Pretense

Donning her disguise, which gave her the look of a fierce female Mercenary, Fenrir made her way towards the entrance of the City. From her observation, she knew it was called Heavenly Moon City, affiliated with the most powerful Sect in the province, the Heavenly Moon Sect. They were located atop the massive mountain nearby, which was larger than any mountain Fenrir had ever seen in her previous world. From a glance, it seemed to have a height of more than 300km and, as there were strange forces that made flight very difficult in this world, most people had to scale it on foot.

Other than the Heavenly Moon Sect, the City itself had several 'powerful' Sects, Clans, and Mercenary Groups. At the top of them all was the Outer-Branch of the Heavenly Moon Sect, with the Flowing River Sect and Flame Jade Sect constantly competing for the second strongest position. However, the group Fenrir knew to be the most cautious of was the Heavenly Moon Mercenary Guild, as they were a branch of the larger Continental Mercenary Association.

The Continental Mercenary Association was part of the three strongest powers on this continent, which Fenrir had learned was called the Oyone, or 'The Western Badlands'. In this world, it was the weakest of the four continents, which were Vestaia, 'The Northern Heaven', Melkio, 'The Eastern Prairie', and Hai-Son, 'The Southern Kiln'. Vestaia and Hai-Son were supposed to be equal in strength, but Melkio and Oyone were inarguably weaker than the other two. As for the other powers within the Oyone Continent, they were the Searing Sword Palace and the Demon Beast Mountain respectively.

Though the Searing Sword Palace was supposed to be the strongest force in the Oyone, it was well-known that they rarely sought trouble with the Demon Beast Mountain. The reason behind this, which had interested Fenrir, was because it was a region made up of various 'Demonic Beasts' that had managed to obtain human forms. This was the reason why so many people had called her a Demon in the past. As for why this was a 'bad' thing, it was due to the fact that many Cultivators hunted Demonic Beasts for their cores, materials, or even their souls. This practice made it impossible for Humans and Demonic Beasts to coexist together, to the point that any humanoid Demonic Beast outside of the Demon Beast Mountain would be hunted down relentlessly.

Fenrir believed this was extremely stupid, even though she had also killed her fair share of Demonic Beasts by now. The ones she fought, however, also hunted each other and fought for territorial dominance. They also lacked any significant intelligence and, if they had, she would have let them be since it was 'wrong' to fight against each other for no reason. If the only reason you had was that the other 'person' was different, you were more of a monster than them. Intelligence was something that made it possible to rationalize, empathize, and work alongside each other. This allowed Fenrir to deduce that the main reason why Humans seemed to hate Demonic Beasts was because 'it was harder to steal their resources'...they just disguised their greed behind false righteousness, just like how many of their practitioners wore their pride and pettiness on their chests, putting on pretenses instead of being genuine...

(Fenrir's Commentary: 'This place, these people, it's all so disingenuous...everyone just wants what other people have...')