136 The Encroachment of Envy

After that, the division between the Elves and the Fae began to grow without a visible stop in sight. It wasn't too serious in the beginning, the Elves would just shun the Fae from whatever activities that they were doing or scam them out of resources, however, this kind of bullying kept on growing until the Fae weren't even allowed to own any of the nicer buildings or live anywhere close to the Queen, they also had to take the more dangerous jobs and many of them ended up dying.

Naturally, no matter how intrinsically nice the Fae were, there was no way that they could continue to take this kind of persecution without retaliating, but in the end, they were quite unwilling to give up their noble Faerie code which had become an innate trait of their race when they had become the Fae, so all they did was band even closer together and protect each other when needed. Sometimes things got violent, but it wasn't too unbearable

However, when the first Fae to die on the streets in broad daylight ended up being a small child of the 2nd generation, all gloves came off! The Fae had always thought that their children would be fine so long as they didn't stick their head out too much, after all, they were children and children were the future. It was utterly sinister to harm a child, something that the Fae couldn't fathom, so their protection towards them was somewhat lacking. It shouldn't have mattered because everyone loves kids, but who would have thought that the Elves would be so cruel!

Unfortunately, the Fae were unaware of the fact that when the Elf that had killed the child committed the deed, a strange green energy that wasn't too dissimilar to that of their leader had taken control of the man's body. His eyes had filled with green light and a strange symbol had appeared on his forehead.

Too bad, all of these markings had disappeared after the deed and the man's consciousness had returned, but before he could even feel remorse for his actions, 5 Fae that had heard the dying screams of the child appeared before him with enraged faces before tearing him apart.

This occurred 3 years after the Queen's announcement (Year 154), and it marked the beginning of the rebellion.

The Fae began to parade around the streets, complaining about the unjust harassment that they had been suffering despite their grand contributions to the Elves, and began demanding that the Queen should give back everything that was taken from them and return their honour, or marry Zalucard and make him King.

They came and went with such domineering force that the proud Elves that used to pick on them before began to steer out of their way, not wanting to be the next Elf to be torn to pieces. So like this, their momentum continued to rise until 1 year later, they actually began to become more violent. They forcefully confiscated homes from Elves and took the resources of others, however, even in this chaotic state, the only Elves that they harassed were Elves that were deemed too devious or useless to society.

They still considered themselves the noble Fae whose goal was to uplift the quality of all Elven life, even if there had been a clear division between the Elves and the Fae. It was in their very nature after all.

However, one day, a certain portion of the group of Fae parading the streets began to glow with a green aura, but that mass amount of green aura started to raise a strange feeling of Envy on those who were nearby and they too began to glow with the same green aura.

It was like an unholy plague, and at the head of it was Zalucard.

Normally, the boy had bright green eyes which weren't too uncommon for an Elf or even a Fae for that matter, but at that moment, they were glowing with an ominous light that caused those who looked into them to feel ugly emotions rising in their hearts. But on top of that, there was an even more eerie green symbol that was etched onto his forehead, and looking at it was even worse.

It didn't take long for the emotions of everyone in the vicinity to become extremely volatile. The noble Fae began to scream their protests with spittle flying out of their mouths and wild eyes looking in every direction, and the gentle Elves began to throw whatever they could grab at the crowds of Fae with similar appearances.

Strangely enough, the longer this continued, the more the green aura continued to spread and the more the ambient temperature began to drop. It was completely terrifying and everyone with a brain should have been screaming and fleeing, or at least becoming vigilant, however, that was not the case.

Instead, the people just became more and more wilder to the point that a furious battle was going to take place at any second.

None of them… none of them were aware of the fact that portions of the green aura that was growing and at an even faster rate… began to be sucked into the strange mark on Zalucard's head.

As this continued to go on, the mana within Zalucard's body, which was also green in colour, began to rise at a pace that had never been seen before. Even his flesh and blood began to receive the strange green essence and it could be considered that he was undergoing Anatomy Refinement.

WHOOOSH!

Zalucard's aura burst forth as he broke through the 9th Stage of the 2nd Realm and entered 1st Stage of the 3rd (Core Refinement Realm), and his Anatomy Refinement officially began at the 1st Stage. The only reason that impurities didn't begin to flood out of his veins was because they were directly eradicated by the same energy that was nourishing his body.

Other people had to not only endure great pain to achieve what Zalucard had just achieved, but that also had to be lucky too. After all, if all you needed was pain to unlock Anatomy Refinement, then nearly everybody on the planet would have done so. You needed a suitable enriching force that would preserve your life and help you grow to complete the process, and even then, dying still wasn't out of the question. But here, Zalucard had entered the path of Anatomy Refinement as easily as inhaling oxygen!

If people like Raiko and the Crystal Dragon King heard of what had happened, who knew how many teeth they would have grinded away out of anger.