The Gymnasium…
Alone
The quiet gymnasium was securely closed off with bright yellow police tape.
A lone deputy was casually stationed at the main front entrance.
There were two flashing paramedic vehicles parked out front.
Alex went smoothly in through the dark side delivery entrance that the hasty tape didn’t completely cover, simply because it was completely around the far corner, and whoever had hastily set up the rough perimeter absolutely hadn’t thought to properly walk the full circumference of the large building.
The cold loading dock smelled heavily of burning and something else…
highly acrid, sharply chemical, the very particular, ugly scent of organic matter that had recently undergone extreme, rapid combustion.
Walt Arnold was entirely gone.
Exactly what remained on the concrete loading dock was merely a shape…
a dark, terrible shadow completely burned into the hard surface, a perfect silhouette of a man trapped directly in the exact posture he had violently died in.
Immediately around the black shadow, the cracked concrete was deeply scorched in a rapidly expanding ring of massive heat damage.
And deep within that dark shadow, barely visible, practically almost nothing: a faint, eerie green glow.
Not the sharp, buzzing glow Alex had successfully come to closely associate with pure meteor energy.
This was something significantly different…
much softer, much warmer.
The quiet afterglow of raw pyrokinesis, the potent meteor radiation that had violently fed Walt’s terrible fire abilities, now completely freed from its broken host, slowly drifting and quietly dissipating into the cooling night air exactly like shimmering heat rising from summer asphalt.
It would be completely gone in mere minutes.
Alex slowly crouched right beside the burned shadow.
He gently pressed his bare palm directly to the scorched concrete.
This time, his magical core absolutely did not reach involuntarily.
It didn’t wildly surge or fiercely snap or aggressively pull totally without strict permission.
He had been carefully practicing deliberate magical extraction for two full weeks, and the vital muscle memory was firmly forming…
the calm, totally controlled, perfectly channeled draw that simply took exactly what was there without violently tearing, without completely overwhelming, without leaving absolute destruction closely behind.
He breathed out incredibly slowly.
And gently pulled.
The residual pyrokinesis energy came incredibly easily…
significantly more easily than the tedious bug work, vastly more easily than Jeremy’s wild lightning.
It came in a very long, perfectly smooth draw exactly like carefully pulling a delicate silk thread.
The deep warmth of it was completely unlike anything he had previously absorbed…
absolutely not the frantic, raw electrical charge of Jeremy Creek, absolutely not the strange biological buzzing of Greg’s captive insects.
This was pure heat.
Deep, incredibly dense, highly structural heat, the very specific kind that only existed at a fundamental molecular level.
It moved cleanly through his hand, smoothly up his arm, directly into his core.
And his core did something he absolutely had not expected.
It loudly sang.
Not literally.
There was absolutely no physical sound.
But there was a massive, undeniable quality to the smooth absorption…
a perfect resonance, a profound rightness…
That had definitely been his starving core wildly consuming highly foreign energy and aggressively converting it strictly by brute force.
This was significantly different.
This felt exactly like deep recognition.
Exactly like happily meeting a perfect frequency that his magical system was completely, already perfectly tuned to comfortably receive.
Heat.
Fire.
Total transformation.
The Ancient One had strictly taught Sebastian Shaw that every single mage possessed a fundamental affinity…
a specific element or a natural domain that their unique magical core smoothly processed significantly more naturally than all others.
For some lucky few, it was water.
For some, it was time.
For Sebastian, it had aggressively been dimensional reality, the very fabric between separate worlds.
For Alex Carter, trapped in this new body, firmly in this wild universe…
apparently, it was the Five Elements.
He quietly filed that highly useful information away.
The smooth absorption took exactly forty seconds.
When it was entirely done, the faint green glow hovering right above the black silhouette was totally gone.
The cold concrete was just ordinary concrete.
Walt Arnold had violently passed through this strange world, and sadly left behind nothing but a dark shadow and a highly valuable lesson.
Alex calmly stood.
He felt comfortably warm.
Absolutely not uncomfortable…
deeply pleasant.
Exactly the way you comfortably felt directly after peacefully sitting in a bright patch of warm sunlight on a freezing, cold morning.
The pure pyrokinesis energy had successfully integrated significantly faster than absolutely anything he had ever absorbed before, settling perfectly into his core with the absolute ease of calm water easily finding its proper level.
He quietly checked his internal reserves.
Doubled completely again.
Not the massive, dramatic doubling of Jeremy Creek…
this was a significantly smaller harvest; Walt had violently lost massive amounts of energy directly before dying, and much had already freely dissipated.
But it was a highly meaningful increase.
Maybe a clean forty percent right on top of exactly what he had.
And something entirely else.
Something totally new.
Alex slowly held up his right hand, his palm facing the dark ceiling, and thought entirely about warmth.
A tiny, bright flame instantly appeared right above his palm.
Pale orange.
Barely the size of a tiny birthday candle.
It was definitely not pyrokinesis…
he absolutely had not absorbed nearly enough of Walt’s raw meteor energy to actually inherit the physical ability wholesale, and wild meteor abilities definitely didn’t ever translate directly to raw magical power anyway. The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
But the deep warmth he had safely absorbed was clearly interacting with his existing, growing mana in a beautiful way that naturally produced something totally new.
A true, fire-aspected magic.
Absolutely not Walt’s raging, uncontrolled inferno…
something significantly more modest.
But incredibly real.
Alex effortlessly extinguished the small flame.
He stood completely alone in the dark, empty gymnasium and looked thoughtfully at his palm.
In the strict Hogwarts canon, wandless fire magic was typically an extremely difficult, seventh-year achievement.
In his incredibly fragile current state…
with his small mana pool barely reaching a late-second-year equivalent…
producing even a tiny candle flame of pure fire-aspected magic completely wandlessly was massively, significantly ahead of schedule.
The deep affinity was absolutely helping.
The raw meteor energy was smoothly translating into something incredibly more compatible directly with his core than he had ever realistically expected.
And his truly vast, ancient experience as the Sorcerer Supreme was easily bridging the massive gap directly where his raw power unfortunately currently fell heavily short.
Alex slowly lowered his hand and walked quietly right out of the dark gymnasium.
He perfectly replaced the side delivery entrance door exactly as he had originally found it.
He walked calmly back to the chaotic parking lot, safely retrieved his backpack directly from where he had carefully left it against the school’s cold exterior wall, and easily joined the loudly dispersing crowd.
Clark quickly found him exactly ten minutes later.
“There you actually are.” Clark looked massively relieved in the highly particular, intense way of someone who constantly, mentally tracked absolutely everyone he deeply cared about.
“You okay?”
“Totally fine. I was completely on the other side of the building directly when the loud alarm went off. Is Chloe all right?”
“She’s completely fine. Deeply shaken, but absolutely fine.” Clark glanced nervously directly toward exactly where Chloe and Pete were currently talking rapidly to a worried teacher.
“She insists something incredibly weird definitely happened in the Torch office.”
“Weird exactly how?”
“Coach Arnold directly attacked her. With literal fire.” Clark lowered his deep voice, his bright blue eyes totally intense.
“But she swears the massive fire didn’t just casually spread. She absolutely says an invisible, massive shockwave brutally blasted the coach entirely across the room and instantly snuffed the raging flames totally out instantly. Exactly like a giant vacuum. And then the fire alarm straight down the hall suddenly shattered and literally pulled itself.”
Clark looked deeply at him.
The mild, friendly blue eyes were completely open, incredibly honest, and terrifyingly, sharply perceptive.
“She completely thinks someone actively stepped right in to save her. Someone totally invisible.”
Alex met his intense gaze directly with the perfect, completely impenetrable calm he had thoroughly learned to flawlessly maintain strictly under exactly this kind of intense scrutiny.
“Wild fire is incredibly unpredictable, especially in highly enclosed spaces,” Alex said smoothly, easily offering the absolute most plausible, perfectly scientific lie he could possibly assemble right on the spot.
“If a roaring fire suddenly consumes all the oxygen far too quickly strictly in a sealed room, the massive, sudden pressure difference can easily cause a highly localized backdraft… a massive concussive shockwave directly when the cold air violently rushes back in. It could incredibly easily knock a heavy man completely off his feet and instantly disrupt the flames.”
“And the alarm?” Clark asked incredibly gently.
“Extreme, massive heat can easily cause the cheap glass casing to completely shatter. The violent, sudden change in total pressure could easily have tripped the tiny lever.”
Alex casually shrugged, his calm face a perfect mask of very mild curiosity.
“Or maybe she’s completely right. Maybe she literally has a guardian angel. Either way, she’s totally safe.”
Clark quietly studied him directly for a very long moment, heavily weighing the neat scientific explanation directly against exactly what he already knew of the strange world’s profound strangeness.
“Right,” Clark finally said softly.
“Yeah.”
They smoothly turned completely away and walked safely toward the others.