I am God LSLCCF

Black Dragon Anu opened his jaws, and terrible flame poured out from within.

Wind and fire twisted together, and became a whirling column of flame.

Whoosh!

Such was the harvest of this round of mimicry.

Inside the black dragonʼs neck a strange organ had grown, one that could secrete a substance like black oil.

There was no telling which of his lizard person ancestors this power had once belonged to, but strengthened by mimicry and wisdom ability alike, it let the black dragon command and breathe a strange dragon fire.

Black Dragon Anu let out a satisfied sound, his wings flashing in the sky.

”Very good!”

”This is the power of dragon fire.”

He tested it. Rain came down out of the sky, and the flame did not so much as waver.

”Not even afraid of water. Rain cannot put it out.”

He did not rush into the next round. Mimicry was not something that could be used without limit.

Every time it was used, the mimicry information inside the magic crystal shifted, and more was written into it.

It would take on an entirely new face and form, and gain some new innate ability of its own.

In a certain sense, every round of mimicry amounted to a rebirth.

He decided to hold off, and use his next round of mimicry only when he reincarnated through the Four-Part Secret Technique a hundred years from now.

That way he could also see, a hundred years on, whether the totem pillarʼs consciousness had woken again.

Once he had become a black giant dragon, Anu could not wait to begin another ritual.

”Ritual of Godʼs Form!”

”By this ritual, I can take on the shape of an apostle.”

Standing atop the ritualʼs stone altar, Anu went from black dragon to man, stark naked, though not quite the legendary Godʼs Form. A dragonʼs tail trailed behind him.

But having taken on the shape of Godʼs Form, Anu found himself far from pleased.

He looked at his own reflection in the water, and made a sound of confusion.

Never had he imagined that the Godʼs Form he had waited so long for would turn out to look like this.

”What kind of monster is this?”

Much as he disliked it, this form did suit him well enough for everyday use, since the black dragonʼs body was simply too enormous for that.

Well satisfied, Anu set off flying toward home. He had power now, and the next step was to go change his own homeland.

But when Anu came back to his home village, he found every last member of his tribe already dead.

Black Dragon Anu looked over the ruined, silent village, the unburied bones scattered about, the wilderness overrun with beasts, and turned his gaze toward the horizon.

”The calamity of the Death Demon Plague!”

Time slipped by, and a thousand years passed.

The totem pillarʼs consciousness woke again at last.

And the black dragon curled beside the pillar, his bulk like a small mountain, lifted his head and made a sound.

”You are awake at last.”

The Flying Dragon Mountains of old had become the Devil Dragon Mountains, and every manner of dragon beast now roamed within them.

Across that thousand years, Anu had gone through mimicry eleven times.

His black dragon form had changed enormously, too. Horns had grown from his head, a strange jaw had grown in, armor like solid steel had grown over him, and organs of every strange kind had grown inside his body.

His form grew steadily more perfect, his power steadily greater, and he held more than a dozen fourth-rank innate divine techniques.

Along with his rounds of mimicry, the divine artifact, the Ancestor Totem Pillar, gained eleven new kinds of magical beast of its own. Because they all sprang from a lizard bloodline, they came to be called lesser dragons.

Hum~

Waves of light rippled outward without pause, spreading to cover nearly half the mountain range.

A tremendous force killed the magical beasts throughout the mountain range, and the power inside their magic crystals was drawn out and folded into the totem pillar.

Countless magical beasts were devoured by the totem pillarʼs spirit. A thousand years of waiting, a thousand years of gathering strength, harvested in a single instant.

But even that was not enough. It fell far, far short of what he needed to rise to a mythical artifact.

Then, the totem pillarʼs consciousness stirred fully awake.

The totem pillarʼs spirit looked around. Nothing here seemed to have changed much. It was still the same quiet valley, thick with green growth.

Only now a black giant dragon lay curled beside the pillar, watching him.