Within his mana channels, Rai reached. He called his mana to move, to flow within him like it normally would.

The only difference was the heat.

Before, when he first read the grimoire, Rai felt like the fires he called forth were weak... they didn’t feel anything like the Hellfire that he had to endure in the grimoire’s initial test.

But now that he’d communed with Hel intentionally... Rai felt the difference.

He held out his hand and flickered forth a kindle of Hellfire.

In his other outstretched hand, Rai called forth a regular flame.

With his so-called attunement to Hellfire, Rai’s Hellfire was leagues beyond anything he could’ve imagined.

It was so surreal to him that he couldn’t even begin to think about what to do with it. But now that he’d gained a true new power, Rai wanted to experiment and go wild. His mind harkened back to the days of his childhood, when he first tried to figure out Stormflow.

Hellfire was a little different, however.

Rai needed versatility. Not more raw power.

Thankfully, from what he saw in Hel’s vision of the past, he had something of a clue that pointed him in a direction that’d prove useful to him.

Golems.

Rai clenched his fist, dispersing the purple flames from his palm.

“I need to learn golem magic.” Rai declared triumphantly.

Nobody replied.

Not long after the lack of a reply, Rai realised that he was sat in the middle of a field. Alone.

“Wonderful.” He said.

“Thank you Reiki. I really needed that.” Sin said.

“Not at all. You just looked so haggard, poor thing.”

“Yeah... that training was...” Sin shivered. “H-hellish.”

“Hahaha! Rai had that same exact expression when he was a kid and first started learning from dad. You remind me a lot of him back then!”

“It still amazes me that he did all of this when he was just a kid... no wonder I can’t touch him whenever he uses the Dance.”

*Click... thnk*

“Speak of the cheeky monkey, and he shall appear!” Reiki quipped.

“Hey mum.”

“Hungry, Rai?”

“A little, but I’ll wait until dinner.”

“Alright, more for me then!” Reiki said, as she eagerly dashed towards the kitchen.

“She must be hungry after helping me so much...” Sin said, with a touch of remorse in her voice.

“Hmm?”

“Ah... When you went onto the field, I went to the bathhouse. But I was really really exhausted. Well... the rest is a girls’ secret! You don’t get to know.”

Rai raised his hands.

“That’s fine with me. I don’t think I want to know, really.”

“... Did you figure out what you needed to figure out, by the way?”

“You mean my weaknesses?”

“Mhmm.”

“Well, I know what my weaknesses are... but I think I found a way to work around them.”

“Do tell.” Sin said, as she sat down on the sofa.

Rai sat beside her and started explaining his theory.

“You have all of your utility spells, and you can apply them through your Domain. I’ve only got short range spells and some long range attacks, but I hardly have any actual useful utility.

So, I communed with Hellfire.”

“That... sounds dangerous...”

“It was more like a meditative state where I learned about Hellfire’s purpose. From what I learned, I think I need to learn golem magic to make best use of Hel.”

“Hel?”

“Hel is Hellfire’s name... uh... it’s a bit of long story. Hellfire has its own personality... kinda.”

“... That’s totally not terrifying. Nope, not at all. Not like you have a sentient mana flowing through your body, nope, not scary whatsoever.” Sin lied.

“Well, sentient or not, I need to learn how to make a golem for her... or out of her... or... I don’t fucking know it’s so complicated! I fucking hate golems.”

“Maybe... your aunt can help you?”

“Sin!” Rai exclaimed. “That’s a brilliant idea! I’ll go back early and get Aunt Elly’s help!”

“EH?! Wait a minute, aren’t we going back together?! I get that you’re excited to learn from your aunt again... but we also have the dungeon expedition soon, so I really don’t think you should try and cram all of this in with such little time left...”

“Ah... you’re right. I got a bit ahead of myself, sorry. We might not have time right now, but after the expedition there’ll be like a week or so until the Summit. Aunt Elly must’ve already prepared everything she needs for it, so she’ll probably be free to help if I ask her then.”

“For now, it might be worth working on some of your other techniques. It might not make you more versatile in the way you want, but at least you’ll have more to rely on than Stormflow and the Dance.”

“That’s a good idea. I had some ideas for improving on a few techniques I could use more often.”

“And I could use some more Dance training after I eat. Go on, I’ll eat a little first then come outside and train with you.”

“I’ll see you outside in a little bit then.”

Rai leaned over and pecked Sin on her lips.

He got up from the sofa and made his way back outside.

With his development of Hellfire more or less paused for the time being, Rai had time to work on some of his other techniques now.

As he went out to the field just in front of the house, where he practiced Stormflow for the first time, Rai stretched his limbs out to make them more limber.

The first technique he wanted to work on was his wind technique.

Rai surrounded his feet in wind magic, and took steps in the air.

This was how he’d defeated his teacher in a race, and how he felled the tree roots in the Phoenix’s Trials. It was a technique that he’d used multiple times, but Rai hadn’t refined it just yet.

This time, he thought about how to improve on the technique’s efficiency while also making it more effective.

Rai tested a number of variations of the technique. They all had varying degrees of success, with some somehow ending up even worse than the original base technique.

Eventually, Rai decided to implement other elements within this wind technique.

This wasn’t a thoughtless decision.

Rai had found, that after trying out all of the different variations he could, there was something missing in the technique.

Instead of making it so he was ‘propelling’ himself through the air by shooting out wind magic from his feet, Rai thought that it would work better to create a stable enough platform perfectly under his feet to shoot off from.

In effect, these two achieved the same thing. But with Rai’s physical strength, coupled with Stormflow, this would work a lot better for him.

As he tested it, Rai quickly learned how foolish of an endeavour that was.

“It works when I go upwards... but when I try to dash sideways or downwards it all falls apart... Shit. Back to the drawing board, I guess.”

A failed experiment.

Rai revisited the idea of using wind magic as a propellant.

“What if I somehow strengthened the wind magic using another element? It always felt so clunky and inefficient before...”

Rai racked his head around the idea as much as he could.

But not much came out of it.

Even if he wanted to use Hellfire or lightning along with his wind magic, those two elements were far too powerful for wind magic to handle. Hellfire would burn the wind away, while lightning would charge the wind in a way that’d blur its actual purpose.

Rai knew he needed a way to move through the air effectively and efficiently, but his current method for it was clearly not the most optimal. What was even more frustrating was that he couldn’t figure out a way to improve on it with what he had.

“What’s wrong?” Sin asked from behind him.

“I’m trying to improve on that wind movement technique that I use to step through the air, but I can’t figure it out.”

“Why would you want to improve on that? It’s already incredible!... Isn’t it?”

“It’s good, but it’s inefficient with the amount of wind I need to produce and the amount of mana I use to get there. It also feels a little clunky, after using it for some time now.”

“Hmm... In that case, why don’t you come up with a new way entirely?”

“Eh? How am I supposed to do that?”

“The same way you came up with the Windstep or whatever you called it.”

“Windstep... that’s a good name.”

“Besides, I wanted to learn that technique, so teach me it! I have another ‘air movement’ technique in mind, but Windstep will be useful for me for now.”

“Happily. Oh, while we’re on the topic, would it even be possible for me to learn your Domain?”

“Honestly... I don’t think so. Not immediately, at least. The Domain ended up as its own technique, but even before that it was only possible because my mana sense was probably one of the best mana sense techniques in all of Zenith. And that was only possible because I spent so many years refining it. One of the benefits of my strict tutors, I suppose.”

“Ah. Never mind then.”

“I think if you worked on your mana sense for a while, you’d figure it out on your own eventually.”

“Probably. Anyway, let’s get to teaching you Windstep.”