บท 2: The Will To Live

Even though the woman looked mostly human, her cat-like ears and eyes, long black tail, and large fangs made it clear she was anything but human. As the guards called her, she was a beast. Just as humans are intelligent animals, beasts are intelligent monsters.

As the guards dragged the biting woman away, the emperor finally looked at his surroundings, making his first moves in weeks. The frail-looking old man in the opposite cell gasped, sitting up as he reached for the rusty old bars. "Young man! Young man! Are you still alive over there?" He sounded worried, and the emperor looked at him.

"Thank the nine! You're alive!" The old man looked at the door, making sure they weren't coming back. "Here, take this." He pulled a small piece of bread that he was hiding beneath his rugged robe and threw it to the emperor. "You still got water, there, in the bowl by your side. Eat up."

The old man's scrawny figure was familiar to the emperor, he remembers him from before getting caught by the imperials. They were making their way over the border, trying to escape the invasion spreading invasion.

Those memories belong to the emperor's current body, he had only inhabited it long after they were caught.

"Guards!" A shonky prisoner bearing a long face and a twisted smug yelled, "The fool moved!" He leaned on his side, looking at the emperor with a disgusted yet amused look as if he was looking at a bug about to get squished.

The old man gave him a sharp glare, and the shonky prisoner giggled, "Serve you right, for last time…"

The old man's face burned red with rage, "You…never learn…" He clenched a fist, cursing beneath his breath.

The emperor couldn't remember the shonky prisoner no matter how long he searched his memories.

The large iron door got kicked open as a heavily armored guard wearing a spotless set of heavy plate armor stomped his way inside, glaring at the prisoners with bloodshot eyes. "Bastard! Shut up!" He glared at the shonky prisoner, yelling loud enough to send his spit raining.

The shonky prisoner pointed at the emperor with a smug grin, "Sir, look."

When the guard turned reflexively toward the emperor, he noticed the small piece of bread by his side. "Who did that?!" The guard burst into rage. Prisoners were strictly prohibited from sharing food or water so they couldn't neither help nor harm each other.

"Me." A large man with a thick brown beard and broad shoulders said as he leaned back on the wall of his cell, "You imperial bastards know how to get beneath my skin, so I get beneath yours." He spat on the guard's face.

The guard wiped the spit of his face, "You maggots…think yourself all high and mighty?"

"You're right, I'm a maggot crawling beneath your rotten skin, whore's bastard!" He gave him one smug smile, and the guard snapped.

"No!" The shonky prisoner growled, trying to speak up but the guard threw his baton at him, hitting him square on the face before pulling the baton back with a magical chain. "I said shut up!" The guard only gave the shonky prisoner a sharp glare afterward as he approached the large man's cell, opened it up, and yelled, "Out! You're coming with me."

The large man stood and walked out of his cell, giving the shonky prisoner a smug smile.

"Wait!" The old man tried to speak, but the guard wasn't listening to anyone anymore. He dragged the man by his beard and stormed out.

"You bastard!" The old man glared at the shonky prisoner who only gave him a shrug, "Cry about it." He giggled as he turned back to take a nap and the old man shouted at him while still trying to be quiet enough to not alert the guards.

As the two argued, the emperor wasn't even listening to them, he was more focused on the tiny spider hanging from his arm. The little fellow had built its fragile web on the emperor's arm and had been living there for weeks.

'It shouldn't be impossible with such a bug…' The emperor's eyes flashed white for a second, and the spider suddenly stopped moving, staring at him.

{Notice: You've tamed a Black Spider.}

{Notice: You've gained the class: Tamer}

The emperor was almost startled by the sudden voice that beeped inside his head, he had never experienced such a thing before, but he knew this wasn't his old world. It didn't take someone like him long to conclude that this world might have vastly different rules than his old world.

He'll learn them with time, but for now, he needs to focus.

'Go scout the dungeon.' The emperor's thoughts sept into the spider's mind and it quickly dashed out of his cell, moving faster than what it could before. The tamer and tamed beasts share a bond, their power spills both ways. Even with how weakened the emperor was, he wasn't using his spiritual power, and so it all flew to empower the spider.

'This world might have its own rules, but as long as my world abilities still work it won't be a problem.' He looked at his stomach, seeing the faint and ghostly sphere burning inside him. That was his soul, the core of his power.

His current body had a mortal core, and it was still stuck in the first stage. The lowest of the low, this is the perfect example of a weakling mortal who had never cultivated for a single second in his life. But the emperor was a bit happy about it, he at least still had a functional core unlike how he would've ended up if he succeeded in healing his old world.

The cultivation stages ranked from weakest to strongest as follows with each separated into ten stages:

Mortal Core

Refined Core

Supreme Core

Ascended Core

Transcendent Core

Sacred Core

Holy Core

Divine Core

Demi-god Core

God Core

That woman he saw earlier was his target, with her long tail, and sharp ears, he was certain she was a beast if they still existed just like his old world. The beasts were the only ones who stood by his side to the end, so even if he's to die in this prison, he'll make sure she at least gets out.

Unlike him, she was far more powerful, explaining why the guards had her chained in a small cage. Her mortal core was already in its third stage. Compared to that, most guards here were stuck at the second stage except the captain, who sat comfortably at the high end of the fourth stage.

{Notice: You've gained the skill [Observer]}

The emperor ignored the sound ringing in his head as he closed his eyes, focusing on the flow of energy from his core to the spider he tamed earlier. While tamed animals and bugs are useful, their lack of intelligence makes them unable to relay information back to the tamer. To combat that, the tamers developed several techniques to share their tamed animal's sense for direct observation.

As he started seeing the world from the spider's eyes as it ran across the dungeon's walls, another notification rang in the emperor's head.

{Notice: Tamed Beast skill unlocked [Shared Senses]}

Those strange notifications were starting to get annoying, but what he saw from the spider's eyes quickly drew his attention. The spider was sitting on a window, staring at the bloodied battlefield beneath the fortress where they were locked up. Rotting corpses still sat beneath the hot and burning sun with vultures sweeping down to feast.

What captured the emperor's attention wasn't the grim sight, but the massive aura behind the mountain chain on the horizon, a massive flame-like arua of the supreme rank.