Alexander the Dragon Chapter 3

Chapter 3 - You are a wizard

Magic was the bridge between the mortal world and the celestial beyond. My existence was partially magic, so it was natural for me to perceive its pulses and patterns as I etched my will upon the physical plane.

I provided my mana, the energy that existed from my core, and meshed it with the mana of Uroboros that flowed in all things. I combined them together and commanded them to take form. To become language-based symbols that were far from easy to discern – strange shapes and bewitching runes – the ancient hieroglyphics of a long-forgotten architect of magic.

Holding these patterns in my mind’s eye, I felt them physically in the space between my skull and the front of my brain, pressing and shaking incessantly, on the verge of unraveling. I held fast against the building pressure and reexamined my work.

Wizardry required certainty. Double checks. Triple checks. Without precaution, a mistake could wreak havoc and quickly fatigue you if not damage your mind and spirit.

The Lightning Pulse spell used eerie rhombus shapes that overlapped slightly while going down. They had three jagged runes on the sides of each rhombus. The pattern was held in perfect position according to the grimoire for this spell. At the same time, I continued outpouring my part of the mana needed to rewrite the natural laws.

I was certain this would’ve led to a perfect spell once I uttered Lightning Pulse. Following the advice given to me, I canceled the spell by inserting a universal cancel rune on each of the shapes. The pressure in the front of my head dissipated and my magical energy stabilized.

Head held high, I waited for Father – I mean, King Jaden – to praise me.

“Not enough magic output. It would’ve collapsed,” he said, tossing Rocky up and down while looking at me with his glowing eyes. Rocky wore a serious face, as if challenging herself to keep her breakfast down while playing with her father. Good for her. I was more shaken than I liked.

I sputtered before catching myself. “I’m sure I pushed the right amount for the spell to succeed. Did you account for the world’s portion?”

“I did account for the world. Still not the right amount with you  from what I can tell. What’s the right amount of mana in your theory?”

I didn’t have a mana instrument for measuring my exact magic output. However, my studies basically said a spell with an effect of Uncommon Quality should feel like pushing a head-sized rock with your hands, but spiritually.

I had a much larger head than the usual wizard. I was also bigger while in my dragon form. I supposed the sensation would be relative. I was also certain I had more mana than most aspirant wizards, so I should hold an advantage.

I explained that to the King.

“You need more output. It’s not a rock the size of your head you’re dealing with. It’s the size of your entire body. You won’t overcome your magic resistance without pushing your own weight, spiritually speaking.”

I huffed. “There are other creatures with high magic resistance and can cast spells just fine.” I couldn’t name them all off the top of my head. I could hazard a guess by calling out a hag type, but there was no need to get into the weeds on the subject of monsters with the Adventurer King. I continued on, “Why must I suffer this ridiculous barrier?”

His smile was nearly mocking but not quite. “Other creatures don’t hold much raw myth next to a dragon’s reputation. Magical laws hold more truth than lie in that regard, boy.”

“Still, I’m a partial dragon,” I grumbled in spite of myself.

“Then it wouldn’t be that much harder to really push your magic. With guts. And heart. Push it to the limit, boy!”

“Push it, push it!” Rocky cheered. The dryad clapped encouragingly while still feasting on her buried meal with her feet. I was becoming less eager and more nervous with this expectant crowd.

I calmed down and focused on the process instructed in the grimoire. The details were still sharp in my memory. Nothing changed except for exerting more mana from the spiritual core inside of me.

I threw my willpower at the effort, shoving, heaving, straining to overcome the disadvantages of my dragon heritage. Doing so made the magic symbol drafting harder to complete and maintain in my mind’s eye. The wobbling rhombus shapes and runes hazed in and out of focus in the crucial seconds I built up my half of necessary mana.

“Cancel it,” the King ordered.

Surprisingly, inputting the cancel runes on each rhombus was harder than expected. It was like my mind was fighting against me because I was overstraining my mana output to overcome myself.

No creature should be battling against their nature this early in the levels when I lacked enough achievements and Titles to shape my destiny going forward. Still, I accomplished the task and safely canceled the spell.

King Jaden settled Rocky on his shoulders, letting her sit behind his neck. “Again.”

I nodded quickly and performed the same sequence. It was as hard as the last time. Maybe even harder. For a split second, I worried the world of wizardry was beyond me and I should aim to be more like a sorcerer instead. Then I would pick up spells at random if Uroboros was kind enough to deliver. If I lived long enough, surely I would get some interesting spells out of random circumstances. I could satisfy myself with those. Surely, that was enough.

I let this train of thought distract me for a few seconds. Then I crushed that pathetic and weak side of me. I will be a wizard regardless of my dragon heritage!

My claws clenched and ripped apart the loamy forest floor. I clenched my jaws and pushed my mana to overcome my own resistances. I hardened the shapes and runes in my mind. Lightning Pulse was on the tip of my tongue, begging for release.

“Cancel it,” repeated the King.

I growled in frustration but did as I was told.

“Begin again, boy.”

I couldn’t tell what was worse: getting skewered by a corrupted spear or being under King Jaden’s tough tutelage?

He was no wizard.

But he was the Adventurer King and must’ve known many wizards and witches and other magic users. He knew his stuff from the social circle he kept where many eclectic people with various abilities came together to face the greatest challenges Uroboros had to offer.

To have his close attention was starting to dawn on me as crushing. Maybe even scary and maddening.

When I looked into his eyes, I saw the soul of a man who faced death, travesty, horror, sacrifice. I saw a man who succeeded where others failed, who fought alongside the best adventurers in the world, who achieved conquests many could only dream of.

His time was worth the treasury of a large kingdom.

So I endured his brutal tutelage. Every time I wanted to give up, I clenched my jaws and dug my claws into the forest floor. Every time weakness sneaked up in the back of my mind, I beat it back and refocused on my task.

It was torturous.

“Cast it,” the King ordered.

I nearly lost control of the spell, shocked by the change in procedure. I had lost track how many times I prepared the spell and canceled it. Before everything unraveled, I followed through with overt eagerness, like a desperately starved predator seizing fresh meat.

“Lightning Pulse!”

The moment the magic words left my mouth, I knew I had made a mistake. The symbols were perfect in my mind. The mana output was not enough. I missed the mark by a few units. Unfortunately, in the world of wizardry, that was grounds for total catastrophe.

Lightning Pulse collapsed with a two-prong attack against me. The symbols imploded and struck me with a headache inducing daze. The mana backlash knocked the air out of my chest and made my soul hurt.

I let out a measly whine and lowered to the ground like a wounded animal. It was pathetic. I hated myself.

How did I fail? I should’ve been capable. Was I not capable? How embarrassing.

You insufferable weakling! I thought vehemently. You have failed your Father. You’re not good enough to be a dragon. You’re not good enough to even be a human!

“Hey, hey, open your eyes,” the King said.

I hadn’t realized I closed them. I forced them open and noticed the world was murky. I felt a human hand on the side of my face, rubbing around in circles that were comforting. I blinked my eyes to clear my vision

He was close up now, smiling like always. Something about that felt terrible, which compounded with Rocky’s concerned gaze. I tried to hold my bearing as Father – King Jaden – continued to rub my cheek.

“Good, good, you’re not too out of it. I’d seen expert wizards die working on complex spells. Blew themselves up.” He let out a sigh. “It’s good you got to feel the failure now. I think at the academies they do all they can to avoid spell failures. Hell, they have artifacts that siphon the potential backlash like an electrical fuse.”

I didn’t know what an electrical fuse could be but I assumed it was terminology from King Jaden’s former world. It didn’t matter. Despite being an independent dragon who lived in solitude for practically all of my life, I leaned hungrily into my father’s nurturing hand and let out a soft growl of low contentment. He was kind enough not to make a joke about the scenario or call me a hairy gremlin.

“I’m serious when I say this failure will make you stronger. You were close. But now you know what happens when you don’t get it right. Remember it. Because it could be worse.”

“Maybe I’m not fit for being a wizard,” I said with a sniff.

“You got the right mentality for it. You’re just being impatient.” He chuckled. “Maybe I can take your mind off of it with this proposal? Let’s set out on our adventure. I believe Pinea is done with her meal.”

I snapped my head up and saw the dryad standing with her feet reformed into something more human-shaped instead of roots. She nodded quickly and gave me an encouraging smile. However, I didn’t feel encouraged. I wanted to fly back to my mountain and hide. The fire in my chest was cooled and reduced to an ember.

It was terrible that I displayed myself as incompetent and weak in front of a mere dryad named Pinea. Still, I forced myself to focus on the most important task and push forward.

“Yes, yes, the case of the corrupted treant. How should we proceed, Adventurer King?” I asked in a no nonsense voice. Nevermind my whining and pathetic showing from prior. I was now a dragon minding his business: hunting evil to burn it out.

“You tell me,” he said with a smirk.

I had a hunch he would do that. I didn’t mind. It helped me push through the mental fog lingering from the failed spell and the difficult training.

I looked around the glade and forest. My gaze lingered on the dryad. “You were attacked by the treant. You could lead us back to where it all started.”

She was prime witness number one. It made sense to focus on her until we found another thread to follow. Of course, I was basing my investigative structure on the legends of heroes and villains. The smarter heroes always seemed to have a structured procedure.

I supposed it was a good thing King Jaden kept talking to Pinea and keeping her around. Just for this reason.

“Good, good, I think that’s a suitable way to start.” He turned his attention to Pinea and spoke in her language.

The dryad nodded and waved for us to follow. As we set foot, it occurred to me that I had limited experience of walking around the Charmed Forest, or any forest.

I normally flew in and flew out. Air superiority was a powerful advantage against most creatures. Except for the corrupted treant. It would’ve knocked me out of the air while I tried to get close for a flaming burp.

The day was drawing closer to noon. The forest tweeted, sang, swayed with mystical fey-like life. Horned rabbits jumped out from behind the foliage, looked at us, then ran away quickly while turning invisible. Fey spiders lit up their webs with myriad colors, letting me know when to duck my head to dodge a face-to-face with their webs.

The spiders waved their legs in thanks at me, and I replied with a derisive snort and nothing more. I found them to be nuisances since they were in my way, but I obliged by moving my head first.

At least the trees here were larger than other forests. Maybe being more magical in nature gave them greater size. Because of my own size, I loomed taller than the rest of my party. I found that agreeable with me, which helped me ignore Grand Archdragon Tiamat’s comments of me being puny during her visit yesterday.

We found signs of the fighting that happened between Pinea and the corrupted treant. Upturned soil that was darkened from the touch of corruption before the miasma was snuffed by the land’s natural mana. Snapped over saplings and older trees that had withered and died before being cleansed from the corruption and miasma. There were the corpses of beasts that were low in level and caught by the corruption. Instead of being turned into monsters of evil, they died.

“Creatures of the Charmed Forest care about the whole more than themselves,” King Jaden explained, patting Rocky’s leg while she kept riding on his shoulders. “Many will intentionally snuff out their own life force to stop the corruption from taking them over to spread itself.”

“That hadn’t been the case with the treant,” I said right away.

“No, it hadn’t.”

The trail stretched farther than I’d expected. Pinea became more morose as time went on.

I found it incredible she’d survived so long with the lashing treant hounding her. She could’ve given up and accepted her fate. Perhaps she had a stronger will to live than most.

There was a consequence for that, of course. We saw portions of the Charmed Forest that were scarred and potentially damned for years to come. We also saw the successfully corrupted as well. They took root in the hyper rabbits easier, apparently.

I squashed them under my paw as soon as they sprinted at us.

[You’ve defeated Corrupted Hyper Rabbit - Level 5 Monster! Experience gained!]

[You’ve defeated Corrupted Hyper Rabbit - Level 6 Monster! Experience gained!]

[You’ve defeated Corrupted Hyper Rabbit - Level 4 Monster! Experience gained!]

“Do I look like a pestilent regulator? This is beneath me,” I growled, shaking the latest corpse off my paw.

They were large for rodents. Nearly as tall as the average man’s thigh. They popped and left a gooey mess when I struck them. I had a hard time imagining the Experience gained was worth my time. At least I was stamping out some of the corruption in the area.

The King smirked slightly. “You have no idea how many famous adventurers start off with a rat infestation quest. You’re following the footsteps of giants, my boy.”

Before I could reply, the smirk on his face wiped away. He reached over and set his hand on the dryad’s shoulder. She jerked away in surprise before giving him a thankful look.

Ah. I was being obtuse, wasn’t I? These creatures weren’t mere pests, they were the neighbors and friends of the dryad.

We’d been crossing through a trail of blackened destruction and death for a good while now. I sensed this was a low level area, so the dryad and the corrupted treant’s prolonged, running battle was very costly for the creatures in their path.

I didn’t know what to say to make her feel better, but the prickling heat in my chest was urging me to utter something. I dipped my head closer to her, which startled her.

Before I lost my nerves, I spoke my intention. “If there’s a plot behind all of this, we will get to the bottom of it. Corruption will not be tolerated. Especially in the lands of dear allies.”

I hoped that sounded good. I thought of myself as awkward on my delivery.

However, the expression on Pinea’s face was thankful and overjoyed. She hesitantly reached out and pressed her hand to my snout. I allowed her this comfort before pulling my head back.

It was strange to think I would’ve normally looked down upon her if my day had gone on as usual with me hunting, feasting, and flying about before returning to my lair. Now we walked together on the same darkened trails I would’ve normally ignored.

“Big brother’s the nicest,” Rocky said, breaking her silence all of a sudden. I was so shocked by her words, I nearly failed to catch what she said next. “I never had a big brother before. I think it’s fun to keep you, so I’m going to keep you.”

“Uh, um, hm.” I cleared my throat. “I never had a little sister before. I suppose you could fill the position.”

She gave me a very familiar smirk. Almost like our father’s. Oh, yes, she was very much his blood.

She was also quite strange now that I thought about it. She hadn’t reacted to the corrupted monsters attacking us. Nor did she respond much to the overall bloodshed. I’d killed the monsters brutally in front of her, and she functioned just fine.

Wasn’t that strange?

“Look alive, look alive,” the King said all of a sudden, his tone making me shiver. “The corruption got to something a bit tougher than hyper rabbits. I’m still leaving it up to you, boy.”

Before I could reply, the latest challenger made itself heard with a loud whine. I stopped and rose up on my hind legs to see from a higher vantage point. Just like that, I was effectively twenty five feet tall while balancing against my tail.

Something monstrous smashed through the copse of trees ahead and rumbled out into the open in a cloud of splinters, twirling leaves, and black dust. It was a corrupted steel boar, and these creatures were normally in the early teens in level based on my reading. The corruption would’ve pushed it to the late teens now.

It was doable.

I spread my wings and beat them once to hop ahead of the party, stealing the corrupted monster’s attention. It dug at the darkened forest floor with its front hoof before charging forward with wanton abandon. It used an ability or two right away, its body becoming a reflective sheen of steely magic. Sparks of light surrounded its face where its horns started to glow.

I touched down lightly after my hop, waited a beat, then beat my wings again to enter the air once more. It looked like I was giving the boar a free pass at my party. That was not the case.

I crashed down with a weighty stomp on the boar’s back. I put all of my body behind the stomp and had the boar’s legs buckling, its face digging into the ground, burying its tusks.

Before it could recover, I whirled around and grappled it from behind, beating my wings to keep it imbalanced by yanking it backward or side to side. My fore claws were latched tight to its sides, the tips of my talons scraping against its magical steel coat. It was a big boar, large enough to stare directly into the chest of a human, so it was a good enough challenge to hold between my paws.

It tried to twist around and face me, which was exactly what I wanted. Its efforts were repaid with a flaming burp to the face.

Against the corrupted treant, my flames had merely been a surprising tactic. Against this creature, it had more of a stunning effect.

I repeated the process, stunning it more and more, weakening the steel shell it had coated itself with, but not entirely. That was fine. I needed to slow its struggles long enough to achieve my main goal.

The symbols were etched perfectly in my mind’s eye.

My magical output was pushed beyond any perceivable limit I had. The air around me twirled from the heavy mana circulation of Uroboros responding to me.

The spell formation felt like it was going to collapse at any moment while I wrestled with the target. A wizard should have space to work. A wizard should cast their spells with more ease and refinement. A wizard shouldn’t be a dragon who was the son of a Calamity, the Blazing Tyrant and Grand Archdragon Tiamat Hellbringer. But I didn’t care about any of that because I sought one goal.

I wanted to make my father proud of me.

“Lightning Pulse!”

The difference between success and failure all came down to feeling a click. Then I sensed that all was right in the world. The world was going to answer my will.

I felt like a mystical god. For a brief, brief moment.

I was no longer a Dragon Halfborn of fire. I was an arcane being who wielded lightning. I was barely digging under the surface of what this element could do, which was a fast and shocking revelation, like a climactic epiphany that was barely graspable. This elemental tree commanded the storms. It could unleash ear-blasting thunder. It could be hot and stunning and bright. It could be the master of metal and more somehow.

For this instance, it was a near invisible current passing between my fore paws. Directly into the struggling boar.

The monster’s eyes exploded outward with a spark, crackle, and pop. Thick clouds of moke unfurled from its mouth and nostrils. A high whine of electrical energy hummed loudly for all to hear before it cut off once the spell ran its course.

I had already released the boar since it was long dead, but the body remained upright, its muscles locked. It smoldered and filled the air with a distinct smell reminiscent of rotten bacon put on a sizzling pan.

Then it tipped over and thumped onto its side.

The System barraged me quickly.

[You’ve defeated Corrupted Steel Fey Boar - Level 18 Monster! Experience gained!]

[You’ve leveled up Dragon Halfborn from Level 4 to Level 5! Free stats gained!]

[You’ve gained a New Skill! Appraising Eye (Great)! Congratulations!]

[You’ve gained System recognition for a Spell: Lightning Pulse. Congratulations!]

Despite how well I finished the fight, I was suffering the post-battle jitters. That was the strongest creature I’d defeated by myself. I’d also managed to do it with a spell while keeping my party out of the battle.

The notifications were almost overwhelming to examine. Before I could regather my composure, I found Father and Rocky already at my side, Pinea following after them.

There was a soft smile on Father – King Jaden’s face. It widened into a beaming grin.

“You’re a wizard, Alexander.” He patted my side. “I’m proud of you, son.”

I should refute his claim. Having one system-recognized spell did not make a wizard. True wizards had dozens of recognized spells. They’d studied for longer years than my wink of an existence. I had it under good authority to stop him from shaming true wizards.

But he beat me to the punch. “I’m serious. I’m proud of you. You’re a freaking wizard.”

“Wizard!” Rocky backed him up.

Pinea clapped in support.

I lowered my head as the blazing heat in my chest became unbearable. I coughed up a few words with crackling embers and dragon smoke, the most I could manage right now while straining under the weight of the moment.

“Thank … you. Thank you.”