The Way Ahead 4 by Kaleb

Author:Kaleb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Podium Publishing
Published: 2023-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Completed Paths

CharLimitCanttalkmuchNocluewhathappenedDidmybesttohelpyouli, Mage, Skilled Arcanist, Physical Alchemist, Bomber, Linguist, Beginner, Warrior, Path Less Traveled, Athlete, Scout, Unkillable, Superior Alchemist, Adventurer, Explorer, Outsider, Skill Researcher, Wanderer, Alchemical Warrior, Novice Pyromancer, Novice Ritualist, Alchemist, Physicist, Engineer, Physical Arcanist, Biologist, Practical Alchemist, Fey Scion, Feytouched, Skilled Arcanist

CHAPTER 10

Unafrayed

Edwin carefully Infused the water he poured out, the mana connecting to and binding with the liquid while it made its way through many tubes and pipes. It was far more complicated than strictly necessary for his mana to properly “sink in” and associate with the water, but it did make an excellent obstacle course for his control.

He’d already gotten to the point where he could pretty reliably keep his grip for as long as he needed, but he wasn’t able to keep the Infused water separate from a larger mass. As soon as the two liquids touched, they’d instantly mix and dilute his Infusion. The only way he could avoid it was by maintaining two separate Infusions while they combined, but even that resulted in an almost homogeneous mixture of the two instances.

Right now, he was trying something different. At the end of the tubes wasn’t another pool of water, but instead what he’d settled on calling “alchemist’s fire,” firevine sap concentrated and Refined into incredible flammability. It was even more flammable than white phosphorus, but thankfully it didn’t burn quite as hot or as fast. It didn’t mix well with water, but that was what he was trying to counteract.

Water fed into the sealed vial, and Edwin carefully expanded the container at about the same rate as water was being fed in. It wasn’t perfect, having frequently found himself either stopped up or being sucked into a vacuum, but he was improving.

Inside the vial, Edwin felt his mana coil and try to mix with the intense fire magic present in the oil, but the two just slid off like, well, oil and water. But that was all right. He’d experienced that problem before, and he was pretty sure he knew how to deal with it.

It would have looked very boring to any observers, but Edwin found himself embroiled in his attempts, trying to first break down the larger clumps of fire into smaller bubbles. He squeezed, fighting past the resistance, and felt satisfaction as a bonfire burst into campfires. Then, he hunted down each and every campfire, turning them into cooking fires. Then he hunted them down again, breaking cooking fires into Bunsen burners.

Just what he needed.

Bit by bit, Edwin took his Infused water, a veritable ocean amid the countless tiny fires it surrounded like stars in the night sky, and fed it, trickle by trickle, into the Bunsen burners. In theory, he could probably use much larger quantities of mana, but that was harder to control. But at these scales, he could combine the fire and the water into, well, boiling water. At least in theory.

In practice, his sloppy attempts to merge the two types of magic was exceptionally wasteful. By the time

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