Chapter 5: I Cast Magic Missile!

In the forest of the south lands Ishida didn't have look for long to time to find food, since after a minute of him walking north he was able to find a perfect unharmed dead rabbit just lying on the ground in front of him.

Feeling the today was his lucky day, Ishida happily took the gift of nature and properly skinned and butchered it.

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Under the guise of the night, Ishida is currently waiting for his rabbit meat to fully cook on the fire. 

Since he has nothing to do but just wait, Ishida started taking the palm sized grimoire from his bag and started reading it.

"Hmm, It is said on the grimoire that for one to cast a spell they first need to have a mental image of the spell, force some of your mana to write an arcane circle in the air and make a mental trigger to start the process of changing the mana into a set of elements or rules."

"Then chants are like a cheat sheet version of copy and pasting the mental image, then how can people even do a chant less spells?"

After theorizing for a minute, Ishida was a able to make a conclusion.

"Wands, staffs and maybe grimoires can save the mental image and arcane circles inside them making it more convenient to cast spells..."

"Then how does arcane circles even form in the first place? From what the grimoire said the arcane circle is like the bow, the arrow is the mental image and the mental trigger is the string..."

"The first step of casting a spell is to make mental image like for example a ball of fire, the second step would be use fraction of mana used for the spell to make an arcane circle to 'cock' the spell and then the third step would be to make a mental trigger to start casting process, in this step a set amount of mana for the phenomenon to occur will be consumed and the spell will be released..."

Putting his hands on his chin to think.

"So in layman terms, magic is just a deconstruction and reconstruction of matter to fit a set criteria in manipulating the laws of natural world or should I say physics?"

"Let's say if a mage is knowledgeable enough to learn basic eleventh grade physics and the laws of thermodynamics, then technically they have the potential to become a god?"

Shivering in thought, Ishida couldn't help but be engrossed on learning more magic and spells.

"Interesting... So this is what magic is, now we know a second reason why Frieren likes collecting spells and grimoires"

"The more you know how a phenomenon works, the more you can be able to fully replicate them using spells and magic."

"I think I already know the phenomenal basis for casting Zoltraak, Barrier"

Ishida excitedly smiled and thought of a few magic experiments he would do tomorrow.

*Sniff*

'Wait, why am I smelling something burning?'

"!"

"NO, MY MEAT!!"

Ishida looked at his right hand with the now charcoal burnt rabbit meat on a stick and resisted the urge to cry again.

*Grumbling*

'Beggar's can't be choosers!'

Ishida bit down on the meat, but quickly regretted it.

*Bleugh!*

Spitting out the burnt rabbit meat from his mouth, 

'It tastes like shit!'

Ishida then looked at the meat again eagerly and then bit it down.

*Gulp*

*Cough* 

*Cough*

'I'm so gonna regret this later...'

Ishida regrettably thought before continuing eating the burnt rabbit meat alone

*Gulp*

After finishing his meal, Ishida then put another more set of firewood on his camp fire before finally laying down on the forest ground and looked up into the starry skies.

'I wonder what mom and dad are doing? Knowing them they would had probably spent so much money trying to find me or even buried me close to grandpa...'

*Sigh*

"It still feels so unreal, all of a sudden your living in the comfort of your home and in a blink of an eye your living into another world..."

Looking at his short childish right arm with some burn marks trying to grab one of the stars, Ishida can't help but worry if his parents and relatives were fine with him suddenly either disappearing or even dying out of nowhere.

'I wish they were okay and are able to move on, I also hope then knew I loved them very much...'

Ishida then used his right arm as an eye mask and went to sleep, knowing tomorrow will forever be the day his life will truly change for the better.

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Somewhere in the outskirts of the Äußerst an elf with golden hair and golden eyes siting on a throne covered with mountains upon mountains of grimoires started eyeing the south lands with interest and just as she was about to leave her seat, she felt a familiar mana signature of her apprentice's student going towards the south lands and made a cocky smirk.

"Flamme, it seems like your apprentice has progressed well to be able to move faster that your own master. I wonder how she will be deal with that (thing)" Serie lazily pulled up one her leg to her self and watched the scene in entertaining interest.

Frieren who is currently flying through the night as fast as she can, towards the south land's unexpectedly sneezed mid flight.

'I should had brought a winter coat...'

"Hachoo"

*Sniff*

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Waking up from a good night's rest, Ishida quickly stood up from the ground and stretched out his arms and legs.

'Hear me world! I Ishida Ashi will have a peaceful and quite life!'

"Guu-ah!"

"OUCH!"

Finally feeling the pain of his burn marks, Ishida's cringed in pain, before finally patting clothes for any bugs and dirt that got stuck to it.

After taking into account of all of his belongings, Ishida nodded before taking out his water pouch and drank a little bit of water, now fully rehydrated and eaten, Ishida is finally ready to do his first magic spell.

'What spell should I go for first?'

'Hmm, since I'm in a fantasy world why not Zoltraak?'

'Its not like, I would lose anything when learning the current underappreciated spell in Frieren...'

'At least this can teach me how properly detect them in future.'

Ishida feeling pumped up, closed his eyes and tried visualizing what, how, and why Zoltraak is made off, through the use of his understanding of physics and common knowledge.

'Zoltraak is an offensive spell that fires a concentrated ray of pure mana, Zoltraak functions to divide the sub atomic particles of a specific target and decompose organic cells to a rate closest to 99% light speed, Zoltraak works because it follows the concept of molecular disintegration through radiation and thermal decomposition.'

Ishida quietly meditated, before feeling his mana throughout his bloodstream and ordered some of it to move to his head.

After a second of moving some mana in to his head, he finally was able to visualize an arcane circle in his mind that looked similar to the white arcane circle Frieren used when she killed Qual, but however after some closer inspection he was able to see that it has some golden hues written on the symbols making his arcane circle a little different from Frieren's.

'So this is how you get the arcane circle...'

Ishida then willed the image of the whitish zoltraak arcane circle from his brain just In front him and then created a simple mental trigger of snapping his finger to activate the spell.

Opening his eyes, Ishida was able to see a palm sized white arcane circle just in front of him.

'I did it!'

'To think I actually got it from the first try!'

Ishida widely smiled from his first successful spell and then willed the arcane circle to spin around him and experimented on it, if he can properly enlarge or even shrink it.

'I can make the arcane circle as small as the size of my palm any smaller than that then the arcane circle disintegrates and the mana return backs to me, as for how big I can make it, I'm not so sure... I only made the circle only a 100 meter wide until I just dispelled it just in case someone saw a suspiciously large arcane circle floating above the forest.'

Finally being able to have a fighting chance to live in this world, Ishida couldn't help but make the first carefree laugh he ever had since he transmigrated here.

"He-ahahah!"

'Agh, my wounds!'

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"Ha ha ha!"

After a minute of calming himself down, Ishida was finally able to stop himself from getting more and more excited.

"Then the next spell should be Barrier then?"

Ishida stood still again and calmly closed his eyes, before finally visualizing what made barrier so powerful that not even Zoltraak a spell that is literally made to pierce any magic defense in the past century, became almost useless in present standards.

'Barrier is a defensive spell that uses six dense layers upon layers of arcane circles that are intertwined with each other to form a singular hexagonal shape and through the use of the natural energy absorption properties of a gridded honey comb pattern it is capable of absorbing most kinetic and mana attacks before finally using its absorbed mana to counter attack the next set of spells, the only time a barrier spell is unable to fully block a spell is if got overload with too much mana making it automatically self combust by shattering and using the absorbed mana to either negate or weaken the spell.'

Doing same thing he did when trying to cast Zoltraak, Ishida quickly moved his mana into his head and was able see a whitish colored arcane circle that looked completely different from Zoltraak's, he immediately made a mental trigger of flipping a switch and willed it into reality.

Not wasting anytime more time, Ishida quickly using made a single row of whitish honeycomb barriers just enough to completely block his silhouette.

'So my theory of the basic barrier spell is correct? I thought it wouldn't be accurate and fail but lo and behold a defensive barrier spell is like very thick arcane spells intertwined with each other, that also serves as a function to absorb, protect and counter spells instantly...'

Scratching his head, Ishida then looked at the barrier in amazement.

'Who ever made this spell has got be a genius!' 

'You don't even have to make an mental trigger for it, because it works systematically!'

Dispelling the barrier Ishida then sat down on the ground in contemplation.

'There is so many more mysterious, magic has in store and there is literally so many options of fighting with magic!'

"What if instead of using the barrier magic as a way to protect your self from your enemies spells why not use it to trap your enemies in it and change some arcane circle that make the barrier into Zoltraaks to so that's in guaranteed to obliterate them?" 

Ishida shivered in excitement thinking of how many possibilities magic has in store for him and the many creative ways he can use it for.

'Blood manipulation'

'Energy manipulation'

'Cellular acceleration.'

'Gravity manipulation'

'Vector manipulation...'

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*Sigh*

"I'm still a long way to manipulating time, but a man sure can hope"

Standing up from the ground again, Ishida clenched his fist tight before finally training his magic.

Making three palm sized individual arcane circles in front him, Ishida couldn't help but think about his one friend who always used a specific spell to solve any problem they encountered when playing dnd and smirked before chanting.

"I cast magic missile!"

Snapping his finger the white arcane circles immediately fired a beam of mana towards an unsuspecting tree.

*Boom*

*Boom*

*Boom*

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*Cough*

*Cough*

Coughing from the amount of dust he accidentally inhaled from the result of attack.

*Cough*

After a minute of the waiting for the dust to finally set it, Ishida was finally able to see the true strength of magic.

'Well Damn...'

In front of him, three large holes were found on the first tree, then the one behind it and one behind it until he could no longer see where the holes went.

Taking out his diary from his hide bag and a piece of charcoal, Ishida then quickly noted

(Note to self never use Zoltraak for hunting...)

Putting his diary back to his bag, Ishida happily started walking north of the south lands again.

'I can't wait to see what the central lands is like!'

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Unbeknownst to him, Ishida is now considered the biggest target of all mages around the south and central land is hurriedly looking for, so that normal citizens who are living outside of the major cities won't die from excessive mana toxicity.