"Nope! Complain one more time and earn yourself another lap, now keep practice shooting!"
Mohsen laid lazily on a log, under the shade of a tall tree. He didn't even have his eyes opened, just his pointy white fluffy ears were enough to keep Yilas's supervised.
"But Teach...!!" Yilas whined in a begging voice, every time she brought up the matter, Mohsen completely shut her down.
Over the week, Yilas had been training hard both physically and spiritually. Every day, Mohsen made her get up before sunrise for a long run and mountain climbing. After that, Yilas continued to learn to control her source of power, mostly focusing on using earth and wind elements which Yilas surprisingly took up without much effort. Since her physical ability couldn't possibly compete with other male beasts, Mohsen focused Yilas's practice on the long-range weaponized usage. At the current moment, Yilas was working on the aim of her wind arrows.
At first, Yilas's 21st-century mindset thought creating weapons and firearms would yield higher benefits in this world. However, after learning more about what this cultivation could do, Yilas had a different outlook. She finally understood why beast-man still heavily depend on their natural-born weapons like fangs and claws and used magic-like ability instead of inventing their own tools.
First, their physical ability was much more reliable and manageable than tools. With a decent amount of training, even a young beast could use some element, and like having their own bottled of water for energy, they were constantly aware of their level of power output. Second, since transportation was mainly by foot, carrying heavy tools and devices through the great distance between regions here proved difficult. The amount of fundamental supply one needed to make it to the closest city could already overwhelm the carrier.
There were many more reasons that persuaded Yilas to drop the idea of making her own weapon and firearm but the two were the most prominent. Instead, she focused on cultivating and learning the way of leaving like the native here.
"My arms can't even rise anymore..." Yilas grumbled lightly, though it didn't escape Mohsen's sharp ears without notice.
"CAN'T RAISE??" Mohsen immediately growled, he was laying 30-40 feet away from Yilas in an opened air environment but his voice was still as loud as it was screamed next to her ears.
"I-I... of course not, haha, I was just joking." Yilas denied awkwardly, Mohsen was always ready to scold her at any moment. Yilas had come to accept his tough-love methods of teaching.
"Come over here..." Mohsen calmly called Yilas over, though hesitated, she inched closer extremely careful.
"Closer..." Mohsen said again, under the shade of the tree, his skin looked so pale it seemed cold and transparent. If it wasn't for the regular puffing of the chest, anybody would have thought that he was a statue.
Yilas bent her knees to get her face closer to Mohsen's. Only a few inches away, Yilas could even feel his fresh breath glazing through her cheeks. Upon further inspection in the past few days, Yilas realized Mohsen was very beautiful. A gentle, elegant beauty that could pass as a girl.
His eyes were big and they were deep-set, his eyelashes were very blessed and long, just like every girl's dream. His nose was small and dainty, it especially harmonized well with his small, thin lips. With a face like this, Yilas bet her teacher would be scouted for modeling if he just walked on the street.
Distracted by Mohsen's appearance, Yilas didn't notice long white fingers coming close to her, reaching to her forehead.
*PAP!*
"Owww... why did you hit me?" Yilas instantly covered her forehead with her hands, stepping back a few steps, pouted her lips, and whined. Mohsen had flicked his fingers so hard on Yilas's forehead that she could feel her skull banging, without even looking, she knew it was going to swell up soon.
"That's for being lazy!"
Though always complained about how lazy Yilas was, Mohsen couldn't deny the fact that she had worked harder than any student he had ever trained. He was not going easy on her just because she was a female but Yilas kept up with all the exercises with her own strong will. Mohsen soon realized Yilas was not only gifted in power but also mentally capable, she could endure great hardship and overcome herself quickly, showing her great potential in energy cultivation.
Within 7 days' time, Yilas had made more progress than a regular beast in a whole year, maybe even more. The first few nights, Mohsen had lost some sleep because he was up thinking about what kind of monster he had created out of her. However, Mohsen ended up persuading himself that if he left a natural talent like that gone to waste, he would felt guilt to Madam Mame for the rest of his life. Moreover, deep down inside him had another reason, Mohsen just hadn't come to terms with that feeling just yet so he ignored and suppressed it like he usually did with all of his other emotions. Unknowingly it would only lead to his own exhaustion later on.
"Now get back to work before I cut your diner portion!" Mohsen scolded.
Like a wounded puppy, Yilas pouted her lips and went back to her training spot, focused on practicing. Only a few minutes later, a familiar voice had screamed out her name from afar, freezing Yilas frozen in the middle of the desert field.
"THERE YOU ARE!"
Without even looking, both Mohsen and Yilas knew who was the owner of the voice, they reluctantly watched the man getting closer and closer. Especially Yilas who was quickly shrinking smaller and smaller.
"What are you doing here, Zassar?" Mohsen grunted in his throat, the horse beast had been an annoyance since he attached himself to Yilas. He had been interrupting their lessons whenever he had the chance which bothered the heck out of Mohsen. Therefore, the two of them had tried to avoid Zassar as much as they could these days.
"Of course I am here to see my lovely Yilas." After grunting an answer back to Mohsen, Zassar immediately did a 180 and turned smiling, even the tone of his voice changed higher and sweeter when addressing Yilas. He shouted to Yilas from afar. "YOU HAVE WORKED HARD, YILAS! I BROUGHT YOU SOME FRUITS!"