Fireball

Outside the castle, the cold wind blew incessantly and heavy snow fell. The snowflakes on the ground had even condensed into a thin layer of ice, yet Merlin did not feel a trace of chill at all. On the contrary, he felt a wave of restless heat, and he even took off his thick woolen coat, wearing only a thin shirt.

The Spell Model of the Fireball was finally simulated in the Sea of Consciousness, and what Merlin needed to do next was to test the power of the Fireball.

Merlin glanced around the room. The environment here was not suitable for testing the Fireball, so he put on his coat, pushed open the door, and walked out.

He remembered that there was a secret basement in Wilson Castle, extremely hidden and quite spacious. Only Old Wilson, the butler, and Merlin knew about this basement.

If Merlin wanted to test the power of the Fireball, the basement was the best place.

Following the memories in his mind, Merlin walked directly into Old Wilson's room. He gently pressed a certain brick on the wall, which was the mechanism for the underground passage.

"Click."

With a crisp sound, one of the walls in Old Wilson's room began to slowly split to both sides, and some dust shook down, scattering all over the floor.

Before long, a pitch-black opening appeared before Merlin's eyes. He reached out and picked up the candlestick on Old Wilson's table, lit the few candles on it, and stepped into the opening with the aid of the faint candlelight.

The passage was very dark and, because no one had entered it for a long time, there was also a stuffy and very foul odor inside. Merlin cautiously continued walking forward.

This passage sloped downwards, consisting of a long flight of stone steps leading to a depth of about one hundred meters underground. There were also many candlesticks along both sides of the passage. Every time Merlin encountered a candlestick, he lit the candle, so before long, this dark passage became brilliantly lit and very bright.

After walking for a few minutes, the stone steps finally disappeared, and Merlin arrived at a very spacious basement.

This basement was simply a large hall. Surrounding the hall were more than a dozen small rooms, all of which stored various sabers, spears, shields, and suits of armor.

Merlin still remembered that when he was ten years old, Old Wilson had brought him in a few times. When Old Wilson built the castle, he had modeled it somewhat after the structure of a military fortress, which was why he had built a basement like this that only allowed a single person to enter. Once there was any danger, they could hide in the basement.

If preparations were made in advance and the basement was packed full, the supplies inside would be enough for several hundred people to live for a whole year.

Yet so many years had passed, and Blackwater City had been calm and tranquil without any wars breaking out, so the basement had gradually fallen into disuse.

Although the basement was abandoned, this happened to provide Merlin with a sufficiently spacious venue, which was most appropriate for testing the power of the Fireball.

Thus, Merlin stood firm in the exact middle of the underground hall and began to silently sense the Spell Model in his Sea of Consciousness.

At this moment, the Spell Model in the Sea of Consciousness was still rotating slowly, and even a trace of fire elements from underground was gradually merging into the Spell Model.

The fire elements absorbed by the Spell Model were the Spellcaster's mana! The longer the Spell Model existed, the deeper the accumulated mana would be. Therefore, once the Spell Model was constructed in the Sea of Consciousness, one did not need to worry about it; the Spell Model would automatically accumulate mana.

Merlin had carefully read through old man Aita's spell notes and also understood the method for casting spells. It was very simple: one only needed to stimulate the Spell Model with mental power to instantly trigger the spell.

"Fireball!"

Merlin let out a low cry, his mental power directly stimulating the Spell Model of the Fireball. Immediately, a ball of fire radiating a scorching aura appeared out of thin air, less than a meter away from Merlin.

A wave of joy welled up in Merlin's heart, but he failed to control his mental power well, and this fireball dissipated in the blink of an eye.

The fireball had dissipated because Merlin had not mastered his mental power properly. After all, once a fireball was released, it also required the Spellcaster's mental power to control it.

Although the first attempt failed, Merlin was not discouraged. He summarized the experience and lessons learned, and released another fireball.

This time, he steadily controlled the fireball with his mental power and began guiding the small fireball to tremble and fly haphazardly through the air.

"Bang."

The fireball heavily struck the hard wall. This mere fist-sized little fireball seemed to contain immense power, causing the hard wall to tremble slightly and leaving a half-inch hole in the wall—a pit burned out by the fireball.

Just this alone could not truly reflect the power of the Fireball. Merlin then retrieved a heavy suit of armor from the inventory in the basement. This was standard equipment for Heavy Armored Knights; once worn, even those sharp knight lances could not pierce through the heavy armor.

Naturally, using this heavy armor to test the power of the Fireball was most appropriate.

He hung the heavy armor on the wall, but instead of continuing to cast the Fireball, he sat down and began to rest.

Merlin rubbed his temples slightly. Just by casting the Fireball twice, he discovered that the mana accumulated on the Spell Model had been completely consumed. If he wanted to cast the Fireball again, he could only do so after it recovered its mana.

Looking at the Spell Model in his Sea of Consciousness absorbing the external fire elements bit by bit, Merlin was lost in thought and murmured in a low voice, "It seems that because the Spell Model was constructed only a short time ago, it can actually only release the Fireball twice."

Merlin could do nothing about the scant amount of mana. The accumulation of mana could only rely on the long-term accumulation of the Spell Model, and there were no shortcuts to take.

After an hour, the Spell Model slowly recovered, and Merlin was finally able to release the Fireball once more.

"Go!"

Merlin released the Fireball again. This time, his execution of the Fireball was already familiar and practiced, so he cast the Fireball very quickly. He controlled the small fireball in front of him and smashed it fiercely into the heavy armor on the wall.

"Sizzle, sizzle."

There was no huge sound as imagined. A thick chest-guard piece on the front chest of the heavy armor, which had the strongest defense, was directly burned through by the small fireball, creating a fist-sized large hole, with a wisp of light smoke still curling around the rim of the aperture.

"Hiss."

Even Merlin could not help drawing in a cold breath. He was extremely astonished; although he had anticipated that the power of the Fireball would undoubtedly be extraordinary, he had not expected it to be strong to this degree.

This was heavy armor forged from refined iron, and its defense could be considered top-tier among armor, unable to be pierced even by a knight's long lance.

Yet heavy armor with such powerful defense was easily pierced through by the Fireball. The tiny fireball released by Merlin contained a terrifying temperature.

"Eh? What is this?"

Merlin snapped out of his daze. When checking the Spell Model in his Sea of Consciousness, he suddenly made a new discovery: beside the slowly rotating Spell Model in his Sea of Consciousness, there was actually a gray horizontal bar.

The appearance of this gray horizontal bar in the Sea of Consciousness, especially right around the Spell Model, aroused Merlin's worry.

"When did this appear?"

Merlin frowned tightly. He remembered very clearly that when he constructed the Spell Model initially, there was no such gray horizontal bar; this must have appeared not long ago.

Thus, he observed more closely and found that more than half of the gray horizontal bar's area was faintly glowing, while a little less than half of the area remained gray.

Merlin observed for a long time without figuring out what this horizontal bar actually was, nor knowing when it had appeared in his Sea of Consciousness. However, he did not plan to waste any more time studying this horizontal bar; he still needed to spend a lot of time gradually familiarizing himself with the process of casting the Fireball.

Therefore, Merlin released a ball of fire once more, and his mental power guided this fireball to bombard the heavy armor directly.

"Boom."

This time, the entire fireball actually exploded, scattering and flying in all directions, and even the heavy armor with its astonishing defense was blown into a pile of scrap iron pieces.

This was the function of mental power. Mental power could not only guide the direction of the spell, but also execute many variations, such as causing the fireball to explode violently upon contact with an enemy. If dealing with some hard objects, one would not let it explode, but instead rely on the high temperature of the fireball to pierce directly through.

These were all techniques of spellcasting, which required long-term practice or actual combat with others to gradually figure out the various functions of spells.

After all, Merlin had constructed the Spell Model only a short time ago, so generally after casting the Fireball twice, his mana would be exhausted. At this time, he had to rest and wait for the mana to gradually recover.

If he disregarded everything and forcefully stimulated the Spell Model, it would very likely cause the Spell Model to collapse, inflicting severe damage on the Spellcaster.

These taboos in the spellcasting process were written in great detail in old man Aita's spell notes, and Merlin had firmly memorized every single one of them.

During the period of rest, Merlin discovered that gray horizontal bar in his Sea of Consciousness again. Strangely, however, the horizontal bar at this moment was no longer gray, but had turned red.

Looking at the red horizontal bar, Merlin felt a strange sensation in his heart, so he tried to touch the red horizontal bar with his mental power.

"Hum."

Suddenly, stimulated by Merlin's mental power, the red horizontal bar abruptly emitted a dazzling radiance. The Spell Model, which had had no prior movement and was quietly recovering, unexpectedly began to spin violently once more.

At the same time, the mana that had just barely recovered a little was swiftly sucked dry by the Spell Model. Before Merlin could figure out what was actually going on, a huge ball of fire abruptly appeared in front of him, quietly floating in the air, and the interior of the fireball seemed extremely unstable, appearing as though it could explode at any moment.

Merlin stared dumbfounded at this huge fireball. If the previous fireball was only the size of a fist, then this fireball right now was almost a full three or four fists large.

"Not good."

Without the guidance of Merlin's mental power, coupled with the fact that the interior of this fireball seemed extremely unstable and was vaguely on the verge of exploding, Merlin sensed danger and immediately used his mental power to guide this fireball to crash toward the ground.