Starting Out As The God of Beasts

The massive obsidian doors hadn’t even finished vibrating from Roy’s sudden disappearance before Lord Manuses stepped away from the panoramic window.

’I cannot receive the God of Beasts’ blessing because I lack faith?’ Lord Manuses was in deep thoughts.

The golden silk of his sun-spider coat swirled like liquid fire as he moved back to his fractured mahogany desk.

”This must be a test.” He clenched his fist, ”If I must prove my faith to Lord Varanus, this should be the beginning.” His eyes flickered, brimming with determination.

”Trojan,” Manuses rumbled into the empty air.

The shadows near the entrance parted instantly, and the towering Sun Tiger Martial Master stepped forward, his hand still resting on his twin broadswords. ”My Lord. I am here.”

Instead of issuing a tactical defense order for the eastern terrace, Manuses reached into the drawer of his desk and pulled out a narrow sheet of black parchment.

He didn’t look up as he slid it across the polished stone.

”Initiate the Purge!” Lord Manuses gave a command.

Trojan picked it up, his amber eyes scanning the lines. Written in thick, dark ink was a precise list of names—every high-ranking Orc captain, Troll priest, and Goblin logistics officer currently stationed within the city limits.

”My Lord... this is...” Trojan’s voice faltered, his ears twitching in sharp confusion. ”These are the core commanders of our auxiliary forces. If we remove them now, our entire outer perimeter will—”

”They are not our forces,” Manuses interrupted, his voice dropping into a cold, absolute register that brooked no debate.

”They are the eyes and ears of the Troll King, and right now, they are preparing to offer this city’s blood to an altar that will swallow us whole.” Lord Manuses declared. ”Gather the elite vanguard. Strike them hard, strike them simultaneously, and leave none of them alive to report back west.”

Trojan stared at his master for a single, heavy heartbeat.

The sheer weight of the command hung in the quiet room, but the lifelong loyalty of the Tiger-man overrode his doubt.

He snapped his fist against his armored chest. ”By your will, Tiger Lord.”

The mid-ring armories were thick with the smell of grease and low-grade iron.

A platoon of thirty heavy Orc enforcers stood in the courtyard, their iron axes resting against their shoulders as they waited for the morning guard rotation.

”Why are the Tiger-men taking so long?” An Orc captain grunted, spitting onto the dusty cobblestones. ”The whole lower ring is turning to ash, and we’re stuck guarding a bunch of rusted spears.”

”They’re coming now,” a soldier muttered, pointing toward the heavy archway.

A detachment of twenty Sun Tiger soldiers marched into the courtyard, their golden-gilded plate armor gleaming under the raw morning sun.

They moved with a rigid, unnatural silence.

Their broadswords remained in their scabbards, but their hands were already wrapped tight around the hilts.

The Orc captain stepped forward to hand over the watch log. ”About time. Tell your Lord that the eastern trenches are—”

He never finished the sentence.

Trojan materialized from the flank like a golden blur.

His twin broadswords cleared their scabbards with a high, ringing shriek, cutting through the Orc captain’s thick neck before the logbook even hit the dirt.

”Kill them all!” Trojan roared, his Martial Master aura erupting across the courtyard like a physical shockwave.

The Sun Tiger soldiers drew their blades in unison, their movements executed with a ruthless, clinical precision.

The narrow courtyard instantly turned into an ambush zone. Caught completely flat-footed during a routine rotation, the Orcs didn’t even have the space to swing their heavy axes.

Blades pierced through the gaps of their leather under-armor, and the heavy thud of falling bodies echoed against the iron-reinforced walls of the armory.

Within two minutes, the entire platoon was wiped out, their blood pooling in the gutters.

Because the city was already under an absolute lockdown, the sudden explosion of internal fighting threw the lower-ring infrastructure into total, unmitigated chaos.

Down in the lower terraces, the common Orc soldiers heard the ring of clashing steel and the roar of Tiger-men from the upper tiers, but no orders were coming down the line. The command network had been completely severed.

”Who are we fighting?!” An Orc lieutenant screamed, trying to rally a frantic line of defenders near a terrace ramp. ”The slave pens are empty! Are the wolves attacking from the east, or are the renegade hyenas breaching the secondary gates?”

”It’s the Tiger guards!” A retreating scout yelled from above, his armor covered in friendly blood. ”The Mayor’s vanguard is executing everyone at the checkpoints! It’s a military coup!”

The lower ring fractured into a three-way meat grinder.

Orcs began firing cross-bolts at any golden armor they saw; the independent Hyena cells under Alpha Brenda exploited the confusion to hit isolated supply warehouses; and the common beastmen slaves scrambled through the smoke, completely unsure of who was freeing them and who was hunting them.

The carefully managed hierarchy of Tempest City vanished in a single morning, replaced by a screaming matrix of dust and iron.

Deep beneath the city’s foundations, far away from the chaotic noise of the streets, the air inside the Troll King’s inner sanctum grew violently tense.

The remaining Troll priests stood around a massive, secondary ritual basin, their gray skin turning pale as the connection to their outer sentries went completely dark one by one.

The magic array etched into the floorboards—designed to pulse with the blood flow from the eastern smelting pools—was completely dry, its purple light flickering weakly like a dying ember.

”The smelting pool has fallen,” an acolyte rasped, his webbed hands shaking as he looked at the entrance. ”And the Tiger-men have turned on the guard captains in the mid-ring. Manuses has betrayed us. He’s clearing the list.”

The lead Troll Priest, a twisted Martial Warrior whose body was covered in deep-purple ritual scars, let out a wet, furious hiss.

He slammed his jagged staff into the stone floor, his yellow eyes burning with a fanatical, desperate rage.

”Barricade the iron doors!” The Troll Priest shrieked, his voice echoing off the damp, subterranean vaults. ”Seal the bedrock tunnels! If that cowardly cat thinks he can cheat the Great King’s covenant, we will turn his own palace into the kindling!”

He turned toward the rows of iron cages lining the back wall, where the remaining sacrifices—mostly young beastmen and broken miners—were huddling in terror.

”Forget the preparation phases!” The priest roared, raising his jagged ritual dagger as the tattoos on his flesh began to pulse with a sickly, toxic miasma.

”Ignite the God of Misfortune’s array right now! Throw every single one of them into the basin! We will perfect the ritual so the God of Misfortune may descend with raw blood before the Tiger-men breach the floor!”

But before they could activate the ritual’s mechanism, lifeless bodies dropped, soaked in their own pool of blood.

”W-What just happened?”

The lead priest staggered back. His body quivered. He could feel it—the presence of an indomitable cultivator!

”It seems I arrived on time,” a gentle voice echoed through the room.

Emerging from the shadows was no other than the newly evolved Martial Lord.

The High Priest of the God of Beasts, Lord Varanus..