Chapter 299: How To Grow
A few hours after dark, everyone was ready to head to bed, and Alexis dragged Dominic away.
"Do you think that you could advance faster if we brought in a proper Archmage? You learned so much just from one trip with my brother. Perhaps if we had a proper instructor here in town, you could advance your magical skills to the point that everyone would have to call you Master Mage." She suggested.
Dominic shrugged. "Everyone in Cygnia has to call me Royal Sorcerer or Duke anyhow. But being able to back up the titles would be good.
I’ve got a decent array of magic already, but I don’t know any of the fancy stuff that the trained mages learn."
He could read the magical languages, but he had never trained in how to create magical circles, grand arrays or other similar defensive magics that a real Master Mage would know.
Alexis smiled. "I will inform the King in the morning. He’s going to be sending us people soon, so I might as well call in a favour and get an extra mage here for training.
He will surely send one, even if it’s just so that you’re being trained by one of his people, not someone that the Merchant’s Guild found for us from outside the country.
There are still some in the three Stansia Province cities, but the King would never trust them to teach one of his Dukes.
They’re not likely to be extremely loyal to Dagos, but they did work for them for the last decade. That alone is enough to question their suitability for the role.
Besides, they might not have used the skills that we will need for at least ten years, as Dagos was so set on eliminating magic from daily life."
Dominic swatted her on the backside, chasing her into bed. "You have a point. Though they’re all Wavemates trained mages, everyone who didn’t flee is viewed with suspicion by those who did, and those who never stopped fighting.
It’s a hard place for everyone to be in.
You can’t really blame them for not wanting to lose everything, and most of the Wavemates Mage Towers were pacifists. That’s a large part of why the nation fell so fast. They simply didn’t fight back and thought that diplomacy could do something.
But on the other hand, those pacifist mages spent all their time focusing on practical magic.
That is the sort of magic that we need.
The Purity Sect learned a lot of combat magic, as well as their utility magic. It’s just unfortunate that we didn’t manage to get a fully trained member, and only found the Acolytes."
Alexis giggled. "Is it true that their curse really will stop them from getting intimate?"
Dominic wrapped his arms around her. "Even this level of cuddling would put the other person in crippling agony. It’s both their strongest defence and their greatest weakness. They join the sect when they’re little, and by the time that they’re adults, they’re so starved for affection that they naively believe anyone who is nice to them.
It would be rude to call them morons, but they’re clearly easy to exploit if you know their weak spots."
Alexis frowned. "Should we find a leader for their mage tower? Someone from the Purity Sect, or another Mage Tower’s Elder?"
Dominic shrugged. "It would have to be someone who knows the Purity Sect’s methods. They can’t start a new path without destroying their existing progress, and they are cursed, so traditional ’growth through suffering’ styles of learning can’t be used on them."
Alexis smirked as Dominic’s hands roamed. "You know, we need to talk about your draconic heritage at some point, right? You can’t always distract me from it with flirting."
"But I can try."
Alexis pulled him into a kiss, then backed away. "Try, but not succeed. Now, out with it."
Dominic sighed in frustration. She knew his weak points as well.
"The stronger my innate magic gets, the more powerful the draconic blood in my body becomes. In theory, I just need to find a balance, and the outbursts of fangs and claws will stop. But in practice it’s not easy because every time it happens, the human side and the dragon side are in agreement." He offered.
"So, because you were born with a temper and an overbearing sense of hatred for injustice, it’s too easy for your draconic side to take over?" Alexis clarified.
"Not exactly take over. I don’t even notice the change. I’m still me, and I’m not in some blind rage or a feral state. It’s just that having fangs and claws when you want to tear someone apart is far too logical."
Alexis hummed curiously, as she ran her fingers over his chest. "And when it happens outside of combat?"
Dominic licked up the rim of her ear, then kissed down her neck.
"I see." She stammered.
Dominic chuckled as he continued with his kisses. Now she understood. The human and the dragon were in perfect agreement about what needed to be done, and both sets of instincts were working in harmony toward the same well-planned goal.
Even if he did need to trim his hair so that she couldn’t get such a good grip on it.
Not that it would help. If she was unable to get a grip on his hair, she would find another way to express her approval of his technique.
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Dominic sighed as the morning light from the window hit him in the face.
That settled it, he had a new plan for the day. He was making a magitech device with a timer to shut those damned curtains at midnight and not open them until after he got out of bed in the morning.
This happened far too often, and Alexis liked looking out at the stars before bed, so they couldn’t just have the maids close the curtains when they prepared the room.
The only solution was putting them on a timer. This routine was getting old.