Chapter 104 - A New Lightning Spell

Chapter 104: 104 - A New Lightning Spell

Adrien had slept properly for the first time in several days. By the time he reached the clearing behind Greymoor, his body felt normal again and his Core had completely recovered.

After the Ancient Tree, the trip through Elyndor and everything Vael had told him, spending a morning alone sounded considerably easier. Several practice targets had already been replaced after his last sessions, and a few metal plates had been brought out for the soldiers.

Today, he wasn’t interested in Frost.

Adrien reached into his Inventory, but the Lightning Manual did not appear immediately. Three seconds passed. Then five. At seven, the first traces of black leather began forming between his hands.

Silver lines followed across the cover, and exactly ten seconds after he started, the entire grimoire settled into his palms. The mana drain began immediately.

’Damn. Still ridiculous.’

Even with Bottomless Core and a fully recovered reserve, he could feel how aggressively the SSS-rank Item was consuming mana simply by remaining physical. Umbral Root was expensive for someone at his rank, but the Lightning Manual was in a completely different category.

Adrien opened it immediately. He had already studied Lightning Bolt from the first section, but more pages had become accessible since then.

Whether that was because he had learned the spell, grown stronger, or something else about the grimoire itself, he still didn’t know. A new diagram waited several pages later.

[Thunder Needle | 2 Stars]

[Affinity: Zephyr]

[Aspect: Lightning]

Adrien’s attention sharpened as he began reading.

The spell was much smaller than Lightning Bolt. Instead of gathering a large discharge and releasing it with overwhelming force, Thunder Needle compressed Lightning mana into an extremely narrow projectile.

Its area of impact was almost nonexistent, but the tradeoff was penetration.

’So it doesn’t destroy everything around the impact. It just goes straight through.’

Absolute Comprehension activated naturally as Adrien continued reading. The structure began arranging itself inside his mind without much resistance.

Two-Star spells had already become easy for him to understand, and after learning Zap and Lightning Bolt, the basic principles of the Lightning Aspect were no longer unfamiliar either. The grimoire seemed to make the process even easier.

There was no serious headache this time. No blood and no pressure strong enough to force him to stop reading. The separate parts simply settled into place one after another until Adrien understood exactly how the spell compressed, stabilized and released its charge.

[New Spell Observed: Thunder Needle | 2 Stars]

[Absolute Comprehension active]

[Comprehension: 100%]

[Spell Learned]

[Thunder Needle | 2 Stars | Novice 0%]

Adrien smiled.

"Nice!"

He immediately dismissed the Lightning Manual. The grimoire broke apart into mana and returned to his Inventory, and the enormous drain on his Core disappeared with it.

’Useful book. Terrible thing to leave manifested.’

Adrien summoned Umbral Root instead. The staff appeared almost instantly, its familiar weight settling into his hand as he pointed it toward the nearest tree.

[Thunder Needle]

Lightning gathered at the tip of the staff and compressed into a line so thin that Adrien nearly lost sight of it before release.

A sharp crack crossed the clearing.

There was no explosion. Adrien lowered the staff and walked toward the tree, finding a tiny black hole in the bark.

He moved around the trunk.

Another hole waited on the opposite side.

"Okay."

The next target was stone. A large practice block stood near the edge of the clearing, already damaged by Frost Lance and several weapons, so Adrien aimed at the thickest section.

[Thunder Needle]

Another crack followed. A small hole appeared in the front, and when Adrien walked around the block, he found another one on the back.

’For Two Stars, that’s stupid.’

He moved on to one of the metal plates.

The first cast punched through the center and left a narrow melted ring around the impact. The second passed through closer to the edge.

After that, Adrien placed several smaller targets at different distances and started working on accuracy. Thunder Needle was fast.

Not Lightning Bolt fast, but fast enough that the time between release and impact was extremely short at normal combat distance. More importantly, it was far cheaper.

After twenty casts, Adrien stopped simply repeating the original structure.

He compressed the next one harder.

[Thunder Needle]

The projectile became even thinner. It took slightly longer to shape, but when it struck the metal plate, the penetration was cleaner and the spell continued into the wooden target behind it.

’More compression and penetration.’

The projectile became thicker, and when it hit the tree, the hole it left was several times larger. It didn’t pass all the way through.

’Bigger wound. Worse penetration.’

Adrien cast again, then again.

Each time he changed only one part of the structure. Compression. Mana quantity. Width. Formation speed.

The spell remained Thunder Needle every time, but its behavior changed depending on what he adjusted.

That was when Adrien stopped.

He had done this before with Frost Lance. During the fight in the slaver camp, he had shortened it and kept it connected to his hand as a blade. Other times, he had changed its shape, adjusted the amount of mana inside it or altered how it struck.

He had never really stopped to think about what he was doing.

Now he was doing it consciously.

’I’m altering the structure without actually creating a different spell.’

That was different from Spell Fusion. He wasn’t combining two completed spells into something new.

Thunder Needle remained Thunder Needle.

He was simply modifying it within what its structure allowed, just like he did with Frost Lance multiple times.

Adrien looked toward the damaged metal plate and formed another Thunder Needle above Umbral Root. This time he didn’t release it immediately, holding the thin concentration of Lightning mana steady while studying its structure.

Thunder Needle was simple enough that he could already alter it consciously.

Lightning Bolt was considerably stronger and more chaotic, without a doubt.

And now Adrien wanted to know how much of that spell was actually fixed.