Standing way too close to an enraged troll is a very bad idea. The only good news was that he was already charging a significantly different sized Shield spell, as well as a counterpart out of Conjure Weapon. He had wanted to test what the difference between the two was for conjuring shields, so this was a reasonable opportunity. It would be perfect if it was almost any other half dead single creature, but a troll was a little outside the bounds of what he thought he would be testing the differences with.

Sadly, a quick check showed that he still didn’t have the Flamethrower spell, and Discharge wasn’t close enough to fire to completely counter the regeneration. It did slow it down considerably, and with Force Pulse having knocked large chunks of separated flesh off of the troll, it was actually more terrifying than before. His Fire pet was still throwing out flames from behind, and although they didn’t look too useful, they were still making some progress in cauterizing large portions of the troll's anatomy. Dix’s recently refreshed spells had only Fire Bolt to help him out with the regeneration issues, and the others were all various bolt spells of limited usefulness at this moment.

His shields finished just in time. He had created two huge tower shields, each tall enough to cover his entire body, while abutted to the floor. Seeing the troll preparing to give him a running kick, he overlapped them as best he could. Unfortunately for everyone, when the troll planted its foot to kick him, its hip separated at the joint. The forward momentum toppled the troll into a forward face plant headed right at Dix, who had no time to react in any way other than what he had already prepared. Seeing no other alternative, Dix huddled behind his shields, bracing them as best he could to hopefully prevent a crushing defeat.

As the troll was falling, Dix had a moment where time slowed down, giving him a chance to think. It wasn’t his life flashing before his eyes, however, it was just some of the things he had done and learned recently. Most notable amongst them was how he moved while utilizing his movement skill. Sadly the revelation that he easily could have dodge this troll and its downfall if he had fully accepted what he could do now came too late. He was no longer a simple human, limited in how far he could push his body and what he could reasonably expect it to withstand, and he really needed to start accepting that. He would have to find some way to push his new limits once he got to Mantra, and he was determined to break whatever new limits he found he had as often as possible.

Chancing a look upwards, he saw the horrific visage of the troll falling towards him. It appeared that he was too close, and the troll would crush him face first. In fact, it looked like it was trying to swallow him whole. With no time left, he released the Rejuvenation spell he had begun charging right after casting the shields. He also ordered the Summoned Healer closer to himself. He really wasn’t looking forward to trying to get healed up from the amount of damage he was about to sustain, or trying to fight the troll in that state.

When the constant roaring of the troll was abruptly cut off by a noise that sounded like a massive traffic collision, one involving semi trucks and trains, Dix was a bit pleased he wouldn’t have to hear that thing for a short time. He was hoping the volume of it had temporarily made him partially deaf, so he could continue not hearing it. The rain of saliva and blood was significantly less welcome, but as none of it was his, he wasn’t too upset. Darkness fell and the ground shook. If he had been unaware of what was occurring, he could have reasonably expected it to be the end of the world. Or at least his world. The stench of rotting meat and sickness engulfed him, and he briefly wished it really was the end. The smell alone nearly knocked him unconscious.

A series of tearing and popping noises heralded the return of the light. For a moment, Dix couldn’t fathom how he had lived, yet alone where the light was coming from. Eventually he looked around and spotted the top half of the troll’s head laying on its side behind him. Realizing he could see the severed brain stem, he quickly dropped his shields and grabbed a wand. Overpowering a Fire Bolt into it, he aimed carefully and blasted fire right onto the nerves, melting them into nothing. It might not be immediately fatal for a troll, but it would be devastating. Even if it regenerated the rest of its body, it was unlikely to be moving anything anytime soon.

Seeing that once again he didn’t have Flamethrower, but did have Fire Bolt he went ahead and cast it on the rest of the troll’s severed head, searing closed the vascular network that led to the brain. Its head had been torn off at the back of the mouth, severing the spine right at the base of the skull. His shields had been caught between the vertebrae and the skull, with the full force of the falling troll pushing against them. Since he didn’t actually see what happened, he would have to guess how this would affect his comparison of the two types of shields he could summon up.

Checking his spells again, he saw he finally had Flamethrower. And only three other spells. With his luck during this fight, he probably had three Flamethrower spells trying to make up for all the rotations they missed. He picked up his staff that rolled off to the side during his shield debacle. A quick scan showed that it could once again handle an Overpower, so he started charging a Flamethrower. Thinking about it, he realized he would need a couple casts of Flamethrower, even overpowered, to ash this troll with the spell's short duration of two seconds. Quickly, he called up his Mana Sense and sent it inside the staff. His Overpowered Flamethrower was almost fully charged, but he had an idea on how to do something a little different with it, and withdrew all his mana while he still could.

When a spell is normally cast through a mage weapon, the spell is charged through the runes first. This process involves filling each rune, one at a time, with mana. When a rune is full, the exit gate opens, letting the mana flow up to the mana chamber. Then the gates at the beginning of the runic sequence start closing. When the first gate closes, it cuts off the mana flow from the caster. The mana already in the runes continues on into the mana chamber, and as it is withdrawn from each rune in line the gates drop behind it. Once the full spell, and all of its charged mana, is stored in the mana chamber it can be released at any time.

Overpower used this exact process to function. By flooding the runes with mana in waves, it crashed against those exit gates and allowed him to force more mana into each rune. But now he wanted to do something completely different. He wanted to keep the gates open the whole time. Both of them. If the entry and exit gates of all the runes stayed open, then he could continue to flow mana through them and up into the mana chamber. It was similar to what he first tried to do when learning Overpower, but this time he wanted a steady even throughput. He didn’t want it bottled up in the chamber, he wanted it pouring out as fire.

Double checking his spells, he saw that cancelling the spell early didn’t count as a cast. With a quick glance at the troll he saw that it was still struggling to recover. The head had only regrown small portions of its skin, and none of the portions near the neck. Luckily, without his direct supervision, his Fire Summon had decided to pour all of its flame onto the opposite portion of the severed neck, keeping it from growing a new head. He didn’t really know if it could, but wasn’t willing to risk it. His Air Summon was just catching on to the idea that it could sever digits and limbs, and was going a little wild trying to cut an arm into as many pieces as it possibly could manage.

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With all going as well as it could for the moment, he focused back on his staff. Mid-fight, with a regenerating troll in pieces behind him might not be the best time to learn a new skill, but the pressure of the time limit might really help. He went slow, working only on one rune for the moment. Before he tried anything else he needed to make sure he could keep the gates open. He tried propping them open with mana constructs, or forcing the flow to thicken, but nothing was working. Looking back it was apparent he was running out of time. The arm was healing faster than the Air Summon could hurt it, and the Fire Summon couldn’t keep new flesh from appearing. It wasn’t fast, but it was progressing

Feeling the pressure he looked back at his task. Rather than concede defeat he tried looking at the problem another way. Why did the entry gates close? The runes were full of mana, and it needed to be sent to the chamber. OK, that wasn’t much help. Why did the gates close one at a time? He started filling the runes in order from closest to the point his mana entered the staff, so those filled first. Not immediately helpful, but there was the ghost of an idea in the back of his mind. He could feel his subconscious working at it, and knew this was what it wanted him working on.

Dix took a couple deep breaths to calm himself, despite the situation, then dove back into the staff again. This time he controlled his mana, keeping it from rolling into the runes immediately. Instead he kept it right at the entry gate for each rune, until he had all of them ready to fill at the same time. He also didn’t have the exact amount of mana to fill each rune held ready. These were full mana connections, still attached to his mana pool, and ready to keep feeding the runes as much mana as they could take. Again he had tried this while working on Overpower, but he was looking for a completely different result so when he failed to achieve it he didn’t look to see what else he could do from this point.

The thought of being here with Overpower reminded him that he needed to do more than just figure it out. He needed a skill to do this at any time. And it couldn’t be a skill that just made a Flamethrower. This skill needed to be about how to control the flow of mana, and keep the gates open until he wanted them closed. A thought popped out of his subconscious with the answer. A dam. But the skill couldn’t be the dam, the staff was the dam. Instead the skill would be the control board to the dam, in total command of the flow of mana through it’s channels. Each gate opening in a precise sequence until the correct amount of mana was stored in the final chamber. At that point, and not before, the final gate would be opened. When it was, all of the other gates would be used to slow or speed the flow of mana to that final gate, maintaining the exact same amount of mana at all times, until it was time to stop.

Dix was so lost in his visualization that he didn’t realize he had created the very skill he was looking for. At least until he felt the heat rising as a pillar of flame shot upwards from the staff. He was lucky he had been holding it upright instead of against his shoulder. Startled, he nearly fumbled his skill and the staff both. Calming his racing heart, and surging mind, he gathered himself and his things back together. Finally, with a vicious smile he turned the unending blaze of his Flamethrower onto the remains of the troll.

With a little help from his Summons, he had it reduced to ash and bones in three minutes. He had no idea how much of the troll he needed to burn, but figured turning all of the flesh to ash should do it. Bones alone shouldn’t be able to recreate a troll. He worried over it for a while until he noticed the entrance to the next cave had appeared. If the test was satisfied the troll was dead, so was he.

Dix entered the fourth room expecting something worse than a troll. What he got was beyond all his expectations. Slimes. Twenty of them. Confused, he looked around for whoever was in charge of this lame practical joke. When no one came forth to claim credit, or laugh at the look on his face, he just sighed and waved his Summons forward. They weren’t the best for fighting slimes, but could get the job done. For himself, he stuck to whichever bolt spells he would have available that sounded fun. Lightning bolt, Icicle, and then Force bolt. He wasn’t expecting much from Force Bolt, but it turned a slime into a splatter on a wall. He watched it carefully while he continued killing others to be sure it wasn’t faking being dead. When the entrance to the next cave opened up a few minutes later, the splattered slime had never come back to life. Huh, maybe that spell is slightly more useful than I gave it credit for.

Cave five was going to be difficult. This time it was elementals, although thankfully only four. Earth, air, fire, and water, all shaped like dogs. Dix wasn’t sure how useful their current form would be to them, but was still cautious. As always the first thing he did was check his spells. Once more Discharge was the best option from what was available, but he was tired of using it for everything. Admittedly, it was an awesome spell that could heavily damage all four elementals, especially Overpowered, but he’d used that spell in three out of four caves so far. His other options were very lackluster, however, he was determined to get some use out of them.

Wind Blade and Earth Spikes were the next best spells he had for the situation. Dix really couldn’t imagine what some stalagmites were going to do to air, fire, and water. As for earth, it could probably absorb it. Wind Blade wasn’t much better, but he still aimed it at the water elemental. He sent his own Summons to work together on the earth elemental, and fired his Wind Blade. He had aimed it vertically, so it split the water elemental in half. When the two pieces splashed to the ground, they formed a puddle and then a dog rose up out of it, taking the water. He almost groaned at the impossibility of fighting these things, but noticed it was slightly smaller than before. So, his Wind Blade did a little damage, but nothing substantial. He looked at the earth elemental to see how it was faring, but it was melted into a pile of slag. Still alive, but impossible to see how much of it was left.

Focusing back on his portion of the fight, he barely had time to dodge to the side away from the bolts each of the three elementals he was fighting had launched at him. A childhood game of flaming tennis had imprinted the need to dodge fireballs so deeply into his psyche it was instinctual. Ice Spikes was available, so he cast it, raising a series of spikes directly in front of and under the fire elemental. It’s yelp of pain sounded more like the pop of a campfire. He quickly raised a second set, followed by a third. With Ice Spikes not an option for a fourth cast he instead rattled off Force Pulse to knock back the attack spells of the air and water elementals.

With the fire elemental locked down into place, and slowly losing out against the forest of Ice Spikes, it couldn’t avoid it when Dix channeled a Water Slicer to keep it going long enough to drown the tiny chunks of fire that were all that remained of the fire elemental. Sadly, he had spent so long ensuring its death, he missed the air and water elementals charging attack. Both slammed right into him. One erupted into a wave of water, shocking and briefly choking him, until the other exploded in a kinetic explosion similar to Force Pulse. Whatever it was, it blasted him backwards, crashing into the wall but out of the water.

He groaned as he staggered to his feet. The spell from the Summoned Healer fixed up his bruises quickly. Dix didn’t even think about his available spells, and just threw a Lightning Bolt at the water elemental. He was starting to get used to the rapid change of spells in his head, and had developed a sense of which was which without having to really concentrate on them. He followed that attack with one on the air elemental that felt a little odd in his head, like it didn’t make any sense. It turned out to be Multi Bolt, and was surprisingly useful as it threw out two Fire Bolts and a Lightning Bolt. The Lightning was useless, but the Fire Bolts did a shocking amount of damage as they consumed the air to grow bigger. Even better, the water elemental was right behind the air elemental, and the insubstantial being didn’t even slow the spells down. One more Lightning Bolt, and two more powerful Fire Bolts splashed into its chest and head.