Taking a deep breath in, she first settled herself more comfortably on the sofa. Delphina wondered if using up four questions so quickly was worth it. However, partially completing two quests was easily worth it. She was starting to run out of patience for this Q&A session after all.
"Yes, confirm."
[5/20 questions now available]
[Compiling the books 'An Ode to his & her Majesties failures' and 'A Brief History of Mareveil pre 'The Darkening' 2030-50MA']
[Processing compilation]
[20%]
[45%]
[70%]
[Complete!]
[The compilation from these 2 books will now be mentioned in sequential order]
[After the first Gate Flash occurred, attention was placed on the fact that Mana was the root of the problem- the Gates, the Heroes, and the Villains all using it, causing destruction. The usable areas of the World were slowly shrinking towards the Imperial Continent.
Too many continents had fallen due to the warring between the Heroes and Villains; those that went unchecked as the Empire grew its power to fight them had caused irreparable damage.
Creating monsters, poisoning the land, or taking cities to themselves, eventually leading them to ruin due to mismanagement]
[The Emperor at the time decided to use a drastic measure—a sacrificial spell using both the bodies of himself and his Wife, the Empress. To atone for the common people, and since the Imperial bloodline held the purest Mana, it was right that their bodies were used to eradicate Mana as a whole.
The Past Livers would no longer be able to use magic from their pasts or use Mana to devastate the World. Gates would also theoretically disconnect from their World as it would go from only allowing the most devastating Megafauna through, to having no Mana at all.
A completely undesirable world that The Gap should register as 'conquered']
[Steps were taken to ensure the World would be able to handle the technological step back, with Artificers and Alchemists from de Rios working hard alongside the de Velasques and the de Lunas to support them and find a new niche for them as all of their Magehood would be taken from them.
The Information Network disseminated helpful Otherworld tech to the de Lunas]
[Two years later, after the de Velasques twins announced all known Villains in The Underworld had been successfully executed. The Emperor & Empress made their sacrifice.
This caused The Darkening – all life was lost, except for the Imperial Continent itself. All Gates stopped, as hoped. Except for those on the Imperial Continent, which kept opening- albeit slower and with much weaker Megafauna coming through any rare Gate Flashes that occurred]
[How all this happened is unknown, as Mana had indeed been eradicated. Theorists from the de Luna Duchy proposed that, because life remained, the Gates near that life also remained active. As Sword Masters could still utilise their skills, they deemed this energy 'Life Energy', which only certain people could tap into.
But why only the Imperial Continent was unaffected by the loss of life has never been uncovered]
[The Empire became destabilised due to the loss of trust in the Imperial Family. However, it was held together by the four Dukedoms, all of which the common people still supported.]
Delphina took her time to read through the absolutely exposition-dump worthy amount of text on the screen in front of her. The more she read, the more confused she became. There was more information that was missing that linked these drastic scenarios together. There had to be.
"Yeah, there's still more to learn, it seems. But not now, this won't all fit in my head otherwise."
"I can make some wild guesses about a couple of things, but I'm not sure… Actually, fuck it. No.69, just a quick check-up on the system's abilities question."
"If I ponder my findings out loud, will you comment on them and/or count them towards my quest completion if it is relevant?"
[…]
[Checking with the Administration database]
[Yes, that is within my system capabilities. But as your Level increases, the amount it will count towards will decrease. This will also not count towards scenario completion unless it involves a conversation chain.]
With this, Delphina leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, gently cupping her chin in one hand.
"First off, the Heroes and Villains arrived in this World over a rather long period of time, then as the number of them increased. Rather than becoming beneficial to the World. They were just malevolent pests."
"I'm guessing that as they brought in 'Otherworlder' tech and the like, before it became oversaturated or before they became overwhelmed-whatever came first. They used to be welcomed."
"So the spread of them wasn't such an issue. I mean, especially with The Gates, and it seems pretty strong Megafauna used to invade regularly?"
[Yes, that seems roughly correct so far.]
"The de Velasques took the forefront in hunting these guys, but by that point, the 'Past Livers' were thoroughly bred into the Four, no, sorry, at that point in time, it would be the Three Great Families. Probably the Imperial Family as well, because of people marrying into their Royalty from other Continents. And who knows what was happening with Heroes and Villains over there?"
"That meant any skills that didn't use Mana were by that point already present. Obviously, that had to be true for the Burgess Family; otherwise, they wouldn't have become the fourth Ducal Family. Someone else might have managed to do that."
"That's probably also how the de Velasques and the de Lunas became simultaneously the strongest Sword Masters and Mages."
"So to cut a long story short, especially with one of the answers you've given me earlier. The twin leaders, Maria & Donovan de Velasques, thoroughly rigged the de Lunas detection artifacts that they still(?) use to detect Past Livers, to ignore any Past Livers present in the de Velasques Family…"
"Hey, No.69. There weren't any traitors in the de Luna Family, were there?"
[…]
[I am unable to speculate on the situation, however. Remember, it is the victors who write History]
[But you are correct, the detection devices do not work on the de Velasques Family.]