Cardinal: God Spell

It has been two months since Sora created the 'Fire-Fist: Flash' spell and a lot has happened since then; Sora has formed 100 stars since then and had mastered his new spell down to a science. Frankly, after mastering the casting and basic use of the spell Sora discovered a 'Flaw' his new spell had in comparison to normal Fire magic which was diversity in power.

Essentially, the trick he pulled off that saved him against Lima where he cast 5 precision fireballs at once along with 5 precision sparks could be done with the Fire-Fist due to the nature of the spell; mana already passed through all his fingers so he could cast 5 Fire-Fists simultaneously to fuse and make more powerful. At least that was what the initial verdict was.

Over the past couple of months though, not only had he mitigated this weakness but the practice of the new and improved Fire-Fist: Flash, gave his mana arteries the workout they needed for him to begin preparing the second stage of his Sage Series Basic fire magic. 

First of all, to mitigate the weakness of his spell he decided to essentially create 5 'Paths' through mana arteries, one for each finger and then have the 5 'Paths' converge at the centre of his palm before the spell would form. This not only quintupled the speed and raw intensity of the Fire-Fist spell, but his fire fist gained both an ember streak and 10 times power boost. essentially, his 'Super' Fire-Fist: Flash was now stronger than the Intermediate Fire magic spell when casting normally. 

Unfortunately, while the spell is now strong to unholy degrees compared to before, it took a lot more out of him to cast the 'Super' version of his spell. Not only could he not cast the 'Super' version with a single thought yet, but he could only use the 'Super' version a handful of times before his mana reserved started to feel it.

On the other hand, the workout his mana arteries had gotten from practising the 'Super' version of the spell allowed him to prepare for the 2nd of 5 stages of his Fire-Fist spell, 'Fire-Fist: Drive'. The 'Pivots' for this spell, if he were launching it from his right hand, were his left toes, his left ankle, his left shin, his waist, his hip, his right rib, his right shoulder, his right forearm, his right knuckles, his right fingers and his right palm. This spell had more complicated 'pivots' because it was designed after the straight.

One needed to follow the full range of motion to cast the spell effectively and like the real straight it has a sort of cooldown time because of the sheer number of 'Pivots' the mana passes through to form the path, furthermore, like any other stage 2 spell it takes significantly more mana than the stage one version, Flash.

Where, the flash was small, fast, precise and penetrative; this spell was larger, more detailed, had a much denser ember streak, and was designed to have a 'Knockback' effect on top of the penetrative effect. He could effectively cast it at the moment but he needed a target big enough that he wouldn't attract too much attention when he did cast it. Right now he needed to work on aiming the spell and switching between 'Flat' punches and 'Knuckle' Punches for his stage 2 fire fist; After that, he would work on increasing his casting speed to a thought, creating 5 mana paths for each finger on this spell, working on efficiency, speed, and aim again.

Right now though, Sora wanted to enjoy the fruit of his labour. He had 100 stars saved up and two very greedy elemental cores he needed to fill up. He started by upgrading his Fire elemental core to advanced grade by adding the 5 remaining stars needed, and then straight to superior grade by fusing another 30 stars in. With 65 stars left, Sora knew exactly what he was going to do; He fused 50 stars to his Fire elemental core to raise it to perfect grade and took the Lightning elemental core to advanced grade with the remaining 15 stars in his tank.

All in all, Sora was now satisfied with his progress as he could cast more spells more efficiently since he no longer had any restrictions on his Basic Fire magic elemental core. He could fully access his mana arteries without needing to worry about extra filters, at least when casting basic magic and simply needed to work his arteries out to make full use of them.

Sora travelled back to the Trench he escaped from all that time ago when he fought Lima and figured that he should probably start eliminating some other participants so this first round could end already. He knew what he needed to do and where he needed to go to get it done, From here he just needed to amass the power needed to support his ambitions of revolutionising Magic.

Sora followed the Trench back to the Open Plain where Lima found him and pondered the whole way there, surely Lima had multiple means of killing him even back then so he doubted very much that Lima was willing to let him just casually walk away from one of his strongest spells period. His thoughts drifted to how he fused Fire and Lightning Magic to barely survive the spell and he began seriously thinking about a different brand of magic he could research while he practised and fleshed out his fire magic theories.

Fusion magic, no combination spells, not double casting, but the perfect assimilation of 2 originally separate spells into 1 new spell; according to his flow theory it was hypothetically possible but at the end of the day his flow theory didn't account for a good portion of what human biology aloud for, to his knowledge it was an assumption that humans could channel magic through their muscles like other living creatures.

In the end, Sora put the thought at the back of his mind for now, he would tackle one theory after another, If he abandoned efficiency and began researching new theories every time he got the idea he would never truly evolve magic and only end up giving humanity more questions to ask and less time to ask them. He needed to focus on one thing at a time if he wanted to get anything done.

Sora got back to the open plain and wasn't surprised to feel ripples of magic energy fluctuating throughout the whole field area. The 4th year mages were having a free-for-all and many of them were starting to run low on mana reserves; as things stood most of them could barely cast even advanced magic, talk less of profound magic spells. If he was patient enough he could pick off whoever was left over with a 'Super' Fire-Fist: Drive and wipe them out in one fell swoop, he could then pick off the rest with lightning magic.

There were only 5 4th year students left and Mu Lima was being tied down by two of them while the other 2 duked it out without care for consequence; it was clear that If they were fighting openly like this then they either had wiped out all the other students or the remaining students were people who made deals with some of the 4th years to be the one's to survive the 1st round, He could sense 15 auras around the general area so the later was likely the case.

Lima sighed as he floated high in the air with a wind magician 4th year circling him with the wind magic 5th stage advanced spell, Perfected Wind Wings. The other, who was a light mage, mixed the Light element 2nd stage profound spell, Basic Light steps with with the light element 5th stage advanced spell, perfected burning light. He would aim his 'step' at Lima and aim the burning light through a kick which Lima would block with a 'Flame wall' spell.

The two 4th years fighting with Mu Lima were Zhu Li the female wind mage with Water, lightning and earth as her other elements; and Jun Wei the light mage who had Plant, Poison and wind as his other elements. Li was circling Lima with her wind wings, duel-wielding a pair of lightning whips as she tried to lacerate Lima who protected himself with excellently placed Corrosive balls from his Acid element Basic spell; On the other hand, Wei was bouncing around in a Beam of light and channelling burning beams of light through his kicks when he closed in on Lima which the 4th year Elite barely blocked with Flame wall.

Lima suddenly Launched a Flame spear at Li who responded by firing two spark bolts in retaliation; the spells collided, exploded and cancelled each other out; at least before an Ice spike shot out from the smoke; Zhu Li quickly wielded a water shield and tossed it at the spike; The spear plunged clean through the barrier, freezing it before shattering it, and was about to find itself in Zhu Li's shoulder.

At least before Wie shot 7 wind blades out to thoroughly shatter the Ice spear. In the instant that Wei stopped though, Lima used Gravitational force to launch him at the ground at ridiculous speeds from well over 500 metres in the air, Wie had no time to react as he dropped like a bullet and hit the ground full speed; Lucky for him Li used earth ripple to soften the ground just enough that Wie was only knocked out minimal internal injuries; in the end Wie was still in the first round, He would be disoriented when he wakes up, but he would still be in it.

Zhu Li, however, wasn't so lucky herself as her left thigh suddenly caved in from all directions under an invisible and instant force; Before Zhu Li could even scream she was sent flying into the forest by a fireball and crashed into a row of trees burning the forestry around her as she did. Zhu Li was unable to focus enough to cast magic under the intense pain of having both of her thighs crushed and her badge activated, eliminating her from the first round and sending her to the medical ward. 

After eliminating Zhu Li, Lima used the 1st stage profound spell of Ice magic, Lesser Hail Shard Assault. White spikes of hail shot out from Lima's palm at a certain region of the forest and a good number of observers were immediately Eliminated.