Tragedy of the Demon Lord

Section One - Those Who Are Born to Die (2)

Part Two - New Beginnings

The girl stared coldly at the beast. It was bound by the steel chains of man, thick spears protruding from it's skin and large gashes pouring blood.

She smirked and spoke to the beast.

The girl touched the icy wall confining the white winged beauty. The beauty, wearing the collar of a pet, slowly looked up with dead eyes.

She softly pressed her forehead against the cold glass and spoke to the spirit.

The girl reached through the iron bars and touched their delicate face. Their body was limp with depression, their will to live flickering out.

She gave them an understanding look and spoke to them.

"Your existence is rejected by this world. Come with me. Let's make a place for ourselves."

And they followed.

Rin learned many things about her new world.

The world was called Kyokou in the common language Kuusou. Kuusou was originally used as a simple trading language, but due to it's easy grammar and intuitive writing system, had eventually become more of "everybody's shared language". Of course, each group of peoples still maintained their own more traditional languages, but the usefulness of Kuusou was unmistakable. Not every person of every country spoke Kuusou, most notably tribes living in inhospitable environments, but it was generally accepted that people from major cities knew the tongue.

The forest had been the Sacred Forest of Higeki. It was situated on the border between Nishi and Higashi and generally considered no-man's-land in both countries. The forest was sacred to one of the most predominant elven religions in Nishi, yet it wasn't unheard of for them to allow peaceful human believers from Higashi to enter the forest in order to pay their respects to their goddess. Originally, the forest had belonged to the elves of Nishi, but during the great magic war Higashi had won it. Years after the war, the tensions between the countries had created tension and discrimination between elves and humans in Higashi, so the king of Higashi decided to return the forest to Nishi under the condition that it was used only for religious purposes. Needless to say, it was still a complicated relationship.

Magic was sorted into Affinities based upon which mana a person had the natural talent to absorb. Of course, the more pure and specific the mana a person could absorb was, the more powerful the spells cast using that mana would be. It was common to have many Affinities, making common magic useful in day to day life, but not particularly powerful on the battlefield. Of course, some races tended to have greater Affinities than others, such as elves, with an average 3.95 times greater mana absorption and capacity than their human counterparts. Other species tended to have a tendency towards a specific Affinity, such as dwarves being more likely to have an Earth Affinity. Zero Affinity referred to a rare person without the capacity to absorb mana at all. There was no information on Negative Affinities.

The only way to use magic requiring mana that you didn't have an Affinity for was through Collected Harmonic Affinity Operation Shard, or CHAOS. These shards commonly originated as beast class demon cores taken from slain beasts. The crystallized mana that made up the core of a demon would carry a limited supply of the mana utilized by that demon that originally acted as something of a soul. Of course, the sheer amount of mana contained within a single shard was overwhelming. In order to make the mana usable, small pieces would be fused with normal rocks, which lowered the magical density, the products being called chaos stones. Another way was through the use of elixirs, where the mana would slowly diffuse into a drinkable liquid. The mana in the chaos could be used for spells beyond the capacity of the user and for spells of other Affinities from the user, and the methods of dilution made them extremely convenient to carry around, contrary to their volatile raw form. Their usefulness in particular made them a costly commodity.