"Pfft! Hahaha! Marvelous. Truly marvelous. Such a good kid."
Sitting on her throne, Tiamat, who was observing the fight between Sol and the Lords showed none of her usual dignity as she laughed loudly and boisterously - A proof of how pleased she currently was.
In all the immediate futures she had seen, most of them ended with Sol's victory or with him bailing out. Still, this one victory was the most hilarious and the one with the smallest probability.
She was both elated because of the power her grandson had shown and also because he was indeed slowly leaving the grasp of destiny.
Even so...
"A dragon that's not a Duke with a War Form…"
The War Form was the most optimal way of fighting for dragons at the King rank. Compressing power, strength, and energy in a small frame for explosive results.
But because of how powerful it was, the energy necessary to keep it was off the chart.
In a normal situation, in a world with enough mana, the core would do its work and allow the user to keep the form as long as he wished to. But in the current environment of Tartarus, where absorbing and controlling Mana was so hard, the upkeep was too much.
It would be like a fish trying to breathe on land. Even though the two places had oxygen, it was impossible for the fish to survive without water.
The worst was that Sol shouldn’t even have been able to use this form at his current level. Not even pure dragons could do so, much less a hybrid one. But, since he was Blessed, this didn’t come as a surprise for her.
In the first place, it was a waste of time to be surprised at what a Blessed could do. The best thing to do was simply roll with it and not mind anything that happened.
'Thankfully, he won't be able to just steamroll everything with his War Form.'
The goal of this training wasn’t to simply kill chaos lords or prisoners that were jailed. The goal was to make him realize his strength and weaknesses, as well as to adapt and evolve his body to the most suitable level.
This was the best way to optimize the benefits brought by bathing in the dragon pool since his body would naturally absorb the propriety most adapted for his path.
The following circles would be very hard for him since the numbers of Lord class spawns increased tremendously and giants, titans, as well as traitors, would begin to appear.
The Titans were no weaker than Dragons and if they were to gang up on him, victory would be impossible without using his dimension. But this was alright. After all, the more he used his power, the more his body would become adapted to it.
"I wonder how he will solve them."
She couldn’t wait to see how he would surprise her.
"Tiamat."
"Hum?...Yggi?"
“...”
Just as she was about to look back at what he was doing, another screen popped in front of her.
On the screen, an imposing old man could be seen. He had a long white beard, bushy eyebrows, and was completely bald. Even though he looked quite old, his hulking 3 meters tall body was covered in scars, and his bulging muscles made it so that none who saw him would dare to take him as an ordinary old man.
He was Yggdrasil, the divine beast of Humilitas.
Yggdrasil’s eyebrows twitched a little at the cutesy nickname his old friend had been using for him for as long as they could remember. After all, even though he looked like this while she looked like a young woman in her twenties, she was older than him by quite a bit and even took care of him many times on the battlefield.
“*Sigh* Firstly, please stop calling me Yggi.”
“Sure, Yggi. I promise to stop…One day.”
“*Groan* You will be the death of me.”
He couldn’t count the number of times he begged her to stop calling him like this or at least use a less embarrassing nickname. Sadly for him, Tiamat was pretty stubborn. It didn’t help that she beat him to a pulp when he tried to use a nickname for her.
Her argument back then had been, “You can call me whatever you want the day you beat me.”
Just thinking about it made him want to spit blood in anger. If he was a human, he was sure that he would have died because of the high blood pressure.
*Chuckle*
He could hear the chuckles of his favorite daughter behind him, but he ignored them. This was the little amount of dignity he could keep.
“Okay, do as you like.”
“Hehe. You know I will.”
The two continued to banter like this for some time. It was hard to imagine how two people representing two different concepts could be so friendly to each other, but this was how it was.
“Now then, Yggi. Not that I hate discussing with you, but I know you aren’t the type to make friendly calls for no reason. What brought you out of your hibernation?”
“You tell me.” Yggdrasil shrugged, “My daughter, Phoebe[1], informed me that you and Gabriel want to hold a summit. I know how much you hate formalities like this.”
Tiamat stayed silent for a short while before she nodded, “The daughter of Michael managed to escape The Tartarus in Anubis’ territory. It means the force of Chaos now has a demigod with a dimension in their midst. I don’t need to tell you how much of a pain it will be once she contacts the hiding Titans, if she hadn’t already done so.”
Yggdrasil frowned. “Why do I always wake up during shitty situations?”
For one, demigods with their own dimensions had an inherent advantage since they could use their full power no matter where they were, unlike normal demigods who were weakened when outside their territories.
But if that was all it wouldn’t be a problem. The true danger came from the fact of the strategic application a dimension gave. It means that now, Titans didn’t need to flee and hide in the Abyss.
They could hide in the dimension and all they needed to attack was use one person to open the gate wherever they wanted and allow their army to rampage and retreat at will.
It wasn’t like there was a lack of traitors during the war. But this time it was one of the worst.
“I am too old for this shit.”
Tiamat didn’t mock her old friend this time. She knew very well that none of them wished for another war.
Unlike the side of Chaos who thrived in such a situation, for them, war brought nothing more than pain, suffering, and sadness.
There was nothing beautiful about war. Anyone who thought the opposite was either a crazy bastard or someone who never fought on a battlefield.
“Well. Nothing we can do about this. There is another reason why I called you. Your granddaughter, Nidhogg, finished her training. Phoebe will bring her to your territory. Take care of her.”
‘Hum…Who?'
Tiamat had so many descendants that it was impossible for her to remember all of them instantly as long as they didn't catch her attention.
Still, at her level, it was possible to access any part of her memory at will. Even those that were thousands of years old.
It didn't take long for her to remember who he was talking about.
'Hah. The one under Hydra... Interesting.'
She remembered that the girl was quite talented. Furthermore, her poison was at another level entirely.
"By the way, I allowed her to take some of the poison from the Dryads."
"Ohoh?"
If she was only mildly curious, now he had her full attention.
While he may look like a kind but imposing old man, in terms of poison skills, there were very few beings who could match Yggdrasil.
His understanding of nature was so thorough that there were very few things he couldn't kill with poison.
Yggdrasil was the humblest of them all and because he was so humble, he never underestimated any enemy and would always use the most vicious and destructive poison possible.
It reached a level where he poisoned an entire small dimension and erased all forms of life in that place for more than a hundred years.
The Dryads were Yggdrasil's direct daughters and while their poison didn't reach the same level, it was still pretty scary.
"I guess she is coming back for the title of prince."
"Indeed. I am really curious about that grandson of yours. The little Blaze was truly a ray of sunshine. Though she was as much a bully as you."
Tiamat laughed out loud. Hearing the name of Blaze always made her sad, but she was used to losing those she cared for.
Rather than crying about those who were dead, she was more interested in the living.
'This will be interesting.'
She grinned before another idea flashed in her mind.
"Hey, Yggi."
"What? Just so you know, I will not give you any of my branches. You know how much it cost me."
Yggdrasil gave a look of wariness at Tiamat as he prepared to cut off all communication.
"Hey...I resent that. I only asked those once and I used them to plant world trees for the Elves."
Yggdrasil grumbled but still showed a look that said that he would not yield to any unreasonable demands.
"Well... Let's cut to the chase. The Norns are still with you... Right?"
Yggdrasil frowned. "Yes. But you know that we can't believe in them."
The side of the Order wasn't the only side with traitors in their midst.
Though far rarer, some Titans did not believe in the ideologies of Chaos and decided to join the Order.
This was the case of three very powerful Titans known as the Norns[2] who had power over time and destiny. They were:
-Urd, who held power over the past.
-Verdandi, who held power over the present.
-Skuld who held power over the future.
Out of the three, Urd was a demigod Titan while the other two were Kings.
"I want Skuld and Verdandi. Let Phoebe bring them alongside Nidhogg. Please."
".... Alright. I don't know what you are planning, but I will believe in you."
"Thanks, old friend."
Tiamat answered with a gentle smile free of any of her usual pride and arrogance.
[1]: Phoebe in myth is a name belonging to a dryad as well as to a Titan who incidentally was the grandmother of Apollo and Artemis. I don’t need to remind you that Apollo is a sun god, right?
[2]: In Norse mythology, the Norns basically control Fate itself, or rather they spin the thread of Fate and as such can perceive it more clearly than anyone else.
