Streamlined Spellcasting

After being directed to the door belonging to the vacant room, Einer closed the door behind him, finally able to relax from the continuous pressure of being around other living beings. People that he couldn't just easily think of as enemies or background characters and treat accordingly, but had to talk to and manage relationships with.

'This training room thing is even better than I thought, I don't have to deal with any malicious guild officials that I'm not allowed to attack, professional and intimidating employees, or confusing adventurer acquaintances.'

'If my plan to become all powerful succeeds... I'll never have to socially interact again!'

He sighed and bounced on his feet a few times, hyping himself up to make the most out of the time he had here.

Einer didn't need to keep track either, since apparently the old guy would come to 'kick him out' when his time was up.

With a sweeping glance, Einer took in everything there was to see inside the expensive training room designed specifically with powerful adventurers in mind.

'the hell is this?'

If the previous room was a dome-like space 20 meters across and 5 meters high, than this triangle shaped room was most likely more than 100 meters in length from the door to the end of the room.

As the space went further out, the walls expanded from just a few meters apart, to around 100 meters as well. It made sense for it to be shaped like this, considering that they wanted to give a large amount of space, however there were the other rooms connected to the main dome-like one which obviously required their own space.

Einer could only wonder how many of these there were in total, since he hadn't tried to count the number of doors.

The walls, floor, and ceiling were all made out of a beige material that shared similarities to both stone and metal, the only details that filled the empty space being rivets that ran along the room like a grid, causing the entire place to seem as though it was constructed out of panels of the material.

Despite the space being large, open, and empty, the beige color made it easy on the eyes and much more comfortable to be in, especially for the first time.

'I'm assuming that this material can take a beating, this place being catered primarily to Jade Rankers and all.'

Another thing Einer noticed was that he could sense arcane energy in the air.

'Magic? Normally the only places I sense mana are inside of living things or inside of spells, but this entire place feels filled up with the stuff.'

Without wasting any of his time, Einer conjured a fireball in his palm using an insignificant portion of his arcana capacity.

He let the apple-sized sphere fly off towards the far wall, losing a bit of speed before causing an explosion that could blow off the limb of any average human.

'Well since we're here to test things, let's see exactly how fast I can throw those out.'

An excited grin appeared on Einer's face, another fireball like the last growing in his hand.

Soon, he was pitching like a mad man, periodically switching between his left and right arms. A stream of explosions constantly rang out against the wall at the end of the chamber, and it was quite a satisfying sight to see.

Einer longed for the day that the stream of explosions became a barrage instead.

When he started, it had taken a few seconds for each cast, since he had to get used to putting in the exact same amount of energy each time.

Until now he had basically just poured a large portion of mana into each spell, only assessing the approximate value of it right before shooting it out, when it would already be too late to reclaim the energy.

With his ever increasing sorcery stat, and the effects of [Novice Sorcery], Einer eventually got into the groove of controlling his energy consumption, the most basic of skills.

At his new pace, he could release the weak fireballs in just under a second, and when he stopped making noticeable progress, he stepped back to think.

'That was probably around ten minutes worth of casting, and I get the feeling that right now, even if I keep that up, my casting won't necessarily get much faster.'

Einer noticed that it wasn't his execution of the steps in the casting process that were shortening, but that it was his timing of the steps and the speed at which he began the next one after the previous was finished was improving.

Essentially, in that short time, he had streamlined the process closer to what felt like his limit.

'On top of increasing my sorcery stat, I'm sure that if I get another passive like [Novice Sorcery] I can reach even faster speeds through better control, I should also practice making higher firepower versions at an exact standard as well.'

'In combat, knowing exactly what my spell is going to do damage-wise will be helpful... I think'

Einer took a stance, and began drawing out a much larger quantity of arcana.

He imagined what line he would give in a fight when he used this move,

"Heh... it looks like you made me use 5% of my power. Not bad."

A core of intensely burning flames rapidly formed, before launching out like a cannon ball and colliding against the opposite wall far more quickly than before and without losing any of its speed on top of that.

While the noise was mostly neutralized by the room's properties, the wind from the blast remained and blew Einer's brown hair back behind his head, giving him a refreshing feeling like an unexpected sudden breeze on a summer's day.

"mmm, perfect."

Einer said as he gave a chef's kiss to the open air.

He began creating another as close to the previous as he could, firing it off while paying close attention to the shape, size, and feel of the explosion.

'Hmm, that was a bit weaker, I can only try casting it slowly and carefully to get a good feel for it before prioritizing speed again.'

When Einer was about to start channeling his energy again however, he noticed something odd with his capacity.

'I'm only down about 3%?'

When he took a moment to close his eyes and pay more attention to his sixth sense for mana, Einer figured out not only what was happening, but why it was happening too.

'On top of my body using my own energy to create arcana, the energy in the air is also being absorbed by my body?'

'Not only that, but the amount I'm gaining from the passive absorption is far more than my natural recovery rate.'

Only a short moment later, Einer's capacity was completely full again.

Kneeling down to the ground, he examined one of the many rivets in the training room, finding that a constant stream of arcana flowed out, diffusing into the open space.

'I see, these rooms are constructed not only to resist attacks, but to be able to contain arcane energy within. On top of that, there must be an artifact or item of some kind that is responsible for generating the energized air that automatically enters my body, and I can only imagine that it runs on a fuel of some kind, no wonder the operating costs are what they are.'

Einer realized that this was really the only use for an artifact of that kind, since there was really no combat application to such an item.

Even if someone could somehow recreate these conditions on a battlefield, what's stopping the enemy from taking advantage of it as well? It would be too difficult under any thinkable circumstances to try.

After spending the next five minutes adjusting his arcana output to match his rate of energy absorption, Einer began to let loose fireballs that consumed mana at the exact rate he was gaining it, with a focus on streamlining the casting process closer to his maximum physical and mental potential.

The minutes passed by quickly as bang after bang rang out, the end nearing seemingly just as it had started for Einer who was completely immersed in shooting off each fireball just as the last had exploded.

Even if he could only fire one at a time, and with more than a second in between due to the increased control and power required for these higher output fireballs, Einer still had fun letting loose for a change.