Book One - The Dragonkin Empire.

Preparations and consequences.

Lumiere's side

 The day started, the birds were chirping, the sun was warm, the sky cloudless, and the morning dew refreshing. Unfortunately for me, my peaceful morning was nowhere to be seen, the trees bore heavy cuts, the birds where scared, the sun warmth was a nuisance, the sky doesn't provide any kind of shadows, my mind is tired and my body covered in sweat.

 "That is not how you do it!"

 "Damn it, I can't understand what you're telling me"

 "If you want to feel the energy around you first you have to feel the ones inside!" Right now, Lixk and I were training. Two days ago, after Lixk said that he wanted to learn how to fight a magi I told him that he wasn't fit, all he cares about is swinging his sword but that didn't dissuade him.

 "I'm going to tell you again, in a fight like this there are infinite ways for the mana to be used, there are three major categories: Offensive, defensive and illusions, all of them require certain quantities of mana, if the quality of it is good then one doesn't need a lot of mana. If there is no mana on the battlefield then the magi can't do anything, on the other hand if there is a large pool, like here, then there is no way you can fight him head on, you have to sense all the mana around and read the flow. Normal magi grab some mana from the flow, condense it evenly and cast a magic, but condensing the mana is difficult, meaning that in certain areas of the magic the mana will be weak, also the flow of mana varies from ona place to another, in other words there are areas where the flow will be weak, finding the weak parts of a magic and the characteristics of the flow is essential because there it will be easier to brake their defences, usually the magi is focusing on the mana flow and won't move but a skillful one can do a lot of things, like gathering all the mana around his body and letting him grab all the mana necessary to cast while moving, there are many ways to use the mana, right now I'm only casting my defenses with the mana that flows near and I can't gather mana around me, so sense it and attack me from the weakest point."

 Talking this much is pretty annoying, my mouth is dry and my legs numb since I can't move from here. Earlier in the morning I sat here, the top of a rock with my legs crossed to receive the rays of the sun quickly and warm my body, now it's two and a half hours after the sun went up and my ass is pretty damn hot.

 "Listen up, here's a tip, to feel the mana first watch the way you breathe, second you have to focus on all your little movements and third open, or rather access, your mind and feel the little disturbances around you".

 I've been repeating myself for the last two days, I'm tired and now is hard to maintain my focus.

 "There!" He rushed to me from the left were there wasn't much mana, I gather little in my hand and shot him a cluster of ice, he dodge it, closed in and put the tip of the sword against my ribs while panting hard.

 " I did it!" he was screaming with joy, but he widened his eyes the next moment seeing how red blood started to drip heavily from my mouth and ribs. " Don't fuck around" he reached his hand to me and tripped over a dead tree going through me and landing flat on his face.

 "And make this lesson a very valuable one." I spoke from my rock just behind Lixk, I went down and kicked him lightly on the head. "For the last hour you've been trying to approach a death trunk, illusions are the most troublesome since they don't attack you head on, with this they wait for you to wear out and put pressure on your mind by showing shocking images like my bloody self, I am an illusionist, meaning I am more proficient with illusions, the thing about illusions is that we can't really fight with them, this is more effective to give a chance to run away, the ones that use illusion are cowards and I excel in this. I'm going to take a brake, as for you, I want you to strain your body by doing one hundred push ups, work on you abs and make fifty laps around the lake." I left a tired Lixk that saw me with much hatred. " You know we can stop whenever you want!". I said teasingly, by now I know full well just how prideful he is.