Titan King: Ascension of the Giant

Unconscious, Dirtclaw's body gave in to raw instinct. His hellhound true form had become a vortex, furiously drawing in the life energy being channeled by the Dragon Crucible. In the process, he absorbed an immense number of draconic runes. They etched themselves into his hide, covering his demonic form in a lattice of shimmering gold, creating a bizarre fusion of hellish power and barely contained majesty.

The baptism of the Dragon Crucible was meant to empower, not endanger. But Dirtclaw was an exception. His unique hellhound bloodline, now saturated with draconic power, had pushed him to a dangerous precipice. His consciousness was beginning to fracture. Lost in the surge of new strength, he no longer knew if he was a hound or a dragon.

Fire… the fire of Hell… it burns with my pain… it is despair… it is…

ROAR… I am Dragon… I am a searing light in the darkness… I soar across the heavens… and look down upon all creation…

I am… the emissary of hell… the guardian of fear… the source of all darkness… I will spare you… but only if you beg me…

The glory of the dragon… all living things… will burn in my flames… all will tremble… at the sound of my roar…

Awooo…

Inside the baptismal chamber, Dirtclaw's body began to twist. His form elongated, his four paws cracking and reshaping into draconic talons. Even his skull began to shift, his hound-like muzzle stretching into the nascent shape of a dragon's maw. All the while, the golden runes on his skin flared with brilliant light, warring with the hellfire that erupted from between the cracks.

On the western sea, at Leonidas Palace.

Orion, lounging on a sun chair, suddenly opened his eyes, a flicker of surprise in their depths. The Dragon Crucible was his creation, a special structure he had personally reinforced with a Lord's Stone. He could perceive every fluctuation within it as if it were happening right before his eyes.

"Something wrong?"

Orion's sudden movement instantly alerted Kraken and Makareth, who were relaxing nearby. Kraken's presence made sense; he was coordinating the war against the dragons. Makareth was there out of sheer boredom, waiting for the Crucible's baptism to finish so he could take his newly empowered subordinates back to the Abyss and start a few wars of his own.

"A minor glitch in the Dragon Crucible," Orion said, his composure returning as quickly as it had been lost. He raised his goblet, clinking it against theirs. "Nothing serious."

"How are the men I sent?" Kraken asked, taking a sip of wine through his captain's avatar.

"Doing well. One of your offspring is on the verge of becoming a lord."

"Really?"

"Mm," Orion confirmed. Compared to his own few children, Kraken's progeny were innumerable. A giant's whelp might take fifteen years to reach adulthood; a member of Kraken's massive octopus race took only three. His lineage was vast, and his true power in the deep seas was far greater than he let on.

"With so many offspring," Orion asked, voicing a question that had long been on his mind, "why hasn't the overall quality of your bloodline improved?"

Kraken sighed. "We massive octopus race aren't as prolific as you might think."

Seeing that Kraken was about to divulge some secrets of the Sea Race, Orion and Makareth fell silent, leaning in with undivided attention.

"Here's a bit of trivia for you," Kraken began. "Ninety-nine percent of all octopus species? The females only breed once in their entire lives."

A look of genuine surprise crossed Orion's face. That was a fact he truly hadn't known.

"Don't be fooled by my numbers," Kraken continued. "Most of my children were sired before I reached the Legendary level, with lesser beings. Their bloodlines are… impure. The batch I sent you this time is actually the best of the lot, and that's only because their own blood resonated with mine when I became an arch lord."

A strange, complex expression settled on Kraken's face. His consciousness was that of a human from a past life, but his body was a massive octopus. Every time he looked at the soft-bodied, tentacled creatures who shared his blood, a wave of contradictory emotions washed over him. It had taken him a very long time to get used to it.

"I have a theory," Kraken said after taking another sip of wine. "The higher your level of power, the higher your life essence becomes. And the harder it becomes to produce offspring."

"How so?" Makareth asked.

This was a subject Orion understood all too well. Of his few children, only Kronos had been conceived naturally. Caelus, Pallas, and Kaelen were all the result of special circumstances, created using a unique secret technique or powerful artifacts.

"While the females of my race only breed once, a single clutch can contain hundreds, even thousands of eggs," Kraken explained, his tone growing more philosophical. "That was the norm, at least before I became a lord. But after my ascension, the females I coupled with rarely conceived. And when they did, they never laid more than three eggs, and the incubation time was significantly longer. It was as if I had… broken the natural limits of my own species."

He looked at Orion, searching his face for a flicker of recognition. Orion's brow furrowed slightly. He said nothing, but Kraken knew he understood.

"After I became an arch lord," Kraken said quietly, "I stopped siring children altogether."

"So, my theory is this: for beings at the Legendary level and above, while we may look the same as our kin, our very life essence has changed. We have become so different on a fundamental level that it's actually harder for us to procreate with beings of a lower tier." It was a conclusion born from his own long, strange experience. And it felt undeniably true.

"I'll admit," Orion said, breaking his silence, "since my own ascension, I have only fathered one child through normal means."

Kraken nodded. Orion had walked the same path.

"So," Makareth interjected, cutting straight to the logical conclusion, "the more powerful the being, the more powerful a partner they must seek? To ensure the offspring's talent and bloodline are superior? So they inherit more of their parents' innate gifts?"

"Yes," Kraken said, nodding in firm agreement with Makareth's deduction. "That is my other theory."

But as Orion heard Makareth's words, his mind wasn't on theory. A fragment of a memory surfaced, and with it, the face of a single person.