Kitsubi

"And thus the empire as we know it was born," the professor said, having finished the part about the demon reservations, as well as going into detail on many more events. "Having quelled the last threat remaining to humans, the Empress now rules over the entirety of the world.

"While the imps still cause trouble, and the beasts of the wild may attack the occasional village, they can all be stopped by the Empress' elite soldiers, the Guards. And so we've been at peace for thousands of years, growing and adapting with our kitsubi and fregog neighbors to become the behemoth we are now."

Fate finished the last chicken wing, placing the boney remains down with a content sigh as he finished the last of the memory. Since the memories came from the professor himself, Fate even got insightful tidbits into the various subjects he just covered.

For example, the kitsubi were the only demons on Ziobrun capable of producing children with Facets. While the imps obtained human mates when able, they didn't do so nearly enough for the human blood within them to be thick enough for a Facet. And the aesh and fregog were content to breed amongst themselves.

Only the kitsubi regularly mated with humans. Their pride and human-like nature meant they disdained mating with animals, which their imp cousins had no qualms about. This meant that every kitsubus had human blood within them, with some having thicker blood than others.

It's estimated that a kitsubi needed at least eighty percent human blood for a chance to birth a Facet, and even that wasn't guaranteed, although it was common.

While this sounded easy, kitsubi blood was much stronger than human blood. Even with a human parent, a kitsubus will always be female, and the mother is often where at least sixty percent of the kitsubus' DNA comes from.

It takes several years and a lot of luck for a kitsubus to be born with enough human blood to birth a Facet, and even more luck for them to actually have one. Even then, their own children may not even keep that concentration of blood, the kitsubi blood making a resurgence each time to bring it back up to around fifty or sixty percent.

Even those without a Facet are not powerless, however. If they were, they wouldn't have stood a chance when the humans invaded their lands, as they had never seen a human before the Empress landed on this continent.

Like the other demons, as well as every creature descended from the Nine Races, they had their own ways of producing or using Mana. While the imps could steal Mana and grow hot and the aesh could burn Mana and mimic Skills, the kitsubi were more… unique.

Stronger than the imps and fregog and yet weaker than the aesh, the kitsubi had two main bloodlines, both of which boast control over the aspects their succubi ancestors do: Pride and Lust.

The first one, the Fox bloodline, was the most common. Sporting demon horns and lengthened canines, as well as fox ears and a single fox tail, their Pride increases their healing factor and dulls their sense of pain. The more prideful the kitsubus, the stronger this effect.

Their Lust manifests as bloodlust when provoked, their entire minds focused on forcing their opponents to submit. This dulls their pain even further and makes them virtually unstoppable.

Cutting off their limbs and sometimes even severing their heads does nothing. The only ways to stop a provoked Fox kitsubus are to lose, destroy the brain, or restrain them long enough for the bloodlust to pass. Due to their lust for battle, it's a tradition of Fox kitsubi to only marry those humans who best them in battle.

While not every Fox kitsubus follows this tradition, the majority of them do.

Following this is the Spirit kitsubus. With the same appearance as the Fox kitsubi except for leathery demon wings and slit, foxy pupils, the Spirit kitsubi are the spellcaster to the Fox bloodline's warrior.

Their Pride allows them to bend the world to their whims in the form of powerful illusions that, depending on how prideful the kitsubus is, can look and even feel real.

Their Lust allows them to shapeshift into various forms, gaining the physical strength, female reproductive system, and digestive tracts of their form. While this could be used to mate with other species besides humans and demons, they have refused to do so for the most part.

Which brings us to the most important trait of a kitsubus: their tails. While a Fox kitsubus can only have one tail, a Spirit kitsubus can have anywhere from one to nine. The tail is the most treasured part of a kitsubus, more important to them than a maiden holds her virtue.

Purposefully touching a kitsubus' tail without consent is worse than murder to them, and for good reason. While the aesh can generate Mana from within themselves, and the imps can steal it from their enemies, the kitsubi rely on their tails for Mana.

Unique to the kitsubi and their kitsune cousins, the fox tail has two forms: retracted and extended. While extended, the fox tail or tails gathers the ambient Mana in the air, converts it into the kitsubus' own Mana, and stores it within itself, with each one able to hold enough for about three Spells' worth.

The fox tails were the equivalent of a kitsubus' Mana pool, and those without Facets had only their tails to gather Mana. The Fox kitsubi used their Mana to strengthen their limbs and their tails to weaken their human enemies' Spells, and the Spirit kitsubi used them to cast their illusions and shapeshift.

This Mana was only usable while the tail was retracted. While retracted, they form tattoo-like "fox marks" in the small of the kitsubus' back, resembling the tail or tails they become.

Because of this, touching a kitsubus' tail is seen as taboo, and severing a tail is the ultimate punishment saved for the worst of kitsubi criminals. Even the Empress' Guards do not dare to remove a kitsubus' tail, for only the kitsubi Sages have the right judge who is worthy of such punishment.

Fate let all of this information work its way into his brain before throwing away the wing bones and heading off into the city.