"Hmm… if I can just use spells it would be much easier. The regular use of spells and consumption of hell energy would automatically increase the amount of hell energy that can be channeled by the hell imprint at once. Though considering the difference in the worlds, I don't know how long it would take." Lucius muttered to himself.

He sensed the Hell energy within his body and drew out one of them.

~shua~

The crimson streak of hell energy floated over his hand as he observed it.

"There is certainly some level of suppression on the hell energy in this world. I can feel the 'stiffness' in its movements." Lucius concluded upon his observations.

~huu~

"Let's see if a spell works," Lucius said, before closing his eyes.

In his past life, using spells was the same as breathing to Lucius. But in this world, he would have to start all over again. In order to use a spell, a mage needed to create a spell matrix which would then give rise to the actual spell.

The spell matrix was like a formula that gave mana the 'function' that it needed to do. Once a mage created a matrix in their mind, it would stay there and they would not need to recreate it. 

This would let them use the spell seamlessly. But now that Lucius was trying it… he found it to be hard.

~Crack~

The spell matrix that had just formed in Lucius's mind crumbled like dust.

~Sigh~

'First attempts are like this. Hopefully, the later ones are better.' Lucius thought to himself.

He tried about five more times before he was finally able to make the spell matrix successfully.

"For a basic fireball spells matrix this is still decent, I suppose…" Lucius said with a nod.

He could remember the other apprentice mages who took over a hundred tries to make the spell matrix. Though if he considered them, they were the bottom of the barrel kind of students. Lucius remembered that in his past life, this very imprint took him two attempts to successfully create.

If he compared the attempts, the difficulty in forming the spell matrix had increased by 2.5 times.

"Let's see how it works…" Lucius said before pouring the hell energy into the spell matrix.

~shua~

The spell matrix within his mind lit up as the hell energy fueled it. Lucius ended up spending half of all of his hell energy before the spell matrix was fully active.

~humm~

The air above Lucius's hand trembled slightly before a small spark appeared there. In the next second, the spark expanded like a flash and turned into a small orange fireball. The fireball crackled as heat emanated from it.

Lucius then flicked his hand towards the basin that was full of water and shot the fireball.

~Zoom~

The fireball streaked across the room and accurately landed within the basin of water. 

~fizz~

There it was instantly doused out by the water and disappeared as one would expect. But that was not the only effect that Lucius saw.

~Crack~

"Huh? How's this possible?" Lucius said in shock.

The aether within his body suddenly became chaotic and attacked the spell matrix that he had just made. Even Nexus, despite being under the influence of hell imprint started to hum and let out more Aether.

The Aether assaulted the spell matrix and it soon cracked before crumbling into nothingness. All the effort that Lucius had spent on making the spell matrix was reduced to nothing in the blink of an eye.

Lucius had never seen spell matrix collapse like this out of nothing. Sure he had seen them collapse due to overuse or injuries, and he even had a few of them collapse himself. But this was the first he was seeing collapse due to external factors.

Frankly, he was surprised that something was even able to affect a spell matrix like this. After all, the spell matrix was not something physical and was in reality, a mental construct. 

"If aether can affect a spell matrix like this, then using spells will not be viable for the most part…" Lucius realized.

"Or maybe this is a one time occurrence… what if the Aether reacted as it had never seen a spell matrix before?" Lucius wondered.

With this thought in mind, he made another spell matrix after six attempts. It took him an extra attempt, which was acceptable as it was not always an accurate number. Now with the spell matrix formed, Lucius poured the rest of his hell energy in it, depleting all his stores and created another fireball.

~shua~

The fire ball appeared over his palm and he shot it back into the basin of water.

~fizz~

Just as the fireball disappeared, the aether within Lucius's body attacked the spell matrix again and destroyed it.

~Sigh~

"This will not work…" Lucius shook his head in disappointment.

Lucius thought over it more and wondered what more factors could be there to this. He wanted to know if just activating the spell matrix was the trigger for the Aether to destroy it, or was it actually the actual use of the spell which caused this.

Knowing that it will take him a while to test out this theory, Lucius got to constructing another spell matrix. Once that was done, he just slept and waited for the hell energy to naturally be regenerated by the hell imprint.

By the time morning came, Lucius was refreshed and the hell imprint had restored the hell energy. 

Upon waking up, he didn't even wash his face and straight away started to test out his theory. He activated the spell matrix and poured the hell energy into it. 

~shua~

The fireball appeared over his palm, but he did not shoot it out this time. He let it hover over his palm for a few seconds before deactivating the spell.

~poof~

The fireball disappeared, and Lucius watched the spell matrix closely.

~Phew~ 

"Thankfully it is still intact," Lucius said in a relieved tone.

The spell matrix was intact!