Starting Out As The God of Beasts

Inside the luxurious guest chamber, the heavy mental fog that had bound Elijah’s mind suddenly evaporated like morning mist.

The small, red-furred Rabbit-kin gasped violently, collapsing onto all fours over the plush silk cushions.

His lungs burned as he took in ragged, desperate breaths.

His long, tufted ears pinned back flat against his skull, and his body began to shake with an uncontrollable, violent tremor.

The divine authority of Mindcraft had released its grip, and the memories of the last few hours came rushing back into his brain like a tidal wave of ice water.

He remembered standing before the Apostle.

He remembered looking into those terrifying, dual-colored golden-crimson eyes.

Worse, he remembered walking into the Troll King’s audience chamber, his own mouth moving against his will, delivering a flawless, calculated report that had completely exposed his own treason to the network.

”No... no, no, no!” Elijah whined, a high-pitched, terrified squeak escaping his throat.

He was compromised.

Mandraxx knew.

The Apostle knew.

If the Troll King found out he had been used as a meat puppet to feed the palace false coordinates, he wouldn’t just be killed—his mana core would be ripped out to fuel the dark altar.

He had to run.

He had to report the truth to the high command before the trap closed completely.

Scrambling to his feet, Elijah rushed toward the heavy wooden door of his chamber.

His small, clawed hand shot out, grasping the brass door knob.

He twisted it frantically.

Clack. Clack.

The knob didn’t budge.

The mechanism was completely dead, sealed tight by an invisible, suffocating layer of stealth mana.

”Going somewhere, Elijah?”

The cold, melodic voice pierced through the silence of the room, making Elijah’s heart violently seize.

His entire body froze.

Slowly, his head turned toward the dark corner of the chamber. Sitted comfortably on a soft, velvet couch was Alisa.

Her slate-grey Mandraxx battle suit caught the low ember glow of the hearth, and her long rabbit ears were standing perfectly rigid, tilting slightly as she stared at him with eyes full of absolute, murderous detachment.

In her right hand, she casually flipped a pair of black shadow-silk blades.

The Phantom Veil Daggers.

”D-Director...” Elijah stammered, his knees buckling as he backed away until his spine hit the locked door. ”I... it’s not what it looks like. I was forced—”

”Shut up,” Alisa snapped softly.

Before he could even blink, a massive shockwave of Peak-enlightened stage Martial Warrior mana detonated from her frame.

She had already completely her mana absorption stage.

The sheer weight of her aura slammed into Elijah like a physical fist, pinning him against the doorframe.

Alisa didn’t wait.

She blurred forward, her fist driving straight into Elijah’s stomach.

CRUNCH.

Elijah coughed up a spray of dark blood, his body folding in half as he crashed into the floorboards.

Alisa grabbed him by his red fur, hauling him up effortlessly and slamming him onto the low wooden table, shattering the porcelain plates.

”Why?” Alisa whispered, her voice trembling not with sadness, but with a deep, burning rage as she pressed the cold flat of her dagger against his throat.

”I vetted you myself. You were Mandraxx. You swore your oath to the God of Beasts. For what, Elijah? A few silk cushions? A pile of Troll meat? You sold out our people to monsters who use us as cattle!” she roared.

”They... they would have killed me anyway!”

Elijah shrieked, his craven personality completely taking over as he clawed at her arm.

Desperation flared in his veins, and he unleashed his own dormant mana, trying to drive his hind legs into her chest to break her grip.

But the gap between them was a vast chasm.

Alisa didn’t even flinch.

She parried his kick with a brutal sweep of her forearm, the bone-crushing impact fracturing his ankle.

With a fluid, merciless spin, her second dagger flashed through the air, severing the tendons in his wrists before he could gather enough mana to strike back.

”AAAAHHH!”

Elijah screamed, collapsing onto the ruined table, heavily injured, bleeding, and entirely broken.

”Please... Alisa... mercy...” Elijah sobbed, his whiskers covered in blood and saliva as he looked up at her, trembling. ”We are the same kin... please... don’t kill me...”

”CALL ME DIRECTOR!!” Alisa barked.

She stood over him, her face completely cast in shadow.

Her long ears drooped for a fraction of a second before hardening into iron.

”We are not the same kin,” she said coldly.

”Do you have any idea what you did? Because of your pathetic greed, the Apostle himself had to intervene to put an end to your mess” she scowled.

”You embarrassed me in front of the master. You made Mandraxx look weak.”

”You made us look pathetic!”

She raised her dagger, the blade gleaming with a sharp, dark luminescence.

”Your duty is finished, traitor.”

With a swift, clean downward thrust, the blade pierced through Elijah’s throat, pinning him to the wood.

His eyes rolled back, his body gave one final, violent twitch, and the craven Rabbit-kin went entirely still.

Alisa pulled her blade out, wiping the blood on his silk cushions without a single trace of remorse, before vanishing back into the shadows of the room.

Meanwhile, at the jagged northern edge of the city’s upper rings, the freezing wind howled against the entrance of the secret ritual site.

The entrance was a yawning, obsidian archway carved directly into the mountain face, hidden behind a heavy illusion array that had already been dismantled by Roy’s transmitted coordinates.

Eurenia walked slowly up the snow-covered stone steps, her form-fitting battle suit completely exposed under the pale moonlight.

”Stop right there!” a guttural voice barked.

Three towering Troll sentries, their blue skin covered in heavy runic armor, stepped out from the shadows of the archway.

Unlike the common vanguard soldiers in the lower rings, these guards radiated the thick, oppressive aura of Initial-enlightened stage Martial Warriors.

Their massive frost-halberds hummed with a dangerous, white-blue light, locking onto the lone beastman woman.

”A slave? How did you get past the lower gates?” the lead sentry growled, stepping forward with his halberd raised. ”Kill her before she alerts the sanctum!”

The three Trolls lunged forward simultaneously, their weapons tearing through the freezing air with terrifying, Master-tier speed, cutting off every single avenue of retreat.

Eurenia didn’t even bother to dodge.

A lopsided, lethal grin cut through her lips as her eyes flared with the brilliant, newly attained power of her Middle-enlightened Master stage.

The concealed mana cartridges along her forearms roared to life, releasing a blinding, crimson shockwave of compressed kinetic energy that warped the falling snow around her.

BOOM!

She moved like a flash of lightning.

Slipping inside the reach of the lead Troll’s halberd, her palm slammed directly into his chestplate.

The raw mana pressure imploded inward, bypassing his armor entirely and shattering his ribs into a thousand splinters.

The massive warrior didn’t even have time to grunt before his heart exploded.

The second sentry swung his blade horizontally, aiming for her neck, but Eurenia ducked under the strike with fluid grace.

Her leg swept out, heavily reinforced with kinetic mana, snapping the Troll’s ankle with a sickening crack.

As he stumbled, she drove a compressed mana spike straight through his chin, piercing his skull.

The third guard, his eyes wide with sudden, absolute terror, tried to back away to sound the alarm horn hanging from his belt.

”Too slow,” Eurenia whispered.

She blurred past him.

Her hand shot out, grabbing the horn and crushing the metal to melting slag in her fist, while her other hand wrapped around his throat.

With a cold, unforgiving twist, she executed him without a shred of mercy.

The three massive cultivators crashed into the snow, their dark blood staining the permafrost.

Eurenia didn’t even look back at the corpses.

She calmly adjusted the cuffs of her battle suit, stepped over the fallen halberds, and plunged straight into the dark, echoing depths of the ritual cavern.