Chapter 217: Chantless Casting

A while ago, when Magna had tried to punch the stone mountain, everything had gone well. Better than well, actually, as his punch had landed exactly where he intended and produced the result he wanted.

There was only one small problem he hadn’t accounted for.

Even his absurdly high durability hadn’t been enough to protect his arm from breaking under the impact.

"Come on, it wasn’t even that hard."

He looked down at his broken forearm, the lower half now dangling uselessly, held in place only by skin and muscle.

Any normal, sane person would probably have freaked out at the sight of their arm in such a condition. But for Magna, it wasn’t anything special.

Even the pain was nothing worth worrying about, considering how many times he had experienced far worse.

The only thing bothering him was how long the bone would take to heal. He didn’t have any of Celeste’s miraculous medicines with him, the kind that could heal a broken bone in just 1 day.

Still, he had his body’s natural recovery speed. He hadn’t chosen that mutation to improve his physical regeneration by 5 times for nothing.

"I just need to find something to keep it in place."

He looked around the deep crater he had created, where pieces of rock were still falling from the walls.

There were no branches or anything else he could use to bind and stabilize the broken bone.

Then he remembered how Titus and Celeste had treated him whenever he broke a bone.

They had always used ice spells to freeze the injured area and hold the bone in place.

His face tightened, however, as he remembered the last time he had tried to cast a spell while falling from the sky.

It hadn’t worked back then, despite him chanting the honorable names correctly and drawing the proper spell pattern through his mana channels.

Still, he decided to try again, hoping that the previous failure had only been a one-time problem.

He sat cross-legged on the ground and carefully felt along his broken forearm, adjusting the bone until it was back in its proper position. Then he placed his other hand over the injured area and began chanting the honorable names for Glacial Calamity.

The spell was a little excessive for what he needed, considering he only wanted enough ice to freeze his arm and keep the bone in place. But since it was the only ice spell he knew, he figured he could activate it for a second and cancel it immediately afterward.

"O Vein of the Living World, River that has flowed since before the First Dawn, Silent Mother of Rain and Sea."

He quickly recited the honorable names, then began drawing the spell pattern inside his mana channels while quietly producing the necessary sounds.

He could feel the mana moving through his body, and in his mind, he could clearly picture the thin lines forming the pattern.

Once the image was complete, with its final point ending at his palm, he tried to release the spell.

But he encountered the same problem as before.

No ice appeared.

"What’s wrong with it?"

He began wondering whether something inside his body had broken or changed after his sudden growth.

His mana was behaving exactly as it had before. Whenever he produced the correct sounds, it moved through his channels without any difficulty.

There was no problem drawing the pattern either, so he began to suspect that something was wrong with the honorable names.

He decided to try different ones.

One by one, he tried the honorable names of Death, Order, Fate, and Time, but none of them worked.

He even tried those of the God of Games.

"Grand Author of Stats, Creator of All Classes, Absolute Bane of Those Who Try to Bypass."

He had high hopes for these, but they failed as well.

By now, he was beginning to believe that something really was wrong with his body, preventing him from casting spells.

He was gradually losing both his patience and hope when he realized there was still one thing he hadn’t tried.

Chantless casting.

The purpose of chanting honorable names was clear. It was a way of asking permission from the great beings, or more simply, praying to them before casting a spell.

But if he really was a God, even a fallen one, why would he need to pray to another being, or even to himself, just to cast a spell?

"That’s just stupid..." he muttered, finding his own reasoning ridiculous.

Still, he decided to give it a try.

This time, without chanting any honorable names, not even those supposedly belonging to himself, he simply drew the spell pattern inside his mana channels using the sounds he produced by whistling.

Then, placing his hand over his broken forearm again, he released the mana through his palm.

He had so little faith in the idea that he wasn’t expecting anything to happen.

But the next instant, an incredibly cold pressure suddenly burst from his palm, catching him completely off guard as it rapidly froze his arm.

"Oh... shi..."

His arm was freezing so quickly that he barely managed to change the direction of his hand before it turned into a completely frozen popsicle.

The freezing pressure continued pouring from his palm, so he directed it toward the rocky walls of the crater.

"Why isn’t it stopping?"

Magna muttered in confusion as he tried to cancel the spell pattern inside his mana channels.

But for some reason, he couldn’t. His mana continued draining from his reserves without stopping, flowing through the pattern and pouring out of his palm as the Glacial Calamity spell.

"Damn it, stop!" Feeling his already pitiful 18% mana reserves rapidly draining away, he shouted and even tried shaking his hand to make it stop.

But the spell kept going.

No matter what sounds he produced, he couldn’t control his mana anymore. It was like a truck with broken brakes, charging ahead without any way to stop it.

All he could do was helplessly watch the freezing beam pouring from his palm like a storm, covering the rocky walls around him in ice and white snow.