SON OF THE HERO KING

He had been a little worried at first, but thankfully, from what Gabriel had informed him, the current difference in time between the known part of the Astral realm and the Mortal realm was that of the ratio 12:1.

Meaning that 12 days here would only be equal to one day in the mortal realm.

This news had really pleased him because it meant that he had more time to convince a Phoenix to become his partner and follow him to the dragon territory. After all, this contract would last for a lifetime, which, when considering his natural life span, was really really long.

For Sol, the best partner would have been one of Gabriel's direct daughters, but those four were the cornerstone of this territory and it was nearly impossible for them to leave it for him.

His father had been lucky in that Tiamat had nine children rather than four.

Sometimes, Sol wondered if the goddesses had a fetish for the number four.

It was weird that basically all kingdoms always and divine beasts always had four people below them. In fact, even of the four Tiamat, only 4 out of her 8 remaining children were Kings.

He had asked this in passing to Gabriel, but she assured him that it was simply a coincidence.

For example, Asmodeus only had two children. The first one was named Jormungandr. As for the second one, Gabriel told him that no one knew who it was.

Sol had long since stopped being surprised at the mention of mythical names. In fact, if Asmodeus's children had a normal name, he would have been really surprised.

During this week, Sol hadn't been idle.

He had been walking around in the palace and even looked at the city below.

The first thing he understood was that even though this was the Phoenix territory, the population did not only consist of Phoenixes.

There were many spirits in this world, mainly of the fire or ice elements. How the ice or water spirits could survive in this heat was something he couldn't really understand, but it was what it was.

Spirits were beings that could only be born in zones with high concentrations of mana.

In essence, the weaker spirits had no physical form and their greatest characteristic was the fact that they were immune to all physical attacks—which was pretty useless considering all races could use mana.

Only high-ranked spirits took physical forms, generally that of an animal.

At an even higher rank, those spirits would take a human form, which was something that Sol chalked to the goddess having such an appearance.

This was the only reason Sol could imagine. After all, even though the human body was useful for construction, that meant absolutely nothing in a world where magic existed.

When you removed this skill, the human body was nothing more than the weakest and most inefficient body in the world.

From the muscles to the bones and ligaments, there were so many things to nitpick at that it was funny.

Aside from the spirits living and filling the city as if they were humans, there were, of course, Phoenixes, although extremely rare.

Gabriel only separated her energy four times, giving birth to those four Phoenixes he saw during the banquet.

Nephthys, the queen, only had one daughter. As for others, from what he gleaned they only had between 3 to 5 daughters each, each of those daughters having their own.

This kind of asexual reproduction that all half energy beings were able to do was something quite fascinating. But the limits to this were also clear.

Firstly, there was a fixed limit to the number of children that could be produced that way.

The stronger you were, the more you could produce, but even a top-tier demi-god like Gabriel only had four direct children.

It was possible for them to give birth normally, as they were also partially organic beings, but those situations were extremely rare and that was without adding the low rate chances of hybrids being born.

This was the main reason for the extremely low number of divine beasts.

Though, the dragons seemed to be on a different scale.

Not only was Tiamat strong enough to separate her energy nine times, but the fact that dragons could impregnate basically any living being also made it so that their base population was the second-highest among all divine beasts.

The highest one was of course Yggdrasil, for obvious reasons.

"So, how long are you going to spy on me?"

Currently, Sol was sitting with his feet crossed under him on the roof of the palace.

The six moons hung high in the sky and the weather was freezing cold. Thankfully, Sol was already more or less used to the temperature and only felt a slight chill.

He was training his own resistance by warming himself with his mana circulation.

The main advantage of this exercise was a slight increase in gathering and circulation speed of mana. It wasn't much, but it did the job.

At the same time, meditation helped him relax and empty his head from all distracting thoughts.

From behind him, a black-haired woman or rather, a black-haired young girl appeared, prompting him to tilt his head in confusion.

During those seven days, he had seen many exotic sights. White hair, literally fiery red skin or transparent water one— Seeing an undine had been a pretty weird experience.

He had also seen many phoenixes, but they all had in common those beautiful golden eyes, something that the girl lacked. Though, her scarlet pupils were a sight to behold.

This wasn’t all. Compared to the usually tanned skin he had been used to seeing, this girl had a pale white skin that made it seem like she suffered from severe anemia.

This palace belonged to the highest-ranked phoenixes. Anyone who was here was either a servant or a phoenix.

This girl was obviously not a servant, this meant that even though she looked quite different, the chances of her being a phoenix were rather high. Either that or she was some kind of guest—a possibility couldn’t be dismissed.

In any case, what she was didn’t matter. What really mattered was-

‘She is strong.’

-It had been a while since he felt such pressure.

It was neither the pressure of someone overwhelmingly stronger than him nor was it the pressure of someone drastically weaker than him.

It was the pressure that rivaled his own — that of a peer.

(AN: Isis is the child between a King-ranked Phoenix and a Demigod-ranked Demon. Sol is the child between a King-ranked Dragon and a human Demigod. The only reason Sol is more talented than her is that he is also Blessed. Which is a cheat all on it’s own. Then, there is the innocent Nuwa. Pretty sure everyone already guessed who her father is.)