—— ❖ —— —— ❖ —— —— ❖ ——
Days went by.
Arion was now proficient with his new spell, Scald Burst. He, of course, starts using it for absolute necessities.
With one leg over the other, he sat a bit too comfortably up against the cabin's tree. He enjoys a fresh brewing of hot water, nicely settled in a thick leaf shaped as a cup.
Blp. Blop. Blup.
Next to him was the cabin's crude cooking pot, bubbling, propped up by rocks. Within it lay fish and chicken which was taken from his frozen chest only moments ago, his plate sat beside him, a plate-like rock laced with thin strips of leaves. On it lay nicely cut chunks of fish and chicken.
Life was looking up. And he was thriving.
Ah~ who needs civilization, when you can just make your own…
After finishing his afternoon lunch, he finally gets up, stomach bulging out, but happily rejuvenated.
"I can't be lighting these fires like a cave man now, can I?"
"A power so revolutionary, it put us at the top of the food chain–but in this world? I'll be on its throne." A grin creeping onto his face.
Combustion's just oxidation in overdrive. If I'm right, Vitalis can communicate through Luminary to drop the activation barrier—so I can ignite without heat, just electron transfer. Simpler than old-school scouts, right?
"Okay… let's start with a tiny ember, enough to start a campfire. Very easy. Nothing I can't handle."
—— ❖ —— —— ❖ —— —— ❖ ——
…
Midday approached. The forest was at it's liveliest, gentle breezes skimmed the lush grass, making waves through tree's leaves. Birds rushing, flying in their home town.
The heat was at an all-time high, quite generous even, scorching in fact, maybe… maybe a bit too much–
Tsss-Fffwhoom!
"OHH CRAAAAP!"
Arion stands there in utter panic, watching trees go up in flames.
Face, body and hands slightly blackened, as if he'd been crafting with coal and not magic, his hair stuck up straight, like a fried scientist after a failed experiment.
This wasn't his first failed attempt, clearly. But, his first catastrophic one.
"Great going idiot! Burn the bloody place down while you're at it!"
Grumbling to himself like an old man with little sanity left.
Okay, fine. I may have been playing with it, just little bit…
As the fire burnt, he flung into action, knowing that trying to receive any kind of water source would have been impossible, well without losing half of the forest in the process.
Instead, with just a snap of his wrist, grass, flowers and tree bark alike bloomed white, ice crystals formed followed by crackling sounds. The frost branched out, immediately climbing the tree meeting the blazing heat head on.
There was an explosion; within a heartbeat, the tree was a battlefield. Heat and cold exploded with impact, with each element fighting for control.
Frost Snap was his ace.
Steam erupted like artillery. Ice didn't melt — it detonated, every crystal flashing into vapour under the fire's breath. Pressure punched outward, driving ripples through the air; every burst fed the blaze, then strangled it in the same second.
Arion felt it on his skin — frostbite and sunburn at once. A war of thermodynamics, raw and unfiltered.
Seventeen hundredfold expansion per drop.
Pressure hammered bark into glassy shrapnel.
He watched the spectacle unfold in front of him, a war of reaction, hidden in a universe beyond what the human eye was capable of.
Ever since he was small, Arion had always been in love with science, a passion passed down from his mother. Where people saw destruction, Arion saw it's beauty.
He saw everything, as if witnessing it in slow motion:
Glowing droplets glittered across the tree's bark, like molten glass in blazing heat –
Ahh, theLeidenfrost effect.
The literal exploding of gloriously splintering bark –
Glorious Thermal-Shock fracture.
Quivering air, neither freezing nor burning. Just pure air pressure.–
Zero-point equilibrium to top it off.
Watching thousands of steam grenades bloom, it hit him like nuclear fusion to a pyromaniac — the kind of inspiration that probably worried sane scientists.
"Hhmmm ~ now that gives me a fun idea" He made a slightly worrying mental note for his future self.
"Mother Nature. A total hottie, but physics… now that's a babe"
Bark was sizzling and cooling whilst Arion whispered sweet nothing to himself.
When he concluded that his frost snap was doing the trick, winning the battle of elements and killing off the raging fire, he went on to the other tree and patches of flame.
—— ❖ —— —— ❖ —— —— ❖ ——
Drip… drip.
Condensed steam covered the area, cooling bark fracturing.
Crrk.
Explosions lasting echoes littered the forest, smoke and steam rose and mixed, now that the area of his archonist crime was flame free and cooled, he was taking a well deserved break.
Sitting there he saw the after math, with the burnt surfaces slick and smooth due to the fire, the frost and ice made it even more strange, like it was a small biome home to black smooth obsidian ice, light glinting off where fire and frost had fused.
"Mother Nature– I have come to respect your playful attempts to win me over, because damn this is gorgeous"
Arion flirted with his imagination as he scans the marble-obsidian looking area he totally didn't cause. It was like the beauty of exact causality with the perfect born effect. Perfect synergy of reactions, aligned on a minuscule, microscopic level resulting in a natural beauty to bloom.
Magic? Or just the work of the universe in the hands of a slightly insane scientist mage.
"Ehhh- but anyway, this spot is perfect for messing around with fire! As long as it's contained in the area and I don't produce an insanely strong blow torch spell. Then I should be good"
Attempt number…seven was it?
…
With firewood gathered and placed in the center of the scar of fire and ice, he sat down, and tried again, but this time, using what he had learnt.
So Luminary Essence wasn't exactly what I thought. It doesn't behave like the elements I kept comparing it to. It's more like permission — a barrier of entry.
My Vitalis acts as the key, letting Luminary skip the usual thermodynamic steps.
That's why reactions here don't need fuel; they borrow order directly from Essence — but only if they're granted access.
"This is something unlike anything I've learned or seen in my past life. I can't just make assumptions or build hypotheses so easily with such an unknown variable — and an important one at that. There's no room for error."
He stared at his open hand, dusted in black ash.
"The only reason I can bend physics here is because Luminary Essence allows it. If I don't respect it, it'll come back at me without mercy."
I have to be careful not to overlook this anymore — with experiments or exploration — or either I or progress will collapse under idealistic stubbornness.
Who knows… if it weren't for you, Mom, I'd still be one of those grumpy old farts back home, claiming their truth was the only one — and I'd have fried myself in this forsaken world.
He let out a quiet chuckle and went back to work.
—— ❖ —— —— ❖ —— —— ❖ ——
…
"Okay this time. For sure… definitely"
"It's all about redox potential. Give or take one electron too many, and the reaction either dies or detonates— in my face… again— for the third time."
He flexed his fingers, the joints still stiff from the last burn.
Oxidation and reduction — electron exchange. Simple in theory, catastrophic in practice, as evident earlier.
In this attempt he timed the Vitalis pulse with a sharp snap of his fingers. The sound cracked through the air like a switch being flipped— friction and pressure forming the perfect ignition cue.
"Redox Spark," he whispered. "Ignition on command."
Welcome to the family little buddy.
A bead of orange light flared at his fingertip — not a flame, just a spark, tiny and trembling. It hissed once, then Arion quickly licked the dry wood pile in front of him.
Flame. Fire made by his hands, from himself combined with the essence of the world. A strange satisfied emotion brushed over him as he watched the flames dance with hunger.
"Ignition," he muttered, half proud. "A micro-reaction. Just an ember — controlled, stable… and not on fire this time."
But it's exactly that, just a cute little ember, I can't just settle with that. I've got chicken to fry!
He looks at his pile of dry, half burnt sticks he'd been using for kindling with an unimpressed expression.
"No this won't do!" throwing the sticks to the side as if his earlier accomplishment made him too good for them now.
"No life is great without good food! I can't keep using an uneven firepit and a few dry sticks"
What I need is a sustained thermodynamic reaction. No combustion this time, just a continuous energy output. Manageable, sustained and stable. Ideally edible.
He opened his hand in front of him, fingers and thumb open, flaring out the tips of them. Eyes focused, closed, when he felt ready, he started pulsating his Vitalis out through and into his arm, hand and then finger tips while making slight twisting movements with his wrist, almost as if spinning an invisible disk.
Vitalis pulsed in rhythm of his heartbeat – one beat per breath whilst also keeping his wrist movements synergised with his breathing.
He kept this up for some time, making sure he was happy that the rhythm was right. Until he saw slightly orange hues humming, visible to the naked eye for a second above his fingers but only to disappear.
Arion didn't feel disappointed as this is what he wanted, he wanted to know the feeling and catch it first, learn it and build off of it.
Whrrr.
As time went by Arion, still kneeling down, hand open, patience in full stock.
The orange heat grew to be brighter and alive, willing to show up for more than a heartbeat, slowly looking more and more like a coil shape, swirling around where his fingers were.
Vhm-Vhm-Vhm
"Well it's more of an improvement compared to our new Redox Spark spell, but the hard part is sustaining and holding it's consistency."
To compensate for these tricky problems, he continues to shape the coil, compressing it further and then opening his hands and fingers at the same time, the coil flattened and widened, allowing luminary essence to help even out and invite more consistency in the coil.
Now it seems more like a consistent energy ring, the only problem I could possibly see is just needing to feed it more essence via Vitalis control, making sure not to disturb-
Vhhhmm-
But before he continued, he observed it closer, longer. Until his eyes widened, not believing his own eyes.
The convection loop had become self-stabilizing—heat rising, cooling, falling back into it's own core.
A miniature reactor built from air and Luminary Essence, cycling energy instead of losing it.
A self-sustaining, tiny Luminary reactor…
He couldn't help but burst into hysterical but humorous laughter.
"A self-feeding Luminary loop with tiny Vitalis control. Essentially a micro-fusion cycle..."
He laughed again, half hysterical. "I built a reactor… to cook lunch."
"Buhahaha!" now crying with additional snot.
"S-somewhere, my physics professor just spontaneously combusted."
He continued laughing at how hysterical and ridiculous his life was becoming, the things he was messing with was a pipe dream back in his previous life. But now, he was literally manipulating these very powers he could only dream of.
And just for the sake of a nice fry up.
—— ❖ —— —— ❖ —— —— ❖ ——
It didn't take long before Arion soon tested out his new 'reactor' by making some good old fried chicken, literally just fried chicken, he didn't have much to add other than that.
The coil spun steadily now, a soft orange disc of heat hovering a few inches above the ground. The air shimmered around it, quiet and deceptively calm.
"You can be called Heat Coil!" He grinned, whilst looking at the coil disk, slightly humming.
Vhhhmm!
"I know, I know– it doesn't express your magnificence, but I'm already reaching my naming quota for today".
Alright, controlled, sustainable, stable.
He nodded to himself.
Next step—practical application.
"Cooking~!" He cheers and claps like an excited school girl in cooking class.
Arion glanced at the flattest stone he could find nearby. It wasn't perfect, but close enough to "pan-shaped" by wilderness standards. He set it gently above the coil.
The moment it crossed the heat boundary, the disc coil reacted. The Luminary field flared, overcompensating for the sudden mass.
FWAP!
The rock plate jittered—just once—then shot sideways like it had been punched by a god.
It whistled through the clearing and slammed into a tree with a sound like a slap. Bark exploded. The stone exploded, leaving no trace behind.
Arion crouched there, blinking, hair blown back from the sudden burst of air pressure.
"...Okay. So the spin has a bit of a kick." He coughed once, trying to look scholarly instead of terrified.
Note to self: don't place objects directly into a rotational heat field unless you enjoy lethal limb cutting cookware.
He looked at the still-humming coil, offended by how smug it looked.
"Right. Plan B—heat a stone first, then move it off the containment field."
He rebuilt the coil, this time flattening it into a thinner, slower loop, letting the heat seep into the base of a second stone.
A soft red glow spread across it's surface—gradual, controlled.
"Perfect," he said, finally smiling. "Hot-plate mode. Civilization, achieved."
A pause.
He sighed, laughing under his breath. "Mom would be proud. Or horrified. Probably both."
Arion just sat there, no emotion, head propped down after a long session, just thinking about the ridiculousness of it all.
Achieving something humans barely managed. And yet, even then, it felt utterly meaningless, he had already failed once. He knew none of this would make up for that.
He raises his head to look at the humming disk in front of him.
Well, at least you're behaving yourself, Mr. Little disk with the power of a reactor.
—— ❖ —— —— ❖ —— —— ❖ ——
Field Entry:
Redox Spark — Thermodynamics / Reaction Control
A pinch of tinder glows red.
Vitalis lowers the ignition threshold, while Luminary channels electron transfer.
On Earth, kindling requires ~300–400°C to ignite.
Here, the spark forms at room temperature because Luminary shifts reaction energetics.
Science:
Combustion normally requires overcoming an activation energy barrier (Eₐ).
Luminary Essence collapses Eₐ to near zero, allowing molecular bonds to break spontaneously.
In Layman Terms:
I can light a fire without friction or heat.
Vitalis cheats chemistry — it makes things burn because they want to, not because they should.
Maxim:
"Lower the hill, and the fire climbs itself."
—— ❖ ——
Field Entry:
Heat Coil — Thermodynamics / Utility / Limb cutting lethality
Vitalis spins Luminary Essence into a stable spiral, sustaining a self-feeding convection loop.
Pots warm evenly; forges glow steadily.
On Earth, turbulence ruins uniform heating.
Here, Luminary suppresses instability, maintaining equilibrium across the flow.
Science:
Controlled convection loop without hotspots —
a continuous thermal vortex maintained by Vitalis pressure and Essence resonance.
In Layman Terms:
I built a tiny reactor that keeps itself spinning.
Great for cooking, terrible for anything you value near it.
Maxim:
"A patient flame serves longer."
—— ❖ ——
Next Chapter: "Plasma, Girls & Breaking Reality" — At this point, science's the least of his problems.