Five years passed in a blink of an eye, making it 15 years since Azure Terra's liberation from demonic influence.
The state of the continent was incomparable to its past. It's no longer dark, gloomy, and depressing. Now, it basked under the majesty of sunlight, with big and fluffy clouds and the bluest skies.
Humans were no longer trapped in a bubble that could be popped at any given moment. They finally had an entire continent for themselves, and they made full use of it.
To humans of the current era, demons seem to be a thing of the past. But for those who participated in the war for liberation, it feels just like yesterday.
Since the liberation, the army has lifted the ban on family size. This led to a massive increase in humanity's population. This was a necessary thing to do; after all, the number of humans back then wasn't enough to truly populate the Azure Terra. Actually, it's still not enough, even now.
It's still going to take some time before humanity reaches its target size, but they have plenty of time to do so.
During these 15 years, humans focused on developing the entire continent. They spared no effort to ensure that their new home wouldn't be taken away from them again. They wouldn't let history repeat itself again, especially now that they have the upper hand.
With the disappearance of demons from the continent and humans focusing on developing more, their weapons would become rusty since they have no targets to point at.
There's fierce beasts to remedy this. Fierce Beasts are a new race that Cedric grafted to not only become a new challenge for the new generations of humans to conquer but also a way for them to get more resources.
Fierce beasts could either be found out in the wild or they're most commonly seen in secret realms—the real strong ones at least.
But, of course, this isn't enough. If humans wanted everyone to maintain their combat sharpness and instincts, they couldn't possibly ask every single person to go out and hunt fierce beasts. Not only would that be time-consuming, but it would also exhaust a lot of resources for something that's relatively trivial in their current state.
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This is where the new set-up for the Hell Dives comes in. But before that, we must first discuss the class awakening ceremony.
Before the liberation of Azure Terra, the Class Awakening Ceremony occurs once a child reaches 12 years old. On their 12th birthday, they will establish a connection with the Acala System and receive a class template, and their aptitudes will be revealed, which will determine their value.
Back in the day, Cedric received the [Swordsman] class template. This was one of the most common class templates that people receive, and honestly, it's not that bad. There were many people who became famous by simply relying on the growth that this class template has.
With the changes they made and how prosperous humanity has become, the rate at which they eroded the strength of demons massively increased.
Just to remind you, demon souls are plucked from the essence of a demon's existence. In the purgatory, demons are forcibly pulled in, and if they are killed there, they leave this behind. Depending on how many times they died overall, they will begin losing their memories, the oldest first, as the initial sign.
Demons usually ignore this because most of them have experienced numerous reincarnations anyway; they simply don't value these old memories.
But with the increase in the human population, the drain also increases. It's actually a miracle that they haven't been greatly alarmed yet. Especially nowadays, humans could complete a hell dive more than once if they wanted to. They only truly need to succeed once a month to complete their monthly task, but if they want to fetch more resources from there, they are free to do so.
Any failure that happens after succeeding once won't invalidate their clearance either.
Speaking of demon souls, nobody uses these nasty things anymore. Sure, humans still get them after participating in Hell Dives, but they turn into Essence Souls as soon as possible because the latter is just better.
Essence has become a staple need nowadays. It's even used as currency at some places, especially at auctions.
These changes were things that humans could only dream of back in the day, yet they're their reality now. And to think that this is just the start of their golden age sounds incredulous, but it's the truth.
There's still the rest of the world waiting for them to conquer, and this will happen soon, but for now, to truly inspire the new age of superhumans and to commemorate the liberation of Azure Terra, a grand event is about to take place.
It's been 15 years since the establishment of the Prime Earth Federation, and now it has become the true hegemon that binds humanity together. Of course, there are a lot of secondary powers that appeared after the liberation, but in terms of foundation and prestige, nobody could compete with the federation.
Since they've reached their overall goal, the Prime Earth Federation announced that the 1st Continental Superhuman Tournament will take place in the Central Region.
They staged this event to not only remind everybody that times have changes but also to inspire and attract talented people to join the army who wouldn't hesitate to groom them for their future plans.
This announcement reached everyone's ears, and they were shocked. The tournament is limited to those at the Superhuman and Planar Traveler Realms only. Anyone who has the qualifications is eligible to participate, and the promised rewards haven't been revealed yet, but with the federation's prestige, it's almost certain that they won't be stingy.
There's even a wild rumor that whoever claims first place in the entire tournament will have the chance to become the Sun Sage's disciple.
Whether that's true or not will be known after the tournament, but just the idea of it makes the young and heroic feel their blood boiling in excitement.