Calamity Upon This World

In Astressa, monsters are just animals who, over the years, have accumulated mana inside their bodies, adapted, and evolved into higher versions of themselves.

Around four thousand years old, these monsters used to number billions and roam the world.

But after an event called the Great Purging, the monsters were killed around the world for their valuable bodies, which can be used for a variety of different purposes.

And after a few years, the monsters, which used to number billions, were reduced to a mere fraction of the population, with most of them living on the neutral continent.

The place is home to dragons, pheonixes, and many other mythical beasts.

While all races wanted the valuable bodies of monsters, no one wanted to risk angering the mighty mythical beasts.

The dragons, a race famous for their neutrality, finally took a stance after seeing the influx of beasts invading their territory, with many daring individuals coming after them in order to hunt them.

At first, dragons were enraged and massacred thousands of lives, both monsters and other sentient races like humans, elves, and dwarves alike.

But other races did not take kindly to the breach of neutrality they were promised from dragons after their inactivity and refusal to lend out a helping hand during the war against demons.

Tension between dragons and the other races was always at an all-time high and only needed a single trigger to erupt into an all-out war.

Which is exactly what happened after dragons broke their 'neutral' stance, and it started what is now known as the great dragonic war of 1470 AZ.

Despite Zephyr's best efforts to avoid wars, he couldn't fully rid the world of war.

Thankfully, this war didn't devolve into a full-blown racial extinction or planet-domination-level conflict.

And after five whole years of war and the deaths of a few thousand dragons, the war came to an end.

Sadly, just to kill a few thousand dragons, millions of human, vampire, elves, dwarves, and beastfolk lives had to be sacrificed.

Dragons, despite numbering not even a fraction of the combined might of the other combined races, were the dominant force for the majority of the war.

This was due to even the weakest dragon possessing enough strength to level cities and kill thousands.

With their scales being impenetrable by the weapons and spells of most people,.

Even back then, only a few hundred powerhouses were capable of actually damaging and killing dragons.

So the war from a surface level may have looked completely one-sided in favour of the United Race Federation, also known as the URF.

In truth, it was actually the opposite of the actual war between thousands of dragons and a few hundred powerhouses, most of whom were barely able to kill a single dragon.

It was during this time period that a very rare and powerful bloodline of dragon slayers revealed itself, which gave its users enhanced stats and abilities exclusively when fighting against dragons.

This bloodline was later named Dragneel, and they had been promoted from commoners to the status of dukes all because of their war achievements.

These dragon slayers, while few in number, were the bane of all dragons, and every single one of them killed more than hundreds of dragons.

While, in terms of sheer numbers, URF had suffered far more casualties, it was the dragons who had truly suffered from this war.

For the URF, the millions of lives lost were spread out between billions of lives and could easily be replaced.

But the dragons had lost almost half of their entire already limited population, and their lost lives could not be replaced due to female dragons being extremely picky about their mates and them only being able to give birth once.

Due to their innate pride and arrogance, dragons got cocky, ended up grossly underestimating their opponents, declared a war they couldn't win, and almost got wiped out of the face of Astressa.

To avoid going extinct, the dragons proposed a peace treaty.

And the URF, despite knowing about their inevitable victory, would choose to continue the war, but the loss would far outweigh the profit.

After this incident, the neutral continent was declared 'No man's land, a place unclaimable by all races and instead belonging to mythical beasts and monsters.

Multiple laws have been put into place regarding the entrance to the neutral continent.

But the most important one is that once you step foot inside the neutral continent, all your past affiliations with the outside world are cut off.

So basically, even if the king of the human continent stepped on a neutral continent and got killed by a dragon, humans would not have the right to seek revenge on dragons.

But the same applies in the opposite case, and if the king kills a dragon, the dragons won't be able to seek revenge against the human race.

In nature, naturally formed artifacts called dungeon cores can be found that attract nearby monsters, and once enough monsters satisfy their total capacity, they create a subdimension.

And these sub-dimensions are called dungeons.

This type of dungeon is called a natural dungeon; there are also artificial dungeons, but before that,.

"Does all of that make sense?" William asked as he looked at the half-sleeping figures of Jasmine, Raya, and Max.

They were currently in this situation because Jasmine made the mistake of asking William about dungeons.

Giving him the opportunity to yap to them about information that they didn't know or were interested in for a whole hour.

None of them could have guessed that the usually calm, stoic, and cool Edge Lord was secretly passionate about history and was just waiting for a chance for someone to ask him.

All three of them were tired from the journey and wanted to rest to be ready for tomorrow's dungeon excursion, but thanks to Jasmine ignorantly asking a question, they were forced to listen to John's ramblings for a whole hour.

'Let's never talk about history in front of Edge Lord ever again.'

This single thought ran through the minds of all Cleansers members aside from William, who was just excited to finally pass on a bit of knowledge he had accumulated thanks to spending multiple hours every day inside his family library.

After this, the cleaners had to listen to Williams ramblings for another 3 hours before they could finally go to sleep.