Topic - Heroes and Incubi

Topic - Heroes and Incubi ~The Unfettered Ones~

All living things fundamentally have an upper limit to the amount of mana they can contain within their body. Mana is vital energy, the power that life itself possesses, i.e, there are established limits to the amount of power that a race can possess. Humans are no exception to this rule, either, and there is a limit to what is humanly possible. Even if one reaches his limit as a human being through effort and talent, his power will never exceed that of greater monsters and gods who possess high abilities far beyond human limitations. But those who become “heroes” and “incubi” are able to possess even more mana. Through continuous training, they can not only acquire power surpassing that of monsters, but even that of gods. These are beings who have had their human “limitations” removed when some factor caused more mana than a human being is naturally able to possess to dwell within the human body. It is as if their “shackles” are destroyed by the overflowing mana. When this is caused by divine mana, that man is called a “hero”, but on the other hand, when it is caused by mamono mana, that man is called an “incubus”.

Despite the distinction drawn between them, “heroes” and “incubi” are virtually the same kind of beings. The only difference is whether the limit was removed at the hands of a god or a monster. They're “heroes” because they fight with the chief god's blessing, and they're “incubi” because they're monsters' husbands. They can be differentiated in such fashion by where their allegiances lie, but no matter what method of biological classification is used, it is impossible to draw a clear distinction between the two. There is a method of distinguishing them based on their differing abilities and whether they possess divine mana or mamono mana within their bodies, but neither is sufficient for accurate classification. Basically, heroes, who are beings that have received the blessing of the chief god, tend to have their abilities increased so that they may fight to impose her will; while on the other hand, we can say that incubi are beings who have received a monster's blessing, and changes based on the monster's lust for pleasure such as increased sexual potency and stamina appropriate for having sex with a monster can be observed. However, they are both beings with superhuman growth potential. On the one hand, you have someone who trained repeatedly seeking the power to fight, and on the other, you have someone who copulated with a monster countless times, but they both have achieved a corresponding amount of ability growth, and that's all there is to it.

Hence, for example, if an incubus desired to master swordsmanship, or continuously trained himself in pursuit of power to protect his wife and children, he could also gain superhuman physical abilities and durability like a hero in addition to his superhuman sexual stamina. Then, in terms of having enhanced combat abilities, it becomes impossible to distinguish them from the chief god's heroes who have obtained power in order to fight monsters. On the other hand, as explained in “Heroes Viewed As 'Human Males'(p.71)”, just like incubi, heroes also have superior abilities as males. What's more, heroes granted power by the goddess of love, “Eros”, acquire increased sexual stamina and potency to enthrall their partners, so it can be seen that the nature of their empowerment is very similar to that of an incubus. And in the extreme case of the half god half monster “fallen god”, they become beings who are both heroes and incubi, bearing half divine mana and half mamono mana.

Also, in some cases, there are those who become “beings who transcend human limitations”, like heroes and incubi, even without the intervention of a god or monster. In such cases, there is something that removes the shackles of humanity, but the person himself will usually not even be cognizant of it. The distinction between incubus and hero is made even more tenuous due to these ambiguous beings who are difficult to classify. An example of a factor that could cause this is remaining in lands teeming with mana for an extremely long period of time. Sometimes legends about such places are handed down with claims like “if you train in this land, you can acquire inhuman power”. It seems likely that the source of such legends is people who acquired superhuman power by continuously training in those lands. For instance, in the case that the location is a land teeming with divine mana, then it can be inferred that the shackles of humanity were removed due to the influence of divine mana, and as such, the person would have transformed into a being who is very nearly a “hero”. On the other hand, training grounds where monsters who seek to master martial arts such as “jinko (Encyclopedia II- p. 168)” and “hinezumi (Encyclopedia II – p.174)” gather are lands teeming with mamono mana, i.e, there is a possibility that they have become mamono realms. Humans who accumulate training in these special mamono realms can acquire power enough to rival monsters, or sometimes even power surpassing that of monsters. In this case, he would become a being very nearly an “incubus”, but either way, the man himself would be unaware of it, and the order wouldn't recognize it either. He would still be treated as “human” in human society regardless, so long as he was lacking a monster wife.

Also, sometimes the shackles can also be removed due to influence from others. A human man who has continuously been practicing swordsmanship with a “lizardman (Encyclopedia I – p.66)” since they were little will lose his shackles before he knows it and gradually acquire enough power to rival her. Human craftsmen who continuously study with races who possess advanced crafting skills such as “dwarves (Encyclopedia I – p.100)” and “gremlins (Encyclopedia II – p.158)”, acquire godlike skills, determined not to be outdone by them. In this manner, by having well-matched friends and rivals to compete with, as if boosting each other, they can transcend their humanity and gradually grow even more powerful. When men finally obtain enough power to subdue “dragons” after continuing to challenge them countless times, it's also the same sort of thing. It can be surmised that what's probably happening is that mamono mana intermixed during battle when confronting a dragon responds to a man's desire “to acquire power exceeding that of the dragon and make her mine”, resulting in the destruction of his shackles and the fruition of all his accumulated training. In this case too, as expected, the man would become a being that is very nearly an “incubus”, but he would probably mostly be misrecognized as a “hero” who acquired enough power to defeat a dragon by the majority of humans, who are incapable of sensing mana.

Other than that, shackles are sometimes removed from being hit by spells. Rarely, there are tales of those who acquired mana over the human limit by having survived after nearly dying from being hit by a big spell. Also, aside from that, if a forbidden degree of healing is performed using the hieromancy spell “miracle of restoration (p.67)” such as regeneration of lost limbs or treatment of deadly diseases, the patient may awaken as a being that is very nearly a hero. In most cases, the factor that caused the unshackling is indeterminable. Among them, there are those who broke the limit themselves by continuously accumulating training even after reaching the human limit, and even those who are thought to have never had any human limitations in the first place for some reason. As expected, these “beings who transcend human limitations” are pretty much the same as heroes and incubi. The only thing that distinguishes them is the fact that they have neither divine mana nor mamono mana in their body. Additionally, if they were to take divine mana within their body by acquiring hieromancy, or take mamono mana within their body by obtaining a monster wife, then there would probably no longer be any way of distinguishing them from heroes or incubi.

In this way, the boundary between “humans”, “heroes”, “incubi”, and “beings who transcended human limitations” themselves is extremely vague. Biologically and magicologically, they're nothing but “strong humans” who just took different paths to get there. It is difficult to accurately classify them, and ultimately, the current classification is done out of convenience to reflect their origins and allegiances. While they are more or less the same kind of beings, the way that they are treated is based on this convenient classification. Primarily in human societies under the control of the forces of the Order of the chief god, incubi are treated not as human, but as inhuman monsters. In the Order of the chief god, any attempt by humans to uncover the secret mechanism behind heroes, a miracle of the gods, is regarded as an outrage against the gods, so open research is also forbidden. Humans generally conceive of heroes as holy beings anointed by the gods and the Order, while “incubi” are evil beings who became monsters themselves after having been imprisoned by monsters. That's sort of how it is.
For that reason, those who transcended the human limit themselves mostly also tend to be mistaken as either one or the other.

Furthermore, all other living things besides humans also have a limit to their abilities and the amount of mana they can possess. Naturally, there are limits for monsters too, depending on race, but in the case of monsters, the “limit” is easily removed by repeatedly obtaining a man's essence, i.e, among monsters, unmarried individuals correspond to “ordinary humans”, and we can say that married individuals who have obtained a human husband and received his blessing, repeatedly copulating all day and night, correspond to “heroes” and “incubi”.

There is a hypothesis once posited by biologists which claims that if one were to possess mana in excess of the human limit, i.e., vital energy, the power would be far too tremendous for the mind and body to tolerate, but it has been confirmed that in the case of sudden incubization induced by being showered in highly condensed mana, the body and mind also naturally become stronger along with the increase in mana, so that hypothesis has been refuted. The following is a speculative theory among heretical theologians: “Humans are creatures who were created with unlimited growth potential in mind from the very beginning. To become an incubus or a hero is not to transcend one's humanity, but to assume one's rightful original human form. Isn't the present condition of humanity in fact the result of some sort of limit being imposed on us?“

Since the previous hypothesis has been refuted, and there is the existence of those who overcome human limitations without the intervention of monsters or gods, it lends credence to this theory. On top of that, the author will add in her own theory too, but the fact that the effects of “miracle of recovery”, “miracle of power”, and so on, are confined to what is “humanly” possible, regardless of the fact that they can theoretically produce even greater effects, may not be due to the caster lacking the required abilities or mana amount. Instead, it really does seem likely that some sort of “limit” has been put on spells and blessing granted by the gods.

▼A diagram showing the relationship between heroes and incubi using a human man as an example.

Attachment:
Heroes and incubi diagram.jpg
Heroes and incubi diagram.jpg [ 318.96 KiB | Viewed 8 times ]


にんげん
human

普通の人間の壁
the ordinary human barrier

魔力保有量の限界
the limit of the amount of mana possessable

少ない
little

多い
lots

魔力保有量の限界突破！
Breaking the limit of the amount of mana possessable!

つよい
にんげん
strong
human

ゆうしゃ
hero

インキュバス
incubus

まもの
monster

アルプ
alp

※It's a rare case.

まものと結ばれる♥
is joined with a monster♥

魔物の魔力をうける. 女の子になりたい♥. 好きな男の子がいる♥
Receives mamono mana. Wants to be a girl. Has a boy that he likes.