It was no good. When the ‘Mana Arrow’ struck the rock it just deformed on impact rather than penetrate as it was supposed to; it was like an arrow made out of clay, it had right shape but it just wasn’t strong enough to withstand the impact with the target. That was the catch. In order to pierce through an object the arrow would need to be harder than what it was impacting against, or else the arrow would bend and break before the target. It looked like just reshaping the mana wasn’t enough to give it new properties.

How had Mourningstar managed to create her crescent shaped blade then? There didn’t seem to be anything different in principle between what he was doing now and what she had done back then, so why did her spell work and his fail? Maybe Wisps just had a better affinity for this kind of magic compared to Pixies; they was supposed to be the healing class after all, based on his starting spells, while the Wisps were more like Black Mages.

So maybe it would take a little bit more effort for him to make this work. That was no reason to be discouraged, it didn’t mean it was impossible after all; he just needed to rethink things a little. The obvious answer would be to strengthen the integrity of the arrow somehow. Oberon had tried something similar earlier when he had attempted to make the Mana Orb stronger by surrounding it in a Shield spell; the theory was that by making the Mana Orb harder it would lose less force on impact and do more damage.

The end result of that experiment had been rather different than he had expecting, with the Shield Spell absorbing the energy of the Mana Orb somehow and creating a kind of barrier. Oberon still intended on exploring that result a bit more in the future, but now wasn’t the time for that.

Perhaps instead of simply reshaping the mana into an arrow-like shape wasn’t the right approach. Maybe he should also try condensing the mana at the same time, compressing the same amount of mana into a smaller, sharpened projectile that would have more structural integrity and be able to survive the impact with the target.

With no other ideas in mind Oberon decided to put that theory to the test, forming a ball of mana between his hands before reaching out with Mana Shape to begin moulding it. The question was whether he should compress it first and then shape it, or shape it and then compress it; it was probably better to compress it while it was shaped liked an orb first, as it would be easier to uniformly shrink it down when it was in such a regular configuration.

Oberon progressed carefully, not entirely sure what would happen when he began applying pressure to the mana to compress it; this was a volatile and dangerous force he was messing with her after all. It did not, as he had feared, explode however and eventually he managed to squeeze the Mana Orb down to about a third of the size. With this step done he began the process of forming the mana into an arrow, making sure to keep up the pressure that was keeping the mana compressed even as it fought to return to its normal density. Finally, he took the completed arrow and refined the shape a little more, sharpening the point and ensuring that the projectile was perfectly straight.

The resulting projectile was similar in appearance to his last attempt, just a third of the size and slightly darker coloured due to the same amount of mana being forced into a smaller package. Oberon had to admit, he did not feel safe holding it in between his hands any longer and, as much to get rid of it as see the result, he let the arrow fly at the same rock he had targeted before.

As he examined the results of his latest attempt Oberon heard a voice calling from somewhere high above him. Craning his neck to look above him he saw the Pixie from earlier, the one who had been speaking to Mourningstar before he decided to set himself on fire, peering towards the entrance of the cave and saying something about Goblin’s heading their way.

Standing up Oberon flew up until he was hovering next to Ardur, looking in the same direction and seeing the same torches that he could. He couldn’t see how many there were from this distance, but the way the torches were spread out in a line all across the cave gave him an idea and it wasn’t good for them.

[color=f49ac2]“There still pretty far away, but I don’t think we have much time left.”[/color]


[hider=Action Report]
Attempted to fire a "Compressed Mana Arrow"
Flew up to Ardur's level
Spotted approaching Goblins
[/hider]

[@Zeroth]