The king ape roared with laughter, savoring every moment of dominance, and the cracks spreading across Solanky's armor deepened with each passing exchange. Then, mid-battle, Solanky's mind snagged on something — a body enhancement technique buried among his predecessors' teachings, one that could mask any amplification foreign to the forsaken realm, disguising it as a native beast enhancement art. It was the second of two techniques passed down to him by the ghost claw team's forerunners. This one bore the signature of a transcendent entity of staggering, beastly power — strength rivaling the first venerable one himself — though the record was incomplete, only two volumes surviving of what must once have been a far greater whole.
Its creator was remembered as the Beast Emperor, a legend whispered to have withstood a full-force assault from the first venerable one — right hand of the forsaken god, one of the mightiest transcendent entities to walk the beyond realm, second only within the forsaken hierarchy itself. The Beast Emperor's gifts had been so extraordinary that, as an evolved ferrous beast, he'd taken it upon himself to record his entire cultivation journey — every insight, every breakthrough that led him to master the ancestral beast transformation arts.
The technique itself unfolded across two layers. The first tempered the will and spirit of any being beneath the transcendent entity threshold, granting them the strength to shatter the shackles of the beyond realm and glimpse its deepest secrets — truths ordinarily forbidden to anyone below transcendent rank. This layer, though, answered only to those born as true beasts. No other being could touch it.
The second layer worked on the physical body itself, and its doors stood open to anyone who had already walked some path of amplification. It came in two phases. The first demanded the practitioner strip away their own essence, reverting themselves to a mortal state — a razor's-edge gamble, since death during that fragile window meant true, irreversible annihilation. But those who survived it emerged nearly untouchable among their peers, having learned to generate essence entirely from within, free of dependence on the outside world. The second phase built on that foundation, amplifying whatever power the practitioner had already cultivated — provided it resonated with the beast path.
The instant the first phase concluded, the second ignited, driving the practitioner to reshape and refine their newborn essence into something that transcended the very world of its origin. A peak-stage entity who mastered this second layer could see their full strength surge all the way to the threshold of early-stage transcendence.
Meanwhile, the king ape pressed his advantage without mercy, armor fragments scattering with every blow, visibly savoring Solanky's apparent helplessness. A brutal kick sent Solanky crashing into a towering tree, snapping the trunk clean in two. He rose from the wreckage, smiling, and began weaving hand seals.
The instant the final seal locked into place, his shattered armor dissolved and reformed — identical in appearance to the old, but stripped of any amplification, offering protection alone. It was a necessary gamble. While the king ape had kept him pinned under relentless assault, Solanky had, deep within his internal world, been quietly coalescing an avatar from his world energies. Using his defying flames alongside a single leaf from a transcendent grass, that avatar had been refining an entirely new line of forsaken battle armor — designed to boost his baseline strength by several tiers, enough to let his disguise credibly stand against beings whose power ranged from 500,000 to 800,000 times that of an infinite source god.
The new armor spread across his disguised body piece by piece. As it took shape, the king ape froze, sensing Solanky's power climbing — steadily, unmistakably — toward parity with his own. Far from alarm, delight lit the ape's face; finally, an opponent worth the name. By the time the armor sealed itself fully into place, Solanky stood beneath the broken tree like a beast forged for war — tail extended, claws bared on every finger. He'd shaped the armor deliberately into this beastial form, intent on convincing the transcendent beings watching in secret that he was a genuine practitioner of the ancestral beast transformation arts.
He calibrated the armor's output to 770,000 times amplification, then lunged at the ape like a predator closing on prey. For the first time, real fear cracked through the king ape's composure — the sense of a blade suspended over his throat, ready to fall. His posture, his footwork, betrayed it openly, and the hidden transcendent observers read it exactly as Solanky intended: proof that he wielded the first layer of the ancestral beast arts, the layer that broke an opponent's will before the body ever followed.
In truth, the technique bore no such origin — it was Elisa's, a move she favored in her true dragon form when preparing to crush an enemy without mercy.
Solanky appeared above the king ape in an instant and struck downward with his claws. The ape met the blow head-on with a desperate punch. Where the two forces collided, ground harder than diamond by a factor of millions shattered like brittle glass, and a crater 50 km deep tore open beneath the point of impact.
The king ape's arm went numb from the shock, and in that instant he understood, with total certainty, that he could not win. Pride forgotten, survival instinct took over. "I concede," he said. "I am no match for you. I'll protect the travelers, as we agreed. But I ask one more favor of you."
Solanky, claws already raised for a follow-up strike, paused and listened.
"I can feel the ancestral beast's aura in your strikes now," the king ape said. "Would you pass the technique to me? In return, I won't just guide the travelers to the temple — I'll help you clear this forest mission, and give you a map marking every hidden space and secret portal that connects to your teammates within these woods."
Solanky nodded and drew out a crystal ball containing the ancestral beast transformation technique, offering it without hesitation. The king ape stared at the gesture, something shifting in how he regarded this strange, powerful visitor. He shifted back into his towering ape form, sealed the crystal ball away in his internal space, then produced a scaly scroll bound with a green seal, faint mystery radiating from its surface. As Solanky moved to break the seal and inspect it, the king ape stopped him with a sharp voice transmission — warning him not to open it here, not in the forest, where its discovery by the watching transcendents could bring him no end of trouble.
Solanky resealed the scroll at once, tucking it away in his internal world, and turned back toward the travelers. He summoned the protective shield down, and the moment it vanished, the little girl clutching her candy came sprinting toward him, arms outstretched, demanding to be lifted. Solanky let out a quiet sigh and scooped her up, the king ape falling into step behind them. The girl caught sight of the ape and stuck her tongue out, waving her candy tauntingly in his direction. The king ape only snorted and looked away.
Solanky set her back down, patted her head, and told the group he had to part ways with them here — but they had nothing to fear, not with the king ape as their guide. No beast, no bandit, would dare cross him now.
Before leaving, Solanky produced a wooden box, carved from the bark of a peak entity-level world tree whose canopy alone stretched 3.5 million light-years across, and tossed it to the king ape, instructing him to inspect its contents with spiritual energy. The ape caught it effortlessly with his mental power — and the instant that power brushed the box's contents, astonishment flooded his face. He recognized immediately what he was holding, its rarity, its quality. A slow smile spread across his features, and he bowed low in gratitude.
(A.N.: One must understand that entity-level beings all possess exceptional mental power, capable of shaping the world around them — but in combat against an equal, that same power becomes almost meaningless, since at that level every action, every intention, is already governed by precision mental force and spiritual energy alone. Battles at this tier collapse into a contest between three forces vying for control of the local laws: the being, their opponent, and the absolute primal laws themselves — a neutral force that exists solely to keep both combatants from tearing the world apart. To maintain that balance, it suppresses every being at or below the transcendent entity level, granting only true transcendent beings temporary command over the laws of the beyond realm — laws that otherwise remain abstract, waiting to be manifested through time or through the will of a truly great being.)
Inside the box were pills refined from the residue of already-processed transcendent grasses of eternity — a rare delicacy for a beast like the king ape, both pleasant to consume and deeply restorative, capable of strengthening his physical resilience and deepening the very foundations of his cultivation.