Chapter 882: Another world, Demon Sanctuary, Itogami Island
Chapter 882: Another world, Demon Sanctuary, Itogami Island
An endless ocean stretching for miles and miles...
The water is as blue if not an even more enchanting shade of blue than the sky itself. The water sparkled like sapphires, the reflected rays were enough to prick anyone's eyes. It was a hot day, the sun was behaving like it wanted to evaporate the entire ocean as it rained down sunlight like there's no tomorrow. Mirages could be seen everywhere, the humidity and temperature is also quite intimidating.
Large and small fishing vessels could be seen sailing around. Wind crashed against the boats while the sound of air horns could be intermittently heard. The fishing vessels went about their business. The larger ships used dragnets to catch the fishes in the sea.
Looking at the heat, one wondered if the fishermen actually caught anything, did the sun not kill off all the fishes with its heat?
In the center of this boundless ocean, there's an island.
Accurately speaking, the island is an artificial floating city rather than a natural island.
Itogami Island.
If you think this is just a normal island then you're dead wrong...
While it might look like a very highly-developed island with man-made structures erected all over it, it's actually an artificial island made of resin, metal, carbon fibres, and magic. It can be thought of as a set of giga-floats that had buildings and people living on it.
It's also highly populated despite its relatively small area. There are about 560,000 people living on Itogami Island.
This Island also had another name, the Demon Sanctuary.
It's a special area set up to study supernatural beings and/or endangered magical species and superhumans. This was a special administrative region where humans lived with monster walking around.
Most of the humans here were researchers or family members related to researchers.
There were also super-powered individuals licensed by the city here.
The demons and monsters were the focal point of this city.
Beastmen, fairies, halflings, artificial lifeforms, vampires, and various other kind of fantastic species lived here. Collectively, they were referred to as demons.
These legendary creatures aren't living it up. With their habitats gone, torn by the ravages of war, their population dwindled until they were near extinction. The humans and demons worked hard to set the Demon Sanctuary up as a place to harbor demons.
In exchange, the demons were required to cooperate with humans on research and studies aimed at leveraging supernatural and magical abilities to advance technology, industry, and science. Itogami Island was a place designed around that objective.
The demons are granted rights and privileges. For example, they can walk around freely, study together with humans, find employment, generally, living with the humans. It isn't strange to see the demons walking among humans. These relatively normal, law-abiding demons are called registered demons.
Although it sounded strange that humans can live with demons which differed in appearances. In reality, these demons have the ability to transform into humanoid forms so they looked very similar to humans under normal conditions. You might be walking next to a beastman or vampire without seeing animal ears or out-of-place fangs.
To identify a demon or member of other magical races, one would have to look for bracelets that served as tracker and reporting hardwares. The bracelets were like IDs that differentiated humans from monsters. But, this only applies for those who were documented and licensed by the city-state. If they were unregistered, they wouldn't have these bracelets.
Itogami Island was designed as a place to house demonic races so the ruling administration didn't open the city's doors to visitors or tourists. There are stringent requirements in place to prevent all unauthorized personnel except for family members of the researchers here.
Due to its geographical location, the temperature here can only be described as warm to hot. Even during winter, the temperature could reach 20 degrees celcius and above (68 degrees F). Plus, due to its proximity to the tropical belt, it's like summer 365 days on Itogami Island.
On this hot and humid island, the perceived temperature can often time be higher than the actual temperature. Moreover, the salty warm winds coming in from the sea around the island were in many ways, worse than the dry and arid winds coming from a desert. It's a climate that's unbearable for most humans, naturally, it wasn't a tourist hotspot in the first place.
Furthermore, the Island is a gigantic science laboratory.
If there are unregistered demons here, they would be wise to keep their powers in check. If they used magic or their magic power leaked and they were detected, being captured is a very real possibility.
Granted, there are always exceptions that can get past conventional safeguards. For instance, there is a certain vampire walking among the citizens, the Fourth Primogenitor.
By the way, vampires rank the highest among the magical races.
They are famous for being very long-lived, sporting superb regeneration, incredible physical abilities, able to sustain themselves through consuming food like humans while replenishing mana by drinking blood. They are also very susceptible to the urge to drink blood.
The vampires in this world aren't creatures who go into bloodlust because of random reasons. They usually lust for blood after being sexually aroused.
As for why they are known as the strongest demons, that's because of their trump card...
Vassal beasts!
Magical manifestations of incredible power that can only be wielded properly by true ancestors. By trading vitality, these familiars can be summoned into reality!
Even the weakest vassal beasts are basically walking and thinking cutting edge jets and tanks. Stronger vassal beasts can easily morph the environment through their attacks. The highest calibre beasts are walking cataclysms.
It's not hard to bring down a nation with a strong enough vassal beast.
Familiar summoning or vassal beast summoning, that's what solidified the vampires as the strongest demons in this world.
The vampires' racial perks seemed like child's play in comparison to their unique ability to summon familiars.
Vampires are not truly immortal, they just live so long that no one has ever seen a vampire die of old age. Hence, they got their titles as immortal demons.
A weak familiar would drain the life of a human child in a while. Meanwhile, a vampire with a weak familiar will still live so long they appear biologically immortal.
That just goes to show the longevity of these vampires are too ridiculous.
However, the vampires rely heavily on their brain and blood to control and channel their power respectively, making these two organs their fatal weaknesses, if a vampire suffered heavy damage to both organs, they would still die.
The only beings that demonstrated true immortality are the tenbus who are only mentioned in legends and the apex vampires, the primogenitors.
First primogenitor - Lost Warlord
Second primogenitor - Fall Gazer
Third primogenitor - Chaos Bride
Next, only written in myths, the fourth primogenitor who awakened to a world that's anxious about what his existence portend, the fourth primogenitor living in Itogami Island.
These four are the strongest beings in this world, the four primogenitors.
At least, that was the case until...
In the city that's about to go into a period of uncertainty and turbulence because the fourth true ancestor woke up, another true ancestor from a foreign world made his advent while accompanied by his partner. Unbeknownst to the world at large, they arrived...