255 Training II : Training The Mind

The study room was incredibly cozy and comfortable, quite conducive for any sort of study with it's cushy leather seats and the comfortable looking cushion sofa. There was also a desk, and a very massive sort of nest filled with a lot of pillows. This study room was made not just for ordinary humanoid uses, but also for dragons. I took a seat, took a deep breath, and opened the first page of the book.

I didn't last ten minutes before I closed the book back, and fell to the ground, panting as sweat dribbled down my forehead. The codex did not just impart knowledge about how to train mental energy, on it's own it was already a tool that did such a thing, serving as a sort of training wheel, until the readers manage to get to the essence mind realm.

The book works in three steps, first it scans the mind of the reader, second; since it's a codex, it has a lot of techniques or methods that someone can use to train themselves, so for the second step it chooses a specifically or an as accurate as possible tailored technique. And then finally it helps them train and activate their mental energy for the third step.

The growth of mental energy follows a system called the mind's tree. There are five realms in all, and each realms have 5 rings and are known and demoted by a specific color. The first realm, is the red grade realm with five rings, and at the moment, I was currently at the fourth ring.

The essence mind realm, is also known as the yellow grade, and at that point, I would be able to use my mental energy to actively strengthen my defenses, spells, and my mind, rather than the previous times where all it did was strengthen my mind and improve my senses. At the essence mind realm, I become capable of properly manipulating my mental energy.

So far the first and second steps were easy, even the technique chosen seemed to be quite good and nice sounding. After all, when a technique is named, [Divine Mind Refining] you would think that it had s gentle ring to it. Wrong, the technique really does what it's name says it does, refine. And not in a good way.

A surge of mental energy from the book itself, attacks my own mental energy, breaking it down, and building it back up, over and over again. I could hardly handle the first ten minutes, before stopping due to how painful it felt, but regardless I knew I had to see this through. No wonder Adamas told me not to fight it, but to embrace it.......that bloody stupid dragon has no idea how hard this is, why doesn't he try it himself.

I dragged myself back to my seat, and glared at the book for a while, and then I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and opened it. Almost immediately, I felt like I was buffeted by a storm, a whirling tornado filled with knives and glass, chipping and cutting away at my mind, like a chess grater to the body of a lettuce patch, or was it a cabbage patch. I almost closed the book once again, but then I remembered Adamas's words to me, just before I came in here. I shouldn't fight it, I should just embrace it.

And so I did just that. Any form of resistance and struggle that I had been putting up at that moment, I let it all down, and the book was almost gleeful as it reinforced it's attack on my mind. This time it was not just the feeling of knives and saws cutting at me, it was the feeling of multiple hammers banging, ruthlessly on my mind.

At first all I could feel was the torture, and I had no idea for how long this has been happening, unable to fight back, or even close the book as I suddenly felt paralyzed by the process. This training procedure was tailored for dragons, and at the moment, I was only half of that, and even though my other half is a vampire, the mind of a vampire could never compare to a dragon in sheer power and strength. Most dragons are born capable of contending with the gods themselves, every other race has to claws their way up to that point.

Eventually I began to feel the collapse of my mental energy, all the way from my fourth circle red grade, I dropped down to the third, and as I did so, the hammer came down harder, the blades became sharper. And then I felt to the second circle, at this point I couldn't see, or feel anything with my body, all I could hear were the clashes of metal, and ring of steel on steel on steel as my mental energy was battered and beaten like molten iron on an anvil.

Then my mental energy came down to the first circle, and I could feel it's difference, it was purer, stronger and more powerful. And then suddenly I was no longer feeling knives of hammers, but rather sand paper. It rubbed at my mental energy, removing impurities and residual forms of damage, caused by all of the nature's backlash I've had to endure. I didn't even know I had all those injuries in my mind, and they would have accumulated until I went crazy, or suffered an aneurysm or something of the sort. And then it stopped, my mind energy back to the first circle of the red grade, stuck firmly in the open mind realm. But at the same time it was ten times stronger than what it was at the fourth grade. I opened my eyes, and the book turned to a new page.

[The Divine Song Of Mental Bliss]

And then everything seemed to make sense. Adamas and this bloody book withheld information from me. The book would not just give me the method to train my mental energy, it was going to break down all previous training, down to the tiniest point, to make progress a whole lot more smoother, and make so that I acclimated with the new technique easily. The previous technique, is used to refine mental energy, and it's supposed to be used, every time someone gets to the fifth circle of their grade, or whatever mental realm they reach. It compresses the accumulated mental energy, makes it stronger, purer, so that advancement to next realm is easier.

My mental energy was a mess, so the book just skipped a step, and gave me the refining technique, something that I shouldn't have had to worry about until much later. This was the real technique, and as soon as I made the revelation, a song began to play within the depths of my mind.

I couldn't tell if it was from stringed instrument, or something that used keys. I could swear that I could even hear someone humming, but I was not sure. This song seemed to be everything about music, and yet nothing like it. It was soft, steady and smooth. If flowed from one part to another, changing it's tempo from low to mid, to high. My heart suddenly began to beat and pound with the beat, and I leaned back on the chair as an intense feeling of relaxation came over me.

If Hakuna Matata really was a thing that existed, then this would probably ne what it feels like. My bones felt weak, but in a very relaxed sort of way, as I felt my blood flow through my body, like the melody of rushing river, adding it's own symphony to the beat. It look me ten minutes to finally realized that I wasn't listening to music from instruments, this was music being made by my very own body!

Every cell, every tissue, my bones, organs, blood and the energy within me. Each with their own frequency, each with their own melody. All of them coming together to make a symphony that made my mind shake and shudder as my mental energy surfer beyond it's current point. There was a feeling of power from it, something that I've never felt before, but has always been a part of me.

It coaxed and called forth my mental energy, past it's confines of the first circle, and into the expanse of the second, and then the third. This was unlike the previous times I've had to grow my mental energy, as it only ever happened under extreme duress, or the tempering of nature's backlash. And this time it was stronger, more powerful, and my senses felt an exponential increase in strength.

But it didn't stop there, as the symphony picked up it's beat, my heart pounding like a bass drum, yet strumming away like the strings of an electric guitar. My mental energy danced and weaved and rolled with glee, as it went up my mind tree, taking the fourth ring with authority, reclaiming it's former perch like a king. And softly, gently, in a way I never would have expected, my mental energy slipped into the fifth circle, all the way to the peak, and almost into the first ring of the essence mind realm.

But then the feeling of knives and hammers returned, and my mental energy was broken down again, attacked and refined over and over again as it dropped back to the third circle. And then the feeling of sand paper came again, smoothing the edges of my soul energy, making it stronger. And as soon as that was done, the song started up once again, this time it was frenzied and electrified, and in no time at all I was back at the fifth circle.

But once again my mental energy was refined, sending back to the fourth, repeating the same process, until the music came up again and I was back at the fifth circle. After one final refinement, where my mental energy didn't drop again, and that was mainly due to the fact, everything weak and impure had already been removed, it surges upwards again, breaking past a barrier as the next part of my mind tree lit up a bright yellow, and it's first ring came to life.

I was now in the mind essence realm, and I could feel my mental energy, I could move it and shape it. Within my consciousness, a lone tree hung in the blackness, it's roots stretching down, and connected to neural synapses, relays and pathways of my brain. And every second that passed, it released rhythmic pulses of a thick blood red light, and a faint yellow light, cementing my arrival into essence mind realm.

I opened my eyes to Adamas sitting on the table, and behind him was Baeki looking at me with her arms crossed in annoyance. Adamas was swaying his reptilian tail from side to side, and his sister the fire dragon Ashes, seemed to be drawing something on the wooden table with her claws. Based on all their expressions, and what they were currently doing, I felt as if they were impatiently waiting for someone.

"Took you long enough, I was almost bored mad, if that's a word, waiting for you!" Baeki said to me as she swiped literal dust from her shoulders.

"Okay what? I've only been here for like fifteen or twenty minutes, I only closed my eyes for a moment!" I said to her, put off by her exaggeration.

"Sorry Kael, but you've been out of it for three whole weeks! Now I don't care what it is you're doing right now, but you have to get your ass up and be king. The dragons want to go to war with each other, and we're the cause of it."

"What the hell do you mean by that?" I asked her, as I quickly got up surprised.

"Some angry imperial dragon challenged you to a fight to become the dragon king of the soul, rather than you. Soren got pissed, and killed said dragon, now said dragon's family wants to execute Soren, but some other faction of dragons feel it's going to be treason, and they're standing against them in support of you. Did I leave anything out...…..yeah, how about you get your ass out there, and solve this mess!"

I felt wronged. How the hell could things get so bad and complicated, it was just for a moment, or at least a few minutes. I only closed my eyes for that long, and just by doing that a war is about to break out...…..for God's sake give me a break! I'm trying my best here. Fuck!