Lazula grins at me and walks away. Her long black hair flowing down, contrasted by her light grey skin. Even though her height is unusual, it doesn’t prevent her curves from being in the right places. The light grey skin and night black hair only serve to further add a slightly mystical sense of beauty to her.

‘She really is quite perceptive huh.’, I mumble, ‘not only did she immediately recognize me when I walked in, even though my appearance changed that much, but she also immediately sensed that I have a dragonic bloodline.’

I sigh and think, ‘well that are titans for ya. They are the oldest and most mystical race. Nobody knows when the inception of their race was or how powerful their mystical powers are.’

The lessons for the rest of the day are not that interesting. A lot of things are just basic knowledge or only require some common sense to understand. Though there was one thing I learned that peaked my interest. Apparently people in the Eastern continent don’t use mana as power source. They use something called Qi. Qi is formed in a very complicated way.

They will absorb mana in their body while guiding it through vital passageways such as the heart, brain and guts. By doing this they will add vitality power, also known as life power or aura power, to the absorbed mana. The whole guiding process of the mana is done by the power of the soul, which is a certain type of power that everyone’s soul will emanates.

By doing this they will also add soul power to the mix of life power and mana. So Qi is a mix of mana, life power and soul power. It’s heavier than mana and allows them to use stronger body strengthening techniques, but the trade-off is that their ranged attacks will be severely lacking in power and speed if they don’t have any supportive items. The heavy qi is difficult to compress, which makes it also troublesome to put in complicated spells. The heaviness of the power also prevents them from creating fast moving projectiles. In other words, using raw mana or qi have both their advantages and trade-offs.

While thinking about all this unnecessary stuff I arrive in front of the royal dorms and it hits me only now that I’m going to be interrogated.

‘The princess won’t kill me right?’, I think while feeling slightly panicked, ‘she shouldn’t right? I didn’t do anything wrong! I will have to run away If she really would try to kill me. Should I go to the eastern continent? They wouldn’t go that far to chase me right?’

Luckily I get taken out of my downwards spiral of dark thoughts by the gentle voice of Melia.

‘Are you alright, you look a little bit pale?’, she asks, ‘ah, don’t worry, the princess won’t do anything to you. She would just like to know how you managed to create a dragonic bloodline for yourself.’

‘pfew, thank you Melia, I really didn’t know what was going to happen to me.’, I thank her with a grateful expression.

‘Why did you come if you were not certain what was going to happen? You don’t seem to be a careless person when your temper doesn’t flare up.’, she asks with a puzzled expression while leading the way.

‘Eheh, I was thinking about all the new knowledge I acquired today and totally forgot about the problems I had while walking to the royal dorms.’, I say with a wry smile.

‘hahaha, yes that is truly something you would do!’, she says while giggling with a tinkling voice.

‘Ugh, now I feel more embarrassed than nervous. Well, I guess that helps too.’ , I think to myself.

We arrive at a solitary room and I see that the princess is already sitting down.

‘please take a seat’, she says, ‘now could you please explain to me how you managed to acquire a dragonic bloodline of such a high purity?’

I sit myself down. Even though I know that she probably won’t do anything, I still feel slightly scared. I mean who wouldn’t? One wrong word and the whole country will try to kill me.

So I explain her how I did my experiment, what happened in my experiment (or at least what I still remember of it). I describe the process and how I felt during the experiment. I see the faces of both the princess and the maid scrunch up when I describe how the machine broke my chest open or how those tendrils drilled holes all throughout my body.

The princess stays silent after I’m done with my explanation. Suddenly a man in a white lab suit enters the room which surprises me.

‘What are the results?’, asks the princess.

‘We checked everything he said. Theoretically it should be possible to do something like that and honestly it really is the work of a genius. It’s however almost impossible to survive in reality, even if we take in consideration that his body got strengthened by the dragons blood essence. The only explanation we have for that is that he is the only one with a slime soul shard that has a core. Core based slimes have higher magical capabilities and also possess astonishing adaptive abilities. They can absorb harmful things from their environments and integrate it into themselves as an asset through an inherent magical trait of core slimes.’

‘I can give an example to illustrate this. If a normal slime enters a toxic environment it will die from poisoning. If however a core slime enters that same toxic environment, it will use magic to absorb those toxins into his body and then fuse with it resulting in the creation of a toxic core slime, which then will have the ability to survive in this environment without any consequences. This characteristic is however not that well known because no one wants to take the time to study the weakest species of our lands.’

‘I see’, says the princess with an interested expression, ‘so you are saying that he could do this because his slime soul shard is one with a core.’

‘correct!’, says the scientist while looking with interest at me, ‘he is also the only person to ever have had a slime soul shard with a core.’

So I’m special? What? Why did no one tell me dammit!

Wait that’s not the problem here, who gave goddamn permission for a scientist to eavesdrop on me while I’m explaining my research?!

‘I didn’t know that there were other people listening in on our conversation!’, I say through gritted teeth, trying to keep myself calm. The cooling stream of mana that flows through me with each beat of my heart seems to help me a lot with that.

‘You should have expected as much after having created a dragonic bloodline for yourself.’, says the princess with a grin, ‘You didn’t think we would just blindly believe you pertaining such information that might even threaten our national secret?’

Ugh, she’s right even though I don’t like it. I better leave before I can get another chance to get angry.

‘um, I had an appointment with miss Lazula, so I should get going now.’, I say with a slightly impatient expression.

‘Yes, you can go now.’, says the princess, ‘can you guide him back Melia?’

‘Yes princess’, says Melia while giving a slight bow, ‘Follow me’

*********

‘Phew that was close’, I think to myself.

It was so nerve-wracking to be there. I didn’t know the princess could exert this kind of heavy pressure. It seems that there is more to her than just appearances.

I arrive in front of the dorm of the teachers and I see Miss Lazula waving at me. I walk up to her with some more energy in my steps. Finally, I will be able to make myself stronger and learn my first few spells to spend this overabundant mana on!

‘So you are here, I guess your little talk with the princess went well?’, she says while gently smiling.

What?! How did she know? I never told her that?

‘Haha, I have my methods to know such things’, she says with a mischievous expression.

Can she read my mind?

‘And no I can’t read your mind.’, she giggles.

You sure?

‘yes I’m really sure’, She says while laughing out loud, ‘Boy, you’re like an open book to me. You really don’t have any control over your facial expressions, it shows all your emotions loud and clear.’

I sigh and ask with a slightly exasperated tone, ‘what will we be doing now?’

‘well’, she says while taking out a glowing stone, ‘we will first test out what your current stats are with this stone.’

‘After finding out your stats comes the fun part though’, she says with a *slightly* more dangerous smile.

Something tells me that fleeing to the Eastern continent might not have been such a bad idea.