For this one, Ronan decided to sit down. He didn't want any accidental movement to affect the outcome of the test. Once he was sitting, looking like a meditating monk, Ronan started to cycle his mana.

His reserves weren't full, but he had enough to work with. Using the method he'd adapted from the Nine Mouths Delta Mystic Energy Art, he split the mana into nine streams, cycling it once, before the nine rejoined into a single, more potent stream.

Even raising a hand might be a movement too far. Ronan placed his palms on his knees and closed his eyes. All he focused on was the movement of his mana through his energy channels.

Once he was comfortable in his mana cycling, Ronan guided the mana towards his mouth. It might seem strange, but he felt that was a better outlet for it in his current position.

Not that he would be firing the mana bolt directly out of his mouth—that was asking for it to blow up in his face. Literally.

Instead he wanted to release his mana into the empty air in front of his body and manipulate it there, creating the mana bolt shape and then launching it with a second pulse of his mana. He figured if he could master this method he would be able to also prove that it was possible to cast without a specific physical focus.

Killing two birds with one stone.

He drew his mana towards his throat and pushed it outwards. It worked, somewhat. There was a lot of resistance at first, leading to a lot of wasted mana. However, once Ronan had the hang of the method his mana flowed like water from mouth to air.

Unfortunately that led to a second setback. Once his mana was outside of his body he realised that his ability to manipulate it had fallen off a cliff.

While he could still shape and compress it, the difference made his task far harder than it had any right to be. Inside his body and when it was close to his skin, as in the other three experiments, it was sort of like shaping play-doh. Right now, attempting to create the mana bolt in the air half a metre away from him, he felt as though he was trying to stir peanut butter with a matchstick.

Still, it worked. Slowly.

Ronan worried he might run out of time with the delay, but thankfully it seemed as though the mana bolt would take shape before he was whisked to the fourth and final stage of this iteration's tutorial. He was purely using mana manipulation to compress and shape the bolt, which led to it having rough edges and uneven mana distribution. A problem to iron out later, if this worked effectively.

Once the bolt would accept no more mana, Ronan realised a second issue. All the mana that had left his body but wouldn't go into the bolt was about to be lost. On a whim he attempted to use the breathing method which he'd defeated the darkness spell with. He regained some of the lost mana, but the cost wasn't worth it—his bolt started to fray at the edges as it was slowly inhaled along with the excess.

Cutting his losses, Ronan allowed the lost points to dissipate, considering them a tax for his experimentation. With the bolt formed, there was only one final step.

Rather than a gentle stream, he shunted a large chunk of mana out of himself and towards the bolt. When it reached the bolt, he attempted to "burst" the mana.

His launch was ineffective.

The bolt travelled about three metres before smashing into the grass. It had begun to unravel after being struck by the pulse of mana. The resulting explosion was rather weak. Of all his mana bolts that had actually launched, this was by far the least damaging.

The mana simply seemed to unravel, before being absorbed into the mud and air. An abject failure. When taken out of context, that is.

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Collating all the data in the little time he had left before his two minutes ran out, Ronan considered his next step. Visualisation had been the most effective at creating a stable mana bolt, though there were areas it fell short of his other testing methods.

The purely physical spell had been the most destructive by far, but it lacked precision and the backlash was worse than the output of the actual spell. He would hurt himself more than his enemies if he chose to continue down that path.

As for vocalisation… The less said the better. As a standalone method of spellcasting it was utterly useless.

Unless there's some secret magic language to build spells with? I bet the system or the clan are hiding it from me, Ronan thought to himself. Though there's no use worrying about things I don't know. If I find such a language I can work with it then. It doesn't help me right now.

Finally, pure mana manipulation, the experiment he'd just finished with. While it failed to deal much damage or travel far, the bolt itself had been the most stable of all four and proved he didn't need to use his hands as a casting focus. Useful information to learn early on in his journey as a sorcerer.

Looking at what he would need to do next, Ronan sighed. This was going a long, long road to travel. He hoped the destination would be worth it.

Sitting in the dark tunnel at the beginning of stage 4, Ronan looked over the skill he'd received this iteration. Unfortunately he hadn't earned another stat fruit, but his progress on that front was decent enough, so he didn't sweat it. As for the skill, it was another piece of crap.

Fertility Sight (Uncommon): You are able to gauge the fertility of things such as soil, sentient species, and even some less complex sapient species. (Cost: 5 Mana + Variable Mana Cost based on target complexity).

While he could see the value in it if he ever decided to set up a fox breeding facility or take up a side hustle as a farmer, there was nothing going for this skill. He expected he would use it as fuel to create or merge new skills the next time he went to the chronos forge.

Now that he was here, there was no reason to rush ahead or worry about running out of time. He didn't want to stay too long, as it was more efficient to practice magic while also earning new skills and potential stat fruits. He hoped the lack of pressure from the countdown might give him the freedom for these next experiments, as they would be more complex than the first four.

Left with three methods that sort of worked for spellcasting, Ronan had to figure out how to best combine them to make the most out of each method's strengths and weaknesses. He had all the time in the world and he was going to figure out how to become the greatest sorcerer this universe had ever seen.

Movement combined with visualisation. Visualisation combined with mana manipulation. Mana manipulation and movement in concert. These were his next tasks.

The results came quicker when combining methods, unexpectedly. As the combinations were more efficient at producing a working spell, they ended up causing less backlash and meant he could move on to the next without much delay.

All Ronan had to wait for was his mana regeneration. Thanks to his improved base stats and intelligent stat investment during this iteration it didn't take long. He'd also been able to experiment with acuity and intelligence, attempting to find out which of them affected mana regeneration.

What he discovered was that intelligence seemed to correlate with the power of his mana, while acuity slightly boosted its regeneration speed and also had a minor effect on how smooth his mana manipulation was. With those useful results filed away, Ronan realised he would need to do similar tests in the near future for the more physical stats.

Unfortunately when it came to things like luck and charisma, tests were harder to run, but perhaps not impossible. When he was less busy he might give some scientific flirting or negotiating a go.

As for his current tests, the results were less varied than before. Combining the methods brought the resulting mana bolts closer together than the wild spread he'd observed when using each method alone.

Manipulation plus movement was the most destructive. Explosively so. However, his effort in manually guiding the mana meant more of that destruction was directed away from his face, towards his intended target. Fantastic progress, but the precision and travel distance were still lacking.

Visualisation with movement, on the other hand, flew down the tunnel until it vanished from sight, and the screaming whine of the mana faded to silence. He wondered if it struck one of the waiting goblin rogues. While the range was great, he doubted the damage or stability were optimal. With how much mana it consumed he would have expected an audible explosion on impact.

As for the final test, visualising the mana bolt while also directly manipulating his mana to create and launch it? The results blew him away.

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