He collapsed onto the ground as the metal pipe in his hand clattered against the fractured concrete. Panting heavily, he tried to catch his breath as fast as possible, but those around him seemed more than willing to either ignore his current state or were aware of it and didn’t care.

He could not bring himself to complain, though, for their ‘training regimen’ as they called it had indeed made him more powerful, but compared to true Lyrheans he was still hopelessly outmatched. He didn’t know what his superior kin desired of him, for how could a mere lesser Lyrhean ever hope to become something more than what they were?

It was written into his very blood and bone that no matter how much he leveled up and no matter how high his Evolution Percentage reached, he would still be nothing like them. Did they not know this? No, there was no way that such higher, more perfect beings could ever be unaware of such a trivial, instinctual detail inherent within their very biology and soul, could they?

On the plus side, he was not alone in his suffering, as several new brothers and sisters had joined, born into being the same way he had been. He was the first, but he was far from the strongest or fastest of the lesser Lyrheans, as no matter what his superiors desired of him, his powers, when they manifested themselves, were constantly disappointing their hopes.

He kept awakening to non-combat abilities and traits that, while useful in non-combat roles, made him much less effective than what the Great Mother desired of him. He was not even worthy of being a meat shield at this rate, and if this ‘Dread Hunter’ that the Great Mother seemed to fear so much came to strike them out, he would be nothing more than a pebble before a rampaging beast by the sound of it.

Screw slowing this devil down, he wouldn’t even be able to get in her way! And that, more than anything else, was what twisted him up inside. That he could not fulfill the desired calling that the Great Mother set him towards was a shame and blight that he felt and fostered a growing hatred of himself that he would not be able to live with.

Things had come to a head in this last encounter. He looked around as his siblings cut and clubbed and shredded more and more of the vermin that were drawn to the screaming noises made by the shattered husks of the cities of inferior beings and nearly wept in self-loathing as he realized that he would never be able to reach their heights.

By the end of the third battle he was in, and the first that his younger siblings had been in, he was already well behind even a single one of them in terms of kills. Failure was his every moment, and he hated himself for it.

His gaze shifted toward the ground, and to the metal pipe that lay where it had rolled off to. It would be better for the race if he just removed the blight that he was from this world. He was a burden, and nothing more, so to end himself was the righteous, dutiful, loyal thing to do.

Surely a better Lesser Lyrhean would take his place, and he would be forgotten as the failure he was. He reached toward the pipe and nearly grasped it before a foot slammed down on the pipe, crushing the metal of it slightly.

He looked up and saw the Great Mother looking down. Her face was obscured by the glaring sun, but he could feel in his bones that her gaze towards his pitiful form was one of disgust and hate. Why would it not be so when directed at the shame and disgrace that he was?

“No.” she spoke in a voice that was like the choir of a trillion angels, not laced with malice or disappointment, but with… concern?

He paused for a moment before reaching towards a shard of the substance beneath him, but this only resulted in the Great Mother grabbing him and holding his limbs in place.

“No.” she said, her voice now being heard to be that of concern. “I won’t let you do that.”

At this, he finally broke and let his feeling pour out. If he was not permitted to end his burden of a life by his own hands, he would give the Great Mother a reason to do it herself. And yet, as he let out his woes, he felt the feeling of the grip on his body lessen.

The violence around them both faded away as his siblings scoured the area further from them, and the Great Mother pulled him into a seated position facing her.

“I’m sorry.” she said after he had ceased his ramblings and he had begun to cry. “Had I known what you would take my words as, I wouldn’t have said them.”

She reached around his head and pulled him into her chest.

“I said what I said because I didn’t expect you to take it so seriously. I don’t need or want any of you to be nothing more than bodies to stop my foes. Not truly, at least. I see that you hate that you aren’t geared towards fighting because of my words, so let me tell you something that I think will at least make things better.”

He looked up.

“All the bodies in the world wouldn’t stop that bitch if they were naked and unarmed and untrained. None of you newbies, or ‘lessers’ as you seem to call yourselves, would hold a candle to that monster of a woman. I don’t think that I can beat her right now, either. But, do you know how Humans like her even managed to survive all of the shit that they had to deal with to get to the point where the world ended up like this?”

He shook his head.

“Humans endured and survived and thrived because they had the one thing that no other species ever did up till now. They had no fur, so they could not stand the cold. Do you know what they did? They took the world around them and made their own damn fur. They lacked claws, fangs, and razor spines, so they made their own. You are not a combat-oriented being, but you have something no other among your kin do. You can make claws. You can make fur. You can make armored scales and carapaces. Do you understand what that means?”

He once again shook his head. Was she trying to say that he-?

“What I mean by that is that you are more valuable than any mere brute. No mere meathead can make a bow, or a spear, or a pouch to hold things. You can, though. You have done that. When your siblings needed a bandage, they came to you, and when they realized they could not count on their claws and fangs to deliver their venom effectively, who did they ask to make weapons for them?”

It was as if a switch flipped in his head. The Great Mother was right! How had he ever been so blind and stupid as to not see that her words were aimed not at him or his kind, but at others?!

He understood now! His purpose, and that of the Lesser Lyrheans, was never to be nothing more than bodies in the way of incoming attacks! They were meant to be more: to shove the bodies of other, lesser beings before them to soak up such attacks!

And he… his purpose was not to be one of the warriors among the Lesser Lyrheans, but to be the first to give to them weapons, armor, clothing, and more that they were deserving of! Maybe he would even be one day permitted to do so for True Lyrheans, or even the Great Mother herself!

He would be the one to show that mere Humans were not the best when it came to creation, all while his more warrior-like siblings showed that Humans were far from the best at destruction! Yes, it was so clear now!

…

Lyrhea watched the first of the so-called ‘Lesser’ Lyrheans’ face shift between different emotional states, eventually ending in what she assumed was religiously zealous ecstasy.

“Fucking hell….” she thought to herself as the ‘Lesser’ Lyrhean sprung to his feet and, while singing her praises endlessly, began to dismantle the corpses of the nearby fauna that had been ‘un-alived’ by the others of his kin. “Wonderful! Another zealot… Another ‘child of mine’ that is a fucking zealot….”