He also found he was mentally exhausted from holding the spell on the two targets at such a distance. He considered trying a couple of other ideas he had thought of, but he was so exhausted mentally that in the end, he packed it in and headed home with lots to think about. The following two days, he read up on kinetic energy and energy transference, and then a crazy idea began to form regarding molecular structure. So, what about using the bullet’s energy to break down the molecular structure of the bullet and then any remaining energy being neutralized by incinerating the atoms? Is that going to work? He played around with the idea but could reach no firm conclusions because his understanding of molecular structure and energy transmutation simply wasn’t good enough. E=MC² was all well and good, but he was a historian, not a physicist!

He thought about that for a bit. Hmm. Did he need to follow normal physics? It wasn’t like you could do this shit according to ordinary physics anyway. He thought about the translocation spell, the force spell he used to control the roulette wheel ball, and the force field he’d used to stop the bullet. None of them were things you could do as far as regular physics was concerned. Yes, they were essentially obeying the laws of physics in the sense that they were doing real things. The translocate spell was simply relocating all the atoms of the transported item to a different location in the space-time continuum. The force spell he used on the roulette ball was something else, as was the force field thing, he guessed. No matter. He threw conventional physics out and concentrated on coming up with a spell that did what he wanted, regardless of whether it obeyed the laws of physics or not. It took a bit of time, but he came up with a spell design that essentially did a magic hand-wavy thing to solve the kinetic energy punching a dent in him problem. The spell took the bullet’s kinetic energy and used it to break down the bullet into stationary individual atoms, with any energy left over being radiated as light. The spell was complicated and would be hard to throw, and he rather thought it violated one or more laws of physics, but in terms of the magic spell system, or at least the magic spell system as far as he could work it out, the spell he came up with made perfect sense. Armed with this improvisation, he headed back out to the test ravine to try it out, although he was not really expecting much, given his dodgy treatment of physics! He returned to the same spot, and while he dressed the beat-up bush in the now unwearable jacket, he ran the spell through his head several times to ensure he had it right. Satisfied, he stepped back from the jacket-draped bush, threw the spell, and wandered back to his firing mark.