Teachings of a dragon [1]

"How is the tea?"

"It's nice.."

Wearing his gentle suit of an old man, the Dragon smiled at me, "That's good. Hans will be happy to hear that you enjoy his creations."

Having our lesson in the principal's cabin, we were currently just sitting and drinking tea.

"Erm... Sir?

"Yes?"

"Wasn't I supposed to train my mana control with you?"

...

*Cough*

Keeping his poker face, he tried to save the awkward situation.

"Well, of course! This is a mana stimulating tea that will help us in your training!"

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[The head butlers homegrown tea]

Description: Tea brewed from the homegrown leaves of the principal of Kirkegaard's butler. Soothes the mind and slightly stimulates the mana reserves of the consumer.

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'It's the same tea as last time...'

"Now, hurry up and finish your tea, so we can get started!"

Finishing our tea, he started to gather his mana, most likely about to teleport us somewhere else. It did make sense that we wouldn't be practicing in his little home.

Placing his hand on my shoulder, with us now standing beside each other, my surroundings instantly changed. Feeling slight nausea from the sudden warp, we were now standing in the middle of a wooden dojo, "This is my personal practice room, unfortunately, I can't reveal its location because of circumstances."

Signaling me to sit down on the floor, he continued, "During our lessons, we will focus wholeheartedly on the refinement and control of energy. Even if you are a melee combatant, more efficient mana control will be helpful to produce more efficient attacks."

With a snap of his finger, he produced a comfy chair from nothing and sat down.

'How did he do that?'

"I take it as you have already noticed the difficulties of an assassin in your practice with Mike?"

"Yes sir."

Trying to concentrate and release my energy through my daggers had posed quite a challenge, and three days had not been nearly enough time for me to become proficient at it. In contrast, I had no problems executing the [Lightning Step], even if the processes had quite a lot of similarities.

'Skills really are a cheat.'

The fact that skills were autonomically executed, only needing to trigger it by starting the preparations, was incredibly useful. The weakness was the, now confirmed by James, cooldown. They also often used a lot of mana, as they were more powerful than just mana amplified strikes.

"Because you don't inhabit any pure mana, we will not focus on learning general spells, instead we will spend our time focusing on the control aspect. So now little hare, show me how you usually circulate your mana."

Closing my eyes, I started the process of making my lightning flow through my body. Revolution after revolution, my mana continued its path through my body with, what I thought was, excellent speed and flow.

"You can stop now."

Opening my eyes, I was met with a bit of a discontent face. The principal wasn't quite happy with my performance, "It's inefficient. You haven't opened enough channels, making your mana move in a cluster instead of in smaller streams, wasting a lot of the energy in the process."

Standing up, he walked behind me and put his hands on my back.

"I will pour some of my mana into you, to try to show you your smaller energy channels. Bear in mind, as I cannot convert my mana into the lightning element, I'm not sure what kind of reaction your body will have."

Slowly I could feel a warmth penetrate my back, starting to flow through my body. Smaller channels, not unlike capillaries started to open. Suddenly, something inside me rebelled.

My purple energy seemed to be in an uproar, hating the feeling of the unfiltered mana inside of me. It bit back.

*CRSHHHT*

With a huge discharge, it blew away the foreign energy and forced the principal's hands off of me. The principal, instead of being distraught or scared by the explosion of purple lightning, only responded with a mysterious tone, "Interesting."

Instead of feeling pain, he stood up and sat in front of me again.

"It seems as if your body is not only unable to use pure mana, it is actively rejecting it."

'My body is rejecting mana? I thought it was a situation where my physique was just effectively sorting out the mana from unnecessary components...'

Putting his hand on his chin, he seemed a bit troubled.

"Even if I would want to keep on experimenting with this phenomena, I'm afraid it might cause damage to your mana channels. This also means that I won't be able to forcibly open the smaller paths of circulation."

Luckily for me, my speedy mind had already analyzed the mana roads I needed to use in the brief moment before the rejection.

"I think it's fine, sir. Before my discharge, your mana briefly forced them to open and I was able to ascertain the feeling of them activated."

A bit surprised, he let out a hearty laugh, "Hohoho, impressive! Seems like it's not only your body that is fast!"

Leaning back in his chair, he continued, "Then little hare, we will spend three hours circulating your mana, and then we will have three hours of mana control. You may begin."

Letting my senses flow inwardly, I started to gently let my purple energy flow through one of the 'capillaries' at a time, slowly making my flow more efficient with every circulation.

****

"Slowly extend your mana outside of your body, without letting go of your connection."

A streak of lightning was moving around in front of me, hovering about twenty centimeters above my opened palm.

After having spent the first three hours meticulously opening up the flow of my mana, one small stream with every circulation of mana, we proceeded with practicing my control of it.

The idea of training manipulation of mana was simple but hard. By using it continuously, and controlling it through more and more advanced patterns, one would naturally get more proficient. At the moment I was stuck trying to just keep the energy outside of my body.

"Even if you might not learn a lightning spell, external manipulation is the most efficient way of improving your control."

The principal was sitting in the chair he had, in some mystical way, summoned and had paired it with a small table. On the table, there was a pot filled with tea and in his hand he was currently holding a cup, taking a sip every now and then.

Spells and skills were quite different. Spells were more structured and absolute, not something that would vary from person to person. Even if a general spell, like shooting an orb of elemental energy, would have different characteristics depending on the element imbued, it held the same process.

The process of learning [Fireball] and [Orb of water] was the same, practicing shooting a ball of energy towards an enemy. Two fire users would also use the same [Fireball], with only the power and efficiency depending on the user, unlike skills, which were often awakened and tailored to the individual, spells were universal.

That said, it would often be a waste of time for an assassin to learn ranged spells, as they wanted to get close to their opponent without wasting time. Some people, like James and Lindsey, were hybrids, learning both martial skills and spells to fight more dynamically, but for me who could only fill the role of finishing an enemy off, it was superfluous.

Even more so, as I couldn't learn the non-elemental spells, no matter what.

"Don't let your concentration slip!"

The little wisp of lightning had fizzled out, as I had lost connection to my energy because of my lack of attention.

"Try it again."

Still sitting cross-legged, I held my palm towards the roof. Letting my purple energy gather in my hand, I started to force it outside of my body, creating a small orb crackling orb of lightning in my hand. Motioning it with my senses, it floated upwards. At this position, I tried to manipulate it in all directions. Up and down, left and right.

The hard part of mana control was concentration, not letting the connection between the vessel and the energy dissipate. Even without physically making a single move my body was covered in sweat, and extreme exhaustion had settled in.

Spending almost three hours moving my mana had left me in quite a tattered state, forcing me to consume multiple mana potions provided by the old man. Thankfully, it had also led me to make some remarkable, relative to my starting point, progress.

Having started out being unable to even make a mobile accumulation of mana outside my body, I had made quite the improvement in only a few hours, with me now even being able to even move the floating orb a few centimeters in every direction without losing connection all too often.

Standing up, the principal told me to stop.

"This will be the end of our lesson."

Even if I felt content with the practice, seeing the possibilities of my mana, there was still an unanswered question.

"What about examining my Art? Mr. Borr said that you would examine it before I got permission to use it."

Making a small 'o' with his face, it seems like he had forgotten about it.

"Right, there was that as well..."

Fixing his posture a little he started to explain the situation at hand, "You will not get to use it until you are stronger. I already have an impression of what kind of Art it is, without closely examining it, and it will only make you rely on it too much."

Exasperated at the thought of not getting to use the most potent tool I retorted, "But what about the ranking matches? I need to practice it if I want to use it in the duels!"

Shaking his head, he responded, "You won't get to use it during the tournament. Your Art is excellent, almost godly. But I want you to keep it hidden until you are forced to use it. The accompanying martial skills will be permitted, but not the Art."

Ending our discussion, without me being able to retort due to his seniority, he teleported us back to the academy, just outside of his little cabin.