Starting Out As The God of Beasts

The purple fog of mixed blood grew thicker, swirling lazily within the suffocating, high-pressure currents of the Lord of the Sea.

Every breath the human knight-priest took within his mana-sustained bubble tasted of brine and the metallic tang of his own lungs breaking down.

Every movement High Priest Croak made caused the deep, jagged lacerations across his torso to flare with a burning, spatial poison left behind by the Lord of Cleave.

Yet, neither warrior gave quarter.

They had transcended the simple narrative of a battlefield; this was a fundamental clash of existence.

"You speak of the gods, beast!" the knight-priest roared, his voice cracking with a mix of exhaustion and absolute fanaticism.

He parried a massive column of compressed water with his bare, armored forearm, the metal buckling and tearing away to reveal shredded flesh beneath.

"But your ’God of Beasts’ is nothing more than a fake!" he sneered.

"A mere dog whose name has never been heard before!"

"The Church of Misfortune spans, villages, cities and even kingdoms! We are the true mandate of the heavens!"

High Priest Croak’s youthful face remained a mask of chilling serenity, even as a fresh spatial tear opened along his cheek, exposing the pale, dense bone of his fractured jaw.

He raised his wooden staff, his ancient voice vibrating through the very water molecules filling the chamber.

"You are mistaken" High Priest Croak couldn’t help but smile, "the God of Beast is ancient, a primordial who once existed in a time way beyond the era of your gods"

"The depth of the ocean does not care for the size of the ships that sail upon it, human," Croak countered, his tone dropping to a deadly, rhythmic whisper.

"Your kingdoms are built on shifting sands. Your churches are built on fragile words...."

"But the primordial tide... it always, always reclaims what was taken."

With a sudden, violent thrust of his staff, Croak activated a hidden sub-layer of his domain.

The thousands of gallons of high-density water surrounding the knight-priest didn’t just compress—they mutated.

Out of the dark, churning depths, the fluid rapidly coalesced into thousands of hyper-pressurized, jagged water needles.

They weren’t floating; they were vibrating at a frequency that tore at the molecular bonds of the air bubbles surrounding the human.

"Fall," Croak commanded.

The sea of needles converged on the knight-priest from all 360 degrees.

Faced with an absolute wall of physical mass, the human knight-priest threw his head back, his eyes bloodshot behind his cracked visor.

He poured the absolute remainder of his life-essence directly into his runic blade, forcing his Lord of Cleave concept to breach its mortal limits.

"I am a child of Lord Damascus! I do not fall to a swamp-dwelling demon!" he shrieked.

OMMMMM—!!

An blinding, apocalyptic flash of white-gold light erupted from his blade.

The conceptual law of Lord of Cleave went completely chaotic.

Instead of precise, invisible slashes, the space within a fifty-meter radius of the human simply ceased to recognize cohesion.

The water needles were severed into microscopic mist; the remaining stone pillars of the cavern were cleanly sliced into hundreds of paper-thin geometric discs.

The very currents of the Lord of the Sea were temporarily cleaved into dry, hollow voids.

Croak was caught in the immediate, unavoidable backlash.

The conceptual spatial blades bypassed his water shields entirely, slamming into his chest, stomach, and thighs.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

His defensive exoskeleton shattered completely across his torso.

The old beastman was thrown backward by the sheer kinetic weight of the absolute strike, a massive fountain of dark blood escaping his lips as his body crashed violently into the collapsing, rock-strewn floor of the abyss.

His mana cores shuddered, their light flickering dangerously under the stress of the spatial poison.

But the human knight-priest paid an equally devastating price for his maximum output.

The moment his chaotic spatial field subsided, the compressed hydrostatic pressure of the Lord of the Sea snapped back like a massive rubber band.

Without his armor’s full kinetic barriers to protect him, the weight of the ocean slammed into his exposed torso with the force of a falling meteor.

CRUUUNCH.

His ribs collapsed inward, puncturing his lungs.

The white-gold plate armor on his shoulders split wide open, the jagged metal digging deep into his collarbones.

"You are strong, I give you that"

The human gasped, his bubble collapsing as a rush of freezing, high-density spiritual water forced its way down his throat, choking him on his own blood and the primordial mana of the deep.

"Stronger than even Razarak" he chuckled.

He fell from the currents, tumbling heavily onto the shattered stone blocks just twenty paces away from Croak.

The two Martial Lords lay amidst the ruins of the underwater tomb, breathing heavily, their bodies broken, their blood painting the stones in shades of violent purple.

Slowly, painfully, High Priest Croak used his ceremonial staff as a crutch, forcing his trembling, bleeding legs to stand upright.

"Who is Razarak?" Croak questioned.

His robes were ruined, his flesh was carved to ribbons, but his dark eyes remained locked onto his opponent with an unshakeable, terrifying weight.

Across from him, the knight-priest dragged his shattered frame onto his knees, his broken rapier scraping against the stone as he glared through his shattered visor at the advancing beastman.

"Ah, now I understand why everyone kept calling him the Troll Kimg, to think that bastard erased his name from the entirety of the Hudeii Desert" the human grinned.

"Probably only Raksha knows, they are ruled by that man after all...." he added.

They were both on the brink of collapse, completely matched in their mutual destruction.

Yet the fire in their eyes promised that this true battle would only end when one of their souls was completely extinguished.

Meanwhile....

The catastrophic shockwaves from the subterranean abyss could no longer be contained by the earth.

Deep beneath Norona City, the unbridled clashing of Lord of the Sea and Lord of Cleave sent violent, continuous tremors ripping upward through the tectonic plates.

The entire city was constantly trembling, as if caught in the grip of a relentless, high-magnitude earthquake.

Massive fissures cracked open across the stone-paved streets, swallowing charging Orc sentries and panicking Goblins alike.

High-rise stone watchtowers groaned under the violent vibrations, their foundations snapping before they collapsed into thunderous heaps of debris.

The sky above the district remained fractured, a swirling vortex of pitch-black storm clouds discharging massive, jagged bolts of lightning that struck the city’s iron spires in rhythmic harmony with the underground explosions.

The upper sectors, once a proud bastion of the Troll King’s military might, were being systematically destabilized from the inside out.

A few kilometers away, standing atop the obsidian ramparts of the inner castle, the second human knight-priest stood perfectly still.

His hand rested on the pommel of his heavy greatsword, his visor turned sharply toward the collapsing industrial sector.

Through his advanced Martial Lord sensory array, he could clearly feel the violent, erratic spikes of his comrade’s mana.

"To think Aradin would unleash such vast amount of mana" the second knight-priest exhaled a deep sigh.

"Could he be facing a Martial Lord, an equal for that matter?" he questioned.

He felt the quadrupled power of the Lord of Cleave, but more alarmingly, he felt the suffocating, crushing weight of an opposing, high-tier primordial sea mana that was actively matching it.

"A beastman capable of pushing him to his absolute limits?" the second knight-priest muttered, his voice dropping into a cold, concerned register.

His heavy, white-gold plate armor flared with a dense, kinetic holy light.

"I should go check things out" he sighed, "Aradin isn’t permitted to die until Lord Damascus descends"

He bent his knees, his mana channels surging as he prepared to vault across the trembling rooftops.

Intent on breaking the stalemate and executing whoever was daring to stain the honor of the Church of Misfortune.

But just as his boots left the stone masonry—

OMMMMM—

The air directly in front of his path violently compressed, dropping the ambient temperature to a freezing stillness that contrasted sharply with the trembling city.

A blinding, immaculate white-gold light erupted from the darkness of the sky, forcing the knight-priest to abruptly abort his jump and skid backward across the ramparts.

"Who is that?" the second knight-priest’s heart skipped a beat.

"This presence....a Martial Lord!!"

From the heart of the brilliant light, a colossal, majestic silhouette materialized, completely blocking his path.

Lord Manuses descended from the heavens, his massive, pristine feather wings unfurling to their full extent, spanning across the width of the rampart.

The white-gold mane around his neck fluttered elegantly in the tempestuous wind, and his eyes, burning with a sharp, predatory brilliance, locked onto the armored human.

The sheer, overwhelming density of Manuses’s Martial Lord aura crashed down onto the castle walls, instantly counteracting the city’s tremors within a hundred-meter radius and pinning the air into absolute stasis.

"I’m sorry but I can’t allow you interfere with their battle" Lord Manuses smiled.

"Who the fuck are you?" the second knight-priest questioned, observing the beastman who stands before him.

"A servant of the God of Beast" Lord Manuses stepped forward, "Instesd of focusing on your comrade"

"Why don’t you worry about yourself...."

"The High Priest is busy with your comrade, I’ll be handling you starting now!"