Divine Beasts are the offspring of either two Sage-ranked Mana Beasts or a Sage-ranked Mana Beast and a human. Like Sage-ranked Mana Beasts they have the ability to take on a humanoid form and are just as intelligent as a human from birth which allows them to learn martial techniques as well as the ability to control Mana Beasts that are weaker than they are making them more dangerous than either normal Mana Beasts or human cultivators. While fully grown Divine Beasts are considered to be incredibly powerful like every other being on Nerrus they have to work for that power.

-Excerpt from Telram’s notes on Divine Beasts.

The next morning when the students arrived at the meeting place, they were surprised to see that Telram wasn’t wearing the grey robes that he usually wore but something that looked much more practical.

The outfit that he was wearing today was grey Gi, similar to the ones that martial artists on Earth wore. According to his mother, it had been fairly simple to modify existing clothes to make this new outfit. So simple in fact that there several more back at Telram’s house. One for each of the students and teachers. However, Telram had decided to hand them out after they returned from visiting Urlan since it would be pretty strange for all of them to be wearing the same clothes.

The Gi was actually pretty comfortable to wear, the wide sleeves and trouser legs didn’t inhibit movement at all unlike his robes which had gotten in the way on occasion which had often ended with them getting ripped. There was even a spot where there was going to be an emblem embroidered on when they got back from Urlan.

“Morning teach!” Tim laughed as he approached. “Going for a new look?”

Telram smiled at his most boisterous student. He did look rather different today and not just because of the new clothes, he had also tied his hair back and died the red parts of his hair black which made him look much more refined than the way he normally looked. Normally his mane of red and black hair made him look very intimidating but now he just looked like a fairly normal if large young man.

This was of course by design; it wasn’t exactly unusual for places like Urlan Town to receive visits from Sage-ranked Mana Beasts or Divine Beasts in human form. But it would attract more attention than they could afford so Telram was going out of his way to make sure he wouldn’t be mistaken for one since Sage-Ranked Mana Beast or a Divine Beast since even in their human form they both had inhuman features like extra limbs or strangely coloured hair.

As one might expect neither Sage ranked Mana Beasts or Divine Beasts really cared what humans did to their weaker brethren and they often used towns like Urlan to buy weaker Mana Beasts that they kept as slaves or simply ate. On occasion there would be an issue, but these incidents were few and far between.

“Something like that,” Telram laughed as he turned towards one of the three carts that were being driven by the other teachers and Dale. “Alright get on the back of the cart we need to get moving if we want to be at Urlan by tomorrow.”

As soon as the students had climbed into the back of one of the three carts with Telram they headed out. Once the students had settled down Telram told them to start meditating.

“There’s not going to be a lot to see until we get closer to Urlan so we might as well use the time wisely,” Telram told them as he too sat down and prepared to meditate himself. They were going to have to travel through the night if they were going to

Gerry who was driving the cart that they were all in glanced over his shoulder with a smile on his face as he felt the atmosphere behind him change. As he had come to expect after witnessing similar sights over the past couple of weeks what looked like a tornado of Mana had appeared around Telram and the students as they meditated.

Usually when Telram cultivated on his own the Mana in the atmosphere would form into a swirling column above his head as his powerful soul gathered more Mana than a cultivator in the Human Realm could usually gather but when he cultivated alongside his students this small twister grew much larger as their own souls increased the amount of Mana being gathered. This new phenomenon was something that they had discovered a few weeks ago and increased the rate that all of them could cultivate thanks to Telram being able to control the rate that he absorbed the Mana that was gathered which meant that his students could absorb much more than they could normally.

The students only stopped meditating to sleep when night fell and, in the morning, they started meditating once more as soon as they had finished eating. By the time Gerry called out to them Telram had absorbed enough Mana that he was almost three quarters of the way to filling his Mana Core. Opening his eyes, he turned to see what his master was trying to tell him about and when he saw it a conflicted expression crossed his face.

In the distance he could see the rust coloured walls that surrounded Urlan town. The walls were extremely high so that Mana Beasts would have a more difficult time getting into the city. Telram also knew that there would be a large number of cultivators on top of them at all times who could use some form of range attack. But it wasn’t this that was upsetting him, it was the colour of the walls. Urlan’s walls were made of the same stone that Palamar’s walls were made out of but instead of being grey they were rust coloured. This was because the blood of slaughtered Mana Beasts had been thrown over the edge every day ever since the walls were completed to warn Mana Beasts that attacking the well-defended town would be a bad idea.

Normally the amount of blood needed to dye walls as big as the ones surrounding Urlan would attract vermin and spread disease but the blood they used had been alchemically treated so that it wouldn’t do either of these things. Thankfully whatever this treatment was it also completely removed the smell otherwise living in Urlan would be all but impossible due to the stench of rotting blood.

There were plenty of other groups looking to enter Urlan in search of the Beasts or their organs that were sold within the walls of the town. But their group was unlike all of the others, the other groups had multiple cultivators who were serving as guards and much larger and more ornate carts being pulled by more powerful Mana Beasts than the One-eyed Aurochs that were pulling the three carts that they were using. However, unlike the others their group had puppets instead of human guards and it was this fact alone that drew attention their little group but this interest was soon lost when they saw how badly damage the carts were and the fact that there were people riding in the back instead of in an ornate carriage or on the back of a Mana Beast like they were. Instead they assumed that Telram’s group had found the puppets in one of the many ruins that dotted the landscape and decided that they weren’t worthy of their attention.

Little did they know that Telram felt the same way about them. Most of the cultivators that had been hired to act as guards for the rich people in the carriages had a lower cultivation level than Gerry and the others and were on a similar level to Cameron. However, Telram could tell by looking at them that they had used pills and other aids to increase their cultivation levels which meant that it was likely that Cameron would be able to hold his own at the very least. In fact, Telram was pretty sure that he could hold his own against any of the the weaker cultivators despite all of them being in the Ascendant Realm.

By the time they got to the front of the queue Telram and the others were well and truly tired of the condescending looks that they were getting from the other travellers trying to enter the city. The cultivators that were guarding the gates waved them through without even giving them a second glance when Gerry explained that they were visiting Urlan to sell some goods.

Once inside the city they were able to breath clearly again thanks to the barrier that kept the smell of the blood coating the walls from entering the city and removed their impromptu masks with a sigh of relief.

Now that they could breathe again the students looked around the strange new town excitedly, but their excitement soon changed to horror as they saw the conditions that the various Mana beasts that they could see were forced to live in. But their horror paled in comparison to the rage that Telram was feeling as he saw a massive Amber Bear that was in such a small cage that it couldn’t even stand up in and was forced to lie in its own waste as it looked out at the world through eyes that looked more like they belonged on a dead animal instead of one that was still alive. Looking around he could see that most of the other Mana Beasts in the area had similar living conditions.

Telram had been an animal lover long before he had come to this world and the sight before him filled his mind with the desire to beat those who treated these magnificent and intelligent creatures so poorly till within an inch of their lives. But he knew that was impossible, people who were capable of capturing Mana Beasts without killing them were opponents that would be impossible for him to defeat even if they decided to come at him one at a time.

Even if he could defeat the cultivators that had captured the Beasts, he would have to be a fool to release them. Mana Beasts might be more intelligent than normal animals but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t try and kill him as soon as he unlocked the door to their cages.

Gritting his teeth briefly he turned away from the gut-wrenching sight in front of him and turned towards his students who looked at him with slightly pale faces that told him that their stomachs were churning as much as his was.

“Right then everyone,” Telram said in as calm a voice as he could muster. “Remember to stay close to Fergus and the others when you go looking for the Mana Beast that you want.”

With silent nods they headed off down the street towards the market area. They would travel in a group for now but when they spotted what they were looking for they would split up into groups of two. Each pair would consist of one student and one of the Ascendant Realm cultivators that they had brought along with them for extra safety. Telram had been against the idea of splitting up at all but Dale who had visited Urlan town multiple times before to pick up new materials to use in his forge had warned him that Urlan was too big for them to find what they were looking for before everything closed if they stayed together. This was the other part of the reason that Telram had asked Dale to come along with them. Not only did he know the area, but he was also an Ascendant Realm cultivator which should in theory make people more likely to respect him. Soon enough Telram and Gerry were left standing alone in the middle of the marketplace while the others headed off in different directions.

Once they were alone Gerry tapped his apprentice on the shoulder sending a small thread of his soul energy into him that allowed them to communicate without talking.

“You want to destroy this place, don’t you?” Gerry asked. “Is it because of the way that they’re treating the Beasts?”

“Yeah,” Telram replied with a mental sigh. “I know that I’m being naive. Mana Beasts kill people every day and I can only imagine the havoc even these starving ones would unleash if they got out of their cages. Still I can’t help but think that it would’ve been kinder to just kill them than keep them alive in the state that they are in right now.”

“Perhaps but there’s nothing we can do about that right now,” Gerry told his student who nodded silently in reply. “Right, let’s head back to the carts and set up.”

“Yeah,” Telram replied and the two made their way back to where they had left the carts and the puppets that they were here to sell.

It wasn’t long after they set up the stall that they started to get interest from some of the cultivators who walked past. High quality puppets like the ones that Gerry had made were difficult to come across and could be used for anything ranging from training partners to servants and as such they usually cost a significant amount to acquire. However, they had decided to sell them at almost half the price that they would normally be worth. Part of the reason that they were doing this was so that they could sell them as quickly as possible since they wanted to start heading back right away but the other reason was so that people continued to underestimate them since most of the people who had seen them assumed that they had found the puppets in some ruins.

Acting like this would normally be dangerous except for the facts that the Urlan guards were well paid to make sure that no one bothered the merchants who had come to sell their goods and that they had a number of armed puppets that were obviously standing guard over them. Even the more powerful cultivators who were visiting Urlan would balk at the idea of having to fight first the puppets and then the powerful guards who wouldn’t hesitate to kill them for disrupting the peace.

In fact, not only were they asking for far less what the puppets were worth they often asked to be paid in Beast Cores which surprised most of the people who were interested in buying the puppets. Unfortunately, Gerry had used up almost all of the Beast Cores that they had when he had made these puppets and without more Cores, he couldn’t make any more puppets or other things that required Cores to function. The hunters back in Yulis were usually happy to give him the Cores of the Beasts that they hunted but that still meant that he was only getting three or four a day if he was lucky.

Most of the buyers agreed to exchange the puppets for Cores but that didn’t mean that they didn’t receive a large amount of con as well. Even one of the puppets was worth 3 spirit coins normally which was almost half what Gerry had paid for Jai when he had bought him from the hunters who had caught him, but they were selling them for half that. Naturally there were a few people who had tried to claim that the puppets were low quality and weren’t even worth what Gerry and Telram were asking but their claims were quickly proven false by a passing Inscriber who had noticed their stall.

The Inscriber had been a surprisingly cheerful old man who had been very impressed with the work that Gerry had done and had even bought a couple of the puppets for himself. One for studying and one to give the lord who controlled Urlan as a gift which had shut the people who had been trying to claim that the puppets were inferior goods. An Inscriber buying the items that another Inscriber had created was nothing unusual in fact it was encouraged in most cases. What was unusual was that same Inscriber also buying an example of someone else’s work for someone as important as the lord who controlled Urlan.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Telram said as he took a sack of Beast Cres from a well-dressed young woman who had brought two puppets for her family.

“How old are you boy?” she asked as her gaze roved over his body. This was one problem that he did have with his new outfit; it made it much more obvious how muscular he was. Gerry hid a smile as Telram shifted uncomfortably. This was the third woman that had approached him like this since they had set up shot and it was incredibly amusing to see his normally unflappable apprentice looking as uncomfortable as he did right now.

“I’m fifteen, nearly sixteen,” Telram replied carefully making the woman’s eyes widen in surprise before narrowing once more. Like the other women before her she hadn’t been expecting Telram to be as young as he was but now that she did, she was even more interested in him. Cultivators who failed to reach the Ascendant Realm by the time they turned twenty were considered to have a low level of talent but hearing that he was still only fifteen she was forced to re-evaluate him.

“Not only handsome but a decent talent,” she mused. “Nothing special perhaps but something tells me that you’re more powerful than you appear.”

Just as Telram was about to reply he noticed movement out of the corner of his eye and turned around just in time to catch an extremely excited Iris.

“Telram, I didn’t think that I could find one, but I was wrong!” The small girl told him excitedly while Diane who had been accompanying her watched on in amusement. “Come with me, we’ve got to get her!”

As she said this, she pulled on his sleeve trying to get him to follow her.

“Hey Gerry, can you hold down the fort?” Telram asked the old man who was watching the pair with an amused expression on his face.

“Sure Telram,” Gerry laughed causing the woman who had been talking to Telram to glare at him angrily. “You go with Iris.”

“Excuse me I was talking to this young man!” She said loudly.

“I’m sorry ma’am,” Telram apologised coolly. “But it appears that I have to help my young friend with something.”

Giving her a little half bow he allowed himself to be dragged along by his student leaving her spluttering behind him.

“What was that all about?” Iris asked curiously once they were out of earshot making Diane chuckle.

“Don’t you mind that,” Telram replied quickly. “More importantly what is this all about?”

“It’s a surprise!”