"What is it," Kai asked, holding out his little paw.
Silas just laughed at the little mouse's antics, then tossed him a small silver bracer.
"I picked that up off a beast I killed a while back, thought you should finally have it for your trip," Silas said.
Kai quickly snatched it up and slipped it on his arm, shrinking it down to his size.
"Perfect," Kai said as he started to play around with it, putting various things that were sitting on the table in and out of the storage-type magic treasure.
After about two minutes, Kai quit playing, then looked up at Silas and said, "Anything else?"
Silas just shook his head.
And like that, Kai took off again. He clearly couldn't wait to go off on his own and see what he could find, what beasts he could kill, and what trouble he could cause.
"Remember, don't go showing off that you're a divine beast, and don't overuse your innate talent. We have to keep the fact we're both divine beasts a secret, at least until we're strong enough to protect ourselves," Silas sent Kai.
"Don't worry 'bout a thing," Kai sent back.
***
Several weeks went by after Kai left, but not much had changed.
The only thing that was different was that Silas was having an increasingly harder time finding a good fight to help temper himself and further his comprehension.
He was currently walking around in Starfire Ascent. He had heard from a nearby beast that there was a new powerful beast in the area.
After walking around for hours, he soon decided to take a small rest to just relax. So, he found a log to sit on and began to just enjoy the scenery.
As he was looking around, though, he noticed on top of a large cliff there sat a cat-type beast.
He quickly identified it.
[Spatial Lynx (Emperor Beast) - Qi Cultivation: Early Transcendent - Body Cultivation: Early Transcendent]
'An emperor beast?' Silas thought in surprise. This was the first one he had ever run across, with them being extremely rare in the Inheritance Realm. The highest-ranked beast one would usually be able to find in the Inheritance Realm was an emperor beast.
'Spatial lynx...' Silas thought. While this specific beast wasn't included in his inherited memories, based on the name and what little memories he did have on emperor beasts, it seemed like this beast would be quite talented and likely even had an innate talent.
Its innate talent, however, wouldn't be nearly as good as Silas's [Grim Reaper's Eye], with it being a bona fide divine ability.
The innate talent of this beast would likely just have to do with an increased comprehension of space.
'It likely can more easily touch the grand dao of space,' Silas thought. There were three levels to the dao, at least from what Silas knew from his inherited memories: there were the lesser daos, the grand daos, and the heavenly daos. The higher a cultivator reached, the higher they would have to comprehend the dao, and the higher the dao, the harder it was to comprehend. So the innate talent of the spatial lynx being able to more easily touch a grand dao could be considered a not-too-bad innate talent.
The spatial lynx was currently asleep, but after staring at it for more than five seconds, it quickly opened its eyes, looked around for a moment, and then it quickly narrowed in on Silas's location.
Silas immediately smiled once their gazes met, and the lynx then calmly stood up and began to slowly climb its way down the steep cliff, jumping from small rock to small rock.
As it made its way down, Silas too made his way closer to it, but before he could completely close the distance, a bird flew down and landed on a nearby tree.
[Hawk (Beast) - Qi Cultivation: Late Transcendent - Body Cultivation: Late Transcendent ]
Upon seeing that it was just a normal beast, he quickly ignored it, not at all interested in fighting a common beast, even if it was a Late Transcendent lifeform.
"You have no right to meet the gaze of the new king of this region," the hawk said.
Silas just kept walking forward, not bothering with the small bird.
The bird, seeing that it was being ignored, flew to the ground 10 meters in front of Silas and transformed into its human form.
"A mere Mortal lifeform thinks he can battle our king?" It then took three steps forward and brought down its palm on Silas.
Before Silas could meet its palm, the spatial lynx called out, "Stop it. You're not his match!"
The hawk quickly pulled back its hand, took a step back, and turned to look at its king in surprise.
"My king, could you…?"
"I'm going to fight this human myself," the spatial lynx said, its eyes never leaving Silas.
Silas then pulled out his scythe and took one step forward, closing the distance in a flash.
"Whoosh!" "Bang!" He used one attack to test the beast.
"You've reached cosmic resonance in both," the lynx said, just making an observation.
"So have you," Silas said back.
"Whoosh!" "Bang!" The lynx took a step this time, closing in within a second.
"You don't seem to have made any progress in your grand dao of space," Silas said. He wasn't sure if the lynx was holding back for his sake, but he didn't think this was it.
"You know what I am?" the spatial lynx said in surprise.
"Yes, I do," Silas said.
"I'm surprised. I've never met someone who could tell what I am," the lynx said.
"Have you never met a second emperor beast before?" Silas asked. He was curious if this beast knew where another one was.
"Em… emperor beast…" the hawk said in surprise, unable to quite believe its king was a mighty emperor beast. It knew that its king was extremely strong to only be an early Transcendent lifeform, but it just thought it was an extremely talented fierce or maybe even king beast—but an emperor beast? It had never dreamed of this.
"No, I have not," the lynx said, ignoring the hawk.
"Enough words. Let's battle," the lynx said after a moment.
"Agreed," Silas answered back.
"Whoosh!" "Bang!" "Shing!" "Shing!—"
"Shing!—" "Bang!" "Shing!" "Shing!"
"Shing!" "Shing!—" "Shing!—" "Shing!—"
"Bang!" "Bang!" "Bang!" "Bang!"
They went back and forth, neither one able to get a leg up on the other, but both of them could feel their comprehensions taking large strides.
"Shing!" "Shing!—" "Shing!" "Shing!—"
***
Silas soon left the beast, neither one able to do anything to the other, but he knew he would be back.
***
Months went by, every couple of days Silas going to find the spatial lynx for a spar.
He was now 17 years old, and he decided to further increase his height and change his appearance more to that of his past life, getting rid of his youthful look.
He now looked just like he did in his past life, only in this life, he wasn't weak and scrawny. He was well-built with just enough muscle to look strong, but not too much to look beefy. It was the perfect in-between. If his wife Lilian or his parents from his previous life were to see him now, they would surely think they had gone back in time, and instead of their wife/son dying in the war, he became a strong warrior instead.
***
Silas was currently fighting the spatial lynx for the countless time, and he was feeling closer and closer to the Transcendent breakthrough he was aiming for. He even thought it was possible it would happen after this battle.
For him, as a Grim Reaper King using the Fiendgod Body Refinement Technique from his inherited memories, he had to learn to merge both death and destruction together to make the leap from peak Mortal to early Transcendent . So, this is what he had been pondering on for the last couple of months as he fought the spatial lynx.
"Shing!" "Bang!" "Shing!—" "Shing!"
"Bang!" "Shing!—" "Shing!" "Shing!—"
They had both made huge strides in their comprehension, and while they each could easily kill their past selves in a couple of moves, they were still unable to do much to each other.
"Bang!" "Shing!" "Shing!—" Just as Silas and the lynx were getting good and in the groove of battle, Silas suddenly heard Red's flustered voice in his head.
"Silas, Silas, Silas!" Red repeated over and over again. Unlike Silas and Kai, Silas and Red had to be near each other to communicate spiritually, so Red had been rushing toward Silas as fast as he could while calling out his name to grab his attention.
Silas quickly pulled back from the fight, to the confusion of the spatial lynx. It thought he might finally be having a breakthrough, so it decided not to disturb him. At first, it didn't like this human that much, but the more it battled and the more it comprehended thanks to the human, the more it started to see him as something akin to a friend? Maybe? But definitely not an enemy that had to be killed.
"Red, I'm here. What is it?" Silas asked in a panic. What could possibly have happened to make his big brother so flustered?
"Dead! They're all dead!" Red yelled.
"What? Who's all dead?!" Silas asked, panicked. Could his Armstrong clan have been annihilated? Could some enemy clan have mounted a sneak attack? What else could it be? This was the only thing he could think of.
"Kai, quickly come to me," Silas sent Kai, the strongest of them. If his clan was dead, it was possible he was also a target.
"I'm coming, boss. Hold tight!" Kai quickly sent.