Shaden concentrated slowly in front of him as a drop of sweat formed on his brow. He had come up with the idea of using gravity magic to keep his fireball together and was confident he understood both fire and gravity sufficiently.

Well, apparently, he didn’t. But he was getting close. He had already practiced for two days now. Because he couldn’t control the strength of the gravity magic, the fire was sucked into itself and died all the time. But as he practiced, he got the hang of it. Magic was convenient; the more you used a certain spell the more you understood the laws behind that spell.

Understanding was a loose term. He felt the laws of the world. It was like solving a math problem. You could follow all the steps and solve a problem by looking at your textbook. But if you solved enough problems, something in you would click, and you’d understand how to solve that problem without any help. Using magic was similar. The more you cast a spell, the more you understood it and the faster you could initiate it.

What Shaden was doing now was using a tiny black hole to keep his fire from dissipating. He almost had it perfectly.

To be honest, it wasn’t really a black hole. It was just concentrated mana being imagined to suck everything around it. Very concentrated mana. It was so concentrated that while it was not even the size of an airsoft bullet, it contained as much mana as when he used wind to move the clouds a little.

The problem was controlling the mana. Just putting more mana into creating fire didn’t make it last longer. It just intensified it. He had to find a way to make his fire last long while being hot at the same time.

He looked at his ‘black hole.’ At least that was functioning as he wanted. He saw a tiny bead of mana at the center of the flames, pulling it towards itself to form a pretty circle of fire…

Bead of mana? Shaden stopped imagining the black hole and stopped the flames. The bead was still there. How come it hadn’t disappeared like the flames? Wasn’t the bead the black hole?

He reached out and held the bead between his fingers. It looked beautiful. The dark blue hue of the bead changed shades as it released particles of mana from itself. Shaden could sense the great amount of mana stored inside the bead. He had been the one who created it, but he had thought that all of it went to creating the black hole spell. But the mana was still there.

Concentrated mana? Mana could be solidified? He hadn’t given much thought to it before, but the object he held in his fingers was definitely a bead of mana. Of great concentration. If mana could be solidified, then could it be liquified?

Shaden suddenly heard something click in his mind. If he used liquid mana as fuel for his flames, wouldn’t it last longer but still be as intense? Normally, the liquid would splat on the ground, but if he used gravity to keep it all together on top of it…!

Shaden lifted up his hands once more and concentrated intensely. He imagined that his mana was being compressed at a single point. He felt the mana rush out from him as it started to swirl in the air in front of him. He saw the bluish hue of magic start appearing before his vision. It was working! The mana was becoming compressed!

He continued to swirl the mana in a circular motion to prevent himself from accidentally solidifying it. The blue air became thicker, and soon, vapor-like mana began to form in front of him. Shaden smiled to himself. Yes!

He continued to inject more mana into the bluish-purplish luminescent cloud of mana. He understood that gases became liquids if they were compressed enough, and mana was probably like gas too. It would dissipate if left alone, so Shaden used yet another stream of mana to compress the mana by slowing it and attracting the mana to each other.

Soon, he was left with an adult’s handful of liquid mana floating beautifully in front of him. All that was left to do was to transform the mana into a fireball.

Shaden first created the black hole bead of mana he did before with his left hand. It was easier to do after frequent practice. He then placed the bead into the center of the liquid mana. The liquid formed into a spherical shape as the gravity magic of the bead pulled on it. This was perfect. The moment of truth was coming. It was time to add the flames.

Please let it burn longer, please let it burn longer, please, please!

Shaden finally imagined that flames would ignite on the surface of the liquid. He imagined that the flames would slowly eat away the liquid until it touched something—then it would consume all the mana and explode as a fireball should.

The ball burst into flames. Shaden was happy. He was just about to throw it when he remembered something crucial. He had been so focused on maintaining the flames that he had forgotten how an explosion worked. It had to be pressurized or else it wouldn’t explode. He really didn’t want a napalm ball.

Shaden concentrated on his ball of fire for the last time. He used mana to create a layer of pressurized air around the ball. Fire inside suddenly stuck to the layer of air. The air had oxygen, so it was natural for it to. Shaden focused more oxygen into the layer just in case.

It was finally ready. The fireball. It was beautiful and blazing gloriously. It had taken weeks to reach this point. Shaden thanked school for providing him with excellent books and wished his ball of fire good luck. He needed a target now.

He looked towards the woods behind his house. His house was at the edge of the town, and he hadn’t seen anyone go into the woods today. Rarely anyone did, so it was definitely safe. He could start working on life-detection magic in the future. The trees were perfect targets for his fireball.

He braced himself. This was the moment of truth. With all his might, he swung the fireball towards the trees. It traveled with the speed of a baseball if a professional player threw it. He had worked on his throw during the break. It wasn’t perfect, but it was satisfactory.

The ball soared through the sky, still in a spherical shape, and flew towards the trees. It burned just as bright as the first moment it was launched and showed no signs of vanishing. His fireball was a success! All that was left to do was to see how powerful it was.

The forest was around four hundred meters away. He had practiced throwing rocks and ice at it, so he knew it would take around eight seconds before the fireball hit the trees. The fireball was now a small flaming circle in the distance.

Three seconds. Shaden relaxed and waited for the ball to hit.

Four seconds. The ball neared the trees.

Five seconds. Had he put too little mana in the ball?

Six seconds. Or too much? Come to think of it, setting a tree on fire didn’t require as much mana as creating liquid mana…

Seven seconds. Eh. It would be fine.

The moment the fireball hit the trees, the layer of air that Shaden created was broken. Because Shaden had stopped supplying mana to it, the gravitational magic had died out too. All there was inside the ball was fire and fuel, and a whole lot of pressure.

The forest suddenly exploded in light. A wave of heat washed over Shaden and his one-year-old body was almost thrown back from the wind. The light burned brighter than the sun for a moment, and all there was for the split second the explosion occurred was yellow and orange illuminating the area. The fire roared like a violent wind during a storm as it burned and destroyed. The grass all bent backwards due to the force and the flames expanded outwardly, consuming the trees that were in its path. The ground in the area of the explosion dried up, leaving burnt dirt and pieces of clay lying around randomly with piles of soot and torn-off, smoking branches. A cloud of smoke rose from the area simultaneously with the expansion of the fire, and Shaden realized he had screwed up majorly.

The explosion died out, but the fire remained. And a lot of it. If Shaden had aimed for the fencepost of his house, he would be dead. He hadn’t realized he would cause this much destruction. Liquid mana had been a bad idea after all.

And then the shouts of the people came. They had all felt the explosion too and were seeing the smoke coming out of the forest.

Shaden scratched his head. Well, he had caused this mess. He had to be the one to stop it. He still didn’t feel tired after using that much mana, so he could probably manage to stop it.

He concentrated once more with all he had. He imagined that the oxygen molecules fueling the flames would be removed from the forest with his wind magic and poured in his mana. He felt the intense rush of mana going through him, but since he didn’t feel bad, he continued. A gust of wind started blowing through the forest.

The people that were the first to arrive with their buckets saw the trees swaying gently and the fire going out miraculously with the breeze. The flames seemed to…disappear. Soon, all that was left was black trees and ashes. They were confused but relieved that the sudden fire had stopped. What had caused this phenomenon?

Shaden silently returned to his crib as the people started swarming to the forest. He lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling. People were shouting all over the area now.

Maybe he would start reading biology now. Yep. He would put off physics and chemistry for the time being. Healing magic sounded nice.

Shaden closed his eyes, barely aware of the panic he caused that day.