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Chapter 025: Unraveling True History

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The Dragons' methods were really extreme and it was obvious that they don't hesitate on things once they've decided to do it.

A simple provocation from a Blood Dragon Church Follower was enough to incite an entire throng of City Guards to go into war... leading to them falling into Blood Prison traps —which then leads to them losing their numbers, with only a scant few making it back after a bitter escape.

Yes, he was reading his imagination right now.

They already happened. Many times, in fact, and the Vajras never learned time and time again. It's not that they are stupid or anything but it's just that the Blood Dragon Church's followers have ticked into their patience and thus the incensed Vajras time and time again rallied to avenge their fallen clansmen with every provocation NOT on a watch of a veteran City Guard.

'Cortana, based on what we have seen so far, how high is their winning percentage?'

[25% sir... and according to evidences, 90% of all their winning reports came from the times when a team outnumbers them on ambush missions.]

—too low!

—and considering that it was for ambush missions at that... in short, they lose 90% of the time!

——this is definitely instigated.

———the Vajras are losing their adults every time they went out for a kill...

Siva spent a few good hours studying the reports Matriarch Mohindra presented.

There are over tens of thousands of them —stack upon stack of paper files, leaflets, and boxes, full of recorded scenes and photographs saved on a few unique memory plates made by Water Dragon Magic— that if he inspected one by one would've taken him years before completing and by then, he would have trashed the "urgent" part of his tasks and goal of his self-missions.

Thus, he only picked up the ones ranked as [Intel] or a [Kill Report] which showed how the Vajras and the Church of the Blood Dragon God operated; as the rest of the reports were [scanned] to maximize his time efficiency.

Matriarch Mohindra also told him the stories as he read with the 3 Liberty Drones' help, guesstimating the entire picture of circumstances in the entirety of the Inner Continents by the time she finished narrating her stories.

In short, given the situation and history he knew —and now saw and heard— the Church of the Blood Dragon God had long since been a bane to this realm and only six years ago did they fully started their quest to assimilate everything in Middle Earth as theirs, establishing themselves as a third power which the Seven Dragon Clans and Terran Alliance could reckon with as extremely dangerous.

—is it just me who knows that the Blood Dragon God is Vasuki? Or at least a former shell of him?

—–is it just me who assumes that perhaps this is the demons' plot to control the Inner Continents' power structure?

———I mean hello, this obviously has demons all over it... seriously... am I the only one at all?

The incitations within that notion are something he could imagine as dreadfully convincing. Siva knew that aside from the Gods of War and the Gods of Discord, who, by the way, are the very first ones to turn their coats over and embraced corruption back then —to forget their egos, to become [Supreme] and only pursue the manifestation of their divinities to the world dictated by the Devil Gods— there are no one else he could think of who had the abilities to ensure an elaborate scheme like this one would result in favor of the Demons' causes.

And indeed, Siva cringed at the thought, he may have killed many Gods and Demons back then but there are millions upon millions of them... there was no saying that he might have let some of the more slippery ones escape his cleansing.

Even until now, he still had the feeling that aside from the ones who entered Janus's [Cage], there were still a few who managed to live on after the Ragnarok and is still in an isolated planet or space where life is going on as per usual, away from the ears and skin of Siva... The Destroyer...

Siva could feel it. There are still Gods out there—

—and as well as the [Supremes], the old Gods who had already lost their egos and are only pawns for the Seven Devil Gods to manipulate.

Disregarding the planet's suppression, it was them Terrans' resistances that was already making their eternal pursuit of Universal Domination quite hard to accomplish.

If the Dragons and the Terrans join hands, then the demons could only forget ever unifying this universe under their rule.

Someday, even, an entire host of Terrans and the Dragons would even launch their campaign to fight the Demon Armada and even with the Devil Gods, with Siva playing a card in the background, given his hatred against Demonkins, there was no saying that their fate is already doomed by its first note.

As such, they could only destroy all potentialities of that future by sewing discord amongst the Terrans, pulling all strings, ruining what can be ruined, and reduce all future troubles as early as today.

"Oh my god... that's..."

Siva's thoughts came to a stop when he came to a realization —this is definitely the demons' plan...!

—–I was too naïve! What if there are still moles in the Terran Governments?

——what if the Demons of the invasion 56 years ago always thought of this eventuality and prepared a very long and arduous backup plan to make their ends succeed?

—NO! Even before all of this...

———what if the reason why the Dragons and the Terrans were irreconcilable enemies despite their ancient good relationships were because of the Demons' machinations in the past?

————if that's the case, then why... no, what...

—————what's in Terroa that they'd go so far?

As Siva's thoughts raced, he could only ask her to clear a few important factors to build up a guess to back his doubts.

"Matriarch."

"Your Excellency?"

"Do you have records of the most ancient or even just the first ever Dragon Civilization in this planet, or at least in Laurasia?"

Mohindra blinked, "Your Excellency, if you were referring to the ancient records of the Lightning Dragon Tribe before the time of my Father, during the time where this planet was still under control of the Dragon Kings of that era... then no, it has all been lost long ago, along with the disappearance of the Dragon Kings of back then. But at least, until the time of my father's rule, I can tell you a story."

"Tell me."

"The first to step foot in this planet is grandfather's generation of Dragon Kings. Back then, father was just a candidate for the seat of Dragon King... he was nothing more than but a young adult with only me, my elder brother, and my mother, with him, as we traveled the stars atop our Dragon Ark..."

Mohindra closed her eyes at this point, thinking back to those days where she was nothing more than a Little Dragon Princess of a dwindling clan of Royal Blooded Vajras.

"I remember that there are also a few Terran Clans who traveled the stars with us. I was but a child not even a decade old back then but I can still recall all the methods my grandfather and his colleagues employed to create the path in the Star Ocean for us to safely travel in it. Back then, I can vaguely remember that the Church of the Blood Dragon God was a Terran Church and its members are all Terrans worshipping a [Draconian God] —another Divine Beast Race [God] from the ancient times..."

Draconian was another race, similar but not close, to the Dragon Race in general.

This "race" has lizard-like features, with serpentine tongues, bloody vertical pupils, and reverse-kneed lower legs with four-fingered feet and hands. They also have long muscular tails!

It was suffice to say that the Draconian Race is a lot closer to Lizardmen than the Dragon Race—but the Lizardmen Race is also a separate Divine Beast Tribe Group than the Draconians.

And because different blessings from two different Gods can stack over, there are multiple Terran Races who also worship other Terran Gods, aside from paying homage and tribute to their Ancestors, worshipping and praying for other Gods wasn't the tiniest bit unfilial nor was it even illegal.

It was actually the norm, even in today's society of the Terran Civilization in the Inner Continents.

"When we arrived, there was nothing in this planet but forests and mountains, seas, and oceans, and the animals were docile, where the things you call monsters were only S-ranked, and there were five continents in the surface—

"—the Inner Continents, back then, weren't known yet and so we took the Surface Continents as our home and established the first civilizations—

"The Romans, Anglo, Lazio, Jeremiah, Persia... we Dragons ruled over the lands as we built empires on top of mountains, cliffs, and seabeds... kept the times peaceful, fighting against the never-ending invasions of the local monsters —those mindless beasts who's all clearly weaker than us but were all fast to breed so their numbers never ended... and I can also still recall those days when the weaker Terrans of the other empires would fight with us hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, against all the Monster Rushes that kept on coming day and night without end. Even Dragons have those days where we are weak and have to rest—"

Siva felt a shadow of a flag was something in those lines just now. His foreshadowing radar was boiling with signals. He felt that his speculations had just pinned itself on something important here.

"—but on that day, tragedy befallen us."

"What happened, mother?" Electra asked, worried.

Even Siva was curious.

What happened that changed everything?

Why are there no records of this period of time in the Book of Legends?

—No!

In fact, he had long since noticed it as well. There are certain details in history that wasn't recorded in the Book of Legends. For example, why there are no records of Clemente Celestine —or rather, why do the records pertaining to Clemente Celestine all have different connotations?

At one point, he was a hero but to a record which Siva heard from an NPC, he was portrayed as a betrayer, a deserter, a backstabbing evil plotter... why is it so?

"I didn't know exactly what happened back then, but I only heard that the Terrans have betrayed a Dragon King and used that King's blood to conduct a Soul Puppet Spell Ceremony —a taboo which the Dragons deemed as the most blasphemous and the most offending of all taboos... in the end, the war erupted and a line was built amongst Terrans and Dragons. My Grandfather and Mother was left with no choice but to join the efforts in protecting our Clan's border lands... my father was tasked to escort us to a secret realm that the Dragon Kings have just newly discovered back then... it was this Inner Continents we call now... and in this land, we discovered that Dragonkin proliferate en masse."

"In the Inner Continents?" Siva asked in surprise.

"Yes." Mohindra gave a nod, "We discovered there are four continents here and that each continent is holding their own respective unique traits. Laurasia for example, has a natural eco system that benefits the growth of Dragonkins and so, the Seven Clans of the Seven Dragon Kings built their lands there."

"Mother, this part of history..."

"It is not recorded." Mohindra assured. "When we were escaping, we brought our own people with us and with it... the ancestors of the Terrans in this island's city. Because my father believed that there was something wrong in the reports, he did not kill the Terrans and instead told them what happened back then as he protected them... giving them a choice of whether going to the Terran Alliance or to stay."

"—and their choice being the current society of the Island Country of Horbe?" Siva concluded and she gave a slight nod in affirmation.

"Although the Seven Dragon Kings disdained this choice of my father, because he was the strongest of the newly elected Dragon Kings back then, not a word of disdain or rebuke came from the seven of them... it was also one of the reasons why father chose the path Horbe upholds today. It was only until recently that the new Dragon Kings have gone out to persuade us to join their war."

"Mother, what happened to great grandfather and grandfather?" this was the topic she was mostly worried about. How come there are no records of it on their library's archives?

"I myself have not heard any news of your great grandfather after we took this island country as our territory back then. And please forgive this mother of yours for not letting you out of the walls after all these years, honey, because ever since father had banned us from getting out of the walls of the city, I myself had not gone out of this place even once."

As pitiful as it may sound, they grew up behind the walls of this fortress city... thinking that the world outside those walls are filled with danger... and this was also the very reason why Electra had that bottled up sense of adventure as well as desire to go out and see the world outside of it.

Siva had seen it as well. Electra was only gone for a few weeks outside but Mohindra had already gone into a fit of panic and rushed in on them as soon as she heard Electra was back.

Alas, before she could even take a single step out, the very 'threat' itself that her generation has been warned about, fell from the sky, killing her father.

Such a tragedy... and Siva was the cause of it.

He had just destroyed the girl's curiosity and sense of adventure that could've made her "teen years" a happy and memorable one.

"But what about grandfather...?"

Even Siva was curious about this. He'd only heard about her father dying by his hands back then so what about the former Dragon King before her dad 56 years ago?

And the matter between the Terrans and Dragons?

Plainly just from the reasons why they hid here in the Inner Continents, and added the current WAR between them, it was easy enough to know what had transpired in the history of the two races after that betrayal incident.

Siva had also already understood the reason why the Dragons hated the Terrans. But then again, is this the reason why the Terrans are after all of the Dragons as well?

Are they hunting down the Dragon Race because they wanted to carry on the Soul Puppet Spell Ceremony —of turning Dragons into their hominid weaponized beings they can throw in as golems that will forever follow their puppeteers as long as they are alive, as its concept permits?

"Dead... probably..." sadness covered Mohindra's face as she answered weakly.

"How?" Electra was already crying.

Mohindra held her daughter's hand and spoke with tears flowing down her face, "Remember what I've said about when the Blood Dragon God's Church became a notorious sect?"

Electra nodded teary-eyed, "Mn. You said that the day when they revealed their fangs, it was also the day that marked the creation of the third faction in the Inner Continents. You said that there are many people who died in that day as a sacrifice to...AH!"

Realization struck Electra. Mohindra nodded. Both of them were teary as Mohindra narrated the story.

"It was in a time before Your Excellency has saved this little one's precious child. I have only just been married to my Husband for a short while when the Blood Dragon God's Church decided to hold an event that invited all the great warriors of both the Terrans and the Dragon Race..."

Siva felt that this part was somehow related to him for some reason. But instead of voicing out this doubt, he chose to remain silent that prompted her to continue speaking.

"Father came out that day... and never returned. I wanted to be the one to investigate but husband stopped me and he went out instead. But when he came back... he told me what he saw there and my heart couldn't withstand what I heard... I almost could've gone mad if I wasn't pregnant of you back then." Mohindra held Electra's face up, "It was you who made mother strong, honey, you are mother's treasure and as well as her saviour."

Despite her crying face, Electra still blushed and she lowered her head and crying on her mother's bosom like a child.

"Now I know the story between the Terrans and you Dragons..." Siva said. "So, going back to the very first question... do you have a record of the ancient era before the time of you taking foot here in Terroa?"

Mohindra thought hard then shook her head.

"The earliest I can remember is the story I've told you about, Your Excellency."

Mohindra continued, "Although that era was blank to us, we have a few records with us pertaining to the old era of when our ancestors were still on the run from... from the calamity... but I don't think it's connected at all to the Blood Dragon God Church."

Why did Siva asked about it?

It's because he wanted to prove something to the Dragons as to how and why all of this is happening right now... and, potentially, where it was headed.

Siva eyed the Matriarch, "Do you know who the Blood Dragon God is?"

Mohindra blinked, this is the first I've been asked of it, is it? Who indeed is that [God], I wonder...

"Your Excellency I... I thought the Blood Dragon God is some Evil-Attributed God of the old era and that his fanatics have all been corrupted by the Demons and so twisted his teachings only lately, at the time of my father. I personally think that it was the only conclusion as to how the Blood Dragon God Church had caused all this chaos."

She wasn't sure of her answer, as seen on the expression she made at the end of her reply.

"On a certain viewpoint, you are correct. But..."

Siva nodded in understanding. It is indeed true that there are no traces of the Death Mana in the Blood Prison of the followers. If something, then it can be attributed to a sinister way of conjuring the blood as the medium for [Magic] and then using a unique Dragon Magic along with an implementation of it through the Terrans' [Formation Spell Arts].

Combining Dragon Magic and Terran Magic was a project of the higher echelons of the Terrans so it wasn't an issue if these Followers would do it as well. After all, their ranks are made up of many deserters of the two sides.

In hindsight, it was a unique [Blood Magic]! Truly, by its name and its effects, it was really an evil art.

That's why Mahindra thought that it was only an Evil-Attributed [God] of the ancient era.

She thought that the Draconian God this Church is serving was a God with a Divinity pertaining to the concept of [Prison].

That's why it was only until recently (in the life-term of the Dragons) that they thought that the [Blood Prison] was an 'Evil Magic' conceptualized by those 'evil' Demons by corrupting its followers.

Adding the fact that the bloody church never used this Magic only until recently, it was the reason why the Terrans and Dragons only attributed it as being 'Demonic' in origin... thus the logic that it may have been the followers that were corrupted and not the [God] itself.