12 Exploding Skeleton

Char had gone home to rest and wait for night to come. While at it, he told the skeleton to keep training the physical boost ability.

He felt that if it could actually concentrate the magic even more, then the lethality would increase even further. He told the skeleton to use a toothpick as a sword and cast the magic on it without destroying it in the process.

"If that much mana could be channeled into such a small thing, then the lethality will probably increase by several folds," he thought to himself while resting.

"But, I need to think of a way to decrease the mana cost too. With my current mana, I can only use it five times at best. That is too little to be useful in a combat situation."

Additionally, to increase the magic concentration, Char told the skeleton to try decreasing the mana used to activate the magic.

The skeleton train with both alternatively, the difficulty of the two was different. To concentrate the magic further without making it unstable was so hard that even after an hour, the skeleton had no improvement.

On the other hand, decreasing the mana used to activate the magic seemed to work, it could activate the magic even with half the mana, but the drawback was the power was reduced to a fourth of its original power.

"That is good enough, I don't need to fight at full power all the time, I can just use the normal amount of mana for a finishing blow. This could be used to take an enemy by surprise too," He mused as he could already imagine his opponent's surprise when his magic suddenly became four times stronger.

He told the skeleton to keep training until night came. Once night came, he brought the skeleton out once more.

He wanted to train the skeleton's third ability so he could not do it when there were a lot of people training or they will notice something strange.

Char had made sure to stay clear from the library, he didn't want to meet with Aya once more, even though he knew he had grown stronger compared to their first meeting, he was not delusional enough to think that he could beat the girl.

"She is way stronger than me, and her summoned creature's magic is the natural counter of my skeleton," he lamented as the disparity between them had not gotten closer.

For some reason, he could not get her image while reading the book out of his mind. She was not the academy beauty for nothing.

Char did not go too far from his dorm, he just went to the place he left the skeleton before and started its training.

"Bone, Absorb the mana until you explode but don't get killed," He commanded the skeleton.

It just stands there looking for him as if saying, 'Are you stupid?' After a few seconds, it finally activated the magic.

Mana got absorbed from the surroundings and it exploded into pieces, not a single piece of bone was left intact.

"Was I too vague?" he wondered as he summoned it once more.

"Don't absorb the mana wildly, Try to center the absorption to your limb and extend it forward, center the explosion around your arm."

Char kept instructing the skeleton, so it could localize the explosion. It kept failing and failing. He grew frustrated, "Was I wrong? Or is it because of the magic?"

Another explosion happened, but to his surprise, he could not summon the skeleton once more. When he concentrated, he found a single foot's bone was left intact.

It tried to regenerate the rest of the skeleton, but the process took so long because the damage it had suffered was too extensive.

"Oh, it actually succeeds! Even though only a single bone remains, this is still an improvement!" he happily picked the remaining bone.

Rather than praising the skeleton, he used the physical boost magic and crushed the bone with it. After a few minutes, he re-summoned the skeleton.

It looked at him blankly as if it felt wronged, "Hmm... Is it just me?" Char wondered.

He told the skeleton to keep training; the circle kept repeating as the skeleton exploded, leaving one or no bone left and Char would re-summoned it after getting rid of any remaining bones.

After two hours of training, the explosion could already be contained, only its wrist bone exploded, but the explosion was big enough to destroy the skeleton's upper body.

"Keep training, Do your best until you can localize the explosion to only one finger bone," He instructed the skeleton before he went back to his dorm.

Char went to rest once he got back. He had spent all day training, even though he already rested in the afternoon, summoning the skeleton repeatedly also put a strain on his body and mind.

When he got out of the dorm, he already found the skeleton standing by the door like a statue. It had stopped training at sunrise.

Char had told it to stop its training and get back to the dorm on sunrise so others won't find out about its training.

"It would be bad if others know about its ability, but the most important part is it will be embarrassing if there is another crowd when I come to pick it up," His foresight pleased him.

Char could not wait and see how much the skeleton had improved. If it could actually localize the explosion to its finger, then he could tell it to pull out the finger and throw it at its enemy.

Anyone would be surprised if they found a harmless finger bone fly at them only for it to explode on their face.

"If it's only a finger, then it only needs a few seconds to regenerate! I call this magic as exploding middle finger!" Char sniggered.

The most important part was people would not know the true nature of the magic ability, "Who could guess that exploding finger magic is actually mana gathering magic?" he thought to himself.

"I can't wait for next week," he wanted to test his new magic against actual opponents.