Not missing the shuddering response, Grandma Reah just chuckled and knew that the paste was not a pleasant experience by any means, but one of the best ways to improve his skin stage as early as possible. Anima Paste is certainly effective, but its rarity and effect made it an incredibly expensive product to get and she only had it due to her saving it for her own grandson who had passed before she had managed to give it to him.
"Anyway, the next stage is the Bone Forging Stage. Before getting the power from your muscles, your bones must be strong enough to support those muscles or risk having your empowered muscles crush your bones to dust. Many beastkin naturally forge their skin just by living, but to fortify their bones requires them to focus the anima towards their bones.
This stage is important to set up the framework of your body, boosting the durability and density of your bones that provide overall defense as well as improve the impact of your bodily strikes. The difficulty of this stage, aside from focusing anima towards them, is the fact that there are a lot of bones in any beastkin body, and filling each and every one of them to their maximum is obviously a time-consuming and arduous task even for the most dedicated of beastkin.
Next is the muscle stage, and the first major barrier to be considered as a true beastkin warrior. This stage is considered to be the one that provides the most offensive benefit of all the stages."
As for the stages after those, they are known to extremely few and are colloquially called the Three Throne. Bronze Throne, Silver Throne, and Golden Throne.
I will explain the reasoning for their titles, but the difference in power between that of an Organ Stage beastkin and a Bronze Throne beastkin is like that of an Organ Stage to a beastkin that hasn't even reached the skin stage."
Noxtis just shoot up and looked into Grandma Reah's eyes at such an absurd statement. "How is such a gap between them that large? Isn't it only the next stage? Are you sure there is not something in-between?"
"Who would you say would win between two unforged beastkin, one with a crossbow, and the other with their fists? And before you ask, yes they are far apart from one another."
Answering almost immediately after her second part, Noxtis was confused at the question. "Well, the crossbow then if the beastkin had a decent aim. Even if they were the same level, the range the crossbow gives is just too big."
Grinning while still rocking in her chair, Grandma Reah continued. "And there is your answer. That is what the first five stages of Body Forging is, focusing on our bodies first and foremost. After that, the Three Thrones are the way any beastkin that reaches that level to affect an area outside of their fleshy bodies. Outside of their Bloodline Abilities of course, but even then their bloodline abilities are enhanced even more when reaching that level."
Noxtis stared into the starry skies again as his mind spun at the vast enormity that was Body Forging and just how far he could reach. "How do beastkin reach such a level? I have never heard of them before. How are you sure they exist?"
Chuckling as she remembered the moment of her enlightenment, she nodded as if agreeing with the absurdity of it. "Honestly, I don't blame you for being skeptical. For the longest time, I and pretty much all beastkin thought that the Organ Stage was the pinnacle to reach that even now very few are able to reach.
It wasn't until that fateful day so long ago, when the view us beastkin had on the world and our way of power had changed. I don't remember if I had told you before, but when I was younger, I was a part of a small but elite Warband. We called ourselves the War Gods, pretentious I know but we somehow managed to overcome all the jeers and heckling and become one of the most respected and feared Warbands in the entire Sol continent for quite some time.
Anyway, enough about this old turtle reminiscing about the past. Early on in our adventures, pretty much after we finished deciding the name of our Warband, much to the fury of arguments before then, we came across something that would change all of our lives forever. Or rather...someone."
Turning over and resting his chin on his tented hands, Noxtis eagerly look forward to another story.
"His name was Titan, or at least that is what he told us. He was a being none of us had ever seen before or even heard of. We weren't able to understand him at all at first, he spoke in a tongue completely foreign to any kind of language we knew of, and mind you our group was diverse despite its small size.
When we first found him, he was covered in wounds that bore into his thick, rock-like, skin. Many were charred and still leaking blood. By the time we had found him, he was practically paying his ticket to The Starry Plains. Our leader at the time, Flint, took it upon himself to help the being with the help of two of our members who were adept at healing.
With our best efforts, we were able to breathe some life back into him. After feeding him some food and drink, he was able to learn our language absurdly fast and thanked us for saving him. He told us that he had escaped from his pursuers and crash-landed, literally, on our world. He came from the world called Terra and was home to his race called Humans.
Titan was a Body Cultivator and said it was the main reason he hadn't instantly died when entering another world so abruptly. Viewing our Body Forging path, he was able to find many similarities to his world's own cultivation and even sighed enviously at how much more suited the world was for beastkin to cultivate their bodies.
And while he was unable to mimic our path due to several reasons, he was able to teach us many things about cultivation. Titan was even able to teach us how we could improve Body Forging and even push it further than we ever thought possible.
Regrettably, Titan did not have much longer to live and died a couple of months after we had found and revived him. But those moments are something none of our War Gods Wartribe ever forgot and keep his teachings with us and is the reason why we were able to achieve as much as we did.
So with Titan's guidance and our own endeavors, we created the Three Thrones stages. Of which only our leader has since reached the Bronze Throne since I last talked with him. He was always the most insane when it came to training, even more after meeting Titan and seeing just how big this universe can be.
Thankfully he is not one to abuse his new-found power, narcissistic as he is. Aside from taking every chance to boast about his handsomeness and flex to his legion of female admirers, I find it funny that those two were able to rein him in."
Soaking in the small portion of history that Reah shared with him, of which he didn't know that Noxtis was the only one she had shared the information about the Three Throne stages with. Even those of her own tribe she didn't believe would achieve those heights. But some small feeling told her that the child she took in would one day shake the world with his every step.
The light which had been wavering now shone with a renewed vigor. Rather than falter at the enormity of Body Forging but also the world that he had yet to see would cause many hearts to tremble, Noxtis heart shivered in anticipation for what the future had in store.