The furnace fire of the blacksmith shop licked at the coke, the temperature distorting the air.
Aether was bare-chested, holding a hammer in both hands.
His muscles rose and fell with his breathing.
Clang!
Sparks flew in all directions.
Clang!
The pig iron gradually deformed under the hammer blows.
Blacksmithing was not just about forging weapons, but also tempering the body.
Over this half-month, his physical fitness had grown at a visible rate.
Quenching.
White smoke rose.
Aether wiped away his sweat and put on his jacket.
The clearing on the back mountain.
Aether raised his right hand, and three swords condensed from flames floated beside him.
“Look, look!” Paimon spun in mid-air.
“By swapping Xingqiu’s water swords for the Pyro element, isn’t this a new move!
A Pyro version of Guhua Sword: Fatal Rainscreen!” Aether flicked his finger.
The three fire swords pierced into a wooden stake, exploding into charred pits.
He shook his head.
“New wine in an old bottle.
This is just a flame-painted version of Xingqiu’s swordsmanship.
The exertion techniques, the magic circuits—they’re all someone else’s things.” Paimon scratched her head: “Then what should we do?
Knead fire and water together into a ball?” Aether glanced at her.
Magic conflict would blow his own hand off first.
Gildarts would be able to see through this superficial shell at a single glance.
Evening.
The guild hall was filled with the smell of beer and roasted meat.
Aether sat at the bar, poking the potato chunks on his plate with a fork.
“If you keep poking it, that potato is going to turn into mash.” Makarov sat on the bar, holding a huge wooden mug.
Aether put down his fork.
“Master.
What is the essence of magic?” The noisy hall fell silent for a moment.
Wakaba, with a pipe in his mouth, glanced over.
“Essence?” Laxus walked down from the second-floor stairs.
His black tight tank top outlined his exaggerated muscle lines.
He sat in the empty seat next to Aether and tapped the bar twice with his finger.
Zzt.
A bolt of golden lightning jumped at his fingertip, instantly carbonizing a layer of wood shavings on the bar’s surface.
“Do you see clearly?” Laxus stared at Aether.
“The essence of lightning is violent.
It tears through defenses and penetrates all obstacles.
You can’t even grasp the most basic temper of the elements, yet you want to create moves?” Aether looked at the scorch mark.
“Laxus is being too absolute,” Makarov took a sip of wine, “but the direction is right.
Magic is not a move, not those actions you memorize in your head.
Magic is an extension of natural elements.
Why does fire burn?
Why does water flow?
You need to feel them as they originally are, rather than forcing them to become swords or spears.” Feel them as they originally are.
Aether returned to his room on the second floor and lit the oil lamp.
He took out a stack of parchment and picked up a quill.
“Paimon.” “Here!” “What is the biggest difference between the elements of Teyvat and the elements of this world?” Paimon thought for a bit: “Teyvat’s elements…
can pull cards?” Aether ignored her.
He wrote the word ‘Reaction’ on the paper and drew a heavy circle around it.
In Fairy Tail, Wind Mages use wind blades to cut people, and Fire Mages use fireballs to hit people.
The elements themselves are the weapons.
Aether quickly drew the elemental icons of Teyvat on the paper.
“But in Teyvat, Anemo is never used for direct cutting.” Aether’s eyes grew brighter and brighter.
“The role of Anemo is ‘Swirl’ and ‘Pull’.
Attach Pyro to an enemy, use Hydro to trigger ‘Vaporize’, or Cryo to trigger ‘Melt’.
Teyvat’s elements are a strict chain of chemical reactions.” He had been trying to turn Teyvat’s elements into Fairy Tail-style direct damage magic.
He was wrong.
What he needed to do was not to use fire to burn the enemy to death, but to use fire to construct a reaction field.
Late night.
The clearing on the back mountain.
The moonlight was obscured by clouds.
Aether stood before a row of wooden stakes.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
Forget Bennett’s swordsmanship.
Forget Xingqiu’s combos.
He felt the magic power within his body.
“Hydro.” Aether raised his right hand.
It didn’t condense into a sword, nor did it take any fixed form.
He simply let the Hydro element gush out in its most fundamental state.
Whoosh— A large amount of water turned into a fine mist, instantly enveloping the twenty-meter range ahead.
The wooden stakes were covered in water droplets.
Hydro application complete.
“Cryo.” Aether lowered his right hand and slammed his left foot onto the ground.
Extremely cold Cryo elements spread in a fan shape along the ley lines.
There was no claymore from Eula, only pure temperature deprivation.
The moment the frost touched the water mist.
Crack crack crack crack!
The air within twenty meters instantly solidified.
The water mist turned into ice crystals, and the wooden stakes were Frozen solid by a thick layer of ice.
This was just control.
It still lacked a killing blow.
Aether opened his eyes and held his hands in front of his chest as if grasping something.
“Geo.” He stripped away Zhongli’s shield form and extracted the core characteristics of the Geo element—’Resonance’ and ‘Heaviness’.
A low-frequency shockwave erupted from Aether’s hands, accurately transmitting into the Frozen ice layer ahead.
The resonance of Geo, plus the embrittlement of Cryo.
A combination of physics and elementology.
Bang!
There was no deafening explosion, only a dull sound of shattering.
The ice sculptures within the twenty-meter range, along with the wooden stakes inside, instantly disintegrated into a sky full of fine ice powder and wood chips under the resonance of the Geo element.
Shatter Reaction.
Aether lowered his hands.
In the clearing before him, only a field of white powder remained.
He hadn’t borrowed anyone’s moves.
This was an attack method that belonged entirely to him.
Paimon floated out from the Akasha, looked at the powder on the ground, and swallowed hard.
“If this were to hit a person…” “They would be vibrated into mincemeat,” Aether’s voice was calm.
He had finally found his own path.
Elemental Reaction Field.
It was no longer a simple exchange of blades, but the creation of a natural disaster-like dimensional strike through the stacking of different elements.
“Let’s call this move Elemental Symphony then.” Aether thought briefly.
“You’re really casual with naming things!” Paimon complained from the side.
“Names and such are very arbitrary.
Aren’t those Dragon Slayer Magic move names even more casual?” Aether ignored Paimon’s complaint.
“The direction is set and the ideas are clear.
I’ve finished most of the missions around here.” Aether reached out to Paimon, “Paimon, next, let’s take on more commissions from other places.
We’ll treat it as a journey.” “Yay!”