"Okay, It's all clear! Let's see how much I can push myself…" Giving a light scowl, Gerald took a battle stance and prepared to cast Greater Fireball once more. This time he quickly gathered Mana three times, creating a powerful Fire spell, but that wasn't the end of it.

He pushed further, concentrating more energy in the same space. Four contractions, five, six, seven…

"Nnnnngh! Eight! Let's go... Nine!" Gerald pressed with all he had, both mind and body, and repeating it nine times, took all he had out of him.

"Huff, huff!" He was breathing hard and sweat was pouring off his face, with the heat melting his hair and burning his eyebrows.

"Go!" He released the spell.

Wooosh! KA-BOOM!

The ball of compressed flames exploded right after hitting the first obstacle in its way. The flames consumed the trees in their path and scorched the ground, turning it into a smoldering wasteland.

The insane recoil of the spell, combined with the shock wave of the explosion, made Gerald tumble backward uncontrollably for ten meters. Luckily he was using Stone Body to protect himself, otherwise, he would get more than just a few scratches.

"What power! To think 75 MP would be able to bring forth so much destruction!" He slowly got up on his feet, marveling in the awesome destruction he caused.

"But it's too much for me now, I should stop at seven compressions, that would be much more sustainable…" He rubbed his aching shoulders and chest and cast a Recovery spell on himself.

The explosion cleared the ground and made a sort-of shallow crater, ten meters in diameter. It was scary to think about what such a thing would do in a populated city.

"I like it, I like it a lot! Having such destruction on the palm of my hand…feels amazing!" Gerald shouted, his fists pointing to the sky. There was one more thing he had to test out with his new hand: The cannon.

He took a cannonball, although it was quite small, only the size of a ping-pong ball, and stuffed it inside the barrel. He then pointed his arm towards a tree and…

Boom!

Wood chips and dust exploded out in all directions as the metal ball lodged itself deep into the trunk.

"It works!" Gerald celebrated in delight.

One of the reasons why Gerald wanted to make a silver arm was to try and use Explosion magic instead of gunpowder, to power his cannon.

And it worked! The explosion chamber could be filled with gunpowder, but using magic was much more convenient. There was also one more thing… If he wanted, he could perfectly control the amount of force produced by the explosion, to increase or decrease it as the situation required.

He also ordered a few simple steel rings that went around the barrel and gave the explosion chamber some extra stability.

The rings were made to his exact specifications and had to be heated up before expanding enough to be put on. That way, when they cooled down and contracted, it became impossible to remove them.

"Good, excellent! Now I just need to make a mechanism that will feed me the ammunition and I'll become a death machine!"

On the way home he came up with a few designs, but they would all require redesigning the arm too… And that would be expensive! "Okay, maybe I can just manually load it Telekinesis?" he wondered.

Returning to the mansion, Sebas came to him with a letter in hand. "Master, a letter came from the Auction House while you were away. Also, there was an announcement that public prisoner executions will be held at the start of the new moon in a few days."

"Oh? Good work, keep me informed if something else happens."

Whistling while walking, Gerald opened the letter and glanced over the contents.

"What did you get?" Sera asked when she saw him smiling at the paper.

"It's an invitation for an auction that will be held on the 5th of the next month… Which day is today?" Gerald replied.

Sera placed her finger on her chin, "Today? Hmm, I think it's the 33rd…"

"33rd?" Gerald looked her sideways. "Erm, how many days are in a month?"

"Thirty-five, why?"

"And, uh… How many months are there in a year?"

"It's...twelve… Why are you asking me these questions?" Sera blinked rapidly while answering.

'Well, shit!' Gerald cursed in his mind and then simply smiled and waved it off, saying, "No reason! Oh, by the way, I heard there is going to be a public execution soon…"

"Yes, the news was announced today. It's going to be held in the public square in front of the entrance to the noble quarters. I would like to go and see it…"

Gerald nodded, "Sure, we can all go…"

***

"Fuck!" Gerald banged on the table in his room. "How did I miss this?! Four hundred and twenty days in a year! No wonder people seemed a bit older than their years would imply!"

Frowning deeply, he made a few quick calculations, "Ten thousand years… Then that would be almost twelve thousand Earth years… Is this a coincidence?"

He slouched in his chair and started recalling a few old pieces of information. "Didn't scientists say that our modern human history started about twelve thousand years ago? Wasn't there some natural disaster that struck Earth around that time? Am I remembering this wrong?"

"Hmm, there are some millennia-old legends of gods fighting in the skies of my planet, with fire and brimstone raining down on the mortals below. Since Mana naturally recovered here, it should do so back on Earth too, right?"

Gerald scratched his cheek, "We got written records and plentiful evidence for more than five thousand years into the past, that should be more than enough for us to notice something… But there is nothing!" He slapped the armrest in frustration.

"There is something preventing it from recovering! I'm sure of it! I wish I had modern tools so I could get a better understanding of this magic! I can even bend space to my will with just a little bit of effort, damn it!"

"If we could properly examine this Mana thing, I bet it holds the secrets of the universe itself! It has possibly some kind of ability to change the fundamental laws of the universe, or at least shorten the gap in energy required to manipulate them… I just don't fucking know, damn it!"

Gerald stood up and walked in circles around the table, frustrated by the new questions that suddenly popped into his mind.

He stopped suddenly and started floating on the spot. "To bend the space just this much, you need a mass of an entire planet! A fucking planet for god's sake! And I can do it like it's nothing! What kind of bullshit is this? Bending the most rigid thing in the universe, space itself, like it's made of pudding?!"

He almost felt like crying in madness.

"So many questions… And no answers… Ah!" The feeling of frustration was intense.

He marched out of the lab in a hurry and slammed the door behind him.

"Fuck it! I'm going out! If anyone needs me I'll be in the Daisy's Funhouse!" Gerald shouted before storming off to calm his mind and relax his body…

"Sis, what's Daisy's Funhouse?" Qiona asked innocently.

"You don't need to know! Now just focus on your studies!" Xilia answered sternly and pushed a stack of alchemy books forward.