The king ape laughed heartily as he enjoyed suppressing Solanky in this battle, and the cracks on his armor kept increasing. Solanky then came across a body enhancement technique that masked all amplification techniques that weren't native to the forsaken realm by making them look like native beast enhancement techniques. This technique was the second of the two techniques he obtained from his predecessors of the ghost claw team. The technique seemed to have been created by a powerful transcendent entity with beastly strength and abilities comparable to the first venerable one, but it was incomplete with only two volumes.
The first practitioner was popularly known as the Beast Emperor, and legends had it that it survived an all-out attack from the first venerable one, the right-hand entity of the forsaken god, one of the most powerful transcendent entities in the beyond realm and the number in the forsaken realm. The beast emperor's abilities were too dazzling, and being an evolved ferrous beast, he scribed down all his cultivation paths and how he achieved his level of comprehension of the ancestral beast transformation arts.
The ancestral beast transformation arts had a total of two layers and paths. The first layer focused on the will and spirit of beings below the transcendent entity to enable them to transcend the shackles of the beyond realm and enable them to witness the secrets of the beyond realm and why certain things are forbidden to beings below the transcendent level. The first layer could be easily practiced by beings who were born naturally as beasts, and no other being could practice it.
The second layer aided in the physical body's amplification, and it could be practiced by any being who had practiced any amplification. The second layer had two phases. The first was breaking down the essences in one's being, reverting them back to the mortal stage, making it a very dangerous technique to practice, as once one is killed during the temporal mortal stage, they perish forever with no chance of reviving, but when they succeed in the first phase, they are said to become invincible to other beings of the same level. The breakdown of the essences enables the practitioners to generate their own essence, which doesn't rely on the outside world to operate. And the second was to boost one's already practiced amplification, but it had to resonate with the beast path.
During this stage the second phase immediately begins, as they are tasked with reshaping and refining their new pure essences, which transcended the boundaries of the world they were created or born in. For a peak-stage entity who has practiced the second layer of this technique, their bodies' and all-out strength soar to the early stages of the transcendent entity level. The king ape continued his relentless attacks on Solanky, shattering bits of his armor, and he seemed to enjoy how powerless Solanky felt before his newly gained power now.
Solanky was kicked hard into a nearby towering tree, which snapped into two upon impact. Solanky looked at the king ape and smiled, then formed seals with his hands. The moment the last seal was formed, his battle armor seemed to melt away and was replaced with new armor, which looked exactly the same as the damaged one, which only provided him protection without any amplification to his strength, which was very crucial at this point. During the time the king ape kept attacking him, inside his internal world space, Solanky had coalesced an avatar with his world energies, and with the help of his defying flames and a leaf from one of the transcendent grasses, he began experimenting and refining several forsaken battle armors just to amplify the basic strength by several levels to help his forsaken disguise contend with stronger beings below the transcendent level whose power ranged between 500,000 and 800,000 times the power of an infinite source god.
The armor began covering every part of Solanky's disguise-forsaken body. As the armor was manifesting on his body, the king ape stood there in shock as he sensed that the power of Solanky in this new armor was steadily climbing to meet his current power. The king ape became thrilled, as he could now fight with an equal opponent; the armor completely covered Solanky's entire body. He stood beneath the snapped tree trunk like a battle beast with a tail behind him and claws on each finger. Solanky deliberately refined the armor in this beast man form to fight brutally and convince the lurking, observing transcendent beings that he was truly a practitioner of the ancestral beast transformation technique.
Solanky then adjusted his armor's power to 770,000 times, and then he dashed towards the ape-like ferocious beast, pouncing on its prey. For the first time the king ape felt danger like a deadly inescapable sword was hung above his neck. And that fear could be seen in his posture and movement, which made the lurking transcendent beings observing this battle convinced that Solanky truly practiced and manifested the ancestral beast transformation arts and that he was using the first layer of the technique, which influenced the willpower of any being challenging the wielder.
But it wasn't so because the technique he just used was a technique Elisa used whenever she was getting ready to ruthlessly crush her opponent in her true dragon form. Solanky appeared directly above the king ape, and then he slashed down with his claws; the king ape, seeing this, threw a punch to meet the claw strike head-on. The moment they collided, the ground, which was several millions of times harder than diamonds on earth, shattered like glass, with a 50 km deep crater formed at the position where the king ape received the blow.
The king ape felt his arm going numb after the collision and knew that he stood no chance against Solanky. Scared of losing his dear life, he put aside his pride and accepted defeat: "I concede I am no match for you. I will protect the travelers per our agreement. But I need a favor from you."
Solanky, who was about to deliver another claw strike to him, halted and listened intently. "I can sense the aura of the ancestral beast in your attacks now. Can you pass on the technique to me? And I promise to not only guide the travelers to the temple, but I will also help pass this forest mission and grant you a map of every space and how you can meet with your other teammates through secret portals within the forest."
Solanky nodded and handed over a crystal ball, which contained the ancestral beast transformation technique, to the king ape. The king ape, seeing Solanky offering the technique without hesitation, now saw him in a new light. The king ape reverted back into his giant ape form and stored the crystal ball into his internal space. He then took out a scaly scroll, which was tied with a green seal and exuded a faint mysterious aura. Solanky opened the seal to check the content of the scaly scroll, but the king ape stopped him and sent a voice transmission to him not to open the scroll in the forest, as it could complicate things for him whenever the transcendent beings find it.
Solanky quickly resealed the scroll and stored it in his internal world and walked back to the travelers and summoned the shield, which protected them within. The moment the shield disappeared, the little girl with the candy ran towards Solanky and stretched her hands, waiting for Solanky to pick her up. Solanky sighed and carried her, with the king ape trailing behind them. The little girl looked at the king ape and stuck her tongue out to tease the king ape while waving the candy at him. The king ape snorted and looked away. Solanky lifted the little one and patted her head, then told them he had to part ways with them now and their safety was rest assured with the king ape being their guide, for no beast or bandits would dare attack them.
Solanky then placed the little girl down and tossed out a beautifully crafted wooden box crafted from the bark of a peak entity level world tree whose canopy alone spanned 3.5 million light-years towards the king ape. And told him to check its contents with his spiritual energy, the king ape caught the box with his mental power. The king ape was astonished the moment his power caught the wooden box; he immediately realized the quality and rarity of the wooden box, and what his mental power detected made him smile and bow to show his appreciation to Solanky.
(A.N.: One must know that beings at the entity level all have exceptional mental power, which they can use to manipulate the world around them, but mental power in battle against a being of the same level is completely negligible because at that level every action and intent is guided by precise mental power and spiritual energy alone. In battle at that level, they crumble because of three forces struggling to gain control of the laws of that area they find themselves in. And these forces are the being, their opponent, and absolute primal laws themselves, which behave as a neutral force to prevent both sides from collapsing and shattering the world. In order to achieve it, it suppresses all beings at and below the transcendent entity level. Only granting transcendent beings temporal control of the laws in the beyond realm, which are mostly abstracts waiting to be implemented or manifested over time or by a great being.)
In the wooden box were pills refined with the residue of already refined transcendent grasses of eternity. For beasts like the king ape, such pills were delicious delicacies for him, which were pleasant to consume and increased his physical body's resilience and deepened his foundations.