The Black Dragon Empire

The twilight glow shone through the hollowed-out stained glass into the towering Royal Mage Tower.

The royal mages responsible for revising the historical records of the Eastern Continent once again made several heavy strokes in their thick volumes.

Namely: Unwilling to see the people suffer from the ravages of war, the Human Kingdoms extended a peace-offering olive branch to the special faction established by two black dragons in the God-Forsaken Land.

And after multi-faceted consultations, they jointly decided that Her Highness the Saintess of the Holy Kingdom, Vina Alice, would lead a delegation to the God-Forsaken Land as an envoy of peace to sign a non-aggression pact.

This journey was destined to be fraught with danger, but the members of the delegation, entrusted with this heavy responsibility, still set off without hesitation.

After enduring countless hardships, they finally succeeded in signing a non-aggression pact symbolizing peace and friendship in the God-Forsaken Land with the leader of the black dragon faction—a black dragoness named Irene.

...

When this news spread, a burst of hearty laughter erupted in many taverns across the Eastern Kingdoms.

For the commoners who had tasted the red wine, this news was undoubtedly worth celebrating.

This meant they would likely still have the opportunity to drink that cheap and delicious red wine in the future.

But immediately after, an even more shocking piece of news arrived.

The black dragon named Irene had actually announced the founding of an empire!

This caused an uproar among all the common people who heard the news.

To them, the mind-blowing nature of this news was no different from people on Earth hearing that an alien had taken office as the president of a certain country.

While it might not be completely unimaginable, it was certainly rare in history.

Looking back at the history of the entire plane, although there had been rare instances of dragons founding nations, most of them were good or neutral-aligned dragons, such as metallic or gem dragons.

For brutal dragons like chromatic dragons, going through the trouble of establishing and managing a nation was far worse than just sprawling out somewhere and occasionally raiding neighboring human kingdoms for gold coins and treasures.

That kind of life was relaxed, comfortable, and pleasant.

But when they recalled that these two black dragons had previously disguised their identities and sold wine for a long time like legitimate merchants, this behavior was already highly uncharacteristic of chromatic dragons.

Under this contrast, the citizens of the Eastern Kingdoms quickly accepted the fact that the black dragons had founded a nation.

As for the high-ranking officials of the Eastern Kingdoms, once they confirmed that the two black dragons had no other major movements besides announcing the founding of their nation, they also breathed a massive sigh of relief.

Upon receiving news that the Black Dragon Empire was about to hold its founding ceremony, driven by curiosity, they even sent their respective envoys to the God-Forsaken Land to witness this world-rare event: the founding ceremony of an empire established by dragons.

And on this very day, the founding ceremony of the Black Dragon Empire was officially held.

In Black City, which had naturally been designated as the capital of the Black Dragon Empire, a sea of people stretched as far as the eye could see, the streets packed with bobbing heads.

The density was no less than that of a tourist attraction during a holiday.

Most of them were beastkin and half-beastkin who had rushed over from the scattered tribes belonging to the Black Dragon Empire throughout the God-Forsaken Land.

A small portion consisted of people who had traveled thousands of miles from the Dwarven Empire and the human Eastern Kingdoms just to watch the spectacle.

These visiting humans and dwarves were not worried about their own safety.

After all, with a large number of envoys from various nations present, if anyone dared to cause trouble at the founding ceremony, it would be tantamount to directly instigating a conflict between the Human Kingdoms and the Black Dragon Empire—a responsibility that no ordinary person could bear.

However, what puzzled these outsiders was that many of the beastkin and half-beastkin attending the celebration were holding fresh flowers and wreaths.

If they were just ordinary flowers and wreaths, there would be nothing unusual.

But the key was that these flowers, without exception, were pure white.

Driven by curiosity, some went forward to ask, only to learn that the black dragon named Irene seemed to have a particular fondness for white flowers and white wreaths.

To this end, she had even erected a statue in the inner city specifically to receive white flowers and white wreaths as “memorial offerings.” If anyone wanted to pay their respects, they even had to pay a few copper or silver coins.

In response to this, the half-beastkin and beastkin unanimously believed that offering white flowers to the statue would grant them Her Grace’s mysterious protection.

This greatly amazed some of the less-experienced onlookers, who exclaimed that a black dragon capable of founding an empire indeed possessed a truly unique taste.

But before they could finish their sighs of admiration, those holding white flowers and white wreaths were bound hand and foot and carried away like prisoners by a kobold leading a group of figures clad in some sort of black alchemical armor.

Soon, some sharp-eyed people noticed that many white flowers and wreaths had appeared around the obelisk outside Black City.

They were clearly the ones brought by those beastkin and half-beastkin earlier.

As for those who had prepared to present the white flowers, they were buried in the sand around the obelisk like radishes, with only their heads sticking out.

If one got closer, they could faintly hear them shouting strange things like: “I'm innocent! I didn't know anything! I didn't want to rebel!”

This scene instantly extinguished the thoughts of certain individuals who had planned to smuggle large quantities of white flowers from the Human Kingdoms to the Black Dragon Empire.

And they swore in their hearts that they must never bring any white flowers into the Black Dragon Empire.

Otherwise, who knew if they would be buried in the dirt like radishes before even entering the city.

Aside from this minor interlude, the founding ceremony of the Black Dragon Empire went rather smoothly.

Specifically:

Under the watchful eyes of the crowd, the two black dragons descended from the sky in their draconic forms. After unleashing their Dragon Fear to fiercely display their claws and fangs, they transformed into humanoid forms and ascended the walls of the inner city.

Subsequently, Irene, dressed in a solemn black gown, announced the establishment of the Black Dragon Empire.

Next, she delivered a highly professional founding declaration.

Its level of professionalism was no less than a sermon delivered by the church during missionary work.

This made those who had come to watch out of curiosity cry out in disbelief.

To think that such an oddity would appear among chromatic dragons.

What surprised them even more was that after delivering her founding declaration, the evil dragon in their eyes actually personally received the envoys from various nations.

And she solemnly stated that she would implement the noble concept of peaceful development, aiming to promote the overall economic development of the Eastern Continent.

Starting today, letting bygones be bygones, they would not only continue to export large quantities of red wine to the nations of the Eastern Continent, but would also introduce higher-quality beverage products.

She hoped to establish a friendlier business model and build a stable trade route.

While these words made the envoys feel as if they had seen the undead in broad daylight, they naturally won a massive round of applause.

At the same time, the envoys secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

According to the information they had received,

the journey of Vina Alice's delegation had not been smooth.

Vina, who was the core of the group, had even refused to see anyone after returning to the Holy Kingdom.

However, the accompanying guards and others were unwilling to disclose what had actually happened.

This led the leadership of the Eastern Kingdoms to unanimously believe that the two black dragons of the God-Forsaken Land must be extremely difficult to get along with, and there would likely be no shortage of trouble in the future.

But looking at it now, this style, which was even more metallic dragon than metallic dragons themselves, made them feel ashamed of their baseless assumptions and slander.

To the extent that some of the church figures among them, after contemplating for a long time, felt too embarrassed to bring up the demand to destroy the power armor and the technological relics left behind by the ancient beastkin.

Though it was mostly out of cowardice—the envoys sent this time were not naive girls like Vina. On the contrary, these guys were shrewd old foxes who knew very well whether their own lives or the church's doctrines were more important.

The evil dragon had already taken the initiative to show goodwill. To push their luck at this moment would be courting death, wouldn't it?

Aside from the church members, most of the envoys believed deep down that these two black dragons probably had the blood of silver dragons—the kindest among dragons—flowing through their veins.

Oh, wait, probably only one of them had silver dragon blood. As for the black dragon named Daviel, he probably possessed pure white dragon blood.

This could be seen from his bizarre outfit, which was weird enough to cause a loss of sanity.

As for why they didn't think he carried the blood of those chaotic, comical fools from the Abyss?

That was because the accompanying clergy had secretly conducted a detection spell on the little black dragon.

As it turned out, they failed to detect even a single trace of Abyssal aura.

While this made them breathe a sigh of relief, they couldn't help but marvel in their hearts at how incredibly open-minded the Mother of Shadows was in her choice of mates!