“W-We did it…

We defeated 3 Ruler Beasts…

W-We won…”

“We Won!”

“WE WON!!!”

“YEAAAHHHHHHH!!!”

“I can’t believe it! To think the Union would defeat the Three most dangerous beasts in whole Yrniel!

Aren’t we absurdly strong!?”

“Heh, it’s our leaders who are absurdly strong, we did nothing.”

“Oh c’mon, leaders represent our strength, they aren’t different from us!”

“Yeah, leaders are leaders, they are our strength and the core of our Union!”

The soldiers continued to discuss with each other in a joyful tone.

This was a great achievement after all.

This finally proved that the Union was better than those stupid beasts who just move around on their instincts.

Big smiles appeared on everyone’s faces when they glanced at the three huge bodies,

Primordial Horned Wolf’s

Primordial Blazing Bear’s

Primordial Frost Mammoth’s

Were lying on the ground.

“Children.”

Suddenly, a calm but loud voice echoed throughout the battlefield.

The Union members turned towards the voice and saw their Union Leaders standing together.

“I believe we are going to have a big meal today, and in our meal, we are going to eat 3 Ruler Class Beasts!” Dagahra announced with a big smile on his face.

“YEAAAHHHHHH!!!”_.

The Union members roared in excitement.

“Hahaha~ Look how happy they look.”

Dagahra laughed.

“Indeed, it is surprisingly calm to watch,” Caesar muttered with a small smile on his face.

“We did achieve something big today after all.” Sikara smiled as well.

“Indeed.” Moloch, one of the strongest demons nodded.

“And I still can’t believe that bastard stood up against a Ruler Class Beast on his own.” Kiffar, a Dwarf muttered as he glanced at Azriel, who was now supported by Aeliana.

“It was nothing but a weak beast, no need to act like it was a big deal.”

Azriel shrugged and waved his hands nonchalantly.

Dagahra’s face twitched in annoyance when he heard those words.

In the end, he couldn’t control himself and snorted.

“Sure, Sure, it was so easy that you can’t even stand up on your own after fighting it.”

“…”

Azriel looked at Dagahra and narrowed his eyes.

“What? You want to say anything?” Dagahra chuckled.

Suddenly, Azriel moved his hands from Aeliana’s shoulder and stood straight,

“You were saying?”

“…”

Dagahra and the others blinked a few times and were left dumbfounded.

“Y-You recovered?” Caesar questioned.

“Of course I did. How long do you think I was going to be out for after fighting a mere beast?” Azriel questioned.

“I-It has barely been 2 minutes!” Caesar shouted.

“That is all I need.”

Azriel shrugged.

His Vampire Transformation had a time limit and once the time limit is over, Azriel gets incredibly weak for some time.

And that time…

Was 2 minutes.

Yes, just 2 minutes.

After using that absurd Skill, Azriel only needs two minutes to recover back to his original strength, heck, he can even use the Vampire Transformation again now.

Actually, it wasn’t that the Skill didn’t have high backlashes, on the contrary, using that Skill was pretty dangerous since the backlash is too lethal.

All your bones break apart, the Mana flow in your body becomes a mess and it becomes hard to breathe, any person would need 1-2 months to recover from those injuries even after using Potions made by Dwarves,

However, Azriel was different.

His regeneration soon kicked in and in just 2 minutes, he was as good as new.

“Monster…” Caesar muttered.

“Hmph! Don’t act like you are all strong. Tsk Tsk, you still needed help to defeat that beast.” Dagahra snorted.

“Tsk Tsk, I still did more damage to what you and the demons did together,” Azriel smirked and Dagahra turned silent.

“I challenge you to a duel!”

Dagahra roared.

“…” Azriel and the other union leaders looked at him with a blank looks on their faces.

“W-What?”

“Did you forget?” Caesar glanced at Dagahra.

“What?”

“You lost to him like… 100 years ago…” Sikara muttered.

“And he didn’t even use his Vampire Transformation.” Moloch nodded.

“…” Dagahra turned silent.

“T-That was 100 years ago.”

“Sure sure, you sure got very very strong in 100 years. Good good.” Azriel just walked towards Dagahra and patted his shoulder.

“You bastard…” Dagahra cursed.

A smile appeared on Azriel’s face and he started laughing.

“Hahaha~”

The other union leaders started laughing as well and then, Dagahra shook his head and smiled.

“I’ll defeat you one day, you arrogant bastard.”

“Sure sure, I will be waiting.” Azriel chuckled.

“Tsk Tsk.”

The conversation continued, the Leaders returned to the base, and the soldiers started packing up as well.

Many lives were lost today, however, they all fought bravely.

After returning to the base, the three ruler beasts were cooked and everyone started celebrating.

This victory was a huge boost to Union’s morale.

Now that they have defeated the strongest of the beasts, they started moving and expanding more freely.

With how quick Humans, Beastmen, Elves and Dwarves populated, the Union’s territories expanded further and further.

Thousands of years passed by, and the Union continued to grow at an alarming speed, then, they noticed that Beasts who were stronger than the Ruler Beasts.

They named them Lord Beasts.

These Beasts left a deep scar on Union’s morale.

The Union Members avoided Lord Beasts’ territories and bought time.

The longer they could hold, the higher their chances of victory.

And one day, Azriel and the other leaders finally defeated one Lord Beasts.

The Union started growing at their previous speed and 3,000 years later, 75% of Yrniel was under Union’s control.

In all these years, Union members learned about one more thing.

Death.

No, not causality.

But death.

Natural death from old age.

A phenomenon where their skin turns wrinkly, the body turns weak, hair turns white and then, they just die.

Without any disease, without any injury, they just directly die.

A scary phenomenon indeed.

This thing started with the latest of the human generations.

These humans were incredibly weak.

They started dying after living for around 250 years, that’s it. Not only that, but their natural growth stops by the time they reach a certain level of strength.

And that level of strength was…

Simple too weak for them to do anything.

It can be said that the latest generations of humans are complete disappointments.

However, even after that, the humans didn’t care.

250 years were enough, they could give birth to many many more humans in this much time frame.

Also, every once in a while, a prodigy is born who is stronger than normal humans.

So the human leaders were happy.

However, as more and more years passed by, this problem started appearing for Elves, Dwarves and Beastmen.

The Union termed it Lifetime.

And this lifetime was directly proportional to the amount of time a race needs to reproduce.

Humans needed less time to reproduce and they had less lifetime as well.

Elves, Dwarves and Beastmen could live longer compared to humans.

As for Demons and Dragons, there were no natural deaths in their race, therefore, their lifetime wasn’t decided yet.

However, in all these years, even Dragons and Demons could feel that their latest generations were comparably weaker than the first generations.

The Union Leader came up with a theory.

The more they reproduce, the weaker their innate bloodline gets and the weaker the next generations become.

They named this phenomenon ‘Bloodline Erosion’.

They tried to have the ones with better bloodline mate together, however, in the end, it only slowed down the Bloodline Erosion and failed to completely remove it.

In the end, they gave up.

Since they couldn’t do anything, there was no point thinking about it.

Lazy thinking, but oh well.

It wasn’t really a bad one.

Luckily, as more years passed by, it seemed that the Bloodline Erosion among humans stopped.

The weakest of the humans now only lived for around 100 years, rarely did any latest generation of humans live passed 100.

And they were pathetically weak.

Not only that, but they didn’t grow stronger with time either.

The only growth in strength they get is the one when they turn into an adult from a child, and that strength wasn’t much to talk about either.

These humans couldn’t even defeat the weakest of the Beasts.

As more time passed, the latest Generations of Elves, Dwarves and Beastmen became the same as well, and Demons and Dragons followed after them.

Although they were stronger than humans, they were still too weak compared to the first generations.

As more and more time continued, even older generations of humans started dying.

The Union Leaders panicked.

This was problematic.

Whatever happened to humans was something that would happen to other races sooner or later, this meant that older generations of other races would die soon as well.

The later generations were weak, older generations were dying.

If this continued, the Union would lose its strength…

The Leaders had to do something.

The Union Leaders came together and started discussing.

They started looking into how they used to grow stronger, how Mana moves in their body and after countless years of examinations, trials and errors.

Tracing back to Progenitors,

Or Cultivation was founded.