Overlord of Biblical proportions

Prologue (7)

Tannin was an old dragon. Old even to dragons – not just to humans and similar short-lived races. One of the Six Dragon Kings, it was expected for him to be old. At least, he was once one of them, before he was reborn as a demon, and the Dragon Kings dwindled in number to five.

Of course, even powerful demons couldn't completely reborn Tannin into a demon, to etch out all his dragon essence and completely replace that with a demonic one. Tannin may have changed his essence, stopped being a Dragon King and became a 'queen'-piece demon. But in the end he was still a dragon, whatever the whispers of those who hated him whispered behind his back, laughing at his decision to enlist as a demon for the ephemeral purpose of 'saving the species,'.

Many dragons had a rather simple view of the world, that if someone was too weak to survive – perhaps they didn't deserve to survive in the first place.

But Tannin thought otherwise. Defying the beliefs of so many dragons, he caused a split in his society, forcing the ever-quarreling winged lizards to unite, into groups that supported Tannin's decision to save the dragon species. With the other side, a group that were offended by his decision to serve the demons, dismissing his title of Dragon King as an old unwanted rag.

And, where the seed of enmity had been planted, a harvest of lies would spring up. And so many rumors about Tannin began to spread faster than listeners had time to hear all the previous ones. That he had lost his dragon wings, that he was no longer defined by their senses as a dragon, that he now worked as a watchdog for his new master, Mephisto.

Of course, lies were nothing more than that, lies – Tannin was in fact still a dragon.

And dragons had many natural advantages over many other races – advantages so important that it was simply impossible to get past them.

One of those advantages was a dragon's natural disposition to learn magic.

Of course, Tannin was never really strong in that direction. The only magic he really relied on was the magic of his [Blast Breath] and other than that he only relied on his strong claws.

But even so, thanks to his nature, and thanks to the action of his [Figure], Tannin has a keen sense to detect magic. He was able to sense strong magic from several hundred meters away, even while distracted by the communication with his sons.

So when Tannin sensed the usage of really powerful magic, as far as Tannin himself could determine, some kind of portal, he was alert. The not yet fully formed portal was enough to alert Tannin to the intrusion, only for it to disappear a moment later – Tannin instantly realized that the situation was strange.

When that intrusion was instantly gone, as if knowing that Tannin had cottoned on to its presence, the situation went from strange to mysterious.

Teleportation wasn't some rare trick in the world of the supernatural, but it was unlikely that any of the demons in Tannin's neighborhood would suddenly dare to invade the demesne of a former Dragon King, an Ultimate rank Demon. At least, not without an extremely good reason.

And, as further questioning and inspection of the demons' situation showed, none of Tannin's acquaintances planned to pay him a surprise visit. That, in turn, made Tannin's situation even more puzzling. Who in that case would try to appear in Tannin's fiefdom? More importantly, if they were planning to do so, why did they change their mind moments later, allowing the portal to disperse before it could even fully form?

Especially strange was the fact that Tannin himself and his territory were of no interest. His territory was populated almost entirely by dragons, with the only thing of interest in his mountain being the Dragon Apples. With all the attempts Tannin himself or the ruling Satans had made to establish relations between the other races, the process of reconciling the two different races, dragons and demons, was too slow. And that was even for Tannin himself, who was an unaging and very old man.