Chapter 50: Red Fireball
Jimmy woke up a couple of hours after noon. Despite aiming to take a short nap, he slept a full six hours.
It was decent, but it wasn’t nearly refreshing. He could tell that he needed to sleep at least six more hours in order for his energy to fully replenish.
What woke him up was his gurgling stomach. Although he was an omnivore, his daily protein demands pushed him closer to the metabolism of an apex predator.
The bugs he ate gave him plenty of proteins, but he could tell that his body demanded meat. Based on how exhausted he felt, bug proteins weren’t nearly as filling as mammalian proteins.
Jimmy emptied his guts into the alleyway nearby, and then he scouted that area too. He was hoping to find a rat or two.
There weren’t any, so instead, he had to have some bugs for his breakfast. He had to settle, because he feared that his body would go into some sort of shock due to the lack of food.
After eating about twenty bugs, he felt content. He slapped half of them down with two flaps of his wings, which was very advantageous, as he didn’t have to waste a lot of energy to catch them.
"These bugs are tasting more and more like shit," He grunted. "But they’re good enough."
Jimmy then focused on the Flesh Core he had stolen.
This time around, in order to play it safe, he had Virena use her sickle to cut tiny portions from the core. How the core was still beating as if it was alive was beyond him, but he didn’t want to ask such questions right now.
Virena’s weapon was as small as one would expect it to be. She was a praying mantis. The work she did on the core was ideal. She cut out a piece of meat that was even smaller than what the system recommended.
For Jimmy, it wasn’t a beakful of food, but rather, it was a speck. Flea-sized.
Jimmy pecked at the speck, and inhaled the piece.
Almost immediately, he felt a strong punch in his gut! It was immobilizing, but its strong effects trickled down into bearable pain, and then insignificant pain all within ten seconds! He didn’t even hallucinate this time.
[Red Fireball skill absorbed.]
"Hell yeah!" He celebrated.
Of course, he decided to put his new skill to the test right away. He tried to summon it, but he was once again reminded that magic was far more complicated compared to everything else in this world. It required working knowledge of the Arcane Arts. He couldn’t cheat his way through it.
Jimmy kicked his leg outwards, his claw clenching, but nothing came out. He didn’t shoot a fireball.
"What am I doing wrong?" He grunted.
[Elemental Magic requires you to be more direct. You have to say, or simply think of the name of the skill you want to summon.]
"Oh," He squinted.
Afterwards, he tried again, "Fireball!"
Nothing happened. He failed once more. This time, he kicked his leg outwards with so much power that he nearly dislocated his hip! His disappointment was impossible to grasp.
[Red Fireball, not fireball. You have to be specific. Other than that, I recommend that you practice caution. Red Fireballs may be the weakest ones compared to other colours in the Spectrum of Fire, but even for a beginner like you, Red Fireballs can still reach heats of around 800°C (1,500°F). They hurt. A lot. Try not to burn yourself into a crisp.]
"Noted," He nodded.
Afterwards, he jerked his claw forwards one more time, and shouted, "Red Fireball!"
Finally, a one-foot wide fireball shot out of his claw!
[-50 mana points]
Its tail was short. The fireball looked more like an orb, indicating how weak his understanding of Arcana was, but it was a fireball nonetheless!
Its red flames sizzled across the air for a second, before it hit the building across from him. The fireball then dissipated, leaving a small scorch mark on the stone wall.
"Hahaha!" He flung his wings wide open as if he was a great eagle. "This’ll come in handy. Ravens? Fuck them! I don’t think that humans can mess with me from now on. Two fireballs, and they can say goodbye to their nose, eyes, hair, and everything fucking else!"
The adrenaline that came with shooting a fireball for the first time was tough to restrain. Not a single skill or evolution from his past had made him feel as powerful as the fireball did. He felt like he could conquer the world!
However, the system brought him back to reality pretty quickly.
[You ran out of mana.]
[Your comprehension, or simply said, statistics revolving Arcana, did not change at all. The fragment you absorbed was enough to get you the Red Fireball skill, but it wasn’t enough to help improve your statistics on Arcana.]
"Damn," He sighed, "Okay, that’s fair. I figured out how to absorb the core anyway. We’ll tear through it a little bit at a time."
As Jimmy cawed away, virtually talking to himself, Virena observed him. The fact that her friend could shoot fireballs now got her excited. She had always thought that his attack power was weak, but she couldn’t find it within herself to talk to him about it.
However, now, when she believed that his main weakness no longer existed, she was more direct with how she felt.
"I’m glad this worked out for you," She said, "You can defend yourself to the fullest now. You’re my friend, and I don’t mind protecting you, but it’s tiresome. I haven’t slept well in a while, Jimmy."
"Oh, hop on my back and sleep," He said.
Jimmy didn’t even plan to argue with her about her concerns. He knew that she was right.
Virena craved sleep, but she didn’t rush to hop on his back.
Instead, she said, "Okay, thank you. But first, let me show you what I can do now."
Right after, she started swinging her chained sickle around. Fire followed the tip of her weapon.
Virena moved her weapon around so quickly, that not only did it whistle, but the mixture of red and yellow flames that followed it, formed into an orb!
This should not be mistaken with a circle. A circle would require one line of fire to form it.
The orb she created featured multiple circles, jammed together to form an orb, providing a perfectly symmetrical portrayal of precise, overwhelming power!
A moment later, Virena managed to shoot the orb upwards! It beamed towards the sky as fast as a fireball, and the orb did not dissipate for a while!
Jimmy was beyond amazed. He knew that Virena wasn’t weak, but he did not expect anything like this!
When he saw fragments of insects, perfectly sliced into multiple pieces, raining down from the sky, he was left speechless!
Virena had consumed some of the Flesh Core. He was aware of that now, but the move she pulled seemed beyond advanced. He could not understand how a beginner in the Arcane Arts could pull that off!
Virena picked up the back-end of a sliced bug, and as she chewed on it, she said, "Bugs taste better when you fry them. You should try them."
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