Once we're out of the arena, we head straight for the inn, where Master Liina picks up all of our stuff from her room. It looks like her limp is improving, she's walking more normally again, so that's good...

“Alright Yumi, we're all done here, let's go home,” she declares.

“Yes, Master.” I learned some really important things I needed to know, but a lot of awful things happened here too, so going home sounds really good.

With that said, we head over to the adventurer guild to sign up for another caravan escort on our way back. After heading over to the business and being directed to the meeting point, we have to wait quite a while, much longer than last time.

I guess it's that there aren't as many caravans sent from a larger city-state like this to the smaller town of Karshis. The group with us is smaller too. Hardly ten adventurers, even after a six hour wait for everyone to assemble. There's only one covered wagon anyway, unlike the three last time, and the pay is half of what it was on the way here.

I spend the time with more continuous scanning practice. I scan the ground, rocks, trees, the wheels of the wagons and nearby city walls. Everything I can, as much as I can, trying to dig my brain into what will let me carve more information out of things.

I mention this to Master Liina and she pets my head again, wishing me luck.

Eventually, our caravan gets going, and we start on our trek home.

A day and a half in, we're starting to approach the line of the mana vein that cuts across the road, it's wall of spawned monsters blocking our path. I excitedly ask Master Liina if I can throw a big spell at them. She laughs and tells me to go for it. So I get to work.

After looking around at our group, I see we only have one other mage and he says he's a speed caster anyway, so there isn't even a point in me focusing on playing control mage like I should have last time, letting them finish off the monsters with their stronger spells.

No, now it's just me to throw the opening spell to wear down the monsters. Practically jittering with excitement at a chance to do the one thing I'm really really good at now, I work my magic together. It's an agonizingly slow process, summoning just one element at a time, spaced apart so my natural mana regeneration can keep up. Even if my spells are super cheap, that's talking on a timescale of seconds or minutes of mana use during battle. I have to keep this up for hours. Maybe I should have waited longer before starting, but I'm just so excited...

So that's what I do. Hours and hours of carefully spaced, individual elements stacked together, one after another. Since I have so much time to work on it, and I have no need to make anything even remotely replicable, I weave each and every element into the magic to form the most ridiculously, unnecessarily complex form I've ever made.

It gets the the point where I can hardly even keep track of what I'm making anymore, and I start to attract the eyes of the other members of the caravan. I highly doubt they've ever seen someone work on a spell for hours before. I almost want to laugh maniacally, this is fulfilling like, every crazy fire mage fantasy I've ever had.

Finally, the line of monsters begins to appear on the horizon. I... wonder how far away I should cast this thing from... I'm not going to blow up our caravan, am I? Well, if I just extrapolate, a half hour spell hit about two thousand five hundred feet across. It's been like ten hours, so this should be at least twenty times stronger...

“U-umm, Master?” I call out to her uncertainly.

“Yeah, what is it?”

“I'm uhh, actually a little worried that my spell is going to be too big. I think I should cast it soon, before we get too close. I don't want to harm our caravan.”

She thinks about it for a bit before grinning. “Good point, let's talk to the others.”

“Yes, Master.”

So Master Liina calls up the other adventurers and tells them. “Hey, so my slave is going to fire at the monsters now, alright?

They all stare at her.

“Uhh, alright? She some sort of spell sniper? We still have a long way to go before we get near them.” A bird-altra with blue feathers responds.

“Haha, no, she specializes in absolutely ridiculous area of effect magic. This one's going to be really awesome, right Yumi?”

With the spotlight suddenly on me, the altraskan adventurers all staring down at me unpleasantly, I force out, “Y-yes, Master. I'm... really looking forward to it...”

“Ah, fine, whatever. Even if it pulls all the monsters toward us, we'll have plenty of time to prepare,” the bird man shrugs, and he's joined similarly by the others.

“Alright Yumi, you ready?”

“Yes, Mas-” I cut off, blinking when I realize the problem. “A-actually... Well, I'm not sure, now that I think about it...”

“What's wrong?” she cocks her head a little and the other adventurers laugh.

“Well, I've never actually tested the maximum range of my spells, so...” I stare out into the distance, the tiny forms of what look like giant ape monsters if I squint at them. “I don't know if my magic can actually get that far before it fizzles...”

“Huh, good point. Can you do something like that trick with the ball at the competition?” she asks.

“When I queued the spells sequentially? Oh, yeah, that should work!” I nod enthusiastically. “Just, umm, give me a few minutes to add that to the spell...”

“Haha, a few minutes?” the one other mage laughs. “Those are some really slow spells, what does she do in battle?” The others all laugh too.

I glance at Master Liina, but she just plops a hand on my head and says, “She has the most flexible magic I've ever seen, so normal combat is no problem. Though actually, now that you have your Focus, this is your big strength, isn't it?” she asks.

“Yes, that's why I'm so excited, Master,” I respond seriously. She has no idea how many of my old fantasies about awesome super wizard badasses this fulfills.

“Well, you heard her. You're all going to enjoy this too, I guarantee it. In fact... anyone want to take a bet?”

There are a few grins around, while a couple people back off immediately.

“Oh no, I've seen human mages before. If you say she's specialized in area of effect magic, I'm sure I will be impressed, I'm not taking that bet,” comes from one man in heavy armor. One other who I think is traveling with him throws a playful punch into his armor.

“Come on, she's not even in robes, she can't be that high level. I've seen level sixties cast before, they're fucking terrifying. No way she can compare to that,” the second man laughs. “I'll take that bet.”

Now I'm both excited and more nervous. Master Liina is going to have money riding on whether my magic impresses them? Well, ok, I'm not worried about the impressing part at all. The problem is getting the magic to actually hit the enemies.

If I can't land the attack, my magic might fizzle before it ever hits anything, and that would be... really bad... both for Master Liina, and for our actual caravan breaking through the wall of monsters without any other mages to wear them down first.

That's why I'm careful, queuing up a lot of sequential air into a gust shape, with regular fire spells for aiming, and attach the main body of my magic backward onto them. I end up building the whole thing backward, toward the beginning of the spell. Just to be as sure as I can, I slot a whole bunch of magic, far more than I think it will need to get to the monsters.

I shouldn't have trouble hitting them, I think. They're pretty huge, even if they're incredibly far away. I just want to make sure my magic actually gets to them.

“Master, I think I'm ready.” At this point, I'm just adding enough bits of magic to the end of the spell to keep it stocked. Hmm, if I had better mana regen, I might be able to continuously stock magic like this... Then I realize that's a terrible idea, because I'd kill myself blowing up the entire area if I tried to use it on anything.

“Alright everyone, your bets are in?” Master Liina calls, and everyone gives their final ok. “Ok Yumi, do your thing.” She grins and gives me a big thumbs up.

“Yes, Master!” With a huge smile plastered over my face, I step out to the front and fire my spell straight toward the wall of distant monsters, all the way near the horizon.

As designed, it keeps sequencing through wind spells which have good travel speed, and fire spells, that are easier for me to see so I can tweak the line of flight to try and keep it on target. They also serve as markers for how much of my sequence is used up.

“Fifty five, fifty six, fifty seven...” I count out slowly as each fire piece unravels. “I think it's coming soon, I don't know, it might be a good idea to duck, I've never used a spell this big before,” I tell everyone seriously.

It draws a few laughs, as well as a few offended scoffs from my not-so respectful tone, but in general the adventurers are cautious enough to heed my warning and duck a little lower to the ground when I spare a glance back their way.

Meanwhile, despite being incredibly hard to tell, I think my magic is about to hit. There are still a good number of wind and fire parts left over, and it looks like it's on-target.

Going down onto all fours myself, I'm grinning like I've lost my mind. This is going to be good.

Then it hits and the shockwave manages to throw me to the ground despite already being on my hands and knees. Master Liina catches me just a moment later, her much more sturdy frame kneeling in place.

Looking back to the result of my spell, it's... woah. It basically fills the entire land ahead in a sea of flames. The plume looks like an exploding volcano or some sort of fucking atom bomb.

This is what unique, hand-crafted, ten hour magic can accomplish.

Holy fucking shit.

“Well. That just happened.” Is the first response, eventually coming from the heavily armored man. “What'd I tell you guys? Human mages are fuckin' ridiculous.”

“B-but, for real?” his friend coughs out. “I don't care how specialized they are, something like that should be impossible!”

“It must have to do with her magic system,” the one mage offers. “Didn't you see? She's been working on that spell for like ten hours. Of course a specialized human mage who can pour that much time into a single spell could accomplish something absurd like that. Just be glad that would be useless in combat.”

There's a relieved sigh from everyone present. “Right, good point. We'd all be fucking dead if humans could just fling around magic like that all the time,” one comments.

Needless to say, Master Liina wins the bet.

Unfortunately, after some time, dark forms begin to rush out of the torrent of billowing fire. Damn, even casting on a scale like that, my damage still isn't good enough...

“Are you kidding me? The monsters survived that?!” one guy shouts.

“I-I'm sorry, my magic power is still really low, so I don't do much damage,” I apologize. Even with my Focus multiplying the damage by what, at least a hundred times over, I still can't take out huge monsters like that in one shot.

When they come closer, it becomes apparent that they're heavily wounded, so at least that's something. The speed caster mows down half of them before they even reach us, and the remaining adventurers easily dispatch the ones that remain.

At least I did my job of wearing them down, so that's good. I was able to hit all of them with my spell after all.

Seeing my damage, I'm really considering asking Master Liina to put more of my potential into Magic, but now that I know how low my natural stats are, I'm really reluctant to do that. I need to hold onto them for as long as I possibly can while building up naturally because I'm so far behind.

No, I have to remind myself again. Do not frontload power on a carry. I can't give into the temptation for quick power now or I'll screw myself later.

With that in mind, I push those thoughts away and get back to walking with the caravan. The remainder of our trip home is wonderfully uneventful, and I spend basically the whole time Scanning everything under the suns in my attempts at wrangling a better understanding out of the magic so I can make it work better.

And I thought Synergist magic was complicated, Scan magic is just urrggghh.