Over 1000 years ago, the world was completely different. Technology was at its peak and mankind had just discovered the wonders of Spiritual Essence, which had been hidden in the planet's underworld for many centuries! It was then that mankind's power soared as more and more mortals started to cultivate reaching higher levels of power. All the nations of the world united and became a democratic state ruled by a parliament that was overseen by a council of elders. The next century oversaw many great achievements and developments, and Spirit Arts reached their peak.
Mankind had fused Spirit Arts with many fields producing unique professions that could never have been realized with the previous technology. Spirit Tools of all kinds allowed for Spirit Arts and their users, Spiritualists, to reach the peak of man. Now, there was no important position in society that did not require one to be a Spiritualist. Information was shared and many random talents in the field showed up among the general populace. Allowing new and unique body types compatible with certain Spirit Arts and unique variations of Spiritual Essence to be discovered, which lead to new blood quickly replenishing the Spiritualist community.
Spirit Beasts were animals that had evolved Spiritual abilities due to long exposure to Spiritual Essence. They were however low in numbers and were quite weak, unable to create Spirit Arts without the knowledge of Spiritual theory. Few impressive species passed unique abilities down their family trees but these were extremely rare and often endangered. Hence, mankind had little to no competition as the unrestrained sovereign of the continent. Thanks to this and the advent of Spirit Arts, mankind was truly at the zenith of power!
But tragedy struck. Spirits attacked from an unknown source. They were energy beings that could possess animals and also create frightening creatures called variants with time. These variants could evolve like humans and grow with cultivation. This allowed them to gain the ability to control other Spirits and lead them in battle. The creatures were obsessed with consuming human flesh and were barely satiated.
Their eye sockets were always hollow holes while their bodies were somewhat similar to creatures from Earth. Some were so strange they ended up looking like legendary beasts from mythical tales such as dragons or phoenixes. These powerful variants caused mankind no small amount of stress because they gathered Spirits in mobs, organized them and attacked without fear of death.
Spirit Arts and ordinary weapons were for some odd reason weak and therefore useless on the creatures. As if they had some sort of Spiritual Essence resistance. Only weapons that could deal copious amounts of kinetic damage were useful, but it took too much force to harm the tough outer membrane of a Spirit. Those that did not have hard membranes had some sort of natural defence like elasticity, intangibility or invisibility.
Energy attacks of any form were useless. Fire Spirit Arts could only warm them up somewhat. Ice Spirit Arts could only chill a little bit. Lightning-type Spirit Arts seemed to only make them ticklish. Only absurd amounts of Spiritual Essence could do any damage. But mankind did not have humans with great enough quantities of Spiritual Essence or a large variety of spells as they had only been cultivating for a few centuries. Their understanding of optimizing the human body for cultivation was still in its infancy. Few humans had the resources to make advancements in Spirit Arts as too little time had passed.
Their technological advancements in Spirit Tools however had made plenty of progress as their scientific prowess was at its peak. With their powerful Spiritualists backed up by comrades armed with top-class Spirit Tools, humanity took on the Spirits in an all-out confrontation. It was a painful war, and 80% of man's Spiritualists were lost in battle over a period spanning many decades. Mankind failed to match the spread of Spirits. Not only that, the there was another problem that slowly arose.
Spirit corpses dissolved into becoming wild Spiritual Essence that had a mutagenic effect. Humans and even more so animals, were easily affected. Their Spiritual sensitivity and power drastically improved with plenty of odd mutations appearing. Humans gradually became more sensitive to Spiritual Essence and could hold it in greater quantities with more talents in the Spiritual being born. Unfortunately, in this aspect, mankind fell behind the animal kingdom.
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Animals and Spiritual creatures all over the world experienced an explosive evolution. These creatures not only became stronger, but some also gained sentience and the ability to use Spirit Arts!
They could only use the most basic of arts, but they were enough to allow the creatures to strengthen further. Many mutations coupled with the creatures' new powers resulted in many unique bloodlines and new species. These creatures were also capable of devouring Spirits to become stronger and became a nightmare to both Spirits and humans.
The same feat was occurring in humans but at a much slower pace. In this period of time, mankind had lost most of its previous form. It was scattered, with only a few dozen nations remaining and most of their technological knowledge lost to the sands of time. All the continents lost contact with each other and countless nations vanished. With mankind facing threats from the rising Spirits, the rebellion of beasts, isolation and a technological regression, their backs were against the wall. That was when one scientific breakthrough changed the face of the war.
A Blacksmith from an Alchemical background created a Spiritual tool for herself that was like any other. It was made from a material she had created by accident but it was a welcome gift. In battle, the blacksmith discovered that her hammer had the ability to damage Spirits and Spirit Beasts in ways people had never seen before. Not only that, it was so good at storing and directing Spirit Arts it effectively doubled or sometimes tripled her abilities as a Spiritualist. If the Spiritualist used her hammer on a Spirit, it would be like using an ordinary hammer on an ordinary animal! In other words, humans could now damage Spirits on equal footing and their output against Spiritual beasts improved. This hammer was the first known smiter!
A few more discoveries after this changed the rest of the complexion of the battle. The first was the discovery of the contract Spirit Arts. This allowed the Tamer profession to come into play. They could tame Spirit Beasts and Spirits they had defeated and force them to fight for them. This was especially important because mankind also used this opportunity to learn how to rear Spirit Beasts and used their bodies to develop tools, while Spirit Beast meat improved the quality of one's body greatly, with this carrying on to the next generations thanks to the mutagenic effect of the fallen Spirits.
Thus a unique system arose. Mankind hunted beasts to consume them, Spirits hunted mankind and beasts hunted Spirits. The need to evolve and strengthen drove all three races to strive for power.
Tamers allowed mankind to create new armies, tools and a new type of fighter, the Summoner! A Spiritualist that could summon a tamed creature to their location. Summoners with large enough Spiritual Essence reserves were walking armies of Spirit Beast companions. Some tamers took the other route and used only high-quality summons, working with only a few. A specific group led by a descendant of an ancient family of knights only allowed themselves one summon. They used it as a mount and called themselves Spiritknights. Their leader quickly saw the value of smiters and forced every Spiritknight to combine the strength of smiters and mounts. Within a few years, he rose to become Valar's uncontested strongest Spiritualist and he single-handedly raised the importance of Spiritknights in battle.
Together with their high-quality mounts and smiters, Spiritknights became nightmares for high-level Spirits and Spirit Beasts. Then the next discovery made them even more feared. The blacksmith who created smiters was recruited into the Spiritknights after discovering that she had high summoning talent. With her powerful mount, she became a powerhouse that further elevated the station of Spirit Arts using her powerful smiter as a conduit. Smiters made the best wands! This was a crucial discovery!
Then came the rise of mankind's publicly acknowledged greatest mind. A man who had claimed to have mastered the theory of all available professions.
He revealed that he had achieved this feat because he had found a method of absorbing spirits into one's own body.
At first, this was thought to be impossible as the human body would not withstand the strain of this process, but Spritknights with Smitrs and Mounts could!
He admitted that this was only possible when using smiters as conduits and having a high-quality summoned creature as a partner but nevertheless, he was stunned, because after absorbing the refined corpse of a spirit, he received an ability from the spirit!