Chapter 44 - One thousand years of solitude

Chapter 44: Chapter 44 - One thousand years of solitude PoV: Cailleach I used to think I was the luckiest person in the whole world. ::: I never had any memories of the life I had before she saved me. 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 time. I was roaming the countryside, eating anything and everything in my path, when I met her. She beat me completely and utterly. It was my first time knowing defeat, if the records of humans are to be trusted. And, more importantly, her mana was delicious and powerful. It satiated me in a way that made my hunger disappear. For the first time 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 me to join her. She promised to feed me with her mana while I was with her and taught me how to assume a human form. We traveled together and fought many battles together, side by side. Over time, our connection became more and more intimate. She taught me so many things about her original world, and I was always eager to learn more. There was something in her world that was called video games. They sounded very impressive and fantastic, and I loved to hear about them, mostly because of the passionate way she would talk at those moments. The fire in her eyes when talking about video games was unmatched by anything. Her face was then the brightest and most beautiful thing in all of the worlds that existed or could come to exist. And I was hers. Those were days of glory in the battlefield and happiness in our little home 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 me 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 me 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 environments whose elements were aligned with themselves. And at that moment I had the power to also funnel the environmental 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 implement it following her ideas. It was completely based on those games 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 me. And I had no problem with that. I wanted to turn this world into the biggest video game 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 games. So I gave my all to that task. A globe-spanning magical tapestry that constantly fed energy from the environment 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 moment I noticed the first red flag. She publicly ditched her old name 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 time 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 me realize something was amiss. She ordered the collective enslavement of the nonhuman population of the regions her army conquered. That night we had our first falling out. Our very first real argument. 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 me to go for a walk with her. She told me 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 me in the back. Literally. She knew that one stab like that wouldn’t kill me, and that wasn’t her intention. For the knife she used to stab me 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 environmental energy and then locked me inside. Her last words to me 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 awesome woman one could ever dream of. And that woman betrayed me. ::: The following centuries are a blur of hatred and hunger, similar to the one I had before meeting 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 environment. And only now do I notice that at some point along the way, I had reverted to my original form. And, somehow, I am lucid enough to remember those things now. What happened? I don’t feel hunger anymore. Actually, I’m munching on something 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.