"Damn hybrid!" Reflected in Tiamat's eyes was a scene she had pursued her entire life: a formation of elite five-colored dragons, arranged in a battle-ready formation capable of responding to any situation, their bodies glowing with intense elemental energy as they charged toward Synapse.
Tiamat's lifelong goal had been to establish a kingdom in the material realm ruled by five-colored dragons, with herself as the Dragon Queen who governed it all. To do so, such a kingdom required a well-disciplined army that would follow her commands and defend against external threats. But after tens of thousands of years, Tiamat had yet to achieve this dream.
The five-colored dragons she created, especially the red dragons in which she had invested the most effort, had become disobedient after just a few generations. If she wanted them to do her bidding, she had to pay them—an utterly ridiculous notion. Did these ingrates not understand that she was their mother? How could they demand compensation for serving the one who created them?
The blue and green dragons were slightly more cooperative, but as for the black dragons, they were mere whims of hers. And the white dragons? She had created them solely to counter the metallic dragons, rounding out the five-colored species—but they had since become infamous as the shame of the dragon race.
Now, what was she seeing? A scene she had spent her life striving for was unfolding right before her eyes, but it had been achieved by a hybrid, the offspring of a Titan and a golden dragon, her brother and rival's descendant. Well, only half a descendant, but even so, the Dragon Queen felt deeply humiliated.
In truth, Tiamat had long been aware of these dragons, who wore the skin of five-colored dragons but were essentially more aligned with metallic dragons. When Muria first appeared, these dragons began to spread across the continent.
At first, there were only a little over a hundred of them, a number that made Tiamat covetous but cautious. Due to the threat of the Titans, she refrained from making a move. In fact, she had even used some of her divine power to enhance the bloodlines of those dragons, hoping to avoid catastrophe.
But as time passed and Muria established the Dragon Academy, where even better, more disciplined five-colored dragons began to emerge, Tiamat could no longer sit idle. She wanted such five-colored dragons for herself—dragons that would follow her commands.
Thus, she descended in avatar form, sneaking into the Dragon Academy. As a dragon god, it wasn't difficult for her to infiltrate a place where her descendants gathered en masse. The hard part was her objective within the academy: promoting her faith and recruiting devout dragon followers. She quickly found that gaining a follower there was nearly impossible.
The first issue was that the academy was founded with the intention of training every dragon to be skilled in magic, capable of handling extreme situations—far from the lazy, talent-reliant slackers of the past. In short, the goal was to create wizard dragons. And what are wizards? True wizards are a group who hold no reverence for gods. If given the chance, they wouldn't hesitate to kill a god and take their place.
This mindset had been subtly nurtured by Muria, and as a result, the dragons at the academy held no awe for gods like mortals did. The only thing they respected was the power gods wielded.
This lack of reverence for gods wasn't even the thing that angered Tiamat the most, though. The academy didn't only consist of five-colored dragons—there were also metallic dragons, gem dragons, iron dragons, and various other species, so she wasn't the only dragon god affected.
What truly enraged her was that the academy's headmaster, that wretched hybrid Titan-Dragon child, Muria, had explicitly labeled her as an evil god. Well, that was fair enough. But what came next was outrageous. Muria, under the pretext that Tiamat was an evil god, outright banned any dragon from worshipping her at the academy. Of the nine dragon gods, she was the only one to receive such special treatment.
To enforce this decree, Muria had set up harsh reward and punishment systems. For instance, anyone who reported a dragon worshipping Tiamat would be rewarded. Worse still, if any dragon was found to be a follower of Tiamat, their entire hoard would be confiscated, and they would be subjected to a brutal punishment: being skinned, having their scales removed, their tendons pulled out, and then receiving the Six-Elemental Punishment.
The five-colored dragons Tiamat had created were extremely pragmatic by nature, so even when she sent her avatar into the academy, she couldn't recruit any followers. She nearly got caught herself.
"These worthless creatures!" Enraged, Tiamat slammed her claw down in her divine realm, looking at the terminal dragons she had recently created based on the original five-colored dragon model. The comparison was unbearable.
The terminal dragons were a new creation of hers, developed after she lost control of the five-colored dragons. They were characterized by their brutality, short lifespans, inability to reproduce, and lack of intelligence—essentially living weapons made for slaughter.
"Is it time for me to make a change?" Tiamat mused, lost in thought. She realized that the dragon race was undergoing a transformation, and as their dragon god, if she didn't change with them, she risked losing her position. Although the consequences wouldn't be too severe…
After all, Tiamat had become a god by ascending as a Dragon King. Faith was more of a bonus for her, and without it, she would only lose a portion of her power. She wasn't a god purely reliant on faith. Even if her power dropped by one level, it wouldn't be catastrophic.
Still, Tiamat couldn't tolerate such a situation. She had become the Dragon Queen precisely to integrate into the world and become one of its rule enforcers, gaining control and power in the process.
"But turning from an evil god to a good one, like Bahamut? That's ridiculous! Besides, the divine roles I hold don't allow for such a transformation."
Tiamat's domains—Evil Dragons, Conquest, and Greed—were incompatible with becoming a good god. She couldn't fathom how to transition into one. It was an impossible task.
Unless she could find a way to acquire new divine roles as a mediator, it wouldn't be possible to become a good god. Perhaps she could shift to being a neutral god, which seemed more in line with Muria's preferences.
"No! I'm a dragon god, for heaven's sake! How could I lower myself to cater to the whims of a mere mortal hybrid?" Tiamat suddenly recoiled, feeling ashamed of her own thoughts. But faced with the looming threat of losing power, she fell into a dilemma.
Meanwhile, as Tiamat wrestled with her thoughts, several gods in the pantheon were also displeased. As gods, they didn't hide their emotions—there was no need.
For deities like Lathander, the God of Dawn, Tyr, the God of Justice, the Elven All-Father, and the Dwarven God, Muria's invasion of the Synapse continent drew little reaction. In fact, they even considered sending their followers to join the fray.
As gods, they saw the bigger picture. Muria's goal was clearly to flatten the Synapse continent, and once he had, he would undoubtedly establish dominion over it. But as a hybrid, his subjects would likely be composed mainly of dragons and giants—long-lived species with stringent habitat requirements. Even with millennia to reproduce, how much land could they really occupy?
Eventually, the land that had been cleared of evil would be repopulated by humans, and without external interference, humans naturally leaned toward the light. Thus, the continent would become a vast source of faith.
However, the problem was that this source of faith was not yet fully realized. In the meantime, every non-evil god in the pantheon watched the evil gods around them with strange, knowing looks.
"Titan!" A voice softly murmured the name in the pantheon, but no god could detect its source. Yet everyone knew who it was: Cyric, the God of Murder.
Cyric, a god who had lucked his way into divinity, held nearly all the portfolios related to murder and was a true god of assassination, infamous for his insidious power.
"If it's war you want, then war I shall bring you," a voice filled with tyrannical malice rang out in the pantheon. The gods turned toward its source—Bane, the God of Tyranny, another evil god of great power.
"Muria, huh? Let's see how much fear your army will feel once they've tasted my power," the Fear God sneered within the hall.
The Fear God derived his power not from prayer but from the terror he instilled in living beings. Whenever a creature felt fear because of him, his power grew. He was hated by the entire pantheon, as he frequently unleashed disasters and slaughter to fuel his strength.
"You're planning to act? Don't say I didn't warn you—an Epic Titan has already placed his weapon above Synapse," a goddess laughed softly, glancing at the angry evil gods around her. "Do you think this hybrid's actions were not approved by the Titans? If an Epic Titan truly decided to wipe out your playground of evil gods, do you think you could stop him?"
"And what if we can't stop him? Do you expect us to surrender?" The Fear God glared viciously at the Moon Goddess, Selune. "If Synapse is destroyed, I will
lose most of my power. If I degrade to the level of a lesser god, how many of you will come for me? Will I even survive then?"
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