CHAPTER EXTRA 5: MAGICAL BEASTS
Magical energy changed the world completely.
When people hear that phrase, the first thing they think of is that the changes are related to humanity.
Humans changed by gaining strange abilities, allowing awakening lineages and unique innate abilities and even being able to use magical and psionic energy.
Different types of abilities also appeared, outside of magic, such as mechanics, talents and masteries.
However, we are not the center of the world and are actually a part of it.
Other ‘individuals’ who changed were beasts and animals.
Magical beasts, wild creatures, and wild beasts.
What is the difference between them and how were they born?
Such a question was questioned by scholars when magical energy began to appear and began to change our world, bringing natural dungeons.
The difference between a magical beast and a wild beast is the lack of intelligence and its wild or dangerous nature.
The former has intelligence and the latter just has mostly instincts and is like any animal in its habitat... Wild and untamed.
The difference between wild creatures and wild beasts is that the former come from the dungeons and the latter were born on Earth.
Of course, differentiating them is sometimes impossible, and that’s why people sometimes confuse them quite a lot and name them wrongly.
It is all too common, and the reality is that the naming doesn’t matter too much and some just divide it between ‘enemies’ and ‘neutrals’ or ‘friends’.
Simple, but effective when it comes to knowing who to confront, and more so in those places where the killing of some intelligent magical beasts is forbidden.
However, such a definition clarifies very little about magical beasts in general.
How were they born?
Just as their name says, they are ‘magical beasts’ and were born from magical energy.
We humans were not the only ones who changed, nature and animals did too in a way that was just as or even more diverse than us.
Of course, here we come back again to the previous point.
If magical beasts are born from common animals, wild creatures usually appear in natural or temporary dungeons.
They are born from the same source, but the former are by a more natural means... A common animal, when it grows, manages to assimilate the magical energy and begins to ‘evolve’.
A small crab can eventually become a giant after being exposed to magical energy in large quantities and assimilate it to create its magical core.
However, the creatures that are born in the dungeons are different... They are born as magical creatures as if ‘suddenly’.
While most take the forms of creatures very common on earth, it is quite possible that such creatures arrive from the void.
The answer to such a question is difficult to pinpoint, but what we can determine is that such creatures are considered ‘wild’ because their instincts are strongest inside the dungeon.
It is for such a reason that the overflows so common occur when dungeons are not cleaned and even ‘waves’ are formed, where magical creatures head down a path without fighting each other.
Magical energy, as the name says, is ‘magical’... And to see such a thing, one only has to look at an SS-ranked Archmage who can cast forbidden spells destroying and razing everything in its path or as an A-ranked fighter who can withstand the cannon fire of an ancient tank.
It is not strange to think that magical energy can bring about such changes when, on the other hand, ‘Chaos’ can cause the birth of all sorts of aberrant monsters.
Or, on the other hand, elementals who were born of the same element and became conscious over time, becoming individuals with ‘life’... Able to think, act and have emotions.
When there are necromancers who can revive the dead, ghosts and all sorts of all-powerful existences, such crazy things that before Terra nova would be stories out of fantasy books, are now real.
Let’s back up before I digress again.
Magical beasts are born from magical energy, and the only difference with creatures is where they are born.
Of course, magical creatures, once they get out of dungeons and start living freely, can manage to acquire some intelligence.
It has even been seen in high-ranking dungeons that there are some creatures with intelligence, although such creatures are quite wild.
How do they manage to evolve or change?
They assimilate magical energy through what we call the ‘magical core’. Those shiny, spherical gems that for us are sources of energy, material for blacksmiths and magic circles, for them are their organs.
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Humans do not have organs through which they assimilate magical energy, but magical beasts have their magical cores.
With those organs, they assimilate the magical energy into their body, allowing it to change.
The form can be by natural means that assimilate it in dense environments of magical energy as the interior of the magical forest or using the core of another enemy beast and even eating some magical plant.
Also tamers can give it special food with high density in magical energy.
The ways are multiple, but the results are the same.
They get stronger.
In their ‘evolution’, their strength increases and their body also changes completely, either in size or by acquiring unique characteristics.
Some manage to acquire an affinity to an elemental magic, others manage to increase in size and acquire physical strength and some even change by acquiring some characteristics that take them away from their species.
An example of the latter is the winged lions.
That species in general have the ability to fly and the main reason is that when they managed to ‘evolve’, they grew wings.
Today, they have become a natural species in the magic forest and their offspring grow normally.
Winged lions have offspring with other winged lions, and their offspring are born with wings... If we look at it another way, their genetics change.
Of course, it is also possible that they have offspring with common lionesses or other types of magical lions, in which case their offspring will depend on their genes.
The study of genetics does not extend only to man and his possibility of having offspring with demons, dwarves, elves, and any other existing race.
It also extends to the magical beasts themselves.
That is why it is common for magical beasts of some kind to be abducted and then put into breeding kennels for reproduction, and while some consume their flesh, others buy it for breeding.
Some magical beast tamers do such things and manage to tame scores of magical beasts by enslavement and then order their mating to grow their army or for sale to wealthy individuals.
Laws with such dealings have been increasing lately and in some countries or cities they are extremely stringent like in Switzerland or India.
Still, it is naïve to think that with laws, such situations change.
Of course, I will not be hypocritical and will not deny that there are breeding farms for wild creatures without intelligence and that specialize in selling them for meat or materials from their bodies.
Just as there used to be hatcheries for chickens or other ‘edible’ animals, now it is the same. They simply deal with any creature that has magical energy.
In the end, it is up to each individual to determine what is right or wrong. For my part, I will return to the subject at hand.
Magical beasts are born from magical energy, absorb that energy, change gaining different characteristics and become stronger.
They have sharper instincts and when they get a new ability, they can use it quite naturally. That is why it is common for them to be better ‘magicians’ in the use of magical energy.
Their naturalness and affinity make them similar to elementals who are able to control the elements at will.
Twenty years have passed since the ‘Great Cataclysm’ began and the world changed completely, with the greatest discernible changes in humanity being those of SSS rank.
However, on the other hand, the common animals also changed as they could assimilate the magical energy and their change was extremely varied, but equally astonishing.
The variety comes from the multiple capabilities in the creatures and their abilities, but also in the diversity of such beasts.
If one looks at tigers, leopards or lions, one will find some with different skin color with affinity to different magics, then one may also find creatures that are bigger or simply faster.
Such changes not only come from magical energy, it is also possible that they come from what they eat.
The ‘Crocodylus niloticus’ or ‘Giant Crocodile’ found in the ancient ‘Murchison Falls National Park’ are known for their terrifying size.
Such size does not come from having ‘evolved’. They eat a special magical plant that mutates them into huge creatures.
Their major flaw is that it reduces their ability to continue to increase in strength.
Other changes are quite rare, such as the ‘Bloody Elephant’ which is able to absorb blood and go into a state of madness.
Nature is unpredictable and with magical energy, the possibilities became unlimited.
An animal from years ago can become a huge magical beast that could reach several meters in length.
The strength is also high, leaving aside the Barbegazi, there is also the Holy Beast of India or the Holy Beast of China and in the Magic Forest there is the ‘Queen of the Forest’.
All these creatures have the strength of an SSS rank... They alone are calamities.
As if that wasn’t enough, there are several SS ranks either in the Magic Forest or in other areas.
If mankind had not gone through Terra nova, it is quite possible that at one time we would have entered into a war against such creatures.
We would not know why some of those magical beasts with the right means can ‘adopt’ human forms and we would not even know how to communicate and probably would have thought of them as treasures with legs.
It is undeniable that their bodies are valuable, but don’t be fooled. Our bodies, too, are valuable in the eyes of a necromancer, a spirit magician or some lunatic.
However, if humans had been driven by greed, probably by now some magical beast would be brimming with rage... And if that magical beast managed to rise in rank, perhaps many cities would be ruined.
In terms of numbers, magical beasts might be lesser, but such a thing did not mean that they would be easy to take down.
And the Queen of the Magical Forest showed us that they can unite to make a united front against a common enemy and that enemy was the humans.
Today I am grateful to people who are able to put their prejudices aside and who sought to reason with them, wanting not to fight with such creatures.
Perhaps such people did not seek a peace or alliance, but they most certainly did not wish to start an unnecessary battle.
Such people made what is now Switzerland and such people led to what is now Zerzura, who undeniably are the first to have an alliance with such magical beasts.
Not just a tribe of some species, I’m talking about what is the Magic Forest and the Queen of the Forest... I’m talking about an alliance with a nation of magical beasts of all kinds.
No matter when people try to deny it, at present the Magic Forest is a nation made up of different tribes of beasts and ruled by a ‘calamity’.
A primitive government?
Maybe, but we are talking about beasts that evolved from simple animals... They have created their form of government, established a certain order and generated different defense forces.
They evolve, adapt and progress in an incredible way.
They assimilate human knowledge and concepts and apply them to their people, always trying to improve and progress.
Now we are the majority, but... How many years have we been on this planet?
In twenty years, they have done more than we can imagine, and such a staggering fact leaves one great question.
What could they do in another ten? Or twenty years?
The world is no longer ours... Such words are spoken by some individuals who believe that we humans are the center of the universe.
Let me tell you, this world was never ours.
We are now seeing how those who for years were treated as mere animals are validating their right as inhabitants of this world.
Who will be next? Perhaps those who hide in the depths of the sea, who quite possibly we have never seen or met.
Or perhaps plants?
The possibilities are endless, but the results are not.
That is why learn to embrace the new.
Learn to adapt to the magical beasts and learn to treat it as your equal, for this is not the end of change and is only the beginning.
—Excerpt from ‘Evolution’ by Sage Su Chin.