I looked at the potential witness, and I looked at her up and down. Then I quickly took my bladed whip and cleanly pushed it through the eye into her brain, instantly killing her before she could even react. I took my collar back, and I looked down at the dead bodies around me. I watched as Kitty looked at it, a little shocked. "Come on, we can go deeper. You are all getting better at fighting," I told them, grinning at the thought of them soon breaking through.
To be fair, I had no idea if my cute tigers would break through soon, but they were the equivalent of a C-ranked adventure. However, they needed that last push. They needed their beast cores, which was something they had to develop on their own, which is why higher-ranked beast tamers would tame more powerful beasts, but it also increased risk. My loyal little tigers thought of me as their mother, and they would not kill their own mother without me abusing them. This is why I allowed them to watch me sleep, which I would never do with a tamed beast that I captured and trained.
Beasts, even when intelligent, were different from humans who were trained. Humans can be trained out of their instinct by society. Many realize that unless they want to move into the wilderness, they have a social contract they have to abide by. This contract was something that I had ignored and did not care about, both in this life and my last. That did not mean that society NEEDED that contract. Because if the contract was left unused or unfulfilled, then people rebel.
People like me are born when the social contract is ignored by those with power, which was not something happening from what I saw in this world. The current social contract was that we keep the monsters away while you pay taxes. They were important, but ultimately, it came down to working, surviving, having a family, and feeding them. Don't work, you die, simple.
This is why Slaves are bound even more by this contract than most would believe. They start getting mindsets that bind them to that role. If a Security guard thinks of themselves as a Cop, they will act like a cop and go around pretending to be a cop and rule whatever area they control like a cop. But if you treat them like a nobody, and they think they are nobody, they will start to act like nobody. Mindsets were extremely potent weapons to the human psyche. The best show of that was my home country when I was in my previous world.
Criminals in that country were jailed like no other country in the world. All it took was one time being in jail, and you were forced into a life of crime. You had a record now, and any employer would pick a person without a jail record over the person with a record. So, people outside of prison and jail would treat them like criminals even if they paid their dues for that crime. So they could no longer feed themselves, and in order to live, they would have to commit crimes. Then, they would get caught again and would be put in jail or prison. Inside prisons, they would be treated like criminals and/or Animals. Sometimes, it is even worse than animals. Whether they deserve that or not, they would start to act like animals even if they were mostly a good person out in society beforehand. Why?
To survive in an environment where everyone is treated as an animal, you have to be an animal to survive.
So they would leave prison or jail, and everyone would continue to treat them that way, and so the cycle of a criminal will never be fixed.
You treat people the way you want them to act. If you want them to act respectfully, treat them as if they deserve respect. If you want them to be a dog, treat them like a dog. If you want them to be slaves, treat them like slaves, and if you want someone to be a person, treat them like a person. These are the fundamentals of Slave training.
First, you break them down, then treat them the way you want them to act. Watching as Kitty came up for scratches, I could tell she did not even think about the fact that this was a humiliation for a normal person. This was no way to treat someone out in the open, but now she was purring like a kitty. It was simple, although it took time to do so because I only treated her as I expected her to act, along with discipline.
Which is not the same as beasts.
Beasts had their own nature, and you could train them. Make them do things for you, but they are still beasts in the end. They will test you from time to time, and you better be able to meet and succeed in that challenge to your authority, or it would kill you for that authority. Add intelligence with that beast instinct and urges, and you have a recipe for disaster when you least expect it,
Then again, I paused, and I wondered.
My cute Tigers are not weak. I have had them for years, and I thought it would only take a year or two for them to develop a core. Their parents had cores; they were powerful animals in the Northern Beastal mountains. So why had they not developed their cores? It does not make sense to me now that I am thinking about it.
I had put them so much on the back burner that I never thought to check their beast core development, as they should have one by now. In fact, it would be weirder if they did not have a beast core by now. "Zara, Rajah, Ariel, Come here when you are finished clearing this room," I ordered, and I watched them as Ariel leaped in at the last moment, tearing out another Minotaur neck open and dodging the strike of the other. The room was large, and the Minotaur was in a group of ten working together.
It was interesting to watch as they problem-solved together to kill the tigers. I did not even need to give orders this time around. Their teamwork was still just a little off, but they were getting close to perfection. As I watched, these high C-ranked monsters fell with missing muscles, throats, and eyes. They had been killed from their weak points, and now I had three happy Tigers coming up to me while Kitty looked lonely in the back.
"Zara, Rajah, Ariel, line up, sit for inspection," I ordered, and they all sat down like dogs being told to sit, waiting for inspection. TI was an old order that I had not used in a while, and it was good that they remembered. I reached out and used my energy to see what was happening, and my eyes widened.
I moved to check each, and my eyes widened more.
Their beast cores were thick, vibrant smoke, almost into a solid core of mana. They were on the brink of breaking through and making very strong beast cores. Zara was the closest, with Ariel being next, followed by Rajah, who seemed to be just the tiniest bit slower than his sisters, and I grinned.
At this point, they only needed a bit more time or a catalyst to break through. Then, it would be full peak C-ranked beasts with only the need for some form of enlightenment for them to break through. But they would be intelligent at that point. Completely able to talk to me.
Excitement brewed in me.
I wonder what my Tigers will say to me after they gain human speech.
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Hey Everyone,
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