The man grinned from ear to ear as ash rained like demented snow.

“Took you long enough…” the man remarked with a hint of annoyance thinly veiled with excitement.

Otto looked at the village before him, a single man stood before him in a sea of flames.

Unlike the organised force from before, this was a single man, most people made it out of the town, Otto could see them fleeing from their homes into the surrounding woods.

Questions like what and why welled up in Otto’s mind, though he didn’t truly care to hear the answers.

He extended his hand towards the man with fire-coloured hair that spiked outwards looking like a pinecone.

“LightningBolt!” he cried as from his hand flew a bolt of white light that flew towards the attackers and extreme speed.

“Shield!” the man retorted as a rectangular shield made from fire flew back at Otto, blocking the lightning before disintegrating moments later.

The man didn’t wear a shirt, only the bottom half of his robe which was black and red in colour.

“My name’s Ifrid, I would ask you not to take this personally since I was sent here to kill you by the current Murlin himself, but honestly I don’t give a shit…” the man said gritting his teeth.

“FireBreath!” the exclaimed as before his mouth appeared a magic circle.

In a flash, Otto jumped behind the cover of a nearby tree, narrowly evading a wave of fire the seared the earth.

Ifrid made his way barefoot over the scolding earth, a spell keeping him from taking damage from fire.

“WaterBolt!” Otto exclaimed firing an orb of cold water onto the blisteringly hot ground resulting in an explosion of steam that sent chunks flying at Otto and Ifrid.

Otto was quickly improvising a spell that would speed an object in the direction he pointed.

He grabbed a handful of pebbles off the ground before placing them in his pocket.

Otto leapt from behind a tree catching a glimpse of Ifrit’s mouthing the words “FireArrow”,

Two magic circles appeared, one on each palm.

“S-shit!”

Otto was forced to postpone his attack for the sake of taking cover behind another tree.

From Ifrit’s hand flew red-hot rods made from what looked like burning metal.

They flew into the tree he was hiding behind, the sweet scent of boiling sap filled the air, quickly overtaken by the scent of smoke.

“T-that’s cheating! I thought his thing was fire!” Otto thought grabbing one pebble from his pocket and placing it in his right hand.

He rushed from his cover and threw the pebble at Ifrit.

As it was about to strike him Otto exclaimed, “MagicBullet!” causing a magic circle to appear on Otto’s hand and causing the rock to zip forward digging a small hole in Ifrid’s chest.

It lacked the speed to reach any of his organs.

“Nice!” Ifrid said, his voice becoming more hight pitched to reflect his growing excitement.

“From the way Abel said you fought I expected you’d just douse me with some water…” Ifrid admitted.

He took a deep breath as his shark-like teeth became visible once again.

“FIreBreath!”

Seeing no time to dodge the attack properly, Otto quickly touched his hand and pointed into the distance.

“MagicBullet!” he announced reluctantly.

Suddenly, he was flung out of the spell’s way, instead landing against a tree with an unpleasant crunch.

As the smoke and fire cleared up Ifrid looked over to Otto’s wounded body.

“NICE!”

“AWESOME!”

He ran his fingers through his hair before making his way towards Otto.

“The king was right not to trust Abel!”

Otto lifted his hand at the man.

“WaterBolt!” he exclaimed and as expected a bolt of water knocked Ifrid back a little, he didn’t even bother to block it with his fire shield.

“…”

“Don’t you have any other spells?” Ifrid asked.

“WaterBolt!” Otto exclaimed again.

Ifrid shrugged.

“I hope you don’t think getting me wet will stop me from casting fi-” Ifrid was cut off when Otto cast another spell.

“LightningBolt!”

As soon as Ifrid heard the word “light” he began casting his fire shield spell.

“Too slow!” Ifrid grinned as before him the shield of flames manifested.

Ifrit felt a wave of ice-cold fear come over him as he heard the electricity striking the wet ground and not him directly.

A loud zap could be heard.

Ifrid breathed a sigh as he saw the steam from the ground rising into the air, his fire-shield cooked the water off.

“That was close…” he remarked.

His shield began to disintegrate.

“Magic bullet!” Otto exclaimed pointing a finger at Ifrid only for his damaged body to be launched forward.

He grabbed onto Ifrid, hooking his left hand over his neck.

Ifrit gasped as he felt a fistful of cold pebbles pressed up against his stomach.

“MagicBullet!” he exclaimed; all the rocks flew straight through Ifrid leaving a massive, mangled hole in his torso.

Both Ifrid and Otto were pushed forwards by the impact.

They fell to the ground, Otto got up to his feet feeling what he assumed was a broken rib in his side.

“Nice… move… anomaly…” Ifrid said blankly looking up to the sky above, seeing the ash he created raining down onto his body.

His head shakily tilted towards Otto.

“You won’t… be safe… anywhere…” he smiled as his eyes finally glazed over and a torrent of blood poured from his mouth.

Otto felt the adrenaline leave his body as the pain set in.

“Ah! FUCK!” he exclaimed.

Otto walked over to a tree and sat down against it.

He grabbed his book from inside his sack and opened it.

He flipped forward in it.

“Curses…”

“Heat…”

“Target points…”

He kept skipping over more pages.

“Why the fuck doesn’t this thing have a healing section?!”

“Why didn’t they consider the possibility of me being hurt?!” he thought.

Otto skipped through more chapters.

“Gravity…”

“Illusions…”

“Lasagne recipe…”

Otto kept flipping through more and more pages.

“Healing…”

“Finally!” he thought.

“Once you leave the tower, you’re going to need to figure out how to heal yourself…”

“It’s a simple spell for the most part, Rejuvi, the reason it's so simple is that it’s actually just an element!” read the book.

“You can use the ‘here’ keyword or make an orb of healing!” the book explained.

“Once I leave the tower?” Otto thought.

Uncertainly Otto wrote down the variable in his notebook.

“ƒ ElementHeal Rejuvi «”

“ƒ Healing « CreateBattery « SetBatterySize 20β « Name HealingBattery « SetPlace Palm « SetManaOutputPlace HealingSpell « SetManaOutputAmount 2β « SetLifespan 2«… SetElement ElementHeal « Name HealingSpell « SetShape Orb « SetSize 3µ «”

Otto placed a hand to his side.

“Healing…”

A blue magic circle appeared as well as an orb of green light that eased his pain, after two seconds the battery died.

After a few more attempts Otto couldn’t feel anything other than a slight bruise.

Otto extended his hand towards the raging fire in the town.

“WaterBolt!”

“WaterBolt!”

He kept casting the spell, it wasn’t enough to put the fire out but he managed to clear a path into the town.

He looked around seeing the doctor’s building engulfed in flames.

Reluctantly, Otto decided to keep heading north towards MiningTown, an official town the enemy might not be as eager to burn.

From there Otto would try and find out where the Archmages were located.