17 Liquid Vaes

Before the four lackeys could react, Al had already sent the orbs towards them, the fact that it was a basic spell made it easier for Al to modify its formula to suit his purposes.

All four orbs reached their target in but a moment and had dealt great damage to each person.

The fire orb had exploded on one person, the wind orb gave another cuts all over his body, and the earth and water orb just dealing pure physical damage onto their respective victims, all four falling down in pain.

Al had compressed a large amount of Vaes into each orb, as he was experimenting the power of his spells against his enemies, relative to the amount of Vaes he used.

Al's Vaes usage for this entire battle was quite poor as he calculated that even with 30% less Vaes used, he would've achieved the same result as now.

He hadn't properly learned how to efficiently utilize his Vaes, as even when he sparred with Alexa, he had fought with all he got, pouring as much Vaes he could into each spell to try and suppress her.

But with normal opponents, he didn't need to use so much as it would be a waste in the long run, especially in long-term battles against waves of enemies.

The thought of losing because he didn't efficiently use his Vaes made him want to immediately fix this weakness.

It seemed like he needed to experiment more, Alexa wasn't a good point of reference as she was too strong.

He had sensed that the person who had snuck up on him previously had gotten up and seemed to be attempting it again.

Before he even got close, he had already cast another orb of neutral attribute and sent it behind him, soon after, he heard a cry of pain and something hitting the roof as his surroundings became silent once again.

Barely half a minute had passed since he knocked out Kevin, but it seemed to be enough time for him to escape as his body was no longer there, leaving just cracks on the roof along with the unmoving but conscious bodies of his lackeys.

Or maybe not, he had sensed there was someone on another building, turning towards it, he saw Kevin on it and had injected himself with a syringe filled with a colorless substance

Upon scanning him, he saw that his Vaes was increasing at an abnormally fast rate, Kevin had veins popping out all over his body, his body was also shaking as if it was in massive pain.

The liquid in the syringe Kevin used was not this world's version of a mana potion, nor was it an ability enhancing drug, it was actually liquid Vaes.

Liquid Vaes was literally as it sounded, Vaes that had been compressed into a liquid form, it was used as a fuel in almost every machine that utilized magic in this age, but in low concentrations and mixed with other substances as the pure essence of Vaes was too volatile to be used straight up.

Liquid Vaes was like fire, being able to do wonders and cause disasters as well.

The laws pertaining to the usage of liquid Vaes was very strict and it was nearly impossible for someone without a business that heavily used liquid Vaes to get their hands on it legally.

Not even Platinum status mages were able to get hold of any legally without a legitimate or good reason.

It was that dangerous, it was able to be injected or drunk by living things, giving them a huge boost of Vaes that could even surpass their Vaes capacity, in return, their body would receive a great amount of damage and pain.

Though the damage is not irreparable, only the best medical services had any chance to completely heal it.

It also temporarily crippled your magic to the point you that you would be unable to use it a short while after.

While the duration depended on your intake, a month of recovery was the equivalent of taking a small sip of liquid Vaes.

This information was available to the public and wasn't some sort of massive secret, and the only reason it wasn't a secret was that the first time liquid Vaes was invented, people had attempted to create Vaes potions with them, which horribly failed.

Now, you could only get pure liquid Vaes from the black market at a high price.

Kevin's Vaes had recovered to about 36%, he had over 50% when he started this battle and he knew that using the same tactic of attacking Al with his Flaming avatar wouldn't work even if had was full on Vaes.

He raised up his shaking arm, fighting through the piercing pain he felt and channeled Vaes through his arm, preparing what would be his final spell.

The only reason he was so desperate was that he knew that even if he survived this battle, he would still be sent to prison and he wouldn't be able to survive there.

He had killed too many people in his life and the fact that he did it all with magic made it worse.

The law was extremely harsh against those who committed crimes with magic, while those with a high magic status may be able to bypass the law to some extent when it eventually came down on them it was particularly harsh.

Not including nobles who could pull some strings with their family name to bypass the law regardless of their magic status, the higher your magic status, the laxer the law is on you, but also the harsher they would punish you when you've crossed the threshold.

Kevin was a silver III mage, his great talent and affinity with fire magic made it possible for him to defeat those a few statuses above him.

Having evaded the law all his life and never properly covering his tracks, the only reason he hasn't been caught was that the police never made him a high priority target.

He may kill from time to time, but it's not like he goes on massacres, the people he's killed are low-status mages or just average people where no one would really care about their deaths except for their own family members.

Even the trio that had graduated at the top of their classes in their school didn't have much importance in the eyes of the law or the public.

In the first place their school only had a good reputation in magic in their area and compared to all the schools in the city, it could only be considered as just slightly above average in terms of magic studies.

Even the best schools that didn't pride itself on magic studies had a better reputation for it than their school.

He wasn't going to kill them all though, but he did mean to hurt to injure Gin to the point that he would die without proper medical care.

The spell he was currently charging up was the most powerful and dangerous spell, especially to himself, in his arsenal and could be charged up as long as he had sufficient Vaes.

Charging it would consume around 1.5% of his Vaes every second, taking him 24 seconds to fully charge it with his remaining Vaes.

He had gone to a far-off building with a taller roof while his lackeys had distracted Al, he used up all his Vaes while moving there by using a movement spell.

It had taken him ten seconds to get there by pushing his movement spell beyond its limits, having pumped all of his remaining Vaes into it to make him go faster.

He had immediately injected himself with the pure liquid Vaes after that.

His expected Al to react in two ways, he would retreat upon seeing that he was casting an awfully powerful spell which would be the most ideal scenario.

Or Al would run straight towards him to try and stop him, he didn't have much time to think of other scenarios nor was in the right state of mind to do so.

In case of the second scenario, He would charge up his spell and release it just before Al reached him, expecting at least ten seconds of charge time which would translate to 15% of his total Vaes which was still very powerful for the spell he was about to cast.

He didn't worry about Al dodging out of the way the last second or moving in an erratic pattern to try and make him miss as the area of effect of the spell was huge.

He had already charged up for six seconds and he saw that Al had not taken a single step, not backwards in retreat or nor forwards to stop him.

He didn't know if Al had not sensed that he was currently doing or if he was thinking of whether to retreat or advance, but Kevin decided to blast him with his spell the second he saw him retreating since it was already sufficiently charged.

After another ten seconds of charging, Al was still standing in the same position, Kevin couldn't tell of what he was thinking as he had the same neutral expression.

He didn't care at that point as his spell would do a lot of damage at its current charge and only eight more seconds were left until he fully charged it with his remaining Vaes.

Those eight seconds seemed to last forever for Kevin and on the final second, he felt his Vaes fully drained, Al still on the building as if a statue.

He released his spell, not caring about his lackeys that were scattered on top of the building, his spell would definitely destroy the building he was aiming at which would put a lot of heat on him from the police, but he could just hide out until he was in the clear.