[color=f49ac2]“Feelings?”[/color] Oberon looked at Torrent curiously, wondering at the wording she had used. When the Lesser Wurm had seemed to explode with fire earlier, while inside the Giant Slime, that was her using the fire inside of her, her ‘feelings’, and pushing it out? [color=f49ac2]“Yeah, I guess you could put it that way.”[/color]

Torrent walked away so she could practise her skills further away from him, leaving the Sprite to ponder on what she had just said. Was the idea of creating fire by pushing out your feelings just evocative wording or was it something more than that? Unlike the other spells he had seen so far, like Stone Shot or the Aqua Sphere he was working on, Fireball didn’t use any existing material to become fire; it just snapped into being, seemingly from nowhere. It was something he had wondered about before since it didn’t fit into his theory like everything else did.

Perhaps fire spells fed off the caster’s own energy, like their body heat, or perhaps it was formed from some less concrete but more romantic notion like the caster’s ‘inner fire’ or something. Maybe it didn’t need anything, and it was possible to cast elemental spells without any kind of medium to make it work. Using actual water to form an Aqua Sphere could be kind of like training wheels to help new magic users learn the spell, while more experienced individuals could cast it from thin air. Fire could be an exception because there was nothing physical to it; it was just heat and light after all.

Through all of this he couldn’t help but feel like he was scrabbling around trying to understand the most basic concepts of magic in this world, concepts that proper students of magic probably learnt during the first day of their studies. At some point he wanted to get his hands on a real book of magic or talk to a real magic user and figure things out. As fun as experimentation was it was equally frustrating not to know these things.

Still, it was interesting that Torrent thought of her fire spells in that way; feelings being expressed, or the fire inside you being brought forth. He was already fairly certain that intent was a strong component of spell casting, one that helped guide the Mana to do what you wanted it to, so it was probably equally true for your general approach to magic as a whole and the terms by which you made sense of it. Oberon thought of magic as a natural force; Mana was everywhere it seemed, in living things, in the air, even in the water and the ground and sunlight it seemed. Magic to him was manipulating this naturally occurring substance. Torrent thought about it her way, Crispy thought about it his way and Digbie and Ash likely had their own understanding of how they did what they did with Mana.

He should ask them about it sometime.

Meanwhile, his attempts to finalise the Aqua Sphere spell by absorbing water into his Mana Orb was progressing well, if the system announcement was any clue, but the fact that the streams current was destabilising the Mana Orb was a problem he would have to deal with. He flew into the air, looking around for some part of the stream where the current wasn’t as strong that he could move to, or else looking for something he could use to dam the current and provide some shelter for his experiments. After a little while he found what he was looking for in a small part of the stream was blocked off by a rock jutting out from the shore, the obstruction forming a kind of eddying pool where the water swirled around in a circle rather than flow onwards.

Creating another Mana Orb, Oberon sank it into this new part of the stream and began his experiment anew. He closed his eyes and tried to draw the water into the Orb, this time paying more attention to the stability of the Orb in case the miniature whirlpool was still enough to break the Mana apart even if it no longer washed it away.

The Sprite continued this until he was interrupted by Torrent’s shout. Releasing his latest attempt, the Mana Orb being washed away in moments by the stream, Oberon turned towards the Lesser Wurm as she fired a stream of intense fire into the water. Before the spell was finished Oberon use his Magic Analysis on it. [color=f49ac2]“Wurm Breath?”[/color]

[hider=Action Report]
Magical nerdery
Further attempts at turning "Mana Orb" into "Aqua Sphere", this time without the current washing it away
Used "Magic Analysis IV" on "Wurm Breath"
[/hider]

[@Zeroth][@Old Amsterdam]