A red flame flickered on Robert’s fingertip. Although he had seen it a thousand times in Riley’s memory, he was still amazed by it.

He wasn’t just mesmerized by the flame, but also by the fact that he could see how the flame formed.

An invisible energy was drawn from the center of his body. It followed the energy channels, to his fingertips and once there transmuted into a flame.

What was the difference between light and dark magic?

The book gave a short description:

“The difference between dark and light lies in whether one chooses to control their element on a macroscopic scale or on a microscopic level. Growing monster wines, to trap the enemies, requires the use of energy on a macro level, forcing as much growth as possible. Creation of medicine from a herb, on the other hand, requires delicate control over the energy flow.

To simplify it, a dark magus is able to force as much power as he can in every spell he casts, a dam breaking on command comes to mind. A light magus power is gently persuading minuscule amounts of energy to do his bidding. A man threading the tiniest imaginable thread through thousands of eyes of thousand needles to reach his goal.“

Before he became an apprentice magician, he had to decide upon one direction, whether to focus on raw power or on delicate control.

The final chapter was about spirit stones and after finishing it his eyes lit up. Spirit stones allowed users to refill their energy. They also acted as an energy source for weapons like magical crossbows and spirit cannons. If he could get his hands on one of those, he had a way to fight even if he were to chose the way of light magi. And the purpose of those weapons was exactly that, to enable non-dark magi to fight.

“Hmm..“ Robert thought “I still need more information, about how this world works before I make a decision on which path I choose“

After playing with his fire for some time, his inner physicist told him that the fire on his fingertips was only a mass of hot gas. And the molecules in that mass were moving with so much kinetic energy that it became plasma.

Suddenly he got an idea. "A flame is just hot gases, what happens when I disperse the flame without increasing the energy?" Robert mused "What happens when I increase the space between heated molecules?"

He created a fireball in his hand. After that, he split the single flame into two, four, then into sixteen and the fire in his hand became smaller and smaller as they split into thousands of glimmers. He continued to split this glimmers until suddenly the pressure in this palms increased. The exponential differentiation of high energy molecules caused a soft breeze to form from on his hand.

“Did I just cast air magic? Did I just become a dual element mage?“ he thought.

He was not sure if his knowledge of science made it possible for him to be a dual element mage.

The book on magic he had read said nothing about dual element mages. Maybe there are no dual element mages, maybe it was just out of the scope of this book. He experimented for hours and was finally able to form a wind from his palms.

What he didn't know was that the mages of this world already knew about these gimmics, but as they were not useful in anyway and consumed a lot of power, weren't popular.

Robert decided to try out other elements. With his understanding of the states of substances, he wanted to see whether he could alter other elemental magic too.

He filled water from a clay pitcher into a clay bowl. Both were old and had seen better days. The pitcher's lid had cracks and looked like it would fall apart if handled too harshly.

Robert summoned another flame on his fingertip. Using his finger like a blowtorch he pointed it at the water and dipped only the flame into it. The water began to heat up. The flame was again split on a molecular level. Now the heat of the flame was equally spread out and soon the water was boiling. He reduced the energy flow and the boiling stopped. He tried to raise the fire molecules and steam welled up from the water. He took control of the steam and like morning fog above a lake, it floated for a few seconds before finally dispersing.

It worked and didn’t work at the same time. “Well, I can always practice it, there is no hurry.“ Robert thought.

He decided to try earth next. Again he started with the fire, but this time he took another approach. He tried reducing the vibration of the molecules to resonate with the natural frequency of a brick that he had picked up.

He tried and failed, tried again and failed again. On it went.

Time went by and sunlight started to peek through the single window of his hut.

But just like when he was tweaking an experiment in his former life Robert was too engrossed in his work to notice it. And as he was conducting his x experiment the brick started to shake violently and exploded into tiny fragments. He tried the same experiment once again and was able to do it in a few minutes this time.

“Finally!“

He had a lot more ideas to experiment with, but his angry stomach which hadn't gotten any attention in a day loudly growled at him. Finally, he decided to stop experimenting with magic and go find something to eat. The few coppers he had left would be enough to get a meal at old man Jia’s shop.

Robert walked through the streets of Westfae, many people smiled at him on the way, he nodded back in greeting. The healer said that these villagers were the ones who found him unconscious in the abandoned old house outside the village.

Robert walked into the old man Jia’s shop. It was a small building, one of the few which reminded him of his old world, and had two rooms. One for the customers to eat and the second was the kitchen. He ordered ramen.

From Riley’s memory, Robert knew that ramen was the only thing he could afford at the moment. Old man Jia placed the hot ramen in front of the hungry Robert. Steam was rising from it and carrying a delicious smell. He even added an extra egg on the house as he knew of the circumstances Riley was recently in.

“You have any idea who tried to kill you kiddo?”, Old man Jia asked Robert as he was about to finish his meal.

With his mouth full of noodle, he shook his head. He really had no idea who those men were. He had clearly seen the old bald man. But he couldn’t remember any details about the young man’s appearance.

After finishing the meal, Robert wanted to learn more about the world. He wanted to learn more about magic, but the village had too few sources of information. He even went to pester the storekeeper, Rudo, from the general store. Although he was startled at first, he told him many stories and even narrated some of his adventures to Riley.

The storekeeper was surprised when Riley approached him with his newfound curiosity about the world. He guessed that Riley, after experiencing the traumatizing feelings of getting tortured by an old bald man, wanted to gain more power or even exact revenge against those who tortured him.

He explained the wide variety of spirit animals. Those with a thousand eyes, those with nine tails, the legendary spirit animals who slaughtered whole cities in a single night. He told stories about fights between master level magic users in the capital city of Lorvale. About the magic cannons of the Sand nation which kept the advance of the SouthEastly Empire at bay.

Robert listened to the stories for a few hours before new customers came and the storekeeper had to tend to them.

After the meal, he was flat out broke. He didn't even have enough money for the next one.

He decided to go hunting. But Riley’s fire arrow magic could only be used once every hour. So unless he was extremely lucky and hit something vital, he would only be able to hunt one or two Rabbits a day. At the most. And spirit stones, which would be able to restore his mana, cost about 10 gold. The proceeds of one year of hunting wouldn't amount to that much!

Robert decided to take a different approach. On the way to the hunting grounds, he cut off a bamboo-like plant. Like a bamboo, it was hollow inside and was just right for his plan. He prepared darts using some other tree branches. Their size was just right to fill the hole of the “bamboo tube“.

He tested it by blowing into the tube after inserting one of his darts. It worked well and the dart flew from the tube. Robert was happy with the result. But he was not planning on creating blow darts, he was creating a primal version of a gun.

He prepared five of these tubes and filled them with darts and also made 20 spare darts.

Robert was all set to hunt!