Demons

In the continent, there are currently 12 overwhelming civilizations that command armies and engage in political strife to gain more power. By working together with other kingdoms their technology advances, by making peace treaties they stray from war and control enemy expansion and development. But being the warmongers that the 12 kingdom leaders were, they developed a complicated system to allow territory expansion and limited murder to attack and hinder each other; The Candidate Rights. Each kingdom would select one representative and would give them the power to wage war, allow trade, form friendly relations and create enemies without the kingdom being held responsible for any consequence. If the representative were to be captured or killed by an enemy kingdom, the opposing kingdom would not retaliate or hold a grudge, regardless of birth or position the candidate has in their kingdom. Normally, hurting royalty from another kingdom is prohibited, and the selected candidates are almost always royalty or nobles with immense fighting prowess. But choosing an inheritor of the kingdom as a candidate quickly became the norm for all kingdoms due to the advantages it held, even with all its risks. The system was a double-edged sword that gave the kingdoms the ability to gain the upper hand on their enemies or lose an important power and asset of their kingdom's future. And amongst the 12 kingdoms, four of them were currently at war over territory.

With the magical essence called Alm and Divine Beasts, they were slowly destroying all the villages, towns, and land that was between them. The most prominent figure of the war, and the one who initiated the war was a princess candidate from the Iridescence Kingdom, Samantha Opaline. She waged war with the Astle Kingdom in order to train herself with the pretext of taking their land, a conniving princess with enough power to shift the balance. The other two kingdoms were forced to into the scrimmage because they were allied with the Iridescence Kingdom and were bound to help due to their pact. Three kingdoms being involved against a princess candidate and her subordinates was the reason the land was left in cinders. At the time the war started, no one besides her subordinates knew that she had signed a contract with what they assumed was a Divine Beast. Making a deal with a Divine Beast and absorbing them was the best way to gain power, each of the family leaders had formed a contract with a Divine Beast and gained enough power to amass influence and build a kingdom. However, Divine Beasts were a rarity, a normal beast can only evolve into a Divine Beast after being able to freely manipulate Alm and change their body to that of a human. They needed enough internal Alm and had to be extremely skilled in controlling the Alm around them in order to shapeshift. While the power does not differ much from Divine Beasts to Divine Beast, it is the skillset that changes and what makes them form contracts with humans. After forming a contract, humans gained the specific skillset and abilities of the beast and incorporated them into their techniques. The stronger they became, the more abilities they gained. And amongst the leaders, they were each given an Actuator Rank based on the elements they could control and how many abilities they could use in battle. Even though anyone could form a pact with any beast to gain abilities, what made the Divine Beast pacts different was the amount of internal Alm gained. But due to their rarity, not just anyone could find a Divine Beast and fuse with it, which was what made princess Samantha Opaline dangerous. To have enough power to contend against a three-star Actuator as a candidate was a big enough threat to shift the balance of power and force war to breakout. But Divine Beasts were not the only creatures that could give power to humans, while there were stories of demons possessing a person and giving them power, no one knew how to summon one.

All stories passed down since ancient times regarding demons had one similarity, and that was that the death of humans was needed to summon a demon. Even though many tried to summon one, none of them ever succeeded and if they were found, they were immediately executed for genocide. What humanity was unaware of was that these demons were the same fairies that many worshiped and thanked for the ability to control Alm. A fairy born from hatred and despair was no different from one born from nature and faith, a power that is not bound by the rules of Alm manipulation. A catastrophic ability to change innate elemental nature and create unnatural techniques that defied the world's rules, that was the power that Samantha Opaline gained.