On top of the high land of Himaseru where the land is surrounded by Himaseru mountains range, that's where we, demon race, lives for so long. I am Inaugurath, of the Demon Race. I have lived for 672 years. For us Demon Race, 600 years old is only halfway of our expected life span. We have the longest life span compared to other humanoid, but our fertility is the lowest. Thus, us Demons are always cherishing our brethren. Our life were mostly spent on farming, raising live stocks, and researching on magic to make our life prosper. Although we are indeed calling ourselves Demons, we're not demons as mentioned by the religions of human. Our stature isn't much different than human, only our skins are black and black eyes with bright red pupils, along with horn on our head, and averagely bigger in size than the human. We're peaceful sentient being who didn't bother mingling with the other races. No other races capable of reaching the highland, not even the Dragons. The land on the highland part of the mountains range is fertile, thus we have never running out of foods or any other basic needs. Even the ravine down there which seems to be connected to a grass plain, is actually still a part of the highlands. We lived in harmony with the nature and our own brethren in this environment, away from creatures from the low ground.

The reason that this highland is inaccessible is due to how unstable and dense the mana is. Even dragons, said to be creatures with the highest amount of mana would be poisoned by mana because their body absorbed too much of them. Even if they kept letting ou the excess mana, the output couldn't keep up with the input. The only way to live and adapt to the atmosphere was by being born in this extreme environments. 

Although there weren't many of us Demons compared to another member of the races, we still numbered in the hundreds of thousands. That hundreds of thousands were spread all around the highlands, to develop each of their part of the land, and the excess of goods then being traded with other Demons which resided in another part. We lived in peace for so long that our recorded history was like a research journal instead of a history book.

We had chieftains, who lead each of the area, but we had no king. Even so, our life were fulfilling. At least until they appeared. They who looked like our kin. But at the same time different.

If I were to described ourselves, we were like demon, that the human mentioned in their religions, combined with human. But they, they are like demons hybrid with beasts or monsters. They came in an army as much as the total population of our race. They came and attacked every settlements they came across. They killed our men as easy as walking on the land, and took our women to be used as breeding tools. 

When the women were used as breeding, they would get pregnant within a day, and gave birth within three days. The children born from their gene, grew up so fast. In a week they had became adult and battle ready. And, the children had no resemblance at all with the mother's. They are all, although it was odd coming from me, Demons. They might be what the human called Demons. 

Most of our kin was either killed, eaten, used as breeding, or as labor slaves which in the end still being used as foods. The ones succeeded in their escaped, went into hiding far away from those Demons. It took more than 2 years before us survivors finally met again. When we met, we realized how dire our situation was. From hundreds of thousands of us, there weren't even five hundreds of us left.

We continued our life deep under the mountains range likes the dwarfen race, away from sunlight, away from its warmth. While at it, we're sharpening our magic to its extremity. 10 years later, we gathered 20 of our best warriors and elite group to conduct a scout, I was one of them and the leader of the group.

Once we reached the surface of the highland, we headed toward the nearest settlements. There, we gasped. The settlement was no more, and what replaced it was the Demons. Hundreds of thousands of them, congregated on the spot where the settlement was. With our enhanced by magic eyes, we saw that they cannibalized their own kind. We were also seeing a dozen of women of our race, missing their limbs with protruding stomach.

The sight made me grind my teeth together in extreme anger. I could only saw them without having any way to help. Then, one of the warrior who came with me suggested that we should at least ended the suffering of our women who were made to breeding tools. All 20 of us agreed, and decided to bombarded them with combined spell. We invoked Inferno and burnt the hundreds of thousands of demons with it, until even the once fertile soil burnt black.

We kept burning them until our Mana was exhausted. A slight relief assailed us. We finally burnt at least the same amount of them as when they invaded us.

But, our nightmare had yet to end.

None of them fell. They only looked slightly injured by our greatest combined magic. They looked angered and realized where the attack came from. While almost completely running out Mana, we ran away. Although if our speed were being compared to the agile elf would be faster, the Demons ran even faster than us even when we ran with enhanced magic. Before long, I realized that we could never had outran them, so we agreed not to go back to our hideout and lured them away from it instead.

The chase ended within several hours. We ran out of both Mana, and stamina. But, we still had our last method. Our last trump card, the forbidden magic which used the mana in the atmosphere, our own mana, and our uselessly long life as the fuel. The Armageddon. 

We burnt our life force as the fuel to create a magical sun above our heads. The heat burnt our skin, but we continued to pour our life to create the greatest sun. 

The sun was completed, the plants underneath it we're already burnth, the land was scorched, and then finally we dropped the sun.

Before I finally lost consciousness from almost loosing all of my life force, one of the warrior who was my best friend, chanted a spell I didn't know. He touched my shoulder, and said "Swap". A moment before I fell unconscious, I was in a room full of papers. I was teleported back by my best friend to the hideout.

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A few decades had passed, and although I should've been left with 700 years worth of life span, now I looked like someone whose life has only 100 years left due to the spell we did several decades ago. My magic power output is also lesser than it used to be, only comparable to the best spellcaster the human race had. But it didn't mean that I have lost my magical knowledge. 

Since our best warrior were all died, these past thirty years we put our efforts into research of magic on the level that is useful to supports our everyday's life. Because we now knew, even our greatest magic was futile against them. 

The newly developed spells are those for scouting far away place, a type of clairvoyance; then a spell to turn the property of the earth to a fertile soil, albeit it requires mana as much as ten people's worth of mana quantity to turn 20m² into fertile land, and even that is using the amount of mana which is demons possessed as the standard; and lastly, magic barrier that completely hide us from being found by any means, although the barrier needs to be supplied by all of us demons continuosly with our mana, so our mana is always at 60% full.

We didn't live in luxury, but we lived sufficiently. Although due to being underground a lot for a long time, our dark skin had becomes brownish like a dark elf.

One day, hundreds of years later, with my clairvoyance spell which looks like a floating eyeball, I sent it near their dwelling, I saw that they began to move.

There, on the lowest highlands visible from my spell, they gathered. They were moving towards the ravine. If one looks from above, the highland was as being if poured by black tar, but no, it's them. 

"...are they trying to go down from the highland?"

I muttered alone in my room while observing them.

Then, I heard an exploding sound from the highland higher than when the eyeball was. I shifted the gaze of my clairvoyance eyeball towards where the sound was coming from, but I still saw nothing. So I moved the eyeball closer to the source of the sound.

"...what?"

I saw a human wearing eerie robe on top of the hill. 

"How come a human is here?"

Heard by no one, I continued what i thought without saying it out loud. 

No. What's most surprising isn't the fact that there's a human here...it's how he managed to killed them, without even breaking a sweat!

As I was observing the man, he flew away with a tremendous speed all of sudden. I wanted to follow him with my eyeball, but for now I decided to inspect the corpses left by the man.

When my eyeball got closer, rather than corpses, what I saw were their remains.

Most of them were torn apart in pieces as if they got killed by explosion, but there's no such traces of huge explosion, although there were traces of small explosions on the ground.

Are these explosions really the ones that killed them? But the explosion of our Armageddon back then didn't do much to them but the land. So how come these, supposedly, small explosions killed them?

I ended my thought and continued to observed the condition of the remains.

Some of them were intact corpses, with tiny holes drilling into them. These corpses' condition were even weirder. How did these hole being made? What kind of force could put holes on their body when our high-piercing capability magic and our best weapon couldn't even pierced through their skin? Was this done by the black weapon the human used just now?

I decided to cast simple preservation spell from the clairvoyance eyeball to the remains and recovered them later. For now I moved the eyeball to follow the human.

It seemed that he also decided to follow them as I had planned before.

I looked at them about to exit the ravine and got shocked.

A Warp Gate!? But how!? A Warp Gate is a complicated spell as or if not more complicated than the barrier that surrounded the hideout. How could there be Warp Gate there? Did they finally capable of complex magic? Or was it that human who casted the spell?

I stopped my theory there because it started not to make sense. They lived a primitive life, so it's impossible for them to do it. Moreover, from my long observation of them, I never once saw them using even the miniscule amount of mana. The human is suspicious. He might be able to cast that sort of spell, but why would he killed them if he were allies? Or was he deliberately casted that spell to unleash them to wherever they might end up? But the shocked expression he just showed indicates that he didn't know about the Warp Gate.

I need to investigate it later. Now, I should follow him and confirm whether he'd bring harm to us or not.

Then, I used the Swap spell I learnt from the document my friend left behind with the clairvoyance eyeball. The place where they gathered as if they're a sea of tar was being left empty. After I casted Null Existence spell on me beforehand, I casted another defensive spells which raises my defense, awareness, and speed so I could immediately run away if necessary. Because, I have a feeling that the gate infront of me would send me to a place far away.