Lives Lost

Yanyan watched from the side as the memory played on in her head. A man stood in the air nearby Azalu and silently watched her drop the Queen to the ground. Once the two of them were alone Azalu directed her attention straight at the shadowy figure. The two of them just stared at each other as the tension grew in the air. Weirdly enough though it was only coming from Azalu. The shadowy figure didn't seem to care at all, it was more like he was just observing. That calm act seemed to just piss off Azalu the longer it went on. "Azalu..Relia.." Yanyan couldn't do anything to help, she could only watch.

"You sensed my return already, quite fast this time around. Just going to watch it again or will you ever do something to stop me?"

Frustration and anger were the only thing Azalu felt as she looked at the man, he was always like this.

"You made your appearance incredibly obvious this time around so I figured I'd come to take a look at what caused it. Fighting for such a petty human's sake, that is something I would never expect from you Azalu."

"Pft, is this interesting to you?"

"Kind of, it's been a while since we last met and for once you don't seem to be attacking me right away. I presume it has to do with that group of kids down there. I wonder what they have to make you stop."

"Don't you touch them."

Raising an eyebrow the shadowy figure quit edging Azalu on. He was never one for fighting needlessly and if he could he'd rather Azalu not fight him. Each time she came back into this world he would have to use a lot of his power to deal with her. Which set his plans behind quite a bit, yet even after losing to him almost a hundred times she would always come back and attack him. He had managed to wipe out her entire race from existence but none of those tricks ever worked on her. He didn't know why she seemed to be such a unique case.

"You've killed another reincarnation again...I wonder how many this makes in total. 90....100? Maybe more? Are you really not going to give up on attacking me?"

"Never not until the day I no longer come back."

"You know you were the one who betrayed me first right? Usually I should be the one that hates you but I don't. I just want you to stop attacking me, it's super irritating and a waste of my time."

He was right, she had been the one to betray him but she didn't care. She hated the man in front of her and she wouldn't give up until he was dead. Even if that took another hundred tries, she would continue to kill more reincarnations. He wasn't as innocent as he liked to claim to be and that arrogant confidence to not even give her a second thought pissed her off more than anything. He was looking down on her to the point that she was just an annoyance to him, not even a threat.

"Then kill me again and end it all. You haven't managed to succeed yet so I doubt you will now."

At one point in Azalu's life she was friends with this man. They stood at the top of the world as some of the strongest beings in existence. At the time though Azalu grew to want to be the only strong person, so she slowly started to eliminate everyone that was close to her level until eventually she only had him standing in her way. She was far too young and full of herself, she had zero cares for emotional ties or anything like that. It didn't take very long for her to try and kill him as well just like all the others. They were considered equals by most people and that was quickly proven to be wrong when she lost. "He's the hero who slayed the villain." The story ended just like how most wanted when she lost.

Being a part of a race that reincarnated though Azalu didn't care that she lost at the time. She knew would come back soon and just try again. After a couple years that was exactly what happened, she reawakened and went to fight him once more. He was even stronger when she fought him that time and she lost once more. Another set of lives was thrown away in her pursuit of power. "I was an idiot." Nothing in the world mattered to her except winning, to the point where she almost destroyed an entire Country trying to fight him. She came back a couple more times and was forced to face the same results no matter how many attempts she made.

"Each loss was worse than the previous."

Azalu's ego was destroyed and she was knocked down a notch. "He kept that same attitude as he has now." Eventually she fell so low that she resorted to using tricks. She knew his old family members and she used them as hostages in an attempt to win against him. That was absolutely the lowest point in her life and something she deeply regretted. She didn't plan to actually kill them at the time but accidents happen. They were caught up in our fight and died. She didn't even know if she killed them or if he did. There was just too much chaos at the time however she only blamed herself and so did he. After she lost in that life the next time she came back her race was slowly going extinct. Apparently someone was hunting them down.

"He hunted all of us down."

Azalu's mind was a mess and there was nothing she could do but watch all of her relatives die one by one. He purposefully kept her alive as the last living member. In the years that she had known him it was the first time he had shown any emotion whatsoever. "Dusk." That was the man's name, Dusk. He was always a bit of a mystery even to her. Just like herself he had the ability to come back to life. He had changed forms multiple times but always kept the same name. His life span was also that of a normal human's. He never showed any emotions and always kept his goals to himself, he was an oddball that just existed. "Why, just why?" After her kind had been wiped out Azalu finally gave up attacking him for one life.

"I was broken at that point and there was nothing I could do."

She couldn't beat him, had no family or friends. Lost all of her ambitions, to her there wasn't a single reason for her to ever be alive anymore. That still held true to this day, she fell into an endless depression. At that point she begged for a permanent death that would end all of this. "I don't want to come back again." The only person that could do that was Dusk but even after all the times she had died by his hand she kept coming back. Azalu loathed that and she knew he was doing it on purpose. There was no other reason to explain it, Dusk wanted her to suffer even if he pretended otherwise.

She was an empty shell waiting to be buried.