Force Multiplier

The reason I threw up so violently was mostly due to the rapid displacement as the two Dark Lords moved at stunning speed through the air bringing me along, but the fact that much I could see in the immediate vicinity was sheer destruction did not aid my plight. There was utter and complete ruination for miles around. The land had torn itself apart and the air of death hung still in the air. All around, there was nothing but overturned soil, ruptured ground… and a vast, immeasurably deep chasm in the ground. 

My eyes nearly popped out when I saw this scene. I had a feeling that save for the ghostlight inserted into the second spear, it had no difference from the first, which made the sheer destruction all the more incomprehensible. Based on the range alone, the power of the lance had multiplied at least threefold. It was a terrifying number, especially considering how little ghostlight had been used in comparison to the massive lance of ethereal darkness. 

In response to my look of frozen shock, Lord Nightblade explained, "The Death Lance's raw power increased by around 1.5 times, but the scale of destruction increased by so much since the control was reduced greatly. For this reason, its effective strength may have been only slightly higher than the original. However, considering the meager amount of ghostlight used to empower it, it's still a stunning effect."

I shook my head. "What does raw power have to do with control? What do you mean when you say the effective power was reduced? I don't understand…."

"As Dark Lords, we can cast most darkness spells to at least High Precision level, if not Perfection. Nightshade has great talent, so he was able to cast Death Lance at Perfection even as a Greater Dark Elemental. For this reason, his Dark Lance would be precise and very efficient, nothing like the kind of wastage we see with the empowered version."

"The increased power makes the spell 'stronger', but this means that the control is decreased because we are unused to it. It is not as though we cannot control it - at most one or two casts and he could control it to achieve a similar effect."

"However, currently it is inefficient because the destruction has a lot of spillover, which means that in an actual battle, the empowered Death Lance may not be a lot more effective since a target would not take a lot more damage than if they were struck with the original; rather, the damage would spill onto their surroundings."

"On the other hand, once a Dark Lord learns to control it properly, the damage it could do would be vastly increased. Even a Light King would be half-dead after getting hit with a normal Death Lance, but the empowered version would instantly kill them. For a spell like this, empowerment does not really mean much, since it either won't hit or if it does, the battle would be over anyone. Instead, if an area spell was empowered or some kind of buff spell… the effects would be astounding."