After the audience with the beast kin Alex headed to the guardian dragon courtyard along with Anna and Lily. The pair of elder dragons, as always, was sitting at their table with the ever-present pot of tea. Approaching the pair Alex greeted them and enquired if they could start his draconic magic training.
Ramistol and Kelrina looked at each other and grinned this boy was too eager for new things to play around with. Motioning him to sit down, they began to explain draconic magic. Draconic magic was something akin to Alex's internal magic in as much as the power was formed inside the body but unlike his internal magic draconic could be projected outside the body and maintain its form so long as it didn't lose contact with the caster, quite unlike Alex's wind wings which were just a byproduct of the magic he was using not an actual physical construct that could hit something. The reason other races couldn't use it because their bodies couldn't take the strain of repeated use. Even a dragon's breath attacks were built up in the dragon's body using their magic and projected out, different breaths were used based on affinity as per usual magic the better the affinity the more powerful the corresponding breath attack would be.
Alex sat their pondering what he had just been told, his imagination running wild with what he could do by combining this with his existing magics. He quickly asked for a couple of demonstrations of how to project a construct out as well as dragon breath so he could watch the mana flows. The dragon couple complied and Ramistol demonstrated a breath attack a couple of times while Kelrina showed Alex creating and projecting constructs. Suddenly a thought struck Alex and he asked how durable the magic projections were. He was told that depended on the mastery level, mental image and amount of magic you put into it, also magic would drain every time you hit something or something hits it. Alex suddenly grinned and a flash of excitement passed through his eyes.
He turned into his demi dragon form.
"Ok girls" he said motioning to Anna and Lily to follow him out to the courtyard so they had a bit of room around him, he pulled some steel rods from his storage magic and gave one to each of the girls.
"I want you to try hitting me with those rods, don't worry about hurting me also please do so in your demi dragon forms".
They both had a look of uncertainty about such a request.
"Don't worry at worst I'll end up with some bruises", he reassured them both.
Alex closed his eyes and concentrated on what he called his wind domain, he had been working on for some time, it allowed him to read air flows in a ten meter radius around him, he wasn't adept enough to use it actual combat yet so he was using this as an opportunity to train it.
They both turned into demi dragons, Anna swung hesitantly at Alex with no real force behind it just before the steel met his body it stopped with a ting. Curious Anna looked at the area she had swung at and couldn't see anything abnormal, reassured somewhat she swung again at a different area with more force, again the blow stopped just before it reached Alex with a ting noise. Lily who had been observing suddenly swing with a bit of force to the same result.
"Good keep it up swing harder", Alex encouraged them, the sisters began swinging with some serious force now they felt reassured that they wouldn't hurt Alex. The results were the same no matter how hard or where they swung at Alex the blow would be stopped just before it hit him with a ting noise. Suddenly Alex felt something breach his wind domain shooting towards his head, he smiled slightly and the projectile seemed to ricochet off his head and fell to the floor but there wasn't a mark on Alex.
"Interesting", said Ramistol, sure enough the projectile laying on the ground was his teaspoon.
The sisters looked at Alex amazement in their eyes, before demanding to know how he was doing that. Alex explained that after seeing the demonstrations he had the general gist of how to create projections, so he had combined his draconic magic with space magic and to form and push out small shields directly in front of the incoming attacks, the space shield so to speak could dissipate all the force behind the blow, leaving Alex untouched.
"Ok that explains the not being able to hit you but how did you do all that while your eyes were closed" questioned Lily.
"That's an application of wind magic I have been working on I call wind domain that allows me to read all the air currents around me in about a ten meter radius", Alex said quite proud of that spell.
"Wouldn't that basically mean with those two combined you can essentially stop any attack against you?", asked Kelrina shock in her voice.
"For the most part but I still haven't mastered the wind domain to the point where I can use it instinctively so I'm unable make proper use of it in actual combat just yet, as for the space shields they can be hardened as needed as to be almost unbreakable from a normal blow even the hardest swings there took barely any mana but they aren't any good versus wide range attacks as from what I was testing just then the wider the area covered the bigger the drain so you only want to create them to cover the point of impact. I think I'll call them dragon scales", he grinned.
"How on earth do you think of this stuff", asked Ramistol.
"I've always been like this with magic", shrugged Alex, "I used to give Uncle Hubert fits with the stuff I came up with when I was a kid, I never thought of magic as having limits so I try not to impose any on myself when thinking about what I can do", he smiled.
Ramistol and Kelrina looked at each other in amazement, "To think we both just learnt something from a youngster".
Alex just shrugged, "I don't know the history behind it but it kind of feels like the development of magic stagnated badly at some point in time and everyone just stopped coming up with new ways to do things and just focused on refining the old stuff".
Kelrina looked thoughtful, "You know you may be on to something Alex, dragons have never been overly invested in magic so it's no surprise that draconic magic hasn't evolved much over the years but even the humans in Arcvien haven't come up with something really new in a very long time. Take your internal magic for instance how has no one ever come up with such a simple idea as that?".
"Yeah I did find it strange when Uncle Hubert told me that no one uses internal magic given how mana efficient it is along with the host of possible applications I was beginning to think the mage academy was full of idiots". Alex stated.
Zakath suddenly chimed in, "I overheard your conversation as I came over and I never thought of it like that, I think it is something worth looking into, I may get in touch with Hubert and have a chat with him and see what he thinks", he looked at Alex, "My recommendation is once you are done with your trip to the beast tribes head over to Arcvien and poke around a bit there".
"Weren't you looking after Kayla and Vales magic training?" queried Alex.
"I left them doing some simple exercises and told them not to experiment until I got back, they don't need the same level of supervision you did when you were a kid, if we had left you alone you probably would have blown up the mansion", Zakath chuckled.
Now then kid lets see you use dragon's breath, if not I'm afraid I'll have to disown you, cant have a dragon grandson who cant breath fire", He joked.
Alex grinned and using earth magic raised up a boulder from the ground.
"What's that for?", Anna questioned.
"Target" replied Alex with a grin on his face.
This kid is up to something again Zakath thought to himself.
Alex stood there and thought back to the process he had seen when Ramistol demonstrated the fire breath. First you mix the elements inside you before giving them form, then you push the magic from your body using your mouth as the exit point and you set a conversion point to be just outside your mouth where you give the magic its form. He began the process, mixing fire and wind one enhancing the other, he sought the ratio he needed, satisfied he prepared to 'breath' fire. He opened his mouth and aimed towards the boulder, but instead of the normal fiery red colour many people associated with flame this was blue, the column of blue fire reached the boulder in an instant, and the boulder promptly melted down into molten slag, while the temperature in the area rose quiet a bit.
Ramistol opened his mouth to say something then just closed it.
Zakath just looked at the molten remains of the boulder and just said to Alex, "Kid you are so teaching us how to do that".