The Guardian gods Chapter 912

Ikenga’s awareness showed him the struggles of an emerging civilization. The beastfolk, the people of Krogan who had barely set foot upon the soil of Nana before they were forced to confront the harsh, unforgiving trials of the world.

Initially, their arrival had been met with open curiosity and feigned hospitality. The local populace welcomed them with cautious smiles, while the authorities quietly probed for weaknesses, searching for ways to exploit or subjugate the newcomers. Now that fragile honeymoon phase passed by quickly, giving way to the cold calculus of survival and dominance.

Simultaneously, a shift occurred with the beast folk apperance. The profession of the Summoner exploded in popularity across the continent and beyond it. So pervasive did the art become that nearly every household keeping a common beast or companion animal found itself nurturing the spark of a Summoner, turning ordinary homes into incubators for a new class of magical practitioners.

This explosion of the Summoner profession, while opening doors for both nobles and commoners, quickly collided with a harsh economic and ecological reality, which was the crisis of resources.

A pet bound to a summoner was no longer a mere animal, through the contract, it breached the threshold of the extraordinary. As these summoned beasts grew in power, their nutritional and material requirements scaled exponentially. To advance further along the path, a summoner had to continuously meet these escalating criteria.

This bottleneck stopped many in their tracks, presenting adilemma. Choosing to halt progress at the initial stage and stagnation seemed like an easy escape, but it violated the sacred contract forged between summoner and beast under the watchful gaze of Krogan. Breaking this bond carried a severe penalty, a vicious spiritual and physical backlash that risked leaving the summoner permanently crippled.

Hence outright surrender was a rarity. Instead, the landscape transformed into a display of frantic, high-stakes dedication. Summoners pushed themselves to the absolute limit to ensure their companions were adequately fed and supplied. This necessity forced them out of the safety and comfort of their homes, driving them deep into the untamed wilderness, where they relied entirely on the innate instincts of their summons creatures that knew precisely what rare minerals, flora, or prey were required to fuel their growth or next stage of evolution.

This relentless hunt for scarce resources soon curdled into something far more desperate and brutal. Out of the desperate scramble to feed their extraordinary companions, an underground economy was born, one that quickly spiraled into an extreme state of affairs. Summoners began establishing illicit gambling dens, hidden away in the dark underbelly of the towns and cities, where bonded beasts were pused into high-stakes combat against one another.

In these blood-soaked arenas, the rules of survival were simple, the victor walked away with the necessary rare resources and a surge of hard-earned fame, while the loser’s companion was left maimed, starved, or dead, often dragging the summoner down with them through the violent backlash of the broken contract.

Yet, what outwardly appeared to be merely a savage outlet for desperate commoners was, in truth, a carefully tended beast garden of the elite. Behind the smoke, the roaring crowds, and the exchange of blood-money was the hidden hands of the nobles.

Recognizing an unmatched opportunity, the aristocracy had quietly seized control of the gambling syndicates. To the nobles, these arenas served a dual purpose. First, they were lucrative economic engines, generating immense wealth from the wagers of the desperate and the greedy. Second, and more importantly, they functioned as a good filtering system. The nobles used the dens as training grounds and talent scouts, observing which summoners and beasts survived the meat grinder of combat. Those who proved exceptional were quietly co-opted, bought out, or blackmailed into serving elite households, providing the nobility with a steady, battle-tested supply of powerful summoners and apex beasts to further cement their absolute grip on power.

This economic exploitation and the rise of the fighting rings drove a bitter wedge between the humans and the beastfolk, This divide ran even deeper because of where most of the summoned creatures originated. Aside from the few beasts that were hunted directly in the wild, captured, or had already lived as household pets before their owners became summoners, the vast majority of summoned creatures hailed directly from the Menagerie Plane.

The beastfolk possessed a dual nature, their pure, unbridled animal state and their civilized, thinking humanoid form. Those roaming the world of Nana in their humanoid forms are those who sought to carve out their own destiny, claiming territory and striving to build a sovereign kingdom of their own.

Then their was their other kin who remained behind in the Menagerie Plane who chose the path of the summoned beast. The same race with two different faction and different ambition.

Initially, the beginning of the beast-fighting pits provoked a wave of unified outrage across both factions of the Krogna. Whether in their animal or humanoid states, they shared a deep, burning dissatisfaction, viewing the human idea as a blatant sign of disrespect, clear proof that humanity regarded their race as nothing more than disposable entertainment.

However, that consensus fractured completely as the economic and martial reality of the arenas set in. Among those residing in the Menagerie Plane in their animal state, their perspective underwent a radical transformation. As the fighting dens began dispensing rare and valuable resources, and as the combatants experienced the visceral thrill of true, unbridled conflict, many stopped seeing the arenas as an insult.

To this faction, the brutal survival-of-the-fittest environment was not a degradation, it was a crucible. They believed that a true beast required challenge, combat, and constant trial to test its limits, rejecting the soft complacency of comfort in favor of raw, predatory growth. The rewards and the test of strength outweighed the indignity of their human masters.

On the other hand, the beastfolk roaming the surface in their humanoid forms viewed this development with alarm and profound hostility. For them, the normalization of the fighting pits was a catastrophic roadblock.

Their ambition and goal was to claim territory, earn political legitimacy, and establish a permanent, sovereign kingdom. That grand objective was fundamentally undermined by an economy that treated their kin as spectacle and slaughter-fodder. As long as humanity viewed the beastfolk as beasts that can be put in cage, a race meant for entertainment and wagering, the dream of a respected, independent kingdom remained entirely out of reach.

This internal conflict within the beast folk created a volatile political landscape. The humanoid faction attempted to reach out to their beast-form kin, condemning the arenas and urging them to reject such a way of life, only to be met with cold dismissal or outright hostility from their kin who preferred the brutal meritocracy of the pits.

The human nobles meanwhile quietly exploited the divide. They offered lavish rewards, premium nutrients, and special protections to the owners and handlers of the strongest beast-form fighters, further entrenching the system. By aligning themselves with the faction of the Krogna that embraced the combat, the authorities ensured that any unified beastfolk resistance was choked out before it could even begin, leaving the humanoid faction to fight a lonely, uphill battle for legitimacy against both human prejudice and their own kindred’s primal choices.

This situation led to a common human belief that the Menagerie Plane was a wild, untamed expanse with little to no resources, which was fundamentally flawed since they haven’t been to it. It was not a place of scarcity, but of staggering, untapped wealth. In truth, the Menagerie was vastly richer than most human kingdoms combined, sitting upon boundless veins of rare minerals, ancient flora, and concentrated magical energies.

The lack of these resources that led to the fighting pits was never due to a lack of supply, it was the result of a deliberate, calculating system imposed by the Menagerie’s own ruling class.

High within the hierarchical peaks of the plane sat the true lords of the plane. Beastfolk who commanded power far beyond the feral instincts of their lower brethren. This governing elite operated on a strict, meritocratic doctrine, resources were not distributed freely, nor were they wasted on the complacent. Everything was channeled exclusively toward those who demonstrated a vision for the Menagerie’s future and contributed tangible value to its sustained dominance.

To the ruling class, the beasts sent across the dimensional barrier to act as summoned pets or arena fighters were not merely unfortunate victims of human exploitation. From a broader perspective, they were viewed as a culling mechanism, a harsh trial by fire. Only those who survived the brutal crucible of human society, clawed their way to strength, and learned the intricate ways of the outside world were deemed worthy of the elite’s attention. Those who merely fought for scraps in the underground dens were playing a very small game, entirely unaware that their blood sports were being closely monitored by rulers who measured their worth in power, ambition, and the ultimate elevation of the beastfolk race.