When Teresa used Restoration Mana, she could still control it after it left her body to an extent. If she was using <Healing Touch> for example, she could guide the Restoration Mana in someone else's body to prioritize certain injuries. With Elemental Mana, it felt like that was practically impossible.

As soon as her Mana crossed the barrier that coated her palms, it was transformed into Elemental Mana that felt completely outside of her control. It was launched at a high speed, instantly moving away from her the moment it came into existence.

With <Facilitated Restoration>, she could keep the Restoration Mana floating in the palm of her hand, though the larger it got the harder it was to keep the spell in place. With <Embers> she was never given the chance to interact with the Elemental Mana, it just shot away as soon as it was created.

Teresa was messing with her <Embers> skill, she decided to take a day to power level it as much as possible. She could already melt the flesh off a Wyvern-Fish, but she couldn't melt bone. Considering the kinds of enemies she would be facing in the stronghold, that was a problem.

If she could make it powerful enough to kill the skeletons, she would be set to go on another murder rampage at the next stronghold. It was extremely Mana consuming to use, to the point where Teresa actually brought her Mana recharging staff out into the desert with her again for the first time in a long while. The staff had lost a lot of its utility as Teresa's Mana pool kept increasing, she was never so low on Mana that she really had to focus on recovery that much.

<Embers> was an insanely useful skill in combat, though there were a lot of quirks that Teresa was curious about. For one, she couldn't set anything on fire with it. Sure, it shot out a bunch of sparks hot enough to liquify flesh, but somehow it couldn't ignite anything. Teresa had grabbed some clothes from the gift shop and tried to burn them with her new spell, but the fabric would never catch fire.

It would burn away, but it seemed the combustion process directly caused by the Elemental Mana would stop on its own after a short period of time. It was similar to the Wyvern-Fish's attacks. Their fire would linger for a bit, then extinguish despite the heat. This led Teresa to question how that worked, and her brain went back to elementary school science class.

Fire needed three things to burn: heat, fuel, and oxygen. There was plenty of oxygen to go around, Teresa wasn't exactly underwater or anything. As for fuel, well, the Elemental Mana was the fuel. The Elemental Mana also provided the heat somehow, so that should equal fire.

Instead, it fizzled out on its own. Teresa's best guess was that the Elemental Mana ran out of "fuel" and burnt out, but what about the stuff Teresa was trying to burn? If she shot her <Embers> onto a shirt sleeve, then the shirt should have heat, be the fuel, and have plenty of access to oxygen. Was there not enough oxygen? Was the heat too hot? Did she burn through the shirt as fuel too fast for it to properly ignite?

Teresa would be a terrible girl scout.

She found another group of monsters, Vampire Deer this time. Alright, she would experiment more after getting some experience, they were roughly level 24. Teresa herself was level 22, but she was sick of fighting weaker monsters. They provided significantly less experience, and she had to kill a lot of them to see any improvements at all.

<Embers> shot out from her palms, arching out like napalm towards the monsters. She had already learned she could affect how far the spell could travel by increasing the speed her Mana flowed through her arms, but it had a limited effect. In the Tutorial where her ability to see in the distance was limited by magic there was an upper limit on how far she could practically shoot the spell, but she was nowhere near that point.

Accelerating the Mana through her arm faster simply wasn't that great at increasing distance. To make her spell shoot farther, she would need to increase its initial velocity. Teresa had taken a physics class and she still knew one of the kinematic equations. X final, or the final position of an object, was equal to the initial position plus the initial velocity multiplied by time plus half the acceleration multiplied by time squared. So Xf = Xi + ViT + 0.5AT^2. There were multiple kinematic equations for multiple scenarios, but Teresa only really remembered one of them.

Why did Teresa know that? She had no idea. It was one of those random things she had memorized for no reason. It wasn't overwhelmingly complicated and made sense if she thought about it. That equation and PV = nRT were the two things she remembered from college physics and pretty much nothing else. Springs? Oscillation? Right hand rule? Forgotten. Maybe some surface level information about magnetic fields, but that was about it.

The importance of that kinematic equation was that only increasing the initial velocity would provide Teresa any benefit to her spell's range. That and getting rid of air resistance, but that wasn't exactly something Teresa could just do. Increasing the velocity would have diminishing benefits, as air resistance would really come into play at limiting her spell's speed. It was essentially a negative acceleration value.

She could also increase the total airtime of her spell, but that also involved increasing the initial velocity. She couldn't exactly change gravity now could she? Wait, could she? Well she certainly couldn't right now at least. The "T" in the equation was how long her spell stayed in the air, and Teresa was not about to do trig functions in her head without a calculator. Give her some paper and her phone then sure, she could figure something more specific out, but figuring out ideal angles to shoot her spell would have to rely on trial and error for now.

If she wanted to launch a strike from a vast distance, then <Embers> needed a lot of speed. The Vampire Deer were currently still out of range, though they were charging towards Teresa and closing that distance quickly. How else could she increase the initial velocity of her spell? Maybe she could build up pressure before her Mana crossed the transformative barrier and have a massive glob of Mana pass through the barrier at once instead of a consistent stream.

Might as well try it. She channeled Mana to her hand, but didn't activate her <Embers>. Rather quickly, she felt a massive chunk of Mana forming inside her hand, but she could shove more in. Make it more dense. Teresa kept piling Mana into her hand until it started to physically hurt. How did that work? Regular Mana wasn't really a physical thing as far as Teresa knew, did she have metaphysical nerve endings or something?

Deciding that putting more Mana in her extremities would probably result in something negative, she activated <Embers>. A barrier coated the palm of her hand, and all of the Mana she had built up exploded out the now-available exit, causing a massive explosion of light to completely blind Teresa.

KABOOM

Teresa was launched backwards from the force, a miniature explosion blasting out from her palm. Her hand and arm were both broken, and she had dislocated her shoulder. A massive wave of white and red streaks shot through the sky, and it rained down over a vast area in front of her.

The initial Elemental Mana had shot out the fastest, and actually overshot the monsters charging Teresa. However, the blob of Mana hadn't all shot out at the same speed, as the closer to Teresa's wrist the Mana was the slower it shot out. As a result, it caused <Embers> to cover a large area. Some of it rained down past the Vampire Deer, some of it landed directly onto the monsters, and a lot of it scorched the desert in between Teresa and the beasts.

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It worked, sorta. Teresa healed herself up and was ready for combat, and it seemed her spell hadn't really done a lot of damage. The sparks were really spread out, so rather than hosing the monsters down in a river of <Embers> they had all just been sprinkled by sparks.

She could iron the details out later, what was important was she figured out a cool trick. It could hurt her more than the monsters, sure, but give it some practice and she might be able to make it work.

The monsters approached and Teresa began melting them. Her strategy was relatively similar to when she used her poison staff. She ran around dodging the monsters as best as she could, but rather than just pumping out as much poison as she could she instead scorched the closest monster to a crisp. The spell did a lot more damage at point blank range when every spark was effectively hitting the same spot on a creature, rapidly melting flesh and causing debilitating injuries.

It was easier than using the poison staff, as it could quickly put a monster out of the fight. If Teresa scorched half of a deer, it would no longer have a chance of keeping up with her. Do that to all of them, and suddenly she was surrounded by crippled monsters who could do nothing but wait to die.

Skill Level Up!

<Embers: lv 1>

Type: Elemental Magic

Channel Mana to your palm and convert it into fire-based Elemental Mana that will be dispelled rapidly from your hand.

----->

<Embers: lv 2>

Type: Elemental Magic

Channel Mana to your palm and convert it into fire-based Elemental Mana that will be dispelled rapidly from your hand. Gain a slight boost in efficiency and efficacy to attacks using Mana buildup.

Her skill had leveled up, and the description had changed a little bit. It had been a while since she had seen the description change for a skill, but she hadn't really been paying that close attention to her notifications anymore. She was pretty sure her <Facilitated Restoration> had something in it about controlling its brightness as well, but at this point she mostly just glanced at her System notifications.

It was only the second fight with <Embers> and it was already level 2. It kind of made sense considering she was fighting multiple enemies that were way higher level than the enemies at the start of the Tutorial, but it was still wild to compare the leveling speed of skills then and now.

With the fight over, Teresa grabbed her Mana recharging staff and ran out into the desert away from Liberty Island. It was still early, and that was only her first fight of the day. Regardless, it had really eaten up a lot of Mana. That "Mana buildup" thing really took a lot of it, and it wasn't very efficient by any means. From that one fight alone, Teresa had used just over 300 Mana. That was less than half of her total Mana pool, but that was still a ridiculous amount of it considering most of her stat points focused on Intelligence and Wisdom.

Teresa found a pack- no, a swarm- of mosquitoes after half an hour. They were all lower level except for one, which was a Mosquito Queen at level 26. Well, since they were all kind of weak except for the one Teresa should totally be able to take the fight.

She aimed her palm in the direction of the mosquitoes, but paused before firing <Embers> as a thought crossed her mind. Hang on, her <Facilitated Restoration> spell shot a projectile, and it never seemed to have a problem with range. It kept going in a relatively straight line when shot, barely affected by gravity. What was the difference there?

Teresa fired <Facilitated Restoration> towards the mosquitoes, not intending to land her shot but just to get their attention and see how it worked. She also cast <Magic Wellspring>, which shot out a blue soundwave that seemed to stay relatively condensed into a streak. Both spells were affected by gravity, but definitely not as much as they should be. There was no difficulty in those spells reaching the monsters, so why did <Embers> not travel in a straight line?

Maybe she would figure it out in this next fight, since it didn't seem like it would be overwhelmingly difficult. Really only the one Mosquito Queen was any threat, and Teresa could handle one strong mons-

The Mosquito Queen turned towards Teresa as her two spells shot past, and its wings began rapidly beating. It jumped, and took flight at a breakneck speed towards Teresa.

She just had to say it would be easy, didn't she? Teresa wasn't the most superstitious person, but now that she thought about it she already saw with her own two eyes that Karmic Magic was real. Karma. Shit. Was that what was going on here, or was it just a poor choice of words combined with unfortunate timing?

The Mosquito Queen flew through the air at a much faster speed than even the Flawed Wyvern Fish miniboss in the fifth wave. This was the first mosquito Teresa had encountered that could actually fly despite its size, and it seemed to have a ridiculously high Agility. That's not great news, was Teresa going to have to start dealing with flying monsters frequently now?

The Mosquito Queen flew ahead of the rest of its swarm, closing the distance in seconds. Teresa lifted her hand and fired <Embers> at the monster, but it was able to avoid the sparks by flying to the side. Teresa raised both hands and fired her spell, trying to use the two streams of sparks to pinch the mosquito in between attacks.

The monster had no problems avoiding it, as it was faster than the sparks Teresa shot. She tried increasing the speed of the spell by increasing how fast her Mana flowed through her arms, but it wasn't enough.

The Mosquito Queen tried to inch closer, but was kept at a distance due to Teresa's <Embers>. The closer it got, the harder it would be to avoid Teresa's spell. This put the two at a stalemate, where neither were able to hit the other.

The other mosquitoes would eventually arrive, and that would put Teresa in a tight spot. She could probably melt through that swarm rather quickly, but that would give the Queen an opening to attack her. In close combat, Teresa was not sure she would be able to fare well against such a fast monster. She had some pretty strong healing magic, but one bad hit to the head and she could still die.

Teresa racked her brain for a solution. She was blowing through Mana, but that wasn't her main worry. The swarm would arrive by the time she ran out, and that would likely be the definitive end of the fight. She had to do something about the Queen before the other mosquitoes closed the distance, and thankfully she had an idea.

Teresa waited for her moment, and thankfully she was able to force it. The Queen was caught between two streams of <Embers> and had to dart away from Teresa a short distance to avoid the spell, which was the perfect opportunity. Teresa stopped casting <Embers> in one hand, and she began to condense Mana in the free limb.

The Queen saw the opening and took the chance. It still had to avoid one stream of <Embers>, but it seemed to have gotten familiar with avoiding her spells. Shit, this one was smart too? She had only really encountered the one pack of durable Vampire Deer a while ago that had any real sense of strategic thinking to them, it seemed to be relatively rare in the Tutorial.

The Queen got closer and closer, Teresa's arm would probably be tired from waving it around so much if not for her stats. Once she felt ready, she stopped using <Embers> entirely, and the Mosquito Queen immediately began flying right at her.

Please work, Teresa thought as she pointed her Mana-filled hand at the monster. She activated <Embers>, and the sparks flew out from her palm like an explosive shotgun blast. She was launched back from the force again, and the massive spread of sparks slammed right into the Mosquito Queen.

The monster was practically incinerated, half of its body just gone. Using <Embers> at point blank range already did a lot of damage, using Mana buildup to treat the spell like a shotgun blast made it exponentially more deadly up close.

Teresa healed herself up in no time, and got ready for the easy part of the fight. She was basically a sentient shotgun, after all.

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