Nateaser: Reborn As My Love Interest

Nati - Ch. 101

The air felt heavy from the accumulated static charges.

As Fenna's mother explained it through the magic crystal, the first offensive spell a wizard or a sorcerer learned was to cast lightning. It made sense: the components were already around us, easy to understand, quick to imagine, and convenient to control.

Even in my world, which knew nothing about magic, we used electricity for everything, making it hard to imagine life without it. Every kid learned about it in school, how electrons could jump from one atom to the next, and carry electric charges.

Every material was made up of such atoms, even the air, and as the molecules and particles moved around, bouncing against each other, they generated friction. Static electricity built up from the smallest breeze, although most of the time the opposite currents canceled each other out.

Especially if the air was damp since the water was a good conductor and the negative charges could easily jump across these molecules before they built up in large quantities.

However, when these discharges happened too quickly and violently, lightning bolts formed, followed by thunder. And with the aid of magicules, I gained perfect control over them. While the steps were still unclear to me, the crystal acted like a cheat item and enabled me to skip years' worth of training and focus on the creative part of casting.

No wonder all the village's magicians wanted it, or at least own a copy. Even the practiced witches learned a lot from this, making their spells faster, more efficient, and stronger. And if it enabled me to cast magic without proper learning, the shaman could do it too.

The need to concentrate with every brain cell on what I was doing never went away, but the staff made things easier. The images flashed up in my mind as usual, though I still only remembered less than half of them, and understood barely one percent with my conscious mind, but my brain knew how to handle them and move on to the next part of the process.

I knew how the charges worked, lightning formed, and all that needed to be done was give it a target, which the hellhound was kind enough to supply me with. Thanks to my concentration, time seemed to slow down, and tiny electric sparks emerged from the creature, jumping ten or fifteen feet at a time until the stepped leader reached my staff. Then the real magic happened.

Once the upward streamer and the stepped leader met, a powerful return stroke zipped across from the cherry branch to the abyssal dog. This was the real lightning, that the people usually observed. All the pent-up currents got released at once, and the air heated up hotter than the sun's surface. The superheated gasses quickly expanded, then lost their temperature and created the shockwave known as thunder.

By the time the echo of the crack returned to me, the monster evaporated. I needed to blink a few times to make sure it wasn't just in my mind, but the enemy was gone, and Emi's jaw dropped. Time returned to normal, but it was too early to celebrate with plenty more targets around.

"Way to go, Nati! Keep an eye out for the Cerberus." Omerta yelled, striking another creature with an attack just like mine. "These crystals and the staff are amazing. My spell feels stronger and I can even talk while casting it. This will be like a walk in the park."

"Not fair, look how poorly they burn..." Ember complained although the fireball she cast was enormous. I imagined, casting these was much more difficult than my simple lighting, and three dogs got engulfed in the flames. Only one emerged once the ball dissipated. "See? All of them should have been turned into dust. But I guess the staff does work."

"Girls, please focus." Gitaut didn't share their enthusiasm, but then he didn't get a staff or a crystal, and he mentioned something about the local spirits behaving strangely. Still, we had some fighters with us too, and they couldn't even get in on the action before all the hellhounds got destroyed.