The sky had completely darkened, and stars began to dot the velvet night.
Inside the simple wooden hut at the edge of Blackoak Village, only a single dim oil lamp was lit. Its faint yellow glow barely pushed back a corner of the darkness, casting Rune’s silhouette onto the rough log wall in flickering, unsteady light.
“My mana has recovered!” Rune felt the gentle stream of mana once again filling his body, and a trace of relieved joy flashed through his eyes.
He looked around the sparse room—containing nothing but the bare necessities—and drew a deep breath of air that carried the aged scent of wood. “Tomorrow I can officially start hunting with the team! It’s time to upgrade ‘Little Fireball’ and make the final preparations for the mission.”
Being able to officially join the hunting team meant more than just a change in status. It represented a stable, continuous “source of experience” opening its doors to him.
Hunting magical beasts, gaining experience, strengthening skills—this would form a virtuous cycle. The path to increasing the power of “Fireball: Base” and “Fireball: Condensed” could finally enter the long-awaited “fast lane.”
A brief, beautiful vision of the future rippled across his heart like a stone dropped into a lake.
But Rune quickly shook his head, forcefully dispelling those still-distant fantasies. This was not the time for daydreaming. There were more immediate, more urgent matters at hand.
His gaze sharpened with focus and landed on the greatest trophy he had earned from today’s life-or-death battle—the full 500 experience points gained from killing the Tier 1 high-level magical beast “Terrene Drake.”
This “fortune” was more than enough to allow his already astonishingly promising “Little Fireball” skill to level up once again!
“It’s time.” Rune murmured to himself. He walked to the only wooden table in the room—its surface covered in scratches—and sat down.
The oil lamp’s light illuminated his young yet exceptionally calm face.
He closed his eyes slightly, cleared his mind, and focused his spirit deep into his consciousness. With a silent mental command, the familiar, simple skill panel appeared clearly before his “eyes” like a projection.
[Skill: Fireball]
[Level: 2]
[Progression: 0 / 200]
[Available EXP: 500]
His attention instantly locked onto the icon representing “Fireball.”
Below the icon, in the area that normally displayed level and experience, a glowing upward arrow now shone brightly—indicating that the conditions for upgrading the skill had been met!
Rune did not hesitate for even a moment. His will converged and “clicked” on the glowing arrow.
[Upgrade!]
The instant the command was issued, it was as though an invisible switch had been flipped.
On the skill panel, the progress bar representing current experience—which had been sitting at zero—suddenly surged as though injected with a raging flood. The numbers began to jump and skyrocket!
0…50…100…200…!
In the blink of an eye, the experience was completely filled, reaching the threshold required for the upgrade!
Immediately after—
Buzz!
The skill icon flared brightly. A pure, dazzling golden light rippled outward from its center like a wave, instantly sweeping across the entire virtual interface of the skill bar!
When the light faded, the appearance of the skill icon itself had not undergone any earth-shaking change. It was still the simple flame symbol.
However, the level number displayed beneath the icon had silently and firmly jumped from the original “Lv.2” to—“Lv.3”!
The experience bar had also changed, now showing 300 / 400.
[Skill: Fireball]
[Level: 3]
[Progression: 300 / 400]
[Available EXP: 0]
At the exact same moment the upgrade completed, a stream of information originating from the skill’s very essence poured into the depths of Rune’s consciousness like a sudden enlightenment—unobstructed and direct.
It was not sound, not text, but a more immediate instinctive understanding and knowledge infusion.
Rune immediately sank his mind, closed his eyes, and began to receive and analyze the information with full concentration.
Time passed quietly in the silence, broken only by the occasional soft crackle of the oil lamp.
His brows sometimes furrowed slightly, sometimes relaxed, as though he were experiencing a complex and exquisite process of disassembly and reconstruction in his mind.
Moments later, he suddenly opened his eyes.
In his pitch-black pupils, the previous composure had been replaced by a surge of irrepressible joy—like sparks bursting forth!
“As expected, after leveling up, the Little Fireball skill upgraded two aspects again!” Rune’s eyes sparkled with delight. “First, the amount of fire element that Fireball: Base can condense has doubled compared to Level 2!”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
He murmured softly, his voice filled with satisfaction at having his hypothesis confirmed and anticipation for the future. “This means my endurance has once again increased by a full factor of two out of thin air, the power of the corresponding Fireball: Condensed has grown even greater, and at the same time, the forms of attack can undergo massive changes!”
As he spoke, he closed his eyes and issued a mental command: “View status panel!”
The next moment, the pale blue native status screen—visible to everyone in this world—appeared before him.
The screen was simple, containing only a few glowing runes:
[Name: Rune]
[Class: Fire Mage (Tier 0)]
[Constitution: 0.9]
[Spirit: 2.0]
[Mana: 200/200]
[Skills: Fireball]
This was the panel that appeared automatically after awakening his class.
He stared at the two numbers: “Spirit: 2.0” and “Mana: 200/200.”
For a newly awakened mage apprentice, this Spirit value was neither outstanding nor poor, and the Mana cap was average.
For knight-type classes, the core attribute was “Body,” and their energy bar displayed “Vigor,” tied to physical strength.
For mages, everything was rooted in “Spirit.”
Spirit determined mana cap, mana quality, spell casting speed, spell control precision, and the possibility of learning higher-circle spells in the future. The displayed energy was also mana.
In fact, the upgrade of Little Fireball had always carried a hidden benefit: the ability to condense more fire element without increasing mana consumption.
For example, when Little Fireball reached Level 2, the same 50 mana consumption produced a fireball that condensed twice as much fire element as Level 1.
This was what had allowed Rune to achieve compression and raise the temperature.
Now that Little Fireball had advanced to Level 3, the same 50 mana consumption condensed twice as much fire element again compared to Level 2.
This was equivalent to his mana being implicitly doubled once more, and his endurance doubled again.
This was undoubtedly a welcome improvement.
“And moreover…”
Thinking of this, Rune raised his hand slightly, palm upward, and moved his will.
This time, he didn’t even deliberately focus his spirit to “condense” the spell. He simply willed it.
The next instant, mana flowed as though an extension of his arm. The fire element in the air gathered in a smoother, more efficient manner than before.
It felt as though he had gone from a blacksmith swinging a heavy hammer to a seamstress threading a needle—his control over every fraction of power had reached a new level.
Whoosh!
Then, a cluster of incandescent white flame twice the size of a ping-pong ball—now a full fist-sized orb—rose in his hand.
“Level 3 Fireball: Condensed is more than twice as large as Level 2. This also means that if it explodes on impact, the instantaneous destructive power will increase by more than double! After all, the amount of fire element released in that instant has also doubled!”
“Let’s call this ‘Fireball: Condensed v1.1’ for now! After all, its core temperature hasn’t increased, so it doesn’t count as a qualitative change and can’t yet be called version 2.0!”
Looking at the fist-sized incandescent white Fireball: Condensed v1.1 in his hand, Rune’s eyes shone with brilliance.
If the previous ping-pong-ball-sized Fireball: Condensed v1 could deliver power comparable to a low-Tier 1 spell,
then the current fist-sized compressed fireball had at least doubled in power, reaching at least mid-Tier 1 level.
Magic ranks and magical beast tiers followed the same system.
Each tier was divided into low, mid, and high grades, with corresponding differences in power.
“And besides the doubled fire element density, the control and perception of the spell model have also become far more refined! This should allow me to realize more spell model concepts and achieve even more varied attack effects!”
Looking at the fist-sized incandescent white Fireball: Condensed v1.1 in his hand, Rune quickly calmed himself and kept his thoughts clear.
The next moment.
He closed his eyes slightly and began to feel something.
It took only a few seconds.
Whoosh!
The incandescent white fireball in his hand began to change rapidly.
The originally stable-burning Fireball: Condensed v1.1 started flickering on and off.
Buzz!
A low energy vibration sounded—not from the outside world, but directly affecting Rune’s spiritual perception.
The next instant, the fist-sized incandescent white Fireball: Condensed v1.1, like a living viscous liquid, slowly split from the center into two! The splitting process was so smooth it was almost eerie, with no sign of explosion or energy dissipation.
In the blink of an eye, two smaller orbs—each slightly larger than a ping-pong ball yet still radiating astonishing heat and incandescent white light—hovered above Rune’s palm.
They were not stationary. Like two miniature celestial bodies that both attracted and repelled each other, they slowly rotated and revolved around an invisible axis at a stable rate, forming a miniature “binary star system.”
The extreme heat caused the air around them to warp violently, producing faint crackling sounds.
“Forming multiple fireballs in a single cast is indeed possible! In that case…” Rune opened his eyes, looking at the harmoniously rotating twin fireballs in his palm, a pure, restrained smile of successful experimentation appearing on his face.
The skill upgrade had brought a qualitative leap in control.
But this was only the beginning.
“And with my current control precision, I should be able to go far beyond simply shaping spheres…” A new, bolder idea flashed through his mind.
With a thought, the two rotating incandescent white Fireball: Condensed above his palm suddenly stopped their revolution. Then, like two drops of mercury meeting, they rapidly fused together, reforming into a slightly larger, more condensed indeterminate flame.
Immediately after, the shape of this flame began to undergo an even more astonishing transformation!
From the surface of the incandescent white mass, a thread as thin as fine wire—yet extremely dense and solid—began to be “drawn out” like a living white serpent.
The thread glowed with the same high temperature and light as the main orb. Under Rune’s impossibly precise control, it deftly coiled around the central spherical spell model core, wrapping and spiraling around it again and again.
The entire process was quiet and rapid, as though an invisible, skillful hand was weaving a piece of scorching art.
In just a few breaths, the original spherical fireball had completely disappeared, replaced by a four-meter-long, slowly writhing incandescent white “fire rope” floating above Rune’s palm!
It looked like a tamed living whip made of pure light and heat, or a superheated transcendent metal wire glowing white-hot.
Rune’s gaze locked onto a discarded, thick hardwood block in the corner two meters away—used as a footstool.
“Go!”
With a mental command, the tip of the incandescent white fire rope above his palm shot out violently!
It moved as fast as lightning, leaving a searing afterimage in the air as it reached the top of the wooden block in an instant.
The fire rope, like the most dexterous lasso, swiftly coiled several times around the middle of the block under Rune’s control, tightening firmly!
Sizzle—!
The instant it made contact, the extreme heat carbonized the thick hardwood surface and sent smoke rising. Flames whooshed upward, and the wrapped section of the block emitted painful “crack-crack” popping sounds.
But this was not visual enough.
Rune moved his will again. He directly reached out and grasped the end of the fire rope.
Yes—grasped it directly!
Because during the earlier battle with the Terrene Drake, he had finally tried holding his own compressed Little Fireball directly.
At that time he had already realized that the compressed Little Fireball possessed the properties of solid matter, and thanks to the mysterious rules of this world, his own magic could not harm him.
Thus he had achieved the ability to physically hold his own spell.
The next moment, he pulled the fire rope with a sharp, sudden yank!
Rip—!
Amid an ear-grating sound that mixed the tearing of wood with high-temperature cutting, the incandescent white fire rope—deeply embedded in the carbonized timber—tightened violently!
Like a white-hot iron wire slicing through butter, the tough wooden block was forcibly cut more than halfway through by this pure thermal cutting force!
The cut surface was charred and smoking, the edges showing a melted, vitrified texture.
However, looking at the block that had not been completely severed, Rune’s brows furrowed slightly.
......
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