As Daniel dawdled, wasting precious time outside his cylinder, Metz weaved an intricate fire spell. His plan was ultimately simple, if he created a shell of stone around himself his opponent would be forced to come close and investigate, and then Metz could see how tough he really was. With each passing second he could increase the radius of his pillar of fire, so that in just ten seconds it covered twenty feet, which was incidentally how long it took his foe to come up with a strategy for defeating his stone shell. He was impressed when he felt the first inkling of cold transfer itself through the stone walls of his cylinder, though the thickness of the stone provided him ample protection at first, it would soon betray him as it transferred the cold. However, to say that he would freeze to death in a matter of seconds would be a vast overstatement of the effects of cold on Metz, boosted by mana to become three times the man he should be, his body was capable of regulating itself to such an advanced degree he was hardly bothered at all.

The only problem was, with each passing second he weaved, and grew cold, his mana was burning low. Still, he only needed an additional five seconds, and his foe gave him just that as he slowly approached the pillar, just barely audible outside to Metz’ increased capabilities when under the effect of mana.

“Let’s see if you burn.”

The red circle manifested itself around the very edge of his platform, glowing an iridescent colour as fire suddenly billowed upwards, moving exceedingly quickly as it had a solid sixty feet height to reach in under a second. The fire erupted from every space of open ground around the rock cylinder, and billowed up and over the roof leaving no spot of safety for anyone trapped on the platform as the pillar erupted in flame at 1500 degrees Celsius. If his opponent had time to freeze the stone pillar solid before the heat erupted he might have been in trouble, but for the three seconds the fire burned with its incredible intensity the rock held and Metz was safe. However, as the last lick of flame spouted from the great pillar he felt empty and dropped to one knee, his mana spent.