Primordial Soul's Rebirth

In Eldoria, there used to be three mythical beasts guarding all of the worldly races from the terror of the demons—on land, that is.

But that was a long time ago.

After a while, the guardian beasts, the ones who were the strongest, started to get bored.

Your journey continues at empire

They started craving entertainment—no matter what sort of entertainment it was.

The white tiger, the wildest among the four beasts, took human form and started training some demi-humans with his own combat skills.

He wanted them to get stronger fast and give him a satisfying fight.

His life became a bit entertaining as he saw the ones he thought grow stronger.

Then there was the calmest of all four beasts, the black tortoise; she chose to help her followers form a systematic way of ruling, making them all enter a new era of politics.

She did regret her choice later as one of her dearest, the humans, started to turn greedy, resulting in them getting kicked out of the empire, after which she went back to her life as a guardian beast.

She could tell that it was for the better and that her presence among her followers would only cause more problems to arise.

The black tortoise tried to advise others the same, but unlike her, no one else really saw anything bad in what they were doing.

But there was one among the beasts, the strongest of them all, the golden dragon. He started to crave the feeling of conquest—the feeling of having everyone under him.

His followers, the dragonkin, or other such beasts revered him, flaming his greed for more, and it was then that one of the beasts, the most gracious one of them, the phoenix, suddenly fell in love with a fire spirit.

That was the start of the phoenix empire.

She gave children; they grew, and soon, they became the emperor and empress of the domain she ruled over.

She never cared about anything other than giving her family members all the love she could, but that was what she thought.

In the eyes of a certain dragon, one that wanted to rule over the whole world and grow stronger than his father was, didn't see her actions as anything good.

'She's trying to raise an army.'

The product of her love looked like soldiers to the dragon.

Soldiers that she was raising to become the ruler of the world.

One phoenix was already strong enough that even he, the golden dragon, would take some effort to defeat, so wouldn't an army of such beings be enough to reign supreme over all?

So, the golden dragon started to create an army as well.

But unlike the phoenix, whose children were marks of her love and light of her eyes, for the dragon, who had forced himself on the woman he stole from his followers, they were nothing but weapons to be raised.

He saw the power of the ones being born by his blood, and he knew that if he went on like this, then maybe his dream of ruling the world wasn't far off.

'I want the strongest women all over the world.'

He relayed his command to his followers, and soon the dragonkin started doing as their guardian beast had asked of them.

They brought the best of the best, willingly or unwillingly, and they watched those same women getting thrown out after they were filled with their guardian's seeds.

Then the dragon empire was formed, an empire where the ones with the purest of bloodlines ruled over the ones with diluted or impure.

The dragon lord went into indefinite seclusion, always trying to get his power up, until one day, when one of his sons forcefully mated with a phoenix woman, who turned out to be the youngest daughter of the phoenix guardian beast.

That day, the mythical phoenix rushed into the dragon empire, raging and thirsting for revenge, only to face the golden dragon, who believed that his son had done nothing wrong.

It was not because he wanted to protect his son, not at all; he was just excited to see the outcome of the merge of the two strongest races on this planet.

The phoenix, however, lost her sanity the moment she saw the golden dragon's response, and a battle broke out.

The white tiger, the wildest of the four beasts, although craving battles, didn't want to see one of its friends die at the hands of the other, so he rushed to stop the fight, and so did the black tortoise.

"Krieee…."

But they were a bit too late, as the moment they reached the place where the battle took place, they saw the once gracious phoenix, known for her fiery feathers and ruler of the immortal fire, taking her last breaths, scorched black.

If they wanted to, they could've just killed the golden dragon then and there, as they could see the dragon's claws had pierced the phoenix from behind, meaning that it was not a fair death.

But they couldn't do it.

They lost one of their friends already; if they were to kill the other, whom they used to think of as a friend as well, then they would be left at the mercy of the demons, as they weren't capable of protecting the entire living realm against the demons on their own.

That day marked the day of the Phoenix Empire's downfall.

What the three remaining mythical beasts didn't know, however, was that the Phoenix didn't completely die.

The golden dragon, who knew about the rebirthing ability of the phoenixes, did his best to make the phoenix empty her reserve, and he made her reach a point where she wouldn't be able to get back to life or even heal.

But the golden dragon didn't know that the Phoenix had one ability, hidden from everyone, an ability that lets her leave her corporeal body and enter hibernation until she finds a perfect new body.

Her descendants tried to sacrifice their bodies, wanting to bring her to life again, but the Phoenix's warm and soft heart couldn't bring herself to do it.

She wasn't the golden dragon, who could even kill every single person in this world if it meant that he could gain something out of it.

She just couldn't do it.

It was after several requests from her descendants that she agreed to the summoning of a vassal for her.

Maybe, if it were someone unknown to her—someone with no link with anyone in this world—she could manage to bring herself to take over that person's body.

But as she lived within the deepest part of the Phoenix Empire, stored as a flame in a veil made of some special ore, staring at the human with a spirit's bloodline inside of her body, she started having second thoughts.

'Why do I have to do this to anyone?'

'Can't we just search for an alternative?'

'She is just a little girl...'

The phoenix, unlike the golden dragon, the black tortoise, or the white tiger, wasn't a descendent of the past guardian beast; she was the one and only phoenix, the first and last phoenix born on the surface of the world from a burning volcano.

She knew the grandparents and the ones before of the other guardian beasts—that was how old she was.

Yet she didn't feel indifferent to life; she just wasn't made that way, and she had been compassionate since birth.

She did change a bit as she now hated someone with her life—so much so that she wanted to eat that person alive—but that didn't mean that she would stoop so low that she would use someone's life just to fulfill her own selfish desire.

If she did that, then what would be the difference between her and the only person she really hated—the golden dragon?

The place she lived in, the deepest and most protected part of the Phoenix Empire, was also the ancient library of the empire.

She keeps going through them, trying to search for a way to keep the girl still alive, even if she does turn into her vassal.

She didn't spare any effort, as she even asked for her descendants to do the same—which they didn't, as they didn't care about an other worlder's life if they could have their ancestor back.

They weren't the pure descendants of the phoenix; they didn't carry her compassion.

Even the reason they wanted the original phoenix to come back to life was because they feared that they would be wiped out if the demons were to attack.

It was just the phoenix who was naive enough to think that its descendants were still the same, ready to give their lives for her.

She would realize what the world had turned into—how low her lineage had fallen—if she were to come out of the cage she treated as her home.

But today, as she stared at the girl who was being brought up as a vassal for her with eyes filled with hesitation, she heard a voice.

"I was going to kill you after I took Alice away, but I guess you can stay alive."

She, who was in the form of a flame, trembled violently as she heard a voice that sent chills down her spine.

It wasn't any of her descendants; she was sure of it.

Who was it then?

'Wait—!'

It was then that a sudden thought flashed in her mind.Nôv(el)B\\jnn