“Listen, the tournaments are just around the corner and acting like this won’t give you a higher chance of keeping your seat.” hissed the lightning queen as she grasped onto her crystal sceptre like it was the only way she could control her rage.

“You keep your mouth shut before I make you! Both you and the Lightning monarch have been getting too big for your boots! I’m not putting up with your crap any longer!” the fire element’s monarch roared as he got up from his seat and slammed his fists on the Cherrywood table. Flickers and sparks rose up as the flames of his fists burned the table. His black eyes turned a hue of red with rage and scanned the 6 other monarchs challenging them to oppose him.

“Baron, quiet down. I’m not in the mood for your nonsense right now, we both know I could slap you silly if I wanted to, humble yourself.” The lightning monarch spoke softly, averting his ice cold gaze at him.

“What did you just say?! Say that one more time and see what happ-“Baron stopped mid sentence as his wife tugged at his arm, trying to make him come back to his senses. He sat back down in his chair in fury, not saying a word.

The lightning monarch embodied total authority, power and Status. He was the most powerful of all and gave the final say on all matters.

“I’ve been getting tired and bored out of my mind for this role and it is true that I have been in control for too long; it is time that there’s a shift in the balance of power. As my queen just stated the candidate tournaments are soon and I’m willing to put a handicap on my candidate.” The lightning monarch continued speaking.

“That would be great, as for the handicap I believe you, picking a human would be the best idea. What do you say?” The monarch of darkness smiled under his hood.

“I agree.” the monarch of beasts spoke up.

“Me too.”

“Me too”

“Me too”

“Me too”

“All of us agree this would be a good handicap, do you have a final say on anything?” the shadow monarch offered.

“I have nothing to say. I will accept your requests,” The lightning monarch said under his hood, “This meeting is now over.”

**

This magical world was split into two realms: the upper realm and the lower realm, each bound to one another like a mother and her foetus.

Beings from the demon, dwarven, human, elven, and Were men races all inhabit the lower realm. The ones that can utilise the abundant special energy of the world, called mana are named mages.

Mages are ranked from F to A, F rank having the weakest Mages, ascending all the way to A rank, holding the strongest Mages.

However, there’s a step above A rank, that is almost impossible to reach – S rank. The S rank is given to special top tier mages – based on their prowess.

Only S rankers are allowed to ascend to the Upper realms and live a life of luxury, by climbing the 100 Floor tower called the Tower of truth (It acts as a connection between the upper realm and the lower realm, like stairs in common terms).

The monarchs rule the Upper realm, they are not exactly gods but they are extremely powerful beings who have surpassed the S rank.

There are 7 monarchs, they represent the pure elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Lightning, Light, Darkness and Beast and keep the two worlds in balance, acting as a form of parliament for the Upper realm, and descending to the lower realms in rare cases to fix certain issues.

There were other unknown elements too that haven’t been mastered yet but those seven were the main elements. Special people were born with a pure elements eg 1 in 1000 people would have the pure fire element. These special people usually became powerful and rich.

Normal magical beings were born with a branch of an element eg. the power to create earthquakes is related to the Earth element.

There are also further rarer elements than the pure elements like gravity, ice, magnetism and wind; these are called unknown elements because the chance people have these are 1 in a million people.

Not many people have unknown elements which means its hard to practice it, hence the name ‘Unknown’. Unknown elements don’t have branched elements and are strictly special and hard to figure out.

Every 300 years, monarchs pick their own candidates in the lower realm to replace them. They don’t pick residents of the Upper realm as that would provide no enjoyment for them to watch.

These candidates have to ascend to the upper realm and challenge the monarchs for their seats, since the monarchs themselves are not immortal, ascenders are picked to battle them and take their seats.

You may think that that’s super unfair, however when ascenders reach the upper realm, they go through a series of tests determining whether they have the right to challenge the monarchs.

Furthermore, every resident in the upper realms watches this tournament, it’s like their form of the Olympics. Therefore, monarchs make sure to pick candidates in the lower realms with the most potential, to represent their faction.

The 7 factions of the Upper realm are segregated based on the elements and the Monarch for each element and their respective wives (named serpentines) lead them.

Sometimes if the new generation of candidates fail to beat the old generation, the old monarchs get to keep their seats, and the candidates become residents.

If a monarch dies of old age, a game is held to determine which of the monarchs will occupy the vacant seat and it’s said in myths that if a monarch can somehow occupy all the seats, they’ll have control over all realms…

The s are records of King Lance/ Zeref Amara’s POV. Let’s begin…