In a world filled with darkness, and where the only source of light were the numerous stars in the sky, a dragon was sleeping.
From any point of view, rather than a dragon, it looked more like a small hill. This was how big this dragon was.
Back in the starry sky, one star that was previously mired in crimson slowly began to change and took a beautiful golden hue. Though, compared to the other stars, the light emitted was rather dim.
Still, the dragon's eyes were showing deep happiness.
Slowly, very slowly, after so long, it stood up and let out a roar so powerful that even the space around it seemed to crack.
A few seconds after the roar sounded, two portals opened as a red and a blue dragon, a little smaller than the first dragon, but still humongous flew through it and stepped in front of it.
Once they reached the black and gold dragon, a pillar of light engulfed them, then their bodies became smaller and smaller until all that was left were two humans. One man and one woman, or rather a young girl.
“How have you been?”
At the question of the crouching dragon, the two immediately kneeled,
“We have been well, mother.”
The one who answered was the man. A tall and slim red-haired man wearing a black tuxedo.
Despite the fierce aura emanating from him, he seemed so frail and weak in front of the enormous dragon, but aside from deep awe, nothing else could be seen.
Next to him, the small blue-haired girl, who looked like a girl in her teens, threw a glance of disdain at him. She was a petite girl wearing a flowing white skirt and silver armor over her top.
"Mother. You have only been in hibernation for nearly two decades. What has happened?"
She asked with curiosity.
After all, for dragons, sleeping less than two decades wasn't enough to be seen as hibernation.
At most, it was just a long nap.
Not answering, the dragon closed its eyes, "What happened to your sister?"
Even though she already knew the answer thanks to the <<Sea of stars>>, she still wished to have a clear answer.
The two of them stiffened. The worst situation happened.
Initially, they wished to stall as much as possible, but it seemed that it was unlikely.
Hesitating for a short while, the red-haired man bowed and said in a calm voice.
"She died."
It wasn't as if he didn't care about his sister's life or death.
It was just that for a dragon, death was nothing more than nature at work.
Tiamat’s breath shortened for a while before she asked,
"How was her death?"
Hiding the grief in her eyes, she looked at her children with hopes.
"She died as a proud warrior by fighting Echidna. They even managed to seal her. It was a worthy death."
"...I see. Then I guess this is good enough."
The dragon sighed.
For them, since dying was something natural, what mattered the most wasn't when they would die, but rather–how they would die.
That was one of the reasons why Dragons hated necromancers so much.
For them, reanimating the body of a proud dragon that had died a noble death was nothing more than heresy.
Still, even though as a dragon, she was proud of how her daughter died fighting someone so strong.
As a mother, she felt incredibly sad and lonely.
The two dragons could see the sadness in the eyes of their mother and grimaced.
"Mother, this is our fault. Back then we shouldn't have let her leave the realm with that monkey and the prince."
The red-haired gritted his teeth as he said the word 'monkey'. Clearly, he didn't have many good feelings about that person.
This action of his smoothed the tense atmosphere.
"Fafnir, Kiyo, I am not blaming you. Your sister was a strong and independent woman. Since she chose him as a mate, then going down was necessary. As for the monkey…"
At this, she left a little chuckle.
She remembered that time quite clearly.
"How is he currently?"
This time it was the blue dragon, Kiyo, who answered with a laugh.
"Wukong became the leader of his race in his country. Haha. You should have seen the face of Fafnir when he was beaten by Wukong. It seemed like he was about to die from a stroke."
Fafnir could only lower his head in shame.
Back then he had made a bet with Sun Wukong and had lost thoroughly.
Because of the bet, that bastard monkey requested a great amount of divine gold as well as a small amount of his blood, to create his staff and his golden headband.
Even thinking about all that melted gold made his heart feel like it was about to bleed.
As if losing to that bastard of Sieg hadn't been enough.
Those two had caused his overall wealth to shrunk by two third.
Nowadays he couldn't even strut around in the Astral realm like he used to.
"Sigh, all I can blame are my lacking skills."
Still, as he said, he didn't feel resentful.
A loss was a loss.
There was nothing shameful about losing after giving it all.
What was shameful was refusing to face reality by giving a bunch of excuses.
As long as he was alive, even if he lost a hundred times, each time he would grow stronger out of it.
Still,
"Why are there so many Singularities in this era?"
This was something he couldn't understand.
Kiyo on the side added, "Indeed, the current mortal world has more individuals able to break the shackles than normal. I think there's at least one in all countries currently. In the past, even seeing one was incredibly rare."
Tiamat sighed. She of course knew what was happening.
Still, now wasn't the time. After all, she had woke up for a very simple reason,
"How is Blaze's son?"
"That bastard Asmodeus refused to let us enter his territory!" Fafnir complained.
Even though the descendants of Divine beasts weren’t restricted to enter the mortal world, their range of activities was really small.
Mainly, they couldn’t enter the territory of other divine beasts in the mortal world as long as they didn’t have a contract.
The dragon's territory in the mortal world was the elves' forest. Meanwhile, Lustburg was the territory of the Snake Asmodeus and the Phoenix Gabriel.
Tiamat’s eyes became cold. She had always wanted to punch that smug bastard.
Even to this day, she didn’t understand why the goddesses allowed him to mess around with some humans and create those witches.
Well, she did understand that this was for creating an equilibrium between the different races since humans had generally way fewer powerhouses than other races. Still, the way he bragged during their reunions was so infuriating.
“That bastard even once hooked up with Echidna.”
Fafnir continued, infuriated. Echidna was without a doubt one of the strongest beings in the mortal world, and even in the Astral world, she could nearly stand shoulder to shoulder with the divine beasts.
Because of this, Echidna was basically the most sought-after mortal. So it was quite a shock when they learned about this, albeit short, relationship.
Tiamat was a little shocked at the news but dismissed it. She wasn’t bored enough to care about her son's love failure or other people's love life.
As a half-energy type being, like all the divine beasts, she had never needed to mate in order to give birth.
The only one who had ever struck her fancy, Apsu, died during the Age of Gods, after his failed rebellion against the Goddesses. As such, in the thousands of years since her creation, she had never entered into a relationship.
After all, there was no one in this world worthy of her.
“Enough chit-chat. My grandson should be 15 now. Meaning that he will enter the Astral realm soon to search for a mate.”
Normally, the transfer from the mortal world to the astral world was random. But, it could change at any moment depending on the fancy of goddesses.
“When he comes to our territory…”
She looked between the eager Fafnir and the stoic Kiyo. Groaning, she could only indicate to Kiyo,
“You will take care of him and initiate him in our way.”
“Mother!”
Fafnir whined,
“Shut up. Don’t think I don’t know you want to get back at blaze’s son for all the bullying she did to you.”
He blushed at that. He had indeed wanted to make things a little difficult for his nephew.
When she was alive, Blaze was really a handful. There were basically no dragons who had escaped her claws.
What’s more, she didn’t even stop at dragons and even provoked basically all divine beasts descendants.
The day she contracted with that human’s prince and had to leave the Astral realm, cheers rang everywhere and Fafnir organized the largest party ever made.
Kiyo on the other hand could only smile bitterly, “Mother, it isn’t as if Blaze spared me either, you know?”
“I do. But I also know you are used to caring for and training the young dragons.”
Reaching this far, her slitted eyes shone coldly.
“I want you to break him, break him completely and thoroughly, then forge him into the strongest. His mind, his body, his skills, everything needs to be worked on from the base. Only then will he be able to show his full potential — Understood?”
Kiyo had rarely seen her mother so serious. Bowing her head, she nodded,
“I will not fail your expectations.”
At the same time, she couldn’t help but wonder just what kind of man her nephew was.
(AN: As always a little trivia about myth. In myth, Apsu was Tiamat's first husband. Though he got killed later. Then, her second husband was her son. Hehehe the GILF tags will soon be used. As for Fafnir, I am pretty sure you guys all know the original myth with Siegfried. Meanwhile, in Chinese myth, Sun wukong got his Ruyi Jingu Bang from the dragon king of the East Sea. So I worked around those two myths. This is one of my favorite moments as an author. Perhaps I will one day write a story about Greek myth. Gotta bash that rapey Zeus.)
