The security was tight. Every anti-shadow magic guard was keeping an eye on one another. Some sort of buddy system. And the buddies were in sight of another group of buddies. So, I couldn't assassinate them one by one or buddy by buddies. Unfortunately for them, I'm also an illusionist. I played some pranks on them and slipped into the building. One of the guards had to take a leak. His last leak ever. He did get me inside so I at least made him finish his leak. I was quite far from my destination.

So many useless corridors. I casually walked through the corridors covered in 8 layers of illusions. I noticed some strange boxes attached to the ceiling. I got curious but I ignored them. Getting near my destination was easy, however… I got met by a large metal door and I seem to have spotted a mana detector. The more I sneak around and do this stuff the more I realize how perfect I am for being an assassin. The mana detector had 4 anti-shadow magic guards next to it. But if I cover myself in frost magic I could easily pass. I shouldn't give off mana in my current state but better safe than sorry.

I strolled through the mana detector covered in frost magic. To those guards, it seemed like nothing happened. Now for this metal door. It seems to have magic weaved in it, it's impossible to teleport through it. I looked at the ceiling. I can teleport through that, what stops me from teleporting around this door? I teleported up and back down and looked at the door at my back. These humans are morons.

I found myself in a big hall and everyone here was wearing orange rubber suits. I have no idea what they are doing nor am I interested. A pair of thick goggles on a desk drew my attention. This however was interesting. I inspected it. The lens consisted of many layers of a thin crystal. These seem to allow the wearer to see spirits. But how can they interact with them? I almost dropped them. I recognize the energy these crystal layers give off. It's similar to the 7t crystal wolves. I really hope they didn't hurt any 7t else these guys have a huge problem.

I scanned the building again but I didn't detect any 7t. What did the 7t do again? Stabilize, maintain, and uhh solidify? Explains why these crystals work on spirits. Unfortunately, I can't mess with these things. I also have to be careful because these goggles might be able to see through stealth and possibly my illusions. It didn't seem that the people wearing the goggles could see me but added another layer just in case. 9 layers was my maximum for now. The appearance of my 9th tail boosted me a lot.

I moved extra carefully and finally got to the room where it all happened. I’m sure these goggles don't allow the humans to hear the spirits because they were in agony and crying for help. It was hard to bear so I plugged my ears with snow. I dropped the illusions, shifted my stance, and used [Fernys Magma pit] and melted all the suits, one-shot some humans, and added the agony and screams of the humans to the mix.

The devices that were holding the spirits captive melted. The spirits seemed very thankful but I couldn't hear them.

A human took a box out of his pocket and talked to it. I burnt him to a crisp because something told me he was calling for backup. I spent 10 minutes freeing the spirits. That's how many there were.

The medium spirit tried to tell me something. I took the snow out of my ears. Apparently, there was another room similar to this one in the back. I followed them and used another [Fernys Magma pit] and set the humans ablaze. The spirits started attacking the humans while I set the others free. These seemed to be weaker. They were getting experimented on to make sure they didn't return to the spirit world to provide more lightning. The experiments weren't successful yet. I helped those that were too weak to return to the spirit world. The whole place was chaotic by now. Men in red suits came to spray water on the fire but it didn't help much. And then I got hit by a purple [Lightning bolt]. I redirected it back before I took damage from it.

"Well, well, what do we have here, a brat freeing the spirits, do you have any idea how much trouble you caused?! The whole city is without power because of you and it is going to take months to get this place running again!" You're quite skilled in magic in a city that looks down on it.

A man wearing a strange jumpsuit carrying a junkshooter had appeared. he had a salt and pepper beard and was wearing those crystal goggles.

"It's because they're morons but as long as it generates me money then all the better!" So, you tricked them? I gotta say it's quite impressive.

"I tricked them? Nono, they came to me with these ideas 10 years ago, I don't know why they wanted it but I don't mind. They made me the 11th richest man in Zanyr because of that wahahaha. Now a question kiddo, making these goggles was quite expensive and I'm sure there's no technology similar to this, how are you able to interact with these spirits?" I'm a spirit mage.

"I see then now it's time to become a dead mage!" The guy aimed it at me. Instead of junk it shot a concentrated beam of purple lightning at me. It was almost a laser. I shifted to [Water Dragon dance] and caught the lightning and sent the electrified dragons at him. He kept running and shooting at the dragons. The amount of lightning was evaporating the dragons. He got hit by one and evaporated the other 2. He took out a second junk shooter and started dual wielding.

I gotta say, it looks cool. And way more practical than those junk shooters that shoot metal pellets.

"Heh, like my guns? I'm sure you've never seen one." Oh, so they're not called junk shooters, well I've seen several before, 3 guys that tried to rob me 2 in a strange forest and I guess a god was also carrying one.

"What? Not sure if you're serious or pulling my leg." I was shepherding the spirits away while evading and this started to piss off Mr. Gun. "Are you really a spirit mage? Where is your spirit? And why are you not capturing or absorbing their spirit energy to become stronger?" I don't need all that to kick your ass.

Some spirits notified me that it's hard to escape from this room because they couldn't pass through the walls for some reason. I shifted my stance and used [Flame Pillar] and blasted a hole through the ceiling revealing the night sky. Mr. Gun tried to shoot them down as they were escaping through the ceiling. I used [Fernys Magma pit] and all the remaining humans in the room got toasted, besides Mr. Gun.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"Heh, I was an A-rank adventurer in my time, I've fought stronger opponents than you. Are you from the dragon folk race? This heat doesn't seem to bother you!" He kept shooting at me while he was circulating mana to combat the heat. I decided to start my lightning training here, changed my stance and used [High Voltage] and [Lightning Dragon dance]. I occasionally took some attacks to redirect back to him or into my other attacks to make them stronger. I got zapped a lot because it's not easy to nail the timing when so much is going on.

Then he used [Lightning Tiger] and a huge yellow [Lightning Tiger] pounced on me. I felt like he was mocking me and Raishin. But this isn't an unusual but not unsurprisingly to find on a lightning user. The tiger was keeping up the pressure at close range while he was 'pewpewing' from far. He had to keep moving to avoid my lightning dragons.

”Ha! Is this what they call a stalemate?!” I didn't see how this was a stalemate, I could break this stalemate whenever I want to. I just need to think of a skill that can deal with this situation as I can't grow if I cheat my way through everything. This tiger wasn't the problem, I could avoid it for days, the pewpew was annoying but not threatening.

All I needed was something to break this annoying combo. [Ocean’s Wrath] would make quick work of this situation but I’m training lightning at the moment. What could I do?

I don’t think I can make a lightning equivalent of it. Wait I actually already have one! My [Dagger Torrent]!

I started to use [Accel step] and got the setup out for [Dagger Torrent], no [Boss music] this time because I haven't mastered that yet. The wires caught the [Lightning Shots] of Mr. Gun and used them to speed up the process.

“Ugh, how troublesome!” He took something purple out of his guns and replaced it with something that looked like a red cartridge. He suddenly started firing red [Lightning shots]. I think I know how this gun thing works. I needed to be careful because these red [Lightning shots] could melt my wires.

The [Lightning Tiger] got obliterated even though I was still in the blue lightning stage. I always moved around a lot during [Dagger Torrent] so the conversion to leyline energy wasn't that hard. I could easily evade the [Lightning shots] and send wires or daggers his way during my evasion. My underwater adventures taught me that every evade is an opportunity for a counter-attack and most opponents won’t see this coming. This also covers one of my previous weaknesses; in situations where I have to evade a lot, I tend to do no damage. The lighting around me ramped up very fast and went from purple to red.

“Ugh, what is this skill, do you have any idea how long it takes to make these red lightning cartridges? And you just throw around red lightning like it’s nothing!” He started to mix up his shooting pattern and mixed some very large red blasts in between his regular [Lightning shots]. I sent a red lightning-imbued dagger at one of his guns and destroyed the gun. “Noo! Masha! How dare you destroy her!” He took out another one and took an orange-colored cartridge and loaded it.

Uh oh, this doesn't look good.

“I only have 2 of these orange ones so be kind and die!” An orange blast akin to a laser blew a hole in my [Dagger Torrent]. The red lightning filled up the hole but I had to replace the wires. The wires aren't that much needed but they increase the control I have over this. I could deflect the red lightning attacks but the orange blasts were giving me trouble. The problem was that this guy wasn't expending any mana. He had stored this beforehand similar to my frost marbles.

His red cartridge seemed to be empty and he replaced it with his 2nd orange one. He kept blowing holes into my [Dagger torrent] which made it hard for me to catch him in it. I also couldn't try and get to orange lightning myself because I kept losing a lot of energy because he kept blasting holes in my skill. I sneaked in some [Lightning dragon dance] movements and sent 2 dragons at him. He blew their heads off but I could close in and catch him.

“Aaaargh!” He kept randomly shooting orange blasts to get out of it. My [Dagger Torrent] was losing a lot of lightning. I dashed toward him and as I landed a palm strike on his chest, I used [Accel Stop]. I didn't send all this lightning to collapse into myself but into my target.

Hasta la vista noob. My palm crackled and all the red lightning rushed into me, through my arm, into my palm, and into Mr. Gun and turned him into a red explosion, red from the lightning but also from all the gore. I did hurt myself doing that though.

Yuck, this [Lightning palm] makes a huge mess. Maybe I should call it [Crimson Palm]. [Crimson palm] sounds cooler.

I would run into problems when I would use a different color of lightning for this skill but as long as my targets have red blood it should still be accurate. It had one big flaw though…

I was covered in gore… Maybe I should cover myself in a [Thunder cloak] first. I made sure that all the spirits had escaped and cleaned myself thoroughly with water and fire. I first burned everything off me with an amped-up [Phoenix Dance]. Several thousands of degrees would do. Might have turned the whole room into a molten mess. And then I cleaned myself with water. I had to burn my clothes too so I had to take a new set out of my dimensional pocket.

A strange smell lingered, I couldn't tell if it was me or this room. I did a self-diagnosis. I took quite some damage from failing to properly redirect lightning. Besides that, I was fine. I looked at the broken gun. So other people also store magic and release it in bursts. I can see how this gives them an advantage over normal magic users. It requires preparation but after their cartridges run out, they can use their own mana.

Their opponents will by then be exhausted from using their own mana. I know how much of a pain it was to make my frost marbles so I assume this doesn't get used all over the place because of that reason.

I melted the already half-molten gun. I hope I never see this troublesome weapon again. I jumped through the hole and stood on the roof. It was another full moon. I felt the tug again and this time it was stronger. I stared at the moon for 30 minutes as if hypnotized and then got a hold of myself. I need to get to that mountain. A trail of spirits lead toward the mountain. That mountain might be a good power spot for lightning spirits but the humans know this of course.

I needed to do something about this powerplant though. They can always rebuild those rooms because that’s the only thing I destroyed. It might take longer if I destroy the whole building. I took some distance and got my tails out and started my [Tail Dynamo], my tails spun lightning threads of lightning ley line energy and created a purple electrified field around them which shifted to red.

I made sure that I could catch the whole building in my next attack. They also had it going deep underground. My tails kept spinning and a mass of orange lightning began to crackle behind me. I let all the lightning flow through me and selected my target. I used my reworked skill [God of Thunder] and dropped a massive orange lightning blast on the powerplant that shot into the sky and created a big hole in the ground. I was impressed by its power, It sent out electrical waves that fried every machine that relied on electricity in the city. My tails stopped spinning and I stored the excess lightning energy in my tails. I don’t think they can come back from this. I have to be careful with this it seemed that using this skill also did lightning damage to myself which means I haven't fully mastered lightning yet. My arms felt tingly and I circulated nature energy as I headed towards thunder mountain or however, it was called.