Wizards of the Otherworldly Court: Five, Twenty-three, and Twenty-nine Years

Chapter 5.3 Ronald's Collection: Protecting the Duke from Bandits - Shock

"Lord Illyer is right!" A knight shouted. By his voice, Ronald deduced that it came from Oswald, the head knight. "They are here to assist us! Focus defending the duke and young mistress while they strike!"

"""Yes, sir!""" The rest of the knights shouted in unison. Aside from the gasp of awe and fright, without not even so much of a "Who are you?" the knights didn't devolve into the chaos that swept the bandits and quickly adapted to allow the 'brown-robed figures' into their ranks, disciplined to the end.

"Sh*t! Forget about it!" a bandit with a black eyepatch yelled, silencing his fellow bandits. "Fire spirit art user or not, there's only one of him! Just kill him and then kill the duke! So get your asses together!"

"""R-Right!""" the rest of the bandits shouted and steeled their weapons.

And so, Ronald lifted his hand once again, pointing it to that bandit while holding [Emilia's Right Dagger] in his other hand. He gave his Order.

I order you, attach to left foot of man with black eyepatch, form cylinder 20cm diameter 1cm height, sculpt formation height to 180cm upward, oxidize, thus is my Order, [Burn].

---

WHOOSH

While the sounds of the wall of fire drown it out, Joshua could still tell by the startup noise that Ronald has given his second [Burn] Order which would undoubtedly spook the bandits on his side even further.

And as he recalled, Ronald has yet to memorize it.

---

"...[Burn]!"

WHOOSH CRACKLE CRACKLE

Upon Ronald's Order, the burnt piece of a log of firewood embedded into the ashes of the Training Grounds flared up the enveloping flame once again. Taking a deep breath, as Ronald verbally gave the Order instead of doing it in his mind, he watched the log burn brightly in a fire that was much bigger than it would normally.

CRACK

Suddenly, a snapping sound was heard as the log, already short and thin after being abused with multiple uses of [Burn], broke into two pieces with the top piece falling to the ground, escaping the fire as the maneg formation was attached to the bottom piece which was still stuck to the ground.

"Welp, you're gonna need to replace that," Joshua remarked, glancing down at the poor timber. "Any signs of memorizing it yet?"

"Hm, let me try." Ronald looked at the stump of whatever's left of the bottom piece of the log and ordered, "[Burn], bottom of log stuck in the ashes I see."

And then they waited.

"..."

"..."

And waited.

"..."

"..."

"...And they said ordering out loud makes it easier to memorize the Order," Ronald sighed as nothing happened even after half a minute.

"Great, so this makes firewood number what now? Before we go out to get some more." But Joshua's question might as well be rhetoric as looking around, the two Court Wizards were surrounded by a lot of used firewood. There's no way to count them all. 

"Hm, I think I get why grandfather had trouble using [Burn] that he created [Burning Fist]. Memorizing this Order costs too much firewood on top of his Maneg Soul not accepting even the most accurate description," Ronald grimaced.