!" Lith fell to one knee, holding his ears to muffle the deafening noise.

"What’s wrong, child? Talk to me." The Mother had to repeat the question multiple times before he managed to hear her.

When Lith was done explaining what had just happened, Baba Yaga sighed in relief.

"You’ve just bitten more than you can chew, child." She said. "A tier one spell can’t have so many effects. You need at least tier three for that. Also, you didn’t define what kind of explosion you wanted.

"A burst of pure fire? A blazing shockwave? A series of concussive blasts? You left your spell open to too many interpretations, and the Lodestar delivered all the possible answers to you at the same time.

"Scale it down to something simpler, and it will be a perfect tier two spell. Either keep the piercing effect, or make the Cinder blast explode upon contact."

Lith did both, obtaining Iratho Het and Iratho Rak.

"That works too." Baba Yaga nodded. "Now move up to tier three, but this time picture the effect you want clearly, step by step."

"Iratho Ghet Rekhat!" The three runes fused together, conjuring a pillar of Cinder the size of Lith’s arm that pierced through the Firing Range’s Zero counterspell.

Then, Fire Stab exploded in a hot flash that consumed most of the oxygen in the room, making what little was left too hot to breathe. If not for the Firing Range cooling the temperature and injecting fresh air, Lith would have suffered more than a brief fit of cough.

"Thank my paranoia, I sent Elysia away." Lith cleared his throat. "I would have never forgiven myself if something happened to her."

"Don’t worry, child. Elysia would have been fine." Baba Yaga replied. "The Firing Range’s timing was impeccable. Not a hot gust of wind reached Solus or me. The only reason you coughed is that you were too close to the point of the explosion.

"Next time, make your spell detonate at a safe distance. The fire of your own Cinder spell can’t hurt you, but the heat and lack of humidity can still turn you into a dried-up mummy."

"That was a safe distance." Lith inwardly cursed at Cinder Magic. "I couldn’t risk the spell exploding too close to the wall and hurting Solus. I didn’t expect the side effects to spread so far despite the Firing Range."

"I’m afraid something similar will happen with all the other Cursed Elements." Solus shuddered at the thought of the kind of damage Cinder could do to the tower and how it might reflect on her.

"Chaos is relatively safe because it doesn’t affect its surroundings. Its power is focused on destruction, whereas the other Cursed Elements alter everything in their area of effect, and destruction is just a consequence of that."

"Solus has a point." Menadion said. "To make matters worse, when I created the enchantments for the Firing Range, I wasn’t aware of Cursed Elements other than Chaos. Are you sure you want to continue with your experiments?"

"We still have over twenty hours left." Lith replied. "We’re practicing the Cursed Elements to learn how to use them and warn the children about their potential danger when they grow up.

"I’m still reeling at the idea Ely might have gotten hurt, but we’ve just discovered something important. Besides, we still have no Choke Magic Spell. I want to give Bazek a go and then see if we can use Cursed Runes to cast arrays."

"I’m confident in your work, Mom." Solus said. "Moreover, the more we learn about Cursed Elements, the better the Firing Range can neutralize them. It will protect the kids from themselves in the future, and us from enemies who can cast Mirror Magic spells."

"I’m with them." Baba Yaga nodded. "Also, I’d like to try a few more Zero Spells. I’m curious to understand if they are as dangerous as Cinder Spells and Lith was just lucky when he used them in Amrok, or if we’re overlooking something."

The Mother practiced the Cinder Spells Lith had just created until she mastered them. Once she deemed to have reached a deep enough understanding of the Cursed fire, she created one tier one, one tier two, and one tier three Cinder Spells.

She needed much longer and many more attempts than Lith, but she succeeded a bit faster than with Chaos.

"I’m getting the hang of Cinder Magic." She nodded. "Yet I have to admit that without Elysia to reveal the chore magic rune and you to pave the road for me, Lith, using Mirror Magic would have been a pipe dream.

"I would have never discovered the existence of stable Cursed Runes on my own. Even after all this practice and watching your progress, there’s a large part of me that is still scared stiff of even the basic Cursed Runes.

"Creating tier one Cursed Spells and above requires my full focus, willpower, and the guidance of the Lodestar. Without the latter, I would be too busy fighting against my primal dread to notice a single rune."

"I know what you mean." Solus nodded. "I’m doing my best to follow you guys, but whenever you conjure a Cursed Spell, something inside of me screams at me to turn my head and cover my ears."

Baba Yaga needed no rest thanks to the endless vitality of her white core and the flood of world energy accumulated inside the Lodestar. Lith moved on to practice the Choke Rune, Bazek, developing several tier one spells, a few tier two, and a handful of tier three.

Bazek turned the air into a noxious gas, and the lightning bolts it conjured did more than release electricity. They scrambled the magnetic field of everything and everyone they came in contact with, destabilizing their victim like a disease.

The Firing Range needed time to adjust its spells and find the perfect way to neutralize the Choke Spells, but even then, they were still dangerous when utilized in the confined space of the Lodestar.

Lith often coughed, and when he failed to visualize a controlled form of his new spells, his hands became numb and his armor consumed lots of energy to protect him from injuries.

Baba Yaga followed his lead, limiting herself to the weakest spells of every tier she could think about, sacrificing destructive power in favor of surgical control.

"Interesting." Lith said after carefully observing the Mother as she cast her spells. "Until this moment, I thought that the stable Cursed Runes conjuring one Cursed Element while also releasing and scattering its opposite all around the caster was something similar to Mirror Magic’s effects.

"That you couldn’t call upon any Cursed Element without summoning the other, and that the stable runes simply got rid of the second Cursed Element in a way that doesn’t endanger the caster and doesn’t require their focus. I was wrong."

"What do you mean?" Solus asked as the Mother was already glimpsing the revelation behind those words.

"It’s easier if I show you." Lith set the Firing Range to neutralize the Cinder Magic Spell that had almost hurt him before, Fire Stab.