87 Chapter Eighty-Seven - What is in motion can no longer be stopped

"Matthias is dead..." The old man spoke in a tired and wounded voice, he sighed deeply and looked up, although he was in what was clearly supposed to be a underground the roof of the place was covered with strange yellowish clouds and a thick fog, sometimes a sickly pale yellow glow crossed the "clouds", as if some kind of energy was trying to penetrate the veil.

"Matthias was useless!" the woman who resembled a living wrinkled mummy responded with clear contempt. "He was useless even at the end! If he hadn't been so stubborn about getting back into a bond with his god he wouldn't have ignored the true ways of power! That worthless fool couldn't even buy us a few minutes!"

"Don't worry Mother Serwyna! After all, Matthias was never anything more than an expendable chess piece in our plans! The loss of him and all the other pawns is nothing compared to the power we are about to receive! Father Lucius, please allow me to intercept the enemy!" The middle-aged Blond man spoke, he straightened his suit tie as his eyes sparkled in an odd way.

"No Corvin, if you go to him alone you're going straight to his death..." A chubby and short woman replied with a condescending tone.

"Forgive my disbelief, Sister Goodwind, but this is impossible, I admit he's strong, after all he got this far through all our army, but it's impossible that the whole battle so far hasn't tired him! Even though it is a shame to hunt tired prey I will submit to this injury for the sake of our plans, I believe I have a great chance of success! Don't forget that I am the ultimate heir of the dark poison ki, apprentice of the veiled poison demon, and a superior level martial master near the ascension! Also I can have a high quota of divine level magic artifacts! I've hunted supernatural beings much bigger than him! Unlike Matthias I will go all out from the start!" Corvin responded with a confident tone, a purple mist appeared around his clenched fist. "Besides, I always wanted to hunt a dragon! I believe that the head and the skin will be a unique trophy..."

"Calm down my children! Alexandre, listen to your sister!" Lucius spoke in a louder voice than was expected from someone his age. "This enemy is not like one of the common beasts you hunted for sport, this boy is really the son of who he claims to be! Don't confuse him with a Lizardkin or one of those scaled beasts mistakenly called dragons! Even though he is in an incomplete state he is still a true dragon!"

"Forgive me Father, I didn't mean to disrespect you…" Corvin replied lowering his head. "Forgive my ignorance, but he being Eradan's son is trully such a worry? I know Eradan was strong but he's been gone for so long... I mean, the boy is not even a transcendent yet! This is the perfect time to end him!"

"You don't know Eradan, I've seen him fight twice, I know what he's capable of... in fact, if he were here our plans would never work out..." Lucius replied.

"So Father, what's the problem?"

"Looks like you're missing a crucial detail, Corvin my dear…" Serwyna commented with a sweet tone that mixed a maternal feeling and an attempt at sensuality.

Corvin looked at her asking for a conclusion.

"Conquest..." Marta and Serwyna responded together in a worried voice.

Hearing the word Corvin's eyes widened in shock and he swallowed hard, he turned to Lucius as if waiting for confirmation and was met with an eerie silence.

"I...I thought it was just a legend..." Corvin commented in a worried voice, his mind began to travel and remember an old tale.

Eradan, the dragon of conquest. Few knew about this story, the story of the hidden protector who defended this dimension for eons.

Legend has it that the dragon came to this dimension a few seconds after its birth, it hid in the void and slept silently among the stars, at that time when planets were nothing more than balls of mud and dust, Even before the first life appears, the black dragon arrived here before everything and even before the first life appeared, but he didn't interfere with anything, just slept in void and silence, waiting patiently.

When the first life appeared on one of the worlds of this dimension the dragon opened his eyes, but still he didn't interfere. For a eternity the dragon continued in his tranquility, watching without interfering, a mere bystander who ignored everything that involved him. He ignored the first magical age, the fall of the elves, the revolt of the titans and the rise of men, he ignored the empires, the disasters, the wars and everything else.

But there was something he didn't ignore.

The first invasion to occur was very early age, at that time the Earth was still young and full of magic, a place full of powerful and ancient magical races, alien to the mighty dragon that watched them from the void.

The invaders were a cruel race, powerful and even older, beings born in a dimension of nightmares, whose form was as changeable as water and who could manipulate matter and magic with mere thoughts, although their numbers were small, each of them had a power equivalent to a thousand armies.

This nameless and formless race opened a portal to this realm, for some reason they longed for Earth and were ready to neutralize anything in their path. All races of that time were forced to drop their old intrigues and reunite with their enemies, in a futile and frivolous effort to face the insurmountable, to defeat things that fed on gods.

Then for the first time Eradan intruded, and it was on that day that the races noticed his presence.

It is said that it was fast, with a mighty explosion and he rose from his ancestral home, as if a new star appeared right in the middle of the void, without any warning or without any conversation Eradan went against the formless enemies and annihilated them all with extreme ease.

But the most frightening thing was the origin of his title.

All the gods and magical beings that watched him could feel the all the power of the mighty dragon that looked divine, its power was enormous and it was growing. It is said that with each defeated enemy, with each creature slain, with each of the fallen the Dragon became more and more powerful, an invincible and unstoppable beast. A beast that grew with each victory and whose potential was limitless, the dragon that conquered everything in its path.

When the slaughter was over, the dragon returned to the void, once again alienating itself from everyone in a self-imposed exile.

It was like that with all the other big invasions.

Although the mighty dragon seemed to ignore the rifts and small crevasses, every time a race powerful enough to dominate this dimension crossed into this world the Dragon awakened and began a new killing spree, he faced all invaders head on and he proved undefeated among them all, guarding the material dimension as a silent and solitary protector.

About twenty years ago there was an invasion like never before, on the edge of space, an armada of demons came with the aim of destroying the world. It wasn't the first time the demons tried as they had always been haunted by the harvest of human souls, but this time the demons were accompanied by dragons, true dragons.

Yes, those of the same race as Eradan joined the demons in order to conquer the Earth and once again the lone Dragon rose against them.

Alexandre Corvin was a young man at that time, a miserable apprentice of a hidden sect, practically a child newly introduced to the secrets of the world, like many of the common humans he didn't even come to know of the battle unfolding far from his eyes, not until years later.

The outcome of the battle is something to be discussed, it is said that it was a unilateral massacre, Eradan decimated the enemy legions and caused unimaginable destruction, even against his kind the dragon was without equal and although the fight was more difficult than that the other times he came out victorious and undefeated,.

So a few years after the battle Eradan revealed himself to all magical society, to tell the truth, it was only then that the dragon's name was discovered, because until then the legend only referred to him as "The Black Dragon". After years of his silent protection the Dragon created a powerful defensive seal on the world and departed that dimension without any explanation.

"I thought it was a legend too..." Marta Goodwind commented in a similar tone. "But I'm a psychic Alexander, one of my skills is to feel the strength of my enemies and I can clearly feel his strength! Every time one of our brothers falls I can feel his power increase, just as it is described in the legend! The power of conquest is real, and this boy has it!"

"It doesn't matter anymore..." Lucious commented in a calm, low voice. "It doesn't matter after all... The original plan has already failed, inside we have an enemy that gets stronger every second and outside we have the army of hypocrites trying to get in... The boy is almost here. .. In a few minutes he will arrive at this place, at that point everything we send against him will be like throwing wood on a fire..."

"So it's over? Everything we did... everything I did... was it in vain?" Corvin looked down at his hands with a horrified expression.

"Corvin, honey, can you stop freaking out for a second until you hear everything? It's not like it's all blown up…." Serwyna commented in a sweet voice.

"The great mother is right, the master plan is out of the question, but we can still execute plan B..." Marta commented corroborating Mother Serwyna's statement.

"Corvin, my child, What is in motion can no longer be stopped... It is true that we cannot achieve our main objective, we cannot get rid of the seal completely, but the amount of energy we have gathered during all this time is more than enough to achieve our goal... When I said it was too late, I meant to him!" Lucius stood up, he put both hands behind his back and waited. "It's time to welcome our guest..."