13 Target Practice and Spell derivatives

Baldy stopped his lecturing seeing Nate had summoned a weapon similar to his innate summons yet different at the same time. He had seen the gun as Nate liked to call it and was familiar with its build and the gun in Nate's hand was a bit different.

"It seems someone has already understood my lecture. Nate why don't you show what that gun of yours can do" Baldy said as he pointed out towards the wooden dummy.

Nate was excited by his new summon and moved towards the front to fire his gun. Standing in a field, Nate pointed his M9 towards a wooden dummy roughly around 10 meters away. Using both hands to get a stable grip, he fired the gun and continued to pull the trigger until all 15 rounds were exhausted.

Looking at the wooden dummy there only one damage near the shoulder and every other shot missed. Nate could only scratch his head in embarrassment as he looked back towards the others. Baldy had a slight smile in his face satisfied by the weapon summoned by Nate while others were covering their ears as they looked at Nate in awe.

'The fire rate is faster than his previous guns and also has more er.. what did he call those projectiles again ...ah right bullets. It also fires more bullets. Although he needs to work in his accuracy he'll get there with practice.' Baldy thought to himself as he looked at the gun Nate was holding.

'What's more amazing is that the speed this bullets flew towards the target. I certainly look forward to his future summons. Though the only downside is the noise it creates. Maybe he'll summon some quiet ones in the future. At least I hope he will.' Baldy was lost in thoughts as he looked towards how well Nate could be utilized in the future.

"Alright everyone, keep in mind of what I said and try to make something different out of your innate spells. It doesn't matter whether if you manage to change the spell entirely or just move up or down your mana consumption.

And Nate, work on your accuracy with your gun. I'll give you guys three months and within these three months, you'll be provided with mana crystal to enhance your mana. Whether you reach stage two within three months or not is up to you. After that, we'll start combat training. But I highly suggest you reach stage two mage if you want to survive the combat training.

You'll be trained to fight against death itself and only with those with the will and determination to live will survive. Weakling have no place in this world. As long as you remember that, you'll be able to survive out there. Of course, if you want to live, then determination alone won't do.

Remember, there is a very clear difference between surviving and living. Now continue your training I'll leave guys to do your thing" Baldy delivered his long speech and went out of the field leaving Nate and the others alone with wooden dummies and other target practice materials.

Seeing Baldy had left Nate summoned an M9 magazine and pushed the mag release button on his pistol to push out the empty mag and load his newly summoned mag into the gun. After cocking the slide to push the bullet in the chamber Nate went back to his shooting.

Olly and others took some time to watch Nate shoot his gun and after a while, they also picked their place and started to practice their ability.

Olly was an internal caster of Earth attribute. He could turn his skin hard like a rock, which increased his physical defense as well as boosted his attack as well. But it also took a lot of mana to maintain the "Rock skin" as he liked to call his spell. Inspired by Baldy he wanted to apply his spell only to small part of his skin.

Annie was an external caster of fire attribute. She also had "Fireball" as her first innate spell and she took Baldy's spell as an example and tried to divide the fireball into small fireballs.

John was an internal caster of air attribute and could change his body into the air, giving him enhanced agility and speed. He too had insane mana upkeep to worry about and hence followed the similar pattern like Olly and focused on turning only one part of his body into the air.

And lastly was Nadia an external caster of water attribute who had "Water Stream" as her first innate spell which allowed her to fire a stream of water from her palm in high speed to wash push away a target effective up to 10 meters. She too started to look for a way to create a new spell out of the old one and soon the training field was drowned in heavy noise of different spells.

Nate was enjoying his time shooting the guns but soon found out he couldn't summon more than 6 extra magazines before he'd run out of mana. After that, he'd need to wait an entire hour before he's mana reserve would recover.

It was the same case for everyone else as they also depleted their mana reserve earlier than they expected but continued to overdraw the mana from the air while resting.

Just like this their magic training started and all of them got busy improving their skills over the course of three months. Baldy would provide two mana crystal each day and rest was up to them.

Baldy would provide few pointers in magic once in a while when Olly and others were too confused to move forward. Nate was having an easy time as all he had to do was summon a weapon and its attachments and figure out a way to utilize them to their upper limits.

In just a few weeks of training and the results were getting visible and Baldy was very much satisfied with the progress. Olly had managed to apply his rock skin only to his hands and increase the amount of mana in his hands to multiply the impact caused by his punches.

Annie learned to divided her "Fireball" into smaller ones and had already started to practice "Big Fireball" which burnt more mana but did more damage as well.

John realized there wasn't much advantage in turning just a single body part into the air so he asked to train in using daggers. His spell gave him agility and speed but not the ability to inflict damage without returning to his physical form. He chose daggers to compliment his agility and speed. He wanted to be an assassin as well and dagger was one of the best choices of weapons for assassination.

Baldy was happy to teach John but told him he would teach him how in combat training. For now, he just pushed him into an obstacle course and asked him to phase in and out of those obstacles. Getting familiar with their innate spell was important as well. John was asked to find a way to minimize his mana consumption and use the ability with calculated timing.

John grumbled when Baldy gave out his order but followed it anyway. Nadia found success in her training as well as she managed to decrease the size of her "Water Stream" while increasing its force. Her "Water Stream" had a small amount of penetrating effect and managed to inflict more damage to the wooden dummy but it still hadn't reached a lethal level.

Talking about progress, then it was Naturally Nate who came out on top and satisfied Baldy more than anyone else. Besides summoning a different weapon on his first day he also summons various attachments to the weapons such as extended mag, red dot for increased accuracy and silencer to reduce recoil and sound.

His accuracy had as well and could land 4 shots on dummy out of ten during rapid fire and could connect all his shots if he fired single shots with an extended time interval. Of course, he couldn't land the shots in the desired position yet. But still, he had come a long way from hitting only a single shot while exhausting the whole mag.