Interlude: Beast God
First, by the time I recognized my “self” as an individual, all the humans around me were worshipping “me.”
If there was a bountiful harvest, the villagers would exalt “me,” and if it rained, they would sob and praise “me” as a god.
Beast God worship. A custom rooted in the villages of that entire area—no, a “malpractice”—where a specific beast was worshipped as an existing god rather than a concept.
Because lifespans varied by species, the period for worshipping the same Beast God was fixed at three years.
For three years after I was born, I was truly a god.
However, three years. At that cycle, as if replacing a worn-out tool, I was cast down from the throne of godhood.
Unlike other Beast Gods, my individual self was intelligent.
I possessed thinking ability, and even the ability for mirror self-recognition, which ordinary beasts do not have.
That must be why I felt so acutely that I was no longer a god.
I was deeply resentful. Here, I learned why I had known no way of life other than being given things since birth, and why my fangs and claws had been clipped.
I had already degenerated to the point where I could no longer survive on my own.
The reason I described Beast God worship as a “malpractice” stems from the fate of the animals after they descend from the throne of godhood.
——Being buried alive.
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For three years from the time they are infants who cannot even open their eyes, the Beast Gods, worshipped as gods and given large amounts of mana while living without any hardship, are buried alive three years later in a cave beneath the village shrine.
It was sincerely believed that the mana released when a Beast God dies would enrich the soil of the village and its surroundings. What else could this be called but a malpractice?
I could understand just how hideous, cruel, and selfish that act was. Never before had I hated my own intelligence so much.
Precisely because I was superior, I understood it with my head rather than instinct.
Even if I struggled, I was pinned down; even if I cried, no one would listen.
I couldn’t help but feel despair, realizing that to the villagers, I had now been reduced to “a beast that used to be a god.”
My life, which I thought would end gently and happily, suddenly shed tears in the face of a miserable end.
In the underground where no light reaches. My brain, filled with resignation, spat out the thought that I would rot here, mourned by no one.
The images of the villagers who struck, kicked, and slashed me to weaken my resistance are stuck in my mind. The throbbing pain and the unpleasant stickiness of my blood were enough for me to loathe my past self, who had enjoyed happiness without knowing anything.
In the cave I was thrown into, the remains of my predecessors who must have returned to the earth long ago, and the corpses of the previous generation’s Beast Gods that continued to rot even now, were being humiliated by maggots.
This is your future. It was as if I were being shown that.
Hunger gnaws at my stomach. Loneliness erodes my heart. I, who do not know how to manipulate the mana I was provided with. I, who was successfully stripped of my instincts and am becoming fertilizer for the villagers.
Everything was pathetic and shameful.
The death that finally visits.
Right now, I longed for that more than anything. A sweet death that would make me forget the eternal regret that never ends was my greatest salvation.
——But, such a thing never visited “me”——never visited me.
I do not weaken, I do not rot, and I do not die.
The negative mana left behind by my fellow Beast Gods floating in the space. The mana of the world keeps me alive.
And even now——I continue to hate.
All the humans and demons who thrive by using us as stepping stones… I will continue to hate them.
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