Altera...the world by which all beings live in. The world of Altera is divided into three major realms and minor pocket realms. The three major realms are the Divine, the Human and the Demonic realm. No one knew how these three realms came into existence but each of its inhabitants lived inside their own realms to strive and survive.
As time went by, the inhabitants of each major realm started to have their own perception of the [Rules of the World] or the [Concepts] that govern every phenomenon of the world. The descendants of these inhabitants would then call this practice as "Cultivation"
The first realm who ever started perceiving the [Rules of the World] was the [Divine Realm]. It's inhabitants studied light with great interest and through the years it has been the focus of their research. Their focus in the concept of light and the endless evolution of Life, changed their perspective in life and their way of thinking, even their very soul...
Eventually, they would develop a symbol on their soul...a [Stigmata of Light]
This [Stigmata of Light] gave them an extremely lengthened life-force and it also changed their body. Wings made of light sprouted from their backs and strengthened their body. Across time, this [Stigmata of Light] would be passed down from generations to generations and they will be known as Angels to the other races.
These Angels would then form their own civilization and crown their own [King] who would then be known and advertised as [God] to the other races. Many would congregate and praise this [God] until churches would be built in celebration of this [God]. Many millenniums later and the [Divine Realm] would already have their own Cultivation system and the primary Stigmata called...
[The Stigmata of the Seven Virtues]
As the Divine realm researched the Light, the Infernal realm was the opposite...
The Infernal realm took great interest in the Darkness and from it, it changed their ways. They embraced the desires hidden in their hearts, even the darkest desires they could find was worth embracing. They would take what they want, fight and kill who they want. To them this was the freedom and the perfect life for them.
Time passed and as they continued to embrace the Darkness it formed their own Stigmata.
The [Stigmata of Darkness] changed them the same way the [Stigmata of Light] changed the inhabitants of the [Divine Realm]. Their bodies experienced great changes, they grew more beast-like, having horns and tails, even black, rocky armor on their body. Their physical capabilities were heightened to the extreme, while their life-force was lengthened, it was only half as long as the Angels.
With their way of life and their looks, the other races would then come to call them as "Demons"
These Demons would then follow the path that the Angels once did and a [King] would ascend from their ranks. But their way was much more extreme than the angels. Their [King] emerged from numerous battles between factions and from the chaos and bloodshed, emerged their [Demon King]. Countless demons would then bow before their [Demon King] till their reverence for their king would create a Cult. Same as the Angels, the Demons would then develop their own cultivation and primary Stigmata called...
[The Stigmata of the Seven Sins]
Finally, from the last of the three major realms...the realm of the humans. It was much larger than the [Divine Realm] and [Infernal Realm] with seven continents all around the realm.
They were the last to perceived and practice cultivation as this was cause by wars with each other. Endless conflict plagued their everyday lives that they weren't able to take a break to understand the wonders of the world around them.
Even the Angels and Demons who came to invade this realm were perplexed with humans as there were times where they resembled Demons and sometimes Angels. In the end, the two otherworldly invaders took different actions.
The Angels decided to spread their culture, their beliefs in hopes that the humans would also praise their [God] and built churches in his name. On the other hand, the Demons demonstrated their own culture by showing the humans their dark ways.
Many would be swayed by these two influences till their forces in the [Human Realm] would grow to battle each other.
What baffled the Angels and the Demons was that the Humans never developed a unique Stigmata of their own. Rather, not every human managed to developed a Stigmata and only a chosen few was able to form them. But these Stigmata greatly differed from the ones the Angels and Demons had. Instead of being a elemental concept, some of them were pure concept with one of the strongest being the [Concept of Death].
But what made them extremely interested with the humans was that they were able to use both the cultivation systems of both the Angels and Demons. To them, the potential of Humans were much greater than both of their races.
The three major realms were built similar to the others with each realm having seven continents.
In the [Human Realm] the seven continents were positioned in all directions except the east and the west. So there were three continents in the north and three in the south, then the central continent, with their names being...
Northern Continent : Louren
North-east Continent : Floria
North-West Continent : Selta
Central Continent : Mithra
South-West Continent : Sevre
South-East Continent : Felix
Southern Continent : Luota
...
The Story begins in the South-west continent of Sevre, in the Grand Rock Prefecture. Here, there are four main families who struggles for supremacy. Each had their own cities, borders and armies and their greatest goal is to rule the while Grand Rock Prefecture.
One afternoon, there was a Slave trader who was travelling across the Viridian Forest near the Black Turquoise border.
The Slave trader was travelling with two caravans with the back caravan containing ten different slaves, some were grown men and weapon, children who looks only to be nine years old. The other Caravan was where this slave trader is in, he was sitting in a luxurious couch with two beautiful slaves feeding him fruits and servicing him.
A group of mercenaries was hired to protect the caravans from [Enchanted Beasts], monsters who gained knowledge of a [Concept] and broke through the confines of their normal selves.
Inside the caravan for the slaves, a child was sitting in the dark, holding his knees. His body was so thin that you could see his bones already, his lips looked very dry like he hasn't drank water for a long time. But the thing that made this child look pitiful was his eyes, they were devoid of all hope and life...
He still vague recalled what happened and how he came to this point.
His small village was raided, the men were all killed and the woman were raped by dozens of men, women who looked even slightly pleasing to the eyes were not spared...even little girls. The male children and those who were younger were all taken to be sold as slaves.
This boy never forgot that scene...his father killed, protecting them, his mother dragged and forced by two men to the ground. Even his older sister was raped before his very eyes as he cried his eyes out.
When he was taken with the other children, the last thing he saw was his mother and sister being brought to another place with dozens of men following them. One wouldn't need much to figure out what was gonna going to happen to them and because of that he sank into despair that it nearly broke his mind.
He was dragged back to the raiders camp and was then sold to the slavers where he was trained...no, broken by their trainers. Pieces of him were slowly being taken away by every whip that struck his back as he was taught by the trainers how please the buyers who will one day buy him.
Eventually he was so broken that the only thing that he remembers from his past is him name...Magnus.
Magnus knew he was slowly being broken and pieces of him was being taken from him but this, his name was the last thing he clung to. He desperately held onto this word, this special word, the word by which his parents lovingly called him.
Along with the other children who were captured, they were beaten and barely had anything to eat. This accelerated the rate of them breaking and when they diligently followed their trainers, they would get additional food. Because of this, most of them were blinded by their hunger that they were more than willing to abandon their former selves and follow their trainers. One of the few remaining defiant children was Magnus, this resulted to him being punished and not getting food for more than three days.
Magnus was still clinging to the faint hope of escaping and one day having revenge but that hope was slowly being extinguished.
But it was then that he heard a deafening sound.
Roar!!!
A loud beast roar entered his ears and this was followed by the walls of the caravan breaking, as a whole tree was entered his sights. This tree broke the wall and struck some of the slaves inside, killing them. Magnus was one of the lucky few who was outside the path of the tree.
Seeing the hole in the caravan, Magnus finally saw hope and he didn't want it to slip from his hands. He took a peak and saw the mercenaries fighting three Gorilla-type Beast.
Now that no one was guarding them, he braced himself as he took the first step towards his freedom.
Magnus jumped off the caravan and rolled on the ground upon landing. He took another look at the fight and ensured that no one noticed that he escaped further into the forest.
He then ran for his life after seeing that no one noticed him escaping. He ran as fast as he could but with the fatigue and hunger from three days of not eating weakening his body, Magnus felt dizzy quickly. But he knew he couldn't stop now, he had push himself even as he felt his consciousness fading.
Last thing he saw a bunch of trees before he fell, he felt himself rolling and in pain before losing consciousness.
Moments turned to hours and it soon became dark.
Magnus slowly woke up and saw a barely lit surroundings. When he touched the ground, he knew it was bare ground and not a grassy-kind of ground. He couldn't see well because it was dark and with only certain part of his surroundings was lit from the light passing down. From all this, he guessed he was in some kind of cave system.
"Ah!" When Magnus tried to move, he felt pain all over his body.
His body was grazed all over from when he fell, add that to his fatigue and hunger, he found really hard to move but still he bit his lip to push himself to the utmost edge.
Magnus wobbled as he struggled to get up, ignoring the pain that ached he pushed himself to walk over to the light.
One...
two...
three...
Step by step, Magnus got closer and closer to the light and as he did, he found a strange silhouette that made him nervous. He inched closer and the silhouette started to get clear...it was a skeleton.
What was strange was this skeleton was still wearing a glamorous black coat with golden ornament together with the various other equipment. As Magnus got closer to the skeleton, he saw that there was strange black markings all around the bones and a black puddle of liquid beneath the skeleton.
Staring at this skeleton, Magnus felt like some strange voices were whispering for him to get closer. With state that he was currently in, Magnus didn't put much thought into it and struggled to take each step towards the skeleton till he felt another wave of weakness overwhelm him and just before the skeleton, he fell face first into the black flood as he lost consciousness again.
Deep in the darkness, Magnus didn't know but moments after he fell down, the black liquid moved like it had a life of its own and inched closer to him.
As the black liquid got close to him, it seeped into his wounds and entered his body. Little by little the entire puddle entered his body and even after that, the black liquid mysteriously rose from his body like a beast and absorbed the clothes and equipment around the corpse.
If Magnus could see the skeleton then he would've thought that it was made with some kind of jewelries with it some part of it sparkling, even in the dark. Just from seeing it, one will know that whoever died here wasn't any ordinary person but sadly Magnus couldn't examine this skeleton himself before the black liquid moved again.
Lastly...the black liquid passed through the ribs of the skeleton where a black piece of flesh remained and on it was a white symbol of a shark. The black liquid touched this flesh and the white mark glowed and disappeared into the black liquid. Once the white mark disappeared, the black flesh turned to dust. The black liquid then proceeded to devour the skeleton whole.
After all of this was done, the black liquid returned to Magnus' body and settled on his back. The Black liquid took form of some kind of beast's jaw opened with it's teeth bearing down to take a bite.
Hours passed by and Magnus slowly woke but the wave of pain he was expecting to assault him didn't come and instead he strangely felt full of strength.
"...?" Magnus opened and closed his fist feeling the strange sensation but he didn't know what word to describe it because of his past.
But one thing he knows though...he is now free.