At the moment, Ray was sitting at that table that could be found at the center of the living room of his dorm. He was now facing a great enemy, an enemy that had been dubbed by both peers and seniors as "The Enemy of all young heroes", although it was called by a more common name by teachers.
Homework.
Thankfully, he was not alone.
In order to make sure that none of them forgot to do their homework or had any difficulty in completing it, they decided to do homework together in this dorm.
Right now, they were doing homework for History class. It was a "simple" two pages of questions that needed to be answered in at least four lines of text.
This was not the first time they had received homework, and not even the first time they had received it from their History teacher, Amon.
But this piece of paper was getting on everyone's nerves, or at least it was in this dorm room.
Jynn hadn't swept his hair back or taken his shirt off for the whole time, although he still showed a relaxed smile on his face.
Zillah was trembling, clenching his pencil very hard, this was already his fourth pencil this week. He also seemed completely incapable of thinking with his inside voice.
Cù, on the other hand, was the calmest among the four of them. Really, his only concern in this homework was to find enough words to fill the necessary four lines, Ray knew that he preferred concise answers, at most reaching two lines of text.
Ray, on the other hand, was having a hard time not cringing.
At the moment they were studying how each Age had been documented, by whom, and how these eras influenced the current age.
And it was all so embarrassing to learn about.
The Age of Gods was embellished beyond belief, to the point that even Arianne had felt uncomfortable. Most authors that talked about the Age of Gods were religious people from around the Age of Heroes, the end of the Age of Monsters, and the starting years of the Current Age.
The Age of Dragons was full of inconsistencies. As a Dragon himself, the humans' grasp on dragon culture was horrendous, and most works about the Age of Dragons were from Ancient humans from the Age of Demons and were completely unaware of how dragon society actually worked.
It was something like not recognizing dragon rituals, but thinking of Wyverns or Wyrms as the same thing as True Dragons was insulting.
As for the Age of Demons, it was weird. Most works depict it as an era of human suffering, and while he agreed that humans suffered a lot during that Age, it was not all that it was about.
'I mean, it was in that age that the previous Dragon King fought the Demon King, effectively destroying one of the two moons that existed at the time! That battle supposedly left the planet further away from the sun! How is this not talked about more?!'
The Age of Heroes, on the other hand, was a weird thing for Ray. On one hand, most works were obviously human supremacy agendas, as they depicted the stories of the First Hero and the Grey King and how they pushed back the demonic oppressors.
On the other hand, they were pretty accurate and hardly missed any certain details.
And there was the Age, whose historic works made him cringe the most.
The Age of Monsters.
The one he had been most active. He had been born in the Age of Heroes, at the very end of it, and he now was alive in the new era.
And every single historic work seemed dedicated to slandering him.
Even the book he had just brought back from the library, every time it mentioned Astra's deeds, they always had to bring up the fact that she was part of the team that "killed" him.
And there were the rumours.
About the Monster Spirits. Demonic hybrids that seemed to stem from an unusual amalgamation of demonic power, dragonic genes, and yokai origins, resulting in dragonic evil spirits that terrorized humanity at the end of the Age of Monsters and the start of the Current Age.
About his reasoning about killing the Drakes. No! He did not kill them because he had been rejected! What kind of story were they spinning here?
And so many rumors about him and Kurama—it always twisted his guts in a way that felt like he was about to vomit.
He had met Kurama after his fight in the Gap, she was a small fox yokai at the time. Driven by curiosity, she had spent time alongside him while he rested after the battle.
Due to his enormous demonic power, it ended up corrupting her, turning her into a subspecies of yokai, the evil spirits.
Ray just couldn't see her in the same way people seemed to believe their relationship was.
That little pest had followed him for so long that he practically raised her.
The Monster Spirits were simply born from her mischief. A whole race of hybrids, born because she wanted to make a prank with some inuendos.
"Look at this, Rexy! They are like our little children! I believe this is reason enough for us to finally go through with that human ceremony! You know, Marriage!"
He could still remember her annoying voice.
'I wonder if she is still alive.'
Historical records said that she died after attempting to get revenge on Gideon. Supposedly to avenge him. But Ray knew better, she would never be killed that easily, she was a master of illusion, after all.
He could lie and say that he didn't feel slightly unseasy.
Phew
He sighed, trying to shake off these feelings.
"Having trouble with the homework?"
Cù Sith asked.
"No, it's not that. It's just, why does it seem that every book that talks about the Age of Monsters has the goal to put Rex Draco's name through the dirt? I mean, I get that he was not exactly a figure to feel bad for or sympathize with, but couldn't they stick to actual facts rather than pure slander?"
Jynn was the one who answered.
"Does it matter? Winners are the ones that get to shape history. Rex Draco lost against the Last Hero, therefore, if someone slanders him or not, it's impossible to know if it was true or not, anyway. For all we know, Rex Draco might have really killed the Drakes because he was rejected. Couldn't be me."
"I thought the general consensus was that Rex Draco was a mindless beast that killed without thought?"
"B-but he wasn't right? If one looks past the slanderous claims, one can actually see that Rex Draco was never one to seek fights in his older years, he was still brutal once encountered, but he barely did anything without reason. He had a disagreement with the Drakes, that was for sure, and there must be a reason for him and the Fox Spirit of the East to have created Monster Spirits. I-I think."
For the first time that day, Zillah raised his head to talk before quickly lowering it.
Cù Sith nodded in agreement.
"At the end of the day, it is a fact that Rex Draco was not a mindless demonic dragon. He had reasons to act and things that set him off before committing one of his atrocities. In fact, one of the legends in my tribe recounts an encounter with Rex Draco."
Ray's eyes shot upwards.
Jynn and Zillah were not much better, surprise written all over their faces.
"According to legend, it was during a time when the Sith Tribe was one of the few barbarian tribes to exist at the time, so it was around the middle. Supposedly, in a dreadful coincidence, the Sith Tribe, accompanied by the Soul Reaper Hound, had settled in the same place as Rex Draco had. According to what is stated, the Sith Tribe and other tribes with other mythical beasts in their company had settled around a mountain in which Rex Draco had settled at the time."
All of them listened with all of their attention. Ray was at the same time putting some effort into seeing if he could remember what Cù was talking about.
"Due to the threat that Rex Draco imposed on the tribes, the beasts, along with the strongest fighters of each tribe, united in a struggle to try and draw the demonic dragon away."
"So how did it go?" Jynn asked.
"Not well. According to legend, right when they arrived at the cavern's entrance, Rex Draco was already coming out. They didn't even bother waiting for any signal, both beasts and humans attacked him."
"What happened?" Zillah posed the question.
"The answer is not clear in the legend, only that all human warriors died, and from the beasts, only the Soul Reaper Hound survived, never to recover from the wounds that it had suffered, slowly dying until two generations later."
Jynn and Zillah breathed out a puff of air that they didn't know they were holding.
Ray, on the other hand.
'Sounds like a great battle. Too bad I don't remember any of it. Maybe they died too fast?'
If he didn't remember it, it meant that the battle hadn't been that worthy of attention on his part.
Looking at Cù Sith's proud expression in recounting his tribe's mythical beast's great feat of battling and surviving the King of Dragons.
Ray just hoped he never found the truth of Soul Reaper Hound's crushing defeat and how little his efforts mattered to him.
"What happened after? Did Rex Draco come back to the mountain?" Jynn was the one that asked.
"He did not. The team made up of humans and beasts successfully pushed him away, allowing several generations to live in that place to this day." Cù Sith answered.
Wow, so the current place of residence of the Sith Tribe was exactly the place that supposed battle had taken place.
"That's, huh, amazing." That was all Ray could say.
"You don't sound convincing at all." Cù couldn't help but retort.
"No it's just, are you saying that the beasts and the humans were together a few levels below the Last Hero?"
Ray decided to play the Last Hero card.
"Huh... No, the Last Hero was crazy strong, he did more than them with fewer allies, and he managed to kill Rex Draco and come back relatively safe. We can't compare the two feats."
***********
Author's Note: Another Chapter! Say how awkward would you be if you and your friends accidentally sarted to powerscale you?
Check Out my other Novel: This Novel's Plot has Completely Changed