After a few days, and an alarming number of scorch marks, puddles, and coughing fits — Arslan somehow managed to pull it off.

He’d learned all four spells.

“Create Water,” “Tinder,” “Dust,” and even the simplified “Cold Wind” Ludger had written. Each one of them worked,  more or less. Mostly less. The “Create Water” spell soaked half the training yard. The “Tinder” spell nearly set a chair on fire. But they worked.

And that was enough to leave the entire guild in stunned silence.

When word got out, Harold, Selene, Aleia, and Cor arrived just in time to see Arslan light a controlled spark from his fingertips,  a faint orange flame that hovered there, flickering proudly while Ludger watched with quiet amusement.

For a long moment, nobody spoke. Then Harold snorted.

“…Well, that’s it. End of days. Our fearless Guildmaster just became a mage. Someone warn the heavens.”

Selene checked her gloves for some dust. “I thought the last time you tried magic, you blew up a tent and blamed it on the wind.”

Arslan frowned. “That was a training accident.”

Aleia raised an eyebrow. “Pretty sure it was you trying to ‘channel mana’ through a metal cup.”

Even Cor, who rarely bothered with humor, gave a low rumble that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. “I never thought I’d live to see it. Arslan, the musclehead, the man who thinks with his lower head, wielder of the mighty candle flame.”

That set everyone off. Selene actually had to steady herself from laughing too hard.

Arslan groaned. “It’s Tinder, not candle flame!”

“Sure it is,” Harold said dryly. “Next thing you’ll tell us you’re applying for a position at the Imperial Mage Academy.”

“Would they even let him in?” Selene asked. “He’d terrify the instructors just by glaring.”

Ludger, meanwhile, was trying, and failing,  not to grin. “You all done making fun of my test subject?”

Cor folded his arms, deadpan. “If your test subject burns down the guild, I hope that you are rebuilding it again.”

“Noted,” Ludger said.

Arslan shot his son a look that landed somewhere between irritation and reluctant pride. “You realize this means you owe me. I’ve just advanced the boundaries of magical history.”

Harold coughed. “You spilled water on your boots five minutes ago.”

“Progress requires sacrifice,” Arslan replied with dignity.

Ludger couldn’t help it, he laughed. A genuine, quiet laugh that made the others glance at him in surprise. “Not bad, Dad. For the sake of science, I’ll mark you down as a functional experiment.”

Arslan grinned, shaking his slightly singed hand. “You Told me I could handle it.”

Harold whispered to Selene, “You think he knows he’s still smoking?”

Selene smirked. “Let him have this one.”

And as Arslan basked in his accidental magical achievement, the rest of the guild quietly agreed,  the day their swordsman Guildmaster learned to actually cast magic

might just be the strangest miracle Lionfang had seen yet.

Arslan stood there in the center of the training hall, still holding his hand out where the faint ember of Tinder had just faded away. The laughter had mostly died down, replaced by curious murmurs and the quiet scratching of Ludger’s quill as he jotted notes on a clipboard.

Finally, Arslan crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes. “Alright, Luds. What exactly was this all for?”

Ludger looked up from his papers. “Simple. I wanted to see which element you had the highest affinity for.”

Arslan blinked. “Affinity? You already know I’m not a mage.”

“Exactly,” Ludger said, setting the clipboard aside. “That’s what makes you a good baseline. If you could force a spell to work without formal training, that meant your natural mana resistance and elemental alignment were doing all the work. It’s a more honest reading than testing on someone who already channels magic.”

Arslan frowned, clearly not following but letting him continue.

“The easiest spell for you,” Ludger said, “was Tinder. You picked it up in about four hours — reading, focusing, and forcing ignition through raw mana control. That alone tells me your natural affinity to fire magic is the highest. It didn’t fight your flow at all.”

He flipped through his notes. “Then you spent about twelve hours struggling with Cold Wind and Dust. That puts your air and earth affinities at about one-third of your fire level,  not bad, but not instinctive either.”

Arslan raised an eyebrow. “And Create Water?”

Ludger glanced up, deadpan. “You spent twenty-eight hours on that. So… I’d say water is not your element.”

Selene snorted from the sidelines. “You don’t say.”

Before Arslan could retort, Cor, who had been listening quietly from the back, folded his arms and spoke up. “Wait a minute. You’re not just guessing, are you?”

Ludger gave a faint smirk. “No. I tracked his mana flow, resistance, and strain time across each exercise. By measuring how much effort it took to stabilize the spell’s structure, you can define an affinity range.”

Cor nodded slowly. “Hmph. So you quantified it. People have talked about elemental affinities for centuries, but no one’s ever managed to measure them. You just did.”

Harold whistled low. “That’s… actually impressive.”

Ludger shrugged, flipping his notes toward Cor. “Nothing complicated. Just efficiency ratings. I converted them into potential values on a scale of one to a hundred.”

He looked back at Arslan. “Your readings came out like this:”

Arslan – Elemental Potential (Baseline Reading)

Fire: 82 / 100

Earth:

31 / 100

Air: 34 / 100

Water: 12 / 100

Ludger leaned back, pen tapping against the clipboard. “So you’re fire-dominant, no surprise given your combat style and Overdrive’s flame form. This exercise was another way to understand why your overdrive takes that shape. Your mana circuits are naturally aligned toward combustion-type flow, meaning you’re more efficient at igniting or sustaining fire-based energy than any other element.”

Selene smirked. “In other words, you’re literally hot-headed.”

Harold chuckled. “That explains a lot.”

Arslan groaned, rubbing the back of his neck. “So after all this, I find out I’m basically a walking campfire?”

Ludger grinned faintly. “More like a portable furnace. It fits you, Dad.”

Cor took the notes, scanning them with interest. “You realize what you’ve done, don’t you? If you refine this process, you could give anyone an elemental diagnostic within a day. This could change how guilds train their recruits.”

Ludger nodded slowly. “That’s the idea. With enough test subjects, we can build a proper reference scale, maybe even predict class growth patterns based on affinity.”

Arslan muttered, “Next thing you know, he’ll make a chart for how well we breathe.”

Selene grinned. “Careful. He might.”

Ludger smirked, scribbling one last note. “Only if it helps optimize stamina recovery.”

And as Arslan stood there still mildly offended about his “campfire classification,” the rest of the team realized that the quiet boy had just built a system that could define what centuries of scholars only guessed at — the measurable structure of elemental potential.

After everyone had finished laughing at Arslan’s expense,  and after Harold finally stopped calling him “the campfire mage” Ludger turned serious again.

He set his clipboard aside and folded his arms. “You should keep training, Dad.”

Arslan blinked. “Training what, exactly? My candle-flame magic?”

“Fire magic,” Ludger said. “Specifically.”

That earned a few raised eyebrows from the others, but Ludger’s tone didn’t waver. “You’ve got the highest fire affinity I’ve ever measured, eighty-two out of a hundred. That means your circuits respond to ignition and heat faster than any other element. If you focus your mana training on that, you’ll get better results with your Overdrive.”

Arslan frowned slightly. “My Overdrive?”

“It’s not just a trick,” Ludger said, leaning forward. “Think about it, your Overdrive already manifests as fire. It’s not an illusion or a visual effect, it’s your mana burning itself clean to push your body past its limit. That’s combustion-type flow.”

He paused, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “If you strengthen your affinity with controlled training, the output efficiency could improve. You’ll waste less mana keeping it stable, which means you’ll last longer in battle. Maybe even amplify the burn rate safely without overloading your body.”

For a long moment, Arslan just stared at him, not confused, but thoughtful.

He rubbed his chin slowly. “Huh. You know… I’ve never thought of it that way. I always treated Overdrive like instinct, hit harder, move faster, and hope you don’t fall apart afterward.”

“That’s exactly the problem,” Ludger said. “You’re relying on instinct when you could be refining it like a spell. Think of it as fusing technique with intent. Overdrive’s just another channeling pattern, yours happens to burn instead of resonate.”

Cor grunted approvingly from the back. “He’s right. Your Overdrive’s raw, not refined. Fire training could balance your internal mana flow instead of letting it tear through you every time.”

Arslan glanced down at his hand, the same one that had flickered with Tinder

hours ago — and let out a low hum. “Fire training, huh? You’re basically telling me to do what every young hothead already does by accident.”

Ludger smirked faintly. “Except this time, it’ll be on purpose. And measurable.”

Arslan’s chuckle was quiet but genuine. “I’ll give you that. Never thought I’d live to hear my eleven-year-old tell me to train smarter.”

Harold grinned. “Careful, Guildmaster. If this works, you’ll have to rename Overdrive to ‘Campfire Ascension.’”

Selene elbowed him. “Or ‘The Eternal Matchstick.’”

Ludger rolled his eyes. “You’re all comedians.”

Arslan ignored the laughter, still deep in thought. “Fire training to refine Overdrive…” He rubbed his chin again, half-smiling. “You know, I used to think technique came from instinct and repetition. Never imagined you could break it down like a scholar.”

“That’s the point,” Ludger said. “Instinct builds skill. Understanding turns it into mastery.”

Arslan gave a quiet, approving nod. “Alright then. I’ll do it. Let’s see if your methodical madness can turn this old flame into something new.”

“Good,” Ludger said, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Just don’t set the courtyard on fire again.”

Arslan grinned. “No promises.”

Ludger stretched, his jaw cracking with a quiet yawn. The adrenaline from the little “elemental test” had finally worn off, leaving the weight of exhaustion pressing against his shoulders.

He rubbed his eyes and muttered, “Alright… I think that’s enough science for one day. I’ll take a nap and resume my research somewhere quieter.”

Arslan raised an eyebrow. “Research or napping?”

“Yes,” Ludger said flatly, already turning toward the guild dorms.

Before he could leave, Cor’s gravelly voice came from behind him. “So that’s it, then? Arslan’s no longer part of your experiments?”

Ludger paused mid-step, half-looking back. “For now, yeah. I’ve gathered enough data to analyze his elemental alignment. I’ll run more tests later to see if his Overdrive reacts differently after a few weeks of fire training.”

Cor hummed, his tone caught somewhere between amusement and curiosity. “And what about you, boy? What’re you planning to experiment with this time?”

Ludger stifled another yawn, then answered as if he were talking about something completely ordinary. “Overdrive attunement.”

Cor frowned slightly. “Meaning?”

“I’m going to try to align my Overdrive with the four elements separately,” Ludger said, rubbing his neck. “Fire, water, earth, air, one by one. Each one should change how the body and mana interact during the burst. I want to see how much control I can gain over it.”

The room went quiet for a moment. Even Arslan stopped mid-sentence, blinking at him.

Selene raised an eyebrow. “You’re talking about rewriting a musclehead technique to match elemental mana flow. That’s not research, kid, that’s pretty close to suicide.”

Ludger shrugged. “It’s only suicide if I fail.”

Harold groaned. “That’s exactly what people say before they fail.”

But Ludger just smirked faintly. “Relax. I won’t test it here. I’ll head to the hills later, fewer things to set on fire, drown, or bury.”

Cor stared for another long moment, then exhaled through his nose. “You never stop, do you?”

“Not while I’m awake,” Ludger said, already halfway out the door. “Which is why I’m fixing that now.”

He yawned again, waved lazily over his shoulder, and started toward the stairs.

Arslan chuckled under his breath. “My son, the prodigy researcher-slash-madman.”

Selene smirked. “At least he takes after you in the last part.”

Cor folded his arms, murmuring to himself, “Elemental Overdrive… if he pulls that off, it’ll rewrite combat theory.”

From down the hall, Ludger’s voice echoed back, half-drowsy, half-amused.

“That’s the idea.”

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