Somewhere in the Felicité Duchy.

On top of the highest peak of a twin mountain, a father-son duo stood, and hovering above them was a bird-like creature.

The father was a sturdy blonde who, despite his strong and even bulky stature, was already in his sixties. His son, on the other hand, hadn’t even undergone his coronation yet, merely a child by noble standards.

The boy had in his hands something resembling a slingshot, and the father, kneeling at his son’s level, taught him how to fire with the small propeller.

"That’s it, boy," the father said, satisfied with the boy's posture.

Retrieving a marble-shaped charcoal-like object from his pocket, he gave it to the boy. The boy charged the object on his slingshot, then stanced himself to fire, knowing exactly what was expected of him.

"Excellent. Now, all you have to do is to draw it and fire it. You know where to fire it? "

"Yes, Papa."

Drawing the slingshot as hard as he could, the boy aimed high in the sky, then released his grasp from the sling.

The marble-like object flew high in the sky, before ultimately diving back toward the ground, but midway through its descent, it was snatched away by the bird-like creature that was hovering above them.

"I did it!" The boy cheered.

That creature was Appolon, the boy’s father's personal pet, if not an integral member of the Ducal Family; an Acarion Falcon, a highbeast whose kind is the emblem of the Duchy of Felicité itself.

That’s it, the father was Jovian Constance, the current head of the Ducal family of the Duchy of Felicité, and the boy standing at his side was the sole heir of the Duchy’s crown .

The Acarion Falcon is a weird and very unique high-beast. It didn't need intercourses to lay eggs; it just needed to be fed a specific material, which the duo had just done an instant before.

The father son duo were out today not only to spend time together but also to fulfill a long-standing tradition passed down through heirs of each generation of the ducal family.

Every Ducal heir, once they reach the age just before their coronation, is entrusted with a spawn of the Acarion Falcon of the Ducal family, just like his son today, Jovian, fifty years ago underwent the same ritual accompanied by his father.

"Yes, boy. You did it. " Jovian said, proud and slightly emotional.

Jovian married Miana, the Duchess of Felicité, when he was thirty years old. By noble standards, their marriage was a late bloomer. The Ducal couple's first child, however, arrived much later in their lives. They were already in their late forties when they expected their first heir, but it was a girl, rather than an heir. There was nothing wrong with that, but it was common knowledge in the Altaira Kingdom that only male-born could ascend to the ruling throne.

Though this rule might sound very stupid at first glance, one could easily understand the logic behind it.

Female-born are bound to marry someone outside the family, and eventually the time will come when that woman will undergo pregnancy, and it is a well-known fact that pregnancy, for nobles, does often degenerate. A sudden change of regent is never a good thing, whether it is for a kingdom or a duchy. As such, it is expected only for the male-born to inherit the ruling throne to ensure that the throne remains in the hands of the right person with the right bloodline.

This put the Ducal couple in an awkward position. Though the birth left the Duchess completely unscathed, one could even say it went quite smoothly. They were well aware that having a second child would be risky, but surprisingly, not long after the birth of the first Ducal Princess, the Duchess was blessed with yet another pregnancy, which was irronicaly revealed at birth to be yet another girl.

At that point, the situation was not only quite nonsensical but also comical.

Two children, born, but neither of them had the bearing to ascend to the throne. The Ducal family was left with only one option; to wait for the next generation to have a Ducal heir. At that point, all they could do was to cross their fingers that the next generation wouldn’t be like this one.

Once again, a couple of years later, it happened once again. The Duchess underwent another pregnancy, which, despite the risks incurred, she decided to undergo nonetheless, and this time, as the seven finally responded to their prayer, the child born from it, was a boy.

Ethan Constance.

He was born late, but for the Ducal couple, his birth was their pride and an expected miracle from the Seven.

Jovian wished he had more to bequeath to each of his children, but he didn’t have much. The duchy wasn’t particularly rich. In fact, compared to the situation of the other duchy of the Altair Kingdom, the duchy's situation was straight up horrendous.

Despite how enormous the territory of the duchy was, demographically and economically, they weren’t doing well. This is nothing new, it has already been several generations since the Duchy’s situation was degrading at an alarming pace.

Most of, if not all, Felicté's topography was made of enormous chains of mountains. The climate was cold and hostile, making activities like growing crops impossible and cattle-raising very difficult.

So far, the Duchy's economy has survived thanks to "crater gold," an underground material found in the deepest part of the duchy beneath the massive mountains that cover it.

For generations, the Duchy survived and relied solely on "crater gold" for a variety of necessities. Their economy was dependent on it, as was their construction, and it was also the primary material used to construct edifices in the duchy due to its heat-absorbing properties and natural sturdiness against the territory's wintery storms. One might say, without being far from the truth, that they became too reliant on it for several generations before Jovian's time, when the Felicité's soil ran dry of the precious material known as crater gold.

With crater gold becoming increasingly scarce, the economy plummeted, and it didn't take the Ducal family long to realize that, given their duchy's geological and topographical characteristics, their only hope and scapegoat for the impending bankruptcy was an expansion of their territory toward the western side of the Monster continent, in other words, a crusade.

The moment they realized what awaited the Duchy, the Ducal family started requesting that a crusade be fought on the western part of the Monster Continent, yet that never happened. For the past thousand years, the church's expansion has been limited to the northern half of the human continent, completely ignoring both the western and eastern parts of the continent.

The Ducal family made, throughout generations, efforts and sacrifices to call upon those who had the power to make a crusade in the western part of the human continent possible, those of the Royal court of the Altaira Kingdom, the top brass of the churches: the Fourteens, those of the Seven Great Noble Families, and, of course, the pontiff. Yet for centuries, not even once did they receive favorable answers to their requests.

To the Ducal family of Felicité, it was as if everyone was headed toward their extinction, even their fellow Altarians.

After so much sacrifice from his forefather and risks taken by his duchess to give him an heir, Jovian felt bad about entrusting his beloved son and daughter with a duchy that could be summed up as a barren and unfriendly land. His children were so young, yet the future he would leave them looked grim already.

He certainly didn’t want that future for his children and wished there was another option for him to secure a safe future for his children.

And incidentally, two years ago, another alternative was presented to him by someone with whom he was once close to.

The Douglas conglomerate, also commonly referred to by most as the "little puppy of the church," Just as their alias suggested, that family of commoners, made nobles by title and name only, were behaving mostly as a non affiliated branch of the Church, but despite that, they rose well above several prestigious noble houses of the human continent. The conglomerate was known for generations for its production of knights and legionnaires who would later serve under the nobility and the church, but it wasn’t all. They spread their influence to the domain of education, especially for commoners who would later serve under noble houses in every corner of the continent. Those asking for their services grew exponentially over the years, leading them to be what they are today.

The previous Duke of Felicité had a fairly genuine relationship, which at that point could be referred to as a friendship, with the previous head of the Douglas family.

This wasn’t particularly new for the Duke, for the Duke before the previous one, too, was getting along with the previous head of the Douglas family, most likely because their interests were somehow aligned when it came to an expansion on the western part of the monster continent.

The Douglas conglomerate, armed with both the workforce and the capital required for mining, was also on the hunt for Crater Gold.

With the Crater Gold reserve nearly depleted, and the Church having no plans to expand westward, the relationship between the conglomerate and the Felicité Duchy somehow came to a standstill, neither good nor bad.

Yet, two years ago, Jovian received an unexpected visit from a member of the Douglas family he had not seen in a long time. In a very unusual circumstance, both Jovian and that person had been forbidden by their respective fathers from ever meeting again, and for some unknown reason, that person somehow vanished without leaving a single trace for a very long time. As a result, it had been decades since they had last met, but he had a feeling that the reason that person was here had nothing to do with their shared history, but rather something to do with her family.

And to Jovian's biggest surprise, it wasn’t.

For some reason, she appears to be working for an organization called "Aristocracy."

At first, Jovian found the idea of someone as eminent and dilligent as her joining a group of pumpkins, silly, given how well-placed her family is in the church's eyes, despite its certain inconveniences.

But after hearing her plan, he realized how thoroughly thought out this entire organization was, especially given who the three most prominent names in this madness that was about to unfold across the human continent were.

That day, he was presented with what he was looking for; a scapegoat for his children and his people, and it was most likely why she, herself, came to Jovian so boldly with that plan.

It was a plan that didn't require him to dirty his hands; merely to close his eyes, and be ready for when the time would come.

He was hesitant at first, but based on how things were presented, he knew that if a war broke out between the Church and the Aristocracy, the outcome would be disastrous for both sides, with the Aristocracy causing damage to the church and, most likely, taking a thousand years to recover from.

The whole plan was not a battle of nobles on one side and nobles and commoners together on the other, it was something else entirely, something no-one expected to battle against.

Weighing the pros and cons, Jovian eventually accepted the offer, for he knew that if he were to refuse, his family’s safety was nowhere close to being guaranteed in the storm that was about to be unleashed upon the human continent. Furthermore, accepting would secure a future for his children and his people.

" Papa, does that mean that I, now, will have my own too?"

"Yes. Soon. Babies don't just come out so fast, so you do have to be patient, just like we did for-."

High in the sky, Jovian noticed the bird was acting weirdly, shrieking cacophonously and panickingly. It has been fifty years since he was with Appolon, and never did he see him behaving like he was doing right now. He didn’t know what was wrong, but he was familiar enough with the Acarion faulcon to know that it was trying to inform them that something was amiss.

"Boy, I don’t know what is wrong, but I think we should go home from now on," he said, urging the boy to come in his arms. Today was a special day for the two of them, so they chose to travel here merely by magic.

"Yes, Papa."

Just as the boy jumped into his father's arm, the earth shook, or to be exact, it roared.

A roar that felt like it was coming from the center of the earth itself. If Jovian had to say where it came from, he would say below them westward, toward where the monster continent is.

In the span of a few seconds, the ground shook at least ten times more violently than it began.

Not even given the time to process what had happened, it was soon followed by a loud explosion, and from afar; beyond a faraway chain of mountains, they saw an endless stream of fire emerging from the ground at a low angle.

"What the he-"

The pillar of fire was quite belatedly followed by a powerful ripple, and then by the deafening sound of the explosion.

"Hold on, boy."

Shielding his son, he protected him from the ripple and the deafening sound of the explosion.

In these lands, something like what happened would prompt a cataclysm like an avalanche, which were quite frequent around here, but with them being on top of one of the highest peaks in the duchy, they had nothing to fear of such an avalanche, but that didn’t mean that they would be immune to what happened next.

Under the influence of the quake, blast, and riple. The mountain caved in under its own weight, and the ground beneath their feet cracked open, causing the duo to fall into one of the bottomless ravines that had suddenly formed beneath them.

Their fall was soon followed by a massive dump of mountainous crumble falling apart.

The nearby mountain, like the one on which the Jovian stood, suffered a similar fate.

Several minutes passed, and there was still no sign of the duo.

The earthquake stopped, or to be accurate, it was replaced by a drum-like sound, but at least millions of times louder, so loud that at each drum, the ground experienced a mini-seism as it was rhythmical like a droplet leaking from the ceiling.

Suddenly, a pillar of light emerged from the buried ravine, shooting straight toward the sky. Soon after, Jovian and his son emerged from the same pillar of light.

"Are you alright, son?"

Using his light magic, Jovian created a flying podium, on which he rode.

"... Yes." The boy mumbled, still crying and numbed by what had suddenly happened.

"It’s okay, now." He reassured his son, for he couldn’t but understand how much his son felt.

Never in his life had he experienced something like that. His heart was still throbbing chaotically.

What caused all this chaos?

He had no idea, but as soon as his flying podium rose high in the sky, he found out what was responsible for all of this chaos.

Every mountainous relief within sight had been broken apart and was nothing more than a shambles of what it had once been. For someone like Jovian, this scenery instilled in him a feeling that he immediately identified as fear, but it was nothing compared to what he felt when he saw what came next.

A giant hole could be found where the stream of fire was fired. And visibly having crawled out of that same hole, a giant creature rivaling the size of a mountain in the surrounding area casually walked away to only God knew where.

When he fell upon that thing, Jovian even forgot to breathe.

"How did that creature enter the human continent? How is this possible!? Is the barrier somehow dea-" He went completely silent the moment he remembered the powerful blast from earlier.

He instantly realized that this creature must have blasted its way through the barrier.

The creature's skin was made of chocolate and orange scales from place to place. On its head were three pairs of protruding backward horns. It had no wings, but at the other extremity of its body, a giant tail was terminated with an enormous but slightly flattened, insanely long tail.

The Duke had never seen a creature this big, but he knew what kind of creature resembled the thing he was witnessing right now, a drake, a quadrupedal wingless lower species of dragonoid, but right now, at the thought of calling that thing a lower species, Jovian felt a shiver running down his spine.

Each of the monster's footsteps caused the ground to visibly shake, though the creature was moving away from them, Jovian was left completely speechless.

"Papa, what about Maman!" The boy called out, as panicked as Jovian was. Getting out of the panic-induced trance he was in.

His heart skipped a beat the moment his son asked that question.

His daughters were away since they had already finished their ascension and were now in the Aurora Academia, but many members of his family were still left in the capital, among whom was his wife.

Jovian realized that there was no way that this rumbling, those earthquakes, hadn’t reached the capital.

"Hold on once again, son. We’re heading back to the capital for your mother. "

Like a shooting star, they flashed toward the Ducal capital, Providence.

Holding his son tight against him, the Duke's expression was grim, for he knew the most-likely reality of things.

Primordial Earth Elemental Dragon Geon, The Rampant Mountain.

Closest to nature, he is zealous, devoted, and understands the purpose of his existence.