Starting Out As The God of Beasts

"A shapeshifter?" Manuses’ brows slightly furrowed, "No" he shook his head.

"This is more than shapeshifting, he-he copied my mana, my powers as well" Lord Manuses’ gaze darkened.

The air over the ruined avenue turned into an absolute pressure cooker as the two identical white-gold titans collided.

It was a sight of pure horror for the surviving Norona forces—two copies of the same majestic, lion-winged nightmare tearing into one another with ferocious, animalistic cruelty.

BOOM—!!

Their first mutual claw strike created a perfectly spherical, white-gold shockwave that instantly leveled a three-story stone armory.

"A copy skill?" Lord Manuses questioned.

"Kinda" the second knight-priest grinned, "Not quite but something like that"

The brickwork disintegrated into a fine powder that was blown blocks away by the sheer kinetic displacement.

Because the second knight-priest had used the absolute law of Lord of Names to mirror Manuses’s physical density and power output, their baseline capabilities were perfectly, terrifyingly identical.

When the real Manuses threw a brutal, alloy-shattering left hook, the copy threw the exact same punch at the exact same velocity.

Their knuckles met with a deafening, metallic crack that sent a seismic tremor rippling through the city’s foundations, causing nearby roads to buckle and twist like ribbons.

"Same strength, same profound mana quantity" Lord Manuses growled, "What exactly is this skill of yours?"

Lord Manuses asked again.

"Guess" the copy chuckled, he grabbed Manuses’ right arm, sending the original crashing through a building.

"Even if I tried to explain, you won’t understand it" the copy smirked, "Why should I bother myself then"

"Is that so?" Lord Manuses’ voice boomed from the burning building he crashed into.

The Tiger Lord dashed through the flame storm, spawning right before the copy in an instant.

"Then it’s a cheap parlor trick," the real Manuses growled, his multi-layered voice vibrating with deep, rumbling pride.

"You can steal my flesh, human, but you cannot steal the soul forged by the God of Beasts!"

"You can never beat me" Lord Manuses declared:

"In the eyes of the law, the flesh is the vessel," the copied Manuses countered seamlessly, his cloned voice carrying the same resonant authority.

"If the power is identical, the origin is entirely irrelevant."

With a massive roar that shook the very teeth out of the surrounding Orc sentries’ jaws, the real Manuses opened his internal mana channels to their absolute limits.

His pristine white feathers violently caught fire, turning a blinding, incandescent crimson-gold as he unleashed his signature active concept: Lord of Wrath.

The space within a hundred meters turned into a hellscape of pure, unadulterated physical aggression.

Lord of Wrath multiplied the user’s kinetic output based on the intensity of their battle fury, turning every casual strike into a localized cataclysm.

Manuses lunged forward, his fiery claws ripping through the atmospheric pressure, leaving vacuum trails behind them.

But the moment the skill fully manifested—

OMMMMM—!

The copied Manuses’s feathers instantly ignited with the exact same blinding, crimson-gold fire.

The Lord of Names didn’t just replicate static stats; it flawlessly adapted to the active skills unleashed by the target.

"Lord of Wrath!" the copy roared, matching the real Manuses’s fury line for line, concept for concept.

The resulting collision was pure, unbridled madness.

"You even copied my skill huh?" Lord Manuses’ frown deepened.

The two Lord of Wrath skills interacted like two exploding stars trapped in a cage.

Each mutual strike sent devastating, apocalyptic shockwaves tearing through the horrifying landscape.

They broke through solid infrastructure with their bodies, tumbling through reinforced stone walls, crashing down into deep subterranean sewers, and bursting back up through the roads like twin volcanoes.

The collateral damage was grotesque. The fleeing armies of Norona City—hundreds of Ogres, Orcs, Goblins, and Trolls—were completely caught in the crossfire, dying like flies.

It was Hell!

A platoon of forty armored Ogres tried to retreat down a side street, but the stray thermal-kinetic shockwave from the two Manuses clashing overhead simply erased them.

"Run...Run....Run..."

"Save yourself, we are in deep danger"

"Please save me!"

"Norona in falling"

Screams and wails echoed through the storms, Roy watched from the shadows.

"Interesting" Roy’s lips curled faintly, "A skill that copies the target the moment the target’s name is known"

"I knew dealing with humans will be such a headache" Roy gently caressed his sleek crimson hair.

He is still in his Wolf-man form.

"Humans are too unpredictable, blessed by the world with such grand potentials, unlike beastman whose skills follows a strict direction"

"The skills humans awaken are versatile and unpredictable" his eyes flickered, "I’m excited to see what the ten continents has to offer me" Roy chuckled.

He turned his back, making his way out of the scene.

"It’s time to meet the Troll King!"

As he left the scene, tons of debris fell, clouds of smoke rising, engulfing districts upon districts.

The air pressure alone caused the Ogres’ massive skulls to implode, their green bodies bursting into wet, crimson shreds before they could even scream.

Fleeing Goblins were thrown into the air by the constant earthquakes, their fragile bodies snapped in half by the concussive air currents.

The streets were literally being paved with a gruesome, thick paste of pulverized bone and mixed monster blood.

The real Manuses felt a deep, agonizing tear along his shoulder as the copy’s fiery claws ripped through his alloy-dense muscles.

Blood poured from the wound, staining his white mane a dark, sticky crimson.

But simultaneously, Manuses’s own claws dug deep into the copy’s chest cavity, cracking the mirrored ribs and leaving a matching, smoking crater of cooked flesh.

They were bleeding together, breaking together, and destroying the city together.

The real Manuses’s eyes burned with an unyielding, wild fanaticism, while the copy’s eyes—though identical—carried the cold, frustrated desperation of a human who was forcing himself to match a beast’s primal instincts.

They tore back into the sky, their massive feathered wings creating twin cyclones of fire and wind, completely indifferent to the absolute, blood-soaked ruin they were leaving in their wake.