When the spell died a second later, Daisy was relieved to see that her target for practice was still standing, albeit a bit scorched. Her eyebrows drew together as she considered how to make the spell more versatile, then smiled with wild excitement as an idea crossed her mind. Instead of just shooting the burning orb in a straight line to connect with her target, Daisy wondered if she could send it on a curving path. She stepped to her left and pooled Mana into another casting.
She visualized the path that she wanted the fireball to take, and let it go. The result was not ideal. Instead of arching to the left and hitting the brick wall like she’d seen in her mind, the burning orb sailed straight again, passing to the right of her target and continuing on until it dissipated somewhere over the ocean. Daisy frowned as she tried to puzzle together what had gone wrong, but then furrowed her brow with determination and tried again.
This time she tried to make the orb spin left on the vertical axis as she released it, but again the fire ball just shot in a straight line, missing the target completely. Daisy wondered for a moment if it was even possible to make her Blast! move the way she wanted, but she wasn’t ready to give up.
Again, Daisy pooled Mana into the casting, but this time held the burning orb in place between her outstretched hands after the second had elapsed. She could feel her Mana swirling within it, giving it life and form. Trying to replicate the feeling of Mana moving from her core and through her arms, Daisy pushed on the Mana still within the burning orb between her hands and it moved forward an inch. Tongues of flame began to flick out from the orb in uncontrolled power. Fearing it might become unstable and blow up in her face, Daisy stopped pushing on the Mana and the orb was pulled back into place.
Daisy had another idea. With her right hand she pushed on the Mana within the fire ball again, but this time pulled on it with her left hand at the same time. The resulting spin filled the her with glee. She pushed and pulled harder and the speed of the spinning orb accelerated. Then she took aim just to the right of the brick wall and released the cast. The spinning, burning ball of fire left her hands moving in the direction it had been aimed, then, halfway between Daisy and her target, it curved to the left and detonated against the brick wall. She jumped and cheered with both hands in the air, then looked confused as she was confronted with a system prompt.
Congratulations, Daisy! You have unlocked Rank 1 of the non-Class Skill, Manual Targeting.
At Rank 1, your chance to hit your desired target with Manual Targeting is 20%. Practice your new Skill to improve its accuracy.
Daisy dismissed the prompt, silently agreeing with its suggestion to practice. And practice, she did. After she’d forged the initial mental pathway to manually target her spells, Daisy found it significantly easier to do so again. Over and over, the Elementalist pooled Mana into the spell, then pushed and pulled at it to acquire the necessary spin. More often than not, she missed her target, sending burning orbs to fizzle out over the ocean, but that didn’t discourage her. The more she practiced the easier it became to control the speed of the spinning orb. Eventually she was even able to begin the act of pushing and pulling to start the spin during the one-second cast time. Then, another idea occurred to the little girl.
At Level 10 she’d unlocked a Skill called Ice Storm. It didn’t require a specific target, but targeted an area. Daisy reasoned that using this different type of targeting may help her learn to use her new Manual Targeting non-Class Skill more effectively. She hadn’t tried casting that spell yet, but figured that then was as good a time as any.
She knew from the Skill description that casting Ice Storm would require her to pool 140 Mana into the spell over 2 seconds. Daisy looked purposefully at the brick wall and began to cast. Instead of feeling the Mana gradually heat up as it moved down her arms, Ice Storm had the opposite effect, leaving the tips of her fingers numb with cold by the time the cast time had elapsed. She released the spell and watched in curious amazement as a dark cloud appeared out of thin air above the brick wall and rained a torrent of spiked ice shards to shatter against it. For the next ten seconds, the ice shards smashed against the brick wall and stuck out of the ground in a ten-meter radius around it.
Out of curiosity, Daisy decided to try employing the same pushing and pulling technique on Ice Storm. The result was not exactly what she’d had in mind, but she nodded appreciatively as she watched the ice-spewing cloud move slowly from right to left over its ten-second duration. After the thirty-second cooldown period had elapsed Daisy cast another Ice Storm, this time reversing her pushes and pulls on the Mana that made up the Skill to make the cloud move from left to right. She squealed with delight when it worked as intended and received another system
