Humans

It went without saying that the High Humans were likewise forbidden from mingling with the regular Humans, but this was a slightly loose rule because the guardians who were responsible for protecting the territory of the regular humans were actually exempt from that rule, and it wasn't just them. The people who would collect a percentage of the resources gathered by the regular Humans, or the people who were given permission to conduct experiments could also interact with the regular humans.

However, the one thing that was absolutely forbidden was for the 2 races to mate with each other. Gloria did not want to see a second coming of malformed children. She had killed the last and wanted it to stay 'the last'.

But unfortunately, that rule was miraculously broken. A High Human had committed the deed with a regular Human and a child was born.

The child was… not the miraculous part. That child was apparently the most deformed of all, so much so that it was directly born as an Abomination. (A highly rare existence that devours life force in an attempt to stave off its inevitable implosion.) The birth of the Abomination killed the mother immediately, and it might have even caused more damage to others if its High Human father didn't kill it.

That was certainly no miraculous matter.

The miraculous part was because everybody knew how hard it was for a living being to ignore the commands of their progenitor. It was an almost irresistible compulsion. No matter how tyrannical or dislikable a Progenitor may be, even if you hated him or her to the very bones, you would still find it VERY difficult to disobey a command that didn't directly harm yourself. (Basically, you can't be commanded to commit suicide or something like that if you really didn't want to.)

The only exception was if you were disobeying a command to do something that would actually help your progenitor. For example, if you were ordered by your progenitor to flee from a fight but you wanted to stay to defend your progenitor, the compulsion from the command can be bypassed by the desire to save you progenitor if you had enough conviction.

It was very, very unfair. But thankfully, most progenitors had the best interest of their race at heart. Even the tyrannical ones weren't too excessive if you didn't provoke them. Bellatrix's experience with her own progenitor was actually a really nice one and she despaired at the fact that she died.

Anyhow, the point was that it was very hard to go against a command from your progenitor, and yet, somebody did it - and to Gloria of all progenitors.

It went without saying that Gloria was furious, but true to her conduct, she did not immediately act out of emotion. She first had to get all the facts (or so she claimed). The High Human that had sired the Abomination was already profusely regretful and didn't hold back any information at all.

Apparently, he had once been extremely injured in a fight with a Beast near the territory of the regular humans, and so he decided to return to their territory to receive aid from the other High Humans stationed there. He made it to the territory but he did not make it to the actual settlement before he succumbed to his injuries and passed out.

When he came to, he realised that he was being carried on the back of a feeble human girl who was trying her best to drag him along despite his weight. She was a beautiful girl, one that could just about match the aesthetics of the High Humans, she could be considered the most beautiful regular human of all. She was his downfall. From there began a foolish tale of love.

This resulted in the previously mentioned sequence of calamities.

The High Human killed himself after confessing his wrongs before Gloria could do it, but it still wasn't enough to quell Gloria's fury, and she ended up turning her eyes on the regular humans.

As one would expect, they ended up extinct.

This happened many, many years ago and Gloria had grown much more intelligent, much more mature, and much more humble. She claimed to deeply regret her decision to wipe out the regular humans, but Bellatrix couldn't tell if she was telling the truth or not.

Regular humans were pretty much useless and it wasn't much of a loss if they went extinct, and that was how Beasts would feel. Regular humans should hold even less importance to High Humans who could do all the dexterous things they could do but even better.

She supposed it was sentiment that Gloria was feeling considering the woman was once a regular human herself. Even she as an unrelated Beast would feel it was a pity if the innocent humans went extinct, so it wasn't much of a reach to think that Gloria would be even more affected despite her divergent mind.

In any case, Gloria once more stated that she was glad that there were still regular humans around and that she would one day like to see them again. Which… honestly caused Bellatrix to panic a little.

Truth be told, she had held something back in her conversation with Gloria, something she had no intentions of revealing at all if it wasn't absolutely needed. Because after hearing how Gloria felt about the regular humans, she knew that she could never reveal that whilst the humans back on her continent were thriving more than ever before, the number of pure humans remaining was dwindling, and it was dwindling fast.

To put it simply, most of them were shedding their pure human natures to become Beastkin.

Beastkin were the result of someone from an Enlightened race fusing their genes with a Beast. It caused a profound mutation that changed them greatly. This was different to 'Bloodlines' which didn't cause much outward changes to their possessors. Beastkin were pretty much a different race, similar to the difference between High Human and Human (If you didn't take into consideration quality).

Nobody knew why the Humans and even a few Elves were capable of such things, but it happened all the time nowadays.

It all started after the first grand continental meeting 6 years ago. That was the first time everyone had been exposed to Apis's Celestial Elephant Beastkin.