Wild Dragon of Rome 17 (Patreon)

As much as the kiss and the implied promise made me more excited, as I tightened my grip around the dragon heart with one hand, my wild heartbeat was about my upcoming breakthrough. I was about to risk everything for a hasty breakthrough …

But, I didn’t have any other choice but to push forward recklessly, and use a method that even the crazy old man had treated reticently. 

Breakthrough was a straightforward affair for a single-element mage. Not easy or safe, but simple in concept. Slowly feed the elemental core with more mana without letting it grow and adapt, apply pressure from outside to keep it small, until it inevitably cracked, and the elemental concept it had been holding spread into the body of the apprentice mage. 

Of course, an elemental core was more of a mana construct than a physical organ, and the energy it contained spread into the mage's body, giving a mage the ability to connect with the elements of nature. Once that process was completed, the mage could use mana to connect the elements outside his body, feeding, controlling, and weaponizing their element with the ease they breathed. 

The initial spread and the organs affected determined the mage's potential. Most chose the heart, as it gave the greatest overall improvement, and allowed the strongest spellcasting, but different organs had their own advantages. 

A healer might choose to prioritize his hands, while a scout might prioritize his eyes, prioritizing passive improvements over spell power, but such choices were rare. Most mages started with the heart, and slowly created more of that compressed energy and attuned more of their bodies with mana. 

Of course, that energy had been mana in the past, but after staying trapped and compressed in an elemental core for years, it turned into something different. Most called it elemental vitae, but quite a few people called it ichor — though never in the earshot of priests, who didn’t appreciate such heresy. 

Ichor was the blood of the gods, and even for a mage, daring to compare themselves to Jupiter, Neptune, and other divine entities was daring … even if the divine hadn’t walked on Earth for centuries. 

I took a deep breath, focusing on the present. The breakthrough for a four-element apprentice was a far more difficult and delicate process. The reason was simple. The elemental vitae didn’t interact well with each other. 

That was why the only acceptable breakthrough method for a four-element mage was a sequential approach. Choose one element, overwhelm the core, shuttle the vitae into an extremity, and keep it there before breaking the second one. The usual pattern was head, legs, stomach, and heart, the heart always being activated the last. 

Then, the mage would spend months carefully creating borders between them to prevent those energies from mixing. It was the safe approach — for a very loose definition of safe — but it was also laborious and limiting. It shackled the four-four element mage to the rank of mage, never to rise to the rank of sorcerer. 

Still, it was a good deal for most. The breakthrough to the rank of sorcerer was filled with secrets and dangers. There was a reason people called it a minor apotheosis. 

Four-element mages couldn’t rival sorcerers, but they had an overwhelming advantage against the other mages, making it an excellent choice for rich and daring minor nobles. 

Even that process could go wrong in many ways. 

Fire and water were a combustive combination, while earth and air rejected each other wildly. Those weren’t the only problems of vitae conflict. Earth absorbed water, air fed water, and fire tainted earth … at least, when mages had limited themselves to more traditional interpretations all the time. 

The vitae from the core carried years of conceptual understanding of the apprentice. My grandfather had spent years and many painful lessons explaining that, for someone like me, who had used his cores for alternative understandings all the, even those reactions was not a given. 

Which meant, his crazy theory was even more troubling. Unlike the traditional breakthrough, his technique didn’t require a lot of mana, as fitting for an emergency technique. The old man probably didn’t envision a sequence of events he had given me the dragon heart, yet I was still forced to break in a hurry. 

Not that I blamed him for that assumption. The sequence of events that led me here was … exceptional. 

I took a deep breath, and spoke. “It’s time for a breakthrough.” It was not just to inform Lillian that I was starting, but to gather my courage. 

Then, I punctured my finger, and let the dragon heart absorb a drop of blood. Its multicolored glow spread in the cave, joining the blue glow of her spheres. This time, I didn’t bother containing the mana. I didn’t need to. The commotion from it was nothing compared to what was about to follow. 

I gathered some of that mana, turning them into four identical needles in my body, and aligned them against my elemental cores, ready to puncture. I was betting a lot on my grandfather’s theory. If it was wrong, I would damage my cores, making it impossible for them to generate the necessary pressure to crack in the future. 

“Focus,” I muttered, ignoring those thoughts. I needed to treat it like a fight. In a fight, second-guessing the tactics was a cardinal sin, as a momentary pause could prove fatal. My unorthodox breakthrough was like that … only worse. 

I punctured the four cores at the same time.

The pain that followed was hard to describe, but I welcomed it. I was used to suffering, and it gave me something better to focus on than self-doubt. I closed my eyes, focusing on my cores, and four drops of vitae that followed, their feeling impossible to describe. 

Yet, as I truly felt them for the first time, I understood why some dared to call it tainted ichor. The feeling was divine. Just their free existence allowed me to connect with my surroundings, feeling not just the mana, but the existence of the elements. It was beautiful and scary at the same time… 

I ignored the feeling as I focused on the four drops. Earth, fire, air, and water, each carrying the distinctive tinge of their nature and more. I ignored every single nugget of wisdom people had advised, and instead pulled them all to my heart, forcibly colliding them right at the center of my heart. 

The pain that spread was indescribable. My heart burned and froze at the same time, expanding and contracting. 

Yet, along with the pain, came an understanding. I felt my nascent connection with the world shift. It was another hard-to-describe sensation. As if, previously, I was looking at the world from a broken, stained window. No, four stained windows, each distorting the view in a different way, forcing me to guess the reality of the picture …

As the four different vitae merged, the windows broke, giving me a glimpse of something much greater, beautiful, and terrible at the same time. 

“T-that crazy old man, he’s right,” I stammered as I prepared to force another drop while I started connecting with everything at the same time. He was right. Developing only one element, and treating them as distinct entities crippled the true potential of the mages. Only by merging the four, one could truly coordinate with the world. 

Of course, I still needed to survive. 

The first attempt to merge the elemental vitae had succeeded, but it was not without cost. I could feel the presence of several internal wounds while blood forced itself through my throat. 

I was glad that beasts already started to react, making Lillian too busy defending me to pay attention. The last thing I needed was a healing spell to break my balance. Even the slightest external influence could be deadly —

As I pulled for mana, the dragon heart suddenly turned into a liquid, and before I could react, seeped into my skin. I could feel it moving through my veins, forcing me to redefine the meaning of pain. Even the conflict of four vitae in my heart was nothing in comparison. 

A desperate, foreign cry reached my ear. Intellectually, I knew that it was mine, but somehow, it didn’t feel like that. It felt alien … like everything except the liquified dragon heart climbing up my veins, burning everything behind. 

I wondered if I was imagining the smell of burning flesh… though not for long. The dragon heart continued to climb through my veins, but it didn’t spread, moving in a determined manner. 

And, settled right into the center. Then, there was no pain. I felt like I was about to die … when I felt Lillian cast a healing spell on me. 

Then, darkness.