As a million thoughts pouring into my head, I fell down backwards with a thud as the lapse in concentration caused the electricity wrapping around my hands to disappear. How could I, an E-rank fire elemental produce electricity?! This was insane! I remembered reading about how it had long been theorized that lightning magic was probably an extension of fire magic, and how mastery of the fire element might lead to a mage unlocking lightning magic. However, I was hardly a fire element master… And even the Yin Yang King, who ruled over the Kingdom of the Sun, and a master of the four elements; someone who was considered the greatest elemental in the world, could not use lightning magic.

To further dispute the fire element relation, from what I had read, out of the five known lightning elementals in the world, four of them had only ever used the lightning element since awakening. Only the Silver King, our kingdom’s monarch used other elements in addition to his lightning element. So, if proficiency in the fire element was not a pre-requisite of the lightning element, how had I suddenly unlocked this terrifying power? Because even to me, this was terrifying. 

Lightning elementals were considered some of the most powerful mages in the world, all assigned S-rank since their awakening, since electricity had the greatest offensive power of any naturally occurring element in the world. I still remembered the old video footage from the early days after the Aurora Magilis, when the world had watched the Silver King defeat over ten S-ranked mana creatures in the span of a few minutes. Even as an entire family of the infamous Crown Narowal Whale attacked the coast of old New York City in the Kingdom of Gold Dust, the Silver King defeated them all using only lightning magic, with gigantic bolts of blue electricity raining down on them from the heavens.

‘Well, I won’t be going home early today,’ I amusingly spoke out loud. I wasn’t sure exactly what was happening, but two years spent as a fire element martial artist in-training at Master Jaehyun’s dojo had taught me that there was only one method of familiarizing oneself with their power; experimentation. I spent the next few hours trying out different iterations of my new power, until the sun was minutes away from setting, and the voices of mana creatures around me had grown markedly louder. Slowly making my way back up the narrow tunnel I had arrived from, by the time I reached the café where I had parked my bicycle, another hour had passed, and it was already nightfall.

Perhaps if I had paddled straight home at top speed, I would have reached in time for dinner like I had promised my mother. However, the thoughts spiraling in my head, distracting me as I rode my bicycle, meant that my mother was once again going to be disappointed. But that was about the least important thing on my mind right now. I still couldn’t believe the course of events that had occurred recently, none more so than today. As I breathed in the lingering winter air deeply, it was almost as if I was trying to exacerbate the stinging in my lungs to make sure this was reality, and not an elaborate dream or hallucination. After spending the last few hours experimenting with my new abilities, I had figured out a few things, although many questions still remained.

My first realization had to do with the process of how a mana art, or magic spell, was actually cast. Because mana channels served as a sort of neural network; normally, manipulating mana through our mana channels meant giving it a series of sequential mental commands to achieve a desired effect. For instance, the D-rank spell for flame sphere was a series of vocalizations which would help me focus my thoughts, step by step; on conjuring flames around my hand, molding them into a circular shape, enhancing their intensity by condensing more and more mana into the sphere, and then giving it a thrust outward from my palm. Any deviation from this sequence of steps or a lapse in concentration would either cancel the spell before it was completed, or end up achieving a different effect than what was desired. This was precisely why lower ranked mages would often chant a spell out loud using words, whereas higher ranked mages could cast the same spell a lot faster by chanting only mentally; called silent-casting.

However, while the former had been the exact case with my fire element, my lightning element was altogether different. I had found that I was able to translate my thoughts into lightning elemental effects or ‘spells’ with insane precision, without actually using any words or known spells. After all, since it was so rare, there were actually no publicly available spell books on the lightning element, and I had never come across as single lightning element spell. Yet today, by simply thinking of the effect I wanted to produce with the lightning element, I had instantaneously achieved it. 

Granted, I had only tried basic ‘spells’ such as coating my fists with electricity, shooting out a small lightning bolt in a straight line from my right hand, or creating a sort of barrier of electricity jutting out of my body by a few centimetres; still, my near instantaneous and natural control over the lightning element was unbelievable even to me. It was almost as if my mind was working on overdrive when I used the lightning element, the speed of my thoughts drastically increased, resulting in undeniably accurate ‘spell’ casting. The only thing I had heard of which was remotely similar to this was when Master Jaehyun had once told our class at the dojo about how mages at the level of the thirteen kings didn’t need to use spells, and could use magic instantaneously with a single thought. And even then, no one had believed him.

My second realization, although I wasn’t sure this would actually work on a larger scale, came when I tried to produce an electric current from my feet, similar to fire jet, attempting to propel me forward. While that had ended in failure, I had noticed that for the few minutes that followed me withdrawing that ‘spell’, my speed had become noticeably faster, as if my feet and lower legs had become, for lack of a better word; supercharged. I didn’t really have time today to experiment with this further, but I knew it was something worth looking into. In the beginning, after the Aurora Magilis, enhancers were the only mages who could strengthen their body using mana, increasing their strength, speed and defensive capabilities many times over. One of the world’s most famous enhancers, the Bison King, was known as ‘the wild beast’ because of how many landscapes she had ruined; once bringing an entire mountain down with a single punch.

Over time however, elementals also figured out how to coat their bodies with a kind of ‘suit’ made out of their elemental attribute to achieve the same effect, although to a much lower degree than enhancers. The D-ranked flame coat and flame jet spells were perhaps a good example of this; by channeling mana to my legs, enveloping them in a fiery blaze which increased their durability, I could produce a burst of fire from my feet, now supported by my stronger legs, to propel my body forward at a much faster speed than simply running. Although I had never seen the lightning element being used in this manner, if it followed the same principles as the four basic elements, I reasoned that I should be able to use the electricity I generated to coat my body in a kind of ‘lightning armor’, at the very least increasing my speed and attack power, if not defense as well.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, was the noticeable change in the capacity of my mana channels over the past few hours. Since mages mostly had to rely on the internal mana coursing through their mana channels in battle, the greater one’s mana capacity, the longer they could hold out in battle, and the greater number of high-level spells they could produce before needing to meditate and recharge. Although there were no precise tiers of mana capacity, it was believed that an S-ranked mage had a mana capacity at least ten times greater than an A-ranked mage. When compared to an E-ranked mage, I surmised, perhaps a thousand times greater, if not more. 

Theoretically, the process of increasing one’s mana capacity was a slow process; as a mage progressed to higher ranks, and their bodies became more proficient at processing mana, their mana channels would ‘expand’; not physically, but in a metaphorical way best described as an increase in ‘depth’. Honestly, the painfully slow growth of my own mana capacity so far, especially compared to Fang, had left a bitter taste in my mouth. However, today, within the span of a few hours, every time I used the lightning element, I consciously felt my mana capacity increasing little by little. If I could keep this up for a month, how much more internal mana would I be able to utilize in the practical portion of Magiharu? The thought left me visibly excited.

As my house finally came into view, the neon symbols on my WristNAV indicated it was half-past nine; the stars now clearly visible in the night sky.

‘Mom, dad, I’m home…,’ I declared as I entered the house, not giving the two figures sitting in the living room a chance to react as I raced up the stairs, directly into my room. Even without the lightning element, I was fast enough to evade my parents’ wrath, at least until tomorrow morning.

After taking a quick shower and slinging on a pair of shorts and a moderately warm sweatshirt, I jumped onto my bed, unable to keep my eyes open any longer. The fatigue of the day washing over me, I was happy at the possibility of being able to sleep peacefully after what had been an exhausting past few days. As I drifted into my subconscious, I was once again greeted by the image of purple lightning emanating from my masked savior’s katana. ‘I wonder what that was…,’ I groggily thought out loud before my body’s desire to rest finally took over.