I am sorry, Shadowbros, but this chapter is fully about Cid experimenting with magic. Yeah, no interactions with girls. Next will be for them, though.

'Magic Overload is caused by user's inability to properly control large amounts of mana. It is possible to artificially cause Magic Overload by absorbing environment's mana but usually it happens on its own if user's natural reserves are vast enough. If victim is not able to subdue it in time or get help from any other magic user that knows how to treat it, rampant mana will start breaking and mutating the body, completely reshaping its form and inflicting immense pain, making victim Possessed. Theorized: due to inability to adapt to sudden changes victim's mind shuts down, and once cured will have no memories about the time they spent as Possessed. However, such condition brings its benefits: getting treatment will fully stabilize magic flow in user's body, completely negating any chance of mana rampage in the future, and increase the magical reserve available for user, based on their own natural capacity and the abilities of the one doing the treatment. It is one of the few guaranteed ways to drastically increase someone's magic potential in a short time. Moreover, if user manages to subdue Magic Overload on their own, the benefits will become even more apparent: it may be possible that there's no concrete limit on how much your capacity can increase…'

Man, he is so tired! He was writing everything he knows about magic down for nearly 5 hours already!

Yeah, he knows he proposed it himself, but give him a break! Not only that, Alpha asked him to write everything in the most formal tone possible! What, exactly, did she not like about pictures?

In short, Cid was really bored. He wanted to do something! Good thing that Magic Overload part was practically the last thing he needed to write down and now he can focus on his brand new Blood Magic! Now he just needs to find a quiet place where no one will find him…

Nice, deeps of the forest! He gave a notice to Shades that he wanted to go out on to get a breather. Of course, they would want to tag along with him, but he couldn't allow that, so he just left it in the form of a small letter that was shoved to Alpha and then ran aw- went to his destination.

Right, Blood Magic.

Cid created a slime blade and made a small cut on his finger. A bit painful, somewhat like a needle med workers use when taking blood… Now infuse the leaking blood with his mana…

He watched as the blood slowly went up. Previously just a splash on his finger, it gradually condensed into a single drop and risen up. Cid slowly retracted his finger and continued watching how this small drop defied all laws and simply stayed in one position, unaffected by gravity neither being scattered away by gentle wind. However, as soon as he commanded for it to change form, it immediately flowed into a little flower.

"Wonderful…" Cid sighed in amazement. He finally unlocked another way to use magic other than conventional Body and Weapon Enhancement and his trump card Nuclear Magic!

Now, the question: how much can he use it before he runs out of fuel? And fuel here being not mana, but blood. You know, people don't really cary gallons of blood in them, now do they? Fortunately, Cid actually was working not only on magic and martial arts, but also on his body as a whole since childhood! He shifted his organs, made new nerve pathways, and changed the structure of his body as a whole, all of the sake of min-maxing his fighting abilities! It's just that he didn't think of using his body parts as an actual magic conductor before… Ahem, what he means here is he knows his body very well and can rapidly restore any damage taken, even if he's left without magic as his current body has quite impressive regenerative abilities on its own. With magic? Pfft, even if he somehow ended up broken doll, he would stand back up in mere seconds with no lasting damage whatsoever!

Which also works on his blood. Theoretically, as long as he has mana, he has the ability to endlessly replenish his supply of vital liquid. Before that it was simply a quick healing method, but now? Now he actually has unlimited access to the greatest magic conductor he knows, because its magical conductivity beats even the slime at a whopping… Ding, ding, 100%!

That's right, there's absolutely no energy loss when using his blood in combination with his mana! The only downside is the fact that it only works for as long as his blood cells remain alive, which when brought outside of his body tend to die in a matter of minutes… And that absolutely doesn't matter because as long as there is mana in his blood cells he can support their life cycle, meaning he can use the same blood over and over again. Still a shame, though; that means he can't just fill blood jars and then use them when he needed, as dead blood cells drop their conductivity to measly 30%.

However, the perspectives don't end here! You see, upon realizing that he can, in fact, use Blood Magic, he got a question: but what if?… What if he can use his body even further?…

And so he got two interesting ideas! First: of course, continue with body modification. By using his previous experience and brand new knowledge he can further adapt his body to anything that could exist in this world. Toxic environment? Not a problem, just create a filter, maybe he can even use harmful substances. Volcano? Well, that's a nice bathtub. Frosty place?… Alright, he doesn't know yet how to counter that.

Who knows, maybe after enhancing his body enough he can go to open space? And even use something here as an inspiration? Come to think of it, there was a fictional guy in his past life that got his power from sun, Super-something?

Now hold on a second, there was a whole genre back on Earth about cultivating your body, wasn't there? Yeah, literally cultivators… Not, not the agriculture ones. Now if only he could remember how exactly were they doing all of that, he could take some inspiration…

Oh, what about the second idea? Well, he can't use it as of yet, as it requires him to literally mess with his body beyond human, for example, creating multiple eyes that would fire out lasers at his enemies. Why would he do that? Because it's cool!

'How interesting…'

Cid stared at a ball of water levitating in front of him.

Upon realizing that he could actually control his blood in the same manner as slime, the next obvious step would be using any other liquid. Good thing that this forest had a nearby river!

And, well… It went better than he expected, but worse than he wished it could. Better because the result he expected was not being able to control any somewhat large pool at all, and worse because the conductivity was… 15%. Even worse than his dead blood cells. Moreover, even if compared to weapons made of steel — keep in mind, 10% conductivity, — water still performs worse simply because weapons are made from solid material and you only have fill them with your mana to increase their prowess, while water is, well, liquid. That means you have to have way more precise control in order to use water as means of attack. However, if you get past that, you will realize that using liquids is actually very beneficial.

You see, the power of water is its ability to take any shape. It is already obvious with slime as it also has the ability to take any shape desired by its user, however slime is, at its core, magical gelatin. Items made from slime are more solid compared to those made from water and only require constant mana supply, however once mana runs out it will quickly transform back into its most primitive harmless form. Water is way harder to control, however upon using up last mana it… splashes. And he doesn't mean it just falls down, oh no! You see, in order to actually make any item from water he has to compress it greatly, making it solid enough to be used as a weapon. And this structure is supported by his mana. Once mana runs out, water quickly bursts out, inflicting great damage to everything unfortunate enough to be near this water explosion. And the more water he compressed beforehand, the greater the burst will be. Slime doesn't have explosion feature, unfortunately. In a sense, it's somewhat similar to his Nuclear Magic, but while in Nuclear it's the desired effect, in Water Magic the explosion is after-effect.

Does that make Water Magic overall better than than slime manipulation? Hell no! Even though he already can picture many ways to utilize water as a weapon, slime is leagues superior in terms of versatility. But does it look cool when he drops a massive wave on everyone? Hell yeah!

Well, one thing he confirmed: he can actually infuse and control any liquid with his magic. Now let's move on to the next step!

"Damn, that one is way harder than I thought…"

It should've been obvious that the next best step would be Air Magic (yeah, he just decided to call it the same way everyone back on Earth called it). Well, because it is in contact with him at all times, he already trained at rudimentary Earth Magic in form of steel, and it looks cool! Imagine he makes a speech in front of everyone and then his coat starts fluttering in the wind! But that's actually him controlling wind currents to make the moment cooler! Oh, the coolness!

But air was almost incompatible with his powers. Remember how he thought about why nobody researched why magic disappeared into thin air when not controlled? Well, today he found the answer.

Magic quite literally disappears into thin air.

You heard that right: it is because of air that using magic outside of your body is considered impressive. Air just absorbs mana that is not compressed to the level when it overpowers to absorption force. So what, then? It's impossible to control air with magic?

Not quite!

Do you remember about the fact that you can absorb magic energy from the environment? Correct, the way to control air is to control the magic in the surroundings itself. Not a big feat for Cid, honestly, but it is a challenge all previous experiments did not give him.

And so he developed a technique somewhat similar to Overdrive. What does normal Overdrive do? He quickly accumulates energy from the surroundings into his body as wel as pumping up his own natural mana regeneration. At first it was very risky technique and was the sole reason he got Magic Overload, however once he got past that it became his name card (quite literally: Overdrive is the reason his eyes turn red in his Shadow persona).

Now what does the modified Overdrive do? The complete opposite: he quickly releases a wave of mana and mixes it with the environment mana before it can be absorbed. This mixed mana can now be controlled, a bit worse than his own, though, and is way less susceptible to air's absorption, giving him about an hour before he loses control of surrounding air. With that he can actually control air just like he controls water and everything else. As a bonus it should make a field of suppression on everyone other than himself since not only do his opponents need to resist air's absorption force, but also they will have to fight his own mana! Now that one is actually efficient! And cool!

He already tested it out: he only needed to do the mana-wave once, after that he can simply pump up additional mana as a stream just like with slime. He also tested air currents; the way his slime coat was fluttering in the air simply screamed cool! Oh, he also tested out air compression. The resulting blast when he let the control was, well… Let's just say there's now thirty less trees in the forest. Shame.

Results: now he has his swordsmanship as usual means of cool combat, Air Magic as means of "I'm gonna kill by simply looking at you" kind of cool, liquid control for… well, blood weapons look cool, nobody can deny that! And Nuclear Magic is for when he needs his coolness meter to explode!…

Oh, now he has a problem. That air explosion? Well, Shades obviously noticed that and now they're here. And judging by their faces, they did not like his sudden department. What did he write in his letter, again?…

Well, no more magic experiments for today. Maybe not even tomorrow. Alpha's expression tells him he's absolutely fucked…