Iralithen Hasturnal Benenthin, or shortened to 'Iralen' for the ease of fellow dragons, couldn't help but seethe slightly,
Just recently a brigand of humans had attempted to steal from his hoard, when it was still in its territo- Iralen shook its head and corrected itself; desolation.
Those damn humans dared to come into his desolation, though he was only an [Epic] dragon, that didn't mean any random sentient could take its riches for themselves.
From what he remembered, they went towards the north. From what he could remember the last time he looked there, the humans there were in the middle of a civil war. He really couldn't understand the small rat-like creatures, less than the size of one of its claws, and even more foolish than locusts along with rivaling their hunger.
At least the empire to the south had the sense to pay him tribute every ten years just for not attacking them, they even gave him a large amount of gold trinkets and a few artifacts that were candy for his eyes so that he moved to this beautiful cold mountain range. There was a lot of prey just a bit down, the height was good for flight, it was nice and cold. They even carved out a reception area for other dragons to come or for them to bring their tribute!
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And; Get this! The more local human leaders- Iralen couldn't exactly remember what they were called, something like 'Barans' or 'Nobls'- Would also come to him with precious gemstones and gold to request for him to get rid of a somewhat larger prey. Something he was happy to do, he got to eat well, get gold, and also cement his might in the sentient population.
Then there was this one time that an empire human came along and tried to take one of his artifacts, when he went to burn down one of their villages to punish them before going to kill the thief Iralen remembered something and went to the nobls and told them that a human had stolen something from him and they quickly went to execute them for him!
He didn't even need to bother finding the rat himself!
In comparison, he had to go through the effort of burning down a vilage or two, then finding that thief too... He couldn't help but think that it would be so much easier if he just went to the kingdom, killed their rulers and made the empire their boss from then on. Then he could laze around and have them go and kill any thieves that stole his jewels in his sleep.
Though, he didn't really know about which sentients he would have to kill to do that, and decided to just go and follow standard procedure and burn down that village.