King Ghidorah

An unfamiliar but pleasant sensation rose from the places being stroked, spreading in warm waves along some newly formed connection.

Body: Mmm... that feels nice... a little farther left... wait, no!

Mind: Insolence! Remove your hand! Lowly creature! I am the King of the Monsters!

Aegon sensed the little creature's thoughts echoing in his heart, automatically translated into something he could understand. A telepathic link?

Interesting.

The little thing was quite the proud softie. A mischievous urge he had not felt in ages stirred within him.

Aegon watched the little creature with interest. Its body was clearly relaxing beneath his palm, and it even nuzzled against his hand without realizing it.

Yet all three heads struggled to maintain their "fierce" expressions. Unfortunately, paired with its miniature size, they were merely comical.

"All right." Aegon casually stroked the other two heads as they tried to bite his fingers, his tone teasing. "You don't look very useful right now, but keeping you as a pet to stave off boredom wouldn't be bad."

He withdrew his hand and watched King Ghidorah seemingly breathe a sigh of relief, then shake its heads with a faint air of disappointment before raising them again, adopting a haughty expression that said, This king is magnanimous enough to overlook your offense.

"Tsk, you really are a proud little softie." Aegon stood and dusted off his hands. "You need a name. King Ghidorah... King Ghidorah..."

He rubbed his chin, his gaze sweeping over the three little heads crowded together, all trying their best to look majestic. A wicked impulse suddenly rose within him.

"From now on, you'll be called 'Little Laki,'" Aegon announced with a perfectly straight face.

"Guh?! Gah?!"

All three of King Ghidorah's heads froze instantly.

Its six golden eyes widened as far as they could, filled with disbelief, bewilderment, and the shattered look of someone whose entire worldview had just suffered a nuclear blast.

Little... Laki?

Little! Laki!

That name which made countless titanic beasts tremble in its universe, that exalted title symbolizing destruction and conquest, that identity it wore with pride-King Ghidorah-had become... "Little Laki" in this strange creature's mouth?!

"RAAAH-!!!" The middle head let out a short, piercing shriek filled with grief, outrage, and protest, though it still sounded like a kitten whose tail had been stepped on.

It furiously waved its stubby little claws while the other two heads thrashed wildly, trying to express the strongest possible objection.

Aegon, however, merely watched it with a smile. His eyes plainly said, Objection overruled. That's your name.

King Ghidorah... all three heads drooped at once, and even the pale golden scales covering its body seemed to lose some of their luster.

It looked at its now stool-sized body, then at the "giant" before it.

An unprecedented tangle of emotions-frustration, resignation, and a faint thread of despair for the future-engulfed its newborn consciousness, so utterly out of place in this world.

Before it could display the bearing of a king, it had already acquired a ridiculous nickname.

It felt as though its life as a monster had taken some indescribably wrong turn from the moment it had been dragged into this world.

The dark clouds on the horizon had already faded. The terrifying celestial phenomena and pressure of existential rank brought about by King Ghidorah's arrival had vanished with them, leaving only an even deeper stillness over the ruins.

Aegon pulled his thoughts away from the memory of his first encounter with "Little Laki," a hint of amusement flashing in his violet eyes.

He lowered his gaze to the stool-sized King Ghidorah at his feet, which was staring up at him expectantly with six golden eyes.

The source of the "Three-Headed Dragon Shadow" pressure that had just forced the Death Dragon to bow and made all living things tremble was, naturally, this "concept seed" from another universe.

The constraints of this world's rules had compressed King Ghidorah's power and reshaped its form, temporarily preventing it from displaying its world-destroying might.

But its inherent existential "rank," and the natural suppression it exerted over lower-order beings, would not vanish entirely just because its body had shrunk.

It was like a star locked beneath countless seals. Even if its light remained hidden, the mass of its core and its gravitational field still existed.

The moment Aegon had awakened the system and bound himself to King Ghidorah, he had faintly sensed this connection.

And just now, in the desperate situation against the Death Dragon, it had been less a matter of deliberately releasing King Ghidorah's aura than of being driven by mortal peril and sheer force of will.

For the first time, he had attempted to "borrow"-or rather, "resonate" with-a trace of King Ghidorah's compressed and sealed "presence," which belonged to a higher order of existence.

He had "shared" a sliver of King Ghidorah's existential rank.

The experience had been extraordinarily strange. He had not gained any concrete power, but had briefly "embodied" or "projected" the "perspective" and "pressure" inherent in the very "concept" of King Ghidorah, standing above the ordinary creatures of this world.

It was like an ant suddenly comprehending the grandeur of a mountain and borrowing a sliver of that mountain's "presence" to intimidate a beetle.

"Sharing existential rank..." Aegon savored that strange, fleeting sensation.

It had felt as though he had become an ancient beast looking down upon all living things. Everything lay beneath his gaze, and life or death seemed to rest on a single thought.

That sense of dominion had been cold and vast, utterly unlike human emotion, yet fatally alluring.

"I never imagined you, of all little things..." Aegon looked at "Little Laki" with a complicated gaze.

If it truly managed to "decompress" someday, fully adapting to and integrating with this world's rules before growing anew... what would that look like?

The dragons that swept across Westeros would probably be no different from mosquitoes and flies before it.

Just then, he clearly sensed a thought coming from "Little Laki."

It mingled curiosity and inquiry with a trace of the dignified reserve befitting a "king," which it was struggling to maintain.

It roughly meant: You experienced that power, didn't you?

I won't hold it against you that you called me Little Laki before. Now, what should you call me-?

The corners of Aegon's mouth lifted slightly. This proud little creature had clearly sensed something when he borrowed its power just now, and might even have confirmed how tightly they were connected because of it.

Yet it insisted on putting on an air of This king is magnanimous, while sneakily trying to steer him toward a different form of address.

He crouched and shamelessly reached out to stroke those cool, smooth golden scales again. They felt wonderful beneath his hand.

This time, all three little heads merely recoiled as a token gesture, while a conflicted feeling passed through the link: Again? and Mmm... you can scratch a little longer this time...

"What should I call you?" The amusement in Aegon's eyes deepened as he deliberately sent the thought Little Laki back through the link.

He felt all three heads of the little creature in his arms stiffen at once, its scales practically bristling. "I think 'Little Laki' sounds rather nice. Unique and affectionate. What do you think?"

"Wooo-!" An aggrieved whimper came through their mental link. The middle head even tried to bite Aegon's finger with its not-yet-fully-grown baby teeth, but the force was barely more than a tickle.