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Astral: Into the New World
Special Chapter: The Astrals

Special Chapter: The Astrals

Astrals are an essential part of the Kingdom's military tradition, known as the Knights Hunting Season. It’s a yearly event held in the most powerful kingdom.

Astrals are known as outlanders or travelers from another world, who are separated from their original body and achieve new abilities known as astralis. The ability to self-heal in a short period, and have extraordinary flexibility. These potentials are lesser than the natural abilities of scaled people which makes them the perfect prey for the hunting season. They are weaker but will not simply die and are also potential fighters. However, not all Astrals are separated from their original body or travelers from another world. Astrals are also the descendants of previous travelers who use the forbidden portals to transition their physical bodies to astral form. These descendants are exempted to take part in the bloody hunt only if they did not inherit the gift of self-healing.

But long before Astrals become preys, and before the portals are being destroyed and forbidden, let us know how they became.

Thousand years ago, scholars and magicians built the secret portals beneath every citadel of each kingdom hoping to access the other worlds. The portals are a success but it never became a gateway to another world, instead it became the first teleporting medium across every kingdoms. The discovery became the easiest door to invade another kingdom which leads to the first known War of Kingdoms. Not only did it bring chaos but also brought an unforeseen power, the power to separate the body and the soul without dying. Therefore, the astral was known before as the new soul, a duplicate of the physical form only it was more than a physical body. And during that bloody war, soldiers line up to pass through the portals and duplicate themselves and even gain the ability of Astrals, the self-healing & extraordinary fighting ability. Thus, even with countless lives that suffer and died during that War of Kingdoms, more have survived. But they never knew one thing during that time, that once the physical body dies, the astral dies.

After the war, the 13 Kingdoms never really reconcile, but peace was brought upon all lands by the rules of the true conqueror, the winner of the war, known as the Noble Kingdom. For the peace to thrive, the Noble Kingdom orders its people to destroy all the citadels, and portals beneath them, and kill all the scholars and magicians that built them. Since then, the War of Kingdoms was put to last, and magic slowly fades. However… astrals… the remaining trace of that history are yet to be erased, and portals… some of those portals are mysteriously appearing…new ones, new portals that none has dared to touch for more than hundreds of years.

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But as the Kingdoms and their people continue to evolve, the quest to hunt for blood and fights grows immensely. Then it begins with a seasonal fight called the Kingdom Rank, which occurs every 3 months of the year. Each Kingdom chooses its best killer, a single fighter that will determine their kingdom's rank among the 13 Kingdoms. Later, the rules austere, because only Astrals are fighting, and they hardly die, hence they let their physical forms joins the fight. It became a sport for less than a decade and was terminated because participants are all soldiers in their astral forms. And the majority of the kingdoms refuse to sacrifice their soldiers, no more. So, another game was formed, they called it the Academy. Unlike the previous hunger game, this annual event is the use of collective ingenuity or the participation of people to rebuild and remodel their Kingdoms. And all the kings will have to judge respectfully and acknowledge the community who has the best Kingdom building and will be reigned as the new Noble Kingdom which may or may not maintain its title until a new game is formed. This particular event, replace the consecutive title holder of the Noble Kingdom since the war, and the following fighting tradition. The new Noble Kingdom, however, was dethroned immediately, belittled, and disrespected because they are of a small community and is never been known even before the War of Kingdoms. Thus, the major population decided to bring back the vicious game- a fighting. They brought back the Kingdom Rank, so then Astral soldiers are dying one by one and the astral kind became rare, almost gone.

The fighting tradition was banned later on to avoid military casualties. But the current Noble Kingdom still aim to eliminate a trace of magic, particularly the astrals. The gifted descendants of their soldiers who used the portals to win the War of Kingdoms 500 years ago became their new target. Together with other astrals who came from the newly emerged portals, especially known as the summoned and little is known about them. Nevertheless, all astrals are hunted not for fighting games anymore but to become the perfect subject to hunt as part of military test to select the strongest knights.