“Kent, are you able to cast instant fireballs now?” Before Kent could even step back into the cave, Alice rushed over like a gust of wind, grabbing his arm with an expression of frantic urgency.
“No, not quite,” Kent replied, slightly taken aback by her sudden reaction before answering honestly.
Refusing to let go of his arm, Alice pressed on, her cheeks flushed with a deep red.
“I saw it in the wash tub!
Don’t try to deny it!”
“Oh, that wasn’t an instant cast; it was a silent cast,” Kent explained, turning his head slightly as he set his bundle down, fighting the urge to lean in and bite her blushing cheek.
“A normal spell requires a two-second incantation.
By silently reciting it in my mind, I can cut it down to about half a second, making it look like an instantaneous cast.”
“A silent cast?
That’s still incredible!
Even our instructors can’t cast silently,” Alice replied in awe, the panic completely vanishing from her face.
Kent had already sensed a faint trace of magical fluctuation within Alice—though it was extremely weak.
Realizing she actually had formal training, he decided to probe further.
But before he could open his mouth, Niu Niu chimed in from atop his shoulder with a hint of disdain.
“Pfft.
Your instructor was decades old before hitting third rank.
Nothing to brag about.”
“Ah, a magical beast pet!
And it’s so pretty!” Alice looked up, finally noticing Niu Niu perched on Kent’s shoulder.
True to form for any young girl spotting something beautiful, her eyes lit up and she instinctively reached out to touch the sprite.
Kent’s mind raced.
Narrowing his eyes with a sly smile, he decided to spin a tale.
“A few months ago, I ran into a peddler down the mountain.
Bought Niu Niu here for a single silver coin along with two magic books.
One book came with a few scrolls—an enlightenment scroll, a soul contract scroll, and a second-rank fireball scroll.
I accidentally tore the enlightenment scroll first, which instantly taught me how to read.
Later, I used the contract scroll to hatch Niu Niu.
Turns out she’s a mutated grass spirit!
And because it was a soul contract…
well, that fireball scroll is still sitting around collecting dust.”
“A mutated pet?
A grass spirit?
A soul contract?!” Alice’s jaw dropped in sheer disbelief.
Mutated pets were one-in-a-million rarities.
Grass spirits, on the other hand, were widely considered the most useless magical beasts, usually kept only by low-level apprentices or alchemists to handle trivial chores or run simple experiments because their intelligence rivaled mid-rank beasts and they could keep secrets.
But those were strictly master-servant contracts!
Who in their right mind signs a soul contract with a grass spirit?
Yet, seeing Niu Niu in person, Alice couldn’t help feeling a twinge of envy.
“Hey, don’t underestimate our Niu Niu.
She’s the absolute best!” Kent felt a sharp pinch on his shoulder and immediately started flattering the sprite, knowing all too well she was no mere pet.
Realizing Kent wasn’t lying, Alice pulled her hand back, her curiosity piqued, and rushed outside to investigate.
Wait…
a magical beast pet that has its own minion?
What kind of pet is that?!
Kent left her to it, a subtle smirk playing on the corners of his lips.
Heading inside, he found Delis washing bowls.
Catching sight of her graceful, curving silhouette bathed in the warm candlelight, Kent swallowed hard.
No wonder guys blow all their money at taverns.
With a beauty like this around, who wouldn’t want to visit?
“You don’t need to wash those, I brought extra supplies,” Kent said, dropping his heavy pack.
How on earth did Niu Niu manage to haul such a massive bundle back anyway?
he wondered, though he knew better than to ask.
After living together this long, he understood Niu Niu’s fiery, childish temperament well enough not to push her buttons.
“Eek!”
Just as Kent let go of the sack, a blur flashed past, and someone plowed straight into his arms with a startled squeak.
Looking down, Kent saw it was Alice, her body trembling slightly.
He figured she would have screamed at the sight outside, but she had managed to run back first.
“Well?
What do you think of Niu Niu’s new minion?” Kent teased, flashing an amused grin.
It wasn’t about showing off; it was better to let the two women find out now rather than later.
“Unbelievable…” Alice murmured.
Looking at Niu Niu now felt like gazing at a priceless legendary artifact.
It completely shattered four years of formal magical education.
In the hierarchy of magical beasts, strict laws reigned supreme—how could a high-ranking beast ever serve as a minion to a lower one?
The sheer absurdity of it left her utterly dazed.
“I’m going to go feed Little Qing,” Niu Niu announced, feeling slightly awkward under Alice’s intense stare, and zipped away.
Alice and Delis exchanged glances—Delis’s eyes full of silent questions.
Without answering, Alice quietly followed Niu Niu outside.
Meanwhile, Tori shrugged helplessly before returning to his routine: practicing and refining his magic array strokes.
Kent knew that letting up even for a day bred laziness, and with the women distracted by Niu Niu, it was the perfect time to train.
After practicing his arrays for roughly two hours, Kent shifted to magic casting.
Stepping outside to his usual spot, he ignored the missing audience and focused.
Boom!
Boom!
…………
Successive mini fireballs slammed into the hard stone wall with dull, muffled thuds.
Kent concentrated entirely on the conversion process, tracking how mana transformed into raw spellcraft.
He realized something fascinating: mana merely acted as a catalyst and a guide.
The true destructive power of the spell actually derived from the ubiquitous fire-elemental particles floating freely in the surrounding atmosphere.
The moment his mana surged forth, ambient fire particles swarmed toward it like adoring fans rushing a celebrity.
Not far away, Alice and Delis had quickly integrated into Niu Niu’s inner circle.
Under the women’s gentle, petting hands, the towering wind wolf was currently being coddled like a giant puppy, leaving Alice’s heart racing with excitement.
But when she saw Kent stepping out to practice his magic, a competitive spark ignited within her.
She resolved to meditate harder and reach the true rank of a certified mage as soon as possible.
As she watched Kent cast fireball after fireball without a single pause, her eyes slowly grew hazy.
His casting speed was astonishing—faster even than her own instructor!
Having only ever witnessed her master cast spells, Alice estimated that by the time her instructor finished a single incantation, Kent had already launched two.
In a duel between mages, half a second could mean the difference between life and death.
Delis, though ignorant of magical theory, simply thought the giant wolf’s fur felt luxurious as she continued schmoozing with Niu Niu.
Niu Niu, meanwhile, secretly had to hand it to Kent—cultivating across all twelve elemental systems was the kind of insanity only legendary deities in higher planes attempted.
Yet this guy had stumbled into it purely through a moment of sheer audacity.
Still, seeing him return straight to practicing basic fireballs instead of letting success go to his head made Niu Niu smile.
He reminded her of her father—a man who never let cultivation slip from his mind.
Lost in his own mental world, Kent analyzed the mechanics of casting.
To him, mana was water, spiritual force was electricity, and the spell chant was the motor.
If he could coordinate them properly, true instant casting should be entirely possible.
Yet theory and practice were worlds apart.
Every time he finished a chant, there was a microscopic delay before the spell fired.
Kent searched desperately for the bottleneck.
If he could eliminate that split-second lag, his firepower would multiply exponentially.
If an opponent took three seconds to cast one spell, but Kent—provided he had enough mana—could unleash ten in the same timeframe, sheer density of fire would compensate for any gap in rank.
Of course, if an opponent threw up a fourth-rank elemental shield, ten or twenty low-tier fireballs wouldn’t break it, but against equal foes, volume was king.
Kent fine-tuned his focus on the interplay between mana, spiritual force, and the incantation.
Mana is summoned by the chant…
summoned…
summoned…
Suddenly, an epiphany struck him.
If mana was entirely dependent on the chant to manifest, then a chant would always introduce a delay.
What if he bypassed the chant and used spiritual force directly to summon the mana?
Acting on instinct, Kent tried it immediately.
The moment his spiritual force brushed against his inner mana pool, the energy surged forward in an overwhelming flood.
He finally realized the true secret of instant casting: it was entirely a matter of spiritual capacity!
Standard first-rank novices lacked the requisite mental strength.
While Kent was only thirteen chronologically, his soul possessed the maturity of a full-grown adult.
The conventional wisdom that “first-rank mages must practice repeatedly to achieve instant casting” was merely a slow process of building mental resilience through exhaustion and recovery.
With his spiritual force acting as a direct conductor, Kent’s mana poured out like tap water.
Beads of fire materialized between his fingers at breakneck speed, shooting toward the stone wall in a continuous, unbroken crimson stream that looked like a string of glowing pearls.
Kent snapped his eyes open, watching the relentless barrage of fireballs slamming into the stone.
His heart surged with triumphant joy.
He finally grasped the absolute core of magic: mana and spiritual force were two sides of the same coin, neither negotiable.
, That’s a fully automatic submachine gun!
he thought, grinning ear to ear.
“T-that…
is that Chain Fireballs?!” Alice gasped, startled out of her wits by Kent’s sudden burst of magical output.
Chain Fireballs was a high-tier fourth-rank spell!
But upon closer inspection, she realized the projectiles were still basic small fireballs, lacking the devastating explosive radius of the true fourth-rank spell.
Still, maintaining that kind of rapid-fire output was insane.
Alice turned to look at Niu Niu, who was wearing a similarly knowing expression.
What an absolute pair of monsters, Alice thought, completely speechless.