One Last System

The bolt, at its core, was a simple spell. It was a bunch of mana bundled together, shaped in an aerodynamical form, and infused with a simple intent consisting of direction and purpose.

It was its simple structure that allowed me to use it to chip away at the power of the otherwordly monsters by putting this world's mana against their anti-mana.

Yet, the bolt that I just shot out was different.

Rather than being guided with just the intent infused directly into the mana, it actually had a small array fitted at its core.

From a purely mechanical point of view, the one thing that the presence of this array-filled pebble did was add some mass to the otherwise purely magical attack.

But it wasn't those few grams of stone that would make a difference. It was the formation that I embedded into the pebble that made things interesting.

BOOM!

The second my bolt crashed into the front wave of monsters, the formations on the pebble overloaded. It was one of the simplest activation mechanisms one could imagine, similar to how early explosives would ignite on impact rather than over an electric signal.

And the moment the most fragile parts of the formation burned out, for but a single instant, the task of the formation changed. And for a single millisecond, rather than stabilizing the space around it, the formation imprinted upon the pebble started to produce sparks.

They weren't physical sparks, of course. Instead, the sparks that the formation produced altered the intent within the now condensed mana of the bolt, turning it into a proper explosive!

CRACKABOOM!

Near instantly after the bolt turned into a powerful shockwave that culled a huge chunk of monsters right away, a black bolt descended upon the hit zone, eradicating any and all that were unlucky enough to survive up to that point.

"That was nice," I muttered.

There was an unavoidable sense of visceral joy that a man would get from blowing stuff up.

And when that stuff turned out to be monsters that were eager to hurt me and the people behind me, thus making it morally correct to defend myself?

The grin on my lips grew even larger. Yet, I had no time to just enjoy myself.

So, I picked up another of the pebbles that I prepared before the wave appeared and flung it forward in the same manner I did just a moment earlier.

Poof!

This time, the effect was different. The shockwave appeared as soon as the stone left my direct zone of control, accelerating at a rate greater than the air could handle.

And then, as soon as some unlucky monster happened to be in within the stone's path...

BOOM!

Another shockwave appeared, this time turning into a storm of fire.

It was cinematic with all the flames that arouse amidst the monsters... But a mere second later when the wave passed over the burning area, the reality proved that visually great stuff wasn't all that effective at all.

"Scratch the fireworks, I guess," I muttered, clicking my tongue with dissatisfaction.

There was a visceral join in blowing stuff up... but right now I had to be efficient, not flashy.

"Let's try another one," I said in a cheerful voice as if I was in the middle of a party rather than awaiting the moment the monsters would inevitably crash into us.

And so, I picked up the biggest of the pebbles I picked before stepping forward with my left leg and pushing my right hand to the back.

'Let's see how this one will do,' I thought, jerking my entire upper body forward, pushing my right arm ahead, and taking a step with my right leg all at the same time.

Ting!

The sound that reached my ears when my throw sent the stone flying out of my control zone was different from what I expected.

'Was there some sort of metal ore inside?' I thought, recognizing the sound as something one could expect from a swordfight rather than from the stone falling apart.

Because that's what the formations I imprinted onto that particular piece were aimed at.

Rather than serving as a means to carry the bolt forward while using its energy to reinforce the space it passed through, the formations caused the stone to split into myriad pieces.

This time, my attack wasn't aimed at using my mana to bring forth death and destruction. Instead, it turned the stone into something akin to a grapeshot, where each of the grapes... no longer had the complex formation necessary to reinforce the space around it.

'It's coming,' I thought, sensing how the fabric of space around me jerked.

And then, right as the scattered pieces of the stone reached the approaching wave of the monsters, a myriad of black lightning appeared in the air.

They didn't strike right where the parts of the stone were. No, instead, they all struck right at the point where the stone fell apart... only to then split into a thousand different strikes that then burned through the paths that each individual grape took, all the way before delivering their final blow against the unlucky monsters ahead!

"Woah!" I exclaimed when my body wobbled under the shockwave caused by the appearance of the black lighting.

I ended up taking a step to the back and then another one, all for the sake of stabilizing myself back.

Yet, for how shocking the aftereffect of my experimental grapeshot was... It was its results that caused me to stumble when I brought my eyes back up.

"What the hell was that..." Levi freaked out behind my back while Mia...

Mia simply remained silent. She stared wide-eyed at the disaster I willingly brought upon the world, easily capable of recognizing the same force that nearly killed me just a few days ago.

"The drawback of using the pure mana in a world that falls apart under its power," I explained before shaking my head and raising all the stones that I had left in my left hand, picking a few of them at once.

The monsters kept on running in our direction... and now they got too close for me to keep comfortably testing out my new devices.

What's more, if I kept on going the way I did right now, there would be no materials left out of them for me to upgrade my formations at all!

"Well then, I need to start taking this situation seriously," I muttered to myself, taking one last look at the stones in my head before pouring them all into the pouch by my belt.

And so, I poured most of my mana back into my wardens before bringing them all up to the front of my killzone.

"I had my fun, now it's time to do the work!"