"As I said, it won't work."

Sitting down on the grass, Fen crossed his hands on his chest and closed his eyes.

"If you think you have it bad, imagine attempting to ignite it for years, only to learn you would never do it properly!"

Not taking Fen's attitude, Firo stood above him. The fingers of her right hand were gripping surprisingly hard, wooden handle of the floor-brush.

"You said it several times already."

Ignoring the outburst of the girl and the mute threat of her makeshift weapon, Fen waved his head to the sides.

"It's not like I don't want to nail it either!"

This young man's day wasn't that bad. With their yesterday's meeting abruptly interrupted by Mark's return, he had a good night of sleep before waking up and going to the academy grounds. Pressed for more answers, right after the lessons ended, after ascertaining both his teacher and Kaisha that everything was okay with him, Fen rushed back home.

"You know what will happen if you don't…"

Moving the blunt end of the brush towards Fen's face, Firo looked at his face with a stare filled with determination.

"Okay, okay, I will try again."

Raising his head in a defensive gesture of surrender, Fen managed to avert the wooden crisis away from his face. Letting his hands fall back down on top of his knees. Closing his eyes, he focused his entire mind at the same feeling that saved his bottom during the duel last day.

Pulling all of his unignited aura back into his body, the young arcanist accelerated its flow to the maximum before igniting the contraption.

With this kind of brute-force approach, it was impossible for Fen to remain in this state. A time that he took from the moment when his power would erupt to when it would slip out of his hands, was so small that even blinking wouldn't be a proper comparison.

His body surprisingly managed to recover its strength rather quickly. Despite how shitty Fen felt right after his fire leaving his body, now, even after several attempts back to back, he still could at least fell his limbs. Their torture was slowly making the young man lose his sanity. But this was far better from losing control over them due to the overextension!

There was only one point that Fen had to properly execute. At least according to Firo's words, as long as he would manage to turn his flow from a vector to a circular shape, then by creating another flow with counter spin would allow him to balance the energy requirements without draining his body dry.

The hard part lied in how the young arcanist apprentice had to basically achieve something that easily exceeded his school curriculum, in just a fraction of a second where the balance could be achieved. The reality wasn't as desperate as the theory sounded, yet it didn't mean it wasn't difficult at all.

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"Remember, it's should be all in your muscles already. You are not trying to learn something new. You are only allowing your body to recover its memories from your bloodline. While the lack of the sacred pool might be a problem, later on, I can bet you will somehow figure it out."

With this calming, motivational speech, Fen's eyes closed once again. Slowly, the cooled down aura of his continued to accumulate in his veins. Starting the process with extreme care, the young man could feel the momentum of his flow slowly raising. With each passing moment, the flow grew stronger, all the way to the point where its sheer momentum was more than enough to warm Fen's body up. Even with his fire brought to the lowest temperature, he could control, in just a few seconds the area around the young arcanist turned into an inferno.

'NOW!'

Just like Firo said. It wasn't something that Fen calculated. It was not an action that he judged to be the best. His body jerked. It was all it took for Fen's insides to turn up, as an overwhelming wave of energy entered his body. Yet, there was no signs of his body failing to keep up with said energy!

"Stop."

This one word was enough to move the young man instantly into the familiar scene. Surrounded with nothing but flames, he stood right against the human persona of Draconis.

"I'm sorry little one."

Rather than scolding him for doing something wrong, or even looking at the young man with disappointment, this ancient being seemed to be… distressed? Regretful? Resigned?

"What happened? I was just about to…"

Raising his hand to the front, only to notice that it was nothing more but a bulge of a small ball of flames that replaced his body the moment the young man entered this strange realm.

"Yeah, you were about to fully ignite your blood. But firstly, you are not ready. Secondly, you are not ready. And trust me, those two points have different meanings."

As if his ancient lineage made him privileged to speak in riddles, this young-looking personification of the ancient dragon shook his head to the sides.

"First thing first, your growth is too quick. While I know that it sounds strange, but if you won't get used to the powers that are manifesting in you, you won't be able to overcome the trails that lay further down the road."

Swapping his hand to the side, Draconis instantly turned the nearby surface of the fire-sea, creating several columns, each higher than the previous one.

"Look, at the point where you are right now, you are facing the shortest column."

This time, Draconis didn't even bother to gesture anything. Appearing on the picture, a figure of a human, exactly the height of the first column, approached the row.

And just like expected, he climbed it pretty easily.

"Right now, you can push forward. But if you don't learn how to climb the columns on the short ones…"

Sending a quick look at the image he was creating, Draconis suddenly turned on his feet and walked a few steps away from his own spectacle.

Fen's eyes were still glued to the image. On it, the same figure of human jumped down the first column and approached the second. Instead of attempting to somehow scale it, it simply jumped up and luckily managed to reach the top. That was the case with the third and fourth column. Once it approached the fifth, the situation changed though.

"Then you will fall only after climbing things beyond your reach."

Perfectly following the words of the ancient being, the figure suddenly lost the traction of the column, falling down to its own demise. Saving the extreme details that Draconis for some reason included in the finisher of the spectacle, Fen could at least understand its reasoning from the beginning to an end.

"But there is still the other reason, isn't it?"

Suddenly realising that part, Fen raised his eyes at his unofficial mentor.

"Yes. Listen, if you think that the questions that you have now are hard to understand or answer, then you better not imagine what lies once you reach greater heights. Right now, I can still somehow help you to grasp some things, but even my influence is limited. But…"

For the very first time since Fen meets this being, its personification twisted its mouth in a clearly sour expression.

"What you were attempting to do, was igniting your own bloodline. The normal way to do so would be by cutting yourself and directly setting one's blood on fire, but normally it took years to learn it. After all, with your blood turning into super-grade energy, it's hard to maintain it once it's outside of your body…"

Shaking his head with a slightly happy grin, Draconis was most likely recalling some events from his own past.

"The method that you came up with is not bad… No, it's actually terrible!"

Still avoiding the topic that he broke before, Draconis suddenly burst with laughter.

"Rather than going with all the effort, you just need to ignite your blood. It's that simple. If setting one's blood on fire outside of one's body does work, why should you be unable to do it within your body?"

Looking back at the young man, Draconis suddenly reached forward with its hand, touching Fen's blob of fire.

As if a thunderstorm shook his entire soul.

All at once, the young man could feel the delicate balance of the fire within this realm. With this, he could simply use his flow like always, using its recoil to create the counter flow!

"But for now, I would rather if you didn't use it."

Putting a stop to Fen's sudden happiness, Draconis looked at him with a sad expression on his lips.

"You see, you are nowhere near the point where one would normally learn this. Even the past clans considered this level to be of an able-bodied and trained soldier, not some commoner. But there is still a lot that you don't know. And once you set your blood on fire properly, I won't be able to meet you here anymore."