[Dragon peaks]

A few hours before Irsyr abruptly appeared in the throne room his day hadn’t yet been unusual at all. Standing on a small mountain peak at the edge of the dragon peaks, he both overlooked the varied terrain below and watched Edylia on the peak opposite of him.

Both were currently in their humanoid forms, with mana regularly pulsing from their bodies and rushing toward different sections of the land below. There, hundreds of constructs acted under their command, marching across the grasslands and through the forests to meet the other constructs in battle.

Once one side came out victorious in these confrontations the remaining troops would immediately gather back into their groups before marching on. Pushing toward the other dragon's mountain, it would only be a matter of time until all of them became entangled in the next fight.

Behind these front lines were constant streams of new troops, with golems forming at the foot of both mountains and immediately heading for the front line. The range of their variety covered not just every element but also most sub-elements and advanced applications, with examples of this including glass golems and blood golems.

Marching together with them were mindless undead that formed from pure death magic and without the need for a dead body, mechanical constructs, and masses of different elements that were mindless imitations of elementals. Just like the golems, they were purposefully created without a soul and a mind of their own, making them empty puppets that acted only based on their creator's control.

Occasionally more sophisticated creations would appear, stepping out of portals the two conjured instead of being created on the spot. Each one of these was created by Irsyr or Edylia ahead of time, making them considerably more powerful than the lesser troops and allowing them to display a strength close to that of the average new mythic rank even though the two held back in their creation.

Most of these premade constructs were near-perfect imitations of an existing species in both form and ability. Whether it be skin, flesh, or even mana flow, all of these were replicated with such precision that they would be truly impossible to differentiate if it weren't for the fact that these creations lacked both a soul and the ability to think just like the lesser constructs.

Among them were two such constructs that stood out from the rest, with both taking the form of a dragon, more precisely a shrunk-down form of Irsyr and Edylia respectively. Standing still before the two mountains even as the other prepared constructs, most of whom were also modeled after existing species, started joining the fray where they tore through lesser soldiers until they met another of their kind.

For hours this Wargame raged on, with the front line constantly shifting back and forth but never coming close to either mountain. Above it flight capable creations passed by, either scouting in enemy territory or hunting down the enemy scouts that made it into their sides territory.

In this chaos, Irsyr had managed to amass a sizable army on his left flank and had started a push towards his wife's base. At its helm marched a towering humanoid creation of his whose form was based on giants.

Edylia for her part wasn't idle as this happened, immediately amassing a force of her own to counter Irsyr's advance.

As soon as she gave the location and the order to advance, the constructs programming kicked in and the small army headed out. Similarly, the massive snake construct that was supposed to lead them immediately switched directions, its brain acting like a biological computer and moving the body with mechanical efficiency toward its target.

Rapidly moving across the terrain, the two groups didn't take long to come into each other's range. The moment they did, the troops capable of ranged attacks opened fire, peppering the other side with projectiles that ranged from normal arrows to massive boulders that were flung by the earth elementals.

Under this hail of attacks, the melee-focused troops advanced onto each other, never breaking formation and constantly filling any gaps created by the enemy fire. Even further ahead were the two premade constructs, with both rushing through the line of lesser troops to meet each other in a titanic clash.

Colliding a moment later, the giant immediately fell into a disadvantageous position as Edylia's construct managed to lunge at him with its mouth open. Barely dodging the giant's hands as they tried to grab it from both sides, the snake was about to sink its fangs into his neck.

But just before it swung its head down, Edylia ordered her construct to stop. As a result, not just the snake but all of her troops immediately ceased all movement, even going as far as to stop beating their wings and simply dropping out of the sky.

Despite this, Irsyr's troops didn't seize this opportunity. Rather, they acted just the same as he sent out the order to stop practically simultaneously. As a result, the entire valley fell silent from one moment to the other, with only the occasional sounds of constructs toppling over being audible.

The two Locis dragons were meanwhile looking up with complicated expressions. To a normal onlooker, it would seem as if they were simply watching the clouds overhead, but any sufficiently powerful individuals would at least find the pulsing waves of energy that broke into the universe from the astral realm.

Edylia was the faster of the two to recover from her surprise, stepping forward after just a moment and immediately appearing next to Irsyr.

“I wish I could ask if this is what I think it is and hope that I'm wrong, but I'm far too confident in my own abilities for that.” She said as soon as she arrived next to him.

“Yeah, it's what you think it is. But why does it have to be now, we didn't have a gathering of the dragon gods in over a hundred millennia.”

“While the timing seems unlucky, maybe Krezegor or Azeal simply managed to anger enough gods so that Vunreon had to act. Wouldn't be the first time for either of them.” Edylia suggested optimistically.

Though Irsyr nodded in agreement, both he and Edylia weren't at all convinced of this. Since Darganth's death the dragon gods only gathered twice, once immediately after it happened and the second time nearly a hundred fifty millenia ago as Irsyr had said.

In neither of those gatherings did Vunreon's Universe Will even voice a complaint about their action. That was despite there being more than enough reason to do so as none of the dragon gods could claim that their actions following Darganth's death were resalable, at times also to the detriment of innocent groups.

So even though the possibility of something like that being the reason for this call was there, it was more hopeful thinking by Irsyr and Edylia than anything else.

Dwelling on the thought for a moment, Irsyr soon turned to his wife to plan with her. But before he even opened his mouth to speak, she already nodded in agreement with him.

“I'll take care of Yldra's and Alicia's training and anything else that comes up while you're away.” She said.

“Thank you.” Irsyr said with a warm smile.

Leaning in to press a short farewell kiss on his wife's lips, he didn't wait after pulling back before abruptly disappearing from where he stood.

Arriving outside the universe of Ikrus a moment later, having broken through its restrictions on leaving it with utter ease, he immediately returned to his true form. Though unlike even in his own lair, this time he didn't shrink its size in the slightest, resulting in him dwarfing even the universe of Ikrus that was behind him.

Counterintuitively, this didn't mean that his true size couldn't fit into the universe. In fact, he could assume his full true form in nearly every universe while dwarfing a good number of them when next to them.

This was because a universe's size in the astral realm had no correlation to the extent of its expansion. Instead, it was a reflection of its strength and weight of existence. So while some universes stretched near endlessly, others consisted of only a single solar system or even just a single massive sun and a proportionally massive planet.

The way this functioned was that the foundation of space inside and outside of a universe was completely separate, with the deepest layer of the former acting as a kind of shell that existed on the topmost layer of the latter and contained the rest of the universe in it no matter how large it grows.

As a result, being in the astral realm palaces one far closer to the purest form of elemental energies as they passed through fewer layers of space. Furthermore, these layers were also fundamentally different in their purpose, with the foundation outside a universe being able to endure even the purest form of elemental energy but in turn, being unable to process it into a state in which it can give form to a material realm.

That step is instead mostly performed by the different universe's spacial foundations, though there are cases where both steps are performed by two seamlessly connected foundations. But in both cases, the degraded energies are then processed further before reaching the physical universe.

There, they are bound by the same protective film of mana that keeps the material realm ever so slightly separated from the foundation of space and the river of time. Though it isn't entirely the same, this layer also keeps the other elemental energies separated from the physical realm while allowing the two to still influence each other.

In the case of the fourteen other elemental energies, this is done by creating an overlapping parallel plane of existence where each bit of the physical plane has a counterpart. In it, every elemental energy is represented equally, though the layer of mana allows only the

influence of the mix of elements corresponding to whatever material there is to reach the physical plane.

So while mana allows a being to cast magic, outside it requires transcendent mana which is reserved for only ascendent beings. This is because, in contrast to normal mana, this type of energy can also influence elemental energy in the state it exists in before flowing into a universe, allowing a being to cast magic and use aura mostly the same.

Naturally, this restriction on normal mana didn't bother Irsyr in the slightest, allowing him to cast spells as freely as he would inside a universe. In fact, the differences in the fabric of space even helped the space element's ability to teleport over large ranges. Coupled with his overwhelming general power and affinity with the space element, no location within the whole multiverse of Vunreon was ever far from him.

And with the location of his destination known to him through the message Vunreon's Will had broadcast, he immediately vanished again as he teleported toward his destination. Appearing only twice in between despite traveling through a sizable portion of the Vunreon's territory, taking about a minute each time before teleporting again, he quickly reached the comparatively small universe that was his destination.

Beating his wings and flying toward it despite the lack of air around him, he reached out with his claw and touched its shell. The moment he came into direct contact with it, it looked as if his body was sucked into a single point as he let the universe pull him in.

Gliding through the tunnel he found himself in, Irsyr looked at the familiar streams of elemental energy that rushed around it with a bored expression and let himself drift through the universe's entrance. And though he wanted to just teleport past or push through the normal procedure of entering a universe, he knew that Vunreon was insistent that they be kept at least in this place so he endured.

After multiple boring minutes, he finally felt the most annoying part of this procedure, though just as with the rest he didn't bother resisting it. Quite the opposite even as he lowered his natural resistance to get it over with quicker, quickly allowing this universe to enforce its rules on him.

Initially ignoring it as restriction after restriction fell on him, he frowned at the familiar but hated feeling as his body was forced to shrink. Within a moment his massive body that could devour entire starts compressed into that of a barely adult Locis dragon of just over two hundred meters long.

The moment this finished the seemingly endless tunnel before him was abruptly replaced by an endless expanse of lush grasslands into which Irsyr was thrown. However, as soon as he arrived, this previously undisturbed piece of land started to shift.

Starting just a few meters in front of him, white floor tiles rose from the ground. Forming a path multiple dozen meters wide that started by him, they first continued forming in a straight line before splitting to the sides and forming a circle.

As they did, towering pillars rose into the air around them and the ground inside the circle started caving in. In it, massive steps made from the same white stone that the floor tiles were made from formed, forming a rough cone shape that ended in a flat circle roughly two dozen meters in diameter at its center.

Within barely a couple of seconds, the construction of this massive structure finished, allowing Irsyr to calmly step into the now-finished gathering hall.

Doing so without hurry, he slowly dissolved his true form into a shower of silvery motes of light and transformed into his humanoid form as he descended down the steps. Once at the bottom, he turned to the presence he had felt appear a few seconds ago.

“It's been a while.” Irsyr greeted.

“Certainly.” The other figure replied with a chuckle.

Following those words, the man jumped toward the center of the circle where Irsyr stood, unfurling two black wings from his upper back as soon as he left the ground. Slowly gliding down, he landed just a few centimeters before Irsyr with a leisurely smile.

“Though that doesn't mean it's been long enough.” He said to Irsyr, looking him in the eyes as he studied the latter’s reaction.

Meeting his gaze with the same stoic intensity, Irsyr let the tension hang in the air for a few seconds before nodding with a sigh.

“It has been. You're my brother, I don't want this conflict to continue even if it means that I have to admit to being wrong.” Irsyr said.

“You don't have to, we can agree that we're both to blame.” The other man answered with a shake of his head.

At those words a smile formed on Irsyr's lips.

“It's good to see you again Azeal.” He said, opening his arms in reconciliation.

“It's also good to see you again Irsyr.” Azeal said, accepting the offer and closing his arms around Irsyr in a brotherly hug.