Chapter 417: The Dragon and the Sovereign
The nameless creature circled the crack in reality - a place too small for it to fit into without collapsing it, that much it could sense. But it could feel its prey. The fox that had spread herself into this land. She was inside, dying without a direct connection to the uncountable life forms that lived in her domain.
The dragon was patient. He had not lasted for uncountable turnings of the seasons for nothing.
He had weathered calamities - had caused more than a few himself - in his quest to evolve. From creature to monster. From monster to spirit. From spirit to sovereign of a territory that had not been unlike this, if much warmer and rainier.
And when half his land had collapsed in fire, destroyed by no more than the simple churning of the world’s continental plates, he had freed himself to become something else.
A leviathan of the sky. Lord of whichever place he claimed.
And then they came.
The little birds with their sharp, metal claws clad in dark mana.
Century after century they came. Fighting him in circles from one land to the next, on the great continent far to the west of where he now found himself. A continent so rich in mana it could sustain him even without a permanent hold - though of course, he claimed a large enough stretch of mountains to rest when he felt the need for some peace.
He craved that peace, even if it meant displacing this land’s sovereign. The little birds had come, but unlike before they’d kept attacking. Day after day.
Unrelenting.
He sensed their wants.