“What the hell is going on here?” I said, stunned, looking at the pup on my bed.

Surprised would be an understatement regarding the shock of finding this pup inside my bedroom. The glowing eyes and the overbearing pressure this mut was exuding were a real eye-opener.

The pup's eyes, which exuded a blue and golden light hue, looked fantastic, but he was apprehensive, making it hard for me to get closer to him to take a better look. His demeanor was as if he knew he had done something wrong but pretended not to know. My screaming and cursing probably startled him, causing his apprehension and the exertion of pressure. This crazy pup used it more than anything as a defensive mechanism.

“Hey boy, no need to feel threatened. I know I might have overreacted a little just now,” I said gently, pushing the door open.

The pup kept staring at me with wary eyes. He was trying to figure out what I was up to.

I slowly walked into the room, step by step, not wanting to alarm the pup any more than it already was. I made my movements slow and steady to make sure he knew I meant him no harm.

“Boy, let's bring this situation to a close,” I said, trying to calm him down. I felt that this mutt understood what I was telling him, but for some reason, I couldn't understand why.

“I made the mistake of leaving you alone, and you took advantage of that by clearing out my kitchen like a fox inside a hen house,” I told him as I walked towards the bed.

The pup stared intently at me, but his overbearing pressure became less aggressive.

“Boy, don’t worry. I’m not going to do anything to you. Especially now that I know you’re not a regular pup,” I said as I got closer to him near the bed.

By this time, the pup’s pressure was gone, but he still was a little wary about the whole thing. I got to bed and sat down next to him. He kept his big puppy eyes on me, but I could sense his demeanor changing from guarded to more relaxed.

As I continued talking to him, I started petting him on the head and stroking his ears as if letting him know we were cool. After about five minutes, the pup suddenly got up and jumped from my bed. He walked to the door, proceeded to lift up his hind leg, and peed on the door frame. He looked back at me, and his eyes said it all: “That's right, I did it. Got anything to say about it?” He then walked out the door and down the stairs.

“This freaking dog,” was all that I could mutter before following him to the first floor.

“This thing is not an animal at all; it is a freaking Stellar Beast,” I thought as I walked down the stairs.

“But how? The gate was blown up many centuries ago, so we don’t have an active gate where wild beasts can be found, and I’d be amazed if someone just threw him away.” I kept thinking, trying to figure out how the beast came to be.

“It’s weird. I can’t come up with any logical reason why it would have ended up here by itself other than someone throwing him away or him escaping.”

“But even if it escaped, he would have already been tracked down by its owner from the neuro link formed at the time of the stellar bond. So, its whereabouts should be easy to track,” I told myself.

I couldn’t figure it out, and the more I thought about it, the more baffled I was.

“I don’t know where you came from, boy, but for now, you can spend your time here with me if you choose,” I said to the mutt, who was now lying on top of my couch again.

He looked up as if he did not understand what I said.

“Hmm, would it be possible to form a bond with this beast? I haven’t tried it since I was back on Earth,” I told myself.

I looked at the canine-looking beast on my couch, and I couldn’t help but get the idea in my head to try and bond with it.

“I don’t know if this will work since my sensory cortex was damaged back then, but there should be no danger in trying, I hope,” I told myself as I squatted next to the pup.

“Here we go.”

I proceeded to calm my mind as I tried to enter my sensory perception. This was the area in the brain where you could form a bond with a stellar beast. The more developed your sensory cortex, the more advanced your perception area will be. This allowed you to bond with the more advanced stellar beasts and share more of the beast traits with you.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

After about 5 minutes, my consciousness drifted into my sensory perception zone. Surprisingly, it was more extensive and highly developed than I last remembered.

“What in god's green earth is this?” I said as I looked at my perception zone.

The area was far more advanced and more prominent than I remember. It was as if it had grown ten times as big.

“Shit, how the hell did it get like this?” I thought.

The next thing that popped into my head was the groups that had hunted me back home on Earth. If they found out that not only did I survive but that, on top of that, my sensor cortex underwent an extensive upgrade, they would stop at nothing to capture me and kill me.

“Fuck I need to keep this under lock and key for as long as I live. I can’t let anyone know, or it's going to be my ass on the sling,” I said as I observed my perception zone.

“Alright, let's start this test to figure out if this is all just for show,” I told myself as I started the bonding process.

Small waves of energy started to ripple out of my head as my perception started encompassing the area around me. This was like how Bluetooth technology worked in the past.

The ripples reach out like radio signals over a certain distance, and if a stellar beast is nearby, it will either accept or decline the invitation from the ripples. If it agrees to the power, its consciousness will travel to your sensory zone, manifesting as an illusory image of the beast. Depending on the level of the stellar beast, it can be a mirror image, a more advanced image of itself, and on rare occasions, as noted in some of the old war journals, they can also manifest in humanoid form.

That is where a more advanced sensory cortex comes into play. The more advanced your cortex is, the higher a beast you can bond with. Most humans today have a regular to slightly better sensory cortex. Only very few have an advanced or titan-level cortex. Those with these types of cortexes are highly valued and highly sought after.

As my sensory perception traveled out, the pup lying on the couch next to me perked its ear up as if noticing something peculiar. It picked up its head and looked at me, perplexed, trying to figure out what I was doing. It then inched closer to me and gently rested the top of his head against my forehead.

Suddenly, a bright flash engulfed the room before an illusory image of the pup, but much older, appeared in my sensory zone. Its eyes were still two-colored, but its fur had turned from black and white to golden and blue. Its presence gave off a majestic vibe.

“U underling of me?” enquired the beast as it approached.

“Shit, this thing can talk,” I told myself stunned. I was shocked that this thing was intelligent enough to talk.

“I teach u skills and knowledge. U give Ve’zak food,” it said as it approached me.

By now, the changes from the young pup to this older version were very apparent. In addition to the changing color of the fur, it was also quite tall, standing on four legs.

This had never occurred to me, even when I was back on earth. I had bonded with a few stellar beasts on Earth, but none like this. Dam, this was all new to me.

“You want to bond with me,” I said cautiously. I never imagined that I would be able to talk to a beast.

“Wait a second, isn’t a talking beast something out of myth? There were reports in the historical accounts of talking beasts, but none had ever been verified, and here this beast talked, and it even called itself Ve’zak. Shit, what's going in on here,” I asked myself, now more confused than excited.

“Yes, bond, me Ve’zak and u Cuxuc,” it said, and immediately, a cone-like vortex about a foot in length appeared in front of me of my face. It was golden in color and stood still, spinning in place about a foot away from me.

The pup kept staring at me as if waiting for me to do something, but I was still in shock over the whole thing. Seeing that I wasn’t reacting, the beast snarled.

“Cuxuc need life print, hurry,” it said hastily, seeming somewhat bothered by now.

“Life print?”

“What the hell is life print,” I thought to myself.

“Life print, a print of my life, as in a map or picture? Could it be talking about my DNA?”

I looked at the pup and proceeded to draw out a drop of my blood which then got sucked into the golden vortex.

“Good!” exclaimed the beast as the vortex spun faster until it looked like a small tornado. Then, the golden light started to turn crimson red. Suddenly, the crimson tornado spun so fast that it turned into a blood-red mist that split in two, flying toward me and the beast.

The mist entered my brain, and suddenly, I felt a rush of emotions and a lot of information flood my head. It was as if a whole new world had opened up to me. The first thing I recalled was the name Ve’zak.

In the Beast Realm, these creatures were called Ve’zak. But to me, they resembled the wolf breed Canis Lupus Ligoni, or as they were referred to back on earth, the Himalayan wolf.

“Cuxuc deal done. Get Ve’zak food, starving,” said the pup as I snapped back to reality from hearing his voice.

I looked at him and realized that we had established a bond. This bond was more personal than any of the previous ones I had done. I could see some of his memories and also some of his skills.

“Ve’zak is a weird name to pronounce in public,” I told the pup after realizing that if I got questioned over the name, I wouldn’t be able to explain it. So, it was best to name this pup something more inconspicuous.

“I’m going to call you Lupus, and you can call me Daemon,” I told him.

It looked at me but didn’t blink or say anything. I was pretty sure it did not understand my words just now.

“Lupus, this is what I will call you from now on. You can call me Daemon when we speak inside the sensory space, but remember that you cannot speak to anyone else who is not me,” I said.

It looked bewildered.

“Cuxuc, not happy? Call you Daemon, happy?” it said in a confused tone. Then, it went on to ask.

“New name for Ve’zak, Lupus?”