Not having any reason to understand the intricacies of clothing, Nick was gambling that the spear-tongue would assume that the jacket was an integral part of his body, instead of an article that he could remove at will.

By now, the spell had almost finished forming. With no time left to hesitate, he transferred the burgeoning ball of force into his left hand and then flicked the jacket out by the collar with his right, causing it to open when it shot out from behind the frog’s corpse. Half a second later, a black-barbed tongue drove itself into the center of the leather garment, with an impact that would put a charging bull to shame.

Apparently, the spear-tongue took Nick’s victory over its kin personally, and it intended to settle the score by scattering his guts across the hillside. The blow would have torn a hole in his stomach and shattered his spine, had he been standing where his foe believed him to be.

As the jacket-wrapped tongue rocketed off into the distance, he rose to his feet after darting around to the other side of the corpse. He locked his gaze onto his opponent as the spell hit critical mass.

Remembering the lessons that he had learned from using mana dart, Nick visualized the ray leaving his hands and striking the beast center mass. Just as the frog’s tongue reached its full extension, hanging frozen in the air for a fraction of a second, the spherical vortex raging between his palms hit critical mass and began to expand.

In the series of events that followed, Nick would come to learn three things about his new spell. The first was that piercing ray traveled at blinding speed. Faster than the blink of an eye, a thin cable of force with something spinning on the tip shot forth. The ray flew straight as an arrow, striking the frog in the center of its boney breastplate.

The second revelation was why the spell was called a ray. Instead of being transmitted all at once, the magic within the sphere proceeded to shrink over a span of several seconds, feeding ever more power into the spinning drill of force, ramping up the pressure all the while.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The third thing that he learned about piercing ray was that the first half of its name was just as apt as the second. Instead of being deflected by the frog’s natural armor, the ray stuck fast to its point of contact.

Now that it was locked in place, Nick could see that the head of the beam was capped by what appeared to be a white drill bit, which began to glow as more force magic poured into it, increasing the kinetic energy of its rotation. He had the sense that the spell was drawing upon tiny threads of pure mana along with the heavy flows of force, helping to concentrate a portion of the magic into the drill and allowing it to maintain its shape.

However, while the spell was certainly impressive, it wasn’t doing much damage. Staring down in confusion at the rapidly dwindling sphere suspended between his hands, he was worried that despite all the special effects, nothing significant was happening. There has to be more to it than this, the ray was too dangerous to use in the safe room.

The beast was alarmed by the strange spell stuck to its chest, but it didn’t seem to be otherwise affected. Nick breathed a sigh of relief half a heartbeat later, when he spotted a series of circular scratches forming along the boney black plating. As the ray reached full force, the tip bit deeper, onyx flakes drifting to the ground like ash, becoming a flurry as more of the plating was ground away.

Despite the damage to the frog’s armor, he was afraid that it wasn’t going to be enough to end the fight. A moment later, the ball in his hands dissipated completely. The last bit of energy traveled along the cable of force, retracting as it fed into the whirling head of the ray.

Just before the spell ran out of juice, the beam broke through, lancing across the soft tissue behind the plating. It came bursting out of the other side of the beast’s body in a fountain of amber blood, shearing through muscle and organ alike along the way. The frog had enough time to let out a confused croak before falling dead to the ground, a hole the size of a quarter drilled through its heart.

That’s more like it, Nick nodded in appreciation, taking in the carnage wrought by his new ability.