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AN: The square brackets [ ] will be used for Dragon Tongue casting for this chapter.

“Alright, now that you are done with testing your vocal range, we know that you are able to make sounds lighter and lower than a dragon can. Now we need to see if you can produce those sounds in the right sequence. Try the vowels.” Professor Sageira instructed.

I took a minute to mentally reconstruct the sounds in my mind and figure out which part would need a higher or lower frequency. When I was done, I began my first attempt and ended up sounding like a speaker on the fritz, but it was closer than any of my prior attempts.

Nonetheless, it was progress!

It took me the better part of two hours to fine-tune the first vowel before it met Professor Sageira’s passing mark, and that was only the first of ten vowels.

This was going to take a while.

***

It took a whole five days before I could recite the ten Dragon Tongue vowels forward, backward, and jumbled, all to Professor Sageira’s satisfaction.

“Now that you can pronounce those vowels properly, let's get to the actual test. As I am sure you know, those vowels are just the important sounds that form Dragon Tongue words and do not hold any power on their own. So let's start with the safest element most magics start with, Air. Repeat after me to cast a gust of wind.” she said as she pulled out a feather, putting it on the table before me, and reciting a cutteral growl that somehow sounded like a word.

The moment she did that, the feather was picked off the table by a small localised whirlwind, danced on the wind around the room, before landing on the table again. “Your turn.” she gestured to me.

Not expecting to get things right on the first try, I pronounced the word of power syllable by syllable, and as expected, nothing happened because I pronounced the word so badly that even I picked up where I screwed up.

It took me a few more attempts before I got it right, and when I did, I felt my will and a hefty chunk of my mana flow from my being, giving me the feeling that the words that came out of my mouth felt more… solid… more real than the clothes on my body or the floor I was standing on.

I sensed those words somehow grab the world around it and “pulled” a gust of wind into being, carrying the feather on the table. I was so engrossed by the sensation that I lost concentration. That was when I felt the connection to that gust of wind snap, and the world reasserted itself to the state that there was no gust of wind.

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I slowly looked up from where the feather had fallen to Professor Sageira, and saw that she was also looking at me. “I did it,” I said in a whispered voice.

She gave me a wide smile and said, “Yes, you did.”

***

Weeks passed as I studied Dragon Tongue under Professor Sageira’s tutelage.

In a public setting, I spoke the common language that everyone else spoke, but behind closed doors, I was only allowed to speak with Professor Sageira in Dragon Tongue. If I did not, I would get whacked by a cane, and the same applied if I got anything wrong verbally, grammatically, or phonetically.

By now, I could do the equivalent of asking for directions or asking to pass the salt. Other than that, it was the equivalent of a caveman speaking Dragon Tongue, but I was getting better.

In all this time, besides the test to see if I could use Dragon Tongue as a word of power to cast magic, I was not allowed to cast anything in Dragon Tongue, all i had to do was keep my will in check, same thing applies to all verbal spells, otherwise teachers would be shooting off spells whenever they were teaching their students a new spell.

By the end of the second month, besides the more complex or esoteric words, I was fluent in Dragon Tongue. That was when Professor Sageira told me I was ready and brought me to a private training hall.

After she checked that there was nobody observing them, she once again cast Sealed Space to make sure we do not damage the place too badly.

“This is going to be our first real lesson on casting with Dragon Tongue. Remember what I told you. You are no dragon, which means you do not have the quantity of mana we do to throw around. Keep your words short and simple, let your will shape the rest. More words equal more mana used, and Dragon Tounge is a mana-hungry beast.” Professor Sageira reminded me.

I decided to start with the four main elements. “Alright, I will begin. [Fire]”

When I said, “Fire” in Dragon Tongue, I once again felt a hefty chunk of my mana exude from my body and pulled at the fabric of reality to manifest fire above my waiting palm. With my initial investment of mana paid, I held onto the flame with my will and willed it to form a snake that slithered down from my palm across the floor.

As I kept the flame active, I felt a small trickle of mana being constantly drained from me to maintain the flames. As I played around with the fire, a question came to mind. “Professor, I can already do this with my instinctive magic. This is just the same thing at the cost of a lot more mana.”

Professor Sageira just chuckled at my observation. “That is because you are not thinking big enough. Make that fire bigger and keep your senses on your mana expenditure.”

Trusting the dragon to know what she was talking about, I obeyed. My fire snake grew in size and started coiling around the training hall. At first, I thought something was not right. The fire got exponentially bigger, but the mana I was expanding to maintain the flame increased by a negligible amount.

The look of realisation must have been plastered on my face, and Professor Sageira clearly saw it. “How do you think all the dragons in the stories and records burn towns and cities to the ground so effortlessly? When casting in Dragon Tongue, the upfront mana investment is relatively big, but the maintenance expenditure and upscaling are negligible. That's what makes dragons so powerful… That is also why I am going to need you to swear a Soul Oath. Otherwise, I am going to have to kill you.”

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