Chapter 4: Exorcism

　　In the backyard of the "Stigmata Skin" guild, there is a small drill ground, where dummies, archery targets, and a trench have been dug.

　　In order to fight the cunning vampires, the hunters have to familiarize themselves with swordsmanship, archery, and magic. That's why there are many hunters here on weekdays.

　　But the drill ground is rather cold these days, as everyone is sent out to fight.

　　The storming of the vampire coven a few days ago was just a prelude to a major battle, and a large number of lower-ranked vampires had reappeared in the vicinity of that coven.

　　So the hunters had no time to rest before they went forward again to exterminate.

　　Yveli at first still uphold the idea of light injury not to fire line, also went out to fight, but on the same day was injured again was carried back. This time it was a sword in the thigh, if the wound is a little further down to the knee, this leg will be ruined, she will also have to say goodbye to her hunter career.

　　Now with a bandage on her leg, she sat in a chair next to the drill hall and watched Edward practicing his magic there.

　　In the past few days, the hunters who stayed in the guild were saying that the guest who stayed in the guild was a high-ranking mage from the western continent. On the second day of his stay, this "high-ranking mage" cast a super magnificent magic spell, causing the entire guild to be shaken.

　　That day, Edward spent the whole night trying to cast an exorcism without succeeding once, so he had no choice but to give up his efforts for the time being, and then looked to another book.

　　An Introduction to Elemental Magic

　　The reason why I didn't try this book right off the bat is because elemental magic is not very useful in the vampire hunter's system, and the stash only has this one primer, and it's only an introduction.

　　But the books on holy magic were very complete, with beginner intermediate and advanced levels. And according to the instructions in the books, holy magic was the most suitable magic for humans to learn.

　　With holy magic out of the way, Edward can only hope for this book.

　　Turning to the title page, however, a large note at the front again brought him close to despair.

　　The book said that elemental magic had high requirements for the learner's physique, and the humans in this world did not have a high affinity for the elements, unless it was like the magic academies in the Western Continent, where apprentices were exposed to special magical guides from a young age to improve their physique, in order to successfully channel elemental magic.

　　Even if someone is gifted and born with a physique that has an affinity for a certain element, they won't be able to reach a very high level without relying on magic guides to improve it.

　　Moreover, this book, "Introduction to Elemental Elemental Magic", recorded things of a theoretical nature, and only served as an example, noting the incantations and guidance methods of the [Elemental Fireball Spell]. After reading it carefully, Edward had almost stopped expecting anything from himself.

　　Aside from the different incantations, the channeling method was almost the same as the [Elementary Exorcism] that he had been experimenting with for a night without success, except that because the flames would burn the caster himself, the [Elementary Fireball] had added the step of channeling the magic out of the body before transforming it into the element of fire.

　　But after finally tossing and turning all night, Edward wanted to give it a try.

　　He stretched his by hand forward flat, palm open, and recited the incantation, "Eternally burning and immaculate holy flames, heed my prayer and gather in front of me ....."

　　Before the incantation was finished, Edward was surprised to find a blazing flame appearing in front of his hand and growing larger and larger.

　　The moment moved him to tears, successfully condensing the flames showed that his all-night efforts had not been in vain. So much so that he forgot the second half of the spell in his excitement.

　　Luckily, the book was off to the side, and he looked down into it, carefully memorizing the second half of the spell in secret.

　　That's when he realized something remarkable.

　　Because of this glance down at the book, the small ball of fire that had coalesced in front of his palm had turned into a huge fireball with a diameter of more than a meter, and had also set fire to the buckskin on the bed, as well as a few scattered books.

　　I'm a little tomato! What is this!

　　Edward immediately puts his hand out the window, and then recites the rest of the incantation on the fly, " . . at my command turn into an arrow that breaks the enemy and shoot!"

　　The huge fireball flew out, burning a big hole in the iron window grill, and then exploded in mid-air like a brilliant firework.

　　Edward couldn't be bothered to admire the magnificent view; he immediately picked up the half-burned buckskin and flung it toward the ground to extinguish the flames on it.

　　The tattered buckskin was then placed over several of the burning books, covering the fire from the books.

　　Most of these books had only charred title pages, the more tragic one was the one placed on top, The Origin of the Vampire, with several of the front pages burned.

　　By this time there was a commotion outside, the morning had arrived with a mist and the vampire hunters were lined up and ready to set out on the attack again.

　　They all saw the huge fireball and thought that they were under enemy attack, and drew their silver swords and stood at attention.

　　It's not until Edward apologizes to Chief Hector with a burnt book that the hunters figure out that the "enemy attack" was just a blunder.

　　Because there is no good academy system in the east continent, elemental mages are very rare, so people generally respect this kind of talent, after knowing that the huge fireball was set by Edward, the chief steward did not show a dissatisfied attitude, instead, he immediately sent a valet to go and replace the burnt objects in Edward's house.

　　As for the partially burned copy of The Origin of the Vampire, because it was a common book, Chief Steward Hite did not ask Edward to compensate for it, and only in the end, at Edward's insistence, did he agree to deduct a portion of the interest on the deposit as compensation.

　　But Chief Hector also made a request that if he wanted to practice magic again in the future, he should go to the backyard's drill ground and not practice in the house.

　　So ever since that accident, Edward would dive into the drill ground whenever he had time and practice [Fireball Technique].

　　And after Evelyn came back from another injury, she became his audience.

　　By today, nearly ten days had passed since that accident, and Edward had practiced the [Fireball Technique] to perfection.

　　But because that book, Introduction to Elemental Elemental Magic, only recorded this one magic. So he could only tirelessly practice it over and over again.

　　However, the Introduction to Elemental Elemental Magic explained the principles of elemental magic in this world in detail, using the [Fireball Spell] as a model, and there was a detailed explanation about the meanings of incantations and gestures.

　　After letting loose a fireball in full chant that accurately hit one of the archery targets on the drill ground, Edward glanced at the book and said to himself, "So the lengthy incantation is just to get the caster to focus, and to build the spell, you really just need to build a few key 'runes' in your head ' will do?"

　　In the spell of [Fireball], the runes with magical power are [Inflammation] [Gathering] [Arrow] [Shooting], and these four runes determine the elemental attributes of this magic, the amount of magical power, the form of gathering, and the method of launching, respectively.

　　Edward raised his hand again, and immediately shot a fireball out of his hand as he recited the phrase "Fire Gathering Arrow Shot" in his mind.

　　Evely, who was watching from the sidelines, however, almost jumped up in surprise, and the consequence of forcing herself to get up was that she pulled the wound on her leg, causing her to grimace.

　　"Ouch, hiss... this is... chantless spell casting?!"

　　As a vampire hunter, Ivory also knows some holy attribute magic, which are simpler than elemental magic and usually only require a rune or two.

　　But even so, it took Evelie most of a year to master chantless spell casting, and for that to happen it was already considered a natural talent.

　　To master chantless spellcasting in less than ten days, like Edward, was a genius among geniuses.

　　If she knew that Edward had been working on improving the power of his Fireball spell for the past ten days, and that today was only the first time he had tried casting the spell without a chant, she was afraid that she would be shocked silly.

　　"Is it hard to cast a spell without a chant?"

　　"It's not a matter of whether it's difficult or not, a normal person would have to chant and cast the spell countless times before the image of the rune could be imprinted in their consciousness, or else they wouldn't be able to make the rune manifest at any time while casting the spell."

　　"I know, but is it hard?"

　　Evely looked at Edward like he was a monster.

　　She didn't know that this traveler from the Blue Planet came with an ability.

　　Kanji.

　　In this world, with the exception of some ancient creatures, most of the races use a phonetic script called Common Language.

　　The disadvantage of phonetic writing is that a single letter has very little information and requires multiple letters to spell a word in order to convey meaning.

　　But Edward's native language in Bluestar, kanji, is an ideogram.

　　Ideographs take more time to learn than pinyin, but the advantages are clear: the amount of information in a single word is orders of magnitude higher, and the ideographs are very accurate.

　　This is very much in line with the concept of "runes" in this world.

　　Edward's twenty-plus years of Chinese language thinking made it very easy for him to understand the "runes" and simpler to memorize them.

　　For the same rune, the natives of this world need to convert the rune into a word that represents the meaning of "heat", and then inscribe the rune in their minds according to the word.

　　But for Edward, the Chinese character for "yan" in his mind is itself an ideogram similar to "rune", and the benefit of traveling allows him to directly transcribe the yan in his mind into a rune.

　　The reason behind this, of course, Evelyn couldn't possibly know.

　　After thinking about it for a long time, she came to this conclusion:

　　"Maybe you were a very powerful mage before you lost your memory, and all these runes have been etched into your consciousness."

　　"Well, it's possible."

　　Edward, having never studied the differences between different kinds of writing, doesn't realize that his native language has become one of the perks of crossing over, much less believe that he himself is actually a natural rune master.

　　One can only assume that the original owner of this body was a highly skilled mage.

　　After firing off a few more rounds of chantless [Fireball Spell], Edward switched gestures and began to chant the spell that he had been unsuccessful with.

　　"Praise the name of the gods and banish evil and filth with light!"

　　There was still no reaction except for a searing pain coming from his fingertips.

　　Abandoning the chanting incantation and constructing the [God] and [Light] runes directly in his mind, the same response remained.

　　"Strange, why can't you always make it work?"

　　Evely looked at Edward, who was mumbling, and asked, "You can't use the 'exorcism'?"

　　"Yeah."

　　The huntress cocked her head in surprise, watching Edward chant the spell once more.

　　The incantation was perfectly correct and the gestures couldn't have been more standard.

　　Yet the ball of light that was supposed to appear couldn't come out.

　　"That's a simple spell."

　　Ivory stretched out her right hand towards the distant archery target, restoring the [God] and [Light] runes that had been engraved countless times in her head, and then a small ball of light flew out from her fingertips.

　　That ball of light flew slowly towards the arrow target, but arced in mid-air towards Edward.

　　"Huh?"

　　The ball of light missed Edward's forehead, triggering a slight searing pain.

　　"Huh? How did that hit you." Ivory was dumbfounded.

　　An untargeted [Exorcism] ball of light will fly straight ahead or automatically seek out evil filth.

　　Although the huntress thought of this second possibility for a split second, looking at Edward's reaction, that exorcism just now clearly didn't cause any damage, the same reaction as a human being being hit by an [Exorcism], not the reaction of an evil and obscene object being struck.

　　So, she suspected that she had paid too much attention to Edward that she subconsciously set the light ball's target to this handsome-looking nobleman.

　　"You must have done that on purpose." Edward wasn't angry either, but the slight burning pain in his forehead suddenly made the connection.

　　"I'm not hitting at you, it must be because you're a vampire!" Ivory laughed, a small blush appearing on her cheeks.

　　Edward laughed, "How can that be."

　　He didn't notice the scarlet, because the focus was on the "burning pain".

　　Could it be that the burning pain that he produced every time he failed was actually the effect of the [Exorcism]?

　　A ball of holy light that was originally harmless to the human body didn't manage to fly out of one's body, but instead caused burning pain directly to one's fingertips?

　　So is there a way to get the magic to leave the body before converting it into a sphere of holy light?

　　Edward mused slightly.

　　Of course there is!

　　The second rune of [Fireball Spell], [Gather], was designed to gather the magic power outside the body first, before forming the flames, to avoid the flames from directly burning the caster himself.

　　Wouldn't it be fine if we added a [Gather] rune to [Exorcism]?

　　Thinking so, Edward stretched out his fingers and visualized the three runes [God] [Gathering] [Light] in his mind.

　　Sure enough a small ball of holy light flew out from between his fingers and slowly flew towards the distant arrow target.

　　"Success .... It worked!" Edward could hardly believe it.

　　Over the past few days, while practicing [Fireball], he still persistently tried to cast [Exorcism], and this time it was the first time he succeeded.

　　"Isn't that beautifully done, or cast without a chant." Evely marveled as she watched the mass of immaculate white light fly away.

　　"Haha, thanks to that hit you threw at me, it probably opened my eyes because of it." Edward couldn't hide the excitement on his face as he said to Ivory.

　　"Oh? Then I'll hit you a few more times, maybe you'll regain your memory." The huntress laughed and held out her finger at Edward before sending out another [Exorcism].

　　The ball of light hit Edward with a slight pain, but he had a smile on his face, "Well, you sure did do that on purpose."

　　He also pointed at Evelie and mumbled [God] [Gathering] [Light] in his mind, and a small ball of light flew out towards the huntress.

　　However, what happened in the next second took both of them by surprise.

　　Evelie, who had taken the blow from the small ball of light with a smile, suddenly fainted without warning.

　　Accompanied by a suddenly resounding mournful scream, a black shadow emerged from her body, and then flew out of the courtyard wall extremely quickly.

　　The turn of events was so sudden that Edward froze for a second before reacting to check on the condition of the fainting Evelyn