Chapter 34: Church of Varanus [1]
The moment Roy’s smooth voice cut through the suffocating silence, Lord Manuses froze.
He slowly lifted his heavy, scarred face from the stone floor, his tear-streaked amber eyes widening as they reflected the dual-colored golden-crimson light radiating from the human hide before him.
"Y..ye..."
Roy didn’t wait for the Warlord to speak.
With a casual, elegant tilt of his wrist, a transparent cyan panel flickered into existence right before his eyes, invisible to the kneeling tiger-man.
[Ding!]
The status window shimmered.
[Target: Manuses Ryodor]
[Faith Status: Dedicated]
[Divine Domain: Ruler of Beasts resonates with the follower]
[Would you like to deploy a divine blessing?]
[Yes] [No]
A lopsided, predatory grin spread across Roy’s lips. He didn’t hesitate, mentally clicking the [Yes] icon.
[Deploying Divine Blessing: Sacred Awakening (Level 2 Upgrade Function)]
[Consuming 30 Faith Points]
[Current Balance: 5,348 FP]
[Target: Tiger Lord Manuses - Bloodline Restructuring Initiated]
[Synchronizing Beastification Genetics: Holy Griffin]
Roy had already made his decision beforehand. The only empty slot now was the Unholy Phoenix.
"The Father of Beasts has heard your weeping, Manuses," Roy murmured, his voice suddenly echoing with a terrifying, layered resonance that didn’t belong to a mortal. "You have bared your claws against the western parasites. Now, receive the reward of the Feral Domain."
Boom!
The bedrock beneath the Volcanic Palace didn’t just shake—it groaned as a blinding, localized pillar of pure, solar-gold divine light cascaded directly through the solid obsidian ceiling.
The divine energy bypassed the fortress’s physical structures entirely, slamming straight into the kneeling body of the Tiger Lord.
Manuses let out a choked, sky-rending roar as his entire system violently imploded.
Inside his dantian, his three existing Martial General mana cores began to spin at a suicidal, screeching velocity.
The friction was so intense that the liquid gold mana within his bloodstream literally began to boil, vaporizing the caked ash and dried Orc blood off his flesh in a sudden blast of high-pressure steam.
Then came the definitive, world-shaking chime of absolute evolution.
Clang!
A magnificent, iridescent fourth mana core snapped into existence at the absolute center of his spiritual sea.
The three spinning elemental cores instantly stopped, magnetically locking into a perfect, pressurized diamond matrix around the new core, anchoring his consciousness directly into his soul.
He had broken the century-long bottleneck. He had stepped out of the lowest-stage realms.
[Bloodline Mutation Success]
[Sun Tiger Beastman -> Holy Solar Griffin-kin]
[Subject has awakened their fourth mana core]
[Subject Active Skill has evolved]
[Active Skill: Beserker -> Lord of Wrath]
[Evolution Phase has begun]
[Enlightment Status: Initial Stage]
[Cultivator Status: Martial Lord]
The birth of the fourth core triggered a violent, agonizing rewrite of his physical biology as the divine data of the Holy Griffin forcefully synchronized with his apex feline genetics.
"Arghhh!" Manuses screamed to the heavens, his massive hands slamming into the obsidian floor, leaving deep, five-pronged gouges in the stone as his bone density instantly tripled.
His hunched spine straightened with a series of sharp, explosive cracks.
The golden sun-spider silk coat around his shoulders violently tore to shreds as two massive, muscular skeletal ridges erupted from his shoulder blades.
Within seconds, a pair of towering, eagle-like wings burst outward, their feathers not made of normal plumage, but forged from a blinding, metallic-gold solar energy that cast away every shadow in the grand office.
The transformation didn’t stop at his back.
The fierce, tiger-like stripes running across his face and arms began to glow with a brilliant, white-gold holy luminescence.
His thick, heavy feline paws hardened, the skin fusing into razor-sharp, gilded talons capable of tearing through enchanted alloy plates like wet parchment.
His jawline sharpened, his majestic tiger mane thickening and shimmering with a divine, radiant luster that flowed down his chest like liquid light.
The suffocating, heavy atmospheric gravity of a true Martial Lord naturally rippled outward from his renewed frame, distorting the very space around his boots.
The exhausted, aging lines of a stressed warlord had completely melted away, replaced by the flawless, fierce visage of a mythical hybrid creature in its absolute prime.
A hybrid of the apex land predator and the divine sovereign of the skies.
A Holy Griffin Tiger-Man.
The blinding pillar of solar-gold light abruptly snapped out of existence, leaving the massive office in a stunned, breathless quiet.
Manuses stood at his full, towering height, his majestic golden wings slightly unfurled, humming with a low, sub-audible celestial vibration.
He looked down at his razor-sharp talons, then back at the four perfectly synchronized mana cores pulsing within his chest cavity, his entire body trembling in utter awe.
He didn’t hesitate for a single second.
The newly ascended Martial Lord dropped instantly to one knee, his heavy, gilded talons clanking sharply against the cracked stone.
He folded his massive solar wings over his chest in a posture of absolute, eternal submission, bowing his head flat right at Roy’s feet.
"A Martial Lord... My youth... my core..." the Griffin Tiger Lord choked out, hot tears of profound gratitude spilling from his crimson-tinted eagle eyes onto Roy’s boots.
"The covenant is real. My soul, my wings, and the entirety of Tempest City belong to your shadow, Apostle Jarden."
He slammed his fist against his chest armor, his deep, youthful roar echoing across the valley.
"Praise be to the All-Devouring Father!"
"Praise be to Lord Varanus!"
***
With the arrival of a new Martial Lord in Tempest City, the transformation of the canyon began.
The transformation of Tempest City from a soot-choked slave hub into the sanctified cradle of the Feral Domain was not an overnight miracle, but a systematic, bruising reconstruction.
Roy made use of the Sanctuary Recreator Elixir on Tempest City.
The physical evolution of Tempest City did not begin with picks, shovels, or the slow, grueling labor of the forge-masters.
It began with a single drop of divine liquid that violently overrode the laws of nature.
Hidden deep within the vaulted upper rafters of the Volcanic Palace, Roy watched a translucent cyan notification float before his eyes, pulsing in rhythm with the frantic chanting of the thousands of beastmen praying in the amphitheater below.
[Ding!]
The status window flickered before his eyes.
[Conversion Phase successful]
[1,500 Faith Points have been converted into 15 Beads of Creation Essence]
[1,500 Faith Points have been deducted from your balance]
Roy’s eyes shimmered, while Faith Points is the currency of the gods. Divine Essence acts as the divine force manifested and manipulated by these gods.
But the Creation Essence is a whole different story. It could only purchased from the Divine Market in beads.
Acting as the force that transforms a god’s ideas into reality.
The power of creation.
[10 Beads of Creation Essence has been consumed]
The conversion rate on the Divine Market was 100 Faith Points per bead of Creation Essence.
1 bead of Creation Essence was enough to create life from a God’s imagination.
Another bead to multiply those creation thousand folds.
But to modify those creations.
He needed to expend more beads.
Roy mentally swiped the screen away. The effect was cataclysmic, the elixir didn’t just filter into the earth.
It chemically and spiritually transmutated the very molecular structure of the volcanic valley.
Where there was once only jagged, worthless obsidian rock and sulfur-soaked dirt, the divine liquid surged through the subterranean veins like an accelerating terraforming agent.
The crude basalt and volcanic ash dissolved, restructuring on a fundamental atomic level into a brand-new, mythical mineral: Varanite
Within seconds, the rugged canyon walls shifted from dark, crumbling stone into flawless, towering monoliths of a pristine green-veined mineral that possessed the smooth, polished aesthetic of premium marble and the staggering tensile strength of modern Ultra-High-Performance Concrete.
Simultaneously, the dense, bubbling sulfur pools lining the eastern edges of the settlement began to boil with a blinding white light.
The toxic sludge didn’t evaporate; the elixir compressed the heavy volcanic chemicals, crystallizing them into dense, metallic deposits of Varanium—a highly volatile, kinetic-reactive mineral—and veins of magnetic Lodestone Silicate.
Roy gave them those names because they represent his divine presence as the God of Beasts.
The rare materials Roy needed to build a modern military empire hadn’t been hoarded or mined; they had been breathed into existence by the system’s absolute authority.
But the true, world-altering miracle of the Sanctuary Recreator Elixir did not stop at the canyon walls.
It bled directly into the surrounding wastes of the Hudeii Desert.
Covering hundreds of kilometers until he had totally ran out of beads of Creation Essence.
Life was created, both trees and animals.
For weeks, the landscape hummed with a different kind of labor.
The effects of the Creation Essence had transformed the outer landscape of Tempest City into a mighty forest.
The heavy iron slave pens of the lower rings were systematically torn down by the very beastmen who had bled within them.
The newly discovered rare Varanium were melted down in the eastern smelting pools, reforged into armories.
Varanites were molded into concrete blocks used in constructing the structural dome of the Grand Basilica of Varanus.
The first cathedral of the God of Beast, Lord Varanus was being built.
Saint Jarden Cathedral!
