The First King of Beasts

"And, that was how I attained my powers you see, and I must say, my powers are weirdly similar to yours don't you think?" Eir said with a plain emotion in the voice, like he didn't care much.

"Well, you never told me what your power was." Dustin responded in a similar tone.

"Oh, I didn't? My power, is the ability to control animals, coupled with some extra stuff, but this is primarily the most prominent."

"..." "Yes, it is the same." Dustin replied.

"Yes, or something like yours is a diluted version of the original, even mine isn't the complete one." Eir said. "Now, why do you think you of all people have such a power?"

Dustin thought hard about it, and though he passively already knew what the answer was, he wasn't quite sure and decided to go with the more ignorant answer. "I don't know myself. The world has changed, and the gods are about to destroy the worlds or something like that out of amusement, because of this, many people have received many gifts and such abilities, it could just be a coincidence." Dustin said.

"Hmm, not really. I'm not entire sure of the situation in the outside world, but one thing I'm sure about is that the gods will never think of destroying the world, much less out of boredom. One think you don't know is that these abilities and gifts you speak of all come from the gods themselves, that is the only way for we mortals to gain these supernatural powers." Eir said.

He could understand from what Dustin had told him that the world had long changed, and the gods may have retrieved their influence on the earth and allowed it to develop without any interference from them. Whatever is happening now was merely a means to an end, and to Eir the end was quite clear.

"Hah... These gods never change do they?" Eir said. "Forget it, I'll just explain what I think it is to you."

Eir went over his theory, which he strongly believed was the case, and just like Dustin thought, it was similar to his.

"So you are saying I already had his energy within me before everything started huh?" Dustin asked.

"Exactly. Nothing too special there, so don't worry much. When you see real magicians do real magic tricks, its mostly due to the power they had received, and this power causes the essence of whatever god granted them that power to reside within them, and more often than not, the essence is passed down to their offspring. Our problem now is the fact that Cernnunos would never give out his power to anyone, talk less of humans or the creatures of this world, so acquiring it is not possible by any means."

From that, Dustin came to understand that the power of said gods still resided on earth, and just wasn't as much as it used to be. He didn't completely believe this theory though, as he thought there were some loopholes in it. For example, there were many other people before him, living or dead that have had the ability to control animals and tame them, stuff like that, would those people be said to contain this god's essence then?

"Of course, where you got it from and all that doesn't matter. As for the others, not only Cernnunos has the power to control animals, and controlling people and things can happen in a number of ways, so there's that."

Before he received the power from Cernnunos, he had the ability to control and even tame monsters and animals, and this power played a very important role in him becoming as strong as he was at such young age.

Because of the god that ruled the world at the time, the reward system was simple, kill, and you will become strong. It was a simple system that worked miraculously well in different areas. For one, no one was special, and absolutely anybody could become the strongest if they had the resolve. All that was needed to be done was kill a stronger being or one that was equal to one's self, and you will grow stronger. This was also the reason why these times were known as the darkest era on the earth.

Since humanity worshiped the single war god, they derived their power from him, and apart from some other people who risked serving a different god, every other person possessed power from a single source.

Eir had found out about his strange power since he was a child, but even then he knew not to show it to anyone, as it was not a power gotten from the current god. He had no idea where it came from, only that it was different and had to be kept secret. With such a system where one only had to kill others stronger or as strong as themselves to become stronger, Eir would naturally have an unlimited-like growth after he decided to make use of his power.

With the single goal to become strong and protect those who couldn't protect themselves, Eir decided to exploit his powers to gain an unrealistic advantage over ever other person.

.

"I understand you being a good sweet guy and all, but wasn't that the dark era? Why want to do something so stupid?" Dustin asked after hearing Eir's motivation.

"Well, everybody is different. Back then, even a peasant could kill the king if he was strong enough. Power was the language anywhere, and the weak suffered greatly. If it wasn't for the fact that the powerful were uninterested in the weak because they had nothing to offer, they would do away with them. This was my reason. As someone who came up as a weakling, I just couldn't watched without action-" Eir explained.

"Hmm, but with such a system... Never mind, it is actually a very clever system." Dustin said.

The thing was, even though the humans killed everything on the earth, they would never be able to reach the rank of a god, and all they could do was crave power and kill each other, much to the war god's pleasure and amusement. Back when they needed a means to survive and develop, they sort out Cernnunos, but after they developed, it seemed humanity no longer wanted peace, and instead craved hatred and power.

Eir continued, and it wasn't really at all difficult for Dustin to understand exactly what he was saying.

With the gift he had, Eir used it to chop down monster after monster, and anybody who would get in his way and tried to confront him also fell to his power. All he needed to do was use his ability, and the monsters or beasts would just wash their necks and place a piece of cloth over it before him, it was truly a cheat. If anyone was to ever find out that this was how he became so strong, even from hell, they would crawl their way up and curse at him to his face! Unlike Dustin who even had a limit, this guy had nothing of the sorts, and could even halt a dragon in its steps, or even cause it to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff! It was completely insane!

"Heh, no wonder." Dustin exclaimed.

"So, after the whole incident, I returned outside. After finding out that the whole demons attacking the villagers was a lie, there was no need to remain there. Unknown to me of course, was that I was already being watched, and the war god was not taking it lightly at all." Eir continued.

The fact that another god's servant was within his territory was enough to piss him off, and although he normally didn't care, which showed in the number of hidden cults and traditions that existed all over, not without his knowledge of course, this time was different. He didn't know how it was possible, but this human was displaying power far exceeding what a human should, and as a war god he couldn't help but feel threatened and challenged.

"But how are you sure he felt threatened? He could actually kill you easily since he is more geared towards fighting." Dustin made a remark which if he could see the face of Eir, it was have been hilarious, maybe.

The think was that the gods could descend unto the earth, but the problem was that they couldn't come with their full strength, and had to reduce it by a significant amount. It wasn't something that they had a say in, it was just the way it was, Eir didn't understand either. The long and short of it was that if a god came down to earth, their bodies and power would just be restricted to maybe the best champion earth would ever produce, but the problem now was that Eir at that moment was far stronger than that, so the war god would lose if he was to try that.

"Well, so how exactly did you get here?" Dustin asked.

"Why so impatient?-"

"Well, I'm mortal. I don't have all the time in the world."

"Is that so? Then rejoice, your mortal life will soon change."