Dragon Sorcerer 2- Chapter 95 (Patreon)

Chapter 95- Elevating the Body, Freeing the Soul

5 months earlier…

I walked into the Dragon Academy as the sun was coming up. Some of the students were already exercising. Some stretched, others were climbing the walls with a system of small hand holds that I now realized were built in. Others were sparring. A pair were outside cooking in a large pot. At the head of the room, Master Hellegers sat cross-legged and watched it all while Killian walked around offering small corrections or words of encouragement.

If I hadn’t seen how Modessa trained Cami or how Galbrecht sparred with me, I would have walked out right then. This was all silliness. It wasn’t the way of the dragon. Instead I simply waited at the doorway to be acknowledged. That went on for about five minutes before my patience started to run out and I coughed loudly.

Everyone ignored me till about a minute later, Killian shouted at me, “Are you waiting for an invitation?”

“Yes, I’m glad you finally realized it. You really aren’t all that perceptive.”

Killian’s nostril’s flared and from the way his body tensed up it seemed like he might have gotten angry. That left me wondering if he could really be that dense to get angry because failed to acknowledge me.

Master Hellegers stood up and Killian immediately took a deep breath. “Our newest student simply isn’t accustomed to the way of the dragon yet.”

“You might be surprised.”

He gave me a half smile. “Unlikely, but perhaps it is just that you practice in a way that is different from what you see here. Trust me though, people need to build their tolerance. There will be moments of breaking where you are pushed to life and death situations, but it won’t be during morning exercises. Now, come show me your footwork.”

With that the most boring five months of my life began. It was a miracle that I didn’t walk out of there on multiple occasions. I had thought that listening to the inane chatter of the university students was torture, but for three months Master Hellegers taught me nothing. It wasn’t that I didn’t work. That was constant. I performed an intricate dance which he called kata in slow motion. The individual movements often had super silly names ranging from the obvious like front kick or rising block to the hilarious like dragon grasps the pearl.

Even when I could master it almost immediately, he made me go through it in super slow motion, focusing on how each part of my body moved. He would make me do it on fragile paper and work on not disturbing the paper. He would make me do it while carrying a yoke across my back with buckets of water on either side.

I had come here to learn faster, but instead he slowed everything down. Even simple exercises like strikes were broken down into their individual parts. It was frustrating. In fact I almost gave up on it all. But then I started counting up my gains. My Strength hadn’t increased at all, but the stat that I thought the least of had been slowly but steadily increasing.

Because the gains had been so subtle, I hadn’t paid much attention to it. Then Master Hellegers came up to me. “You are ready.”

“Ready for what? You haven’t taught me anything except how to move in slow motion. This shouldn’t be called the Way of the Dragon, this should be the Way of a Sleeping Dragon, except even then a sleeping dragon is probably more impressive. You still haven’t sparred with me since the day I agreed to study here. Only my word is keeping me here.”

He got a thin lipped smile. “Hmm… haven’t taught you anything. I’ve been attempting to make up for the one deficient I saw in your fighting. Especially, given your level you are a natural. You’re strong, durable, and have an amazing mastery of the transformation techniques of the Dragon Disciple Class, but you had one glaring weakness.”

I let out a long forceful breath to display my displeasure with his words. “And what is this supposed weakness.”

“Your Agility. Agility controls your speed, accuracy, and balance. It is the stat which enables a dragon to make the full use of their body. It is one of the reason why dragons are so feared in the air but are much weaker on the ground.”

I was about to argue that point but he asked, “Have you checked what your Agility has risen to yet?”

It took all my self-control not to snap at him but I pulled up the stat sheet. Then I did a double take. The system had to be wrong. I would have noticed something like this.

But even after looking at it half a dozen times it still read the same.

Agility: 118

That simply wasn’t possible. That would have meant that my Agility had doubled over the past five months without me even realizing it. I started thinking it through. Time and again Master Hellegers had made the challenges more demanding. Toward the end, I was performing his precious katas on thin wires which were stretched across the room a foot off the ground. They would have cut into me if I hadn’t been able to transform my feet.

“I take you see the results. Now, the question is if you are ready to try and evolve your class.”

“You mean to Transformed Dragon Disciple?”

“Yes, although you already have most of the transformation down for reasons that I suspect are unique to you. There is a level beyond it. Ascended Dragon Disciple is a legendary class. None of the masters in my line have been able to achieve it for the past five hundred years, but the methods are still record.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Well obviously as a legendary class it can exceed the level cap of twenty, but more importantly, it is capable of the true power of our class. You see an Ascended Dragon Disciple can take on full dragon form, even if only for a limited time.”

I snorted. I could do that anytime I wanted.

Edgar nodded his head then as though he had expected that response. “It is the culmination of mastery of the body.”

“Fine what do I have to do to evolve my class? Slay some monster? Defeat all the students here? Fight you again?”

“No, this is about freeing your soul.”

Master Hellegers had a habit of saying things which didn’t exactly make sense, but that just might have been the worst. He continued, “You are an extremely physical err… person. This has been clear from the beginning. Yet you are here seeking something else, something more than just the path you were born to. I considered this for a long time after you joined us and believe that what is holding you back is that you need to free your soul.

“You need to realize that it is your soul which defines who you are, not the color of your … well the color of the stripes on your uniform. You have done well and possess blue, green, and black stripes, but that is just a reflection of what you are inside. When your soul is at peace with your body, no matter what condition it is in, then you will have achieved true mastery of your body.”

It still sounded like gibberish but doubling my Agility in five months earned him enough patience from me.

“So what do I do then?”

He smiled. “Sit right where you are and meditate on who you are, what you want out of life, and what your place in the world is. Only you can come up with that concept. It is not for the gods to determine the role a man will play.”

“And here I thought you were all reverent to the gods after the way you treated Lisella.”

“I honor the gods for they are strong, but I follow the way of the dragon. The way of the dragon is one of strength but also knowing yourself. Perhaps someday I will get to meet one of these gods, but I cannot help but wonder if they really are gods then why do we have the system. Are these gods truly the creators of all or are they just other beings connected to the system? Eternity is greater than any of us can conceive of.”

I sat down cross-legged and began thinking about what he asked me. It was true, that I questioned if dragons were always correct. I would never let a human know that, but perhaps there was a different path for me which could take the best of both worlds. I didn’t want to permanently stay a monkey, so I needed learn more.

I began meditating on who I was and who I wanted to be. I thought about why I had come here, not just Helleger’s school or even the university. The real question was why had I come to the human world? When I fled from the adventurers, I flew north but I could have gone further south. I could have flown for the ocean, they would have been unlikely to follow me then.

Certainly, I had been much weaker then, but I had still been a young adult dragon. I had options. Then why did I nap after killing the cows? Or why didn’t I flee one night when Galbrecht and Modessa had been sleeping. There was certainly no reason for me to go into the forest.

It was more than my bond with Cami. It was a deep compelling need I had to learn and experience more. I wanted to see more of the world, but more than geography, I wanted to learn new ways of doing things. It wasn’t just power, although that was certainly a part of it. Power equaled freedom after all.

Perhaps that was the greatest crisis, the thing the Master Hellegers believed my soul needed to be freed from. I was a dragon, proud to be a dragon, and sure that dragons were the greatest thing on all of Ileria, but yet, I wanted to go my own way.

Mediation +1

I cursed and started to stand up. The system interrupted my thinking to tell me I had improved a skill. As I stood up though I felt a powerful blow strike my chest. I was sent flying back into the wall. The force had been diffused, but it still hurt and it hurt again when I hit the wall.

I opened my eyes and saw Killian standing there with a large flat stick of wood. I was up to my feet faster than would have ever been possible without this training, but before I could react, Master Hellegers appeared in front of me.

He held up his hand, “No, Nico. Trust me, please. This is necessary. I want this for you. I want it for us. If you are what I think you are, you represent an opportunity to revitalize the Way of the Dragon as envisioned by my ancestor.”

“What are you lecturing me for? I’m not the one who just hit someone while they had their eyes closed.”

“True, but you need to meditate. You need to do it no matter what happens around you. You can’t stand up cursing. You can’t sleep. You can’t let you mind wander. You need to free yourself. You need to decide who Nico is.”

“And you all are going to hit me if I try to stand up before I evolve my class?”

He nodded with a small grin. “Or if you fall asleep.”

Me from before would have fought. I would have raced out. Or would I have? That was the question. I was a proud, noble dragon. More, I was a blue dragon, the most beautiful and intelligent of all the dragons. Yet, I was living in a human body with humans, trying to learn new things. Maybe I was broken inside.”

Without another word I sat down. It would have been great to say that I simply meditated for a while and then realized what I wanted to be. It doesn’t work like that. Will can’t change the subconscious mind. The dream touched upon my mind, but I pushed it away. I would start to fall asleep and true to his word, one of the students would batter me.

I ended up mediating for a full three days. That was a very long time for a human body to go without water, but my elevated Durability made it possible. In the end, I realized the simplest of facts. I didn’t fully know who I was. I wasn’t going to be able to figure that out in a few days.

What I did know was one thing. I was now committed to learning more. I wanted to grow and see what I could become. It surely had to be better than some squishy faced human, but it was more about my soul. Of course that realization came with another side. If it was about my soul, then didn’t that mean it was the same for humans. Their flesh was the outside.

Nah… I shook my head. I was a dragon, I could dream higher thoughts. Too much self-realization at one time wouldn’t have been good for me.

Once that acceptance fell into place, I got another notification. I almost ignored it as I had ignored the other two levels up to Meditation and the Concentration which I had gotten.

You have unlocked a new level of compatibility between your true self and this human body. You may no evolve your human class to a Transformed Dragon Disciple. This is an epic class.

Transformed Dragon Disciple gain stats per level as follows:

 Strength: +2
 Agility: +2
 Durability: +2
 Mind: +2
 Free: +7

I accepted the evolution and then saw a number of other notifications which I had blocked out.

Your bonded companion has forged a minion contract on your behalf (x2)

Daggin ??? Has become your minion.
 Class: Battle Rager Level: 7

Craft Class: Runed Metal Smith Level: 18

You gain 100 DKP (bonus for first minion)

Rubin Drury has become your minion.

Class: Spell-weaver Level: 10

Craft Class: Enchantment Engineer Level: 20

You gain 50 DKP

Hmm… that must have been what Cami was talking about earlier. I didn’t have time to focus on it though as the notifications continued.

You have gained 5% Age Category

You are now a Mature Adult Dragon (0% to Elder)

Strength: +200

Durability: +200

Mind: +50

It kept showing little changes to my skills and abilities, but I pushed them aside. I’d look at them soon enough. I was frankly thrilled to have reached this point. It was faster than any dragon in my memories. But I was even more excited that I did this part on my own rather than because Cami had gained another level.

You have gained 4 levels as Transformed Dragon Disciple to reflect your growth and you further integration.

Strength: +8
 Agility: +8
 Durability: +8
 Mind: +8
 Free: +28

You have gained new class abilities.

Once again I cut it off. I’d explore those later. Now more than anything I needed one of the few things which competed with the love of gold for dragons. I needed to sleep.