As Torrent continued her experimentation, collecting water from the stream in her mouth and firing it forward, Oberon watched her from a safe distance as he gave some consideration to the information he had just gained. The ability the Lesser Wurm had just used was called Wurm Breath, something apparently created by combining two or more abilities into a single, hybrid skill; judging by its description it was likely a combination of the fire breath Torrent had used earlier and one of the poison abilities both Torrent and Ash had learned from their starting point of being Fanged Lizards.

There were Hybrid Skills which combined multiple elements or attributes into one and could be either magical or physical in nature, and True Hybrid Skills which were the same but also combined magic and physical together. The existence of such skills was interesting and opened up yet more possibilities when it came to creating new skills or expanding on existing ones; it probably helped if the skills in question were already similar in nature, such as the two breath attacks Torrent had combined. He would have to consider this more later.

For now he was more interested in the last part of his analysis, namely the idea that the Wurm Breath would be best countered or blocked by an Earth or Water spell. While creatures that were aligned with a certain element, such as Digbie or the Stone Slime back in the cave, were resistant or weak to attacks of certain elements because of that alignment, the Sprite had never considered that the same would be true of spells.

It made perfect sense however, so much so that he was annoyed at himself for never thinking of it. The Wall spell he had been working on earlier was elementally neutral and as such was neither strong nor weak against anything that he knew of, but the Earth Wall that Digbie used would naturally be better at blocking some kinds of attack and weak against others. This meant that not only would he need to learn as many offensive skills as possible, covering as many elements as he could, he would also need to learn the equivalent defensive ability to allow him to counter as many abilities as possible.

Before he could work on that however, he wanted to complete the Aqua Sphere he had been working on; he didn’t want to leave another project unfinished before moving on to the next one and learning a Water spell would be the basis for his water defence later on anyway. Torrent was also working on a water ability of her own, presumably trying to learn how to shoot water the same way she could breathe fire or poison by using the water from the stream as a starting point; she seemed to have taken his theorising before into consideration.

Oberon used Magic Analysis on the stream of water leaving Torrent’s mouth, hoping to pick up on something even if it was an incomplete skill at the moment. With that done the Sprite turned away from the Lesser Wurm and went back to the small pool of swirling water to continue his experiment. He had seemed to be making some progress earlier but the Aqua Sphere still felt too diffuse, too light to hold the water for long. If he tried to use it as an attack it would mostly likely pop like a water balloon on impact or burst before it even made it more than a couple feet rather than do any damage. In a way it was similar to his first few attempts at Mana Dart; even though it was the right shape it was too flimsy to work the way he wanted it to.

So, why not try the same solution?

If he compressed the Mana Orb down, with the water inside it, would it become solid enough for him to use as an attack? Creating another Mana Orb and lowering it into the water was a familiar act at this point, as was attempting to draw water and therefore water-aligned Mana into the Orb, but this time he went a step further and began to compress the water and the Mana the way he had done with his Mana Dart and with the Flame Lance earlier.

He squeezed the water-aligned Mana and the Mana-infused water into as small of a sphere as he could without destroying the cohesiveness of the spell, as far as he could before the tightly compressed ball offered too much resistance, and pulled it from the water. Assuming the shape held, he would then fling the Aqua Sphere at the nearest tree he could see, firing it forward in much the same way as the Mana Orbs and Fireballs he was used to dealing with.

[hider=Action Report]
Used "Magic Analysis IV" on Torrent's nascent "Water Breath"
Another attempt at creating "Aqua Sphere" using "Mana Orb", water from the stream and compressing both Mana and water together
[/hider]

[@Zeroth]