It wasn’t that he believed beast’s were better than humanity. From the books he’d read in the library, there were easily dozens of humans that had broken the limits of their bodies. They had been struck by heavenly lightning, the divine tribulation. Many of them had failed, but those in the history books were the great successes. They withstood the divine tribulation and ascended past the limits of their human bodies. The legends said they became divinities of their own and ascended into heaven, but Sage knew those were merely legends. The first hand accounts of those saints were not things left behind in normal libraries or for any normal person to have access to. He knew things were far more complicated than that.

No, what he was betting on was a more powerful bloodline. The so called ‘Divine Beasts’ were creatures that were assured to face a divine tribulation simply by growing up. They were so powerful that simply reaching adulthood would call down a tribulation. A human would struggle and slowly cultivate for hundreds of years, facing endless challenges and consuming countless spiritual herbs, alchemical pills, and other special resources. Those special beasts merely had to pass their time. Their innate nature was more than enough to reach the same point as that desperately struggling human. Humanity was never one to be bound. There was no limit that it could not find a way to breakthrough. On the other hand, Sage had a chance to take a different path. Somehow, his soul had found a way to become more pure than it used to be, and he could use an inhuman body to have a higher starting point.

Before, he was an amalgamation of all the creature’s he’d merged with. Each of them putting in an equal part. The mess of pieces were jammed together, just as his mind had been. It was a muddled mess of many lives. Most of them were bugs with weak minds, which he thought would make them easier to assimilate. Unfortunately, they diluted his mind with their simple thoughts, turning him into a beast. He became a voracious monster that only wanted to get more powerful at any cost. Merging with more and more insects, killing the cultivators he came across to take their resources, and moving towards the ancestral tomb which he was close to and also knew had powerful treasures.

Now, things were different. Sage had been in control of his metamorphosis and he’d learned to tell the strength of different bloodlines. That experiment with venom along with a few others had given him a feel for bloodline purity and he put that to use to winnow out the weak genes. Obviously, he couldn’t control his own DNA, it was more of his assumption that what he did had such an effect. Something he wouldn’t really be able to confirm until he created some offspring. Not surprisingly, the strongest line was mostly that of the Twin Ringed Soul Serpent. The ancestral memories it contained seemed quite powerful and he always assumed it was a descendant of some great creature, so this was a big confirmation in that regard. Additionally, the abilities that he thought were powerful also mostly came from strong sources. There were also quite a few traits that he kept even though they came from weak bloodlines, things he planned to improve in the future.

His new appearance was far less disgusting and horrifying than ‘The Beast’ had been. It was much smaller, having shed much of its size to feed the transformation, and also by filtering out the muddier bloodlines. His new body was about two feet wide and twenty feet long and covered in large thick black scales. There was a ridge of large blade like spines along his back, all the way from snout to tail. On its sides were a quartet of limbs, two arms and two legs. Each of them having four clawed fingers, one of them even being opposable. The nose and eyes were placed up high, like many aquatic creatures, so it could just barely poke them out and submerge the rest of its body easily. Its pupils were still vertical, but they were thick in the centers, showing that unusual bulge and the thin outline of red around the black lens shaped pupil.

All in all, he’d crafted this new form to resemble a Flood Dragon. The serpentine aquatic descendants of dragons. There were hundreds of different varieties of flood dragon. The general consensus was that they were the watered down bastards of dragonkind. Dragons were famously greedy and licentious. They left hybrid offspring all over the place. Those offspring would follow in their parents footsteps and breed with even lower lifeforms. Eventually, it would lead to an old saying, ‘The carp that leapt over the dragon’s gate.’ As in the legends, if a carp swimming upstream could leap over the final peak of a great waterfall it would cross the ‘dragon’s gate’ and transform in one fell swoop into a full fledged dragon. From a book Sage once read, the truth was in fact similar. The carp was said to be a fish with a tiny portion of dragon blood. Swimming upstream and climbing waterfalls was a way for it to cultivate, and when they got strong enough they could transform into a more powerful member of their bloodline. Once they did this enough times they could become a flood dragon, a beast that was one of the most pure dragon descendants.

There was the half-dragon direct descendants of dragons. Then the beasts that were their descendants and that formed new species, like Dragon Horses, Dragon Turtles, Dragon Tigers, etc. Flood Dragons came just behind them, the vast majority of them were members of lesser species that crossed the ‘dragon’s gate’ and ascended into a higher life form. A python that lived a thousand years until it finally grew legs. A lizard that ate a pearl of wisdom and grew whiskers. A crocodile that ate so much it could finally grow big enough to ascend. There were many species and paths, but they were similar to human cultivators that faced their tribulation, these common animals would climb up to become a Flood Dragon.

He chose to model his form after a Flood Dragon because there was endless variation among Flood Dragons so he would be able to pass off as one if he were seen. He also felt they were pretty admirable in breaking free of their original bounds to become powerful beasts. Also, dragons were awesome. Who wouldn’t want to be a dragon? He also took along as many of the useful traits as he could. He had the venom of the Twin Ringed Serpent in his fangs, the mental powers of the toad in his eyes, the devouring ability of the warp worm in his throat, the thorn launching of the hornet on his spine, the pheromones of the beetle, the silk of the centipede in his mouth, and he even snuck in an extra joint on his wrists for a folding blade from the mantis. He hadn’t had a chance to test anything out yet, but nothing seemed out of place and he kept the exterior of his body clean and sleek with the exception of the spine ridge and arm blades.

Finally, Sage nodded his head to the boy standing in front of him, answering the question about his choice, “I did. I thought it would be a shame to not use this ability to its fullest.”

Sage lowered his head and serpentine body to the ground in front of the boy, doing his best rendition of a bow delivered by a snake, “Please tell me your name, Sir.”

His humility raising to the maximum once again in front of this unknown being. He had no idea what the boy could do or what he was, but the feat of snatching away his Beast Bag was already impressive. Crazier still was finding out that the bag seemed to have been made out of a piece of his flesh. That meant the boy wasn’t human, and was probably something very powerful.

If I treat him well enough, maybe I can ‘borrow’ some of his blood essence…