CHAPTER 247: ERRATIC

"Ready?" Cynthia asked then and flexed her fingers a few times.

Caius nodded still with a frown and the Combat Magic Professor flashed him a dry smile before she made an exaggerated move with her arms so a spell circle appeared and conjured up a massive ball of water that went flying at Caius.

Unlike the last time he had gotten attacked, Caius was a lot more ready but didn’t go for his best defensive spell. He didn’t really go for defenses at all. If he had any chance of winning this, efficiency was key.

Cynthia was beyond him in terms of combat magic experience and while she was restricting herself to Third circle spells, she was many circles above that and boasted the mana reserves to match it. She also knew how to conserve her mana better than Caius, so she could easily outlast him. All in all, Caius decided he had to make every attack count.

Fortunately, he had spent his time leading up to this moment well.

He formed seals, brought a spell circle to mind, and slammed his palms together before twisting his wrists for the completion of his spell cast.

Caius separated his hands then and a spell circle spawned to life between them and quickly burst into a gigantic and brilliant orange flame that intercepted the massive ball of water.

Only when the collision happened, the ball of water was almost instantly turned into steam and the gigantic flame continued to blaze, albeit quite erratically.

Cynthia raised a brow at the ball of flame and then her eyes narrowed as she began to analyze it even with the distance and she found herself impressed by it. While it looked like a fire spell, it was actually a Fire-wind Elemental combo.

The wind was only a little component though which Cynthia decided was likely decided upon by the spell’s creator for safety. Even though that is still not entirely wise.

Combining different elements to create singular homogeneous spells is not at all easy. There’s a reason success with such can create whole new elements entirely. A tremendous and rare feat of genius.

For example;

Ice is basically a combination of Wind and Water albeit with a lot of condensation but has evolved as its own thing and is entirely a whole Element unique to the Matriarchal Khiones in the north of the Acheron Empire.

Or, for an example even closer to home for Cynthia, the Kragsten family’s Storm Element that was made possible with the trio of Wind, Water, and Lightning.

Anyway, tinkering with elemental combinations can be very dangerous. In fact, it’s more viable for two separate spells of singular elements to be created and then cast individually to complement and boost one another. Of course, casting a homogenous spell of both elements offers a greater result than this alternative. It’s just not as safe.

"Your creation?" Cynthia asked with a nod at the flame between Caius’s hands.

"Yes," Caius answered.

With his knowledge of this world due to his reading ot the original story, Caius was aware of certain things one could do to gain the upper hand while battling within their Magic Circle. One of those was creating spells that combined two different Elements and would almost always win against a spell of a single element.

Take the recent exchange for example;

Fire and Water are opposites. They seek to rid the other and water seems to have the edge in this contest by default. However, this is dependent on the strength of the flame that the water has to douse.

So if you fan an already strong flame with wind, you naturally arrive at an inferno that water cannot possibly quench. Not water or that level anyway. This was why, despite how large the ball of water had been, it had been quite easily turned into mist.

"Impressive work. But it’s unstable," Cynthia noted at the erratic flares she could sense from the flame between Caius’s hands.

Caius shook his head.

"No, it’s not," he said, "This is exactly how it should be."

With that, Caius moved his hands until one was atop the other and then brought them together like he was compressing the erratic ball of flame between them. This all happened in the space of a second and then the ball of flame became a powerful column that went striking at Cynthia’s face.

With a wave of her hand, she erected a water shield to defend herself against the column of flame. When they made contact, Cynthia took even better note of the erratic nature of the column but there was something about it— a purpose to it.

But it wasn’t that the flame was being erratic on purpose—the flame didn’t have a mind of its own after all—but instead felt like its creator had intended it to be that way. Being erratic points to some sort of random chaos/irregularity but this seemed more like a simulated chaos.

But why would someone create a spell to be erratic and seemingly unstable? Cynthia wondered.

She got her answer when she felt something in the collision of the column of flame with her water shield.

Steam was produced as the flame tore at the water shield’s structural stability but Cynthia had expected this after she watched her ball of water be so easily evaporated so she had cast her strongest Third Circle Water shield spell composed of multiple layers to ensure she remained protected.

That should have been enough but then, she realized the sizzling of her shield was not the target of the spell. In fact, it ignored the shield almost entirely and was passing right through it.

Now Cynthia understood the reason for the erratic nature of the column of flame; It was making its particles unpredictable and essentially, sneaking past layers that should have kept it away.

In simpler words, by making the spell erratic, Caius had created something that could bypass protective spells, ensuring that it didn’t have to lose its energy while trying to break through shields and could instead just go right through them.

Suddenly, her intrigued and wondering expression changed into one of surprise that edged close to shock as she raised her eyes from her observation of the flame column and its interaction with her water shield and instead looked into Caius’s handsome face.

He had a strained expression of effort but he met her gaze with an almost cocky smile as he brought the name of this spell to mind;

~Erratic Fireball!~

This was his best spell creation work thus far and he was very proud of it. He also hadn’t planned for it to get field testing so soon as it had actually been one of the cards he was preparing for a coming attack/battle.

The benefits and risks of combining Elements were something he had learned about from reading the original story and he had first put it into effect with the creation of his ~Hellsong Stomp~ spell which had been the combination of a Second Circle Wind spell ~Wispy Feet~ and Third Circle Fire spell ~Hellsong Dash~.

At the time, the most notable obstacle Caius had taken note of was the fact that the two spells were of different Circles which made handling their combinations complicated.

What he had noted during the process though was that the elements of Fire and Wind were practically eager to mix.

Or so he had thought.