The diary made magic sound… manageable.
Structured. Disciplined. Almost polite.
Circles. Intent. Mana flow. Visualization. Cast, release, recover. The elf had written about it the way an engineer might write about a tool—dangerous if mishandled, but predictable if respected.
That should have been my first warning.
I picked something simple.
Fireball.
Basic. Entry-level. The kind of spell apprentices practiced under supervision. Low yield. Easy control. Clear cause and effect.
I isolated a single cell.
Just one.
I let it follow the instructions as closely as possible—mana intake, compression, ignition. The cell trembled, then stabilized.
A spark formed.
Success.
I felt a brief rush of satisfaction—and then curiosity.
What if I let another try?
A second cell mirrored the process.
Then a third.
Then ten.
Then a hundred.
Each cell was an individual caster. Each had its own mana pool. Each was executing the same spell, perfectly synchronized, driven by one intent.
By the time I realized what I'd done, roughly half of my body was participating.
The mana didn't add.
It stacked.
The spark didn't grow into a fireball.
It collapsed inward, compressing into something white-hot and screaming, a sphere of energy so dense it bent the air around it. Light detonated outward, bleaching color from the world. Heat slammed into my senses like a physical force.
"Oh—no—no no no—"
Panic surged through me as the forest around me ignited spontaneously. Trees caught fire before flames touched them. Leaves vaporized. The ground cracked, glowing red beneath my bulk.
I reacted on instinct.
I threw it.
The fireball tore free, ripping a trench through the earth in front of me. Soil liquefied instantly, stone melting into flowing lava as the projectile screamed across the landscape.
It hit a distant mountain.
The explosion was silent at first—then the shockwave arrived.
The peak sheared off in a blinding flash, a column of light punching into the sky. The air rippled. The forest behind me roared as fire raced outward, consuming everything in its path.
I froze for exactly half a second.
Then every survival instinct I'd ever had—human, cellular, hydra—screamed the same thing.
RUN.
I turned and fled.
Not elegantly. Not strategically. Just raw, panicked motion, my massive body tearing through undergrowth, crushing trees that hadn't already caught fire. Heat chased me at my back. The sky glowed an angry white-orange behind me, smoke boiling upward in a column that had to be visible for miles.
I ran faster than I ever had before.
Too fast.
Too loud.
Too obvious.
My thoughts raced as hard as my body did.
Villages.Adventurers.Mages who notice things like missing mountains.
I hadn't meant to do that.
It was just a fireball.
Just a basic spell.
I didn't slow down until the air cooled and the ground beneath me stopped glowing.
Only then did I dare to think.
Magic worked exactly like the diary said.
The problem wasn't the spell.
It was me.
Breathing hard—metaphorically, at least—I forced myself to calm down.
Alright, I thought grimly.
Lesson learned.
Next time I experimented with magic—
I'd do it somewhere much, much farther away from anything flammable. And judging from how powerful that fireball is, that list just went down considerably.