It was lunch when the group stopped. They had left Lesterwood at dawn, traveling southeast towards Yopu’s Planes. During their travels, the group had only 3 encounters. The first time was a herd of deer, they ran after noticing the team’s presence. The second was a treent. The guild had a continuous extermination quest for their branches. Reep quickly killed it with an electrified arrow.

The third and most notable was a pack of Silver Wolves. They got their name from their coat. Their grey hairs reflect light, creating a silver shine. There was no extermination quest, and they were common enough that the cost of a pelt was only a few silvers. Instead of trying to kill and skin the wolves, Max wanted to try using an ability he had forgotten about. Divine Aura.

5 wolves appeared in front of the group creating a half circle. Some snarling, others snapping until the alpha began to charge forward. The group stood calmly, trusting in Max. Max imagined his aura as a protective film, tightly against his body. Max pushed outwards, forcing the film to move. As the wolves got closer, he pushed harder. The four behind the alpha slowed to a stop, flickering their ears.

With all of his power, Max yelled, pushing his aura out. The alpha quickly came to a stop, skidding over the loose rock. It turned and ran, the others following.

Max was panting, That took a lot more out of me than I thought, Max thought.

“Alright! I can’t force my aura out. I’m going to have to figure out how to better manipulate it.”

“You know... Even though I knew what was going to happen, I still felt a little afraid.” Clammy said.

Reep nodded in agreement. “It was a lot less compared to the time at the clinic, but I could still feel it.”

“Anyone have any idea how to train it?” Max asked.

Both thought for a moment before Reep said her idea.

“At the clinic, you were really angry. It was the angriest I’ve seen you. Maybe it's tied to your emotions? You could also try meditation. It might not help with your aura, but at the very least it will help with spell visualization.”

“That's a good point and idea! I guess I'll start with that, if I don't get anywhere, I will go to a church? Ask a priest or something?”

“You have no idea how religion works in this world do you?” Clammy asked with an impish grin.

“I know there are gods that appear in the world every now and then unlike my world. Churches and cults form around them. I’ve heard a few names... that's pretty much it.”

Both girls look at him, an unreadable expression on their faces.

“That's it?” Clammy asked, getting a nod as an answer.

“When we get back, we are going to teach you. There is so much more.” Reep said.

Max could only walk on. How was he supposed to say he had already met a goddess? How was he supposed to mention meeting and receiving a blessing from a guardian of Hell? How was he supposed to tell them other gods might be looking for him? Max had a lot to think about. They were his team, and he wanted to tell them everything. But could he? Vel and Icarus both said specifically not to tell anyone. Max sighed; he had a long quest ahead of him.

The group moved on after finishing their lunch. Max brought up a few spell ideas for Clammy. The one he was most excited about was a spell that would make them all fly. After confirming it was easier to lower the gravity of a single heavy object rather than multiple light ones, Max told her his idea.

“We make a boat!” His enthusiasm was much too high for this conversation.

“A... boat…”

“Yeah, you lower its gravity with us in it, allowing us to fly.”

Clammy thought for a moment trying to find the flaw in the spell.

“But the boat would be weightless, but we wouldn’t. I don’t know if I can lift it with us in it.”

“Oh...”

Clammy cringed at his disappointment.

“I can try it. We just need a boat.”

A few moments later a boat of ice was formed. It looked more like a disc with a dent in the middle than an actual boat, but it would get the experiment done. Clammy sighed, stepping on to the Ice, almost slipping. The other two followed suit.

Clammy tried, she truly did. She could make the ice shake a bit, but that was it. Disappointed with herself, she continued walking. Max brought up his second idea. Gravity Bullet. The idea was to launch a small rock so fast that it would be similar to a bullet. Max then had to go on to explain what a bullet was, and yes, in fact there was no magic on Earth.

“Sounds like magic.” Clammy muttered.

Max sighed. “Can you just try it?”

Clammy said something inaudible while reaching for a rock. She held it in her hand, palm open. She gathered a large amount of mana into a nearby chuck of a tree. The spell made the tree pull the rock hard. If this was done in a laboratory, the researcher would find that the rock travels at close to 30 times Earth's gravity. That would be over 600 m/h. But to Clammy and the others, the rock just moved very fast.

The rock shattered the tree trunk, causing the top to fall over. All three of them stood and watched in silence. Clammy picked out a small boulder, making it float in front of her. The bolder launched out, visually much slower. The bolder impacted the tree, making it crash over. The outcome was the same, but the winner was clearly the small rock.

Any decent mage would be able to react in time, summoning their shield spell to block the boulder. But the harmless looking rock? That would catch anyone off guard. One major negative of Gravity Magic was that when it's cast on you, you can feel it. The feeling is as localized as Clammy makes the spell, creating a buzzing in your arm or wherever Clammy aims. Clammy hoped the small rock would be fast enough to beat shield reactions.

Before they continued walking, Clammy filled a coin purse with small rocks. The outcome of this spell gave Max an idea for Reep.

“Reep, can you focus where you want your lightning to be?” seeing her confused face he added, “Like can you focus all of your electricity on the tip of the arrow?”

Her face lit up, she pulled her bow off her shoulder, and knocked an arrow. As she focused, electrical arcs slowly compressed toward the arrowhead. Once Reep figured it was enough, she let the arrow fly. The effect was less impressive than Clammy, but after observing the hole where the arrow landed, the power became evident. A black, burnt hole was drilled entirely through the tree. Small wisps of smoke could be seen, along with electrical current burns. The burns emanate out from the hole, signifying it was the path of least resistance.

Not only would her new technique deal more damage, it would also seriously stun and burn the target. Reep walked with her head held high for a while, new ideas forming. Max was happy he could help. He had so many ideas, after all Earth had been coming up with them for decades. He thought of fantasy movies and games. Max’s next goal for himself was to recreate Hydro Cannon, from a certain game about small monsters. The idea was to create a pressurized cannon of water, continuously firing until Max ran out of mana or the water source ran dry.

Eventually they broke the tree line and came into view of the village. It was on fire.

Villagers rushed, pulling buckets out of the centralized well. They had formed a line of citizens from the well and were passing buckets from one to the next. It was increasing their efficiency, but it wasn't enough. The group ran ahead.

Max had never seen a house fire in person. He’d seen videos of blazing infernos on the internet but never in person. Max was quite surprised by how far away he could feel the heat.

Max split off from Reep and Clammy. Clammy started to move large items away from the bungalows that were on fire. She moved a wooden cart, a few dongos, even an anvil. She would raise objects a few inches off the ground, then have a villager push it out of the way. This saved her a lot of mana. Reep started gathering up burned and injured people. She explained that they have a healer, and it would be best if they were all together. She even told them old injuries could be healed.

Max ran straight for the well. He knew that with the fire, drawing water from the air might prove difficult. Max peered into the well, making sure it had enough water. He closed his eyes, focusing on what he wanted to do. His plan was to make it rain, the issue was, he didn’t know how to do that. He could try the brute force method, gathering up the water in a large ball, allowing drops to fall. This would simulate rain, but he had no idea if he could move the amount of water required.

He chose to try adding water back to the air. He picked a spot right above a small cabin. This would be his test run. If he couldn’t do this, he would have to change his plans. Water in the well started to disappear, refilling itself with the source. Max ushered the water vapor the same way he normally would draw out water but in reverse. When the majority of the vaper was over the cabin, he pulled it back out of the air. Droplets started forming, catching each other, adding more and more weight until they fell.

It worked, but not in the exact way Max wanted. There was no “cloud”, the drops just fell from nothing. Max knew that there was vapor in the air, and that was where the drops were coming from. But they fell too slow, too sporadic, to make a difference in a fire. Max remembered back to his testing with spouts. The compressed version lasted much longer and did far more.

With that concept, he changed more well water into vapor and transferred it above the burning cabin. Instead of simply pulling the water out of the vapor, he condensed the vapor together. Small wisps of white and grey started to form. Max could tell that the small amount of water wasn’t going to be enough, so he moved his baby cloud higher into the air.

Max knew that clouds form high in the air. He hoped that with a higher altitude, there would be water he could pull from the atmosphere. Max was focused, he had his goal. Draw and compress as much water from the air as possible. The only issue was how far he was drawing from. Max was sweating, and not from the heat. His mind felt like it was boiling. He simply did not have enough raw power than what he was trying to do. Max felt as though he was trying to fill a swimming pool with shot glass.

Max was at his limit. With the last ounce of mental fortitude, he used the rest of his mana. His “command” was simple. Draw water from around the cloud and compress it into the cloud. Max had known about recursive spells, the crazy ice domain spell Vel had shown him was exactly that. This, however, was his first attempt.

Max was an IT worker back on Earth. He had taken many years of coding classes to graduate college. For some reason, Max thought of this rain spell as coding. He had an end goal, and he willed his mana to achieve it.

Max fell hard. His consciousness slipped. All around him villagers yelled, a few ran off to find his companions, others remained passing buckets along. Max was fully asleep, but his spell was still working. His last will of mana remained, forcing the cloud to grow. Clammy and Reep eventually got to Max. Clammy moved him away from any structure that could catch fire and got back to helping.

A little while later, the first drop fell. No one noticed it, after all it landed on a roof. Then the second fell, and the third. Pretty soon there was a slight drizzle. Reep looked up at the sky, directly above the village and saw a dark cloud. It was small, easily miss able.

Reep asked herself, That's what he made, and it cause himself to pass out? It's small. Reep put it out of her mind, moving on to help a small boy.

More and more rain began to fall. Turning from light showers into normal showers into full on raining. Reep looked up at the cloud again, How is it raining that much? She wondered. Eventually the villagers passing the buckets stopped and moved on to other things.

The fires were dying at this point. Building still smoldered, but no flames were evident. Reep looked out past the village limits. What she saw shocked her. There was no rain. The rain abruptly stopped a few meters past the farthest cabin. She took back her earlier thoughts about Max’s cloud being small. She now knew it was perfect.

Max woke up to Clammy slapping him lightly. She wore a grin, but Max didn’t know why. He thought that he had failed, that his cloud would never form. He allowed the village to be burnt down. Clammy helped him to his feet, using herself as stability. Max’s head still hurt; it was much worse than when he tried to make his sphere fly. They walked a few meters, and stopped. Max realized something was wrong.

It was wet. There was water. For the first time since waking up, Max looked around. There was rain, a lot of rain. The fires were gone, and only smiling villagers remained. Clammy led Max to a small building that was left unharmed by the flames. Inside were people, most had visible burns. It took Max a few seconds to realize what the situation was.

“Ah! I need to heal you all.” he said matter-of-factly.

“And you will, but after you rest a bit more. None of them have any life-threatening injuries. They can give you a few minutes.” Clammy said, getting a few groans from the crowd.

Max nodded, he suddenly switched clothes, his traveling shirt and pants swapping to his mana regeneration robes. He realized that he could have put these, or his intellect pair, on before he started casting, but he forgot. While he was resting, he asked Clammy some questions:

“Where's Reep?”

“I think she's playing with some kids.”

“What?”

“I saw her running through the rain and mud with some kids.”

“Uhh, alright. Moving on. What’s with the rain?”

“What do you mean by the rain? You created that cloud, right? You saved the village.” Clammy stated.

“But the last thing I remember was a very tiny cloud. It could never have turned into that.” Max said, pointing out a window at the sky.

“We didn’t either. We got over to you pretty quickly after you passed out. But the cloud kept growing. Eventually it started raining, light at first, then...” She cut herself off, gesturing outside.

“Huh. It worked.”

“What worked? The spell?”

“Yeah. I wanted my mana to maintain itself…to keep forming the cloud... What is mana?” Max asked. If his hypothesis was correct, he just opened up a lot of doors for himself.

“Mana? What? It’s... uhh, power that contains magic?” Clammy was disturbed. How could she not know?

“You don’t know?” Max inferred from her hesitation.

“No.” Clammy said downcast.

“Guess I should ask our teacher. Does Vel even teach?”

Clammy laughed, nodding in agreement.

Max eventually felt good enough to heal some of the worst injuries. One man had pretty bad burns over his arms and legs. The other had a roof fall on him. Both were very thankful. Reep eventually came by, asking for Max to “Turn off the rain”. This gave Max pause. Would his spell go indefinitely? If he was right, and the rain was recharging his mana, would it go forever? Max wanted to keep the spell up longer, but the village chief also asked to remove the rain.

Max wanted to resist more, but he could always experiment back at the mansion. With one quick pulse of mana, the rain suddenly stopped. A few seconds later the dark colored cloud slowly got brighter. Eventually disappearing into the atmosphere.

Congratulations you have learned the spell Create Raincloud (Rare).

Channeled

Creates a cloud to drop water on a designated location.

Be warned, many places and entities will act negatively to sudden large amounts of water.

It was well into the night when Max finished healing all of the villagers. There were only a few with burns, most were old injuries. Finding a healer outside of a city was rare and traveling long distances just to receive healing was not an option for most. The villagers tried to pay Max, but he wouldn't accept it. Max came from a country where people would bankrupt themselves to get medical treatments, if Max could help someone for free, he would. The village chief gave them a room to stay the night, telling them they would talk more in the morning.