I am God LSLCCF

Black Dragon Anu told him, ”Because the Death Demon Plague has become a kind of extraordinary power now. Every extraordinary being on this continent commands the plague to work all manner of divine techniques.”

”They no longer fear the plague at all. Some of them even treat it as a divine beingʼs own gift.”

”And these extraordinary beings who wield the plagueʼs power call themselves Abyss priests.”

The totem pillarʼs spirit went entirely still. ”Abyss priests?”

Never had the totem pillarʼs spirit expected to hear that name spoken in this world of all places.

Black Dragon Anu went on, ”The Death Demon Plague is not merely a sickness. It is alive. I can feel it, and behind it stands something tremendously powerful.”

The moment the totem pillarʼs spirit heard the name Abyss priest, he already had some inkling of who stood behind it.

”Then have you found that being?”

Black Dragon Anu said, ”I never did. It is as though she does not exist at all, or else she is everywhere at once.”

”But I can feel her growing stronger all the time. This plague itself keeps changing.”

”She is devouring this whole world through the Death Demon Plague.”

”How could the young man I once was ever have tolerated something like that?”

”This creature had already used the plague to kill my family, to kill my people, and now she meant to use it to enslave every lizard person alive.”

”So I fought her. I tried everything I could think of to destroy her, to save everyone from her hands.”

”Every time our powers clashed, I came out the worse for it.”

”There was nothing I could do to touch her. We fought more than once, and I never even laid eyes on her true face.”

”Her very existence, her very form, was too strange for words.”

”It was as though she belonged to some other world entirely.”

As he spoke, Black Dragon Anuʼs words stayed flat, carrying not a trace of feeling.

Nothing like the young man he had once been, the one his own words described.

The totem pillarʼs consciousness asked, ”So the beast knights we planned for never came to be, and the Death Demon Plague took hold of this world instead?”

Black Dragon Anu nodded, and went on to tell what happened next.

”Time and again I fought the plagueʼs master, and time and again I lost, until everyone began turning their backs on me, even hating me for it.”

”I lost to more than just the Death Demon Plague. I lost to every soul on this continent too.”

”Because little by little, things reversed and changed. The Death Demon Plague was no longer the problem. I was.”

”The Death Demon Plague brought power. What I brought was death, was disaster.”

”Until the day came when I realized that every nation on this continent, every lizard person alive, was doing everything in its power to kill me.”

”They meant, in their lordʼs name, to kill me, the evil black dragon, and to kill every lesser dragon that served under me.”

Somewhere in the telling, Black Dragon Anu began, unexpectedly, to laugh.

But that laughter was filled with bitterness, sorrow, helplessness, and the weight of years.

”You know something?”

”This mountain range and forest where you and I live, they call it the Devil Dragon Mountains now, the most terrible and darkest stretch of land on the whole Void Continent.”

”They know nothing of any lizard person named Anu. All they know is that the most terrible black dragon on the whole continent lives here, a dragon of calamity that brings ruin and death.”

Black Dragon Anu looked at the totem pillarʼs consciousness, head raised high, and said, ”So. I have disappointed you.”

”I never became any king of the lizard people. I never became their savior.”

”I became the devil dragon in their eyes.”

Black Dragon Anuʼs massive body rose just slightly, and the whole valley and forest fell into shadow.

That terrible giant dragon fixed him with a gaze dark enough to chill the blood, and in a voice that crept beneath the skin, spoke a single line. ”I am Devil Dragon Anu!”

In those few words lay all the misery and bitterness of a thousand years, gathered up and pressed together.

The totem pillarʼs consciousness took that in. ”So in the end, we became the greatest villains of all?”

Black Dragon Anu nodded. ”I gave everything I had to help everyone. I wanted to save them from disaster. I wanted to bring them happiness.”

”And in the end, I became the one everyone saw as the bringer of calamity.”

”In their eyes I am nothing but a black dragon, nothing but the black dragon that brought them ruin.”