13 Growing 8
Alerted to the presence of an unwanted guest nearby the lab, all of Lux's conditioning from years of service made his body move like it was on autopilot.
He stopped rushing through the forest and quickly used all of his camouflaging spells. Which included smell and aura hiding spells, a floating spell that kept his feet hovering a centimeters off the ground to prevent any noise from movement.
As well as an impressive display of light magic, using constructs he created a full body ghillie suit which he then coloured and shaped to allow him to best blend in with the environment.
If anyone with an inkling of light magic saw what he did, their jaws would've rapped against the floor as the ghillie suit was made using the vaunted Light Mastery. Which publicly, is only known to be wielded by the genius among geniuses, or simply a madman, Krishna Manohar.
Light Mastery, while being the absolute pinnacle of Light magic, actually has a relatively simple principle behind it.
The first stage of Light Mastery consists of creating holograms of light magic by using Light magic on air itself, but that only creates incorporeal projections to actually push it to a construct the trick is to use Light magic on Light Magic.
Probably the most difficult part to grasp with Light Mastery is the fact the method of casting differs from typical elemental spells. Instead forcing your willpower into the spell to direct it towards a desired outcome, you need to essentially trick the light element into believing it's restoring the natural state for something, when in actuality creating the construct of the you're choosing.
Plus there's the fact that creating physical constructs of light require's the dual casting of light spells, one being the Builder and one being the Matter. The Builder spell is used as the skeleton and exoskeleton of the construct, giving an outline so the Matter spell can fill in the gaps, giving the construct mass a durability.
The whole premise sounds weird, but it's much more simple to perform once you get the gist of it.
Or Lux could just be talking out his arse, the white streaks in his hair seemed to give him an unfair advantage compared to others when dealing with the light element. Everything about it came to him more naturally than the other elements.
But that's not to say he never worked his ass off to refine his technique to this degree. While he was still house bound in a toddlers body, he ended up having to deal with the brutal recoil of mana exhaustion nearly every other day due to his mana deficient red core paired with the sheer mana expenditure that came with a poor grasp of Light Mastery.
To even practice the technique he had to create truly miniscule constructs just to be able to attempt creating a construct more than once, but the years Lux spent trying did bring its fair share of benefits.
Using his camouflage, his long time unused stalking methods were quickly put back to the test as he crept closer to the target. Silently he sneaked through the foliage, slipping between the trees until he got a visual on the huge hawk-like magical beast perched atop the cliff where his lab was.
Seeing his first magical beast since his reincarnation on Mogar, Lux was conflicted.
On one hand he wanted to call it out and see if it would be open to conversation, even if there was nothing he needed, the idea of speaking to a massive magic bird was fascinating.
Though the hyper-rational part of his brain screamed to get rid of the beast any way possible to protect the secrets in his lab. Whether the giant hawk was kind and caring, or an outright menace never mattered when the risk was having all of that sensitive information exposed to anyone other than himself.
In no time flat, rationality put to bed his boyish dreams of speaking to animals, and Lux moved to a concealed position in preparation to take his shot. A quick flash of Life Vision told Lux the level of the beast's mana core - deep green, two refinement levels above his own.
Being a magical beast, there was a real possibility of it being an awakened. Knowing this, Lux knew he had to end it in one swift blow.
Luckily that's what he's best at.
Lying prone atop a small mound that had a clear view of the dark feathered magical beast, Lux created another construct that looked similar to his prized sniper rifle from earth - minus a lot of the more intricate details and the telescopic sight.
Creating a barrel was only the first part of his combination spell, next he made a 'bullet' from the earth element and conjured it inside the chamber.
Steadily, Lux held the barrel against his right shoulder, undeviatingly locking onto his prey. With everything lined up Lux initiated the final step of his attack, weaving the runes with his mind, he made a single, high intensity explosion go off inside his 'gun'.
This caused the earthen bullet to blast out of the muzzle at ridiculous speeds, at the same time the loud explosion rattled against Lux's eardrum and no doubt notified everything in the vicinity of his presence.
But the bullet outsped the soundwaves, and in spiralling fashion it drilled a hole straight through the unsuspecting Magical beasts head. On impact, the earth-formed bullet acted like a hollow point, expanding and turning the creature's brain to mush.
Before the hawk-esqe bird could so much as move, his plumage was turned into a bloody mess. Wobbling, the beast fell limply off its perch on the cliff straight to the hard ground next to the fissure that doubled down as the lab's entrance.
Lux warily stared at the magical beast for a brief moment before deciding to use Life Vision to check its status. When he confirmed the creature's death, let go of his bated breath and sighed in a mix of relief and exhaustion.
Keeping so many spells active at once was the peak of his current abilities, and took a fat chunk of mana from his bright orange core, hence his tiredness.
Rising from his position on the floor, Lux dispersed the constructs and slowly walked over to the corpse with the intention of cleaning it up and dragging it inside his lab.
Then suddenly an intense pain wracked his body as he crouched down to use water magic on the bloodstains.
'Aw shite, not again' He thought as the pain forced him to writhe around on the floor next to the stinking headless bird.
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