(Oct 13)

Cornelia gave me a hint, and I finally grasped an idea of what I needed to do to improve my magic control.

I knew what I needed to do to gain control of my dragon essence.

The magic bracelet that William gave to me when I went home to visit my family, was a huge hint.

William told me that it was a magic bracelet that restricted my magic flow, meaning I had to overcome it’s altering my magic by controlling my magic flow to overcome its effects.

In short, it trained my magic control and all I needed to do now, was to recreate that same feeling that I felt when I wear the bracelet.

I knew how to control it this entire time, but I wasn’t doing it though.

This entire time, I was visualizing my inner chakra and dragon essence as a gas, and I tried to control it. But gases are very wild and are hard to control so controlling your magic while visualizing it as a gas, is extremely difficult.

Instead, I should visualize my magic if I were restricting it.

Like a hose for example.

If you have a hose with a small tube and hole, the output pressure of the water will be more compressed, but it’s stronger and less water is wasted from spewing everywhere.

However, if your hose has a wide tube and hole, then it will spray in a wide area and won’t be as compressed, wasting a lot more water and has less strength.

If you take a bucket of water and splash it on a wall, it would do literally nothing but if you compress the water and shoot it with high pressure, all it would take is a single drop of water to pierce a hole in the same wall.

The same logic applies with controlling magic, instead of trying to control a free-floating formless gas that is magic, I should instead imagine my body as a hose, a container to hold the magic and to control it forcefully.

It would be harder for those who can’t use magic to understand this feeling, but this is the simplest way to explain it.

I closed my eyes and imagined my body as a shell and contained all of my chakra and dragon essence inside.

When I breathed out of my mouth, I was surprised by the amount of magic that was condensed into my breath.

To think that all it took was to change my mindset, would make me be able to control magic better.

“Woah, you got it already? That was an instant change! I didn’t want to give you too much advice because everyone visualizes and experiences their magic differently, but it seems you got it now.”

Even Cornelia was able to notice the change in my magic flow, my dragon essence was contained and compressed inside of m ready to burst at any moment….

But containing a massive amount of magic without letting it run loose is quite difficult, like trying to blow up a balloon with a lot of air but not having it pop.

“I’m ready Cornelia, let’s do this.”

Cornelia once again lifted her toothpick and filled it with her chakra as I too, injected my legs with my dragon essence.

I lowered my body…

… and I instantly launched myself and started running at an incredible speed, almost comparable to the speed I was going at with my Dragon’s Jet ability activated.

However, I was using a lot less magic and dragon essence now.

Cornelia also started chasing after me.

I was slightly slower than Cornelia and she launched several stabs at me, I managed to dodge three of her attacks but one of them pierced my shoulder.

But the fact I was able to dodge 3 of her 4 attacks was a massive improvement!

I alternated from running away and looking back to dodge Cornelia’s attacks and I started getting used to supressing and controlling my magic. My magic usage was so much less than it was before!

Slowly but surely, I could feel myself getting more used to controlling my magic this way and it become more natural.

I was able to consistently dodge most of Cornelia’s stabs at me by jumping back, dodging left or right and nimbly moving around.

At one point, I was dodging Cornelia’s attacks and I activated my Dragon’s Mind to slow down time slightly and I saw there was an opening in Cornelia’s attack posture.

I was pretty confident at the time, so I summoned a fireball and launched it at her opening.

But Cornelia instantly took a step back when she noticed me using magic, retracted her toothpick and then parried my fireball back at me.

Yikes.

Her reaction time is almost instantaneous…

She deflected my fireball back towards me, and it was sent flying back into my face.

It was made using my own magic, so it didn’t do too much damage but the explosion from my fire ball temporarily blinded me, which Cornelia used this opportunity to appear right in front of me in an instant to stab me with her toothpick.

“Good job Anthony! I had not expected this, you improved that much! I guess dragon essence is quite overpowered, isn’t it? You’re almost making me jealous!”

Our one-hour training together ended there.

Well actually, we only spent 45 minutes training together, but Cornelia was satisfied with my results and let me off early.

I was about to go back home… but then I realized I was still in a training session with my group…

My body was sore all over, as I had been stabbed repeatedly by Cornelia.

I still went back to my training group though.

Oh, I also wanted to mention that when I was running back, I was hella fast!

Damn, the feeling of the wind on my face as I ran was incredible! I had never run so fast before; it was like riding on a bike because my magic control had gotten better so I didn’t get as tired but was still maintaining a fast pace.

I felt like I was part of the wind!

Anyhow, when I got back to my training group with Alisha and the other soldiers, they were starting to get back to training again.

As Cornelia had said, the training I was doing with my training group was a breeze.

We mostly trained in sword fighting, and we did some muscle training by dragging heavy boulders across distances.

For most of the soldiers, it was tough and honestly it would’ve been tough for me as well if it were me from last year before I gained my dragon powers.

Not only that, but I’m also still growing! Just today, I feel as if I’ve improved greatly, and I will continue to improve!

It got to around 2 – 3 PM, when Alisha decided to end day 1 of our training week.

Alisha took out a microphone and gave us a final speech before we left to head home.

“Alright people, normally I would say good work! You did great today!... but I’m not. Most of you guys are falling below expectations, the training we did today was quite easy and the fact most of you are struggling with it shows how weak you guys are.”

The solders around me starts whispering among themselves but Alisha just continued on.

“I’m sure most of you have heard of the recent events… about the series of murders involving victims being brutally ripped apart and gruesomely torn to shreds…”

Yes, it was something I had personally witnessed, it had caused dragonification to happen just from me seeing the corpses.

I was listening to Alisha’s speech when I suddenly realized something that made me freeze.

The series of murders…?

Not a singular murder… but multiple… it happened multiple times…?

My face instantly paled.

I could feel something rising inside of my throat.

“The murderer that has ended dozens of innocent lives in horrific painful deaths, also known as...”

I held my breath.

“The Grinch.”