Four weeks after the dragon incident, there was still no one other than Zain and Zeidan who knew about the existence of Draig. All they knew was that the food intake of their young master has gone up by fifty times.

The palace was bustling with activities. Everyone was busy with their work. They all were excited about the young master's coming of age ceremony. All were preparing for the coming big event.

In Zeidan's room, he was as usual sitting at his desk. Two of his eleven followers, Raiser and Raina were standing in front of him. Morris was by his side.

"My lord, I don't think you have missed the presence of an unknown legend in the palace. I don't want to know anything about him, just tell me whether he is a friend or foe."

"Don't worry Raiser. He is not a foe. But I can't let you guys meet him for now. It's not safe."

"No, I understand. You don't have to explain, my lord."

Raiser and Raina didn't pry further. They knew that if he wasn't willing to tell, they can't force it. Zeidan asked Morris about the current state of Dukedom.

"My lord, all is going well. We met with some financial problems. But it was resolved thanks to a young master's gift."

"What gifts? He had also said something similar before."

"My lord, you know that we produce seventy percent of food in the northeastern territory of the Zinovia empire. So, there are many nobles and territories which depend on our Dukedom for food."

"After they came to knew about the new law we implemented. They send many diplomats to us for negotiations for buying the food. They know that if we won't provide them with food, the prices in their territory will raise. That could deal a huge blow to them. Even a rebellion could occur because of shortage of food."

"The diplomats are currently staying in the city. They want to negotiate the price they will be paying for food and grains. They came with many gifts. Many of the surrounding nobles who didn't even have good relations with us proposed an alliance."

"Congratulations, Duke Zeidan. You now have absolute power in the northeastern empire. Even Duke Ronald has sent a diplomat."

In the northeastern region of the Zinovia empire, only three Dukes were there, Zeidan, Martin and Ronald. They didn't have a good relationship or bad. They were just traders. Both Dukedoms depend on Bane Dukedom for food and supplies.

"Tell me more...."

Morris started giving full details.

___________________________

Meanwhile in Zain's room. He was in his meditative state, sitting cross-legged on the ground. In the vast ocean of his consciousness. In front of him, were endless vast clouds of destruction and chaos energy. They were revolving around his small soul.

The training technique provided by his mother described how to astral energy and condense the destruction and chaos energy into a purer form. After that merging them with the soul. It was a very sensitive process, a little mishap and backlash would be severe.

He has to focus on astral ripples occurring in his sea of consciousness and guide astral energy to his soul and let it disperse. It would collide with destruction and chaos energy resulting in them condensing. It would allow the energies to become purer and purer as the process continues.

But this process was challenging as heck. The absolute focus was required for astral rays. And to guide them to soul and energies was even more brainstorming. Zain could only perform one try per day. After that, he would be not able to maintain immense focus. He needs a day's rest.

Suddenly, the quiet Zain began to tremble. Sweat beads turned up on his forehead. And his body experienced a change. Finally, he opened his eyes.

"I finally managed to get one astral ray to my soul form."

The energy clouds around the soul formed a globe, an inner cover of destruction energy and an outer of chaos energy. But the distance between them and soul was magnanimous. He has to meditate more to close the distance and turn these cloudy forms of energy into a thick impenetrable wall.

He finally had broken into warrior and mage level 1. He has much understanding after his first training session. His destruction energy was his inner force and chaos energy formed his magic core.

This wasn't expected of him. If it goes this way he would be able to cultivate both inner force and magic which is almost impossible for most people. He had to cultivate more to compress these energies which would make them more powerful and controllable.

This whole process had four stages. Disperse stage, Compression stage, Builder stage and lastly Mergence stage. The first stage was the current one. The energy is dispersed, it had to be condensed. When it gets condensed he will reach Epic level, then it will be compressed in the second stage to form a thick layer.

In the third stage, he will reach legend level. The thick layer will form a structure around the soul and will be engraved with many runes. And in its final state, it will fully merge with his soul. That step will take him on the level of a Nova. This was his cultivation path.

Zain now had a clear understanding of his future. He once thanked his mother for this gift and got up. He was totally drenched in sweat, tired and hungry. He got up from the floor and looked at the seemingly fifteen-year-old boy.

The almond-skinned boy with red eyes. If it wasn't for his normal ears, one could have mistaken him for Dark Elven Prince. He had delicate features and muscles like there carved by a knife. Nobody could guess that he was a GODDAMN DRAGON!!!

"Zain, Draig needs food. Hungry! Hungry!" He said most innocently.

Zain couldn't help but laugh at his manner of speaking. Draig has shown exponential growth in just four weeks but only physically, his mental growth was also fast but not as fast to keep up with his body.