?Chapter 3176 Die Leonel digested this information in silence. He found it hard to accept mostly because it didn't make any sense. But it was even sadder when he came to understand the reason. The fact that it was related to Weapon Forces only made it more ridiculous. At the beginning of all things, there were only Humans and the Beasts. The battle between the two had experienced a push and pull several times across their long history, with both sides coming out on top at some point or another, but neither being able to do so for long, while much of the time was spent in a stalemate. In the beginning, Beasts had the upper hand. They had stronger bodies and a huge advantage as a result. But then Humans began to flip the narrative with their intelligence. They created tools, weapons, and the like, suppressing Beasts until they came out on top. Unfortunately, this didn't last for long. After a long time of being suppressed, the Force Manipulation began to become mainstream and both Races started to feel their way through this complicated process. Unsurprisingly, this process came easier to Beasts because they could rely on their instincts while Humans could not. As the Beasts increased their Force Manipulation, the advantage Humans had in intelligence plummeted off a cliff, and soon enough, there was little to no difference between the intelligence of the two parties. But worse than that was the fact that now Beasts were just as intelligent and several times more powerful at the same time. At this point, the Human Race was at a crossroads. They were having too much trouble catching up to the Beasts. Although they began to slowly create Dimensional Methods over the years, bridging the gap felt impossible. They could never match up to the natural affinity that the Beasts had. The main problem was that the Human Race wasn't designed to have one particular affinity. They could be good at a great number of things, and from time to time truly exceptional geniuses would be born suddenly and be able to carve out paths for themselves. But... They weren't like the Humanoid Races of today, like the Void Race that was born with great Spatial affinity, or the Pluto who were born with shocking bodies and Time affinity. In a lot of ways, the Humanoid Races of today were like the Beasts of the past. They had natural affinities that placed them so far beyond normal I Iumans that they had all forgotten their roots. This was the crossroads that the Human Race reached. They needed to change something; otherwise, they would be crushed by the Beasts in due time. They no longer had the advantage of intelligence, and their talent was also lacking now. This was the birth of three Paths. The Crafting Path. The Hyper Evolution Path. The Weapon Force Path. The first of the three was quite unique comparatively speaking. Although Beasts had caught up in intelligence, their thinking was still quite rigid and they preferred using their own bodies to attack. 1/2 In addition, their cultures made it more natural for them to absorb Force Herbs directly. As they were one with Nature, they never thought about shifting and changing it. So they left many things as the status quo. By comparison, Humans had been creating tools since their inception. They were much more attuned with manipulating nature for their own benefit. This created a faction of Humans who wanted to go all in on Crafting, hoping that if they created powerful enough treasures and Force Pills, they could forcefully bridge the gap. The second of the Paths was the Hyper Evolution Path... the Oryx weren't the first to experience such a state, and they certainly wouldn't be the last. Sensing the plight of the Humans, Existence gave them a chance to trigger Hyper Evolution. As a result, in a short time, the Human Race began to display several mutations that made them more powerful than normal and brought them closer to the Beasts. This was the time where the first iterations of the Humanoid Races began to appear. They still looked very much human, but they were gaining features that weren't the norm very quickly. Given a few more generations, they would become entirely different. And then came the last Path... the Path of the Weapon Forces... The biggest weakness of the Human Races was their affinities. Innate Nodes appeared too randomly, and Lineage Factors could only be so great in a Human Race that didn't have other special characteristics. No matter how strong a Lineage Factor made you, a Human would never be as powerful as a Pluto. Their biology had a limit. Unless they became something that was no longer human, they would never bridge this gap. And many were unwilling to take that step. Watching their Humans mutate around them, becoming "things" that they could only see as abominable creatures, they couldn't sit idly by. The bridge between humans was widening, cracking at its foundations. Many felt that people were abandoning their Ancestors, becoming something far more bestial than they were meant to. This led to them breaking free, going all in on a Path that they had been warned about long before... The Path of Weapon Forces. This Path was no longer about waiting for Existence to hand them things; they were going to take it themselves. They forcefully used the state of Hyper Evolution to forge a connection with the Laws of the World. After all, what was the state of Hyper Evolution if not a stronger attunement with the world? One that allowed efficient evolution in a short period of time? Why not use it to allow a connection with the more fundamental, creating an opening that allowed the Human Race to manipulate the foundational Laws of the world, twisting and forming them into the Weapon Forces that they knew and loved today... But as with all things, there was a consequence to pay. Existence began to dic.