When Daniel arrived back at his cave, he was greeted by a notification.

You have entered a safe zone. This zone will remain for 4 days and 18 hours.

He took off his protective gear and stored away his weapon. Then started his exercise program. It was time for a training montage. While straining his body, he contemplated what kind of spells he would need to better handle a fight like the one he'd just had.

Daniel concluded that the most important thing he needed would be an attack that could throw his opponents off balance and in a worst case situation, if he got swarmed, repel them away from him. After his stamina ran out from the exercise, he started to experiment with his wind magic. It was becoming easier and reminded him a little of his programming in university.

He was starting to think of the air magic as a programming language. In theory, he should be able to create a lot of different effects. But, there was a lot of room for mistakes. It was time consuming and required a lot of concentration. That was where his spells came in. They felt a bit like a function that was created before and could be used with different input parameters like the amount of mana used. Well, it was not a hundred percent accurate comparison, he'd never seen a function that could level up.

With that in mind, he started to build a compressed layer of air and then pushed it outwards with a lot of force. He wanted his new spell to be flexible. That was why, after the first successes, he tried to push a compressed layer of air outwards without using his hands for control. It was more difficult, but after a while he succeeded.

The next step was to push compressed air away in a sphere from his whole body. If the savage goblins jumped at him again, he wanted to have a way to repel them. It worked after some fine-tuning, but he spent more than 10% of his whole mana for spherical air push. Daniel reckoned that this would be a small price to pay to save his life in a desperate situation. The good thing was that smaller, more concentrated air pushes were a lot cheaper. At last, he tried to pull air in a few meters distance from himself in his direction. He braced for the impact and managed not to fall down. If his opponents got used to him pushing them away, this would give him an additional element of surprise. After deciding that this was all he needed, a notification popped up in front of him.

Elemental Spell obtained

Air - Air Wave (channelling)   - Level 1

Manipulates a wave of compressed air and can throw enemies off balance. Strength of the wave depends on mana usage and spell level.

Daniel kept experimenting a bit. Depending on the mana he used, it would be no problem to throw a grown man off his feet. But, it would be a far more economic use of his mana to use the spell in small bursts to make his enemies stumble by surprise. When his mana ran out, he started his meditation cycle again until his stamina and mana filled up.

After finishing, he started the workout again, while he contemplated what kind of other spells would be useful. It would probably be better to have a limited amount of spells with a wide area of use. There didn't seem to be a limit of elemental spells, but he didn't want to have dozens of specialized low level spells. There was only so much time in a day and mana to use. So, concentrating on a few spells with broader use would probably be a better idea.

Daniel came to the conclusion that the spells which would be the most useful right now, would be a way for a ranged attack and a way to escape his enemies, in case he was in danger of being overwhelmed.

He remembered a documentary he once saw. The most dangerous thing about an explosion, which killed most people aside from the shrapnel was the shock wave. If he remembered correctly, an air pressure difference of a tenth of an atmosphere (bar) was already enough to damage buildings and a fifth of an atmosphere would seriously injure a person. An implosion of a vacuum that filled with an air wave would be very harmful for the ears, eyes and lungs. Creating a high pressure area and creating a low pressure area was both air pressure manipulation and should be possible with one spell. Pressure waves decreased in a cubic ratio with distance. If he created a blast of ten bar air pressure at one meter, it would be barely over a bar at two meters and a bit over a tenth of a bar at four meters.

Daniel tried to compress a cubic meter of air in front of him into ten liters. This would mean a pressure of 100 bar. Compared to his other uses of air magic, this wasn't difficult, but it took time. Before he let go of his air bomb, he created a Windshield between himself and the bomb. It worked, the bomb blew away dust and small debris from the floor while he was shielded from the effects. The drawback was the mana usage of compressing the air and shielding himself and the time the effort it had taken. To be useful in a battle, he needed a way to shoot his bomb at an enemy. This was far more difficult and Daniel needed to meditate a few times after he ran out of mana while experimenting. But, after two hours of effort he was able to shoot his air bomb around 20 meters until it exploded. If it hit an obstacle before, it immediately detonated, which was what he wanted.

The next thing he tried was to pull all air out of an area. This was a lot faster, but he wasn't able to move the area once created and the distance of the vacuum increased the mana usage very fast. All in all he was satisfied with the concept and he got the notification.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Elemental Spell obtained

Air - Air Bomb (channelling)   - Level 1

Creates an area of high pressure that can be shot at an enemy or a static vacuum. Power depends on mana usage and spell level.

Two spells finished and one to go Daniel thought and he started his physical exercise again. After he meditated to refill mana and stamina, he arrived at a problem. He had no real idea how he could use air magic to make himself faster. He couldn't use the magic to influence his body and make his legs faster.

When he thought about what limited the speed a human could reach, he made out three major factors. The first was how fast a humans leg could move, this would be the upper speed limit and was defined by his agility attribute. The next one was how much traction he had with the ground which was mostly influenced by the material of the floor and gravity. He could've probably used earth magic to connect to the ground and get more traction or gravity magic, if there was such a thing, to locally increase gravity. But, right now he had no access to both of them. The only thing remaining was the air resistance. At high speeds this would increase more and more in a quadratic way. Reducing it would not help him a lot with accelerating or cornering, but it could probably increase his top speed. At least to a level that was reachable by his agility.

The best he could come up with was to decrease the air pressure in front of him and to increase it in the back. This should propel him forward. Daniel tested his theory and found out that it was increasing his speed to a degree, but that his main limiting factor right now was his agility. The positive discovery was that rotating the pressure difference to the sides helped a bit more than expected with cornering and that putting more pressure in front helped to stop faster. It would be of no help in close combat, but it could give him a boost while running which would only increase with his agility. When he obtained the spell, he stopped his training and prepared himself something to eat and drink.

Elemental Spell obtained

Air - Haste (channelling) - Level 1

Manipulates air pressure around the user to make him run faster. User can't move faster than agility allows. With higher movement speed more mana is used. Spell level decreases mana usage.

After he finished his meal, it was time to restart his training montage.

Safe zone expired

You are no longer safe from dungeon creatures

Daniel paused, the five days passed a lot faster than he'd expected. He opened his status and had a look at his gains.

Status Daniel Krieger

Level

XP

Free Attribute Points

2

780

10

Attributes

Strength

Agility

Vitality

Endurance

Mana Capacity

Regeneration

Mana Regeneration

Toughness

27 (+10)

23 (+1)

13 (+1)

22 (+6)

25 (+3)

21 (+1)

11

11

The training had given him more than two levels worth of attribute points and the experience from the attribute gains let him level up. With a smile he distributed his free points into agility, mana capacity and regeneration. Then he looked over the rest of his status information.

Skills

Slot 1

Slot 2

Slot 3

Slot 4

Swordsmanship

Meditation

Self Improvement

unlocked at Level 5

Novice 2%

Novice 4%

Novice 6%

-

Elemental Spells:

Air:

Windcutter

Windshield

Air wave

Air bomb

Haste

2

2

4

3

2

His increased spell levels had different results. In his Windcutter spell, the damage had increased, but the mana expenditure also. Although it was by a lower amount. Windshield and Air wave were spells that had no upper limit for mana consumption. He could now get the same effect as before with a little less mana usage. Air bomb was the same, but he noticed that he was able to cast it a little faster now, while Haste required less mana and less focus. Daniel was now able to activate it at the same time he used other spells. But, maybe that had nothing to do with the spell level and was just him getting used to air magic.

He closed his menus and checked his supply situation. Included the food he found from the dead man, he had still enough to eat for around nine days and water for maybe six. He was pretty sure that he would be able to find water somewhere in this cave system, but if there were animals to eat here, the goblins would have probably gotten them first. The thought about eating goblins was rather unappealing. He sighed, put on his protective gear, took out the saber and then he left his cave through the same tunnel as the last time.