Being an adventurer after the infamous Demon Wars is hard work; not that it was any easier before that.
Long ago when men and monsters had both races and the world war more primitive, humans sent adventurers, basically glorified mercenaries to keep the cities of humanity safe, engaging other races that were inimical to man. Back then, only the Dark Elves and some goblin tribes had real trouble with humans. Or so did my town priest used to chronicle. "Monster" species were far more different than humans, and they gathered under a huge Dai Oni, an Eastern Demon King, and started to enslave, eat, and slaughter humans. Entire cities were taken by dark elves and orcs, minotaurs, and beast-folk, men slaughtered before the terrified women and children who would be herded for slave labor, survivors often were eaten or made to fight to the death for the beast-folk's amusement.
That's when the survivors to the northeastern Ermorea founded the Theocratic Empire of Lescatie, and started crusades against all non-human races. It was a bitter legacy, leaving bitter scars in many humans.
After a very long, bloody series of wars ranging for CENTURIES, humanity had fought back, only to make a tense, fragile peace when "monster" races became more and more feminized, and the leadership fell from the Dai Oni called "Maou", to a kind Succubus Empress, Agrat. For decades the detente went on, monster-folk resorting to taking whatever trickles of humans under their kin as slaves and laborers.
A century of uneasy slaving raids and peace later, Maou returned and assumed leadership, having meditated in the cold waters of volcanic Wannsee. He was quite insane: he came upon the idea of killing -every- human in existence so that monster folk would once again have males being born. He decided to "enact a human holocaust", using black-furred mamono completely loyal to him.
Radical ideas on race did not sit well with the entire world, not even with the most bigoted monster women. Not just human slaves rebelled to the death; the entire world eventually sent volunteers and allies, monster hunters, and monsters up in arms to Lescatie, which started to tolerate monstergirls at the same time.
Three World Wars happened. The first and the second, Maou died by the hands of a once slave boy, taken by dark elves in a bloody raid. The boy, Theophilos, had shaped his entire being over the years to be a living weapon. The second time, twenty years later he destroyed himself as well, almost banishing Maou in the process using a forbidden, extremely powerful ritual which he had improvised from old hedge blood magic. Amplifying a "Wish" spell with his own life and ten thousand volunteers who gladly died (men and monster folk who were so disgusted with the centuries of war and the recent holocaust, who eventually agreed to die so their descendants would have some modicum of peace), he had wished to unmake Maou itself into nothingness.
Sadly, Maou had become a god due to the enormous bounty of life harvested in his Holocaust. He would be destroyed too, bring a god without a portfolio, but in his death throes, he had assumed the portfolio of "racial hatred". So, for five decades, any being with hatred to another sentient species based on their ancestry slowly empowered the old Dai Oni Demon.
And he came back, for a final time. This time I read in the village temple, his true name was discovered amongst the world's bones, etched in basalt since time immemorial. An Anubis detective discovered it, speaking it across the world and shattering Maou's hold throughout the Cosmos.
And men and monsters eventually destroyed Maou and his ways of terror and human subjugation by pain. But the two great wars and the final apocalyptic third war marred the world and filled it with creatures born of Maou's dark arts, hunted by men -and- monstergirl authorities, such as Shadow Demons and undead zombies.
So whenever a man or a woman needed to fight for glory or wealth, the forests and wastes are good for picking some eldritch creature to fight and plunder its remains for alchemical components and treasures. It was a world of adventure, but considerably lethal outside cities, villages, and towns.
So, as an adventurer, I constantly roamed the world for creatures to kill and towns to see: it's one of the only ways a human can be rich -and- travel, a rarity in the world where most people are peasants or the rare rising bourgeoisie that *might* get a chance to see the world. I used my sword to kill zombies and shadow beasts threatening cities and wandering merchants. And I earned myself a little sum over the months. It was no easy work.
Unlike what stories tell you, it's terrifying to see a zombie, a rotting corpse ambling towards you. Shadow Demons raised by evil blood magic, now haunting the world are equally horrifying. Even if these typical adventurer's targets were wholly human, swinging a sword to kill another living being can be quite traumatic if you ever find yourself in such a situation.
But needs must: men and women with no prospects in cities or unsatisfied by rural life often take up "adventuring". So did I start. So did I live for a few years the day I became a man.
Wandering the forests to the easternmost part of the once-entirely human Lescatian Empire, my journeys took me to a series of towns buried deep inside the Dark Forest, where Eastern monstergirls, humans and Western monstergirls mingled freely, more or less: it was a roll of the dice. Some towns were strictly for humans and violently drove away "monster" races, and most were free for all races, with varying species. There were rumors of underground goblin and dark elf cities but I didn't have time or means to find out. The goblins were now an all-female race of fertile, promiscuous green monster girls interested in science and engineering (no doubt to test sex toys and devices using humans), and dark elves...well, all-female dark elf wanderers, raiders and traders across the forest are rumored to seduce, buy or kidnap humans to take them to their cities, where they practiced their racial tradition of slavery: men used as breeding studs constantly doted, trained and taken care of(dark elves lacked males since two centuries), women for slave labor...and for breeding more humans enticed into orgiastic pastimes when they didn't work for the dark elves.
Still, shadow demons existed between all these small villages and towns, and their remains(for Alchemists) and the bounty put on them(by the Townsfolk) could make anyone rich if you are willing to risk death. My sword and shield always with me, I traveled, fought, killed, and helped my way to fortune.
I was young. Very young, and would often be captivated by the beauty of the Dark Forest. Its monster races were good caretakers after the Eternal Peace Pact and didn't provoke humans too often. Even dark elves kept to themselves and took only those that wouldn't be missed, were groomed over the years, or simply criminals bought from jails, and the rare interested man who was seduced by the dark elf's sweet tongue and demeanor. The goblin merchants' goods were often shady or tended to malfunction, high elves mostly ignored you and commented on your "disgusting human scent", and other monster races were often sweet maidens looking for love or were simply friendly.
Relations with females, the most important part of life, would take early root in me, triggered by a misadventure and the lewd events following it. When it's monstergirls, it is -bound- to be lewd.
I was wandering, disappointed at the nearest town being a human-only village who were just celebrating some weird Zipangu festival named "Setsubun" where they pelted nearby "Yokai", or monstergirls for the layman, with magically enhanced beans. Not only senselessly immature but also a tasteless display of human racism was right there, clearly showed that the town was on my "never visit unless dying" list. So I decided to keep my coin and search for my luck farther east. My long, lazy wandering took me to the sounds of rushing water, where I decided to camp for the night. With my backpack, I kept walking until I could see the waterfall, and hopefully, the cave I could sleep in.
