I was exhausted, spread-eagled on the ground and oblivious to the filth and grime covering me. My lungs worked overtime as I struggled to breathe, the need for oxygen overpowering my disgust at the ubiquitous stench unique to vorander nests. I pulled myself into my space with a thought, and relished the privacy and security it would bring me.

In the past month, my dragonkin mentor/handler Reela had thrown me into seven vorander breeding grounds, today’s being the most difficult, as there were more and more restrictions placed on me each time. At first, I thought I could handle it, as she only forbade me from using voranders as reinforcements, as I did the first time. So I just assembled an army of them beforehand and wiped out the nest that way.

Then she limited my usage of them to a hundred. Just to be clear, each nest had at least thousands of monsters in them, if not more. A hundred was nowhere near enough to ensure my safety, regardless of the enemy’s numbers.

And yet somehow, it got even worse from there.

From reducing the numbers of reinforcements, to banning them outright, then to limiting the amount of essence I could use. Not the number of spells, but the amount. If my reserves were full before fighting, I wasn’t allowed to dip below thirty percent.

Then fifty percent. And now sixty percent.

I didn’t even know it was possible to measure one’s reserves so specifically, as I had simply been going off my instincts, which limited my measurements to full, about half, and empty. Of course, the detailed measurement was a minor benefit compared to the hours of slaughtering and fighting for my life I had to endure, followed by the days of rest and recuperation. To top it off, I definitely wasn’t letting my body recuperate for the recommended amount of time after a serious injury. Despite all the work I had done, my bones were probably one good smack away from collapsing like the stock market.

It was like I was grinding for experience points in a game, only I wasn’t leveling up or getting gold. Well, I was getting the vorander corpses as ‘loot’ in a way, but it didn’t exactly feel commensurate with the effort I had put in to acquire them. I was nearly at the end of my rope.

Reela hadn’t even taught me anything, despite proclaiming herself as my ‘mentor’. She was just so irritating, as she claimed herself superior to me in all aspects, yet did nothing to help me in any way. The absolute worst part about it all was that she had said “stop complaining” a couple nests ago…so now my conversations with her were far quieter, though no less frustrating.

Logically, I knew that she was not trying to kill me. That fucking world oath or blood vow, or whatever it was, prevented her from outright killing me, or leaving me to die. Logically, I was aware of that. But most days, it just felt like she was trying to provoke me into attacking her, stoking my rage by placing me into increasingly perilous scenarios.

What did she want out of it? That was the question, one to which I had no answer. All I knew was that if I had to do much more of this, I just might snap, blood vow be damned. And all the deep breathing, meditation, and calming exercises in the world would do nothing to stop it.

“Finished yet?” The unwelcome voice sounded out in my mind, intruding on my thoughts yet again. I was tempted to hide out in my space and stop responding to the damn dragonkin, but I did not want to push the boundaries of her restraint just yet. If I did end up hiding away, and found out that Reela could straight-up teleport inside without my consent, well. There probably wouldn’t be much of me left to regret my actions after that.

Once again, I suppressed the rage that threatened to overtake me and responded normally. “I need another two days to fully heal,” I responded. By now, any pretense of formality had dissolved, and we both had an unspoken agreement to address each other casually. If I actually had to call that damned red lizard ‘Master’, I would seriously consider offing myself.

“You have two hours,” she said, flippantly ignoring the reality that the human body needed time to heal.

If only I had a dragon’s rate of regeneration, then I wouldn’t need to listen to her unreasonable demands, I idly thought to myself as I went through the familiar process of burning my unsalvageable clothes and disinfecting all my wounds. Actually, even if I did, she probably wouldn’t even let me heal between fights. Dear god, that’s how dragons train, isn’t it, just one nonstop slaughter after another. That red dragonkin asshole probably went through training like that, and now she’s doing the same thing to me. Yeah, great job, except for the one tiny fact that, oh let me think, oh right…I”M NOT A GODDAMN DRAGON!

Before my anger could morph into wrath, I suppressed it and pictured a mental image that helped to calm me down recently: Reela, devoid of her innate draconic protections like scales or wings, running in an endless loop with voranders at her back, incessantly chasing after her and occasionally managing to bite her every once in a while, provoking her into needing to keep running for her life. For all my anger towards her specifically, and the dragons in general, I hadn’t yet reached the point where I needed to imagine someone being literally tortured.

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The scene in my head made me smile…but it also helped me figure out what I needed to do. Instead of simply fuming angrily after every interaction with Reela, I needed to acknowledge and channel my anger into something more worthwhile. A line from some novel flashed through my head. His anger was white-hot, and so it used him, while my anger was cold, and so I could use it instead.

I somehow needed to tame my anger, ironically enough, and make it work for me, instead of waiting for the inevitable explosion that would happen if I only continued to suppress it without any further plans.

I was showing signs of growth. Instead of simply suppressing my emotions, which had become almost second nature to me by now, I had to control them, truly control them, and make them work for me. Perhaps when I grew older, I would reflect on this moment and wonder how I could have missed something so obvious, but maybe it was precisely because it was obvious that I missed it.

I let myself drift off into unconsciousness as my thoughts began to fade, a plan for some kind of emotional training already melting into my subconscious as my eyes grew heavier and I descended into the recesses of sleep.

As soon as I looked at the surroundings, I immediately knew that I was in a dream. I was familiar with the concept of lucid dreaming, but it had never happened to me, or at least, I had never remembered it happening.

I was floating in midair, nothing but white in every direction. I looked down to see what form my body took in this dream, but I looked the same as I ever did, the same old plain and boring human. In fact, I could somehow touch myself, though my sense of touch was lessened, for some reason. On a whim, I poked my fingernail into my forearm, and I felt pain.

That struck me as odd. Wasn’t there some study done that said it was impossible to both feel pain or die in your dream? Your brain didn’t know what death was, and so couldn’t simulate the experience in a dream, but pain was supposed to be equally impossible to feel within a dream. Or…maybe, this wasn’t a dream?

Well, I was naked and floating in midair in a pure white space that seemed to go on for eternity. If this wasn’t a dream, then what was it? I hadn’t suffered any major head trauma, so there was no way I was hallucinating. Was it possible I had been teleported somewhere? Could it be Khime? He was capable of spatial travel, after all, though I somehow felt that it wasn’t him. Besides, why would he teleport me naked?

I immediately stopped that line of thought and began to search the area for any clues.

There was nothing in sight, just the same shade of white in every direction. There was no source of light nor shadow anywhere, yet I had no difficulty seeing. I instinctively tried to use my blood sense and came up with nothing.

Wait. I could use essence here? The realization made me stop short. Had I ever had a dream where I used essence? To my annoyance, I couldn’t recall, thanks to the nature of dreams being harder to remember in detail.

I tentatively tried to pull some blood from myself and failed. I could still feel my cache of essence, so that wasn't the issue. I would have tried a nature spell, but there was nothing for me to manipulate with it.

Although, if there’s no other option, I could try to…

I had an idea a long time ago, that since I was capable of moving blood, I should be just as capable of moving water. After all, water made up roughly half of all blood, the rest being plasma and some other things I couldn’t remember. Unfortunately, reality was not so accommodating. Only my nature affinity allowed me to manipulate water. Combining my nature and blood affinity did nothing except waste my time, and earn me a lecture from a passing instructor who reprimanded me, saying that complex spells, as in spells utilizing multiple affinities, should be done on a smaller scale at first, especially when a student was attempting it.

So, now that I had an opportunity to make another attempt in a relatively safe environment, I took it. I couldn’t manipulate my own blood, as my previous attempt had shown, but nature spells weren’t quite ruled out just yet.

As odd and superfluous as it sounded, attempting to manipulate the water in my blood via my nature affinity was the safest option, as any organs were a no-go, and even something like my urine or sweat wasn’t an option, but since I couldn’t exactly feel those, trying to play around with something I was unsure was present was dangerous. Granted, the same could be said for my blood, hell, even for my whole body, but out of all the options I could come up with, this seemed the most viable to try out.

I focused on the action I had done hundreds of times by this point, attempting to draw out the blood from the artery in my elbow, though with the small modification of attempting to do so with my nature affinity, or a nonexistent water affinity.

You can do this.

I centered myself and took a deep breath –

“Welcome, aspirant.” The deep voice bellowed, startling me and instantly making me wish I was clothed, before I went on guard, uselessly raising my fists. Without essence or weapons, I was unbelievably vulnerable, but I would make a stand if I had to. Worst case scenario, I would explode all the essence in my core, go to my space, and –

“If you are listening to this message, then you have taken the first steps to consciously walking the path of control. It pleases me to know that my search for a successor already bears fruit, though I advise caution. A long and harrowing road awaits you if you desire to assume the mantle of the Deity of Control.”

…What?