Epic of Vampire Dragon: Reborn as a Vampire Dragon with a System
Chapter 164: The Ore Titans And The Ore DemonsOre Titans, gargantuan humanoid creatures that belong to the Giant, Demon, and Ogre Clades. They're gigantic beings covered in ores of all types across their bodies, they're capable of exponential growth every 50 years of their development, even reaching as far as 100 meters, they're the true rulers of this area of the continent of Ginnun.
They are part of the species of beings that were original from this planet, born from the depths of this cold planet, they feed themselves in the large depositories of magical ores within the gigantic mountain peaks that they call their home.
They are an ancient and wise race, often pacific, which mostly sleeps for years only to wake up to eat, socialize a bit between each other, and go to sleep once more.
While sleeping, these enormous titans are no different than mountains themselves, and their own bodies keep growing and expanding, more so often, the ores that grow in their bodies fuse with the mountains where they sleep, making them camouflage with them even better.
There had been several cases of ancient civilizations that had once tried to mine these mountains filled with rich magic ores, or even outside invaders such as space pirates. Usually, everything would be fine as long as they didn't woke them up, but due to their compositions and how they literally fused with mountains while sleeping, more so often these miners woke up these titans by mistakenly mining parts of their skin, causing them slight pain, enough to wake them in rage.
Due to their gargantuan sizes and height, they would pulverize entire settlements, catch spaceships, and crash them in the ground, and were even proficient in magic, easily targeting those that thought that by flying a bit above them, they would be safe.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtThey were the true rules of this place, calm, yet easily provoked, they can be either a force of nature, or just part of the environment itself.
Ore Demons, another endemic race of demons that also originated in this area of the continent and made up their own Kingdom through effort and hard work pray to these Titans as their guardian Gods and give them offerings of large piles of ores they mine in other areas of the continent every 10 years.
The titans did not force them to do this but took a liking on this race due to their generosity, and after several years, they ended becoming their true guardians, and often fend off any suspicious group of people or beings that might endanger the life of the peaceful Onyx Kingdom.
Many of such Titans had developed an even greater bond with the Ore Demons due to their prayers, which hold within them Faith and Mana.
Over hundreds of years of receiving prayers, they gained more and more power, and ended surpassing X-Rank and ended becoming Pseudo Demi Deities, all thanks to the faith and prayers of these Ore Demons over several generations. This only deepened their mutualistic relationships and made of the Ore Titans a staple of guardian deities to the Ore Demons.
Within this desolate place, it has been like this for many thousands of years.
Nonetheless, things are destined to change sooner or later, and they did in a fateful day when a dark force awakened within the Kingdom of Onyx.
230 years ago, the miners of the Demon Kingdom of Onyx led by the Ore Demon King, Rock, ended finding a strange, fossilized item within the depths of a large mining area they often extracted resources from.
Ore Demons, similar to Ore Titans, feed on the earth's riches, devouring magic ores to sustain themselves. Due to this, mining the ground was necessary, and they did it for a living, using the ores to make both buildings, items, technology, weapons, and also using them as their food.
They had already found many times large fossils, ancient beasts of the past that no longer exist whose remains were fossilized into ores and earth, each fossil was treated as a national treasure due to their beauty, and often passed as royal treasures to the Demon King Family.
When they found this strange and dark fossil whose shape they could not discern, they became euphoric, and had tried to touch it…
And that's when things changed.
This fossil was alive, and it held a will of its own, as it was touched, its consciousness took over the Demon King, and he was controlled by the power of this fossil…
Although it has been long since then, the Ore Demon King, Rock, changed a lot. He became colder, more calculative, and rather evil by itself.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmHe began to change how their society worked and seek to discriminate his own population and form a separation. After many years, and having died out of old age, the Kingdom had changed, it became darker, corruption ran asunder as exploitation became a staple.
The worker class was exploited into mining further down below, and others were encouraged into the hunt of deadly beasts that roamed the place.
It was all for the benefit of this fossil's will, which manipulated all the descendants of the King into fulfilling such vile acts for strange and unknown reasons…
What did it seek?
One day, the Ore Titans felt this presence suddenly emerge, and then continuously grow bigger and stronger.
They noticed that something was causing anguish, pain, and negative feelings to the Ore Demons, and such negative emotions converted itself into Negative Energy, amassing into gigantic quantities over the Kingdom, resembling a large cloud of darkness which normal people could not see.
This cloud of darkness continued to be slowly siphoned into the Kingdom's castle, right towards the fossil, which feed upon it, growing stronger over many years…
The Ore Titans, who disliked interfering with mortals, decided to only watch and protect them from external dangers, but the internal dangers needed to be dealt with by them.
It was a foolish mistake; they should had interfered when they could.
The fossil continued to absorb this energy over one hundred years, as cracks had begun to emerge over it in the last 12 years.
This year, at long last, it appeared to be soon to crack open, revealing whatever dormant evil lied within…