Chapter 108: Chapter 106: Slipping away

The merging of races.

It has once been the case that there were clearer distinctions between the members of the common races than there are now. Yes, there are specific attributes and affinities that each race has a natural tendency to, however in days of old, there were also more fundamental differences. The core of these was age.

It is said that, while human lifespans have always remained mostly the same, the lifespans of other races, the elves in particular, were once much, much longer than they are now.

As a rule of thumb, a human will live to around eighty years in optimal conditions. An elf with forest blood will live to one-hundred and twenty. A dark-elf will manage ten years more, one-hundred and thirty. In contrast, the dwarves and the orcs will only manage fifty and sixty years, respectively.

The poorest off are the fairies, who are now limited to existing only within the confines of the western mountain region, as most of the world’s high magic zones have been lost. A fairy will live for ten years.

It is said, though, that the elves once lived for close to a thousand years, if not more. So what changed this?

We can only speculate, but the assumption is that all elves remaining alive today share a common ancestral human in the distant past, whose bloodline had in essence overtaken all other elf bloodlines, leaving only this particular offshoot of shorter living elf within our world.

In inverse, the dwarves and the orcs can be happy, as they seem to be gaining lifespan as their generations go on.

Although this is a point that falls on deaf ears, the races are being outbred by humanity and are slowly vanishing from our world. The fairies are all but gone, and the dwarves are next.

We expect the orcs to go next, and then, finally, the elves of both species.

In the end, only humanity will remain.