The First Legendary Beast Master

Rue took a deep breath and focused on the story.

“As you likely know, after you left, I was taken in by the Crown Prince. We were wed not long after you left, and it was a bit of a scandal at the time. But nothing compared to what came after.

You see, the other branches of the family weren’t happy about a half-breed dragonkin being Queen after he ascended. It led to so many assassination attempts that we gave up on trying to explain my marriage being within the rules as I could transform, and we simply held a purge of the extended family branches.

Not an extermination, he was too soft-hearted for that. But about a quarter of the Royal Family of Gathuzan was culled after an attempted coup.

He should have finished them all.

We ruled together for, oh, I suppose a hundred years or so. Those were good days, and our descendants are still the main branch of the Royal Family.

I know, I know. We were cousins. But our children were glorious, some of the strongest dragons that the Kingdom has ever seen. I still say that was the right choice, and he was both a good husband and a good King.

There were some years there, after he was assassinated, where I was a bit angry and bitter at the world.

You see, I made Immortality first, and those hoping for the throne wanted to use one of our children as a puppet. So, they managed to poison the King while I was out of the castle. By the time I got back, it was too late.

So, instead of letting them win and seize the throne, I took it for myself.

It was a terrible time in my past. I had to kill fully a third of my own children before things were settled, and they understood that the good of the nation comes first in the selection of the next Monarch. Weak and greedy leaders should never be allowed into positions of power. Power is for the powerful.

A few generations later, there was a boy among the young Princes, one who had that gleam in his eye. He was born with talent, not like me. But that wasn’t enough for him. He had that drive, and he pushed for absolute dominance.

I passed my throne to him and moved to the Immortal worlds, thinking that my fully formed Immortal Spirit made me nearly invincible.

I was wrong. So wrong.

The world that I made it to was in the middle of a massive planetwide Clan War. As an unaligned Spirit Immortal, I was forcibly inducted into one of the clans with a subservience collar, and sent to the front lines.

That was their first mistake.

On that world, things were even more strongly power motivated than this one. The planet was split into a thousand regions between a thousand demigods. Each of them had their own faction, and none of them could tolerate each other.

Now, being a Void Dragon who lived and breathed war for the first time, I quickly attracted the attention of the Red Dragon. It was glorious, and we bathed the world in blood. But we were mere ants in the actual battle. When a hundred thousand Legends took to the battlefield for the final conflict, I wasn’t even a consideration. I was very nearly killed by a stray attack and sent to this world through a crack in spacetime.

Fortunately, the subservience collar shattered when the Demigod it was bound to was destroyed, and I was free to remain here. I made it to Ascended Immortality during the war, so I roamed this world for some time, learning about Immortality in a way that was more than serving a Demigod. My progress was slow, much slower than it had been without the assistance of Divine Energy.

Even though I had the potential to make Immortality during that dark time on a mortal world, I lacked the potential to go much further.

So, I spent a few thousand years looking for opportunities and ways to increase my potential.

About a thousand years ago, just after I had reached Peak Immortality, I found a dragon inheritance on one of the other worlds I visited. It was a Void Dragon Legend’s inheritance, and it was enough to push me through to Supremacy, though my innate potential was lacking.

When I came back, I was feeling invincible again. So, I thought that maybe I could settle down and go back to the glory days of Gathuzan.

I started a Clan up on the north side of this continent, in the Valalan League. I named it the Gathuzan Clan, and took in wayward Immortals. We had a couple good centuries there, and then we were attacked by one of the larger Guild Alliances who wanted our territory.

The Clan was wiped out, and I barely escaped with my life.

I’ve been wandering since. I just don’t have the heart to take in a new group of disciples and start over after seeing so much of what Immortality is like. So, I’ve just been wandering, looking for interesting things and wallowing in nostalgia.

That was why I remembered the man who had helped me start all this and become more than nothing in the first place.

Tell me, what made you want to start a Guild Branch here, instead of staying with a Clan and staying loyal to them until you had enough power?”

Karl smiled sadly. Nothing had gone right in Rue’s life. Every time she tried to settle down, things went bad.

“Being in the Clan and being in the Guild are two different things. I don’t view myself as having left or been disloyal to the Clan. We still work together, and they have a full branch here. But mostly it was that we took in a whole pack of Lycans after their village was attacked. They could have gone their own way, but they wanted to learn the unique sorts of skills that the members of the Darklight Host possess.

I don’t suppose that you’re tired of wandering? We’ve got comfortable beds here, and we could use an old friend with leadership experience.”