Chương 132: The Guild Had Rules About Indoor Fire

The first attempt became a brief puff that expanded too widely and vanished less than thirty centimeters away, warming the surrounding air without creating meaningful pressure. Sieghart adjusted by borrowing the directional structure of Water Cannon, imagining the flames entering an invisible channel rather than spreading freely after leaving his hand. The second attempt traveled farther, but its shape remained broad and unstable.

Fire rolled outward like a badly aimed wave before Sieghart cut the spell near his desk.

"Too loose." He reduced the amount of flame and increased the pressure behind it, focusing less on volume and more on preserving one narrow path through the air. A concentrated burst shot forward, reached halfway across the room, and vanished before touching the wall, leaving a wavering trail of heated air behind it. That felt much closer. Sieghart repeated the motion, comparing the spell with Water Cannon while changing only the elemental conversion and the density of the stream.

Water naturally held together, while fire wanted to expand, rise, consume available material, and lose structure whenever the surrounding air disturbed its path. Sieghart countered those tendencies through control rather than additional mana, creating a thin Wind Magic sheath around the flames without allowing the secondary element to become a separate spell. The next blast formed a rough cylinder and maintained its shape for almost one meter before breaking apart into several harmless tongues of fire.

Sieghart stopped, considered the result, and adjusted the wind sheath until it guided oxygen inward without increasing the width of the projected flames. The following attempt burned hotter. Its center changed from orange toward yellow while the outer layer remained tightly contained around the cylindrical stream. Sieghart smiled faintly, then reduced the range before the heat reached the opposite wall. Destroying guild property would attract Mira faster than any System notification.

He practiced activation repeatedly, shortening the delay between gathering Flame and releasing the stream until the attack became an immediate extension of his raised hand. Each attempt lasted only several seconds, but Sieghart gradually learned to maintain constant pressure instead of producing separate pulses that weakened whenever his concentration shifted. The actual difficulty came from controlling the stream continuously while adjusting range, direction, and heat.

That limitation was encouraging because control improved through repetition, and a sustained technique might gain experience faster than spells he could safely cast only occasionally. Sieghart began moving his arm while maintaining the flames, sweeping the short cylinder across an empty section without allowing its end to touch the walls or floor. The first moving attempt wavered dangerously. The second bent slightly behind his hand, and the third maintained enough structure to follow the motion without widening.

Heat accumulated inside the room despite every controlled cancellation. Dust near the floor began smelling burned, and faint gray smoke curled upward from an old training board. Sieghart noticed the smoke but considered it manageable. He moved the board farther away, strengthened Protection around his hand, and prepared one final attempt. Flames erupted from his palm in a dense cylindrical stream, extending exactly one meter before stopping as though an invisible barrier marked the end.

The center burned bright yellow, the outer edges remained controlled, and the spell responded immediately whenever Sieghart changed the angle of his wrist. He sustained it for ten seconds, then fifteen, gradually increasing pressure until the stream roared without extending any farther toward the wall. A familiar notification appeared once the structure remained stable through movement, changing output, and repeated activation without collapsing into an ordinary uncontrolled flame.

New Fire Magic spell acquired: Flamethrower — Level 1. Projects a concentrated cylindrical stream of sustained flame, granting +2 Magic per level while improving heat, pressure, range, and stability. Sieghart dismissed the spell after reading the notification, then opened his Status long enough to confirm that Magic had increased by two points immediately.

The reward was better than ordinary Fireball progression, while the technique itself could be practiced frequently without demanding an entire battlefield or sacrificial section of architecture. He had used Water Cannon as the foundation, but Flamethrower concentrated its output into a shorter and narrower stream designed for pressure, heat, and repeated close-range attacks.

Sieghart smirked while imagining the technique combined with Wind Magic, rotating Mana Swords, boiling water, or concentrated oxygen supplied through carefully designed runic equipment. He raised his hand again and activated Flamethrower at slightly greater intensity, testing whether the cylinder could remain stable while he moved backward. The spell followed perfectly, but the additional heat caught dust beneath the training board and produced another curling line of smoke near the floor.

Sieghart prepared to extinguish it with Water Creation when the door opened suddenly, revealing Mira standing in the hallway with an expression sharpened by immediate irritation. Her eyes moved from Sieghart's raised hand toward the smoke, the scorched training board, and the shimmering air filling most of the room.

"Don't create smoke inside the guild!" Sieghart lowered his hand immediately and looked around as though the room's condition had somehow developed without his direct involvement.

"Sorry." Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. He forced a small smile while Mira continued glaring, already realizing that unlocking Flamethrower had been considerably easier than convincing the guild master that indoor fire experiments were reasonable. This continues from Sieghart's return with runic equipment and several newly acquired magical techniques before he began private experimentation beneath Lunar Arc.

Ronan appeared outside Sieghart's room three times during the first week, carrying a different mission notice on every visit and the same increasingly irritated expression. The first job involved supporting a merchant escort, the second required clearing aggressive burrowing beasts, and the third needed a Restorer capable of charging survey equipment.

Sieghart refused all three without opening the door completely, keeping one shoulder against the frame while carefully hiding the half-dismantled training target behind him.

"I'm training." Ronan looked past him toward the faint scorch marks still visible near the floor, then examined Sieghart with the patience of someone confronting a predictable disease.

"You're becoming a hermit."

"I already live underground."

"That isn't an admission."

"It explains the environmental adaptation." Ronan returned the next afternoon with Mira, apparently believing authority would accomplish what persistence had not. Mira folded her arms and raised one eyebrow.

"You rejected another job."

"I'm training."

"Inside the room where you recently invented a flamethrower."

"I won't be using Fire Magic." Mira's raised eyebrow moved slightly higher, as though Sieghart had somehow discovered an answer less comforting than admitting he intended to continue burning things.

"That was not reassuring." Sieghart closed the door before either of them could extend the conversation, then returned to the spell diagrams covering his desk and the water-filled basin beside them. He already knew which principle he wanted to develop next. Water Cannon provided force and continuous pressure, but its broad stream sacrificed penetration against reinforced targets.

During his previous life, Sieghart had learned that sufficiently pressurized water could cut materials harder than steel, including diamond when mixed with abrasive particles. He doubted the classroom explanation had included magical reinforcement or corrupted Orc Kings, yet the basic principle remained useful in both worlds. Larger attacks spread force across larger surfaces. Against something enormously durable, concentrating the same output into a narrow point could become considerably more effective.

Sieghart lifted one hand above the basin and activated Water Cannon at its lowest output, creating a steady stream that struck the prepared wooden board ahead. The ordinary spell pushed water across a wide circle, soaking the board and moving it slightly without leaving anything resembling meaningful damage. Sieghart narrowed the exit point near his palm, forcing the same amount of water through an opening barely wider than one finger.

The stream immediately became unstable, whipping sideways and slicing a shallow line through the edge of his desk before he canceled it.

"That was closer." He moved the desk backward, placed a metal plate behind the board, and tried again with less water and considerably more control. The second stream remained straight for almost half a second before widening. Its center struck the board hard enough to carve away several splinters. Sieghart repeated the process, gradually shaping an invisible magical nozzle around his palm instead of relying upon his hand to determine the stream's width.

Water pressure increased every time the opening narrowed, but maintaining that pressure required constant control along the entire first section of the stream. A moment of instability caused the jet to bend upward, cut through the training board, and leave a thin groove across the stone wall. Sieghart stared at the damage while water ran down the stone, already imagining Mira identifying the fresh groove before he invented a believable explanation.

The groove was narrow, but deep enough that pretending nothing happened would become difficult once Mira noticed fresh water dripping from it. He packed the basin, boards, and several metal plates into a storage bag before leaving Seraphina through a quiet southern gate. An abandoned quarry beyond the surrounding farms provided stone walls, open space, and nobody nearby who cared if Sieghart damaged rocks while experimenting.

He resumed training there, first carving lines through wood, then striking clay bricks, and finally testing the concentrated stream against solid stone. The spell remained harder to control than Water Cannon because every tiny movement redirected enough pressure to turn a harmless adjustment into a dangerous cutting sweep. Sieghart learned to lock his wrist, guide the stream through his shoulder, and redirect his entire stance instead of moving only his hand.

After several hours, the water formed a clean cylinder thinner than his thumb and remained stable for more than one second. The jet struck the quarry wall and carved a narrow channel through stone, ejecting powdered rock and water from the impact point. A familiar notification appeared while Sieghart maintained the spell, confirming that Water Magic recognized sustained pressure as something separate from ordinary Water Cannon. New Water Magic spell acquired: Water Jet — Level 1.

Projects a highly pressurized stream granting +2 Magic per level, with penetration, range, pressure, stability, and cutting power improving through sustained control. Sieghart dismissed the spell only after three seconds, then discovered that maintaining the stable jet beyond the first second produced noticeably better progression than repeated short bursts. Water Cannon followed a similar rule.

The System apparently valued keeping continuous spells active long enough to demonstrate actual control rather than briefly producing them. That made Water Jet convenient to train, assuming Sieghart pointed it toward quarry walls instead of guild rooms, furniture, pedestrians, or anything Mira considered important. He spent two more days extending the duration, changing directions without losing pressure, and combining small amounts of Sand Control into the stream.

The abrasive grains improved cutting power dramatically, but they also damaged his magical nozzle's stability and made the jet considerably harder to redirect safely. Sieghart recorded the combination for later. Against armor, stone, or reinforced skin, abrasive water might achieve what ordinary elemental attacks could not. Ronan found him at the quarry during the third afternoon, carrying another mission notice and looking offended that Sieghart had technically left the basement without becoming social.

"You could train while helping people."

"I could also train without people slowing me down."

"That sentence is why Mira sends me." Sieghart returned to the quarry wall and fired Water Jet through an existing groove, deepening it while Ronan wisely stepped farther from the line of fire. Wind Magic became the next problem. Sieghart already possessed Breeze and Wind Blade, while his improvised blasts provided movement whenever survival required immediate distance.