After pushing the magic core into Edol's chest, the demon stepped back to observe his enemy.
Acquiring magic was… a bit anticlimactic.
There were no cinematic lightning bolts snaking around Edol, and there was no intense magical aura indicating the advent of a protagonist.
Edol hunched over, a simultaneously painful yet comfortable feeling spreading out from the slowly spinning magic core.
'This is… magic? Just like from those books back on earth? But why? Why would Ugly give me magic?'
A smile crept onto the demon's face as he observed the goblin in front of him.
"Ha! It worked! Serves you right for insulting my family, damn goblin! Now, you'll never be anyone important!"
'What… what is Ugly talking about?'
A deep, earthy feeling emanated from the orb, seemingly urging Edol to put its powers to use.
He instinctively felt that he could use the orb's energy to manipulate the ground, just as how the demon had been while fighting him.
'Isn't this awesome for me? I think this demon suffered brain damage from its last experiment...'
Edol glared at the demon, focusing on drawing the energy from his magic core, and directing it towards the ground.
"Ha! Prepare to feel pain! This is humanity's mastery of magic!"
Edol's control of the energy drained and disappeared as soon as it entered the ground, and he lost sight of the energy as soon as it left his feet.
The energy surged up, the first magic Edol had ever managed to cast! There was only one… no, two problems.
The earth spike summoned wasn't anything like what the demon had created. Despite having exhausted all the energy in his core, the spike made by Edol was only around twenty-five centimeters long.
The second problem-
"AAAGH! My foot!!!"
Edol had successfully impaled his own foot with the spike, not the demon's.
"Pfft! Karma's a bitch, ugly goblin! Grats on getting that 'mastery of magic,' now you can impale yourself in the foot! This is even better than I imagined!"
~~~
After watching Edol struggle to walk around with a hole in his foot, the demon eventually decided it was time to sleep again. With just the stomp of its foot, an earthen igloo rose from the ground.
Watching the demon flaunt its magic, Edol finally understood the demon's intentions.
Ugly had given him magic, sure, but it was too weak to be useful. Given how happy the demon was with the results of its experiment, there were probably more negatives than just having trash-level earth magic.
Seeing as how the demon was done fighting for the day, Edol made his way back to his makeshift hut- a pile of earthen spikes roughly collected into a dome shape.
Over the past few weeks, the demon had been relatively consistent in resting at regular intervals, giving Edol a rest from continuously dying to his nemesis.
Now, Edol had something more interesting to do than making a rough dirt hut.
Sprawled on the hard ground of the hut, Edol ran his hands over the dirt slowly.
The magic core within him felt connected to the ground, and his curiosity urged him to try using magic again.
Edol placed his index finger on the ground, slowly pulling some of the energy from his core. Despite never having any similar abilities in the past, Edol found it relatively easy to manipulate the energy in his body. Wherever he urged it, the energy would crawl through his body towards the desired location.
After roughly five seconds, the energy reached the tip of his finger, and Edol nervously pushed it into the ground.
'Ugly can make spikes and a dome shape, so there must be a way to control the ground more precisely.'
The energy seemed to act as an extension of his own body, even after entering the ground. There was a lot more resistance in moving in the ground as opposed to moving it around his body, and Edol's control of the energy seemed to deteriorate the further the energy got from him.
After moving it a quarter meter away, Edol felt the last bit of his control over the mana dissipating.
'Looks like this is as far as I can go… this really is… AMAZING! I HAVE MAGIC! Cool! This is so cool!'
Edol wasn't at all dispirited by the lack of power from his trash-level earth legacy. After living for the last nineteen years on magicless earth, the feeling of having any magic at all was incredible!
'Even if this isn't all that useful for fighting, I'll still be able to make some pretty cool stuff with this! Ooo! I'll make a cool little fox statue for Sophie! She'll love it…'
Sadness began to overtake Edol's face as he thought of his little sister. Back on earth, his family had always been extremely close. Every night of his childhood had been filled with joyful family dinners and game nights.
Two years ago Edol had moved to Bristol to go to university, but he still had his phone to chat with his family daily, along with coming home to visit them regularly.
Unfortunately, there were no phone calls back home in hell, nor were there holiday weekends to make a trip back home.
"Mom, Dad, Sophie… Will I ever get to see you again?"
A few tears began traveling down his cheeks as he thought of his family, but it didn't take long for him to pull himself together.
"Eh! No more being sad, I'll see them again after I find a way out of this place! Besides, I've only just learned this magic stuff! I have to be able to make perfect little sculptures for them before I get back home!"
Refocusing his will, Edol resumed his practice. The more he channeled his magic, the more natural it felt, and soon his quarter-meter control expanded to nearly a meter. It was still unfortunate that the amount of earth he could move didn't change, but he was still happy with the progress.