ISIHP CH 2

In the Year 1548 of the Enlightenment Calendar, Planet Azureal was suddenly faced with an unprecedented crisis. Thousands of portals had opened up all over the planet, connecting Planet Azureal to a variety of other dimensions. From these dimensions, special energies are never seen before started filling up the Planet Azureal.

Following this sudden spillover of energy, Planet Azureal was invaded by hordes of Monsters, at least that was the term the inhabitants of Azureal had given them. Not only that, even the inherent Flora and Fauna of the planet had started mutating into monsters after coming in contact with these species and the new energy.

These Monsters all had great physical and supernatural abilities and were immune to most things Humans could throw at them at the time. this led to three centuries of Massacre of Humans, as Monsters filled up the planet. From the dominant species that filled up 80% of the planet, Humans were dropped down to a species that was barely holding on to 10% of the planet.

Finally in the Year 1854, Humanity managed to get its first big hope. After experimenting for three centuries, the brightest minds of Humanity managed to come up with a way to harness the energy to improve their physique. This gave them a way to resist monsters actively instead of running away and hiding all the time. They termed this new way of strengthening one's body as the Warrior Path.

With the success of the Warrior Path, humanity's research into the new energies and monsters gained a big leap. Barely a few decades after that, in the Year 1915, Humanity's brightest came up with the second path of power, the Mage Path.

While the Warrior Path was suitable to those that were good in the physical way of fighting, the Mage path offered the path of power to the Scholars, Thinkers, and Strategists. With Mage Path, they got access to the ways of using Mental Power to control the elements and even perform various supernatural miracles like Psychokinesis.

Humanity became aggressive after getting two major paths of power and started pressurizing the invading Monsters. However, monsters were not that easy to subdue, which was proved in the year 1942 when an all-out war between Monsters and Humanity took place.

The trigger for the war was a sudden influx of monsters from the portals, along with the infusion of single new energy which promoted growth in monsters to a whole new level. This energy was later named 'Aether'.

The only silver lining in this war was that most monsters were unable to access this energy on their own, else monsters would have completely wiped out Humanity. Only the most sentient of monsters could handle this energy freely and were able to use the energy to strengthen themselves and their subordinates.

Finally, in the year 1944, a single human took a step that no human or monster ever imagined before. This human was a failed practitioner of the Mage Path, who was not able to control any of the Elemental Energies, nor could he use Mental energies to create Supernatural Phenomena such as Psychokinesis or Illusions.

However, when the war was at its peak, this human discovered that he could somehow control a bit of the new energy that had spurred the increase in the prowess of monsters. Suddenly transforming into a mad genius, this human then tried creating a New Path of power by making himself a conduit for this new energy and tame monsters through it.

He worked tirelessly all alone and created the first prototype of the Beast Tamer Path in the early days of the year 1945. His first successes were through a bunch of weak mutated rodents that were from the Azureal planet itself.

With the beast tamer path, He managed to make them grow strong enough to be comparable to the basic level monsters that invaded Azureal planet through the portals. Flushed with his success, He renamed himself as the 'Pied Piper' and provided his research to the brightest minds of Humanity to be perfected.

However, even though he was the pioneer of this new path, he had damaged his body too much by experimenting on himself to create this new path. As a result, he died before he could see Beast Tamer Path being born as a perfected new Path of Power.

Beast Tamer Path was officially put in action by the end of the Year 1945. This marked the new dawn for Humanity, as humanity leveled the field by defending against invading monsters with their own monster troops. With heroes born from all three paths working together, Humanity managed to push back the invading monsters bit by bit until they reached the area near the portals.

With portals supplying the Sentient Monsters with near Infinite Underlings, humanity was forced to make a shaky truce with monsters. The Sentient monsters agreed to create their lairs near the portals and not go more than a certain distance away from the portals, else humanity would be free to hunt them.

In return, Sentient Monsters were allowed to make their own City-States around the portals where they could do whatever they want with the non-sentient monsters they ruled. However, any non-sentient monster that came beyond these city-states was fair game for Humanity.

Like this, a shaky truce was established between the two groups. Of course, both groups sneakily broke these rules every now and then. But both sides would sacrifice away from their troops if they got caught while breaking these rules, that was the unsaid agreement to prevent another war.

But most of the time both groups minded their own business. Humanity had many other enemies besides these invading monsters, such as the naturally mutating flora and fauna of their own planet. Moreover, as peace was established, Humanity once again broke away into various countries and started plotting against each other for more power and benefits.

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As Rudra read this brief note he had made on the history of this planet, monsters, and the various Paths of Power, he could not help but let out a sigh. No matter what world or circumstances, Humanity's innate nature never changed. Humanity truly was the perfect blend of Sins and Virtues.

However, all that was history. It was currently the Year 2154, so he also briefly looked at the notes he had made on the various advancements Humanity had made to improve the Paths since the War and the Truce.

The main advancement in the subject of the Paths was when Humanity finally managed to fuse technological advancement to the energies that fueled the paths. They were finally able to distill the crude methods used for awakening previously into a more organized and scientific method they termed as the Awakening Process.

With the Awakening process, Almost no one faced any problems even if they failed in Awakening to one of the three paths. Moreover, the Awakening Process would accurately awaken the candidate to whichever path that they had the greatest affinity to and would also insert the basic knowledge related to the Path they were assigned to directly into their minds.

With the current research, Humanity had also managed to derive the probability of a candidate to awaken into one of the paths. An average candidate generally had a 40% chance for Warrior Path, 35% chance for Mage Path, 10% chance for Beast Tamer Path, and 15% chance to fail at Awakening.

Based on this, it was clear how rare the Beast Tamers were. It was also in a way Nature's method of curbing this cheat like Path. Beast Tamer Path naturally meant that a Beast Tamer would never fight alone, they would always have their tamed monsters with them.

But, there was an even more important reason why Beast Tamer Path was so valued. Just as Beast Tamers helped their tamed monsters get stronger through channeling Aether, the tamed monster would reciprocate through the connection they had to the tamer.

Tamed monsters provide the Beast Tamer with improvement in the Tamer's Physical and Mental aspects, even sometimes providing the Tamer with access to the same skills as the Tamed Monster.

The stronger the Tamer was, the more monsters could be tamed, which in turn would again make the Tamer stronger again. It was a continuous feedback loop.

As he finished reading about all this, a glimmer of desire flashed deep within his eyes. No matter what he had told everyone, deep down he aspired to become a Beast Tamer, just like every other kid of his age. Even if the chances were low, he made a secret pact with himself not to give up hope until the Awakening Process was finished.

If fate wills, then he definitely would become a Beast Tamer and work hard to make his name resound in this world.