PoV: Cailleach
I used to think I was the luckiest person in the whole world.
:::
I never had any mories of the life I had before she saved . It was mostly just a blur of constant hunger and constant eating.
I don’t know when I was born, but I know exactly when I received a chance to be born a second ti.
I was roaming the countryside, eating anything and everything in my path, when I t her.
She beat completely and utterly. It was my first ti knowing defeat, if the records of humans are to be trusted.
And, more importantly, her mana was delicious and powerful. It satiated in a way that made my hunger disappear. For the first ti in my whole life, I was lucid.
She was the hero summoned to help the humans win their endless war against the dragonkind, and she asked to join her.
She promised to feed with her mana while I was with her and taught how to assu a human form.
We traveled together and fought many battles together, side by side.
Over ti, our connection beca more and more intimate. She taught so many things about her original world, and I was always eager to learn more.
There was sothing in her world that was called video gas. They sounded very impressive and fantastic, and I loved to hear about them, mostly because of the passionate way she would talk at those monts.
The fire in her eyes when talking about video gas was unmatched by anything. Her face was then the brightest and most beautiful thing in all of the worlds that existed or could co to exist.
And I was hers.
Those were days of glory in the battlefield and happiness in our little ho where we lived together.
We never married officially. She always said that it wasn’t necessary and that she didn’t like ceremonies. To which I acquiesced.
But we were still, in fact, a proper married couple. Or, at least, that was what I used to think about us.
Everything about her was perfect. And I devoted myself to making her happy every single day.
:::
As a monster-type person who feeds mostly on mana, my sensitivity to the flux of all kinds of magical energy was powerful and refined.
No being in this world could rival in perceiving and manipulating magical energy. Not even the Superior Dragons, who had a status equivalent to deities in this world.
That was why, under her guidance, I dedicated myself to figuring out the source of their power and a way to harness that power for the humans.
It took years of effort, and the war wasn’t going well for the humans, until one day I discovered it.
They were harnessing the energy of the environnts whose elents were aligned with themselves.
And at that mont I had the power to also funnel the environntal mana in any way I wanted.
When I told her this, she was over the moon. Now humanity would have a fighting chance.
I never cared at all about the consequences the indiscriminate and constant funnelling of energy had on the world.
After all, nothing else mattered besides her happiness.
If destroying the whole world would make her happy, I would have destroyed it for her.
How stupid I was... How naïve.
:::
We worked together for another whole year.
She designed the adventuring system, and I was to implent it following her ideas. It was completely based on those gas she often talked about.
She didn’t have the power to funnel the energy of the world to power the system herself, so that task fell upon .
And I had no problem with that. I wanted to turn this world into the biggest video ga possible, one she would never get tired of playing.
After all, my biggest fear was that she would want to go back to her world to keep playing those gas.
So I gave my all to that task.
A globe-spanning magical tapestry that constantly fed energy from the environnt into the system.
We created monsters and their spawn and level experience system. We created the guild, the job system, the stat-boosting attributes, and the skills.
Everything so the humans could get a general power-up in the war.
And that was the way we won it. The dragonkin never stood a chance against the humans now empowered by the system.
And that was the mont I noticed the first red flag.
She publicly ditched her old na and adopted a new one, Juno. And then she created a church around it, in which she would be worshipped like a literal goddess.
At the ti I didn’t mind. After all, I was very happy to worship her myself.
Though I was a bit jealous, yeah, if I’m honest to myself.
It was only the second red flag that made realize sothing was amiss.
She ordered the collective enslavent of the nonhuman population of the regions her army conquered.
That night we had our first falling out. Our very first real argunt.
And she said it to my face.
"Demi-humans have no right to be treated like people."
"What am I to you, then?"
She didn’t answer, her face inscrutable and cold.
:::
A couple of weeks later, she asked to go for a walk with her. She told she wanted to apologize for the other day.
Stupid as I am, I did go with her.
She said that she had created a place to celebrate our love as an apology gift.
This underground sanctum.
I walked in, not suspecting a thing.
And when I noticed, she stabbed in the back. Literally.
She knew that one stab like that wouldn’t kill , and that wasn’t her intention.
For the knife she used to stab was a special one. A knife I had designed myself and asked the best dwarven artisans to craft.
A knife capable of stealing one power of the victim and storing that power in itself.
She took the power of channeling environntal energy and then locked inside.
Her last words to hurt more than any knife could ever accomplish.
"You were never more than an useful pet."
:::
I used to think that I was the luckiest person in the whole world.
That I was married to the most aweso woman one could ever dream of.
And that woman betrayed .
:::
The following centuries are a blur of hatred and hunger, similar to the one I had before eting her. The only difference being that the hatred is now as powerful as the hunger.
I don’t know for how long I’ve been here, without a single ounce of mana to feed on and without my power to channel the energy from the environnt.
And only now do I notice that at so point along the way, I had reverted to my original form.
And, sohow, I am lucid enough to rember those things now.
What happened? I don’t feel hunger anymore.
Actually, I’m munching on sothing with a very tasty mana...
Oh.
OOOOOOOOH!
WHAAAAAT???
I’m feeding on a child????
What the hell am I doing?
I feel a sudden burst of mana around her neck, and a pendant-like thing seems to snap apart.
She’s in danger.
What did I do???
No no no no no no no no no...
I quickly revert to human form and cast my most powerful healing on her.
I need to save this girl. Even if I spend all my remaining energy doing so.
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