The Good Teacher

Goran's exclamation drew the attention of the twins. Once they noticed the three new faces, the two cautiously retreated behind Markus and peeked out from behind his legs.

"Little Boy. Did you paint this?" Goran asked with some excitement as well as mild amusement.

Kano looked up at Markus, who returned a smile and said, "That is Jean Rasmus. She is Master's newest student. This Sir is her father, Goran Rasmus."

Kano nodded in affirmation and spoke with a low hum, "It's Smaug..."

Goran started approaching the painting and inspected it more closely.

"It's weird... It doesn't capture the exact facade of a Red Dragon, however, everything about it tells me that it is. The colour tones, the shapes, the aura..." The man commented, to which Kano frowned.

"It isn't a Red Dragon! It's Smaug?!" Kano retorted as he slowly left Markus.

"What species is the dragon?" Goran replied without diverting his attention from the painting.

"I... I don't know..." The boy answered.

"Does the dragon have an elemental affiliation?" Goran asked through practice. However, he realised that he was talking to a little kid and rephrased his question, "Does the dragon bellow fire?"

To that, Kano nodded vehemently with bright eyes.

"Then the dragon you call Smaug is a Red Dragon. In actuality, though, although the species are called Red Dragon their scales are a lighter shade of brown. They're given that moniker because the moment they bellow fire, their scales light up with a bright scarlet hue," Goran explained.

He then continued with praise, "I believe it is a Red Dragon that you've painted here, if not for the colour and sort of surreal physique I could swear that it was the real-" however he interrupted himself midway.

This was because as he moved his hands over the mural, a gradual change started to take place. It started from the end of the painting and worked its way inwards.

The almost vibrant looking colours, with an overcoat of sheen probably due to wetness, started to slowly diminish and gained a more natural-looking shade. This, however, did not detract from the "feeling" emanating from the painting. In fact, the now sober tinting offered a more authentic grace to the design. And just as Goran had indicated earlier, the vibrantly drawn red-coloured dragon was now assuming the actual shade of light brown.

Awestruck, Goran took a few steps back and observed the painting once again in its entirety. A mysterious transformation was taking place in front of him, the like of which he hadn't witnessed before. Through familiarity, Goran activated his mana sense and encapsulated the mural.

"It's charged with mana?" Goran exclaimed.

It wasn't substantial, however one could observe a very faint and even coating of mana overlaid on the painting. It was so faint that anyone could miss it if they weren't actively examining the painting.

Moreover, this coat of mana was not rapidly dissipating from the painting. Through Goran's mana sense, it looked as though the wall was emanating steam. And as the steamy wisps of mana escaped from the wall, Goran noticed that they carried out the inherent energy within the paint, causing it to set. As the paint dried, some of it seeped into the pores of the wall, which was why the vibrance of the painting diminished gradually.

'Such calculation?' It was a truly inspired outcome. There were a lot of details that needed to be measured and calculated before the paint hit the canvas, which was the wall in this case. If there was a mistake in any of these details, the result would have been completely inferior to what it was now.

Yet this little boy had taken into consideration all of them, and that too to such a precise degree.

What was even more unbelievable was the manipulation of mana to maintain the fluid state of the paint. Goran looked at the boy's paint-covered hands and noticed the presence of a nearly depleted mana crystal.

'To have such precise control over mana...'

It was nothing short of genius. Only a true virtuoso in mana control could achieve such a uniform film of mana coating over the paint, especially when drawing the mana from a crystal.

Unfortunately for Goran, this wasn't the last surprise Kano had to offer. Because the man had overlooked the painting altogether while he was engrossed in internally praising Kano.

As the final wisp of mana left the painting, a deep yet barely scrutable change occurred within the painting, that everyone else but Goran missed. Almost symbolically, the last wisp of mana escaped from the pupils of the dragon, and as it hopped off the wall, as though a being of unimaginable power had woken up from a slumber, a wave of death tinged with fiery and unending greed swept over Goran.

Goran's eyes locked on the pupils of the dragon. Within the almost abstract representation of the dragon, its eyes were the only components that held a contrasting sense of hyper-realism. Even though he tried to maintain an unfaltering gaze, he couldn't overcome the predatory gaze of the drake. He could feel himself cowering under the towering, ruthless regality of the monster as a sea of gleaming gold started to wash over him, drowning him, suffocating him. The monster's casual gaze drilled into him, musing at him, at his weakness. It was toying with him!

And then... "It blinked!" Goran screamed, attracting everyone's attention.

"I-It blinked! Josie, did you see that?" Goran asked, to which Josie simply lowered her head and apologised.

"Jean?" Jean too shook her head and frowned.

"But... it blinked..." Goran muttered.

Goran retrained his senses at the painting, only to see that it had turned dormant. The voracious and fear-inducing aura no longer permeated from the painting. Instead, there was now an extremely faint feeling of inert threat. It was as though the beast within had entered a deep slumber, disturbing which would herald a death by unquenchable fire and fury.

'It's still persisting?' Goran commented.

Although he didn't look it, Goran was a devoted connoisseur of art no matter its form. Be it dance, music, food, literature, or even visual artworks. In fact, he had even enrolled in and graduated with great achievements from a plethora of appraisal courses in an attempt to widen his palette and broaden his appreciation of arts.

With regards to the visual arts, in particular, Goran knew that there were levels to a painting that classified its quality against others. For instance, a noteworthy painting, at the lowest level, would portray its content in a remarkably lifelike form. In fact, two-dimensional realism was just the first step. The second level would take this to the next level, by allowing manual infusion of mana from the viewer to cause the content of the image to attain a three-dimensional and lifelike form. The third level would maintain the above criteria, and would also have the added effect of evoking an emotion or thought from the viewer.

The fourth level could pull the viewer (not literally) into the painting by connecting to them spiritually. The fifth, and final level of painting would allow the painting to sustain spiritual life, almost like a microcosm in and of itself. However, these two also required the embedding of mana gems, as mana was required to sustain this capability.

The first three levels of painting were achievable by mages of Core Formation realm and below. A mortal was already capable of achieving the first level. the fourth and fifth were usually only attainable by Core Condensation realm mages due to the spiritual elements involved in the painting.

However, what both stumped and impressed Goran, was that the painting before him was able to easily qualify for the fifth level. Although it wasn't of the quality of the renowned works floating around in this world, this particular painting was definitely standing on the cusp of assuming the qualification.

What was interesting about this painting, though, was that there was no sign of any intricate brushwork or even any pre-planning with regards to composition in general.

There was a sense of measured haphazardness in the painting, that was evoked by the frantic strokes. Upon closer inspection, Goran realised that the whole painting was done using the little boy's fingers. The scales had distinct, yet also uniform thumb strokes that lined the sides of the dragon, forming impenetrable chainmail. These light brown-red accented scales descended towards the underbelly where they were replaced by yellowish-golden and disordered, jagged finger jabs. There was a subtle indication of the change in the material lining the dragon, where its overcoat was obviously its natural scales, while the underbelly was probably the accumulation of random gold, silver, and jewellery. Right at where the heart of the dragon was supposed to be located, was a bare patch free of any scale or golden encrustments, highlighting the dragon's glaring weakness. However, although this was visible, Goran didn't feel the least bit assured or safe.

This was because the drake was at a constant state of relaxed alertness, highlighted by the vigilant eyes, drawn using a combination of finger strokes and linings drawn using the nails.

The entire ensemble was painted without any sense of orthodox realism in mind, and it ran contrary to all established painting conventions where practitioners sought masterful techniques, precise brushwork, and verisimilitude. Yet, it achieved everything those so-called expert works tried to do, through a path that most would have considered barbaric, uneducated, and uncouth.

It was an enlightening trip for Goran. He had learned that even if a painting was abstracted, it was possible to achieve similar results. And it was all possible thanks to the boy's mastery over colours and shapes.

"I have learned much from your work, Kano," Goran said with a respectful tone, causing the boy's cheeks to redden in embarrassment.

"I must ask, how did you get the idea of infusing mana into the paint?"

Kano scratched the back of his head and answered sheepishly, "I don't know. It just made sense to me."

"Is it possible to elaborate?"

"Hmm... Smaug couldn't accept half-measures. He had to be finished at once. Teacher Larks told me that if liquid gained energy from the environment, it would evaporate. I saw that the thin coat of paint was gaining energy too quickly on the wall. I had to tell the paint to hold onto the energy, so I used the m-m-mana stone to do it."

"Wow! How did you manage to keep the mana so thin and consistent? And that too until you finished the painting?" Goran asked with increased elatedness.

Kano tilted his head and answered blankly, "The paint had to dry altogether. I told the mana to hold the energy for me..."

"But how?"

"I... I d-d-don't know," Kano replied with a dejected pout. "It just made sense to me..."

Goran's jaws dropped in defeat. He smiled bitterly and said, "I guess it is true when they say that asking a genius to explain themselves is like asking a bird how to fly?"

"I-I-I am not a genius!" Kano exclaimed in distress.

"Boy, stop being modest! I guess it is because you haven't left his village and seen the world, but the work you have produced just now blows every other renowned piece from grandmaster painters out of the water. Sure, there is still a lot of improvement and growth on your end, but the way it stands right now, I can see that you will achieve great things in this field."

And Goran wasn't lying when he said that. As stated before, the work was at the cusp of the fifth level. Sure it wasn't evident yet, but he could tell that maybe a few more years of practice and the boy would be shoulder-to-shoulder with the other experts. However, what was even more important to note was that it was able to achieve this without the need for a mana gem!

It was an unprecedented achievement, to say the least. No mage had achieved this in this realm in the last 6000 years, since the last artisans and craftsmen able to encapsulate such phenomenon in their works without relying on ramshackle solutions such as mana gems had also disappeared from this realm around that time.

"By the way. Seeing as you drew this dragon, I must ask. How were you able to capture it so well? Have you ever seen a dragon before?"

Kano answered matter-of-factly, "Not really. I read it in a book."

Goran nodded with a blank smile, "Read it in a book?"

"Yes. I read it in a book."

"Read it in a BOOK?"

Kano nodded.

"READ it in a BOOK?"

Kano shrunk his head into his shoulders in seeing Goran's increasingly agitated expression.

"READ IT IN A BOOK?!"