I still remember the day that Telram gained the moniker of ‘the demon beast cultivator.’ Even now it is one of the names that he is most known by in places where he is disliked. However, despite the notoriety this event brought him Telram remembers this day fondly as it was one where he found an ally and friend that would follow him to the ends of Nerrus itself.

-Excerpt from the memoirs of Gerald Rence

Telram looked over his opponent carefully as he walked towards the centre of the arena. As he had suspected not only was Ryu’s cultivation level much, much higher than his own but so was the amount of mana that was strengthening Ryu’s body. Telram sighed internally as he confirmed that there was no way that he was going to be able to defeat this opponent. Nonetheless he wasn’t going to back down from the fight. It was just too good an opportunity to learn more about Divine Beasts and get some real-world experience fighting them.

As his gaze slowly wandered upwards to meet Ryu’s own Telram froze as he realised that the blue-haired man was watching him with an intensity that could almost be called predatory. In fact, the only reason Telram didn’t think that it was predatory was the wide smile on Ryu’s face.

When Telram came to a halt a couple of meters away Ryu stepped forwards before the referee could even open his mouth to ask them if they were ready to fight.

“Telram right?’ The Divine Beast asked as he approached. “I’ve seen a couple of your fights and I must say that you are very intriguing. You seem to use a Body Strengthening technique that makes your body more like that of a Beasts. You’re not as strong as strong as some of the other cultivators or as fast as others but you are close. And your martial arts skills seem to be even better.”

“What is your point?’ Telram interrupted before Ryu could continue which made the Divine Beast burst out laughing.

“I don’t really have one at this point,” he replied. “But if you can prove yourself to me then this trip won’t have been a complete waste.”

Telram raised an eyebrow at Ryu’s words but chose not to say anything as Ryu turned towards the referee who was watching them with an irritated look on his face.

“Well?” the Divine Beast asked with a feral looking grin on his face. “Can we begin.”

Seeing the look on his face the referee gulped nervously. Even though his own cultivation level was considerably higher than Ryu’s he knew that the chances of him being able to stop the Divine Beast if something went wrong were pretty low.

“Uh, very well then,” he stammered. “If both of you are ready?’

Telram nodded shortly as he raised both of his fists in preparation for the attack that he already knew was coming. Sure, enough as soon as the referee gave his permission Ryu unleashed an attack. As Telram was sent hurtling backwards from the powerful blast of water that Ryu had fired at him he cursed internally. He hadn’t been expecting an attack like that from Ryu who hadn’t used any real martial techniques on his opponents so far and had instead relied on his powerful physical body to defeat every opponent that he had fought so far.

But Ryu didn’t give him the chance to think about this further and followed up his surprise attack by moving so quickly that a normal person would almost be forgiven for thinking that he had just teleported and slamming both of his fists down onto Telram who only just managed to raise his guard in time to prevent his ribs from being completely shattered. As it was Telram felt some of the bones in his arms splinter under the impact and as he bounced off the floor of the arena, he saw Ryu swinging his fist directly towards the space his face was about to occupy.

Immediately Telram began to contort his body so that he could avoid being knocked out. But despite his best effort Ryu’s fist clipped the side of his head hard enough to send him flying through the air before crashing back to earth.

Ryu frowned slightly as he turned towards Telram who struggled slowly to his feet. He was a little bit disappointed with Telram so far, but he decided to give the young man a few seconds to recover from the blow to his head. It would eb a shame to end the fight before Telram had been able to show him what he was truly capable of after all.

Telram gritted his teeth as his vision swam in front of him. The last time he had been anywhere near this outclassed in a fight was when he managed to convince Diane to attack him at full strength. Even then he knew that she had been holding back even then and had just used her physical body to pound him into the ground. What was worse was that he knew that Ryu had just done the same thing just now when he had attacked him. If Ryu had been serious about defeating him then there was no way that he would’ve even be able to avoid taking that attack head on.

For some reason this caused Telram’s blood to start boiling and he decided that even if he couldn’t defeat Ryu there was no way that he was going to let this fight be over as quickly as Ryu’s previous ones.

Even the excited roars of the crowd faded as Telram glared daggers at his opponent who was watching him with a half amused, half irritated look on his face. Gathering his Mana Telram charged towards Ryu who stood there nonchalantly as he approached.

Seeing this Telram’s vision turned red as he activated a martial technique that he hadn’t used so far in the tournament.

Ryu’s eyes finally widened as what looked like claws made of grey mana suddenly sprouted from the tips of Telram’s fingers and the young man shot forwards with the now familiar cracking sound that accompanied the use of his movement technique.

Telram swung his Mana Claws at Ryu’s chest as his opponent stepped backwards but despite Ryu’s fast reactions the tips of his claws still raked across his opponent’s chest tearing his clothes and drawing lines of blood.

The feral grin returned to Ryu’s face as he danced away from Telram’s sudden and vicious assault. This was the first time that he had actually been wounded in the whole tournament. Yes, it had been a lucky blow but the idea that there was in fact a human cultivator of similar age to him that could actually wound him in a fight at all made Ryu incredibly happy.

Ryu’s interest in human cultivators stemmed from a desire for power. While both Sage Beasts like his parents and Divine Beasts like him could learn martial arts and techniques like human cultivators could they still mostly relied upon their physical capabilities and the inherent abilities that they had as Mana Beasts. As such Ryu only knew one martial art similar to the one that Telram was using now that allowed him to create claws made up of his Water Affinity Mana and a Martial Technique that created scales made of water that dramatically increased his defensive capabilities in human form.

In fact, he was using the latter technique right now which allowed him to deflect Telram’s attacks without being injured by the razor-sharp claws of energy. Even with the technique active he knew that if he took Telram’s attacks head on it would result in further injuries what was even more impressive was that he had to continuously use more mana to repair the damage done to the scales.

He was actually still faster than Telram in his human for so he could actually just avoid the attacks and start a counterattack but he chose to let Telram keep attacking him for now so that he could see what else the young man could do.

As his sudden flash of anger faded Telram started to think again and added powerful kicks to his attacks that were enhanced by shockwaves of mana which made it much harder for Ryu to defend himself and eventually the Divine Beast decided that it was time for him to step things up and conjured a wave of water that knocked Telram backwards.

As Telram landed he noticed that Ryu had fired several projectiles at him and quickly activated his Dissonance technique causing grey mist to shoot out from his body. However, this did little to slow the projectiles done and despite a slightly belated attempt to dodge them one of the projectiles struck Telram in the shoulder with enough force to tear a hole in his shoulder.

Telram hissed angrily as he held a hand up to his wounded shoulder and reinforced his Dissonance technique with his bestial spiritual energy just in time for the suddenly reddish mist to devour some of the projectiles that made up a second salvo of attacks. Having predicted that Ryu was going to fire a second salvo of attacks Telram was prepared for this and fired several small projectiles of his own that intercepted the attacks with impressive accuracy as he activated his movement technique once again. He hoped that Ryu’s vision would be at least partially impaired by his Dissonance technique but as he leapt the side, he found out that this assumption was incorrect and barely managed to get his guard up in time to block a hook from Ryu that would’ve killed him if he was a normal person. As it was, he was sent flying backwards again.

Ryu was now quite pleased with Telram right now. He knew that he had a massive advantage over a human cultivator simply because of how powerful his physical body was even in human form, but he actually thought that he might lose to Telram if he didn’t use his martial techniques or inherent abilities as a that he had as a Divine Beast. However, he had come to the conclusion that Telram might actually be able to defeat him if his cultivation level was the same as Ryu’s was. At least if Ryu remained in his human form.

Ryu was the offspring of two Flood Dragons that had reached the Sage Beast level of cultivation. Flood Dragons were among the most physically powerful of all Mana Beasts and their scales were strong enough to protect them from all but the strongest of attacks. They were tough enough that they could even withstand attacks from a cultivator at the same cultivation level that they were at who had a decent quality weapon and a decent martial art for that weapon. Their speed was fairly average for Mana Beasts, but Ryu had focussed on increasing the speed of his human form which was why he was so much faster than the human cultivators that he was fighting. Flood Dragons also had the ability to conjure and manipulate water which was how Ryu could create the projectiles and waves that he had used earlier. These abilities technically weren’t refined enough to be called martial techniques, but they worked well enough against most opponents.

Telram’s abilities really were intriguing and Ryu started wondering what the limits of the interesting body strengthening technique that he used might be. Shrugging to himself Ryu decided that finding out might well be worth it.

“Hold a moment,” Ryu said as he noticed Telram starting to recover from his attack. “Before we continue this fight, I wish to show you something.”

“What do you mean?” Telram asked warily as he raised his guard just in case this was some sort of trick.

“I mean that your Body Strengthening Technique is really interesting to me,” Ryu replied. “Like I mentioned earlier it seems to make your body more like that of a beast. Or more specifically like that of a Divine Beast in their human form.”

Telram nodded slowly in agreement but still didn’t let his guard down. He had noticed the similarity between them earlier, but he hadn’t really thought too much about it.

“So, I was wondering how far you can take it,” Ryu continued oblivious to the angry calls of the audience. “If you hold off on attacking me for a bit, I will transform into my Beastman Form.”

“And then what?’ Telram asked as his interest suddenly peaked. He had never seen a Divine Beast’s Beastman Form before, and he really wanted to know where Ryu was going with this train of thought.

“Well that’s up to you,” Ryu replied with a disappointed shrug. “I was kind of hoping that you would learn something if you saw me transform. But if you don’t think that you can just forget about it.”

“Alright,” Telram said after a second or two. “But if I can’t learn anything from it will you change back, or will I have to fight you in your Beastman Form?”

“You wouldn’t last a second against me in my Beastman Form as you are now,” Ryu replied. “If you don’t learn anything I will change back immediately.”

“Well then I have no reason to disagree,” Telram said cutting over the referee who was about to intervene. Ryu noticed this and shot a glare at the referee who nervously shut his mouth.

“Excellent,” the Divine Beast said. “Then watch carefully.”

Telram relaxed his guard slightly as Ryu closed his eyes and started concentrating. Telram had been constantly using his spiritual vision technique since the start of his fight and started cursing loudly as Ryu suddenly glowed brightly. Shading his eyes slightly Telram continued to watch as Ryu’s form changed. The two small horns on the top of Ryu’s head lengthened and then started branching out like the antlers of a deer as scales slowly grew over his body.

However, the changes that were occurring on a spiritual level were even more interesting than what was happening to Ryu’s body. Telram could see a serpentine dragon with blue scales and long golden antlers was slowly wrapping its body around Ryu which seemed to be the thing that was fuelling his transformation. Telram assumed that this was some sort of spiritual representation of Ryu’s bestial form, but he didn’t really know how any of this was going to help him.

Then it hit him, he might not have a natural beast form of his own, but he did have a beast that was connected to his soul. A plan started to form in his head that relied upon using his connection with Jai to make up for his lack of a Beast Form of his own. However if it did work (which still seemed pretty unlikely to him at this point but it wasn’t like he had anything to lose by trying) it would definitely require Jai’s cooperation and right now he could barely even sense his partner right now.

As Ryu’s transformation came to an end the Dragon-man opened his eyes to see Telram had closed his own and cocked his head to one side as he watched interestedly. Like he had promised to earlier he decided to wait and see what it was that Telram was trying to do.

The crowd which had been growing restless was now watching the pair in confusion as they wondered what was going on. Only some of them had understood what Ryu had been doing but they were very confused as to why he was doing it since he was obviously more powerful than Telram. Of course, they were also confused as to why Telram was letting him transform when he was already as outclassed as he was.

The referee was also confused by what was going on, but he was even more worried than he was confused. He would’ve had difficulty stopping Ryu on time if something went wrong while he was still in his human form, but a Divine Beast in their Beastman Form had the strengths of both their beast form and human form which meant that there was no way that he could stop Ryu if something went wrong now.

Meanwhile Telram was completely unaware of anything that was going on around him since he was currently pumping as much of his mana and soul energy into his connection with Jai as he possibly could. As he did this, he felt the connection slowly grow stronger and a couple of seconds later he realised that Jai was doing the same thing on his end.

“Hello brother,” Telram said through their connection as soon as it was strong enough for them to speak. “I have a request if you are willing to listen.”

“Of course, brother,” Jai replied in his strangely boyish mental voice. “I was wondering why you were contacting me.”

“Alright I was fighting a Divine Beast and…”

“You were what!?” Jai interrupted with a mental scream that almost made Telram lose the connection completely. “What do you mean that you fought a Divine Beast!? Are you alright!?”

“Yes, I’m fine I was just taking part in a tournament and there’s a Divine Beast taking part,” Telram replied. “Anyway, he showed me what happens when he transforms into his Beastman Form and I was thinking that we could attempt to do something similar.”

“Uh, why did he show you his transformation?’ Jai asked in confusion. “Wait, are you fighting him right now?”

“Yes, but I don’t think that he’s going to attack me right now,” Telram told his obviously worried friend. “He seems to be more interested in what I can do than actually winning the fight. Even though he’s going to win even if we manage to work something out.”

“Yeah, no shit,” the tiger sighed. “Alright how can I help.”

“I’m not sure but we can start by strengthening our connection even further and see where that takes us,” Telram replied and they both started pumping large amounts of mana and soul energy into their connection once more. So much mana and soul energy that Telram knew that if they actually did manage to do something with this then they wouldn’t be able to do it for long.

About a minute later they reached a point where both of them could read the others surface thoughts like they had been able to when they had fist created their soul contract. Both of them took a moment to appreciate the nostalgic feeling.

“Alright,” Telram said. “I don’t think that we can afford to strengthen our connection any further. My mana reserves are starting to get pretty low.”

“So, what else can we try?” Jai asked.

“I honestly don’t know, what do you think?”

“I do actually have an idea.”

“Oh?”

Jai explained the idea that he had. It involved the sensation that both of them were experiencing where they could somewhat sense the surface thoughts of the other. Jai’s theory suggested that if they focussed on a common goal, they might be able to make some sort of feedback loop (not the term that he used) that caused some sort of effect. The only remaining question was, what was the common goal that they were going to be focussing on?

“Well since we’re basing this off of Ryu’s transformation let’s try the same thing,” Telram suggested.

“You want to try and become a Beastman yourself?” Jai asked.

“Well, do you have a better idea?”

“Not really,” the tiger replied with a telepathic sigh. “Alright let’s try it.”

By now the crowd was well and truly fed up with things. They had paid good money to see this fight and now they were just watching Ryu stare at Telram who had the audacity to close his eyes in the middle of a fight.

Ryu ignored the boos and catcalls coming from the crowd. He was a Divine Beast why should he care about what humans who didn’t even have the guts to challenge him thought. He was far more interested in what Telram was going to come up with.

Then Telram suddenly tilted his head back and roared and started glowing with a strange red light as his hair started growing out even further and the red streaks that had previously been hidden by the dye that he had used started to show through.

Heat ran through Telram’s body as he felt more changes beginning to take place. His bones and muscles were further enhanced by the transformation, his teeth grew longer and sharper and claws sprouted from the tips of his fingers. None of these changes actually seemed to hurt but with each one Telram felt both his mana and soul energy drain away faster and faster.

For a while there he had been sure that what they were trying wasn’t going to work. Something was happening but it felt off, almost like there had been something missing from the equation. Then Telram realised what it was. He had been using his normal soul energy to power the improved connection between him and Jai but what he needed to use was the bestial soul energy that he had been cultivating. As he had suspected this had been the final piece of the puzzle that had allowed him to take on a Beastman form of his own.

When Telram opened his eyes, he was greeted by the sight of Ryu who was laughing ecstatically at Telram’s transformation.

Ryu hadn’t actually been expecting that Telram was going to be able to pull anything anywhere near this impressive. But he somehow had. Ryu knew that Telram wasn’t going to be able to use this new ability for more than about thirty to forty seconds.

“Well then,” Telram growled through his now much larger teeth. “Shall we continue our fight?”

“But of course!” Ryu laughed while the crowd watched on in shocked awe. “I know that form is using a lot of mana. So, let’s not waste any more time!”

The two now monstrous looking young men then immediately charged towards each other once again much to the relief of the crowd who were mostly still confused as to what was going on.

Now that they were both in their Beastman Forms they were both much faster and stronger than they were normally. And as the fight progressed it became clear that Telram’s inexperience using this form was costing him as he completely missed a large number of his attacks which were all basically punches and kicks since he didn’t have any spare mana to use on any of his techniques.

However, this fight came to a conclusion far too fast for anyone’s liking as Telram suddenly ran out of mana and collapsed into the arms of Ryu.

“Well done Telram,” the Divine Beast chuckled as he changed back to his normal human form. “You finally managed to surpass my expectations.”