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“Thirty-five million six hundred seventy thousand… May I ask how old you are now, mother?”

Lilith’s cheek twitched as she cautiously asked, “You’re not… over a hundred million years old, are you?”

“Oh my, how direct. My good daughter, even if I am your mother, I am still a woman. And most women do not like telling their age. How inconsiderate of you to ask me that, it makes Mommy really want to discipline you~”

The Dragon Queen smiled as she took out the extremely embarrassing dress from earlier again.

“I think as long as you wear this, you will listen to Mommy.”
“I am sorry for my poor behavior!”
“Oh well, forget it. I can’t possibly bring myself to force my lovely daughter into wearing this.”

Seeing that the Dragon Queen did not try to do anything else, Lilith breathed a sigh of relief. Her gaze lingered on the gentle smile on her mother’s face for a moment before asking, “From what you shared just now, were the dragons quite powerful in the Great World back then?”

“That’s an understatement, we were extremely powerful.”

The Dragon Queen gazed into the distance as nostalgia filled her voice.

“At that time, the dragon race could be considered one of the five strongest races among tens of thousands of races living in the Great World. On top of that, our population was very small. I guess now you can imagine just how absurdly powerful an average dragon was at that time. Even the natural gods that emerged were inferior to the dragons during their most glorious era.”

“But that’s… no longer the case right?”

The Dragon Queen looked at Lilith with slight surprise then laughed.

“It seems like my lovely daughter has experienced more than I imagined during this period of time. Aww, should Mommy reward you with some love since you’ve been working so hard?”

The Dragon Queen smiled wickedly, her playful tongue flicked across her vermilion lips.

“Uhh… I’ll pass.”

The Dragon Queen pouted at Lilith like she was a child. “Aww, my lovely daughter is really all grown up now. You were super clingy to Mommy when you were still a baby back then!”

Well, I had no choice back then! But then again, those were really good times.

“More than that, I want to know what happened afterward. Why did the glorious dragons choose to live in this world where only demigods could exist? Why did you tell me that dragons only existed for nine million years? And most importantly, who exactly is that person who calls herself the Dragon Eater inside my body?”

“Oh my, what an impatient girl you are. How can Mommy answer you when you keep bombarding me with so many questions.”

The Dragon Queen gently stroked Lilith’s forehead with her slender hand. Her gaze slowly drifted off into the distance, like she was looking very, very far into the past.

“Then… let us start from the very beginning.”

“That was the era when the dragon race was at the height of their power. Through the efforts of countless dragon ancestors, the dragon race managed to rank among the top three most powerful races in the Great World, despite having the smallest population. During that time, the dragons were able to transform the previously barren Third Major World into the most prosperous world in the Great World, with abundant resources and magical elements. They were also the only race who could solely dominate an entire major world.”

“Oh yes, do you have any idea how big a major world is?”

Lilith shook her head.

“Well then… let Mommy show you.”

With a wave of her hand, the rising sun in the east instantly disappeared and the entire sky turned dark again.

A gentle breeze followed, as if cleansing this world of its impurities with the fragrance of blooming flowers it carried.

The Dragon Queen gently tapped Lilith’s head and whispered, “Look up at the sky.”

“The sky…?”

Lilith, who was lying on her side, rolled over to face the sky.

The sky, now a stunning sight filled with countless twinkling stars, shimmered like a sea of diamonds that engulfed her vision.

“So beautiful…”

This was the first time Lilith had seen such a brilliant river of stars.

“Look. From this point to that point, that’s about the size of a major world.”

“Wait, doesn’t that include all the stars?”

The Dragon Queen nodded with a smile. “Yes, all the stars within your sight add up to almost the size of a major world.”

Lilith sucked in a breath of cold air. She thought that she had been overestimating the dragon race, but she only now realized that her previous judgment was made solely based on their scales and claws. The real dragon race was so much more powerful than she had imagined.

“Back in the days, there were so many vacant stars and worlds. Anyone who performed well had the chance to get their own star, and being rewarded anywhere from eight to ten stars at once for great merit was not uncommon.”

Lilith could feel the corner of her eye twitching. Why did that sound like awarding stars to children who performed well in kindergarten?

“But now…”

The Dragon Queen lifted her gaze and looked up at the sky. The expression on her face turned sad.

“The dragons only have this world that doesn’t even belong to them.”

Lilith felt a pang in her heart.

Before she could respond, the Dragon Queen continued her story.

“Nine million years ago… marked the beginning and the end of everything. At the time, the dragon race was at their peak. Some even believed that they would become the most powerful race in the Great World. The dragons were on the brink of invincibility and their power became the totem of faith that was worshiped by countless weaker races… they arrived.”

The Dragon Queen looked down at Lilith. Her molten golden dragon pupils were as still as the dead of the night.

Despite knowing that the Dragon Queen was not looking at her, Lilith still felt as if she were trapped in an ice block. The coldness of the Dragon Queen’s gaze made her shiver uncontrollably.

“The Dragon Eaters… arrived.”

“The Dragon Eaters…”

“Yes. No one knew where they came from or what their intentions were.They were like a wildfire in the fall, consuming everything in their path and reducing everything to ashes. And the first place they burned down was the Third Major World.”

“That means…” Lilith’s eyes widened.

The Dragon Queen nodded. “Yes, the dragons were the first to encounter them. At first, we reached out to them with good intentions. However, those guys refused to communicate with us at all. They waged that great war against us, indiscriminately killing our fellow clansmen. In order to protect our home, we had to rise up against them and fight back, but…”

The Dragon Queen paused for a moment, then continued with a heavy tone, “We were eventually… defeated.”

Although Lilith already knew the outcome of that great war, she still felt a stab in her heart when she heard it from the Dragon Queen’s own mouth.

“Defeated…”

“Yes, it was a devastating defeat.”

“At first, those guys were not referred to as the Dragon Eaters. They were generally referred to as the Void Visitors or Extraterritorial Visitors. But after that great war…”

The Dragon Queen, who always smiled kindly to Lilith but acted like an ice queen around the others, balled her hands into fists as a rare expression of sadness appeared on her face for the first time.

“The black flame that consumes everything, the black crystal that resists everything, and the black liquid that can change everything. They showed us what… invincibility truly means.”

“Everywhere they went, they devoured all life and energy. Nothing was left of the corpses of our clansmen who fought bravely against them. It just almost seemed like they had been…”

“Eaten by them.”