Welp

So what's keeping the world from advancing? A lot of things.


Pandora: Pretty much the biggest reason. Once she finished essentially ruining the world, she split herself up into around a hundred weaker but still incredibly powerful copies, and went on to her version of retirement. That is to say, tormenting everything on the planet. She loves that.

Monsters, Especially Dragons: Commanded by Pandora without questions of hesitation, dragons are the reason large cities cannot normally exist (Pandora or one of her hundred other selves notice them, command a dragon to swoop down, city is now no longer, people learn this pattern, they stop), and combined with monsters in general, it's hard to get from one place to another or make any of them much bigger. Best part is that despite changing a monster into a demon being possible, people still don't like demons all that much anyway. Oops!

Spirits: The awakening of being a monster did some crazy things. It's actually quite possible to apply the changes that make demons into monsters to fairies, which results in these guys. They're sentient, all drawn towards a single place on birth, and (despite being sentient) hell bent on killing all other sentient, earthly life, in order to inherit and 'save' the world. Like fairies, they're based on an element, and notably stronger than them despite fairies not being all that weak!

Hochmut, And All Of Her Angel Friends: The only god, and quite definitely against things turning back into the state that sent her into a forced slumber! At least she's content to not make public appearances, but her angels can fill in for her pretty well. You know the cards are against you when /God/ is, even worse when she's not the only one.

Demons: They're kind of getting pissed off at this whole 'sealed away' business, and not just at people in general, but pretty much everything. People in general are kind of pissed off at them...in general. Of course, demons are of a chaotic nature on average, and so they're more keen on beating someone up than talk with them. With the demons kind of reinforcing the reasons people hate them and the demons not caring all that much, things are kind of going south there too!

Corruption: Oh wait, a lot of this is Pandora's fault. ...Oh well, it still occurs naturally!