Playing around and experimenting with the trees was fun and all, but eventually, it got boring. The trees grew slowly, and Lucy and Mindle needed to have a lot of patience whenever they did something. Scrael also hadn't found much else she could do except make tiny dark purple branches sprout all over the place.
Toz and Nil could create something, and if they left it with enough mana, it wouldn't dissipate before the tree finished growing and replacing it. Lucy and Mindle had to constantly continue supplying mana and keeping their magic active if they wanted to direct the trees' growth.
So after they finished with what they had first set out to do, they didn't continue.
Lucy had created a figurine of dark, almost black, wood for every member of their group.
Mindle had, despite the flickering of the flames, managed to create a tiny reddish lump of wood in the shape of the tongue of flame she had used. The tree had created a tiny branch, and the little wooden flame grew at the end of the branch, where it emitted weak heat and soft light.
Considering it had been created from fire mana, it wasn't weird. But it wasn't enough heat or light for the wooden flame to be used for anything other than decoration. Nevertheless, Mindle was still proud she managed to do it without setting the trees on fire more than a few times.
Lucy's figurines were beautiful to look at as long as they didn't fade into the shadows when nobody was watching. But looking closer at them would bring them back into view again, so aside from the fun it was when they disappeared, the figurines weren't anything special.
After Lucy finished appreciating his work creating a larger-than-life imitation of himself and tiny little replicas of the others, he stored them inside the simple wooden house Toz had made.
Since Toz had made it while experimenting with fire mana, it was automatically heated and generated a cozy atmosphere. While they weren't training or frolicking, Toz and the cats would sleep in the comfortable warmth together.
Toz and the cats drifted through the Void, seemingly with no end in sight on their ever-expanding island of trees. After the platform of trees had begun growing larger, the group's encounters with void beasts had increased in frequency.
Most of the void beasts they ran into were swarms of fish that they had already encountered several times. But there were several instances of other types of void beasts targeting their island.
However, even if jellyfish larger than a single tree attacked them, the group solved it without issue. Though, unlike the tiny fish with easily identified weak spots like their eyes, the jellyfish didn't have anything like that. Every single jellyfish was a large soft translucent balloon with tens or hundreds of meter-long strings attached to it.
The jellyfish attacked in a very straightforward manner as it simply collided with the forest and let its tentacles surrounded by magic get entangled with the trees, eroding them with the void magic.
The void trees, despite being from the Void, were, for some reason, pretty sensitive to the magic coming from the void beasts and quickly started destabilizing. But before any permanent harm could be done, the tentacles started burning.
Mindle's practice in growing trees by feeding it fire without setting the wood ablaze had practically made her an expert in not burning wood. She easily restricted her flames to the jellyfish tentacles, not even the jellyfish's main body was harmed.
Although the group had been encountering void beasts more frequently recently, they weren't yet living in abundance. Any piece of edible food was valuable. Especially the jellyfish, that, compared to the fish they had gotten used to, had some taste.
However, since they hadn't found a way to kill the jellyfish without reducing its value as food, they were left with no choice but to eat it alive. It was a little strange eating something that technically was alive. But since it had been trying to kill them while it was alive, it made sense for the jellyfish to pay for its crimes while alive as well.
Toz sliced pieces of the large unmoving jellyfish body like servings of gelatinous cake. Just like the void fish, it left a weird sensation in the mouth, and it wasn't exactly fulfilling eating the jellyfish. But at least it kept them alive, and unlike the dull taste of the fish, the jellyfish had a more zesty flavor that almost made it enjoyable to eat.
Aside from the eye-teeth void fish and the jellyfish, the group continued encountering several different void beasts as they continued drifting through the Void. But since all of them were important sources of food, Toz still hadn't found an opportunity to test out the power of his fireball.
While he could use a weakened version with minimal amounts of mana just to try hitting something with it, that would completely miss the point of casting the fireball. Using a fireball without power would be like trying to eat without food. The point of casting a fireball had always been to blow stuff up. Without power, that wouldn't be possible.
Toz wasn't the only one interested in the power of the fireball spell. The cats had felt the pressure during Toz's first go at casting it, and since then, Toz had only gotten a better hang of the spell.
While Mindle's spell had given them a sample of what they could expect from a spell, Tongues of Flame worked differently from Fireball. Tongues of Flame was more a matter of finesse and fine control and would grow stronger and more powerful the more tongues Mindle gained control over.
Fireball, on the other hand, is straightforward in its use. It is simply a spell of concentrated firepower. With Toz's mana capacity and control, his magic already packed quite a punch. Adding in a spell to that would definitely be a spectacle.
However, it seemed like their forest wasn't big enough to attract void beasts powerful enough to withstand Toz's fireball, so they were left with annoying weak void beasts until the forest was attractive to more threatening beasts.
