NOVEL NEXT Chapter 2: The Beast continent
[Ikrus]
Somewhere deep within the continent of beasts. This continent lacks powerful empires and other large scale organizations, instead being inhabited by many different nomadic tribes of beastmen as well as a large variety of beasts. Contrary to the believe of most outsiders, the wild beasts reign here with their humanoid descendants being relegated to prey on a regular basis, as they lack the beasts powerful bodies. Even their advantage in intelligence is short lived, as the beasts that reach a certain level of power develop intellect similar to humanoids. Their only advantage was the same that all humanoids relyed on against beasts, their higher numbers. But on this continent that favored the emergence of powerful beasts, this only served to increase the number of prey that these have.
One of these tribes is the White Fang Clan, a group of nearly a thousand Wolf-kin. After being forces to leave their last village due to the arrival of a Basilisk, they were wandering towards the sea. Ever since the discovery of the other three continents, tribes would try to reach them if their situation turned for the worse.
While two of the continents were already occupied, with human empires and kingdoms ruling on the first and both elves and dwarfs sharing the other, the third continent was currently contested between all of those races. There the beastmen had created their first permanent city. This difference in their way of living quickly lead to a split between the beastmen on the two continents, with those that remained viewing those that left for the new continent as weaklings that have to rely on kingdoms similar to those of humans to survive.
While sharing that sentiment, now that most of their warriors died at the basilisks gaze, it was the tribes only chance to survive. Thus they started their journey south in the hopes of reaching the seas before their last warriors died and they became easy picking for even weak beasts.
Elstan, their most powerful warrior and current leader, became increasingly wary these last few day. Two months ago they started this journey and he quickly grew accustomed to the frequent raids. But since three days ago they found nothing, with the woods they were currently traversing being empty of all forms of life. Even the scouts he sent out yesterday found nothing. But this silence was what lead to his current worries, as he feared the presence of a beast dangerous enough to scare the rest away.
Just as he decided to go through the few records of their knowledge they hold, to maybe find what kind of beast can create such a disturbance, he was informed that one of the scouts he sent out earlier that day returned to their camp. Leaving his tent, he walked towards the scout.
“Chief we believe that we have found the reason for the lack of beasts.” he said.
“How many of the man were lost?” the Elstans asked, his mood turning sour. He already believed them lucky that there were any survivors.
“Non chief, after all it would have been quite shameful if we lost that fight.” The warrior continued. This statement confused Elstans and aroused his curiosity.
“What kind of beast can scare everything in the area, but loose against us?” He asked. He was well aware that Beastmen would loose nearly always when fighting against a beast of the same order in a direct fight with the same numbers.
“It's best if you see for yourself.” With these words the warrior left the tent with Elstan following close behind.
When the were already over four kilometers away from the camp, Elstans senses warned him to run away. While a beastmens senses were inferior to those of a true magic beast, they were still superior to nearly all humanoids. When he started feeling the aura he quickly realized, why the beasts chose to flee the area, but he continued on after seeing the warrior leading him doing so too.
After half a kilometer more, they reached a clearing with many of the warriors he sent out as scouts this morning standing there. At first he was irritated by their fearful looks towards the clearings center, until he followed the path of their eyes, just to find an egg lying there. This half a meter high, pure black egg radiated such a power that few wouldn't find themselves at awe.
“An egg? All of these beast flee from an egg?” he shouts in disbelief, not even daring to imagine what kind of beast would cause this as an egg.
“We too couldn't believe it at first, but we found nothing else in the area.” one of his tribesmen said after his outburst.
“Initially we wanted to destroy it directly after finding it, but Boris here and a few other said that we could use it to keep the beast away. After debating going back and fourth we decided to let you make this decision.” the warrior who had called him her explained the situation to Elstan.
“We weren't so sure whether the protection from beast is worth the risk of what will happen once it hatches.” the tribesmen, Boris, explained.
“Yes, most powerful beast that would leave their young ones unprotected like this either have innate wisdom, innate knowlege or no sense of kinship. When it hatches, the first two cases may mean to become its slaves, while the latter would mean near certain death.” Elstan thought out loud.
After those words he started walking closer to the egg. While some of those present looked at him as if he were mad, he ignored it and calmly inspected the egg. While he looked for both clues to its identity and how long it would take to hatch, he found splinters of teeth around the egg. He quickly called for some of his men to go to the camp and call one of their best trackers in the hopes that they would have an idea.
After a while, the men who went back returned with two of the trackers. While the exhaustion was written on their faces, from being in the firs scouting group and having to travel a with the rest of them, they still walked towards him. Luckily the continent was currently at the height of summer, so the sun was still quite high.
“Impossible!” one of the two shouted mere seconds after reaching the egg, prompting Elstan to turn back to them in shock.
“What?” he half questioned, believing something big to have happened.
“This looks like the tooth of a peak second or even early third rank Flamewolf, but if that is true...” while he didn't complete his sentence all of the understood the implications and had a similar look of fear on their faces, while watching the egg.
While Flamewolfs were by no means a rare or especially powerfull beast, just a wolf luck enough to have a high affinity for flames that managed to become a mana beast, or the descendant of one such wolf. But the second rank was still something none of them could fight. Elstan was still only a third-order aura apprentice, equivalent to a peak first rank beast. The beasts stronger body and abilities similiar to magic make it so that he would rarely win against such a beast. With a first rank beast already posing a great danger, a second rank beast is something they could not hope to even wound critically in its sleep.
Against humanoids, jumping stages is far easier than against beast, with one lucky hit from even an average warrior or magician being able to wound those one, sometimes even two orders above them. Against beasts on the contrary, fighting even one order above ones strength requires a supreme genius, that is using a great technique to train. After all, it is hard enough to kill one in the same stage. If a beast wants to achieve this, it has to be of a superior species, otherwise it has practically no chance.
“It seems that my decision was made easier. If we can't destroy it we should take it with us, otherwise it will probably follow our scent from here if it hatches before we reach far enough that there are beasts closer than we are. This way we profit from its presence and if it is a beast with innate wisdom, it may spare us out of kindness.” Elstan declared after digesting the news, leaving no room for discussion.
“Two of you will return and go warn the others of the sense of danger it excludes, while the rest will help me transport the egg.” he quickly continued.
[three months later]
The last three months of their travel south were nearly perfect for the White Fang Clan. After they grew accustomed to the eggs aura, its only downside was, that they had no way to hunt fresh meat and thus were forced to eat only plants and similar. While they would not starve, their wolf ancestry meant, that they would prefer the taste of meat. Most would periodically envy those tribes that descendent from herbivore mana beast.
During this time they would all try their luck with identifying the egg, but to no avail. By now there were even some who placed bets on what kind of beast it was, with most believing it to be some kind of bird. The trackers on the other hand, insisted it was reptilian. These debates helped the
tribesmen to lift their spirit, but Elstan still remained fearful of the day it would hatch.
Thus he was quite happy about the progress they made in the two days since arriving on the coast. Due to living in an area, where the largest bodies of water were lakes just a few hundred meters across, they knew only the basics of ship building. Their current progress was quite good for this circumstance and he estimated the ship to take about three weeks longer to be completed. While he had these thoughts, he heard the shout of one of his tribesmen
“The egg is hatching!”
Hurrying to grab his best weapon, a sword belonging to their previous chief, he rushed out of his tent. While he had little hopes for it to make a difference, it calmed him to not be unarmed.
When he arrived at the egg he saw that there were already quite a few warriors standing around it, eying it warily. Joining them, Elstan calmed his nerves and prayed for his tribe to survive this encounter.
{Darganth}
Hatching was not an experience I expected to go through again, but here I am. After finding a suitable world, I decided to use my control of time, to revert myself back to being an egg. While this reduced my power at the moment of my rebirth, it will speed up my recovery. A young dragon initially grows quickly and without effort, so the temporary reduction in my physical capabilities is worth the sped up recovery of my magical ones. Together with the passive power growth of my recovered state it will reduce the time needed for me to once again reach a decent level of power.
Now that I think about it in detail I wonder whether my power grew even during my death. My power grew both times I did die previously, but my Soul was shattered this time, leading to my death lasting longer than a few days.
Well, those are thoughts for the future, now I need to focus on my upcoming rebirth. During the few days my Soul is now in this new Body, I have learned that some tribe used the aura of Dragon Fear by body excluded permanently to ward of powerful beats so if I doubt they are either exetremely powerful nor do they hold an aversion to me. While my Dragon Fear is currently far more powerful than it will be after my birth, as it holds remnants of my old power that are going to fade away with time, it merely reaches that of a third rank. Even if they have a peak second rank, I am quiet sure that I could at least escape.
With these thoughts I punched through the eggs shell and basked in sunlight for the first time, after spending months in the Void, waiting for this body to grow powerful enough to hold my soul.