She had resisted mentioning it before because she did not like the thought of Gloria finding out that her fellow Humans in other continents were being enslaved. But eventually she could not help but change her mind because of the sheer difference between the Humans here and the Humans everywhere else. How did Gloria accomplish so much?
That had been the first time she saw surprise appear on Gloria’s face. It wasn’t much. Just a rising of her eyebrows, however, she hadn’t even done that when Bellatrix had mentioned Envy.
“So there are still regular humans alive? That’s good. That’s good…”
The words had been spoken with slight emotion. Her gaze no longer focused on her surroundings and instead replaying thoughts of the past. Clearly, something astonishing had happened if it were affecting a woman like this even now.
But that sentence had been very weird to Bellatrix when she first heard it. What did Gloria mean by ‘ so there are still regular humans alive’?. Wasn’t Gloria a human? Granted, she could not be called regular, and neither could the others for that matter if they were lording over beasts, but what would they be if not human?
The silence persisted for a while before Gloria began to speak of her past. And what a past it was.
It turned out that Gloria and the others were NOT in fact, regular humans. They were something called ‘High Humans’. Apparently they evolved when Magical Energy first appeared in the world. This was a feat that Bellatrix had only heard of and never seen, after all, she had not been born back then.
However, her mother, the progenitor of all Unicorns, was one of the very rare few Beasts that evolved with the genesis of magic. This was an honourable achievement that promised a peerless future for anyone who accomplished it, but never had she thought that it could happen to Humans too because it was said that they could not evolve.
Nowadays everybody knew about the differences between Beasts, Monsters and Enlightened races. Monsters and Beasts can evolve and mutate, but the Enlightened could only mutate. The strange Celestial Elephant-kin under Apis were a good example of the Enlightened being able to mutate but not evolve into a different form.
Because of this, everyone had speculated that only the Beasts and Monsters were gifted with the opportunity to synchronise with the genesis of magic and evolve. Naturally, such a thing only made them look down on the Enlightened even more. If it weren’t for the fact that they had the mind-bogglingly ability to just freely syphon magical energy from the air to turn into their own mana (Something Beasts could only begin to do at the Enlightened Beast Realm) then forget being looked down upon, they just might have gone extinct.
But now, Bellatrix had been confronted with the rule-breaking reality that a group of the weakest Enlightened race, the Humans, had actually evolved with the genesis of magic. Everyone had been wrong.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
But then again, it made sense. How else could the disparity between the humans here and the humans everywhere else be explained? From the beginning, they could barely be called the same species. They even looked different. The High Humans were taller and had perfect physiques, not to mention their much greater beauty too. It settled something in Bellatrix that she didn’t know was aching within her. So she hadn’t lost to normal humans. That was good news.
Gloria then went on to explain that in her younger days she used to be greatly arrogant. She had been born with intelligence so great that nothing in existence could compare. In fact. till this day, she had found no other lifeform that could compare to her level intelligence that only continued to grow with her cultivation.
Because of this, she had looked down on everyone else. Her pride was so great that she even challenged the sun and called it a coward for retreating into the night. There was laughter in her tone and a self-deprecating tint to her smile as she mentioned this.
Because of the past-Gloria’s arrogance and corresponding intelligence, she delved into a path of conquest that not even Beasts could resist, and eventually, she even discovered a different group of Humans that she had never seen before. They were not part of her group that had evolved with her.
They were… lessers.
It wasn’t hard to guess what happened next. Those humans had been swiftly subjugated. Gaia would then go on to find 2 other groups like this, respectively in the North and East sides of the Continent. (The other group was found in Centre, whereas Gloria originated from the South).
After subjugating them, Gloria had essentially allocated a territory to them before abandoning them. Regular humans were so useless when it came to cultivation and their level of intelligence that it wasn’t even funny. So she left them to their own devices so long as they regularly provided half of the resources they found. In exchange, they obtained protection.
However, one day, she decided to conduct an experiment. She had already discovered that regular Humans had a different anatomy to that of the High Humans. It was by and large inferior in every which way, or so Gloria said. She didn’t actually mention the results of her research, which Bellatrix understood.
In any case, although regular humans were inferior, they apparently had something that Gloria was interested in (Once again, this thing was not mentioned). This led to Gloria dreaming of improving the High Human race by fusing that ‘something’ into the next generation of her race. How so? Well, she tried to breed the 2 races together.
The result was a failure.
The newborns were mostly deformed with only a few that were whole and actually better than regular humans, but they were still inferior to High Humans. Gloria did not achieve her aim. It was a resounding failure.
She tried again using different methods, even experimenting with special consumables that might alter the process, but she never achieved success. It was the first irrefutable failure that Gloria had encountered, and the shame had almost caused her to wipe out every regular human. But she held back. She decided to content herself with eradicating the deformed newborns and secluding the regular humans in a territory they were not allowed to leave. Lastly, they were forever banned from intermingling with High Humans.
Alas, years went by and a tragedy occurred.