"What do you think you're doing in this sacred area, Zar!?"
The shouts of a young man who looked no older than fifteen echoed. His hair was long and wild, resembling that of a feral animal, and his facial features closely mirrored those of a wolf.
"Have we not told you time and time again that you're forbidden from coming here!?"
The person he was shouting at was a young man with a rather devilishly handsome appearance. However, with all the dirt and grime covering him from head to toe, no one would have known.
Casting a forlorn glow over his face was a shadow that seemed to follow him wherever he went. Looking down at his feet, he took the reprimands of the wolf-man without retort, his hands balled into tightly clenched fists.
'A forbidden area…' Zar thought, biting his crusted lips. 'To call a public town-space forbidden… Just how much do the Therians despise me?'
Suddenly—
*Pow!*
A punch to the stomach knocked the wind out of him. Forced to keel over, saliva trickling, Zar's neutral gaze turned into a fierce glare as he stared up at the wolf-man's retracting fist.
"What's with that look, Zar?" the wolf-man asked, his annoyance surging. "You're lucky I'm letting you off the hook with just that," he snarled. "Next time you try to come into town, I'll be taking one of your eyes. Understand!?"
Zar, pretending to realize that he let his emotions get the better of him, backed down. Impassiveness returned to his expression as he lowered his head, giving a slight apology. After that, he walked away from the wolf-man, his wolf buddies, and the town gates of Verndale.
"What's wrong with that freak!?" one of the wolf-men, a Therian like every other intelligent humanoid Beast in the world, revealed his sharp, pointed teeth. "He should thank God Legaria that he hasn't already found himself lying dead six feet under!"
The Therian who had punched Zar stared at his fist in confusion, wondering why it felt oddly numb.
'Did I punch him incorrectly…? Yes, that must be it…'
Shaking his head and erasing all useless thoughts, the Therian turned away from Zar's retreating figure. He waved for his buddies to follow him, and soon, all four of them were seen walking through the wooden-staked gates of a small town on the outskirts of the Kingdom of Fire.
Thousands of meters away from the entrance to the small town, Zar suddenly straightened his back, his limp vanishing without a trace. The sparse amounts of anger from before also disappeared, almost as if they had never been there to begin with.
'Therians are fools through and through,' he thought coldly. 'Every single one of them is so far up their own asses that they ignore what's right before them.'
But no matter, Zar continued as he blurred, traversing the forest outside the town at superhuman speeds.
'I got what I wanted.' His dead eyes glanced at the keys jingling in his hands. 'With these, I'll finally acquire what I want.
In the Super-Continent of Legaria, hundreds of different types of Therians existed. And as Therians, they were technically evolved, intelligent Demon Beasts. This meant that they too could devour Demon Beasts to grow stronger.
However, since they weren't 100% Demon Beasts, they couldn't directly devour Demon Beasts like true Demon Beasts could. Instead, they had to rely on their more humanoid traits to extract extremely useful sources of energy called "Demon Cores" from the Demon Beasts.
They then made use of Ancient Cultivation Techniques to absorb the energy stored inside the Demon Cores—energy that, after assimilation, would nourish the Sky Core of the Therian that devoured it, thus improving their cultivation.
'Sky Cores,' Zar clicked his tongue. 'To be so full of yourself that you name the variation of your power source based on the belief that your race is the ascendant of regular Demon Beasts. Tsk.'
Perhaps he and Demon Beasts weren't so different in that regard.
Both he and they were laughed at and seen as lesser than…
Zar's hatred flared further, his speed increasing as a result of his anger. He raced through a forest so vast that the edges couldn't be seen, his feet dancing from tree branch to tree canopy, his speed even surpassing that of some Qi Condensation Realm Cultivators.
Having lived in the Great Forest of Jargon his entire life, Zar had detached himself from civilization. Which, in this region, only really included the small town of Verndale.
It wasn't that there couldn't be more towns and villages if it really came down to it, but the Great Forest of Jargon was simply too large. In fact, the entire world was utterly massive, with millions of miles of surface area being but a mere fraction of the whole Supercontinent.
However, there was something extremely abnormal about the Continent of Legaria.
And that was that there were no—
Humans.
Only Therians and their less-intelligent, less-humanoid Demon Beast counterparts existed as the main races in Legaria.
And then there were those like Zar.
Godlings.
The accursed offspring of Beasts and Foreign Entities—what Therians referred to as "Aliens," but were more commonly known as Humans. As they were the result of the copulation between a Beast and one of these Aliens, Godlings were unanimously deemed to be abominations.
Hated by all, loved by none—that was the life of a Godling.
It was also why there were virtually no Godlings still alive today, with most dying very early on.
But Zar was different.
Although abandoned at birth, he barely let that get to him. And though he nearly lost his life too many times to count—especially in the beginning due to a lack of milk—a pack of monkeys with low intelligence took him in, having mistaken him for one of their own.
But with the passing of time, the monkeys eventually learned the truth.
After thousands of glances at his mostly hairless body, they finally figured out that he wasn't one of them. And though they tried to erase the blemish on their pride by killing him, it was already too late.
He had evolved and adapted too much.
Escaping with just his life, the seven-year-old swore in his heart that day that he'd never rely on anyone else for the rest of his life.
Years later, he returned to the monkeys' dwelling, his strength having tremendously improved thanks to the skills acquired from hunting Demon Beasts and devouring their Demon Cores. The only reason he returned was to thank the monkey mother who picked him up and cared for him during the first seven years of his life.
To Zar, she was the closest thing to a mother he had ever had.
However…
Shortly after returning to the monkeys' dwelling, he learned that the other monkeys had mercilessly beaten the mother monkey to within an inch of her life. After that, they ate her… while she was still alive.
For the first time in his life, Zar felt genuine anger—fury so immense that his eyes bled red, his furious bellows capable of inducing fear in even the Peak Body Refinement Realm Monkey Warriors.
"You are all unworthy of life..."
A bloodbath soon followed, with a river of crimson flowing over the recently fallen leaves of autumn.
That day marked the moment Zar fully adjusted to his reality. And it was also when he finally made a breakthrough into the Qi Condensation Realm—the only good thing that came as a result of his mediocre cultivation talent.
To take nine years of arduous cultivation—cultivating every day from age three to age twelve—just to reach the 1st Layer of Qi Condensation… What sort of crap talent was that!?
In all fairness, such results were considered wholly average in the boonies like the Town of Verndale. However, that was only if the cultivator in question lived a normal life.
Zar, on the other hand, considered the wilderness his home. It was where he spent most of his time hunting Demon Beasts and devouring their Demon Cores.
But if that wasn't bad enough, with him only being half Therian, the effectiveness of absorbing the energy inside Demon Cores was halved. And as he inherited prominent negative traits of the 'Alien' race, his cultivation speed was also halved.
This meant that with the same Demon Core, he had to expend double the effort of anyone else for half the gains!
Life truly was unfair.
But there was no use complaining.
That was something Zar often told himself. And with his whole existence, he believed it to be true.