Charging the magic circle took quite some time, the runes and lines started to glow, increasing in brightness as the seconds went by. He was on purpose charging it slowly so he could make sure it wouldn't collapse, every now and then he needed to thicken a line or add another thin one next to it before taking notes. He started with the outer control circles and worked his way into the main circle. The charging runes were the first area that started to glow an almost white fiery colour, the lines between them charged up almost like molten metal flowing from node to node, slowly making the whole thing glow with a white-hot flame feel. The heat extending from the spell circle was akin to standing only a few metres (1m ~3.2ft) away from a campfire, pleasant and fine, but clearly warm.
The charging continued for a short while more before the aiming circle activated, he had decided on one of the furthest away landmasses that had a small patch of jungle on it, the whole island was around the size of a large football stadium, rough distancing put it at about 3 kilometres away (~1.8miles). As the extended rings of the aiming circle narrowed down to their target, the whole construction was glowing white hot, enough to overshadow the sun at this close range and cast Gilliam's shadow on the ground behind him.
The shaping circle around the whole construction activated for a split second, flickering out of existence as it contracted into the main circle. As soon as the shaping circle was done with its activation the whole construction activated.
The main circle collapsed, but not instantly as the smaller spells tend to do, this used a few whole seconds to implode into an actual miniature sun that hovered in front of Gilliam. As it was contracting it seemed to outrun the contraction of the shaping circle by only the slightest, it was only possible to differentiate them due to their colour differences. The sun was no bigger than a human's head, but it radiated enough heat to make Gilliam's crew, who were standing a few solid metres away, feel like it was getting a bit too hot.
As soon as the rest of the main circle disappeared, the shaping circle followed right after, imploding into the burning sun. Instantly after the shaping circle had disappeared, the aiming circle flashed once before being eaten up by the sun that shot forwards at a blinding speed. It ignited any particle it came into contact with as it left a plasmic trail after it through the air, perfectly heading towards its target.
Gilliam had an almost mad scientist smile on him as the comet-shaped sun zoomed towards its target. The rest of the party didn't share his glee, the only one not sharing the same fear was Petal, who might just not be used to large scale magic. Angela and Aeris were a bit more worried.
The miniature sun made contact, the bright light from the fiery explosion very briefly whited out the entire area in a light bright enough to make the sun seem like a strong candle. It only took a few seconds for the deep bass shockwave to lift them all off their feet, punch them deep in the chest and knock them over, the shockwave parted the clouds and the following fireball spread out at a terrifying speed consuming everything in its path. The fire luckily stopped before it came close enough to cause any problems for the group, but the heat from it even at this distance made them feel like a forge was going to eat them, and there was nothing they could do.
Due to their elevated position, amount of things between and potentially some luck they took no damage, save a temporary bright spot in their vision.
Sitting up, Gilliam was laughing like an insane madman who had just tasted the glee of his creation coming to life, shouting out a satisfied "WOO!" with his hands in the air before he got himself to his feet. The following mushroom cloud forming only had him even more ecstatic, the adrenaline kick alone was enough to have him vibrate in excitement.
It took a long, long few seconds for the fireball to stop expanding before the negative pressure wave came flowing back, it was enough to notice it and move some debris but not enough to cause any problems.
As the mushroom cloud extended far into the sky Gilliam was still quite happy with himself, he was not shouting and jumping anymore but he was visibly excited. He quickly took some notes, changed some things and scribbled some more in his notebook.
Angela finally broke the dialogue silence with her own raised voice.
"What... what the fuck was that...?!" Her voice was filled with more disbelief than it was an actual question.
"A fireball.. Or miniature sun... Or something, I dunno. But it worked as planned!"
He was still busy taking notes and drawing things, sounding very happy with himself.
"No, yes.. I mean, I know that but, what the hell. You could have killed us!" She didn't sound angry with him, or rather, there was too much surprise in her voice to properly get the anger.
"Yes, I know, right. And this was not even at full power. I wanted to make sure I didn't just... die.. So I dialled it down a bit." He let out a little laugh as he said that. Deciding to calm down a little was definitely a good idea.
Angela was for a loss of words, the others didn't say anything either as Gilliam kept scribbling down notes.
A short while after, once everything had calmed down a little, Gilliam could properly survey the damage. Though the fireball had calmed down, there were some trees and forest fires where the fireball stretched but in the inner area of it the islands were now completely bare. Since the fires wouldn't go anywhere so he didn't really care much to stop them. The target island had seemingly been exchanged with an underwater crater. It had long since filled in with seawater but the surrounding small islands had been carved out to form a ring around the central crater. The central crater itself was more than just the stadium sized island, it had taken a decent chunk out of the surrounding islands as well. In short, it was not a strategic nuke sized explosion that can remove entire cities, but more of a tactical nuke that would remove a large area.
Gilliam was incredibly excited at this test.
"No, this is no laughing matter." Angela had calmed down a bit, enough to see that she was actually angry at this. "If you have that little control..." It was clear that she was hinting at how close they almost got to getting toasted, or nuked, but she chose to stop her sentence there.
"That's why I dialled it back, it's all good." He sounded somewhat carefree as he replied, but there was a slight hesitation at the end. "Though I do take your point. I plan to live longer than this, so I think I'll do future tests a bit different." Though he might be underreacting, or she might be overeating, she did have a point.
He absolutely didn't know his limits and if he had not decided to dial back the power of this thing, they could very well have died if Aeris weren't fast enough.
The fact that he didn't feel mana starved or anything at the moment just furthered the point that he could potentially have made it way bigger, meaning that they could have been consumed, and as briefly considered; if Aeris wasn't fast enough in getting them out... They might be toasty at this point.
Angela seemed to calm down at least a little, she was still somewhat agitated but the fact that he at least considered calming down the testing power had at least made a little difference.
"Good, I don't want to die before the prophecy is completed, after all. In fact I intend to live for quite the time as well." There was a slight positive tone to her statement, knowing her healing she could potentially live for quite some time. She was still annoyed but there was a little hope in her voice.
Gilliam considered this for a moment and if he could throw out something like this on a controlled basis, it might reassure her a little about the whole hero thing.
So far her prophecy really seemed plausible.
There was a slight awkward silence for a moment before Gilliam changed the subject.
"Well, I still got some testing to do with the sword and ring, you got something to do in the meantime?" They had already sort of discussed what to do during the testing, so this was more of a statement than a question.
"Yeah, we can do some light sparring in the meantime." Angela smiled as she turned towards Petal, who still looked surprisingly content.
Gilliam didn't respond, he simply manifested the broken blade and started doing his testing.
He wanted to see how the different elements behaved, both in the first and second activation. Based on what Kintas said it could have some interesting differences that in turn could prove valuable in a fight.
He realised that he had a small crowd as he changed the stored energy into fire, having the runes change from their teal colour to an almost waving yellow and orange. Activating the slender blade in this form had it keep the same shape and pattern as the teal blade, but it was again burning with an angry fire. Waving it around felt surprisingly similar to the normal sword but moving it closer to anything had the thing it was moved closer to, act up like you brought a white-hot piece of metal close to it. Plants instantly wilted and caught on fire, more resilient things like stones started sizzling. The more he tested the more he realised that when he burned anything with the blade, a sooty ash-like layer started collecting on the blade. Passively nothing happened but when things were actively burned the spotted soot grew in size and covered more of the fiery blade.
It didn't seem to affect the burning capabilities nor the rest of the blade, but when he triggered the second activation a thick and uncomfortable plume expanded from the blade in a poof, removing it from the blade. It didn't affect him at all but he realised that the rest of his party was not as lucky. Instantly dismissing the blade didn't affect the plume, it was still around him and it wasn't until it was blown away by the mountaintop breeze that the problem was resolved. During the time before it went away the smoke acted a lot like teargas, Angela could easily overcome it due to her personal healing, Savia seemed unaffected like Gilliam but both Aeris and Petal were absolutely not having good times. Having tested CS gas in his military service, Gilliam had baseline control over what it did to your body, so some well placed healing alleviated this a lot until the body could process it passively.
It took a few minutes for the wind to remove it, as it almost seemed like the smoke had some weird viscosity to it, it was still smoke but there might be something magical in nature surrounding it.
The others weren't happy.
Though this was an accident, the group realised that perhaps it's better if he does some of the testing a bit further away, this also meant that he wouldn't have as much of an audience. So a win/win scenario in his book.
The testing continued as the girls did their own thing. For safety's sake Savia was left with Aeris, keeping both of them somewhat entertained as well.
Having a better location he moved on to testing with water, the slender blade looked like it was made of ice, radiating a biting cold, this was enough to cause the air to condense near it and caused micro rain in its vicinity.
Gilliam also found out that touching it to anything caused any moisture to freeze right away.
The second activation allowed him to shoot out water from the blade, it was stupidly cold but that seemed to be it. Or at least so he thought until he saw that once the water was distrubed enough it rapidly froze on its own, like those supercooled water bottles he had seen in the media in the modern world. Testing this with the blade itself, this was enough to trigger the water to practically instantly freeze.
Earth seemed a bit dull at first, physically and metaphorically. The slender blade manifested in a tapered cylinder, with the fatter end on the non-handle side, much like a club. Though hitting something he noticed that it hit harder than it should, almost like it was unnaturally heavy, just light in his hands. This let him do significantly higher damage than normal when hitting something.
The second activation had it widen out considerably, even growing around the handle into a rough shield shape. It looked like it weighed several tons but in his hand it was not that much heavier than the sword itself. Putting it on the ground it landed with a heavy thunk, so there was some heft to it.
Air seemed to focus on lighting, he couldn't test it on anything living but the slender blade looked much like the Aether one he had used before, but it had small tines of electricity ark off into the air like someone was pulsing a tesla coil, the sound was more crackly than screaming as the coils tended to be, but the little testing he could do with it seemed like it acted like a normal blade. The electric effect was probably better against living tissue, perhaps he could abuse Kintas in the dome later.
The second activation replaced the whole blade with a continuous lightning arc, it was painfully bright to look at but for some odd reason, it didn't crackle or scream out like he expected an arc like this doing. Pointing it at a stone had its length shorten like a stream of water hitting a wall before reaching its peak. It started heating up the rock at the contact point but it seemed this might also be an organic thing.
Light was also hard to figure out, the slender blade looked more like an energy beam, it didn't feel like it had any weight and it didn't cut as well as some of the other blades.
The second activation didn't change it in the slightest, there was a heavier energy drain but he didn't really know what it did.
Dark was an element he was a bit uncertain about, the runes alone took a red, black and purple hue to them. Manifesting the slender blade had it take a more serrated look to it, dull black and feeling bad.
The second activation made the blade smooth like the basic slender blade, again it was dull black in colour and all in all, they acted rather normal when cutting trees or poking rocks, he couldn't figure out what they did without a test subject.
For now he deactivated the sword, channelled some aether energy into it so it reset to what he was used to using, if nothing else he knew the rough ideas of what most of the elements did, some further testing was needed. He didn't exactly want to stab someone with the darkness blade, so he might need to talk to someone properly before inviting them into the Dome. Kintas might be the only one he dared do this with, first of all it was easier to explain the concept but... He just seemed different than most people when it came to stuff like this.
For now he considered himself satisfied, moving onto testing the Ring.
This was much, much easier, he just needed to take out his normal things in there and fill it with rocks, then wood and water, and so on. Basically check different densities of material to find a weight and size limit.
Then make some dumb constructions to find dimensional limits, like tying three long sticks together to form a weird three-dimensional plus.
This was surprisingly easy, though a bit time consuming due to the repeated testing but in the end he had a rough grasp on things.
There was a weight limit and a size limit, he could fit more wood in there than rocks, in pure volume, this meant there was a limit to both. Likewise when filling it with sticks there was a point that it was considered full even if there was more weight to spare.
Making the branches on his 3D-plus sign long, then cutting them shorter, little by little, he could figure out that the rough space in there was 2x2x2.5m (~6.5x6.5x8ft).
He was not good enough with weight to figure out how much it held, but using a simple lever-weight comparison, standing on a log balanced over a rock, then placing rocks on the other side, he got to a rough concept that it could hold like 7-10 Gilliam's worth of weight. This was a stupidly simple and inaccurate measurement, so he had no idea how far off he was.
If he tried to put in something once the ring was full, it just failed.
Feeling satisfied with this for now, he put his stuff back into the ring, but left the coat-case out. It was time to find out how this thing worked.
Opening it he started by reading the manual that was put in the pocket in the lid. It was surprisingly well explained. There was a text explanation, a little sketch with arrows and further explanations to compliment the original text.
It was almost better made than some modern building instructions Gilliam had read, it was pretty apparent that the creator absolutely took pride in her work, for the object itself or just the guide materials.
Gilliam used some time to read through the whole thing before he even put it on. The creator, Skirnik, had put some legitimate effort into making this thing.
First of all, the simplest thing on it was a resizing factor, putting it on and channelling any mana into it would have it perfectly fit the wearer. It also worked on the passive energy of the surrounding area as well as the mana that the wielder passively emits, the one you never use, to keep itself charged for the defensive and buffing spells. It stored them in special runes over time and only used it when needed.
The coat, though cloth, would behave like it was solid steel for defensive purposes, and just wearing it would increase the wearers' physical prowess a little. It was not an insane amount but it would be noticeable.
But, the majority of the descriptions were on the spell-pockets. Though surprisingly easy in concept, the guide explained it to a degree that Gilliam understood it immediately.
The short of it was that the pockets in the coat were not physical pockets, but enchantment locked subspace pockets. There was no physical location tied to them so you could access the same pocket from anywhere 'on' the coat.
The way it worked was that you manifested a magic circle and 'assigned' it to one of the pockets, the pocket would sort of consume the magic circle to remember it, you could then shove mana crystals in them to fuel it. When activated you just had to think about wanting to cast the spell and it would activate instantly. If the spell doesn't consume the mana crystal completely it could be used more than one time.
Each dimensional pocket had a physical size-limit on 'about a goblins head'. So not much different than a bucket. The pocket could hold several gems so you could fill it up. You would always know roughly how much remained in each pocket, so you didn't have to fear accidentally running out.
If the spell needed more energy than the stored gems held, you could supplement with your own mana through the casting effect. This was a mental choice so it would never just 'eat it' without permission.
This had Gilliam become super eager, if he could store the Doom spell... he needed a proper name for it, in the coat it could become waaaay more useful. Likewise with the creation spells, or just things he might need instantly.
He had put on the coat before he had properly considered anything, the passively emitted mana had the coat resize itself perfectly. The first thing he noticed was the buffing, it was quite noticeable even though it was not to the point where he would start juggling trucks. But that was not the thing he wanted to test first.
Though he was getting used to it, he still used a bit over a solid second to create the Aether Dart magic circle, but assigning that to, what he mentally called, Pocket #1, the magic circle disintegrated and flowed into the coat. This was followed up with taking a fist-sized crystal out of his ring and mentally wanting to 'feed this to the Aether dart'. The whole crystal just faded into the cloth as he touched it against the coat.
At this point everything looked like normal, he was just wearing a grey coat.
Flinging his hand towards a tree and just thinking about casting Aether Dart had the dart manifest and fly into the tree faster than he could have even said the word 'dart'.
A giant grin grew on Gilliam's face. This was more than he could have even imagined!