Chapter 137 - Flame Training

Chapter 137: 137 - Flame Training

- Adrien’s POV -

The next morning Adrien returned to the family training grounds with Evelyne and Ariane.

Unlike his private clearing in the forest, this field was built for controlled practice, with reinforced stone targets at different distances and thick walls dividing the casting lanes.

Evelyne stopped near the first row of targets and turned toward him. "Fireball first. Don’t try to make it bigger than usual. Cast it exactly the way you’ve been practicing, mistakes included."

Adrien raised his hand and gathered mana.

Heat built above his palm before igniting into a sphere of orange flame the size of his head, though the edges churned more than he wanted before the shape held.

He threw it at the nearest stone target. The Fireball burst across the surface, left a wide black scar and pushed a wave of heat through the training ground.

Evelyne watched the flames die before looking back at him. "You’re wasting too much mana."

"During the shaping?"

"During almost all of it. You’re holding the flame together by force instead of building it so it holds itself."

Evelyne raised one hand, and Adrien locked onto her mana at once. A Fireball appeared above her palm almost instantly.

Absolute Comprehension activated while he tracked every stage of it. His mother was not simply pouring in more mana. Her shaping order was different: heat first, ignition second, and only then the outer containment closing around the flame. Nothing in it fought anything else, and each part carried the next.

Evelyne fired. The explosion against the target came out smaller than Adrien’s, yet the centre of the stone glowed red for several seconds afterward.

"More heat, less noise. A bigger blast doesn’t make a better Fireball."

Adrien built another immediately, copying the sequence while Absolute Comprehension kept pulling the process apart. The sphere formed faster and its surface stayed far calmer.

A notification appeared at the edge of his vision: [Fireball Mastery Increased — Novice 16%].

That much from a single demonstration was already ridiculous.

Ariane stepped up when Evelyne asked her to cast. Her Fireball formed cleanly and flew straight into another target, and her practical control clearly still ran ahead of his after far more hours on Flame with their mother.

"Don’t look so satisfied," Ariane said without turning around. "You’ve had one lesson."

"So far."

They moved to Flamethrower next.

"Continuous spells work differently," Evelyne said. "You aren’t building something once and letting it go. You’re rebuilding it every second it exists."

Adrien extended his arm and cast. A stream of fire erupted from his hand, reaching almost two metres before the shape began wavering. He pushed more mana into the spell to compensate, and Evelyne stopped him at once.

"There. You’re fixing the instability after it shows up. Catch it before it starts."

She stepped beside him and demonstrated. Flame extended from her palm in a stream that barely moved, its length steady, its temperature constant, almost nothing bleeding off around the sides.

Absolute Comprehension traced the corrections Evelyne made inside the spell, each one tiny, dozens every second, balancing pressure, heat and flow before instability could form.

When she dismissed the flame, Adrien tried again, adjusting the mana before the stream could thin. His Flamethrower held close to two metres and lasted considerably longer. Another notification followed: [Flamethrower Mastery Increased — Novice 21%].

They kept going through the morning. Evelyne corrected the mana he burned during ignition, showed him how to raise temperature without simply inflating the Fireball, and showed again and again how to hold a continuous Flame without throwing power away.

Ariane practised beside him for most of it and stayed ahead whenever they ran the same exercise, especially when Evelyne made them hold a Fireball for several seconds without releasing it.

Adrien was closing the gap disturbingly fast, though.

Every demonstration fed Absolute Comprehension more, so work that would have taken days alone collapsed into hours with his mother handing him the answer directly.

By the time they finally stopped, Adrien checked the changes.

[Fireball | 2 Stars | Pyro / Flame | Practised 58%]

[Flamethrower | 3 Stars | Pyro / Flame | Practised 24%]

Adrien stared at both for several seconds. They had started the morning at Novice 0%.

The jump was enormous, even if he knew exactly where the ceiling sat. Novice led into Practised, then Refined, then Sovereign, and his Mana Core still blocked him from crossing Refined 100%, the same as with Frost Lance and Zap. Sovereign would stay locked until Three Stars.

Evelyne drank some water before looking at him again. "How many spells do you actually know now?"

Adrien considered the question. "Quite a few."

"Show me everything you can cast."

Adrien walked back to the centre of the lane and manifested Umbral Root. If his mother wanted the whole list, there was no reason to hide any of it.

Frost Lance came first, the refined spear forming almost instantly before it shattered against a distant target. Zap followed, electricity snapping from his hand into a closer training post. Then the ground cracked beneath him as Ice Wall rose into a thick frozen barrier, and Veil of Mist spread outward until dense white fog swallowed half the field and hid several targets completely.

Adrien cleared the mist and moved on to the new ones. Fireball struck a target in one tight explosion, and Flamethrower burned steadily from his hand with far better control than it had shown that morning.

Evelyne had stopped talking entirely.

Then Adrien activated Winter’s Reach. The temperature across the training ground dropped hard, frost crawled over the earth as the Four-Star Domain opened around him, and his mother’s expression finally shifted when she felt a spell at that level being held by a Two-Star Core.

He was not finished. Adrien raised Umbral Root toward the farthest reinforced target, mana surging through the staff while electricity gathered along its length. The sound alone pulled soldiers training elsewhere around to look.

Evelyne narrowed her eyes. "What is that?"

"Lightning Bolt. Six Stars."

"Six—"

The spell fired before she finished. A violent flash crossed the training ground, and the explosion that followed shattered the reinforced target and threw fragments of stone across the earth beyond it.

For several seconds Evelyne only stared at what was left. Then her eyes travelled over the frozen ground, the scorched targets and the ruined stone at the far end of the field, and she looked back at her son.

"Adrien... a Two-Star Mage should not have an arsenal like this."