The Green Caterpillar collapsed on the ground and disappeared in a cloud of green smoke, but its webbing still remained entangled around me.
I made another careless mistake, but Durandal has once again saved me from falling into a pretty bad spot. That being said, it turns out that Wall Magic is much more difficult to use than I initially thought, or maybe it's just a matter of me not using it properly? I wonder if the result was the same even if I used Fire Wall instead of Breeze Wall? No, probably not. If such a simple monster was able to wait until my spell ran out of time and disappeared, it would have probably done the same no matter what type of Wall I would have used, be it Fire Wall or Water Wall.
Man, what a total failure.
Based on what I saw now, the exact width of the Breeze Wall was approximately one and a half meters, so as long as I or the enemy would move to the sides of it, it would technically still be possible for us to attack even with the Wall fully deployed, unless I would have used two of them to actually block the corridor entirely. Alright, I guess that is a lesson learned for me then. Now I just have to make sure that such embarrassing failures won't happen to me ever again.
Our next opponents were Needlewoods and Green Caterpillars. I tried using Breeze Storm against them. With the sharp sound of the wind cutting through the air, the monster's bodies have all been shaken, especially the branches of Needlewoods who looked like they were nothing more but tree saplings ravaged by the tropical typhoon. Yup, it looks like Breeze Storm will also be pretty effective as a general-purpose Wind Magic AoE spell.
After the spell died down, it became obvious that, just like with all the others, another attack will be needed to properly put all of the enemies down. I attacked the Needlewood that was coming towards me with a Breezeball, while Roxanne disposed of the Green Caterpillars by slashing them with her Scimitar. While using magic I couldn't attack with Durandal at the same time, so I had no choice but to stay in front of the approaching Needlewood before I could hit it with another spell. Launching another Breezeball at it to stagger it, I then hurriedly dodged one of its branches which was being swung at me with the momentum it gained before my spell hit it.
「Here it comes!」
Roxanne's voice echoed in my ears. It was not a loud shout by any means, but it was audible enough for me to hear it firmly and prepare for what was approaching.
When I turned towards one of the Green Caterpillars, I saw that it was deploying an orange magic circle beneath its body, meaning that it was preparing to unleash a Web Spit attack again. Okay, you big bug, you're on! This time I won't allow myself to be had like a noob.
This time I waited until the Green Caterpillar began to spit the webbing out of its mouth, and deployed a Fire Wall at the last possible moment. Now that the sticky threads were already flying out of its mouth there was no way it could have changed their trajectory or adjust its position to bypass my Fire Wall, so it crushed into the flames and made a sharp hissing noise.
Now that I successfully stopped the web from hitting me, I tried to see if I'll be able to cast a second Fire Wall While the first one was still active, but unfortunately that was a no-go. As long as the first Fire Wall was burning, I couldn't cast if for a second time next to the already existing one, so in a sense it was the same with how I could not use two ball-type or storm-type spells in rapid succession, meaning that only one spell can be used at a given time, which is a shame because being able to completely block the corridor so that the enemies wouldn't be able to approach me at all would be quite handy of an option to have, but I didn't have the time to properly contemplate it, because other Needlewoods were just about ready to attack me from the other side while I was focused on the web-spitting Green Caterpillar.
I released another Breeze Storm towards them, their bodies were shaken along with one another Green Caterpillar that got caught in the blast. Overall, it took me four castings of Breeze Storm to finish off the current group of enemies. If only I had used Breeze Storm instead of that one Breeze Wall, maybe that number could have been taken down to three. Allowing me to save that much MP for other spell in case I ever needed them. Well, I guess situations like that cannot be avoided when performing experiments. Now I at least know that I can only use one spell at a time, which will save me the potential embarrasement and quite possibly harm if I tried to pull a stunt like that off while fighting against stronger opponents.
Now then, let us move to the final phase of today's experiments. I have already tested Beginner's Fire Magic, Beginner's Water Magic and Beginner's Wind Magic, so the only one left to try out is the Beginner's Earth Magic.
However, this time, instead of shouting things like Earthball, Earth Wall Or Earth Storm, let's try throwing the system a little curve ball, shall we? When we think earth, what do we typically associate it with? Most likely rocks, dirt and sand. With that said, going backwards from the list of those three things…
(Sandball!)
Well well well, would you look at that, I got it the first time around this time! Am I a genius when it comes to those things or what? The small Earthball was formed in my hand and shot itself forward, crashing into the Labyrinth's wall, cracking it a little. Oh, wait, not Earthball. The command that got e the immediate result was Sandball, so that's how I should probably call it. Yeah, Sandball it is then.
Next, I tried casting Sand Wall. Like the name implied, it created a wall of solid sand to erupt from the ground in front of me. After a while, it dissipated just like the Water Wall, but instead leaving a pile of sand behind it. But unlike all the other versions of the Wall spell, I cannot possibly fathom what kind of usage would sand be off to me. Meaning that it was effectively useless if I cannot process it or utilize it in making it into anything else.
The next monsters that appeared before us became my guinnea pigs for the Sand Storm spell.
Summing up everything that I have learned about magic today: there are a total of twelve battle oriented spells I can use right now, divided into three types: Ball, Wall and Storm and belonging to the categories of Beginner's Fire Magic, Beginner's Water Magic, Beginner's Wind Magic and Beginner's Earth Magic. Balls are meant for single target attacks, Walls act as defensive barriers and storms are Area of Effect offensive spells. All of the above make what I believe to be the main core of the system of magic in this world. Spells of Fire and Water Magic have 「Fire」 and 「Water」 in the names of their spells, but Wind Magic and Earth Magic deviate from that rule, because spells of the Wind Magic are actually invoked by the word 「Breeze」 while Earth Magic's activate when the word 「Sand」 is used. There might actually be more offensive forms of magic that we simply do not know about yet, but since Roxanne, who is a native inhabitant of this world, says that generally there are only three of them, then I have no reason to distrust her words.
「Okay, I think this should be enough when it comes to our experiments with magic for today.」
「Understood. You worked really hard to figure everything out, didn't you , master?」
「Thank you, but I would have never been able to do any of that without your help, Roxanne.」
「Thank you very much for your kind words.」
The biggest question that I had to find an answer to now was how do I want to fight the monsters in the Labyrinth from now on. Should I focus on fighting them with magic, or maybe go back to the purely physical fighting style that capitalizes on Durandal's absurd strength?
Currently, I can defeat Lv.2 monsters on the second floor with four spells, which is a bit much, and admittedly the battle times are a little bit too long for my liking, because the longer the battles, the more stupid mistakes I tend to make, and I am painfully aware of that.