Starting Out As The God of Beasts

Roy closed my eyes and drew upon the deepest reserves of my origin.

Creation Essence didn’t manifest as the chaotic, destructive crimson fire of my rage.

Instead, it emerged from my palms as a dense, blindingly pure golden-white fluid, humming with the primordial frequency of a world being coded from nothingness.

[Ding!]

[You have consumed 5 Beads of Creation Essence]

The status window shimmered before his eyes.

Roy pressed his glowing palms over the seam of the severed neck.

The process was agonizingly precise, a literal stitching of biological data.

Under the touch of the Creation Essence, the frozen, dead cells at the edge of the wound began to vibrate and glow.

Fine, thread-like tendrils of golden light erupted from the tissue, weaving themselves across the gap like a divine loom.

They reached into the dark, severed arteries, re-linking the microscopic pathways of the throat, knitting the shattered vertebrae back into a seamless column of bone, and fusing the shredded nerves with surgical symmetry.

The matted, blood-soaked fur along the seam rippled, the stain of death lifting as new, vibrant rust-red hair flooded the reconstructed flesh.

With the physical vessel reconnected, he drove my right palm directly over the Fox-man’s cold, lifeless chest cavity.

”Wake up,” he commanded, my voice echoing through the dark tunnel like a localized law.

The golden-white essence surged inward, flooding his empty, collapsed heart.

The stagnant blood within his veins violently thawed, supercharged by the sudden influx of divine essence.

[You have expended 10 Divine Essence]

Not only was Creation Essence consumed, even his Divine Essence was also consumed in the process.

This was different compared to the changes made to Tempest City. The Sanctuary Recreator Elixir’s effects was strong.

But this time, Roy had no elixir to support him.

To influence the source of life itself.

He needed to expend his own divine essence.

Thump.

A single, explosive heartbeat rattled the Fox-man’s ribcage.

But the Creation Essence was an absolute primordial force; it didn’t merely restore what was lost—it overflowed.

The dense, divine energy began to aggressively rewrite his fundamental limits. The residual blockages within his mortal meridians were violently blasted open.

His skeletal structure groaned, the bones compressing and densifying into an iron-like resonance, while his muscles coiled tightly with a brand-new, terrifyingly fluid kinetic potential.

[Ding!]

[Your Follower: Nurex Heaver has been elevated from a ’Mundane’ Follower to a ’Dedicated’ Follower]

[Qualifications have been met]

[Target Bloodline: Awakened Fox-Kin]

[Subject will now evolve]

[Cultivator Phase: Initial-Stage]

[Cultivator Status: Martial Warrior]

”Huh?” Roy’s eyes widened in shock, ”An evolution?”

”But how?”

A sudden, fierce vortex of ambient mana kicked up within the tunnel, swirling around the Fox-man’s body as his newfound, sharp Martial Warrior’s mana core crystallized in his dantian, pulsing with a vibrant, defensive aura.

The Fox-man’s eyelids snapped open.

His pupils, once dulled by the transition of death, now burned with a sharp, lethal intelligence.

He gasped, drawing in a massive chestful of the freezing air, his claws instinctively unsheathing as he rolled over onto his hands and knees.

He stared at his own hands, tracking the faint, golden-white traces of Creation Essence still fading beneath his fur, before feeling his perfectly healed neck.

He could feel the explosive, martial energy humming through his newly forged meridians.

He hadn’t just been brought back from the grave; he had been elevated into an apex predator of his tier.

Looking up, his gaze locked onto my dual-colored eyes, and his expression instantly melted into a display of absolute, fanatical worship.

He threw himself flat onto the permafrost, his forehead pressing against my boots.

”My Lord...Saint Jarden” the Fox-man whispered, his voice vibrating with his newly awakened martial resonance.

”You know me?” Roy asked.

”Ofcourse I do” the Fox-man immediately answered, ”I’m an agent of Mandraxx, it’s our duty to guard the secrets of Tempest City” he stated.

The Fox-man was only able to recognize Roy because Roy had quickly transformed back into Jarden Rome.

Not wanting to kill his follower in other to hide his secret. He had to be quick.

”Good” Roy cleared his throat, ”What is your rank?” he asked.

”I’m a Rank 7 agent, my special talent is infiltration and undercover operations” he answered.

”You excel in those fields?” Roy asked.

”Yes” the Fox-man answered.

”Then why were you caught in the first place?” Roy asked. The Fox-man bowed his head in shame.

”It’s....it’s because we have been betrayed!” the Fox-man answered.

”What?” Roy’s gaze darkened, ”What are you talking about?” he questioned.

”Saint....” the Fox-man slowly rose to his feet, ”My name is Nurex Heaver and I’m the head of this undercover operation....”

”But one of us has joined hands with Norona City and we have been betrayed” Nurex reported.

”Do you know who it is?” Roy asked. ”No, I do not” Nurex shook his head, ”What I do know is that the traitor doesn’t know the locations of the other agents”

”Only I do so they exposed me in other to figure out the locations of the other spies” Nurex explained.

”I see” Roy inhaled deeply, ”This is quite troublesome that i thought” he smiled.

”How many agents did Alisa released for this undercover operation?” he asked.

”Well Director Alisa placed me in charge of a five-man team, this means there are four undercover agents scattered across Norona City”

”My death and the traitor would make it three, the rest are loyal to Tempest but until the traitor is found and terminated”

”We’re all in danger” Nurex explained.

Roy’s eyes flickered, ”I despise variables” he clenched his fist, ”You should rest in this tunnel for now” Roy instructed.

”I’ll prepare a trap for that traitor. When the time is right.....” Roy’s lips curled up, ”You’ll be the one who kills that traitor”

”You are now a cultivator, Nurex”

”You should be able to protect yourself until I return” with that, Roy exited the tunnel, returning back to the city while taking the form of the Ogre Captain Toti.

Meanwhile....

**

The heavy obsidian doors of the Grand Frost Sanctum ground open with a low, agonizing groan that shivered through the permafrost floor.

Walking into the massive, ice-rimed audience chamber was a figure that looked utterly ridiculous against the colossal scale of the room.

He was a small, rust-red furred Rabbit-kin, barely reaching the waist of the stone-faced Orc guards lining the pathway.

He wore a heavy, oversized coat of white northern wolf-pelt, his long, tufted ears twitching with every echo that bounced off the vaulted ribs of the ceiling.

To a casual observer, he looked like a helpless, shivering merchant.

But beneath the soft fur and the submissive, twitching nose lay a cold, calculating index of betrayal.

He was an operative of the Mandraxx Network—one of the deep-cover agents Director Alisa had dispatched into the western veins.

He was also the traitor.

A Cultivator who had awakened thanks to the aid of the Troll King.

Elijah Mahune

The traitor who had flagged the Fox-man’s coordinates to the Ogre vanguard, sacrificing his comrade to cement his own position in the dark.

At the far end of the sanctum sat the dreaded Troll King.

The monarch was a towering, terrifying titan of blue-skinned muscle and frozen scar tissue, his form so massive he looked like a natural extension of the jagged ice throne he sat upon.

Frozen mist leaked passively from his tusked jaw, a constant, chilling reminder of the active skill: Frozen Death Star sleeping within his mana cores.

His slitted, frost-white eyes drifted downward, locking onto the tiny crimson rabbit kneeling on the stone steps below.

”The northern bunny has a very quiet step,” the Troll King rumbled, his voice like grinding tectonic plates.

The ambient moisture in the room crystallized further, falling as a light dusting of snow around the throne. ”Speak, little traitor. My vanguards tell me the Tempest spy died with his mouth stitched shut.”

”Why are you here instead of rotting in the slums with him?”

The red Rabbit-kin didn’t tremble.

”You gave me a chance to evolve, I’m here to serve you” He slowly lowered his hood, his dark eyes reflecting the cold blue light of the ice pillars.

”The Fox-man was a fool, Your Majesty,” the Rabbit-kin spoke, his voice smooth, high-pitched, and entirely devoid of remorse.

”He believed that mysterious Apostle was absolute. If I hadn’t leaked his drop-point to your Ogres, he would have successfully mapped the volcanic heat vents beneath the western wall by sunrise.” Elijah grinned.

”His death was a necessary deletion to keep my own network credentials clean.”

The Troll King leaned forward, resting a massive, clawed chin on a fist that could crush a carriage.

”And the other three shadows? Your Mandraxx brothers still breathe inside my bazaars.”

”They are blind nodes now,” the traitor replied, a thin, vicious smile curling his whiskers.

”They believe the Fox-man was caught due to bad luck. I will feed them false coordinates over the next three cycles, leading them directly into your frost-giant patrol routes.”

”By the time Apostle Jarden realizes his northern eyes have been put out, your undead legion of thirty thousand will already be marching through the Hudeii canyon.”

The Troll King let out a low, vibrating chuckle that caused the icicles hanging from the roof to ring like bells.

”Amusing. A rabbit selling out his own people to survive the winter.”

The air rippled as the Troll King smirked, ”Tell me, little spy... what does this ’Apostle’ look like when he realizes his plan is compromised?”

”He looks like a man who thinks he is the right hand of a god, Sire,” the Rabbit-kin murmured, bowing his head until his ears swept the frozen floor.

”He doesn’t know that out here in the deep frost, his divine blessing is nothing but smoke before your winter.”