Literature / Savage Divinity

A modern man finds himself reincarnated in the body of a young slave with no skills and quickly fading memories. Follow his journey to find normalcy while living in a savage world, filled with myth and legends, monsters and Demons. In a land where the strong rule, the weak serve, and bloodshed is a way of life, peace is a luxury few can afford.

Savage Divinity is a Fantasy Web Serial Novel written by RuffWriter.

The series can also be read here. It is complete as of Sept. 23, 2022.

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This show provides examples of:

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The act of Honing a spiritual weapon causes this effect.
• Action Girl: Female soldiers are rarer than male soldiers in the Empire. The Bekhai are the exception with plenty of examples among the cast.
• Apocalypse How: Some of the Defiled wish to bring about a Class 6, as they believe the next life is better than the current one.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Pure Heavenly Energy can transform into matter, create new bodies and even reverse the effects of aging if not grant biological immortality with enough of it.
• Arbitrarily Large Bank Account: Rustram handles most of Rain's expenses but Rain must have a large income to keep affording to outfit all his soldiers, and keep running food shelters, an orphanage, and a school at the wall.
• Awful Wedded Life: Fung was going to become a victim of this due to his arranged marriage. He was saved from this fate thanks to the inadvertent actions of the Bekhai, specifically Rain.
• Ax-Crazy: All Defiled have shades of this, it just comes down to how well they can control their blood lust.
• Big Eater: All beings that can cultivate Heavenly Energy, be they human, half-beast, or beast, eat much more than those that can't.
• Big Fun: Mafu is the Roosequin poster-boy for this trope.
• Blood Magic: Blood compasses are chi devices that can track a person whose blood was added to it. Its method of creation is a closely guarded secret known only to a few groups.
• Cast from Calories: Healing works this way, converting excess body mass in order to heal the wounds.
• The Corruption: Defiled can all wield chi and grow in power quickly with aid from the Spectres, gaining power the more they become defiled.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: Rain gained the title of The Mother's Chosen Son, complete with defiled cleansing action provided by Blobby.
• A Day in the Limelight: Several chapters show the POVs of other characters.
• Death World: The world outside the Azure Sea Empire is different kinds of inhospitable, with frozen wasteland in the north, volcanic wasteland in the south, and desert wasteland in the west.
• The Determinator: Rain gained the title of "The Undying Savage" partly because he refuses to die and give up in combat.
• Dire Beast: All beasts that cultivate Heavenly Energy are larger than their mundane counterparts.
  • Some beasts are born with the ability to cultivate, and as such, they have no mundane counterpart. An example would be the Roosequin.
• Double Jump: Some Martial Warriors can do this, and it's called Cloud Stepping.
• Elemental Powers: It is possible for people to develop this after experiencing an Awakening. These abilities are called Blessings. They are further divided into several sub-categories.
  • Primal Blessings consist of the four classical elements: Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water.
  • Auxiliary Blessings come from the combination of two Primal Blessings. The known Blessings of this type are: Metal (Earth+Fire), Wood (Earth+Water), Sand (Earth+Wind), Ice (Fire+Water), Lightning (Fire+Wind), Cloud (Wind+Water), and Smoke (Earth+Fire).
  • There is a third sub-category called Esoteric Blessings. The known Blessings of this type are: Space, Sound, Shadow, and Sun.
• Emotion Bomb: Some people can cause fear in others by creating a Aura. Fewer people can instill emotions through their voice.
• Enemy Within: The Spectres are this, causing the people they inhabit to be more and more depressed, angry, and irrational, whittling away at their sanity until the they become Defiled. They aren't always successful, as it also depends on the environment and the will of the person they are trying to affect, among other things.
• Enigmatic Empowering Entity: Blobby has given Rain a variety of abilities, but won't answer questions or concerns because it is a water droplet.
• Eye Scream: Happens a few times in series, the most notable is Husolt who has been blinded in one eye and refuses to have it healed.
• Fantastic Caste System: The Empire has one which is based on where you come from. On the top is everyone from the Eastern Province. Everyone in that province is either related to the ruling elite, or serve it. Next is the Central Province, which is closest to the Eastern Province and treats the other provinces that aren't the Eastern Province as lower class. Last are the remaining Northern, Western, and Southern Provinces, which act as the front lines against the Defiled.
• Fantastic Racism: Half Beasts are treated like this by most citizens of the Empire.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Azure Sea Empire borrows a lot from Asian cultures, particularly Chinese culture.
• Figure It Out Yourself: This is how much of the teaching of higher level techniques works, as everyone understands the Martial Dao differently. Justified as actually trying to teach someone else exactly how one performs their techniques can end up not helping at best, or detrimentally affecting their Martial Dao at worst.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Rain has a tendency of giving his many pets, some of which are terrifying creatures in normal circumstances, rather cute or ridiculous names.
• Forbidden Zone: The lands beyond the Empire that most of the Defiled call home.
• Friend to All Living Things: Ping Ping, despite being an ancient giant turtle, goes out of her way not to hurt anyone and has rabbits sleeping on her shell on occasion.
• Geometric Magic: There are runes which can be applied to objects to give them different effects. People who can do so are rather rare, and thus, valuable.
• Girly Girl: Mei Lin comes off this way to most people at a first glance.
• Hair-Raising Hare: Mama Bun is this to the rest of Rain's pets, and to anyone else who draws her ire.
• Honor Before Reason: Deconstructed. Bows are looked down upon as weapons for peasants, so many Martial Warriors would never think to use them in battles, despite the fact that it would give them a massive advantage when fighting the Defiled. The Bekhai are the only ones who seem see the benefits of a good bowman on the battlefield.
  • The usage of tricks, like utilizing poison or oil to burn enemies, is also looked down upon as dishonorable.
• The Horde: The Defiled are this.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Guiding allows Martial Warriors to do this with spiritual weapons.
• Kill It with Water: Heavenly Water is effective against Spectres, Demons, and Demon derived commodities.
• Killer Rabbit: Aurie and Rain had to learn this the hard way with Mama Bun.
• Little Bit Beastly: Ancestral Beasts, and by extension their half beast children, have ears, tails and other features of their heritage.
• Longevity Treatment: Martial Practitioners get the benefit of slowed aging because of cultivating Heavenly Energy. Humans can live to about a hundred years, only experiencing physical debilitation near the end.
• Lost Technology: The Walls that protect the Empire were created long ago; so long that everyone has forgotten how to make them. This poses a problem when they are breached by the Defiled. Thankfully, Rain has developed concrete, which is a step in the right direction to rediscovering how to create the Walls.
• Loyal Animal Companion: Rain has a whole menagerie including Wildcats, Bears, Birds and Roosequins.
• Medieval Stasis: In the Azure Empire, change is slow at best, and resisted at worst.
• Magic Enhancement: Reinforcement strengthens muscles with chi, and with enough concentration and energy can exponentially increase strength.
• Mental World: Martial Warriors who can create one, called a Natal Palace, are considered Experts. The ones who go beyond that by manifesting it in the physical world, called a Domain, are Peak Experts.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Downplayed. Martial Warriors are much stronger than their appearances would suggest, but physical fitness is still a factor in how strong one is.
• Mutually Assured Destruction: Divinities adhere to the Treaty, which is described in Chapter 350 as an agreement between the Empire and creatures of power which keeps everyone in check through threat of mutually assured destruction. This is because Divinities have a high chance of destroying more than they intend to when going all out.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Many Martial Warriors have them but the "Smiling Slaughterer" Guan Suo is in a league all his own, with stories of his slaughter and battles echoing through the Empire's elite.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: Carnagators live in the waters of the Northern Province. They are several ton monstrosities with tough hides and a penchant for eating anything that touches the water.
• No-Sell: Rain can shrug off his opponent's aura without one of his own. While everyone else without an aura cowers under an oppressive aura, Rain is capable of reacting and fighting back, a feat thought impossible before.
  • It is later stated that animals can also do this.
• Noble Savage: The Bekhai come to be viewed this way by the Northern Province.
• Of the People: The Bekhai translates to this word for word.
• Our Spirits Are Different: Spectres are incorporeal, like to gather in droves, cannot be sensed by normal beings, seek to corrupt any sentient being, and have a universal goal of causing as much suffering and destruction as possible.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Any Ancestral Beast is capable of slaughtering armies single-handedly.
• Physical God: People who've Shattered the Void are considered Divinities. Those who have done this can only be handled by their fellow Divinities.
• Playful Otter: Roosequins are of the giant, bipedal, apex predator variety.
• Power at a Price: Spectres give small bits of power to tainted in hopes that they continue to crave the Spectres until they surrender and become a demon.
• Pure Energy: Heavenly Energy can come from either natural sources or purified Spectre remains.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Rain's retinue consists of crippled soldiers, bandits, slaves, and an elite group of turtle guards.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: The world of Savage Divinity runs on this in spades. Chances are, if someone is of a higher position, then they can, and will, enforce it.
• Razor Wind: An expert at chi manipulation can create and shoot a blade of chi, but it is a rare skill.
• Ring of Power: The runic rings won by the Bekhai youths at the competition allow the user to draw in Heavenly Energy much faster than normal allowing for faster recovery of chi and training speed.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Some people, usually arrogant nobles, rely on their friendships or family relations to get what they want.
• Sea Monster: Krakens are just what lie just outside coastal waters of the Empire. Even more terrifying creatures live further out.
• Shockwave Clap: One of the Chi skills that Martial Warriors is called Reverberation. This allows one to create shockwaves to attack opponents. It can invade the body of an enemy that doesn't know how to counter it.
• Shout-Out: Rain's memories of his past life include all kinds of pop culture trivia. He ends up saying or thinking them at times, even if he no longer remembers what they actually mean.
  • In Chapter 35, Rain thinks that maybe the reason Sumila is so strong is because she eats spinach.
  • In Chapter 48, after successfully hunting a rabbit, Rain chuckles to himself while thinking: "Fatality."
    • The chapter also reveals that when Rain needed to make a symbol for his medicine, he chose the side profile of a bow-tie wearing bunny.
  • Rain gives BoShui advice in Chapter 281 by telling him: "He who rules with his left, rules the world".
  • In Chapter 389, Rain imagines that if bugs ever learned how to use Chi and turned into hive-minded monstrosities hell-bent on scouring humanity from existence, he'd rename his retinue to the Roughnecks and tell everyone to aim for the nerve stem.
  • In Chapter 440, Rain thinks about possible ways to use Blessings and one of his thoughts is the possibility of a super powerful Warrior out there carrying a giant gourd full of sand or something.
  • In Chapter 445, Rain sings a song from The Princess and the Frog while in his Natal Palace.
  • In Chapter 454, Chen Hongji thinks upon words of wisdom from his father.
    "Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer".
  • In Chapter 463, Rain cheers himself up after having all his Spiritual Weapons destroyed by quoting a meme from Game of Thrones in his head.
    Gods I was strong then. Khishigs on an open field, Ned!
  • Chapter 524 starts with Rain thinking: I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
  • In Chapter 542, after Gerel says Rain lacks faith, Rain responds by saying: "Would you say you find my lack of faith disturbing?"
  • In Chapter 545, after being stabbed by Shen ZhenWu's Seneschal, Rain quotes Thanos.
    "You should’ve gone for the head."
  • When Rain tries thinking of a plan to deal with the Imperial assassins after him in Chapter 555, he decides to use the D.E.N.N.I.S system.
  • In Chapter 600, Rain thinks of Inception when contemplating dreams and ideas, but only remembers the name and not why he associated the word with those concepts.
  • Yan picks up the title of Sanguine Whirlwind in Chapter 603. It is both in honor of her grandfather and inspired from hearing Rain quote Hosea 8:7.
  • Rain misquotes William Shakespeare in Chapter 618 in response to being made Legate.
    “Heavy lies the head which wears the crown.”
  • In Chapter 633, Rain thinks on words of Albert Einstein when thinking about The Power of Love.
    Love is power, because it multiplies the best we have and allows humanity not to be extinguished in their blind selfishness. For love, we live and die. Love is the Heavens, and the Heavens is love.
  • In Chapter 684, Rain thinks upon the words of Rocky Balboa when motivating himself.
    It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.
    • He also quotes Shang Tsung once he realizes what Devouring Spectres really means.
      So when I devour Spectres, I am absorbing souls, and somehow making them a part of my own. Ha. Your soul is mine.
  • In Chapter 693, Rain attempts to intimidate his opponents by quoting Rorschach, but it falls flat.
    "I’m not locked in here with you. You’re all locked in here with me!"
  • When sparring with Rustram in Chapter 717, he remembers a quote from Bruce Lee.
    Be formless, shapeless like water, a thought that sparks a distant memory of something from my past life.
    Put water in a cup, it becomes the cup.
    Put water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle.
    Put water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot.
    Be water. Be adaptable. Be flexible.
  • In Chapter 733, he Sends Techno Syndrome to his would be assassins to disorientate them.
    “MORTAL KOMBAT!!”
  • In Chapter 776, one of Rain's Natal Souls channels his inner Obi-Wan and Sidious.
    "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." [...] "UNLIMITED POWER!!!!"
  • In Chapter 783, Rain fires Chi bullets at a Demonic Divinity while shouting: "SUP-PRES-SING FIREEEEEEEE!"
  • In Chapter 793, Rain imitates Darth Vader's Big "NO!" after learning that his biological father is the leader of a group of Half-Demons.
  • In Chapters 805-806, Rain ends up weaponizing various memes and pop culture references against Zhen Shi.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: Martial Warriors and Defiled alike learn a set of movements called The Forms to create their own martial arts. Combined with Chi, this gives them supernatural fighting abilities. This consists of being able to hit harder and move faster to being able to air jump and send shockwaves through your opponent, and much more.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: No matter how revolutionary his ideas are, Rain is only one man going up against millennia of tradition. As such, it takes time for most, if not all, of his plans to get off the ground and gain traction.
• Switching P.O.V.: The story primarily follows Rain but often shifts to the perspective of other characters, from secondary characters to one-off characters with little influence.
• This Is My Boomstick: Rain outfits his retinue with spring loaded versions after giving the idea to Mila.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: The nobles of Central place more attention on how many outfits they have, and how gaudy they are than the nobles of other provinces.
• Unwanted Assistance: Charity is generally disdained in the Empire, with many only taking it grudgingly or when truly desperate.
• Waif-Fu: Mei Lin gets special mention for this.
• We ARE Struggling Together: The various factions of the Empire will fight to keep out the Defiled... usually at the expense of other factions.
  • The various Imperial families from the Eastern Province are even worse with this, as their feuds will include manipulating, or even sacrificing, hundreds of millions of people from the other provinces.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When Luo Luo is introduced as Rain's concubine we are immediately treated to POVs of her eager to meet her brave and powerful new husband who she hopes to one day fall in love with, but Rain despite treating the vast majority of the cast kindly immediately decides to treat her like trash and his harem are jealous of her beauty and decide to bully her too. Practically the whole main cast sees this kind and hard working woman and bring her to tears in every scene she shows up in.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: As Spectres turn people defiled, this is the usual case the further they sink into the Spectres' influence. If they surrender to the Spectres and become a full Demon, then their mind is locked away entirely in madness and torture.

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