Starting Out As The God of Beasts

The stone thoroughfares of Kaelos City rang with the deafening, cruel cheers of thousands of human citizens.

Rain had not yet fallen, and the afternoon sun cast a bright, merciless glare over the grand procession marching through the central plaza.

Dragged at the end of heavy iron chains were the surviving members of the Crimson-Spotted Leopard-Kin tribe.

Men, women, and traumatized children were bound hand and foot, heavy mana-suppressing shackles biting deep into their bloodied wrists and ankles.

Their silver fur was matted with grime, mud, and dried gore.

Human children ran alongside the marching column, laughing merrily as they hurled sharp stones, rotten fruit, and dirt at the silent captives.

"Look at the filthy beasts!"

"Praise the Mayor! Praise the Hunters of Kaelos!"

"Cleanse the mountain vermin!"

Behind the grand celebration lay decades of systematic indoctrination.

The Mayor of Kaelos City had long manipulated the public consciousness, painting all beastman species not as sentient, cultured beings, but as mindless, violent pests whose sole purpose in the grand order of the cosmos was to serve in absolute captivity or be harvested for raw materials.

The guards surrounding the column showed no hesitation, cracking their spiked leather whips across the backs of any beastman who stumbled.

The tragic procession was led away from the public squares, routed down a secluded, heavily guarded alleyway beneath the Mayor’s administrative district.

Heavy iron gates groaned open, revealing a damp, subterranean prison built directly into the bedrock beneath the city.

The Leopard-kin were shoved brutally into cramped, cold iron cages.

The heavy cell doors slammed shut with a sickening metallic CLANG.

Here, far beneath the cheering crowds, they were to be starved until their physical bodies weakened to the point where even the thought of rebellion or escape became an impossibility.

Meanwhile, in a luxurious, high-end hotel room situated merely a few hundred meters from the Mayor’s grand estate, a serene silence reigned.

A middle-aged man stood perfectly still before a floor-to-ceiling arched window, his hands folded neatly behind his back as he gazed down upon the sweeping, prosperous view of Kaelos City.

He was draped in flawless, flowing white silk robes embroidered with faint silver thread.

His long, jet-black hair was tied neatly into a long ponytail that fluttered gently in the draft coming through the slightly parted glass.

His eyes were calm, deep, and completely unreadable.

"I see you had your fill of fun out on the mountain," the black-haired man spoke smoothly, his voice soft yet carrying a subtle, resonant weight.

He did not bother turning around.

From the dark corner of the room, a second figure materialized from the shadows.

It was a broad-shouldered, middle-aged man with short, spiky brown hair and a sharp, arrogant sneer.

His body pulsed with a dense, volatile heat that made the air in the room shimmer slightly.

Both men were genuine Martial Generals.

As their respective pressure fields expanded, their powerful auras met in mid-air, canceling each other out into a tense, invisible equilibrium.

In the realm of cultivation, the physics of aging were absolute.

Upon stepping into the Martial General realm, a cultivator was gifted a lifespan exceeding a thousand years, their physical aging locking into a prime, middle-aged state.

However, should a cultivator fail to evolve into a Martial Lord before their thousand-year mark expired, the natural laws would exact a swift, brutal retribution:

Their body would age decades in a matter of months, rotting away and dying in less than ten years.

It was the ultimate, inescapable price of walking the heavenly path.

The brown-haired Martial General let out a boisterous, gravelly laugh, folding his thick arms across his chest as he leaned against a marble pillar.

"Fun doesn’t even begin to describe it, Silver Lotus Elder," the brown-haired man grinned, his eyes burning with lingering sadism.

"Watching that leopard leader struggle was absolute comedy. I toyed with him until his internal channels burst, then turned his chest into a burning pit of ash. Initial-Enlightened or not, he was nothing more than an overgrown cat."

The brown-haired man snorted loudly, making no effort to disguise his deep-seated disgust for the beastman race.

"Honestly, it revolts me how quickly the rest of those creatures fell the second their tribe leader died," he continued, spitting onto the polished wooden floor.

"They are nothing but pathetic leeches, Silver Lotus Elder. They rely entirely on a single strong figure to survive, pretending to carry pride as an A-class species, yet crumbling into groveling cattle the moment that pillar breaks.

They are disgusting pests."

The black-haired man—the Silver Lotus Elder—maintained his calm posture, his face remaining entirely serene as he watched the distant streets of Kaelos City.

He took a long, slow breath, letting the ambient spiritual energy of the city filter through his lungs.

"As long as you enjoyed yourself during the hunt, Everblazing Elder, that is all that truly matters," the Silver Lotus Elder replied softly.

He turned his head slightly, his dark eyes fixing upon the brown-haired man. "Now that the leopard-kin are caged and the core harvest is complete, you should return to the main branch of the Glorious Mythical Sect immediately to deliver our report."

The brown-haired man—the Everblazing Elder—frowned slightly, tilting his head. "Return? What about you, Silver Lotus Elder? Are you not coming back with me?"

"No," the Silver Lotus Elder answered, turning his gaze back out the window toward the skyline.

"I shall remain here in Kaelos City for a few more days."

"Why bother staying in a backwater human city?"

The Silver Lotus Elder’s eyes narrowed slightly as he felt a faint, inexplicable prickle along his spiritual sense—a subtle disturbance in the natural currents that only a high-tier cultivator could perceive.

"Call it intuition, Everblazing Elder," the Silver Lotus Elder whispered softly. "I have a distinct feeling... a quiet premonition... that something truly extraordinary is about to transpire right here in Kaelos City."

As the late hour approached, thick, ink-black clouds rolled over the mountain peaks, swallowing the moon and plunging the region into pitch darkness.

A torrential downpour erupted from the heavens, heavy rain lashing against the stone walls and iron gates of Kaelos City with deafening force.

Thunder rumbled across the sky, masking the sound of footsteps sloshing through the thick mud outside the western gates.

Through the curtain of blinding rain, three figures stepped out of the dark treeline, stopping at the threshold of the city’s outer perimeter.

Draped in simple traveling cloaks that shielded their faces from the storm, Roy, Eurenia, and Alisa stood quietly beneath the shadow of the massive stone ramparts.

Roy raised his head slightly beneath his hood, his golden-crimson eyes piercing through the dark, heavy rain to stare directly at the towering gates of Kaelos City.

The storm had arrived.

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