“Merely relying on thermal cutting from high temperature still isn’t efficient enough. Against a magical beast’s tougher hide or bones, it could take too long…”
He was not discouraged. After a brief moment of thought, he closed his eyes once more and sank his entire focus into the microscopic adjustments of the “fire rope” spell model.
The surface of the floating incandescent white fire rope began to undergo extremely subtle yet fundamental changes!
Countless tiny, almost invisible, incandescent scale-like barbs—resembling the teeth of a chainsaw—densely emerged and grew across the rope’s surface!
These barbs were also formed from highly compressed fire element, with razor-sharp edges and even brighter radiance, making the entire fire rope look like a chain woven from light and flame, bristling with lethal spikes—or rather, a white-hot chainsaw!
“Let’s test this.” Rune opened his eyes, his gaze calm.
He once again controlled the drastically transformed “chainsaw fire rope” and repeated the previous action—wrapping it around the wooden block, then yanking it with sudden force!
Sizzle-sizzle-sizzle—BOOM!
This time the sound was completely different!
It was no longer a simple tearing noise, but a mixed cacophony of high-speed cutting, friction, and high-temperature burning!
The chainsaw-like barbs, the instant they tightened, savagely “gnawed” at the wooden block’s fiber structure while the extreme heat simultaneously melted and carbonized the material along the path.
The effect was instantaneous!
A crisp “crack” rang out. The originally tough hardwood block was sliced cleanly in half by the incandescent white “chainsaw fire rope,” as easily as cutting tofu!
The two halves of the block crashed to the ground. The cut surfaces were no longer merely charred; they displayed a strangely smooth, spiraled texture characteristic of high-speed, high-temperature cutting, with the edges still burning fiercely with flames.
“Now this looks more like it.” Rune stepped forward, doused the flames with water, then looked at the “fire rope” in his hand as it slowly retracted and reverted into a gentle orb of light. A satisfied expression finally appeared on his face.
“This derived skill shall be called ‘Fireball: Form - Saw v1.’”
This was his second successful concept in the tactical development of the “Little Fireball” magic— a “Fireball: Form - Saw” shape that combined high binding force with cutting power.
The experiments were not over.
Rune’s mind moved again. The fire-element aggregate in his palm—slightly dimmer from the mana consumed during the earlier cutting—once more underwent fusion and morphological transformation.
It rapidly split and proliferated. In the blink of an eye, it transformed into ten tiny fireballs, each no larger than a marble, still radiating incandescent white light.
These “micro fire pearls” were numerous, like sentient fireflies. They nimbly darted and weaved half a foot above his palm, leaving intersecting trails of incandescent white light.
Rune’s gaze sharpened and locked onto another empty spot in the room.
“Scatter!”
At his mental command, the ten micro incandescent white fire pearls in his palm shot out instantly like buckshot, each streaking toward several palm-sized hard stone blocks placed on the floor for testing!
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!…
A series of dense, muffled air explosions detonated inside the small hut!
Each micro fire pearl exploded on a small scale the instant it struck a stone block. Firelight flashed, and the impact force blasted stone chips from the surfaces, exposing darker soil beneath. For a moment, smoke and dust filled the air, carrying the acrid smell of scorched stone powder.
However, the explosive power was visibly far inferior to the previous ping-pong-ball-sized or even fist-sized compressed fireballs.
The damage to the stone blocks was mostly surface cracking and scorching, rather than penetration or complete shattering.
Rune watched the scene calmly and quickly assessed in his mind: “Dispersed form sacrifices individual power but gains multi-target attack, area coverage, and some interference capability. Suitable for dealing with swarms of weak targets, or for restraining and blocking enemy movement… each form has its strengths.”
He waved his hand lightly, dispersing the lingering scorching air and smoke, and allowed the remaining micro fire pearls in his palm to quietly dissipate.
“This mini fireball form shall be called… ‘Fireball: Micro v1’!”
“Theoretically speaking, these compressed super Fireball: Micro v1 still reach the same temperature of 2000°C and above. With sufficient launch speed, they could achieve sufficient penetration and sustained high-temperature damage capability. It’s just a pity…”
Thinking of this, Rune shook his head.
“It’s a pity… my mage realm is still too low—only Tier 0, and early Tier 0 at that. My spirit is not strong enough to achieve high-speed launching of magic. Otherwise, if my realm were higher and my spirit stronger, these ultra-small fireballs could deliver shotgun-like destructive power. Instead of being limited to harassment or restraint as they are now.”
A mage’s spell launching relies on spirit to construct a launching channel, thereby enabling directional projection of the magic.
The higher the realm and the stronger the spirit, the more stable the channel becomes, the fewer interferences inside it, and the faster the spell launch speed.
Furthermore, with higher realm and stronger spirit, one can construct multiple or even continuous target nodes, allowing magic to travel freely to any location and be controlled at will, just like telekinetic manipulation of matter.
But the current Rune could not do that, which was why he still had to rely on his own physical strength to throw the compressed Little Fireball outward to assist the spirit-based launch.
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“Never mind. I’ll just cultivate slowly from now on. Once my mage realm advances step by step, all my concepts will eventually be realized!”
“It’s just that… the current meditation method cultivates too slowly. At this rate, I don’t know when I’ll be able to break through to Tier 1!”
Rune shook his head and did not dwell on it.
Cultivating the spirit realm and upgrading the Little Fireball skill were two separate systems. There was no system assistance, and unlike the skill itself, it could not be improved overnight. It required steady, step-by-step cultivation.
“Next is the most important experiment! Raising the maximum temperature of Little Fireball!”
Having finished testing the construction of new spell models, Rune took a deep breath and murmured once more.
“Temperature! Temperature is the foundation of flame magic!”
“I can now control more fire element, and my spell model control has become much stronger!”
“If I compress the fire element controllable by Fireball: Condensed v1.1 down to the volume of Fireball: Condensed v1, I wonder how much higher the temperature can be pushed!”
Thinking this, Rune did not hesitate any longer.
He raised his hand once again.
With a slight mental command, the fire element in his palm began to rise once more.
Whoosh—
A cluster of incandescent white flame, only ping-pong-ball sized yet with an exceptionally dense and perfectly spherical structure, silently and abruptly manifested three inches above his palm.
Unlike the previous experiments with various shapes, this newly formed spell model presented, from the moment of its birth, an almost perfect geometric sphere. The edges of the flame were clear and stable, without the slightest flicker or leakage, as though it were not burning flame but a perfectly cut, self-luminous incandescent gem.
Once the spell model stabilized, Rune immediately began the most critical step.
He concentrated his entire focus and mobilized the even purer mana granted by the upgrade, efficiently converting it into the purest fire-element energy. At the same time, his spirit extended like invisible tentacles, actively drawing in and gathering the sparse free fire-element particles already present in the air of the wooden hut.
Two streams of fire element—one converted from within his body, the other drawn from the outside—rushed forward like soldiers obeying an absolute order, continuously and orderly pouring into and compressing around the ping-pong-ball-sized incandescent “core” above his palm.
As the massive influx of fire element surged in madly, the color of the ping-pong-ball-sized fireball underwent a visible metamorphosis!
In just a few blinks of an eye, it rapidly transitioned from its initial orange-yellow to bright yellow, golden white, and finally stabilized at a pure, blinding incandescent white that was almost impossible to look at directly!
The heat wave it emitted caused the surrounding air to emit faint, strained whimpers, and light severely distorted around it.
“This… is the peak temperature reachable by the extreme compression of Fireball: Condensed v1.” Rune felt the scorching heat radiating from his palm—almost enough to burn through the soul—and the saturated tremor coming from the spell model that had reached a certain critical point, and he understood.
This was the limit of the old power.
Now, he was about to challenge the new height brought by the Level 3 skill!
“Next, let me see just how much higher the temperature can be pushed when the fire element that can be condensed is doubled again after the skill level increase! Fireball: Condensed v2, come forth!”
Rune drew a deep breath of scorching air. His heart pounded like a war drum inside his chest.
He gathered all his spirit to its utmost limit, like the finest needle point, and precisely pierced into the already saturated core of the spell model, attempting to forcibly pry open the “valve” of its internal structure and command it to accept more!
Mana surged. External fire element was seized and drawn in even more violently, turning into an even more torrential flood that tried to rush into that tiny ping-pong ball!
But a sudden change occurred!
The instant he attempted to inject fire element beyond the previous limit, Rune’s expression changed dramatically!
“Not good!”
Warning bells exploded wildly in his mind!
He clearly “felt” that the incandescent white orb in his palm was not failing to accept more energy because of “insufficient structural strength,” but had reached a deeper, more fundamental density limit of the fire element itself!
Inside the tiny ping-pong-ball-sized spell model cavity, the fire-element particles had already been compressed to an unimaginably dense state. The repulsive forces between the particles and some as-yet-ununderstood rule had together constructed an invisible yet unbreakable barrier!
The new flood of fire element crashed against it. Not only could it not integrate, it acted like a giant wave slamming against a dam, causing the entire spell model structure to resonate and tremble violently and dangerously!
The originally stable incandescent white orb—like a stellar core—began to vibrate and hum at high frequency uncontrollably. Its surface light flickered wildly, bright and dim, and a destructive, extremely unstable energy fluctuation began to leak outward like a beast breaking free from its cage!
A hair’s breadth from disaster!
There was no time to think. It was pure instinct honed from countless previous experiments and life-or-death crises!
Rune’s wrist snapped with all his strength, and he hurled the nearly out-of-control “miniature sun” with everything he had toward the old, unlit stove in the corner of the hut—built from stones and clay.
The incandescent white orb left his hand, tracing a brief white trajectory that warped the light in the air, and shot precisely into the dark mouth of the stove.
Time seemed to freeze for half a second.
Then—
BANG!!!
A boom far deeper and heavier than any previous experimental explosion erupted from inside the stove!
The sound was not like an explosion, but more like something extremely dense being forcibly “burst” apart from within!
A violent blast of black smoke, sparks, and incandescent white fragments erupted from the stove’s mouth!
The iron pot sitting on top of the stove was struck as if by an invisible giant hammer, flying half a meter into the air with a loud clang before tumbling and crashing to the ground nearby. A charred dent had appeared on the bottom of the pot! The few dry firewood sticks stacked inside the unlit stove were blasted in all directions, scattering across the nearby floor. Every piece had instantly carbonized and blackened on the surface, trailing wisps of green smoke and emitting a scorched smell.
Fortunately, most of the explosive energy seemed to have been absorbed and contained by the stove’s relatively enclosed structure and heavy stone blocks. It did not ignite the scattered firewood or other items, causing only localized impact and scorching marks.
Rune stood where he was, chest heaving violently, a layer of fine cold sweat already beading on his forehead.
He let out a long breath of air mixed with the smell of smoke and dust, and only then did his tightly wound nerves slowly relax.
“Whew… that was close.” He murmured softly, his gaze sweeping over the messy stove area. After confirming there was no risk of fire, he finally breathed a true sigh of relief.
Then, he closed his eyes slightly, forced himself to calm down, and began to review every detail he had perceived in that heart-stopping moment.
“Just now… when the fireball reached the extreme incandescent white state of Fireball: Condensed v1, the moment I continued injecting fire element, I immediately felt… a kind of ‘saturation.’” His brows furrowed tightly as he analyzed it carefully in his mind. “It wasn’t the ‘bursting’ sensation of the model structure being unable to withstand it, but rather… that ‘space’ itself had already been filled with fire element to a certain ‘density limit’?”
“I mobilized the new amount of fire element I could control, but only about half… was successfully compressed into that ping-pong-ball-sized core. The remaining fire element, unable to enter that space, only collided and churned around the periphery of the model, causing the entire structure to instantly lose balance and become extremely unstable, on the verge of collapse…”
This conclusion made him frown deeply.
“Saturated… does fire element density have an upper limit?” He murmured, a trace of gravity in his voice that was hard to detect. “This is not good news.”
This meant that, at least within the ping-pong-ball-sized spell model of Fireball: Condensed v1, the path of simply increasing temperature by raising fire-element density seemed to have reached its end.
If density had a theoretical upper limit, then temperature naturally had a corresponding limit as well.
“The lethality of flame magic lies at its core in temperature…” Rune’s thoughts raced, analyzing the impact of this bottleneck. “If I cannot continue raising the core temperature, then the power limit of ‘Little Fireball’ in this form… is probably locked at its current level.”
This fact was difficult for him to fully accept for a moment.
He had originally believed that the skill level increase would bring unlimited possibilities for temperature growth.
But now...
......
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