Author's Reincarnation in a Fantasy Setting - Chapter 360: The Maelstrom series

A week had passed since then. I was starting to grow used to this new lifestyle in the Silver Garden Academy, and it wasn’t much trouble.

One thing I noticed was that the classes had improved. Now they were teaching more practical things that are directly used in battles.

At the same time new research was being done on the body of the demon beasts and all the information was being presented to the students in a form they could understand easily and use to know their enemy better.

Till now they have found out that the weak point of the demon beasts was their cores, however, no one really knew what the cores were since they haven’t been successful in retrieving a functioning one.

Of course, I was already aware of all this information due to the novel but hearing it again refreshed the memories so it was kind of helpful in a manner.

Aside from all that, there was the problem with Akumi. He was starting to be more and more of a trouble and I felt like now was the time when I needed to deal with him.

During this past week, I noticed him keeping tabs on me and following me everywhere he could without drawing suspicion to himself. There were also some moments when he found me alone and tried to attack me but then stopped after remembering we were inside the campus.

Although I had gone to meet my parents one more time this week and he followed me there as well. I had not taken any empty streets and it was pretty crowded so he wasn’t able to take action else I’m sure he would’ve engaged in combat with me.

He was also growing close to Anya which got on my nerves. All of those things had made me decide that I was going to take care of him in a few days.

That was part of the reason why I was here in this training room, trying to refine my magic further.

Just like the Zaforths Academy, Silver Garden also offered personal training rooms in which students could lend and use the space to train themselves.

This one was better equipped than the previous one with more targets, weapons, and even some books dedicated to efficiently using magic circles.

However, what I was doing here was work on my elemental magic.

“Maelstrom: Red,” I said as I raised my right hand and a ball of hungry crimson flames appeared before my palm.

It was about the size of a wheel and was bustling with flames that were ready to come out and burn everything in range.

This was a basic attack of Red. It was good for dealing a wide range of damage in a short amount of time however just like Blue and Purple it was quite unstable.

Therefore to improve on that and increase its power more I decided to compress it. Using elemental magic I controlled the flames and forced them to gather in an even smaller space, pushing the ball of fire to the size of a baseball.

At this point, the flames were not visible. It just looked like a red energy ball. Doing this was of course consuming quite a lot of mana but I didn’t have to invest my focus in since I had already predetermined the value for the amount of mana to be used in the compression—it was automatic, in a nutshell.

Next, I used some more mana and started to spin the ball on its axis. It started slow but soon I increased the spinning speed to the speed of sound.

Then I aimed at the human-like targets in front of me and released the attack. The ball of red shot out from my hand at an insane speed and left behind a lot of recoil.

The ball flew straight toward the target leaving a trail of faint red energy behind on its path. At the point of impact, the ball went right through the target’s chest and collided with the wall behind. Right after that, it exploded the surrounding area was consumed by red-hot flames.

“Not quite what I wanted,” I said to myself. Rather than hitting the target, the attack went right through it.

“Perhaps I could use this as a long-range attack, like a sniper,” I mumbled while using elemental magic to wipe out the flames with water. This room was made to withstand this type of training hence there was no damage even after an explosion like that.

After that, I tried the same thing with Blue but the result was no different. The projectiles were becoming so hot and carried so much energy that they were outright going through the target.

However, this was not that much of an issue. What I wanted to find out was a safe way to use Purple. Maelstrom Purple was an attack that was the most unstable in the entire Maelstrom series.

Right after creating it by combining Blue and Red the ball of energy that was created would explode right after a few seconds and would end up damaging me as well.

This was a problem with my elemental magic. If I was not careful my fire would burn me too, my ice would freeze me too, my water would drown me too.

Usually, the magic isn’t supposed to harm its source but for some reason, my elemental magic totally ignored that rule. Perhaps it was because my elemental magic was free-style magic that didn’t actively make use of magic circles and the ruins inscribed on them. Or maybe I was missing something while casting it.

Whatever the reason was it caused me great inconvenience and I was searching to fix it as soon as possible.

But the closest thing I’d got out of it was automating a sequence in which the elemental magic would disintegrate right before it was going to harm me.

For example, if my fire somehow turned around and was on its way to burn me it would extinguish itself right before coming in contact. This was of course just a makeshift. Under normal circumstances, the fire would have hit me and I wouldn’t have been burned even if I was completely consumed by it.

“Ah well, it is what it is,” I said to myself and continued to train some more.