I am God LSLCCF

Chapter 475: Thank You, God Asai!

Cities and citadels stood close-packed across the whole earth.

The lizard people themselves had split by the color of their scales into many different peoples, and each people had split again into many nations, and each nation was made up of families both great and small.

Along the rivers, city after city and village after village had risen, and one could see lizard people in droves bustling among them.

Outside the villages, some tended crops, others herded livestock.

Within the cities stood blacksmithsʼ forges, workshops of every craft, and marketplaces.

Here there were slaves, commoners, nobles, and kings who ruled over it all.

But above even the kings stood the Grand Pontiff of the Abyss Temple of the Black Horn Kingdom, who held the power to crown a king, and who worshipped the very embodiment of the Death Demon Plague.

It was said to be a goddess with black wings, dwelling somewhere within a world of darkness.

A thousand years had passed, and the lizard people who once lived in caves were long since nothing like what they once were.

The Central Plains, the Grand Abyss Temple of the Black Horn Kingdom
A crowd of lizard people, wrapped in black holy robes, stood within the temple, praying to the Black-Winged Goddess upon the altar.

As the morning bell tolled, the priest at their head called out, ”Let the prayer begin!”

Every lizard person there chanted from the holy scripture, while outside the temple a crowd of children knelt and recited along, learning the words.

”O Black-Winged Goddess, throned high within the dark Abyss, eternal and everlasting!”

”You are the only light amid the darkness. We thank You for granting us the power of divine ability, for granting us the power of darkness and death.”

”You punish the guilty with sickness and plague. In all this world, You are the only.”

Once the prayer had ended, a box was set down before each child waiting outside, and in every one of them lay a strange, slimy insect.

The insect had a pair of feelers, and was in fact the very origin of the Death Demon Plague, a thing the lizard people of the Void Continent called the abyss snail.

But to the lizard people of today, this creature was nothing to fear. It had become an object of admiration, even a holy relic.

Because any mortal who ate an abyss snail could seize extraordinary power for themselves, and become an Abyss priest.

One could see the children swallowing their abyss snails, the black plague power inside each one surging into their bodies, and at once a change began in them.

One by one, horns of a sort began to sprout from the childrenʼs heads, not unlike the abyss snailʼs own feelers, only hardened.

This was the mark of an Abyss priest.

The whole scene looked exactly as though the wicked followers of the Abyss Cult had been corrupted by the black mud of the Abyss.

The priests within the temple came forward, looked over the children, and drew back the hoods from their own heads, revealing the very same strange horns.

”From this moment on, you are noble Abyss priests.”

Abyss priests could pass sickness on to others, or draw sickness out of them in turn, and through this whole system they had, little by little, worked out divine techniques of every kind.

But the mark on an Abyss priest went further than that. Here in the Black Horn Kingdom, every child born to an Abyss priest carried the same black feelers from birth.

This was the power of the Black-Winged Goddessʼs own law.

The King of Lust, Melde, had once commanded the power of the primordial black mud, able to breed Abyss race monsters of every kind through its corruption.

The other power of her law was the Law of Desire, which she granted to abyss monsters, giving every one of them the power to breed and multiply, so that they could bring forth new monsters of their own through birth. This was the very foundation on which the Abyss race carried itself forward.

The monthʼs ritual of granted power came to its end. It was through rites like these that the Abyss Temple went on steadily expanding the ranks of its Abyss priests.

If this went on being passed down, perhaps one day every lizard person in the whole world would carry these same black feelers.

And just then, someone came rushing in with news.

The news was carried straight to the Grand Pontiff in their black robes, and it threw the whole temple into an uproar.

”Thereʼs movement in the Devil Dragon Mountains to the north. It looks like that hateful black dragon is stirring again.”

”Itʼs that evil devil dragon.”

”Is it still alive?”

”A whole thousand years, and it still hasnʼt died?”

”Is a new calamity of the devil dragon about to begin?”

”Whatʼs there to be afraid of? Let it come out and weʼll drive them right back.”

”We lizard people have the Black-Winged Goddess watching over us. The black dragon canʼt do a thing to us.”

Throughout the whole temple, the priestsʼ eyes held fear, held hatred, held an eagerness to test themselves.

The Grand Pontiff stepped forward, and raised their staff of office high.

”Tell every nationʼs king. Every believer of the Black-Winged Goddess is to send their finest warriors.”

”This time, we will fight the black dragon to the death.”

But this time, the calamity of the devil dragon was unlike any before it.

Every time before, it had been Black Dragon Anu alone, leading the many lesser dragons and magical beasts of the Devil Dragon Mountains out to strike, killing the lizard people with black feelers city by city, tearing down the idols of the Black-Winged Goddess.

But this time a wholly new power had risen within the Devil Dragon Mountains, one that commanded the lowliest beasts and rode upon lesser dragons, dragon people who carried wisdom of their own.

And after years of breeding and raising them, these dragon people had not only reached maturity, but had grown to considerable numbers.

In a certain sense, dragon people were magical beasts too, only magical beasts with wisdom of their own.

The lesser dragons had been bred the same way as ordinary magical beasts, their divine blood a jumble, and so they came out half-mad and unruly. The dragon people, though, had been bred the way Black Dragon Anu bred his own magical beast companion, with divine blood left pure and clean.

Dragon people in their hundreds and thousands surged out of the Devil Dragon Mountains, leading lesser dragons and every manner of dragon beast to invade the lands of the lizard people.

They swept all before them, and nation after nation fell.

Abyss temple after Abyss temple was torn down, and countless Abyss priests with their black horns were killed.

This time was different from before. In the past, even when Black Dragon Anu had broken out of the Devil Dragon Mountains, overrun these nations, killed their Abyss priests, and torn down their temples, none of it had ever meant anything.

Because once it was all over, everything simply rose up again.

But with dragon people at his side, something had changed. This race with wisdom of its own could help him hold these nations under his control, and help him keep the Abyss templesʼ power from ever rising up again.

Black Dragon Anu seemed, at last, to see the first light of victory, and led his dragon people driving southward.

War beacons and smoke rose up on every side, and no one could stand against the terrible black dragon.

At last, he reached the borders of the Black Horn Kingdom.

The Black Horn Kingdomʼs Grand Pontiff led their armies and their priests out to meet them, and every lizard person stood ready in full battle order, willing to give their lives fighting the dragon beasts, the lesser dragons, and the dragon people alike.

”Fight for god!” Lizard person after lizard person charged forward astride their land dragons, screaming themselves hoarse, hurling themselves bravely at the enemy.

”Drive them back! Take back what belongs to the lizard people!” Across the battlefield, the lizard people gathered together, calling out encouragement to one another. They feared neither death nor danger, they pressed forward wave after wave, and they were willing to take the dragon beasts and dragon people down with them if that was what it took.

”Save the lizard peopleʼs homeland!” They fought on drenched in blood, refusing to retreat even under mortal wounds, for in their own eyes they stood on the side of justice. They were heroes.

”Avenge our brothers!” As more and more of them died, it only left the rest angrier, more filled with hatred, and they threw themselves bravely into the charge once again.

But sadly, courage alone could change nothing, least of all in a world where the extraordinary now walked.

The black devil dragon overhead came diving down.

That terrible monster needed only a single dive, a single breath of dragon fire.

In an instant the land for miles around became a sea of flame, and the army upon that ground was reduced to ash and smoke in the space of a breath.

In the final moment, in the midst of battle, in the midst of the raging fire, the Grand Pontiff sacrificed themself, offered themself up, and paid that price to summon their goddess, the Black-Winged Goddess.

The Grand Pontiff in their black robes knelt on the ground, roaring up at the sky, both hands thrown high above their head.

”My Lord!”

”I offer up everything I am to You. I beg You, defeat this evil devil dragon.”

”Save our nation. Save every lizard person alive!”

A terrible black shadow burst free from within the Grand Pontiffʼs own body, and from within the bodies of the countless dead, and from within the bodies of the living too.

A dense swarm of black specks gathered in the sky, and took shape as the terrible shadow of an evil god. She was the master of the Death Demon Plague, the very one they called the Black-Winged Goddess.

The instant she appeared, she struck out at the devil dragon in the distance.

The black devil dragon, circling the sky, showed not the slightest sign of yielding, and surged up to meet her, breathing flame at that dark shadow of an evil god.

The black dragon had grown far stronger than he had been years before. One could see his attack not merely wounding the shadow woven from that dense swarm of black specks, but tearing straight into it and ripping it apart.

But before long, the specks gathered themselves back together.

That shadow had, at last, taken on a consciousness of its own. In truth, that consciousness had only just returned from another world entirely.

She looked down on the black dragon from on high, taking his measure all over again.

”Interesting!”

”So you really have found a way to godhood, Anu!”

The black shadow drew steadily inward, a single consciousness settling fully into place, and out of her body poured a power terrible and mighty, the power of one of the very oldest of the Abyss Kings.

In the end, she took the shape of an angel with nine black wings, draped all the while in robes of pure white.

This time, at last, she revealed her true form.

She had a face of impossible beauty, a proud countenance and cold eyes, and even looking at a creature as terrible as the black dragon, those eyes might have been resting on an insect on the ground.

Wickedness and holiness were fused perfectly together within her.

The lizard people on the battlefield went wild. It was the first time any of them had ever laid eyes on the Black-Winged Goddess, on their own Lord.

”The Black-Winged Goddess!”

”The Black-Winged Goddess!”

”The master of the Death Demon Plague!”

But that ”goddess,” high above them all, did not so much as glance down at the lizard people below. She only raised a hand, and every lizard person who had cried out her name fell dead where they stood.

She cared nothing for these mortals, but she would not allow them to cry such words in her presence. As she killed the lizard people, she said quietly, ”In my presence, there is only one god!” ”In my presence, there is only one Lord!”

Melde walked upon the open sky, and in a graceful pose, in a voice like an aria, called out the name of her own Lord. ”That is the Lord of Radiance, Xia!”

Devil Dragon Anu looked at Melde. ”So you have finally shown yourself!”

The King of Lust, Melde, answered, ”You wanted a sight of me so badly. Very well. Now you have one.”

Devil Dragon Anu put it to her directly. ”You are an outsider here. What is it you mean to turn this world into? What is it you mean to turn the lizard people into?”

Melde stayed perfectly cold. Though her words formed a question, not a trace of confusion showed on her face. ”An outsider? Have you lost your mind?”

”Anu, were you not the very first to enter this false world, the one who brought the rest of us in after you?”

Melde looked at Anuʼs baffled face, and understood something all at once. ”You have sealed away your own memory.”

Something shifted in Meldeʼs proud expression, a note of scorn creeping in, mixed with mockery. ”A base lizard person after all. You have not even the courage to cross the long river of years.”

”And an existence such as you presumes to reach for myth!”

The two of them clashed once more, and this time they truly unleashed everything they had.

The giant dragonʼs body swelled to nearly two hundred meters across. Melde called an angel staff into her hand, and with the smallest motion she could smash a crater hundreds of meters wide into the earth, or punch straight through the sea of clouds above.

That terrifying power sent lizard people, dragon people, and lesser dragons alike fleeing in every direction. No one dared come anywhere near the two of them.

Yet for all that both of them stood at fourth rank, Meldeʼs power was plainly the deeper of the two.

She had existed far longer than Black Dragon Anu, and her experience in battle ran richer.

Because nowhere else could match the sheer brutality of war within the Abyss itself.

The two of them fought from the sky down to the ground, and from the ground back up above the sea of clouds. More often than not, people never even glimpsed their shapes at all. They saw only a flash of light come rushing in from somewhere far off, and then nothing remained.

Above the sea of clouds, Black Dragon Anu chased after Meldeʼs fleeting shadow.

He roared out, demanding an answer of her. ”Tell me. Who are you, in truth?” ”Where do the two of us come from?”

Melde paid the question no mind. She only looked at him mockingly. ”So you have settled on killing every Abyss priest alive? Are these people not your own kin?”

Unlike other nations, where those bearing black feelers were, after all, still a minority, here things were altogether different. Within the Black Horn Kingdom, nearly every lizard person alive carried the feelers now.

Every one of them had been corrupted by Meldeʼs own power, and had become part of her.

The young Anu of years past might not have known how to answer that. But Black Dragon Anu had lived more than a thousand years by now.

Black Dragon Anuʼs voice came out cold beyond measure. ”Only by killing the lizard people already claimed by the sickness can this world return to normal, and the rest of them go on living better lives.”

Melde went on mocking him in that same cold voice. ”Then how does a hero like you end up with everyone crying out for your death?”

Black Dragon Anu said, ”A hero?”

”I am no hero.”

”You need not say any of this to me. I am only after an outcome.” ”It has been over a thousand years. One way or another, there has to be an answer.”

Melde looked Black Dragon Anu over, her eyes not changing in the slightest. ”Heh~”

”A pity. Destroying this nation will not help you. Killing every priest will not help you either. You cannot kill me, because I live inside every lizard person there is.”

Melde told Anu the truth at last, the truth of her own real power. ”If you want to kill me, you will have to kill every lizard person alive.”

In truth, she was lying.

Killing every lizard person alive still would not kill Melde. Because she went on existing within every abyss snail too.

Melde raised her angel staff, and the whole of the Death Demon Plagueʼs power across the Black Horn Kingdom, every black blotch within every lizard personʼs body, came flooding toward her at once.

Black clouds gathered in the sky, and a terrible black rain began to fall. Endless black mud came pouring down out of the heavens, coiling itself around Black Dragon Anuʼs own body.

High above, atop the sea of clouds, Melde snarled down at Black Dragon Anu below. ”Get down there!”

Hatred burst into Black Dragon Anuʼs eyes, and he spread his wings and shot up into the sky.

He breathed out terrible dragon fire, burning the whole sky to a furious red, he summoned up a storm, and behind him a complex ritual array surged into being.

All of it aimed at the winged woman holding her angel staff aloft.

He meant to save the lizard people from this creatureʼs grip, meant to drive this outsider from the world entirely. There was no room here for her to do as she pleased.

But when the two powers collided, Anu was the one who slowly began to lose ground.

The black storm kept pouring down out of the sky, filth and mud wrapping steadily around Anu, until it became one vast black sphere bearing down to crush him.

And Melde spoke down from on high. ”I spread my field wide, and every lizard person becomes my own power.” ”It has been over a thousand years. Every lizard person alive has long since lived side by side with the Death Demon Plague.”

”Here, you could never defeat me. Killing me is even less possible.”

At that moment, Black Dragon Anu knew that he had lost, completely and entirely.

Even if he still had cards left to play, if he could not save the lizard people, could not change this damned state of affairs, then none of it meant anything at all.

Black Dragon Anu gave up at once. A burst of light exploded from his horns, tearing a path straight through the black clouds.

”Go!”

Every dragon person retreated alongside him, falling back to somewhere far beyond. In that moment, only one thought filled Black Dragon Anuʼs mind. ”Become a god!”

Anu knew that until he became myth himself, there would be nothing he could do against her.

Perhaps only by becoming a god could he ever truly kill her, drive her out of this world, drive her out of every lizard personʼs own body.

This great battle ended, as always, with Devil Dragon Anu retreating back into the Devil Dragon Mountains.

This defeat came down on Anu as an enormous blow.

Black Dragon Anu had given up on every other plan. He had no intention of personally unleashing another so-called calamity of the devil dragon, since he understood by now that it would change nothing at all.

The black dragon took on human shape, and stood outside a city built by his own dragon people, gazing out across the far-off lands of the lizard people.

”That creature was not wrong.” ”I want to let it go, and I cannot!”

”A man is forever deceiving himself, and yet he can never quite deceive himself completely.”

Anu had already settled on becoming a god, but little by little he came to see that the goal itself would not work. ”The reincarnation method!”

”Going by how much divine blood it gathers, this will simply not do.”

”At this rate, a hundred thousand years, a million years, might not be enough to achieve myth.”

What Anu did not know was that the old method of reincarnation he was using had taken the gods themselves over two hundred million years to reach myth by. A god could afford that wait. A race, a civilization, could not afford a span of time so terrible.

Anu had no wish to cross that span of time only to return and find that everything he cared about had already vanished, and that his own reason for becoming a god had faded away to nothing.

What meaning, then, would there be left in becoming myth at all?

Anu bowed his head. In the end, he chose to seek help from the one person he least wanted to turn to.

Black Dragon Anu had his dragon people build an altar, and carved a ritual into it, one whose power reached directly toward the divine artifact resting within the Dream Realm, the Ancestor Totem Pillar.

Beneath the altar, Anu hesitated a moment, then went ahead and made his offering to the totem pillar.

”Ancestor Totem Pillar, by name.”

The ritualʼs power opened a way into the depths of the Dream Realm, connecting to a weathered, towering divine pillar. The totems carved into it lit up one after another, and at last a shadow surfaced.

That shadow lay adrift within a bubble of colored dream, and all at once it looked out beyond the bubble, looked straight at Devil Dragon Anu.

A powerful pull came over him in an instant, and Anu did not resist it.

His consciousness passed into a dream. It was the bank of a great river, a city visible somewhere in the distance. Night lay over it all, and the water ran quietly on, its sound settling the mind.

Anu had no way of knowing that this was Dark Moonʼs own homeland, the place that would later become the Dark Moon Province, or that this very river was where he had so often come as a young man.

He saw a figure sitting by the riverbank, as though waiting for him. Dark Moon, gazing out over the water, suddenly spoke up. ”You do not hate me anymore?” Anu looked at him, opened his mouth, and closed it again.

He took a few more steps forward, until he stood directly beside him, and asked, ”How did you manage it?”

What Anu meant was how Dark Moon had managed to let magical beasts be born across the entire world, freed from the limits distance had once placed on his reach.

Dark Moon told Anu, ”All you need is an obsession, a wish strong enough to hold through a hundred million years without fading, a dream that simply refuses to disperse.”

”Then let that dream stay forever within the darkness, and that alone will be enough.”

”If your obsession is something good, then count yourself fortunate enough.” ”If your obsession is the most terrible darkness there is, then you have a long torment ahead of you.” Dark Moon turned his head back, and looked at Anu.

”A pity, though. More often than not, the deepest obsessions spring from the most terrible and darkest attachments of all.” Dark Moon turned his head back again, and went on.

”Of course, if you could find a believer, a servant, willing to give everything for you, one who would stay devoted to you even across a hundred million years.”

”Let him carry out this task in your place instead. That would work just as well.” Anu froze at those words, and stared straight at Dark Moon.

Though Dark Moon spoke of it so lightly, Anu could hear well enough just how terrible a thing it truly was.

A sudden guilt rose in his heart. Dark Moon might have caused him a thousand years of suffering, but Anu had never imagined that he himself might have driven Dark Moon into a darkness that could last longer still.

Every trace of his old fury, his hatred, his blame, vanished in that single instant.

Anu wanted to say something, but the words would not come, and all he could do was ask, ”Why would you rather become this than give me back my memory?”

Dark Moon told him, ”Because the time is not yet right.”

Anu said, ”Why wait for that moment? Why pay a price like this only to wait for it?”

”Is it even worth it?”

Dark Moon said, ”In this world, it is.”

Anu could make no sense of him, and could only turn to the reason he had come. ”This time, I did not come here for any of this.”

”If you do not wish to tell me, then do not. I will find the answer myself.”

Anu asked instead, ”Becoming myth through reincarnation takes too long. Is there some other way?” Having said it, he sat himself down beside Dark Moon.

”Of course, you do not have to help me.”

”After all, it was my doing that you ended up like this. You have no real reason to grant what I ask.” Dark Moon leaned back against the stone, utterly at ease, and looked out over the river. ”I will help you.” Anu was honestly astonished. ”Why?”

Dark Moon told him, ”Because helping you is helping myself.” Dark Moon finally rose to his feet, and faced Anu directly.

He laid out the method for Anu. ”If you want to shorten the time it takes, you will have to rely on the Ancestor Totem Pillar, on the power of its ritual altar, on its power to answer any ritual regardless of distance, to answer the power of every believer it has.”

”You have already bred the dragon people. That is a new race, and a new profession.”

”Through the totem pillarʼs power, every time a dragon person is born, you can grant a mimicry power seed of your own into its body, into its magic crystal.”

”When they die, that portion of power will return to your own body, and it will be as though you had completed one incomplete reincarnation.”

”But because the totem pillar is not a true myth yet, it holds the power to receive a ritual and not the power of a divine kingdom. So you will still need to raise an altar in the mortal world, one that mimics a divine kingdom sinking into sleep, to take in that power and receive it into your own body.”

Dark Moon set out the whole method in a single breath.

”Go on gathering it this way, until the day you become myth.” ”But a myth reached this way is not the same as a myth reached through reincarnation.”

”You will be missing every other power. All you will have is the mythical power of mimicry.”

This was the Second Eraʼs own method for reaching godhood, and every divine chosen used it to shorten their own road there. Anu paid no mind to whatever power he would be missing. This much, to him, was already enough.

Having said what needed saying, Dark Moon asked one more thing. ”Why do you want to become a god?”

Anu looked at Dark Moon, who held not the slightest blame against him, and it would have been a lie to say he was not moved. He answered honestly. ”To wipe the Black-Winged Goddess from this world once and for all, and to let every lizard person become normal again.”

Dark Moon asked another question. ”Suppose, once you have become a god.”

”You find out that everything you wanted never meant anything at all. What then?” Anu laughed, a laugh with little humor in it. ”Who can say what the future holds?”

”Could the me of a thousand years ago ever have known what I would become today?” ”Could the me of a thousand years ago have understood most of what I do now?”

Dark Moon nodded. ”Fair enough.”

At last, Dark Moon drew out the Matte Longsword, and placed it in Anuʼs hands. ”Here. I took it with me, last time.”

Anu took the sword, and for no reason he could name, suddenly found himself asking, ”You really do not blame me?” Dark Moon said, ”At least for as long as you hold that sword, the two of us are still companions.”

The moment Dark Moon finished speaking, Anu found himself pulled free of Dark Moonʼs Life Dream. He was still standing atop the altar, his dragon people gathered in crowds behind him.

He lowered his head, looked at the sword that had found its way back into his hand once more, and without meaning to, gripped it just a little tighter.

A few years later, every last preparation was complete, and Anu set out at last upon his own road to godhood.

In the city of the dragon people, Anu stood with his back to his own idol, facing the whole of his people, looking out over his own believers.

He told them all, ”I will build a divine kingdom that belongs to the dragon people. Everyone who believes in me may enter my kingdom.”

With those words said, Anu took on his black dragon shape, and flew off into the distance. He vanished, leaving behind only one last line. ”Wait for me, all of you. Wait for my return.”

Every dragon person knelt and bowed to the ground, crying out Anuʼs name, calling him the Dragon God.

Anu entered the place he had prepared for himself, and sank into sleep, receiving every scrap of power atop his altar, gathering strength toward becoming a dragon of myth.

The Black Horn Kingdom

Deep within a temple raised by the labor of ten thousand hands, beyond a gate that pierced straight through into the Dream Realm.

A black-winged fallen angel sat enthroned high above, looking down over the Black Horn Kingdom, down over the whole earth the lizard people ruled.

In this world, she was the very god that mortals spoke of.

Melde was turning something over in her mind. ”The reincarnation method!”

”That lizard person grows stronger and stronger. He is undergoing reincarnation!”

”He has found a way to godhood, and what is more, he is using the new godsʼ own method to reach it.”

The King of Lust understood reincarnation well enough. She had once watched, within the Gate of Spirituality, as Xiao took on one species after another across two hundred and fifty million years, until at last he ascended to myth before her very eyes.

Only, she herself lacked the Four-Part Secret Technique of Godʼs Grace.

And the bigger problem was that the road of a mythical artifact had no use for the reincarnation method at all, so knowing it seemed to serve her little purpose.

The King of Lust had once thought only of how to obtain the Path of Wisdom from someone elseʼs hands, of seizing the Four-Part Secret Technique of Godʼs Grace within it. But arriving in this world, she had suddenly changed her mind entirely.

She had fused herself with the Death Demon Plague, corrupting the abyss snail, corrupting the lizards, corrupting the lizard people.

Race after race had been devoured by her, and the feeling of possessing and devouring an entire people made her tremble, a trembling of pleasure carried right to its very peak.

Watching the inheritance and breeding of these races fall entirely under her own command, and the power of birth itself become the power of her own law, left the King of Lust, Melde, satisfied beyond all measure.

But it was not enough. Not nearly enough.

Beneath that cold, indifferent expression burned a desire as fierce as a volcano, ready to overflow and erupt at any moment.

When no one else was near, Melde sat high upon her throne, muttering to herself like something half-mad, her expression shifting endlessly between rapture, fantasy, and satisfaction.

”No way to become a god?”

”Then I have no need of one!”

The King of Lust bowed her head with lazy grace, and turned a gaze proud and thick with the power to corrupt down on the mortal world, down on the distant Devil Dragon Mountains.

She set her next species to corrupt, her next target, upon the dragon people. ”All I need is to corrupt one extraordinary profession, and I become their master.” ”All I need is to corrupt and possess one myth, and I am myth itself!”

Melde wrapped her arms around herself, closed her eyes, and lost herself in all of it. ”Corrupt everything. Possess everything.”

”Even possess the entire world.”

Melde rose to her feet, raised both hands high, as though reaching to welcome something. ”If I do this, my Lord, will You be pleased?”

”You live within my world, and so You possess the whole world already.” ”Surely that alone is enough to bring a smile to Your face!”

The King of Lust had found herself a new way to godhood, drawing on more than a thousand years of experience corrupting one species after another, drawing on all she understood of the reincarnation method.

She knew the divine chosenʼs whole new method of reincarnation, knew exactly what had given rise to tower keepers and contract lawyers alike.

Now, Black Dragon Anu meant to become a god, and meant to do it by way of his own dragon people.

By her own plan, all she had to do was corrupt the dragon people as a race, and it would mean that every one of his reincarnations was being corrupted by her from the very start.

That way, the moment he ascended to myth, he would be corrupted through and through by the King of Lust, corrupted into nothing more than a mythical artifact of her own.

Then, when that moment came, she would step forward, seize his power for herself, and gather in the final fruit of it all.

Melde had made up her mind. She stepped out through the illusory gate, and walked down into the mortal world. ”Looking for a way to godhood? Is that not my own way there?”

”Corrupt him. Turn him, through and through, into a mythical artifact!”

”And a mythical artifact that belongs to me alone!”

Melde set off toward the Devil Dragon Mountains, but before she began, she suddenly looked up at the sky.

It was as though she were looking beyond the sky itself, toward some other world entirely.

”The ancient myth who held mastery over truth and knowledge.”

”A being by the name of Asai.”

”I will climb to myth by your own method. And one day I will come and thank You in person.”

The corner of Meldeʼs mouth curved up just slightly, as though some memory had surfaced, one that filled her with something like happiness.

”Thank You, for sending my Lord down into the Abyss.”

”Sent him right to my side.”

It was in just this way that the once God of Knowledge and Truth, Asai, had dragged the Lord of Radiance down out of the heavens and into the Abyss, corrupting Xiaoʼs very foundation and root during his last reincarnation, and casting him down from his throne of Spirituality.

This very trick of Meldeʼs, she had learned from Xiaoʼs own mortal enemy.

The methods these ancient myths from time immemorial had once used against one another, the divine techniques born from their own struggles and battles, played themselves out again and again in this new era, and even opened up new uses no one had ever found before.