Thaddeus Agares!!
Solaris Silverstein!!
They were simply known as THE FIRST…
For they were the first ever of the then two major pathways..
The mana pathway….
The prana(aura) pathway….
They had succeeded, the brilliant minds of the races had finally succeeded, and what a resounding success it was…
They had manage to derive not just one but TWO different sources of energy from essence..
And these two, were even more effective than essence itself, for where essence was raw primal energy, these two mana and prana(aura) were more refined, more attuned to a particular set of directories..
Basically where Essence was miscellaneous and capable of being used for almost anything, these two mana and prana(aura) were derived with destruction and conquest at heart…
Where Solaris was a technician, with her spells and overwhelming attack power..
Thaddeus, he was something else, a storm, a force, always the first to jump headfirst into swaths of dangerous beasts..
Not out of any sense of heroism, no..
Thrill…
That's all..
He did it for the pure thrill he got whenever his blade carved into the ranks of beasts, whenever his blade left nothing but mangled and incomplete corpses on the battlefield…
Together they drove out the lesser and superior beasts, regaining lands after lands…
The genius of both Solaris and Thaddeus showed even more, when the two created the first ever mana refinement and aura refinement techniques…
Drawing from their own experiences they created the first two methods to help their fellow altheans awaken..
The Sun path mana refinement technique…
The slaughter god aura refinement technique…
With this breakthrough, more people awakened, joining the fight against the beasts…
But the true final nail in the coffin of this war with beasts came, when an inconspicuous young man from the eastern domain of the human continent awakened…
Lin Feng….
His awakening came as a major shock to all powers, as he didn't just awaken as an aura user or mana practioner…
He awakened with the capability to use both energies..
The affinity for mana
The constitution for prana(aura)…
His rise was swift and fast.. faster than anything Solaris and Thaddeus could ever compare too..
He too became a FIRST..
The first WARLOCK in history..
The first practioner of the DUALITY PATHWAY..
He swiftly caught up to Solaris and Thaddeus in strength, and then surpassed them..
Together the three of them,
The Beast Emperess…
The Slaughter god…
The Immortal Sovereign…
They spearheaded the battle against the calamity beasts…
And after almost a full millennia of war and bloodshed, they managed to drive the beasts from the main lands, sealing them off on a continent far off the other side of the now enlarged planet…
Thus came the end of the age of evolution and the age of beasts…
The five races, Humans, dragons, elves, beastmen, and what remained of the dwarves, came together to create a sanctuary of education, and academy that'll strengthen the bonds between races and foster the next defenders of the world..
Imperium…
The idea was noble and of righteous intentions..
But like all things involving sentient races, it devolved into a battleground for supremacy and superiority complexes..
As for the three firsts…
The Beast Empress Solaris Silverstein, retired to the nomadic beast men isles where she founded the beast man empire Auregon, bringing the entirety of the continent under her rule..
The immortal Sovereign Lin Feng, he retreated to the eastern domain of the human continent, took full reigns of all the territories, and founded his Immortal Dynasty..
As for the last, the slaughter god, Thaddeus Agares, too unbothered to fight over power for the human continent with the immortal sovereign, he retired to his humble village, where he lived out his life in seclusion…
*****
*****
After 5 millennia of change and evolution..
Althea was now sprawling with awakened beings, it was no longer a matter of probability, but of certainty if you are in the right places..
After 5,000 years, awakeners had descendants, who had descendants, who had descendants, till it became a norm for all to have the potential for utilizing mana and prana in their bloodlines, waiting only for a catalyst, the awakening crystal, to spark that potential ,no more experiments, no more deaths, life was looking up…
But, when was fate ever a fan of peace?
For when the next calamity struck, it struck, not in the form of any beast, but In the form of something unseen before…
The dark races!..
A term giving to races more attuned towards the 'darker side' of existence, demons, werewolves, vampires, Orcs, Goblins…
Not to mistake 'dark' for automatic evil, for even among the so called Light races, one would find beings capable of doing things no demon might do…
Within a mid grade kingdom on the dragon isle continent (man at this point, these dragons should check themselves, every calamity always starts with them😂)..
A swirling portal appeared, it's edges ringed black, whilst it's center swirled an omnibus crimson, and from this portal emerged a.. something..
Jagged horns curved menacingly on its goat faced head, it stood on two hooves, with massive clawed hands…
'Guooooooohhhh!' It announced its presence with an ungodly bellow…
It struck fast and vicious, taking down over a thousand citizens before it was put down…
The dragons hoping to understand just what the hell happened (cause yea, it's definitely a good idea to jump headfirst into a swirling crimson portal), sent scouts into the portal…
They never returned..
Instead what came back was an army of goat headed…demons..
They swept through the kingdom like an avalanche, the weakest of them being in the elite stages of power..
The strongest already attaining power equivalent to official mages or aura masters..
That was just the first strike..
Like a tap being opened, demonic portals started spawning all over the planet…
Reports of horrifying creatures popping out of portals one after the other, of cities being overrun here and there..
But unlike the last time, altheans were ready…
They counteracted, wiping out the first onslaught with pure brute efficiency, then they surged into the portals, intent on counterattacking, but instead what they found drove them into despair…
They found information, from the lowly strongholds they were able to conquer they found out what was happening..
Turns out, Althea was being invaded, not for anything but the fact that it was merely a lower world, rich in resources but weak in defense, and their invaders? A member of the dark races..
The demons to be precise..
And the demon realm? It was a PRIME WORLD..
A world capable of birthing entities of such power that the people of Althea couldn't even begin to wrap their heads around it…
But even in the despair, there was hope, for they also discovered, that although there existed beings capable of blowing Althea to bits with a breath, those beings couldn't step foot on Althea because the world couldn't hold their presence, only beings equal to what Althea could currently produce (Saints) could come through..
With that revelation, Althea breathed, finally seeing a ray of hope, if only demons of their same standing can come through, then surely, then can hold on, and with the knowledge they got from the conquered stronghold, the found a ways to replicate just what was happening to them..
The could bide time, invade recently awakened worlds, pillage resources, help Althea grow so that the power ceiling would be raised..
It was a very optimistic plan..
At least until THEY got involved..
The Infernal Houses…
The Demon world's 7 overlords…
A/N:The chapters are getting long and I know this sudden info dump might seem off putting but trust me, it's necessary, I wanted to put it in an auxiliary chapter, but that will be for something else…
So with Raiden about to step out, a better view of the world is an order, and I couldn't just wait till "imperium" a lot of things that'll happen during his outings might not make sense without a good idea of the world's history..
So bear with me, should be done with the info dump by the next chapter..
Don't forget the power stones, comments and reviews, the mass release tomorrow is still on, a good 6 chapters, all things being equal..
Thanks for reading..