Dance Of Demon And Dragon

Divine Lords, an organization with a sole goal of overthrowing the humanity and the gods that dominated the world of Alem. As such, they were the enemies of the Tazak kingdom, the largest kingdom in Alem, which was dominated by humans.

Once there was a supreme kingdom called Kizilalem, which dominated the entire continent, it was far larger than any neighboring kingdoms and held immense power.

Yet, less than a thousand years ago, demon kind, led by the Demon King, managed to steal half of the land of the kingdom and transported it to another world, which currently is known as Kalkan kingdom in the world of Sulum.

Worlds of Alem and Sulum were separate from each other but connected by the places where they separated from, some of which could be used as portals to cross two worlds, in some occasions the portals occur naturally or artificially by skilled hands.

After losing half of their land, the human kingdom became weakened, allowing the neighboring kingdoms to have threat to them.

What remained of the half of the great kingdom was split into many parts, one of which was the Tazak kingdom, where humanity still reigned surpeme.

Tazak kingdom was surrounded by other kingdoms, three of which held the most threat were:

Ashen kingdom, country lead by the ruler rumored to be descended from dragons, located in the North West,

Sacred kingdom, a small demi-human country which provided refuge to the fleeing non-humans except demons, located in north east,

and Temir Empire, separated by body of water located in the South, the stronghold which was rumored to be a country founded by a former slave who rebelled against his masters.

Temir Empire was the most fearsome one for their rulers often usurped the throne often in violent carnage.

The country, unlike the Tazak kingdom has no prejudice against demi-humans, most likely because in the country there weren't many pure humans to begin with. Many have mixed blood and undulling d.e.s.i.r.e to fight.

The only thing that separated the Temir Empire from Tazak kingdom was a body of water which was created when the bottom half of the kingdom was stolen by demons, which was one of the only few good things that came as a result of it for it allowed Tazak kingdom to be in a safe distance from the violent waves of empire.

There were smaller, sub-kingdoms, but they usually were size of a city or a village, so they were not considered much of a threat, like the kingdom of Ashu within the Tazak kingdom, which essentially a city was declaring itself a small independent kingdom. They were regarded as nuisance, but not a legitimate threat.

What they did not know was that they had one more kingdom fighting against them. But that kingdom was located in a different world, the world of Axum, where the kingdom of Uspan prospered under their immortal king.

The country had the lords that served the king, known as the Divine Lords, each one was a general that controlled a portion of the land, meaning each one had a territory they managed. The warriors under them fittingly were called Divine Warriors.

By having their base located in another world, Divine Lords were able to successfully carry out their tasks without giving away their base location or any critical information. All was for the purpose of overthrowing the humanity within the world of Alem, meaning the Tazak kingdom was first on the list.

The later goals were to take control of the other kingdoms, meaning the conquest of the entire continent of world of Alem was the true objective. But there was a catch- their enemies had backing of very powerful allies- gods, or as they are known, Deities. Deities were a force of nature not many would want to reckon with.

But their leader's goal was simple, to make the humanity fall, the gods have to be killed. While the large goal is to make humanity weaker, the primary objective of the Divine Lords was to kill Deities. It didn't make the situation better that there were many deities and they had to do things so that other deities don't catch one to what is going on.

This required intense amount of preparation and manipulation, one of which was using the Kalkan kingdom to which the Tazak kingdom holds a grudge against in order to distract the human kingdom and their gods from seeing the Divine Lords deliver a decisive strike.

That was the objective. But it had many, countless phases that had to be carried out.

One phase was sending spies to infiltrate groups that displayed prominence, importance or a potential threat, and then have the spies send the information about those groups and then in right time sabotage the group. Sometimes the spies managed to give their victims brainwashing poison that made them follow the king's will.

One such a spy, code named Snake or Serpent, managed to infiltrate the group known as the Marked Ones. That group had a leader who planned on destroying the Divine Lords, which was not something they could allow.

The Serpent put every single but one member under mind control of Morphus through poisoning, then had them commit atrocities inside the Tazak kingdom, making all of them have bounties placed on them.

Yet, she somehow the Marked Ones no longer were under her control. Somehow they broke free.

After having his right hand return from his mission, Morphus, the leader of the Divine Lords, and the king of Uspan kingdom, sent him to meet up with the spy in order to find out what exactly went wrong.

Shengyn Finnerman, aka Death Hand, was sent on a mission to find Lan Jin, code named Serpent.

The search did not take long as expected. Shengyn never met this Lan Jin person for more than a few seconds, and she always wore a mask to conceal her face.

Conversely, she had no idea what Shengyn looked like either, so when Shengyn tracked her down using the ring each servant of Morphus wore, she freaked out and tried to attack him.

In a single flash of light, Shengyn pinned her on the ground, shattering her mask, revealing her feminine yet somewhat serpent-like features.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Master Morphus sent me to get you, Lan Jin. I did not expect you to react this badly."

She tried to use poison magic that would be fired from her hand at will in a stream of liquid poison that would melt through even the toughest substance. Shengyn only managed to dodge the blast of that acidic poison only by teleporting behind her and disarming her.

"You….know my name?" Lan Jin now calmed down and spoke in a more civil manner. Shengyn now saw that she was willing to hear him out so he got off her, allowing her to stand up.

"If you were sent by Master Morphus, that would mean you are one of the higher ups, aren't you? Are you one of the Divine Lords? Which one?"

"I am known as Hand, Hand of Death that is." Shengyn revealed his identity.

The reaction was immediate. Lan Jin may be a spy for Morphus who ranked higher than the mooks, the Divine Warriors, but she was still ranked lower than the Divine Lords. She immediately got on one knee while bowing her head.

"Lord Hand of Death, please forgive this fool for showing you improper and uncivil treatment, this one promises that this offense shall not be repeated."

"No need to be so formal, we are colleagues after all. So then, I heard you had quite a hassle in the Ashu kingdom to the point that you had to go into hiding for several months in order to avoid detection. Master Morphus was starting to get worried after you stopped sending him reports, so he sent me to check up on you."

"How kind of you, lord. Lately the entire kingdom of Ashu is hunting for me, using my invisibility I was barely able to escape being captured, and then I had the worst luck of running into an evil dragon Larella…"

"Slow down, start from your last mission. Weren't you sent to Ashu kingdom to check up on that pyromaniac? You know the guy who was supposed to be king there? Master Morphus told me he betrayed us and was killed for it, but that is as far as I know. You tell me the rest."

"Yes, lord. As you might be already aware I was tasked with infiltration into a radical group called the Marked Ones, there I managed to trick them into thinking I was their comrade while making sure they don't end up interfering with Divine Warriors' missions."

"To that end, I succeeded in feeding all but one member of the group a poison that allowed me to take control of their minds. The one member I couldn't place under my control I have had killed by the brainwashed leader of the group, or so I thought. Then, in order to tarnish the reputation of Marked Ones inside the Tazak kingdom, I had them commit acts of terror and murder."

"Then I took the Marked Ones to the Ashu kingdom in order to meet up with Aldan the Greed, the member of the Divine Lords. I expected that he would be able to contact Master Morphus in my stead for as a lower ranked servant I cannot contact him directly. But it seems that Aldan had his hands full as well. There were radical groups trying to usurp his regime." She paused, trying to catch her breath.

"The worst part however, it seems the one who was causing the rebellious actions was none other than the Marked Ones' member I thought I had killed. When we tried to confront him, he managed to somehow stop all of the Marked Ones, even injuring me in the process. I did injure him as well though."

"And then what happened?"

"I tried to regroup with Divine Lord, Aldan the Greed, but unexpectedly Lord Aldan betrayed us. He used some kind of spell to turn himself into an angel and started raining fire balls through the sky. Those fireballs were imbued with angelic purification magic."

"Due to this, the leader of Marked Ones ended up snapping out of my mind control and assisted her fellow Marked One in fighting Aldan. I witnessed the fight between them. Aldan stated his intention to rebel and kill Master Morphus, at this point he was already past the point of redemption. The leader of Marked Ones was injured, but the other one continued to fight and managed to trap Aldan and launch both of them using enchanted ballista…"

"I am sorry, but what?!" Shengyn had no idea what to think of it. "Isn't a ballista something that fires arrows far away?"

"That would be regular ballista. Enchanted Ballista in a sense is an area that is covered with magical transcriptions and anything that steps foot upon it or placed upon the ballista is launched into the air at extreme speed, to fly for hundreds of miles. It is an outdated form of travel that predates teleportation, and it is far more risky."

"So he launched both of them into the sky. I see. Master Morphus did say he found Aldan alone in the desert, with none else in sight. What do you presume happened to the Marked One who launched Aldan?"

"I hope he is dead, that Finnerman was giving me so much trouble, it is the least he could do I he were to just die."

"Did you just say….Finnerman?" Shengyn was hoping he heard it wrong.

"Yes. That Marked One's name is Sabgyn Finnerman, my lord."

Shengyn now had a critical realization.

During his travel to Kalkan kingdom in the world of Sulum, he encountered his brother, Sabgyn there, but the matter of how he got there eluded him.

The worlds of Alem and Sulum are separated by barriers that only sometimes allow anything to pass between them, in a sense there is gigantic rift in space that connects two worlds together for short amount of time, allowing travel between worlds.

If he used enchanted ballista or whatever that was called, that would mean he managed to cross the barriers of Alem and Sulum, in order to end up in Kalkan kingdom.

But that did not make much sense. Immediately after Shengyn left Kalkan kingdom, he saw Sabgyn again in Tazak kingdom, almost as if he was following him. Last he saw of him he was cross-dressing as some prince's bride.

At least Sabgyn is safe. That is all that mattered.

"I see, so the one you injured was Sabgyn Finnerman. Do tell me, Lan Jin, did his face look like this?"

Shengyn took off his mask, now his face had an undeniable expression of anger. Murderous intent was pouring from every centimeter of his body, with his eyes seeming to want to swallow her whole.

"No way! Sabgyn?!" Lan Jin panicked and ended up backing into a wall while trembling.

Shengyn put his mask back on.

"No, still me. I just changed my face to confirm if it was the same man we were referring to, and it seems I was right." He was lying, as Sabgyn's twin brother; he naturally had the same face as him. Shengyn did not possess the ability to change his shape.

"So that face was not your real face, my lord?"

"No, just a mask, come to think of it, you had a mask of disguise as well, what happened to it?"

"Finnerman destroyed it, when I get my hands on him I will make him pay!"

"As one of the Divine Lords, I order you to forget the entire matter with Finnerman. Even if you encounter him, do not engage him. Instead contact me through your ring. You might not be able to contact Master Morphus, but if I were to become your direct superior you will be able to contact me."

"Hmmm, serving lord Hand seems to be a good option, considering the one I wanted to serve directly under betrayed the entire organization….I accept."

"Well then." Shengyn outstretched his hand. Now they made a contract, Lan Jin was not Shengyn's direct subordinate, taking orders from him after Master Morphus of course.

This was the only way to keep Sabgyn safe within Tazak kingdom without arousing any suspicion. If Shengyn were to kill Lan Jin, then there is no telling what other Divine Lords will do, seeing that he killed one of their valuable spies, instead now he had the full control of this spy.

"Is there anything else worth reporting about?"

"Yes, my lord. The leader of the marked ones, Shadelin Long, it appears she is originally from Ashen Kingdom, and what is more she is most likely a member of royal family. In other words, she is a dragonoid."

Now that was some news, dragonoids, individuals with blood of dragons in their veins. One of the tasks of Divine Lords was capturing them in order to make weapons capable of harming even gods. It seems like Shengyn found his next target.