Akuma No Machi

Akuma No Machi (悪魔 の 街 *Akuma No Machi*) is a village from Japan, it is well known for having a conflict with Bukiminahi and for being full of demons.

## **Symbol**

Akuma No Machi's symbol is a yellow full moon with scarlet red thorny branches.

The Moon marks the ebb and flow of life and death, of objective manifestation and subjective disappearance. The Moon was always qualified as Mother-Mediator-Step or Bridge between Earth and Heaven, between gods and men. This has a great connection with the Nazo No Kako universe, especially with the Akuma No Machi people, since it tells about what follows after death. Popularly, there is a set of beliefs associated with the full moon. It is said, for example, that our behavior changes, that crime skyrockets, and that traffic accidents and childbirth increase. This also has great connection to this fictional location. The branches with thorns symbolize the pain that the inhabitants have gone through due to wars, the color of these branches is scarlet red, a color that symbolizes blood, passion, violence and independence.

## **Story**

The history of Akuma No Machi begins in the year 1290 approximately, when the founder of Shiroihane saw free land with a good climate for crops, so he built a small house made of straw and wood to live free from the stress that contributed to being Shiroihane Emperor. But some residents of Bukiminahi previously were looking to somehow get that free space, but seeing that the founder of Shiroihane already occupied the space, they got upset, but they tried to let it pass. Later, Yuuto started a family in Akuma No Machi, also, many people from Shiroihane moved to this village. Over a period of time, some individuals from Germany migrated to Akuma No Machi, so some current villagers maybe can be of German descent. With this, the population of Akuma No Machi began to grow too large, so they created houses, cultivated crops, created families, etc. in order to make their town independent, since it depended on Shiroihane.

Bukiminahi, seeing the great development of the village, began to swindle the villagers of Akuma in shops, which caused anger in both villages, and the relationship between them was getting worse. In the year 1320, Akuma No Machi ceased to depend on Shiroihane and began to be an independent town of Japan, which made many Shiroihane people happy, but angered those of Bukiminahi, because the people of Bukiminahi had become brutally obsessed with with the idea of ​​growing more and being the most developed town.

Yuuto, sometime in the year 1325, died due to being killed by an unknown inhabitant of Bukiminahi, which unleashed anger in the inhabitants of Akuma No Machi. After the founder's death, the town was left to Keiji Hojo, a distant cousin of Yuuto and the emperor of those times. On May 12, 1385, some men from Bukiminahi killed the father and almost all the siblings of a fifteen-year-old girl named Katame Urami, this caused her trauma and a thirst for revenge, because that girl was very vengeful according to those who knew her. So, a year after that, in the year 1386, Katame traveled to Bukiminahi, and made a cruel massacre that would be known as The Urami Massacre. In this massacre, Katame killed over two hundred Bukiminahi villagers, in addition to eating the dead bodies of the villagers who killed her family. This gave the people of Akuma No Machi a bad reputation, they were left as the bad guys in history, so they got angry with Katame without even knowing the truth, so they decided to promise to reward the first one who kills Katame and any of her relatives that stay alive. Due to the massacre, Bukiminahi declared war on Akuma No Machi, thus the conflict began.

Katame killed too many people from Bukiminahi, that aroused anger in the soul of each person killed, so their anger was stored in another body that can be both physical and psychological, that's how the Soul Keepers were created, to be more specific, the Utsu-type shadows. These souls went to Akuma No Machi, where they began to dwell wanting to regain revenge by killing more people, because more people died and more shadows existed, various types of Soul Keepers and Shadows began to exist.

When the Soul Keepers began to exist, heaven and hell had been closed and could only be opened with a magical portal, so a woman was willing to make a pact with the devil, she made a portal to open Hell again and make her pact, when the portal connected her to hell, the inhabitant made her pact: Be a demon. The pact was fulfilled, in exchange for her to create a new hell where the devil can live in peace, the inhabitant had obtained powers after becoming a demon, so she accepted and created a new hell which she called "place of demons" Thus, the original hell closed completely and all the lost souls that were in the old hell became shadows, while the devil lived peacefully in his new home. But accidentally, other demons who were the devil's helpers escaped from hell thanks to the pact and came to the real world, they specifically addressed Akuma No Machi, when people realized that the place was full of demons, the town was named finally a name: Akuma No Machi.

In an unknown year, presumably after Keiji's death, Poreuse found Akuma No Machi and opened up human trafficking in this area.

Some time later, around the year 1400, a man named Arata Hojo found the place where Katame was hiding, in that, they crucified her and burned her alive, for which Arata was officially rewarded for killing Katame. Surprisingly, Arata's wife, named Chiasa Hojo, discovered that the pact girl was Katame's mother, and her real name was Kaoru Urami. Due to Kaoru's pact, she had great demon powers, and she didn't feel totally comfortable with what the devil had given her, so she went to Place of demons to "visit" the devil, but she actually went to combine her body with him. Kaoru achieved her mission to combine bodies, and she shared a body with the devil, but that body had 2 minds; Kaoru's and the devil's.

## **Featured Inhabitants**

* Yuuto Trelbonius: He was the founder of the town, he founded it in 1290, he was also the first emperor of Akuma No Machi, he ceased to be the emperor in 1325 because he was assassinated.

* Keiji Hojo, a distant maternal cousin of Yuuto Trelbonius, was granted the position of emperor since Yuuto's death in 1325, he ceased to be the emperor due to his passing away from natural causes in 1345. When he died, the town was left without an emperor for a long time.

## **Trivia**

* Is the town with the least relevance in human trafficking through Poreuse, because Witches Town and Bukiminahi have more people transferred through Poreuse.