It was late in the evening; the sun was on the cusp of setting in the forest.

Otto hurried through the woods as a cloaked figure chased after him.

“Quit your foolishness, anomaly!” the voice commanded.

It wasn’t even been a full day since he fought Ifrid and he was already pursued by another magic-user.

They were clad in dark clothes, black, puffy trousers, black boots, black tunic, black hood and a black mask, the only features that stuck out were the solid-white eye-holes in the mask, that and the dozens of needle-like projectiles covering the inside of their cloak.

“LEAVE ME ALONE!” Otto cried desperately.

Basing on the voice alone, Otto assumed the attacker was a woman.

He pointed his hand backwards,

“Lightning-” before he could even finish the spell the attacker disappeared into a puff of black smoke.

Confused, Otto looked ahead seeing her manifest under the shadow of a tree, weapon in hand.

“STOP TELEPORTING YOU CHEATER!”

With one swift movement of the hand she threw a handful of needles his way,

Otto was hoping to get out of the way with MagicBullet.

“MagicB-” it was already too late, the needles lodged in his gut.

He pointed a hand towards her, “LightningBolt!” he commanded as a bolt of electricity flew from his hand to where the woman stood only moments earlier, she was already manifesting in Otto’s own shadow.

Otto took a deep breath as the woman put a dagger to his throat.

“You have been sentenced to death by the order of the King, Murlin Onyks the second-” she was cut off by a sharp pain in her gut.

She jumped back seeing her own needles sticking out of her torso.

“H-how?!”

She looked over to Otto seeing small, bleeding holes sticking out his back.

“HOLY FUCK THAT HURT!” Otto cried.

“Healing!” he exclaimed quickly healing the deep wounds.

Otto touched the needles he was impaled with and used MagicBullet to fire them through his body and into the attacker standing behind him.

He tapped himself and pointed forward.

“MagicBullet!” he exclaimed as his body was flung forwards, finally leaving the forest and instead entering a big grassy field.

He hit the ground, rolling in the grass for almost two meters before aggressively spamming the “Healing” spell.

“That was close…” he thought looking at the nearby rocks.

“If I hit any of those it might have been an instant game over…” he added.

From behind one of the rocks appeared the assassin again, dagger in hand.

She didn’t remove the needles.

“Those look uncomfortable…” Otto remarked smugly gesturing to his healed torso.

“Stop resisting… not only have you murdered the fire mage Ifrid, but you also injured me, the shadow mage Enox…”

Otto shrugged.

“You started it…” he replied holding a hand out towards her.

“MagicBu-”

She appeared behind him, dagger in hand.

What she didn’t notice was that he was using his left hand, his right hand was pointing behind him meaning that he would actually fly towards her.

He used the speed from the MagicBullet spell to punch the assassin in the face causing her to drop her dagger.

As soon as his fist made contact with her face, he was certain he would win.

As soon as they landed, Otto retreated with another MagicBullet spell and grabbed her dagger.

“I win,” Otto announced smugly.

“As if I’d give up after one punch…” she replied getting back up.

Otto smiled.

He held her dagger in hand and began to recite his spell.

“MakeBattery… Name ThisSpell « SetDirection PalmPointOne EnemyFace « SetSpeed 50µ « SetLifespan 60 «”

Her dagger zipped from his hand towards the assassin’s face, she narrowly evaded the attack by appearing in Otto’s shadow, naturally, he moved out of the way as her own dagger flew at her again.

When Otto punched the assassin, he marked her face as a coordinate in his mind.

“The spell will run for sixty seconds, there’s no way she can hold out that long…” he thought seeing the assassin desperately teleporting between the cover of the distant trees and rocks.

Not even trees could stop the speeding blade as it slowly buried through them leaving only splinted wood.

“If you just surrender, I’ll stop the blade,” Otto offered.

Bit by bit the blade managed to leave a dozen shallow cuts on the attacker until eventually, she teleported behind Otto visibly exhausted.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that!” she exclaimed as from the forest the blade flew towards them.

She grabbed Otto by the throat so that the blade would kill him on its way to kill her.

“Hey!” Otto shouted trying to take the assassin off his back.

Reluctantly he decided to cancel out the spell.

“Teriadel ThisBattery!” he exclaimed causing the blade to fall to the ground; its blade thrust deep into the soil.

The assassin jumped back as Otto turned to face her.

“I’ll give you one last chance…” he began.

“Leave me alone and I’ll let you go!”

“The orders were-” she was cut off by Otto.

“Can’t you disobey the orders?!” he demanded.

“All magic users are slaves to the Murlin… That is why you are the anomaly, and that is why you must be killed…” she explained.

Otto gritted his teeth.

“I don’t understand…”

He pointed to the sky.

“I’m going to end this, now…” he explained..

She nodded pulling out another fistful of needles.

“MagicBullet!” he exclaimed lifted the assassin up by the head with a sickening crunch before he pointed back down to the ground.

She didn’t even get a chance to throw her needles at him again.

“MAGIC BULLET!”

Her body smashed into the ground with a loud thump.

He repeated this a few more times for good measure.

Otto sat down a few meters away from the corpse and took the book out.

“Alright… what the hell was that about?” he asked.

“You’re really not going to give up on asking me things, are you?” the book taunted.

Otto breathed a sigh.

“Damn it… I forgot…”

“But if you r-” the book began but Otto cut it off.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, If I read the book to the end…”

“You remember what she said? All magic users are slaves to the Murlin…” murky Otto’s voice came from the corpse’s lips.

“Hey! Get out of the corpse!” Otto exclaimed pointing an accusatory finger at the dead body.

“…”

“…”

Both murky and book Otto remained silent.

“NOT LIKE THAT!”

“Damn it, guys!” Otto breathed a sigh of annoyance.

He opened the magic book again.

“Guess this is my best short at finding the answers…”

“Immunities…” it read.

“The keyword is ‘Imunhio’”

“An immunity allows the targeted object to be immune to an element,”

“The spell is used much like the Elsete (SetElement) keyword…” it read.

“Unlike that keyword, it required two bits of information, an element and a simple yes-or-no modifier…”

“The yes-or-no modifier is responsible for a whether or not you want the entire surface of the object protected or only the selected areas,”

“The amount of surface area you pick is directly linked to the mana cost, as such you would typically want to reserve whole-body immunities to quick ‘burst’ spells that you can cast right before being hit!”

“For example… ‘Imunhio Igni Yes «’ would make your entire body immune to all fire for about a second…”

“‘Imunhio Igni No «’ however would make only the selected parts immune to all fire for about a second, this means the keyword ‘Here’ needs to be included in the spell!”

Otto extended his hand forward.

He created a small ball of fire on the ground powered by a small ten-mana battery.

Otto cleared his throat.

“MakeBattery…”

“Imunhio ElementFire True « SetName ThisSpell «”

In an instant, Otto’s battery shattered.

“What the hell?”

“Hmm… Murlin did say it used up a lot of mana…”

Otto quickly created two new variables, one ‘MakeBigBattery’, this spell was basically a copy-paste of ‘MakeBattery’ but increased to a green magic circle and with an even bigger mana output.

He also created a variable to convert Imunhio to ‘SetImmunity’.

He extended his hand forward.

“MakeBigBattery…”

A green circle appeared on his hand, it took about two seconds to fill up and start spinning at its top speed.

“SetImmunity ElementFire True « SetName ThisSpell «”

A thin, colourless membrane appeared around Otto, it didn’t impede his movement.

The magic circle barely managed to keep up with the shield.

Otto placed his hand into the fire causing the mana circle to slow down even more, nevertheless, Otto didn’t feel any heat coming for the ball of fire.

He continued reading the book hoping to uncover more secrets.

Why did Murlin think Otto was still in the tower?

What kind of title is Murlin?

What’s at the end of the book?

Why was there as lasagne recipe in the last chapter?