A burning torch touched the fuse. As the gray cord began to hiss like a snake, the guards Annan had warned ran back to the City Wall.
Annan covered his ears. Beside him, Ingrid gave him a puzzled look and said something he couldn't hear, but he could guess what she meant. "Just do it."
Michael had already covered his ears. Ingrid and Eli Gravel followed suit, and the long fuse burned down to its end.
After a brief silence, the powder barrel some fifty meters from the City Wall became a fireball. The terrifying blast hurled gravel into the air and carried the smell of sulfur and saltpeter up to the City Wall. Half of Star-Moon Bay heard black powder's first deafening roar and saw its dark plume rise.
Ingrid looked at Annan's profile with a complicated expression. "Is this Magic?" asked Old Zoran, who had no idea what was going on.
"It's science..." Annan thought for a moment, then added, "Magical Science."
Expecting Michael to perfect black powder in seven days had been asking too much, so Michael put his ingenuity as a Mage to work. He added a fast-burning Magic Material to the inferior black powder, which had not been burning completely, and finally gave it the power black powder ought to have.
Following the naming convention of Magic Film and Magic Newspaper, it ought to be called Magic Black Powder.
Four ingredients were more troublesome than three, and Magic Materials were usually expensive, but for now, the result was heartening.
Delighted, Annan had a guard bring Michael a pouch containing 100 Kinnar and a chest containing 500 Gold Narls, then offered him a choice: take the 100 to research Magic Energy, or take the 500 and keep improving black powder until it could achieve similar results