The two of us spent the rest of the day fighting. It turned out that mom was holding back a lot in the first fight, because I kept losing without putting a single scratch on her no matter how much I learned from the previous battles. By the time the sun had set, I simply went to bed and crashed into it, skipping dinner altogether. Still, the day was incredibly fruitful.
I was starting to get full of myself and subconsciously thinking that my evolution and class granted me strength far beyond anyone else, but I simply hadn’t encountered a foe who can counter it.
When I woke up, some of the soreness from the earlier day remained, but mom had blissfully allowed me to sleep to my heart’s content.
Despite being thoroughly dismantled yesterday, mom said that I had countermeasures available and that she was going to teach me about them today. We stood once again in the open meadow of her domain field, but this time we weren’t going to fight. With Madeil in one hand and a bottle of milk in another, mom began to lecture me on drills she designed for me.
“A simple flood of neutral mana into a spell’s magic circle is enough to damage or destroy it entirely. It might not be mana efficient, but it’ll get the job done. Fortunately, you happen to be arcane attributed as well. There is no reason for you to simply sit back and watch as your foe does this.”
Madeil finished drinking the milk and began snoring straight away.
“Now, I want you to create and hold any of the advanced-grade magic spells you know without activating it.”
Hearing her command, I quickly constructed the magic circle for the omni-elemental war golem.
“Very good. Now, I am going to be trying to dismantle it with raw mana bolts. Your job is to protect the circle for 30 minutes. If you fail to do so even once, I will make you memorize one more magic circle before we start over.”
I winced but nodded anyway. Even if mom was much stronger than me, I was arcane-attributed and she wasn’t, not to mention that I was a mana elemental with skills to match.
Or so I thought.
Just as mom was sitting down with Madeil in hand, one of her fingers pointed my way and fired a rapidly moving mana bolt. I quickly applied force on it, relying on my [Kin of Mana] trait and [Mana Commandeering] to seize control of it, but it was like pulling teeth. Before I knew it, the bolt smashed right into the center of my circle, completely disintegrating it.
“Now, here’s a handy utility spell called magelight. It’s a very handy spell to have, especially when you have allies without a night vision ability or happen to be facing an enemy proficient with shadow magic…”
I groaned.
This day was going to be an even longer one than yesterday.
***
Today, mom had shown me that my gravity magic was not so invincible and had a giant, glaring weakness: it was made entirely of mana constructs, and thus vulnerable to disruption by arcane magic. Even if you dismantled the magic driving an icicle or earth bolt flying towards you, the physical object itself would still be hurtling towards you. The same couldn’t be said for spells like the orb of devouring, which were held together entirely by the mana construct that created it.
Spells that apply effects to the opponent were even more vulnerable to disruption; your opponent will always wield an inherent advantage when controlling their body because their mana core and soul reside within it. Skills like destined collision or mana commandeering were going to be difficult to use effectively against an opponent who has decent mana control.
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That was not to mention the unique abilities of the enemy themselves, such as mom’s ice magic applying a slowing effect on anything passing through it.
Still, that wasn’t a death sentence to the spells.
It took just as much mana, if not more, to destroy a spell with raw mana. Even more so if I contest it. It doesn’t matter whether or not I can successfully defend my gravity spells – in battles of attrition, that alone would grant the spells great value. Having a large tank of mana as an elemental also tips the balance in my favor.
The true value of such spells comes into play when combined with ‘physical’ magic. For instance, if I send an ice spear flying at an enemy then activate [Force Lord] on them, the opponent will be forced into the unenviable position of contesting my mana’s hold on their body and blocking or dodging the spear at the same time, and that’s where the true strength of convenient and easy to use system-granted abilities comes into play.
Still, while all of this sounds great in theory, pulling it off in practice requires a lot of skill and training. Many hours and magic circles later, even though I never managed to wrestle the mana bolts away from mom, mom decided that was enough mana control practice for the day. We then began training on effective combinations of spells instead.
“Do not confuse knowing a variety of magic circles for the ability to use them effectively.” Mom said.
“I recommend that you get very familiar with a few physical and non-physical magic spells, so that you can have ready-made combination attacks. You’re not going to have time to think of a synergistic combination or get good at using it in the middle of a fight.”
I sat down with as I thought over the spells I wished to learn.
“The best spells for this approach are spells with simple magic circles and high destructive power, even if their mana cost is prohibitive. Take advantage of your mana pool to oppress your opponent with high offensive output.”
I thought over my options and started with the physical spells. The best options were earth magic – and its derivative, metal magic – as well as frost magic. Each of those had advantages.
Earth was widely available and easy to wield. Even though earth magic was weak to fire, fire and its derivatives could not disintegrate an earth spike quickly enough to matter. At least not without expending mind-boggling amounts of mana to create powerful enough heat, which would be an acceptable outcome in and of itself. The problem with it was that its accessibility meant that if my opponent could wield any kind of physical magic themselves, they could easily block it. The same earth spike was not going to have an advantage against an earth wall.
The metal derivative was the opposite – metal isn’t commonplace enough for me to gather it on the spot for a spell, and I didn’t have a metal creation ability. Doing that manually would consume too much time and mana to be practical in combat, so I would have to bring a pre-made metal weapon myself, like the maiden. Unless I am facing a metal mage, it should overpower whatever hasty defenses my opponent could raise, but my own weapons could be used against me when, not if, I faced such a mage.
Finally, there was frost magic. I had the world’s most powerful ice mage for a tutor at my beck and call, and unless I was fighting in a desert, I’ll nearly always have some source of water to create ice from. The ice would be vulnerable to fire spells, but that would also mean I can counter an ice mage who can contest my control over it.
“Hmm…” I thought in consternation.
“If I may?” mom asked.
Taking my lack of objections as a cue, she continued.
“There is a unique kind of magic that might be of use to you. Only atypical-attributed mages can make reasonable use of it, but even then, it isn’t common because it doesn’t actually rely on the atypical attribute.”
A magic available to atypical-attributed, yet doesn’t make use of their abilities?
“What do you mean?” I asked in confusion.
“Recall what you know of the attribute circle. Every person has high affinity with the attribute adjacent to their own, unless that adjacent attribute is the atypical attribute – which would be no affinity whatsoever. However, the atypical attributed themselves face no such restriction, allowing them to make use of two elements on either side of the circle.”
My eyebrows rose as understanding dawned on me.
No one except the atypical-attributed had access to at least high affinity with earth and fire at the same time. Those two attributes were already the most suited for use in offensive magic, and I had both ready to use at my fingertips.
“It takes a bit of practice and a lot of mana, but if you’re willing to invest enough of both, then you can count yourself among the few who can call themselves magma mages – arguably the kind of magic with the greatest destructive potential.”