I am God LSLCCF

Chapter 476: New Species Template

The King of Lust, Melde, walked across the earth. She passed through the lizard peopleʼs kingdoms one after another, and in every city she found an idol raised in her own image.

The lizard people had never mattered to her. All she had ever wanted was to devour them, to treat them as material and nothing more.

Never once had she imagined that, in the end, she would become the lizard peopleʼs own god.

In a city whose legacy had lasted a thousand years, within a stern and towering temple, Melde stood beneath her own idol.

She raised her head, cold and aloof.

”A god exists because of power. A god does not bend to the will of mortals.”

”To destroy is divine punishment. It is chastisement.”

”To devour is divine grace. It is a bestowal.”

Along the way she had not spoken a single word to the lizard people, had not so much as glanced at them.

She made her way onward toward the Devil Dragon Mountains, and came at last to the city of the dragon people.
The city was crude and bare, and the dragon peopleʼs social order just as simple, since this peculiar race had never grown very numerous.

And so there was little call here for merchants, or for much variety of other trades. The dragon peopleʼs chieftain arranged it all instead.

The dragon peopleʼs chieftain was not only their king, but also the mouthpiece of the Dragon God.

Whatever they said became the rule and the law of this city.

Melde walked into the city, and not one soul on its streets seemed able to see her. She moved freely through that rough and ancient city of stone.

The dragon people bore the very shape of a god, save for a distinctive pair of dragon horns added to it, and a dragonʼs tail.

The men were tall and powerfully built, the women lithe and graceful.

In this regard, they suited Meldeʼs own taste far better than the lizard people ever had.

But Melde had once built a winged peopleʼs kingdom in the darkness and ruled over every winged person in it, and even for her own kind she had never spared so much as a shred of pity. What chance, then, did these dragon people have of earning her regard?

She watched the dragon people and passed her verdict. ”They stole the Lord of Radianceʼs power, and now a swarm of ugly worms actually presumes to take the shape of gods.”

Melde saw the colossal stone statue of a black dragon the dragon people had raised within their city, and saw them worship it as the Dragon God.

And carved beneath the idol was a single line. ”The Dragon God shall return at last!”

Melde knew that Anu had already set out upon the road to godhood, and it seemed he had left behind no contingency at all within this city.

For one thing, Anu knew that whatever he might leave behind here, it would be useless against a being like Melde.

For another, even if Melde slaughtered every dragon person here, it would mean nothing at all.

The dragon people had come from lesser dragons. They were a kind of magical beast, one that mimicked another form and possessed wisdom of its own.

If Melde killed every dragon person here, Anu would still have his own contingency. He could simply breed new dragon people out of the lesser dragons all over again.

And if she wanted to go further still and wipe out the lesser dragons themselves, to cut off Anuʼs road to godhood, that too would be futile.

Because the lesser dragons themselves had come from ordinary animals of every kind, and she could hardly go on to exterminate every one of those animals as well.

Just as Anu could do nothing to touch her, she too had no way to stop Anu.

But neither Anu nor Dark Moon knew that Melde had once witnessed the divine war between the God of Knowledge and Truth and the former Lord of Radiance. She had seen with her own eyes how the Lord of Radiance had been driven into the Abyss, and had witnessed the methods of that primordial myth, a being even Xiao dreaded beyond measure.

So she had never truly intended to destroy the dragon people, or to block Anuʼs road to godhood.

Instead, she had set her sights directly on Anu himself.

In the end, within this one and only city of the dragon people, she came face to face with their chieftain.

The chieftain of the dragon people lived within a house of stone, and just then sat there turning some troubled thought over in their mind.

”How am I to make the dragon people stronger? How am I to spread the Dragon Godʼs faith wider still?”

Ever since Black Dragon Anuʼs departure, the whole burden of it had settled onto their shoulders, and the pressure and the responsibility they carried were immense.

Meldeʼs form came apart, scattering into a formless shadow of black specks that slipped its way into the house.

Of course, corrupting an entire race was never so simple a thing, especially one made up entirely of ability users, and a race wholly new at that. But Melde had already settled on her plan before she ever arrived.

By the window, the dragon peopleʼs chieftain suddenly grew drowsy.

But a voice rose up beside their ear, planting a thought deep within the dragon personʼs own mind.

”Have you forgotten the lizard people?”

”Those lizard people can become dragon people just as well!”

The dragon chieftain stirred, half asleep. ”The lizard people?”

The voice went on, like a hypnotistʼs murmur, carving the thought deep into their mind.

”You need only let those lizard people grow magic crystals of their own and become dragon people as well. Would that not solve everything?”

”Then the dragon people would swell in strength before long, and the Dragon Godʼs faith would reach every corner of the land.”

The moment they heard it, the drowsiness clouding the dragon chieftainʼs mind vanished all at once.

They leapt to their feet in excitement, and slapped their hand down on the stone table.

”Just so!”

”I need only turn those gifted lizard people into dragon people as well. Would that not solve everything?”

The excited dragon person believed they had found the answer all on their own.

Not once did they suspect that the thought had never truly belonged to them at all, that it had come from another will entirely.

The dragon chieftain kept muttering over the words Melde had just spoken, eager to act on them at once.

But Melde, having said only that single thing, turned and vanished from the place.

After that, for a very long stretch of time, this world would see no trace of her again.

And yet it was that single sentence of hers that turned the whole course of history, that pushed the wheel of civilization down an entirely different road.

A few years later, a lizard person walked into the Devil Dragon Mountains. The dragon people granted them the power of a magic crystal, and they took on the mimicked shape of a dragon person.

From that day on, the dragon people found a new way out of the Devil Dragon Mountains. Becoming a dragon person turned into an extraordinary profession the lizard people themselves could take up.

The dragon people were overjoyed beyond measure. They marched out of the Devil Dragon Mountains and into the kingdoms and cities of the lizard people, becoming believers and mouthpieces of the Dragon God.

They killed the Abyss priests within those cities, and raised temples to the Dragon God in their place.

And the Flying Dragon Mountains, following on from the name Devil Dragon Mountains, took on an entirely new name now. They came to be called the Dragon God Mountains.

But the dragon people had no idea what this whole process was doing to them. The King of Lust Meldeʼs own power was steadily corrupting and polluting every dragon person there was, working through the lizard peopleʼs own flesh and power to corrode Black Dragon Anu himself.

In each individual dragon person it showed itself the same way. Dragon people had once had horns and tails of every color imaginable.

But as the years passed, and the bloodline handed itself down from one generation to the next, only black remained.

But most of the dragon people thought nothing of it at all, since their own god was, after all, a black dragon.

From this point on, the lizard peopleʼs kingdoms gradually split into two factions.

Temples devoted to the Black-Winged Goddess, and a religion devoted to the Dragon God.

The dragon peopleʼs arrival, in this whole new guise, naturally provoked a backlash from the Abyss temples.

Nations that worshipped the Black-Winged Goddess rose up one after another, and her believers moved their armies at once, striking back against the cities and nations that worshipped the Dragon God.

Both sides denounced the other as heretics, and a war that would be measured in thousands of years began between them. Later still, an entirely new faith arose even among the lizard people.

They claimed that every magical beast in this world had come from a single totem pillar, which they called the Totem God, or sometimes the Beast God.

This faith remained comparatively weak, though. Only a few tribes scattered through the wilds, and a handful of small nations, ever chose to follow this divine being.

Thousands of years passed, and fortunes shifted like the changing winds, like the tideʼs endless rise and fall.

Amid the endless struggle over faith and power, amid the cycle of war and recovery, civilization crept steadily forward, and an entirely new age arrived at last.

The Abyss Empire.

This was an empire that had folded most of the southern regions into itself, and the Black Horn Province stood at its very center.

Everywhere here one could see lizard people with those distinctive black feelers sprouting from their heads, and they took great pride in wearing them.

Just as in the northern nations that worshipped the Dragon God, where the dragon personʼs form was honored as the noblest shape of all, called the very likeness of a divine being.

The city streets bustled with traffic, pack beasts and land dragons alike hauling steel-framed carriages through the crowds.

The shopfronts along the road were fitted with panes of glass, gas lamps lit within, their light spilling over goods of every kind, each one looking more beautiful than the last.

On the road walked finely dressed nobles and elegantly turned-out ladies, while patrol officers cut swiftly through the crowd, chasing down any thief bold enough to steal within their own beat.

But it was not long before thousands upon thousands of people poured into the streets in protest. Someone marched at the head of the crowd, shouting at the top of their voice.

”There are no such things as divine beings!”

”No Black Dragon God, no Black-Winged Goddess, no Totem Beast God!” ”Not one of them exists.”

”Itʼs all nothing but a means for those on high to control us and enslave us, a means for them to exploit us.”

Divine beings had not shown themselves in thousands of years, and it had begun to make everyone question whether they existed at all.

It was not only so within the Abyss Empire. The same was true even in the northern nations that worshipped the Dragon God.

A lizard person led the crowd out into the very center of the street, climbed up onto a high platform, and shouted down at them all.

”Thereʼs no god in this world. None at all.”

”Without a godʼs bestowal we can seize the power of ability all the same, because that power was here in this world from the very start.”

”Every temple, every so-called noble, theyʼve done nothing but manufacture a false divine being and use that godʼs name to shore up their own standing.”

”Weʼll bring them down. Weʼre not letting that lot go on enslaving us and controlling us any longer.” Amid the conflicts that repeated day after day, chaos and war broke out at last.

The clash between the old nobility and the newly risen interests sparked this whole upheaval.

But because the inheritance had been lost, because the crucial secret art for stepping through the Gate of Mythology was gone, the strongest ability users left in this world were only third rank.

Third rank power was formidable enough, but its holders still lived no longer than ordinary people, and their strength fell well short of the despair-inducing might of fourth rank.

The empireʼs upper echelons and the templeʼs old established powers remained strong. But as the age moved on, the ranks of merchants, minor nobles, and commoners everywhere swelled far larger, and these core powers had begun to fall into their hands as well.

In the midst of the conflict, the lizard people on the side of reform seized the Abyss Empireʼs own capital. They stormed the royal palace and killed the Abyss Empireʼs emperor.

They mounted the emperorʼs corpse upon a spear, and paraded it through the streets in triumph, declaring that the old age had come to an end.

In the end, the reformers, having already claimed their victory, came before the oldest Abyss temple of them all.

They stormed the temple, blew apart the shrine of this so-called false god, and toppled the idol of the divine being itself.

Thoom! The idol of the Black-Winged Goddess, which had stood tall for thousands of years, toppled from its great height and crashed down hard upon the ground.

Poof! Billowing clouds of dust rose up in its wake.

The reformers stood atop the rubble, feet planted on the fallen idol, as if to prove some point. ”You see that!”

”This was never more than a carved statue. Every extraordinary power we hold is a projection out of the spirit realm, nothing but a law of this world. No divine being ever granted us any of it.”

”A god is nothing but our own imagining, nothing but...”

The lizard person waved both arms as they gave their impassioned speech, and the crowd below them, blood boiling with fervor, looked up at them with something like worship. But the moment their words fell silent, the sky above the city suddenly went dark.

A mass of black clouds rolled in to cover the whole sky, casting a terrible shadow down across the earth below, and casting fear and despair deep into the heart of everyone there.

Every lizard person there felt their heart begin to pound without meaning to, their breath quickening, as they stared up at those looming black clouds without understanding. ”Is it going to rain?”

Not a few of those present knew that clouds were born of water vapor, and knew better still where rain came from. ”Thatʼs no cloud. The sky was clear a moment ago, not one cloud in it. Where would this many black clouds even come from?”

Quite a few sensed that something was deeply wrong. ”These clouds are spreading way too fast.” Before long, the black clouds had swallowed the entire city whole.

At the very center of the black clouds a passage opened, leading into an endless world of darkness.

A figure stepped out from within that dark, empty world, crossing bit by bit into reality.

The shadow bore four and a half pairs of black wings. It looked down from the sky upon the earth below, and its cold gaze froze every soul present in place.

Below in the world, the faces of every lizard person who had once believed with all their heart that no divine being existed, of every one who had toppled the idols with their own hands, went blank one after another.

”A god!” ”A god really has appeared.” ”The Black-Winged Goddess!”

”So... a god really does exist?”

Their god had awakened. Even across thousands of years, she had never once ceased to exist, had never truly vanished at all. Melde had returned once more, standing tall above the vault of the sky.

She looked down upon the lizard people of this age, upon the crowded, teeming population of the city, as though calculating something in her mind. Then she raised her head again, and looked off toward some far more distant place.

”This number!” ”It is already enough!”

No one knew what she meant by it, still less how cruel those few words truly were. Beneath their flat, indifferent tone lay nothing less than annihilation.

Whether they were the ones who claimed to believe in divine beings, or the ones who believed in none at all, every one of them now stared up in terror at the ”Black-Winged Goddess” hanging in the sky.

There was no faith left in their eyes now. Only panic remained.

Because across those thousands of years, they had long since grown used to living without any divine being at all. A divine being had long since become nothing more than a hollow excuse, a name that lived only on peopleʼs lips.

But Melde paid none of this any mind. She only glanced once at her own toppled idol, and spoke. ”Mortals.”

”I have decided to grant you all once more...”

Melde paused a moment, and her voice turned cold as a winter wind cutting into the depths of every heart there. ”Death and plague!”

Melde called on none of her mighty divine techniques, none of that world-ending power mortal eyes so feared. She merely loosened her hand, loosened the grip she had kept clenched around the Death Demon Plague.

The Death Demon Plague, which had lived in perfect symbiosis with the lizard people all along, erupted in that very instant, and brought death and pestilence down into the mortal world.

In the space of a breath, lizard people collapsed in swathes below.

”Aahh!” They felt something crawling and stirring inside their own bodies, and let out screams that tore at the heart.

”My body... my body...” Those who had fallen to the ground stared down at their own arms and bodies, and saw their scales peeling away in patches, their flesh beginning to rot, black and terrible things sprouting up from beneath.

”What is this?” Those nearby who had not yet fallen ill stared in horror at the ones collapsed on the ground, and shoved their way back, scrambling toward whatever distance they could find.

”No, stay away! What in the world is this thing?” Someone tried to rush in and help, but the moment their hand made contact, they found that black substance crawling straight onto them, spreading the infection into their own body.

Once Melde had brought down her ”divine punishment” upon the Black Horn Province, she flew straight off toward the far side of the Void Continent. Over the thousands of years that followed, working through the lizard people, she had thoroughly corrupted every dragon person now living.

At the same time, through this repeated corruption, she pinpointed the very place where Anuʼs true body lay hidden, as well as the ritual altar he kept within the mortal world.

Melde flew to the northern reaches of the Void Continent, to a great mountain that drew no particular notice upon that vast land. At its foot stood a city, a small and nameless kingdom of the lizard people.

Meldeʼs gaze pierced straight through the mountain, down into the scene hidden deep within the earth.

These mountains converged to form one vast ritual array, and deep within the earth stood a metal altar. Upon that altar lay coiled a colossal black dragon.

Melde spoke his name aloud. ”Anu!”

The colossal black dragon upon the altar sensed, just then, that something was wrong. A tremendous power was pouring in from every direction, converging on him in an endless stream.

It was nothing ordinary, and slowly it roused him from his deep slumber. Rumble!

The entire mountain shattered apart as the black dragon came to his feet. In his daze, a voice of confusion rose up from within his heart. ”What is going on?”

”Who is waking me, the totem pillarʼs spirit?” ”Have I not yet become myth?”

Indeed, Anu still had some distance left to close before he reached myth. But Melde had no intention of waiting any longer. Black Dragon Anu burst up out of the earth, and the ground shuddered for dozens of miles in every direction.

He raised his head, and there, standing at the very edge of the clouds, was Melde. Anuʼs eyes changed at once. ”It is you...”

And at that very moment, in the city far below at the mountainʼs foot, crowds of people were likewise craning their heads back, staring up at the black dragon at the mountainʼs heart.

”Hey, do you see that?” People pointed off into the distance, each of them seized with panic.

”Itʼs a giant dragon. It really is the Dragon God, heʼs real...” For generation after generation they had lived here for thousands of years, and only now, for the first time, did they learn that a black dragon like this had lain sleeping right beside them all along.

”Get up, get up!” Someone came to their senses, and rushed home in a hurry, calling out to family and friends, fleeing together toward the edge of the city.

Everyone sensed that something was terribly wrong, a feeling that disaster was about to fall upon them. The people of the city tried to flee, but it was already too late.

The Death Demon Plague erupted from within their very bodies, spreading through the whole city, and countless people fell writhing in agony, dying in despair.

And as some of the dragon people among them died, their power flowed on in an endless stream, converging upon Anu.

Anu, only just woken, watched this whole scene unfold, and at last understood exactly where that power rushing so quickly toward him had come from.

Because at this very moment, plague was spreading across the entire world, and dragon people were dying in droves. Once they died, their power naturally returned to Anu.

The black dragon looked up at the ”Black-Winged Goddess” in the sky, and demanded of her in a voice sharp with fury. ”What are you doing?”

At the same time, Black Dragon Anu searched for the cause himself. ”The ritual!”

”Something has gone wrong with the ritual?”

Anu broke off the ritual at once, trying to refuse the power still surging endlessly into his own body. Power was a fine thing to have, but power gained this way was tainted.

But Anu had no way of knowing that the ritual had already gone wrong thousands of years before, and that the ritual was not the only thing that had.

Melde floated there in the open sky, looking down at the black dragon within the mountain below, and spoke. ”Anu!”

”It is time to become myth.”

Melde dropped from the sky, and hurtled straight toward Anu.

”You creature, what exactly are you doing?” Black Dragon Anu was utterly bewildered. He could not tell whether the creature before him meant to help him, or to destroy him.

She had delivered power right into his hands, and yet had also unleashed the Death Demon Plague on a massive scale, killing more dragon people than could be counted.

But seeing his old enemy come diving down out of the sky, the black dragon was hardly one to back away. He unfurled his divine power field, and surged forward to meet her head-on.

Black rain fell from the sky, and dragon fire surged up out of the earth.

But the King of Lust offered not the slightest resistance, letting the black dragon strike her down as he pleased. She seemed to fling herself straight into the dragon fire itself, melting away within it.

Yet Black Dragon Anu did not for one moment believe she had truly died like that. He froze at once, and looked warily all around him.

And just then, a voice echoed within his own mind. ”Anu!”

”Hand your power over to me!”

In that very instant, Black Dragon Anu realized in horror that she seemed to have appeared inside him, speaking directly within his own consciousness. A portion of the power within the devil dragonʼs body already belonged to Melde.

Anu had never seen a method like this in all his life. Even Dark Moon himself had never witnessed a technique that could drag a being walking the path of a demigod down into the standing of a mere mythical artifact.

Only a being who had grasped the reincarnation method to its very depths, who understood the distinction between the road to myth and the gulf between demigod and myth to a degree beyond imagining, could have found a demigodʼs weakness with such precision.

Melde seemed to appear right behind Anu, her grip closing like iron around his throat. That signature voice of hers surfaced once more, cold and lofty beyond measure.

”Anu, your magic crystal is no different from a sky messengerʼs crystal stone. Both spring from the Authority of Spirituality, both spring from the power of the Lord of Radiance!”

”How fitting. Let you and your magic crystal both become my angel staff!”

But Melde had long since forgotten that she was no longer the Lord of Radianceʼs sky messenger at all, that even the Lord of Radiance himself was no longer the Lord of Radiance.

She was nothing now but a fallen angel dwelling within the dark Abyss, keeping company with black mud and monsters. Her angel staff, by rights, ought to be called a fallen angelʼs staff instead.

Anu whipped his head around, but saw no trace of Melde anywhere.

Because her shadow, at that very moment, was inside his own body, wrestling with him for mastery over this black dragon flesh.

”So it was me you were after all along!”

Anuʼs experience and his tactics fell short of Meldeʼs own, but he was no fool. He might not know just what method she had used, yet he understood her purpose well enough.

”You mean to seize my power, to use me to become myth?”

Black Dragon Anu twisted his head and snarled at the emptiness around him. There was no shadow anywhere in sight, and he looked, for all the world, as though he were talking only to himself.

”Do not even think it. You will not succeed...”

Black Dragon Anu fought back with all his violent might, willing even to fling the power out of his own body rather than let her have it. But at that very moment, Meldeʼs voice rose up again.

”You still mean to resist?”

”So much mingled divine blood pours into your body, and still your mind holds its clarity. It seems the Path of Wisdom truly does hold some special method for keeping oneʼs reason intact while becoming a mythical artifact.” ”No matter. Your power, and that method besides, will be mine soon enough.”

Melde felt no urgency at all. Matters had already come this far. He could no longer slip free of her grasp.

Even more than that, as her corruption crept steadily onward, she found herself able to command a portion of Anuʼs own body. And so Melde set the ritual in motion once more, letting Anuʼs black dragon flesh drink in power all over again.

”Do not resist, little lizard.”

An endless stream of power came pouring in from every direction, sinking into the black dragonʼs own body.

But the black dragon wanted none of this power. He fought Melde for control over his own body, driving the power inside himself back out again and again.

The black dragon beat his wings again and again, hurtling up toward the sky, desperate to escape this place. ”Disperse!”

”Scatter, all of it.”

One flowing in, one flowing out. For a moment it seemed some kind of balance held.

But Melde told Anu in a voice cold as ice. ”It is no use. We have already come this far. I have material without end to corrupt you with.”

Having said it, Melde raised her hand.

Terrible black smoke gathered in from every direction, converging on the black dragon. The Death Demon Plague erupted in full, and spread without restraint.

Radiating outward from wherever Melde and the black dragon happened to be, the plague spread rapidly through the land around them, swallowing up every living lizard person and dragon person alike.

And it was not only the dragon people who died. Countless Abyss priests died along with them.

At this very moment, Melde delivered the power of her own Abyss priests, freely and without charge, to the black dragon as well.

This was the very ”material” she had spoken of.

One could see great rolling clouds of black smoke sweeping in across the land, pouring into the black dragonʼs own body.

And though the black dragon had broken free of the altar and beat his wings up into the open sky, everything still remained firmly within Meldeʼs control.

He seemed to fly without any aim at all, and would even lash out against himself from time to time, like something driven mad.

But everywhere the black dragon passed, every city and village he flew over turned into a realm of death. The power of every ability user who died there converged upon the black dragon without end, and sank into his own body.

And through this same process, Melde steadily eroded and polluted this black dragon body, polluted the black dragonʼs own power, until little by little she began to feel his very emotions.

As more days passed, she could even hear his innermost voice. She had already come to know exactly what he was thinking.

Soon, she would be able to seize and absorb everything that was his. Every scrap of knowledge he held, every ounce of his mythical power.

Roar!

The black dragon swept across the sky, his eyes fixed on the cities and villages below, watching them fall to ruin one after another because of him.

He watched countless believers who worshipped him, Abyss cultists who hated him, every lizard person without exception, perish alike in the plague.

A roar of pure agony tore from his throat.

Deep within himself, Black Dragon Anu fought on and on against the King of Lust. It was a war between consciousness and desire, and it was the most terrible, most merciless war of all.

Whoever lost would lose everything.

His body grew stronger and stronger, drawing ever nearer to becoming a divine being. That black dragon body of his grew ever more massive as well, ever more perfect.

Even as he devoured the power of these lizard peopleʼs own Abyss priests, he gained authority over the plague itself, a power formidable beyond measure.

And yet Anu felt himself sinking deeper and deeper into despair.

Because his own mind grew weaker with every passing moment, and he kept losing his grip on control over this very body.

The black dragon cut straight across the entire Void Continent, and together they swept over kingdom after kingdom like some calamity of death given form. Months later, after wandering in circles, they found their way back to the Black Horn Province.

This place had already crumbled into ruin, not a single living soul left in sight anywhere. Everyone here had died in the pestilence the Death Demon Plague had unleashed.

Black Dragon Anuʼs shadow swept on toward the distance, making for a city.

After so many days without laying eyes on more than a handful of the living, he finally spotted a single figure here, standing atop a high tower, gazing far off at the black dragonʼs shadow.

That lizard person looked like nothing more than a soulless walking corpse, shoulders slumped, staring blankly up at the sky with lifeless eyes.

A few months before, the mortal atop that tower had watched the Black-Winged Goddess bring down her divine punishment, had watched every soul in the kingdom die one after another in the plague.

A few months later, they saw the legendary Dragon God himself, come bearing black mist and calamity in his wake. They watched that giant dragon, vast as a mountain range, come bearing black mist across the whole sky.

The mortal climbed up onto the wall in one motion, and stood there shouting down. ”The end... has come!”

This surviving mortal had gone entirely mad, and burst into laughter. ”This is what a god is!”

”This is what a god is...”

”Hahahahaha...”

Before the black dragon, still trailing his black mist, could even arrive, the mortal simply threw themself from the tower. It had already been a month since they had last laid eyes on another living soul.

They believed they might well be the very last lizard person left alive in this world, and besides, they had caught the sickness themself only a few days before. There was no longer any meaning left in going on living.

And in truth, that was more or less so.

Even if they were not truly the last, they were one of the very last lizard people remaining, and the few who were left were destined to perish in the Death Demon Plague all the same.

And Anu watched that shadow leap from the high tower, and crash down hard upon the ground below.

Though he could not hear the sound of the body striking the earth, something inside Black Dragon Anuʼs chest gave a sudden, sickening lurch. In that instant, his heart turned to ash.

Thousands of years of obsession, an unrelenting fixation on becoming a god, and in the end it had all come to nothing at all.

The black dragon beat his wings in a daze, flying on over the Black Horn Province, off toward the distant sea.

And in that very instant when the black dragonʼs heart turned to ash, a surge of power finally forced open the locked gate of his memory, and drew out from within it the very thing she had come for.

The King of Lust, Melde, spoke the name. ”The Four-Part Secret Technique of Godʼs Grace. So this is it.” Meldeʼs voice brimmed over with delight and satisfaction.

She savored the feeling.

Because now, at long last, she could seize every last thing that belonged to Black Dragon Anu.

Melde, who had hidden inside Anuʼs own body all this while, revealed herself all at once, taking shape as a beam of black light. At last it grew into a tree formed of Spirituality, Wisdom, Desire, and Knowledge combined.

”The Path of Wisdom.” ”The tree that leads to eternal life.”

”The most perfect, most sacred pattern in this entire world.”

Where the black dragon knew only despair, Melde felt nothing but cold, and something like happiness. She was forever lost within desire, and seemed not to know what pain even was.

In truth, even pain itself could be transformed, for her, into pleasure and joy.

Melde moved through the final step. Once it was complete, she would possess everything that was Anuʼs, and could refine him into her own fallen angelʼs staff at last.

But just then, Anu, who had shown no sign of movement for months, who had seemed to have given up all resistance with a heart gone utterly cold, suddenly stirred.

”Become a god?”

”A creature like you means to become a god as well?” ”You shall never have it...”

Black Dragon Anu, too, suddenly conjured the pattern of the Path of Wisdom, and it twisted together with Meldeʼs own. From the very moment she had first made her move, he had known he had already lost. He had lain low for days on end, waiting all along for this one day.

This was his only chance.

Melde had corrupted his power with a method he had never known. Now Anu, in turn, used the Four-Part Secret Technique of Godʼs Grace, unfamiliar to Melde herself, to hold her back the very same way.

It had happened without warning, but Melde did not panic.

She put the question to Anu. ”What more do you think to do? You mean to stop me, just like this?”

”What manner of method do you call this? You have only dragged me along with you and jammed me fast in the final part.”

”You mean to be jammed fast with me forever in the sea of consciousness, to sink into darkness at my side for all eternity? Have you the courage for that?”

Meldeʼs cold voice was thick with mockery.

”You cowardly lizard.”

”Your will is so feeble. I need only outlast it, wear it down until you can hold out no longer.”

”And then I shall become myth, easily enough.”

Anu spoke, hatred blazing through every word. ”That is so. I shall simply wait here in the darkness together with you?” ”Are you certain you can win? Are you not afraid of the erosion of the years?”

”Are you not afraid that I outlast you instead, that I wear your own will away to nothing, and everything ends up mine after all?”

Melde answered, ”These thousands of years I have looked down upon the mortal world from within the darkness, the whole while. Have you ever once seen me change?”

”Long before I ever came to this world, I had already lived for a very long time, little lizard.”

”I am not like you.”

The King of Lust proclaimed her own difference to Black Dragon Anu, her voice flat and remote, her bearing lofty and distant. Anu answered her. ”Yes. Across all these thousands of years, why has the assault of time never once touched you?”

The black dragon felt a flicker of confusion. He could not understand why she seemed to fear the erosion of time not at all, why she had not changed in the slightest across those thousands of years.

She seemed to possess a heart forged of pure steel, cruel and cold enough to make oneʼs hair stand on end. Melde told Anu, ”Because I am the sin of desire itself.”

”I do not control it. I drown in it. I revel in it.” ”Because I am the original sin itself!”

Unlike the King of Wrath, who suppressed his own desires and mastered his own wrath and original sin, the King of Lust, Melde, had never suppressed her desire at all. Yet she was not controlled by it either. She had merged with desire completely.

She was lost within desire, and desire had become one with her. She herself was desire made flesh.

And it was for exactly this reason that she had become the very first to fall within the Abyss, the very first Abyss King. It was not the God of Original Sin, Xiao, who had forged the Abyss and original sin.

It was her.

Melde looked at Anu with a gaze cold as ice.

”Then let me show you exactly how I shall defeat you here in the darkness, standing above the reach of the years themselves.” ”You have already lost.”

”The only question is whether you lose now, or lose later.”

The black dragon let out a roar, a sound thick with despair and hatred, and with the one obsession left over once every dream had been shattered.

”Then let us try it. We shall see whether your desire, which nothing ever wears away, lasts the longer, or whether the resentment and obsession in my heart hold the firmer.”

Black Dragon Anu hated Melde beyond all measure. He no longer wished to trade so much as another word with this madwoman. He only dragged her down with him, together, into the darkness.

In this final moment, only the faintest thread of consciousness remained to Black Dragon Anu.

He was about to fall, together with Melde, into a seal, bound forever within his own magic crystal and his own body. The black dragon flew on over the Void Continent, out toward the sea.

In that very last moment, he turned his head and cast one final glance back at the Void Continent.

Anu spoke in a voice trembling with a grief beyond any words. ”I never imagined... that it would end like this.”

Anu had wanted to save this world from the grip of the Death Demon Plague, and in the end he had only borne witness to the lizard peopleʼs own extinction. However he turned it over in his mind, he could never have imagined an outcome like this.

In his battle against Melde, Black Dragon Anu had become fused with the Death Demon Plague, and had killed every lizard person there was. Because of one great war fought over a single divine throne, the lizard people had fallen, just like that, into total extinction.

The two patterns of the Path of Wisdom, locked together in their struggle, sank slowly down into the magic crystal within the black dragonʼs own body. In the end, the black dragon fell from the sky, and plunged into the sea below.

No one could say how much time passed. The black dragonʼs body slowly rotted away, and out of the sea was born a magical beast that made its home in the water, a new kind of lesser dragon.

But one black crystal stone endured forever, buried deep beneath the sea. And within the year that followed, the last lizard person alive died in utter despair. From that day, the lizard people declared their final exit from the stage of history upon the Void Continent. Civilization dissolved away, and all that remained was a field of ruin.

And even those ruins, veiled slowly beneath grass and growing trees, faded away in time, until nothing of them remained at all.

Upon the Void Continent, no one could say how many years had passed.

This world now held nothing but animals and magical beasts, with not the faintest breath of civilization left to see. The ruins of the lizard people, too, were slowly erased by the passing years, leaving behind only scattered traces here and there to prove they had ever existed at all.

Across the continent the lesser dragons reigned as apex predators, running down their prey over that vast and empty land. Then, all at once, a passage opened in the sky above.

The clouds tore open, and at the very edge of the darkness appeared a colossal totem pillar, radiant with light.

The light fell, and upon the earth below, a single magical beast slowly took on human form. A myth had set foot at last upon this land.

Having endured through long ages of waiting, relying on the endless reincarnation of one generation of magical beasts after another, Dark Moon had at last ascended to the standing of myth in this world, upon the Void Continent.

Across the vast and desolate land, Dark Moon walked through the jungle, and deep within the forest he could see only the scattered, meager remains of a civilization long since gone.

He had never once witnessed a sight like this before. He had lived through the extinction of an entire race, had watched a civilization rise at the dawn of its years and come to its very end.

As Dark Moon walked on through this place, a thought turned over in his mind.

”If I had handed Anu the road of the beast knight at the very start, would none of this have happened?” He had watched the lizard people vanish from the world.

And the whole origin of it, the very start of it all, might have come down to nothing more than this. He had left out a portion of his own knowledge.

Dark Moon stood atop the ruins of the city, and sat himself down upon the single stone still left on the ground, shaking his head without meaning to. ”I never imagined... that one small mistake could grow into all of this?”

After a moment, Dark Moon shook his head again, and spoke.

”This was only one factor among many. Some things are fated to happen, and nothing can stand in their way.” ”All we do is push things along.”

”We did not create history and fate. We exist within them. We are only a part of history and fate.”

Dark Moon made his way out over the sea, and drew up a single stone from the depths of the ocean floor.

He saw what lay within it. The two Path of Wisdom patterns, still locked together, sunk deep in darkness and lost in a sea of memory.

Dark Moon had no idea where he might even begin.

And besides, Dark Moon could not simply release them either. Freeing Black Dragon Anu would mean freeing Melde as well.

After looking it over a while, Dark Moon let the matter be.

After all, once it had all run its course, Anu would naturally remember everything on his own, and his own purposes would already be entirely fulfilled.

Out over the sea, Dark Moon held the black dragonʼs magic crystal in his hand.

He found himself remembering the hundred years, back when he had only just arrived in this world, when he had taken the shape of a wind lizard dragon and kept Anu company.

Back then, still new to this world, the two of them had sat around a campfire watching the lizard people in the distance, savage as beasts. And this same lizard person, earnest and single-minded, had taken up a pen and written upon the ground.

”First, I will gather every scrap of information there is about the Death Demon Plague.”

”Second, using the deductive power of the god of Ruhe, I will refine the beast knightʼs strength to its fullest, find the beast knightʼs road to becoming an apostle, or a road even higher than that. We will conjure a totem spirit of holy-beast rank, or something greater still.”

”Third, this experiment spans an immense length of time, and I must find some way to hold onto my own will, so that I never lose myself within the experiment along the way.”

Through all the changing years, everything he had once wanted to gain seemed, at last, to have been gained. Dark Moon looked at the magic crystal, and spoke to it.

”Anu, every goal you set for yourself has already been achieved.”

”All that is left is to wait. To wait out the end of everything from inside a stone. Were you not more than a little envious of me for that very thing, once?”

”Now, you can do the same.”

Dark Moon let the stone go, and cast it back into the sea once more. He set foot on land again, and a question rose unbidden in his mind.

”Surely it should all be over now?”

”Every lizard person alive has gone extinct. Is that not the end of it?”

Dark Moon walked across the continent in the form of his seal puppet, searching everywhere for an answer. At last, deep within a stretch of forest, he found the dragon people.

The lizard people were gone, but in this world, new dragon people were still being born, one after another. Most of them came by pure chance out of the eggs of lesser dragons, inheriting the black dragonʼs own power of mimicry.

Yet though these dragon people possessed wisdom of their own, they existed only in tiny, scattered numbers. The largest groups ran to a few dozen. The smallest held only a handful.

Numbers this small could never form a civilization of their own, and so they looked, for all practical purposes, little different from ordinary magical beasts.

Dark Moon had finally found the reason the Voidʼs Mold Mother had never brought this whole evolution to its end. Evolution demanded that a species change and transform, demanded that new species be born, and all of that, it seemed, now rested on the shoulders of the dragon people.

”It is the dragon people!”

”So the Voidʼs Mold Motherʼs task was never finished after all.”

Anu had been unable to complete the Voidʼs Mold Motherʼs task. Very well, then. Dark Moon would carry it forward himself.

The gate in the sky opened once again, and a tremendous power flowed down out of the Dream Realm into the mortal world.

Dark Moon called once more upon the power of the Divine Artifact, the Totem Pillar, to help this world bring forth more dragon people still. In the time that followed, he remained upon that land for close to a hundred years.

He guided these dragon people to gather together, and out of them rose the most primitive of tribes.

But that was as far as it went. Dragon people were, after all, an extraordinary species, and asking a form of life like this to breed a civilization anything like the lizard peopleʼs own was simply asking too much.

Dark Moon himself had no idea where this world would go from here. This much was all he could do. Yet watching those dragon tribes, he felt he was looking at a spark catching flame across this very land. ”A new civilization, a new race, will play itself out once more upon this earth.”

Dark Moon looked back, turning his gaze to the chart of lifeʼs evolution etched upon that totem pillar within the Dream Realm. There, at the very peak of its pyramid, he saw the ancestral fish.

Once, when he had heard the lizard person Anu claim that everything had begun with a single fish created by the Life Sovereign, he had scarcely believed it. But now, however faintly, he found he believed it after all.

Perhaps, long, long ago, they truly had all come from a single fish, and every wild beast that ever crawled upon the land shared that same one ancestor.

Because he himself had left out only one small piece of information, and it had been enough to destroy an entire civilization.

So the thought that a single fish, born hundreds of millions of years before, could be the ancestor of every beast in this whole world, no longer seemed so strange to him after all.

The power of the years was simply too immense, immense beyond all reckoning. Dark Moon raised his head to the sky, and could not help but speak.

”This is the power of the years.” ”Or is it the power of fate?”

”Hundreds of millions of years ago, a sovereign god made a single fish. Hundreds of millions of years later, that fish became us.” ”Our present was fated from that moment.”

”And any single thing we do now may set off some unforeseeable event far in the future, and shape the fates of countless lives to come.”

Once all of this was done, Dark Moon returned once more to the Dream Realm, and sank back into slumber. Upon the Void Continent, everything went on, exactly as before.

Ten thousand years passed. Tens of thousands of years, then a hundred thousand, then several hundred thousand years more.

The dragon peopleʼs numbers held steady the whole while, never once growing larger, and their civilization remained frozen, because of it, at its most primitive stage.

Until one day, all at once, something changed within a single tribe of dragon people. From inside one egg an entirely new kind of hatchling was born.

This hatchling, astonishingly, was born with no extraordinary power at all, no magic crystal of its own.

And yet, without a magic crystal, this dragon hatchling had not lost its power of mimicry and reverted to a lizardʼs shape. It kept the dragon personʼs own form still.

Waah!

The infant let out a soft, whimpering cry, gazing out at the world beyond as it drew its very first breath of air.

From this day forward, an entirely new species template was born.

The dragon people no longer needed to pass through any mimicry transformation at all. They could now carry on and multiply directly through bloodline alone. From this day, the form and the blood of a dragon person were truly and entirely their own.

Yet the dragon people born this way still differed somewhat in appearance from the mimicked dragon people of before. Patches of scale still covered parts of their bodies, and the organs within them differed a great deal as well.

When they opened their mouths, one could see the teeth inside were sharp and pointed.

It was just like the brown ball vine, once before. Kurmis had used the power of mimicry to pinpoint the brown ball vine, and then used the power of the Eye of Mutation to catalyze it.

But what emerged in the end still differed somewhat from what had first been imagined. Evolution, after all, could never unfold exactly according to the mimicked shape alone.

Still, the birth of this wholly new kind of dragon person threw the entire tribe into wild celebration. They lifted the young hatchling high, and roared around the fire together.

Roar!

It seemed they too understood that, from this day forward, their race had entered an entirely new age, an entirely new chapter. The lizard people had gone extinct, but the dragon people carried on.

The story of wisdom went on being told and sung, only now a new chapter had taken the old storyʼs place.