Two days later, Duncan—now Level 2—was finally able to get out of bed and shuffle around outside.
He still couldn't move like a normal person, but the sheer speed of his recovery felt monstrous even to him. Falna wasn't "Honkai energy" that could explain anything and everything. Chardo said that back when he was Level 1, injuries on this level would have kept him bedridden for at least a week.
So aside from Duncan's absurd stats and the boost from leveling up… the only conclusion was that he was simply gifted.
After all, you didn't exactly hear stories about someone getting beaten so hard they raised their Endurance to SSS.
While waiting for his body to fully recover, Duncan didn't sit idle. The moment he could stand, he went outside to test his new magic. Since it was an unknown spell, it naturally drew everyone's attention.
And just as Duncan had suspected: Finger Wag really was random.
It could only be used once per day, and using it drained his magic to empty.
The first day's result was a simple Fireball.
Duncan had never trained magic at Level 1, but a fireball that could burn through the entire mana pool of a Level 2 adventurer was… spectacular. No sane mage would dump everything into a single fireball, and ordinary fireballs simply couldn't hold that kind of density.
Calling it "Fireball" felt wrong.
It was more like some unknown spell wearing a fireball's skin. No one's fireball—no school, no tradition—had this kind of mana capacity or destructive value.
A fireball the size of an adult formed above Duncan's head, and he felt like he was casting a Spirit Bomb. The heat and pressure were so intense even Chardo frowned.
When Duncan hurled it, the explosion and shockwave made everyone's eyebrows jump. Bell, meanwhile, kept chanting "Amazing! Amazing!" like a wind-up toy.
Sure, as top-tier adventurers, Chardo and Alfia had seen magic far larger and more lethal than this. But novelty mattered.
Taking an old recipe and producing a "new dish" with it made Alfia—who carried the title Witch—start considering whether that path could be useful. Most magic had fixed mana costs; "charging" spells existed, but they were rare. Charging with all one's mana was basically unheard of.
After the cast, Duncan felt… weak. Not "kidney—" body weak, but he didn't collapse into true mana exhaustion. Alfia explained it as the spell leaving behind a sliver of residual mana—like the thin dregs at the bottom of a tank—enough to prevent the engine from seizing. But if he tried to cast anything else, he'd drop straight into full depletion.
Because Alfia had the Magic Development Ability, she warned him not to use this kind of spell casually during real adventures.
But for daily practice?
It was perfect.
Mana growth came from using magic, and a spell that drove mana to the brink without making him pass out was basically the dream training method for any mage: maximum consumption, minimal risk of fainting.
"What did you get today?" Alfia asked, standing beside him—oddly expectant.
"I don't know. Finger Wag," Duncan answered honestly.
He raised his index finger and wagged it toward an empty patch of ground.
The pose looked ridiculous—half clown, half provocation—and the short, embarrassing chant that came with it made Duncan's face warm. He'd long since outgrown the age where this kind of thing felt "cool."
Alfia, however, was used to it. Their own long chants were, in Duncan's eyes, max-level cringe. But when everyone does it, the one who doesn't is the weird one.
To them, chanting wasn't embarrassing—it was simply the required procedure. These pure local natives, unscarred by abstract nonsense, didn't feel shame at all. If anything, they thought it looked awesome.
Only Duncan—the foreigner—suffered.
Golden light gathered on Duncan's fingertip.
Two seconds later it vanished, leaving Duncan wearing a deeply unnatural expression.
"What? Problem with the new magic?" Alfia asked, puzzled by his face.
"No… not a problem," Duncan said quietly, in a tone that suggested he was trying to swallow something unhinged. "It's just… the type of magic is… kind of… novel."
"Novel?" Alfia's eyes brightened. "A completely new spell? What type?"
She'd assumed Finger Wag simply selected from existing magic. The idea that it could produce entirely unfamiliar spells made its value jump again in her mind.
Duncan's mouth twitched.
"Party magic."
"…Party?" Alfia repeated after a beat, as if she thought she'd misheard.
"You'll see," Duncan said, stepping back two paces. Then, with the solemnity of a man walking to the gallows, he thrust out his right hand and shouted:
"Flowers, birds, wind, and moon!"
Something impossible happened.
A folding fan appeared in his hand out of thin air.
And his right hand—like it had been cursed—snapped the fan open with smooth, practiced flair… despite Duncan never having trained it once.
A jet of water burst from the top of the opened fan.
The water column surged more than a meter high, split neatly into two streams—
—and instantly drenched Duncan, turning him into a soaked, miserable mess.
"Ooh~ That's water magic," Chardo observed from the side, without any urge to laugh. "But it doesn't have much power."
He'd seen every kind of oddball in his life. A few clownish casting motions didn't even register.
"This spell is literally meant to be a party trick," Duncan said, wiping water from his face. "That's what the knowledge in my head says."
"Party… trick… magic?" Alfia stared. For once, her eyes were fully open, her beautiful pupils filled with a massive question mark.
Those words didn't belong together.
And with Duncan dripping wet, they belonged together even less.
She knew entertainers who breathed fire as a "skill," but elevating that kind of performance to magic was a new kind of cultural shock.
"I think it's because it ate all my mana," Duncan reasoned. "Normally it should just be a small stream from the fan. I didn't expect it to scale into this once my mana increased."
He had a pretty strong suspicion this was some goddess's signature stunt.
"At least you can get water in places without a water source," Chardo said, cheerful as ever.
Alfia shot him a look.
"Don't forget his magic is different every single day."
"…Right," Chardo admitted with a helpless chuckle. "Then never mind."
For him, magic was simple: if it worked, it worked. Research was a mage's job. As a frontline heavy fighter, he spoke with steel.
Alfia stared at the thoroughly useless spell, then forced out a single compliment anyway.
"…At least you emptied your mana again today. That's another step forward for your magic stat."
Duncan looked down at the folding fan still in his hand and tried to comfort himself.
"…And I stole a fan."
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