He knew this fell far short of Master Benson's wild vision. Naturally, he was comparing it with the unsuccessful version of that vision; it might not even achieve the thirty-percent increase in mental power growth efficiency he had originally envisioned. Still, he was pleased. Success was the first step, and he could try to optimize it later. His progress in mental power had never been particularly slow to begin with, and the Demonic Mark Meditation Method was an exceptionally fine meditation method.
This had merely been a spur-of-the-moment experiment, as well as a way to deal with that shameless old wizard who had invited himself over, adding one small safeguard that was better than nothing.
Ruger left the room, scratching his chin with a finger as he walked.
It seemed the burden had fallen back on his bloodline. If he were one of those dragons naturally capable of growing to a very high rank, the additional growth induced by this stimulation would surely be far more pronounced, and the gains much greater.
Unfortunately, he was only a kobold. After tenuously claiming kinship with dragons, he had become a dragonborn kobold, and that was all. Among the many dragonkin creatures, he ranked somewhere around a cousin's next-door neighbor's friend.
That, in short, was the situation for dragonborn kobolds.
But fortunately, he was a wizard.
There were countless kinds of wizards, but one thing was certain: they excelled at handling precisely this sort of situation. Wizards had arisen from similar circumstances in the first place, whether frail and sickly, burdened with curses, ancient and decrepit, or missing hands and feet. They had allowed fragile, short-lived humans to rise slowly from the mire and look down upon all the long-lived species.
From weakness to strength, anything was possible.
Holding the little linked magic