The day was calm—a serene break from harsh wars and brutal exercises.
Su Vaen strolled by a serene brook beyond his outpost, his mind straying over reflections on power, heritage, and the complex pecking order of his world.
In a moment of introspection, rare for him, he began to think about the contrasts between the various classes and races that populated the realm.
He believed, Strength is everything there is in this world. Not what is recorded on dusty scrolls or who one's family happens to be. But sheer power—possessing the ability to bend the world to one's will.
But even in such a brutal pecking order, lines were maintained strictly drawn between noble and commoner, between weakling and truly powerful.
At its most basic, being common or noble depended on birth. and authority.
There were commoners aplenty; they worked the land, lived their lives in comparative obscurity, and hoped to rise above their station.
They wielded little power, their achievements reduced often to bare survival, and their ambitions restrained by the harsh realities of daily life.
Nobles, on the other hand, were born privileged. They could be trained, provided with resources, and endowed with a tradition-soaked heritage.
But even among nobles, there was an unmistakable difference—a narrow but vital distinction between those who held only a title and those whose lineage contributed something more, something enduring.
The lower nobles could acquire a title based on land or under rank.
They were the gentlemen and ladies of small manors, who were respected in their immediate locales but largely irrelevant on the grand stage.
Their authority was usually acquired through backbreaking effort and determination and not through a God-given spark of energy.
They struggled for every inch of authority, normally employing skill and alliance refined to perfection to maintain their positions.
And then there were the blood nobles—the ones with veins coursing through them with the ancient, enigmatic legacy of the Origin Beasts.
They were not strong because of training so much as because of who they were.
They possessed an innate mastery over the elements, a kind of rude, unrefined power that set them above ordinary nobles. Even so, there was order among them.
At the pinnacle of human nobility was the imperial clan, the Xinyue Clan.
Their bloodline, titled the Celestial Zephyr Bloodline, was famous for their connection to the wind—a force as tempestuous and mercurial as it was liquid.
Members of the imperial clan strode with an air of command.
Their dominance had been sharpened to a fine edge where even the wind would bend to obey their unseen command.
They were the standard to which all the others were being held—a testament of what real, innate power was capable when joined with self-control and birth.
The contradictions were evident to any who would look at them. While hard-won know-how and eternal fighting were needed for the lesser nobles, blood nobles and imperial family drew advantage through some sort of natural progression.
Their own strengths were more typically expressed in the flash of their auras or in the manner by which they could instinctively command respect, even amidst combat.
But beneath these superficial differences was a true reality.
In the grand scheme of things, the humans were an oddity. They prided themselves on civilization, on the complex hierarchy of nobles and honor.
But in comparison to the other races—particularly the ferox and the demon beasts—humans tended to fall short.
Even their best of the breed could be, in nearly all regards, the weakest when measured against the pure brute force of demon beasts or the implacable ferocity of the ferox.
Not that humans could not achieve greatness; many of them had.
But human nature was full of selfishness and ambition, appetites that, though driving them to innovate and conquer, planted seeds of strife within and ultimately weakness.
Their greatest victories were marred by the treacle battles of blood and honor—a paradox in a world where strength alone was the currency of any value.
The beasts, both hellish and savage, had a different type of strength.
Demonic beasts, who could take on human form (naturally at the Golden Core or via special elixirs), were animals of raw, cultivated power and instinct.
They led brutal and cruel lives, yet they possessed an unbreakable, raw power that no normal human could ever try to easily imitate.
In nearly every way, the monsters were the true masters of the wild. Their power was raw and uncorrupted, unencumbered by the complex social graces that crippled human society.
Even the finest class of human stock, with its refined arts and trained faculties, were most often outdone by the untrained bruteness of a well-bred demonic creature.
It was this realization that was a humbling yet liberating moment for Su Vaen.
It underscored the fact that in a world where power decided destiny, nobility and commoner roles were, in so many ways, fantasies.
True power was measured in terms of how great a person could control the powers of nature, how great he could tap the raw energy of Tenebris as a creator and destroyer.
In the silence beside the brook, Su Vaen allowed his thoughts to roam free.
He reflected on the reality that nobility, all ceremony and pomp as it may be, was in essence a tenuous, insubstantial disguise for the mad, unbridled reality of the world.
The Xinyue Clan, whose noble lineage depended on the factor of wind, was the pinnacle of human ability.
Their presence was nonetheless marred by internal struggles and self-interest agendas which fragmented them internally. It's not just about their internal struggles.
Their silly thoughts regarding the greatness of origin beasts is the cause of weakness in human beings. Regardless of how great the origin beasts are ultimately those are not the natural power of human beings.
A human being can utilize maximum 60% power of the origin beast lineage they utilize.
This is reality they don't speak.
And yet, the commoners, for all their seeming weakness, had something unrefined and indomitable—a strength that came from unending struggle.
And the animals? They were uncorrupted by the trinkets of station and lineage, their strength as natural as the wind itself.
There was a certain irony to it all. In a world where the powerful were defined by their blood and heritage, it was often the seemingly unremarkable—the ones who fought for survival with no weight of inherited hubris—who had the greatest strength.
Human civilization, with its elaborate hierarchies, was at once a testament to human ingenuity and reminder of its basic frailties.
For Su Vaen, these ideas were not abstract. They were the basis of his journey—a silent promise that someday he might break free from the constraints of a corrupt system.
He had seen the corruption and weakness that spawned even among the nobility, and he knew that the future belonged not to those who clung to old traditions, but to those who forged new ones.
Finally, strength was a double-edged sword. It would bring a man to heroic heights, or cause him to suffer his final defeat if misused.
Thinking through the stark differences of the noble and the lowly, of the human and the beast, Su Vaen felt a determination growing in his heart.
He knew that in order to recast his life, he had to rise above these conflicts—master the unleashed power of Tenebris Energy and use it to forge his own destiny.
The hubbub of virtuous harangues and turmoil of insignificant hates faded from him in that serene moment beside the gently running river.
All that remained was the raw, unflinching truth: in this world, power was not given—it was taken, in blood and sweat, through trials that stripped away all pretense.
And so, with a thoughtful smile and a light heart, Su Vaen broke out of his trance, ready to continue his quest.
Whether noble or vile, human or beast, everyone had their place in this hard, beautiful world.
But it was up to those brave enough to envision—and to struggle—to redefine what genuine strength really meant.