Arad lifted his hands, sucking the debris from the street straight into his stomach. Eris stood beside him, watching the streets get clean with each passing second. “How is your magic doing?”

“The void?” Arad looked at her.

“What else would I be asking about?” She stared at him, tilting her head.

“I managed to divide it into three types. Null, which is the nothingness of the void, is my elemental type. That’s the part that powers my stomach and innate void breath that erases things.” Arad shook his hands, “This one,”

Eris stared at his hands sucking the debris, this was the null application of his magic.

“Then I have a negative application of it which I subtract void from matter to cause it to collapse into pure energy and heat,” He stopped sucking matter and lifted a finger up, conjuring a ball of bright light akin to a welding arc.

“This is the negative application, it’s the one you use to make that destroys everything in a general direction,” She nodded.

“Yeah, the Fuck everything in that general direction Breath as my spawns named it, I learned it from brother,” He smiled.

“That name is a horrifying one, especially when you hear how loud that breath is,” She giggled, “And the third application is positive, right?”

“Yes, the positive is when I added void to existing energy to force it to stabilize back into matter,” He smiled, the ball of light on his finger fading into a puff of smoke. “For now, I can do two things.”

The air around his finger exploded into a blue flame and it faded quickly, releasing a whistling sound. “The first one is a gas that burns bright blueHydrogen and this one that I had to make when trying to cool my blood when facing Vlad. It’s quite a decent insulator for heat, and it doesn’t seem to catch fire or harm living tissueHelium But making it was extremely harder than the first one and took almost four times the energy,” He sighed, “At this rate, I won’t have enough to make that much,”

“Four times the energy for something can only insulate things, it’s bad, isn’t it?” Eris stared at the air, “It doesn’t do any damage, does it?”

“Well,” Arad smiled, “aT LeAst I cAn Do tHiS!” He spoke, his voice booming in a high pitch, startling Eris out.

“What was that? Voice-changing magic, why did it sound so funny?” She stared at him weirded out.

“It wasn’t magic, I breathed the second gas I made instead of air. Depending on how much of it I breathe with air, I can make my voice sound LOuder and LOUder, and even LOUDER!”

“I won’t call that loud, it’s just high pitched, like a whistle or a ringing sound,” She looked at him, “But wait, if you have some of that gas stored in your stomach, you can change your voice without using magic?”

“Yeah, I won’t call it without magic as I would need to use it beforehand to create the gas. But once it’s stored, it can be called magicless,” Arad smiled and kept cleaning the street, “I’ll try to focus a bit on studying my own magic and void. I bet I could get something powerful by combining it with gravity and barrier magic,”

“You’re mastering gravity magic,” Eris looked at him, “But I never saw you cast a conventional spell,”

“I can do that,” Arad stopped cleaning the street with his left hand and pointed toward an empty spot, Reverse Gravity

The ground cracked where he pointed out in a purple haze and pieces started levitating, “This is a conventional gravity spell. It simply reverses gravity in a designated spot,” Arad wiggled his fingers, “But, the best it can do is cause things to levitate, it isn’t that powerful and only useful as a trap to catch fighters.”

“And that’s why you started modifying the magic,”

“Yes,” Arad closed his fist then reopened it, stopping the spell he had cast. “Look at this,” His hand glowed with a purple light, pulling a boulder to his palm.

“This is gravity magic that pulls things,” He smiled, and then the boulder flew out of his hand, smacking a wall so hard it blew a hole in it. “And this is the reverse of that magic, the reverse gravity that pushes things away,”

Eris looked at his hand, “And you can change the point of effect,”

“Yes,” Arad pointed at a part of the road, making it pull things toward it. “You’re right.”

“I can understand those two, but what about barrier magic? It doesn’t have that many properties to modify besides shape, does it?” Eris waved her hand, creating a small barrier of plasma.

“In fact, it’s quite powerful,” Arad stopped cleaning the street and put his hands together, creating a small plank of barrier magic one meter on each side that floated ahead of him. “As you can see, it has two sides. If I used fifty mana, I had to spread it across the magic and choose which side to reinforce. An equal spread would be twenty-five for each side.”

He smiled, “But, I can make one side have forty-nine and the other only one.”

“You’ll make one side vastly harder for defense. But still spend the same amount of mana. You can’t make a side have zero as it’ll shatter just from the air.” Eris punched the weak side of the barrier, shattering the whole thing.

“That’s right, that also means I can use it to trap people inside a barrier or keep them from entering one.” Arad smiled, creating a second barrier, “But, it doesn’t have only two surfaces,” He pointed at the edge and made the barrier just 0.1 by 1 meter akin to a thin blade. “Let’s make this edge far harder and sharper by changing its shape.” Arad then waved his hand, sending the barrier flying toward a wall and cutting it in half.

“You can use the barrier as a way to create magical weapons, blades, spears, and crushing mauls.” She sighed, “That’s horrifying, especially since they are almost fully transparent,”

“It is, but I still don’t like it that much. Since it can be nullified by magic immunity,” He looked at the wall, sending hundreds of barrier blades and diced them into cubes in the blink of an eye.

He then waved his hand and sent a blade made of compressed wind and blasted another wall.

“I can shoot compressed wind or water blades that can’t be nullified with magic immunity, but I’m limited to one shot at a time. I can fire them rapidly, but that’s still limited by my casting speed. On the other hand, barrier blades can be nullified by magic immunity. But I can create hundreds of them and fire all at the same time,” Arad waved his hand, dicing a second wall, “I use the wind blade against those immune or resistant to magic, and the barrier blades against everyone else.”

Eris walked toward the diced walls and looked at them, “This is horrifying, this still doesn’t count your physical speed and strength. If someone got hit with this, even if they survived, they’d still have a whole dragon around that can blast a mountain with a single breath,”

“And I can use the barrier blades multiple times, so I can just cut the target again,” Arad added, quickly finishing cleaning the street.

“What about fire magic, you learned that, didn’t you?” Eris looked at him.

“I did, but it’s mostly useless as I can generate more heat with crushing matter. I’ll only use fire magic, or make fire with my void if I need to hold back against someone,”

“I can’t see anyone getting a chance against you,” She sighed.

“Nina managed to hold up, in fact, I was the one holding against her. Her skin deflects magic so I can’t use the barrier blades, and she managed to punch my compressed wind and water blades with her bare hands. Not to mention her speed matched mine, if not being faster and stronger. I could’ve tried using my void or expansion, but It wasn’t the goal to kill.” Arad looked around the clean street with a smile, proud of his work. He then walked toward Eris. “I need to figure out other ways to use what magic and powers I have. Especially gravity magic. I feel like there is a lot to discover and learn there.”

“You’re going to train a bit?” She looked at him. 𝑖𝘳.𝒸ℴ𝑚

“Read books. I’m pretty sure Baltos won’t need that much convincing to let me get a look at the royal library, even some secret books. I’m sure he has some stored in the castle,” He smiled.

“Kingdom secrets, I doubt he’ll agree,” Eris stared at Arad.

“What do you bet?” Arad stared at her.

“I’ll teach you about plasma magic if he agrees, and you’ll let me suck your blood if he disagrees.” She stared at Arad with a smile.

An hour later.

“Want to reach the kingdom’s secret library?” Baltos gasped who lay on the bed with Charlie beside him.

Arad and Eris nodded, facing them.

“Sure! But the vault in the castle’s basement only opens with my magic. You’ll have to take me there to open it for you. If you tried to brute your way inside, it’ll destroy all the books.” Baltos smiled, and Eris slapped her forehead. “It’s my loss.” She growled, then glared at Baltos.

“Those are the kingdom’s secrets! You sure want to give them out this easily?”

“If there is someone who should be able to access them.” Charlie smiled. “It’s Arad. He saved the kingdom twice, albeit we lost the capital in the second one.”

𝑖𝘦.𝑐𝘰𝘮