Chapter 146: A meteorite falls
Unedited Chapter.
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Meanwhile, Laura was completely focused on learning the magic necessary to escape this scorching torment.
Being in a place where fire burns constantly and even the rocks spew fire is not pleasant in any way. The heat causes excessive sweating, which is stressful, and it is a heat that comes from a fire that seems to never go out, making it a stinging heat.
She wasn’t as crazy as Louis to try to rest in this place. In fact, in her eyes, that makes no sense whatsoever. This is where she should be trying to learn those spells in 24 hours, not at the academy.
Thanks to her hard work, she gradually felt that she was getting closer to her goal: learning level 4 magic.
While Louis was simply resting, he occasionally worked on learning some magic spells and then simply went back to resting.
Neither of them understood what he was doing, but that’s how the first day passed.
During the night, they used some special items from Hardrial to help them rest.
Here, they did have to keep watch.
While Laura slept, Louis and Hardrial sat watching the distant horizon.
"Are there no beasts here because of the fire? Or are there beasts down there?" asked Louis, looking toward the lower steps of this place where the enormous rock that attracted meteorites was located.
Hardrial shook his head. "No, there are no beasts down there. We don’t stand guard because of the beasts, but because of the meteorites. I told you before that this rock attracts meteorites whenever one enters its periphery, so it’s possible that while we sleep, a meteorite could fall and kill us."
"At the same time, that’s why there are no beasts here. It would be suicide for them, although sometimes elemental spirits form, but those aren’t dangerous."
"Ohh." Louis nodded in understanding. "Has anyone ever died here?" he asked.
"Quite a few, although not even their bones remain."
"Do the meteorites fall on top of you?"
"Haha, that has happened to a few unlucky ones." He looked up. "Stopping these meteorites isn’t really difficult. If one is ever going to fall on you, just attack it. Level 2 magic can slightly deflect its trajectory. Level 3 can change its trajectory quite a bit, and level 4 can deflect it drastically. Magic above that can even destroy them."
"The difficulty lies in the fact that they’re very fast, right?" Louis asked, and Hardrial nodded.
"Indeed. They are the natural enemy of many magicians."
"But the same cannot be said of an Armamentalist." Louis finished his sentence, and Hardrial smiled.
"Yes. Our speed allows us to be natural enemies of these meteors and their desire to destroy everything."
Louis nodded.
He then continued to look at the sky.
The night passed smoothly, and soon dawn broke.
Louis continued his training and then his rest.
Soon night fell again.
Once again, Louis stood guard alongside Hardrial during the first hour of the night.
They didn’t talk much that night, but at one point Hardrial frowned and looked up at the sky.
His eyes sparkled with curiosity.
"A meteor is coming," he said.
It was nothing new; many fell during the day and night. But this one was coming straight toward them, which was unusual.
"And it’s quite large," said Louis, his eyes shining with interest and a big smile on his face.
Hardrial looked at him. "Is this what you were waiting for?" he asked curiously.
Louis simply smiled, and when he didn’t get much of a response, Hardrial went to wake Laura.
If he couldn’t stop it or divert its trajectory, they would have to go down outside the boundaries of the fire and wait for the fire that was spreading everywhere in this place to disappear before they could go back up.
That’s not a fire to play with. It’s something of unimaginable danger, capable of erasing bones without a trace in a matter of seconds.
When he turned around, Louis was already aiming his weapon at the meteorite, several spells charged.
"To deflect the trajectory of a meteorite that is being attracted by the magnetism of that meteorite down there and the gravity of this place, the force must be significant. How much should I use? If I overdo it, could I not deflect it, but destroy it? Although I don’t know if I have enough force to destroy this meteorite," he thought.
But he didn’t need to think too much. He had an active mission and he had to complete it.
First part of the mission: Deflect a meteorite using a single spell.
The perfect spell for this was wind magic, but he wasn’t going to use just any spell this time.
He was going to use one he created himself.
A wind magic that combined explosiveness with his new concept of mass.
He aimed at the center of the meteorite, grabbed a bullet, and put it in the cylinder, drew a line down a few inches, and without thinking twice, fired.
The speed of the meteorite was impressive, but so was that of the bullet.
This bullet was a little special. Well, not the bullet, but rather its magic.
The concept of mass says that anything physical has mass. That includes wind and the bullet itself. All this mass must be added together to form the total magic, but is it possible to activate magic at a certain time, without the need for a cause, based on mass?
For example, the bullet normally needs to touch something physical to trigger the magic inside it. This is the cause that activates the magic.
But what if it could be done differently?
How about using the same magic mass as the trigger?
Keep in mind that a "trigger" is anything that activates the magic inside the bullet. Something physical is the best trigger, but in Louis’s mind, it shouldn’t be the only one.
Because what activates magic is something that affects it.
And something non-physical can also affect it.
A delayed mechanism in magic, for example. But Louis couldn’t find a way to create a delayed mechanism within the magic in the short plan. He would need to create a smaller, mine-like magic inside it, something he lacked the knowledge to do.
Even so, it wasn’t completely impossible for him. He had already been playing around with mass and mass differences within the same compressed magic. So what if he tried to make magic whose mass changes when it approaches something different?
Something like... heat.
The wind reacts to heat, because this heat (fire) creates inequalities in air pressure, forcing the wind to move accordingly as a regulator.
This is the movement he expects to happen.
The movement of his bullet was astonishingly fast, as it had been fired with his greatest magical power. This bullet soon approached the extremely hot meteorite, and just when it looked like it was going to hit it, which could have been dangerous, the magic suddenly activated.
BOOM*
An explosion of wind and fire colliding resounded and flashed in the night sky. The strong winds collided with the meteorite, managing to overcome its fire, and in an instant, the meteorite’s trajectory changed dramatically due to the strong wind.
What was once going to fall on the mountain suddenly fell on the river more than 40 kilometers wide.
The moment it fell, some of the water evaporated instantly, but just as quickly, the rest of the water prevented anything from happening.
Even so, this sudden fall, caused by someone, angered the beasts inside, which immediately came to the surface.
No one died, because they were deep enough that the meteorite rock did not hit them, but even so, they were enraged.
More than 400 freshwater sharks emerged and looked up at the top of the mountain.
At the same time, the head of a huge sea dragon shook from below and jumped up, as if it wanted to fly. A dangerous look was cast at the humans on top of the mountain, at the same time as a huge pillar of water shot up from the bottom towards them.
That pillar of water was truly powerful, reaching them in an instant.
Even so, Hardrial quickly raised his hand and created a defensive spell.
"No one died, what’s the big deal?" he asked, as he pulled out his gun and pointed it at the dragon that had attacked them. "I thought we were on good terms," he said.
BUFF*
A loud breath from some kind of aquatic animal echoed from below the sea, and a jet of water shot upward.
At the same time, another water dragon appeared, indignant.
"You want to fight? I don’t think you’re up to it," Hardrial snorted, showing off his full power. "Even if your guardian is nearby, I don’t mind fighting you," he declared.
The beasts stared at him for a long time and did not retreat from the surface. On the contrary, they continued to stare at them. However, when Hardrial realized that they had no intention of attacking, he simply focused his gaze on Louis.
"That was dangerous," he said, smiling. "You must divert them upward, not downward," he said.
Louis had just noticed this, so he nodded sheepishly. "I’ll keep that in mind," he said.
"Still, I’m surprised you can do that," Hardrial said. "Your stats must be higher than I thought."