After the night-long hunt, Zane and the rest went back to showcase their prey as well as to get a properly-deserved rest. They hauled it all by hand to show everyone how successful they were. Zane on the other hand was still of energy and seemed to be in perfect shape.
Zane noticed this odd phenomenon and decided to train as to not waste time. During his training session, Adam came along.
"It seems to start working now."
Zane glanced at Adam and using his fist destroyed the tree in front of him.
Zane then walked in front of Adam and said, "What do you mean?"
"You're finally starting to assimilate with demon's blood. It took a while but being active really does speed up the process." While Adam was talking he was still reading a book in his hand.
"So everything odd that has been happening was because of that. Anyways, where's Eve?"
Adam chuckled a little and said, "Don't worry about her, she might even be stronger than you right now when she finishes."
Adam gave Zane a bit of advice, "If I were you, I'd start speeding up. Remember that failure I told you about? Well, he heard that you were here and wants to take your emblem. Keeping that in mind, you want anything from me?"
"I want to control mana again."
"I can't really do that. It'll slow down the assimilation even further, anything else?"
"Yeah, I figured. How about some weapons?"
"Oh? Interesting choice, consider it done."
Adam then disappeared through teleportation and left behind an insurmountable amount of swords, spears, axes, shields, bows, arrows and, armor.
Zane did expect to be given a lot of weapons but he didn't think it would be this much. Nonetheless, he used his storage ring to pick it all up and continued his training until morning.
After finishing his training, he went back to where he ordered them all to cook the meat with makeshift campfires and to take turns distributing food all around.
After finishing and finally having a sustainable food source for a very long time they solidified that they all made the correct decision. Seeing this gigantic feast, the other people who decided to not join earlier regretted it and some who were more desperate asked to join.
In the end, when they were cleaning up the carcasses and their sleeping places, Zane ordered every man under him to take up arms. He brought out a lot of the weapons and gave it to every man under him.
Everyone under him gazed at the weapons that Zane just brought out. They all thought that this was some kind of a joke since each and every single weapon that Zane brought out was even better than the ones the guards were using. Realizing this was too good to be true none of them took a step forward and just stood there.
Zane was confused, he brought out weapons for his people to use but none of them were budging, "What are you guys doing? Take a weapon and learn to use it well. Right now we need to establish order. I also have some armor but I don't think any of you can wear it."
Eventually, one of the original five men that troubled Zane in the past took a step forward and took a spear. Seeing that man take the first step, everyone else took a weapon to their liking and wielded it.
Zane ordered all of them to follow him. He went to the edge of the woods and ordered the people with axes to cut down trees, those with swords and spears to cut off the branches with one slash, those with bows to use the trunks as aiming practice and those with other weapons to protect the rest from the attacks of the animals.
Only an hour into this session, the majority of the people were tired and were out of breath. There were only a few who could still go on.
Zane looked at the remaining 10 people who could still go on, "They must be the stronger people in this place. Hey, come here!
Zane made everyone take a break except for those 10 people. He brought them to a more secluded area and decided to train them personally.
"I'll teach you all Basic Martial Arts. You ten will be the elites and would be grouped together."
One of the men asked, "Can I ask? Why would we need to learn unarmed combat when we already have weapons?"
Zane lightly smiled and said, "Simple, attack me."
After a little while, they all attacked Zane all at once. In this fight, it wasn't even a battle, it was just a one-sided beating by Zane using their own attacks against them.
Looking at all the men on the ground he said, "This is why. I'll train you in an hour, rest well."
After a relaxing hour of rest, they all underwent the same treatment Zane got when Adam trained him, beating it into them.
After a day's worth of training, Zane brought a few people to go hunting with him to get more food.
The following day, Zane carried on as normal, he trained the group himself while he just left the others to familiarize themselves with weapons.
"Alright everyone, this isn't the ideal way to learn but its something. Can any of you use mana?"
Out of the people here, only three people raised their hands.
"Good enough, here grab this." Zane took a few sizable rocks and threw one at each of them.
"Using only your mana, hold it in place."
The three of them listened to Zane and tried it out. While they were trying to do so, they only managed to reach up to only 10 seconds.
"Good, keep doing this until you reach a minute. The rest of you follow me."
Zane and the other seven men went into the woods but this time it was even further in than they went to before.
Along their path laid flowers and greeny alongside scurrying small animals and a few bugs. Still staying on guard, they went further in until they managed to spot a predator. It was a relatively smaller tiger but has a dangerous feeling when seeing it. It had sharp teeth but blunt claws, seemingly contradictory but it fits its hunting style.
"This seems good enough. Everyone, drop your weapons we will be fighting this one with our bare hands. I'll prevent it from killing you but I can't stop injuries."
Finally one of them spoke out, "Aren't you getting too confident? This something that can kill us all even if we had weapons but now we have to fight it bare-handed? You may be an Underworld Envoy but you are still a kid!"
The rest looked shocked at the man that just spoke out. Everyone already knew how terrifying Zane was even if he was still just a kid but he still complained.
Zane didn't get angry instead he calmly said, "So you don't trust me? Fair enough, then you can go back. This offer stands to the rest of you if you want to go back then do it right now."
The man that just spoke still stood by his words and looked around him. There was another person who agreed with him so both of them decided to head back from this order.
"Now to the rest of you, from now on you won't be able to back off. I know that you aren't thrilled and were just in to survive but from now on I'll train you so you'll be able to handle yourselves in the future. Now let's go."
The five remaining men gathered up all their confidence and went to forward and try to kill the tiger.
The tiger stared them down like how a predator would look at prey. Suddenly, it pounced at one of the men, it bared its fangs and aimed to kill one of them in one strike. Fortunately, Zane interfered and kicked the tiger away, mildly wounding it.
Zane gave advice he managed to gather from his previous fight, "It's stronger than you, faster than you and, better than you. Think about it."
One of the men looked around and picked up a rock by the side and threw it at the tiger.
"There you go, use your environment. If it's unfavorable to you then make turn it around."
The tiger was mildly dazed by the rock and was angered by it. The tiger went forth and attacked the person who threw the rock. He dodged to the side narrowly getting ripped apart by the tiger's teeth.
Another one picked up a rock and tried to hit the tiger's eyes but missed.
"Good idea but bad execution. There are five of you while there is only one of him. Use your numbers to your advantage."
The two of them made a plan and acted upon it. One of them threw a rock and as the tiger was running towards him there was a person behind him and he had the perfect opportunity to blind the tiger. Sadly, he also missed so Zane had to go and kick the tiger back again.
"You're getting it, weaken it first then go for the kill."
The five men then talked to who will bait it out and who will shoot it. This time when they tried the same strategy it finally works and the tiger was blinded on one side. Using this to their advantage, they once again struck its other eye completely blinding it.
"Now you've made it blind, how are you going to kill it?"
They thought about it but they came to the sad conclusion, "We can't, its skin is too tough and we can't do anything with our fists and a bunch of rocks."
"You can't? Then what did I teach you yesterday? Try and use it. Be careful though, it still has its sense of smell."
They then tried to get closer to the tiger together. The fastest person among them aggravated the tiger and acted as bait so the other could land their hits. When using the technique that Zane taught them, the impact from their hits although weak ignored its tough skin and directly damaged its organs.
From the strikes, it took from all sides the tiger spat out blood meaning it had sustained internal damage and their attacks worked. Seeing this work, they once again tried this out until they managed to kill it.
"Good. Head back, I'll see you later."
After following his orders, Adam showed up from behind the tree and congratulated Zane.
"Interesting method, where did you learn that from?"
"When we were fighting that night. Their teamwork was quite troublesome so I figured it was something to think about."
"Oh? Why did you think that was good when you captured three and killed one?"
"I was working together with Eve, that's why."
"Fair enough. Speaking of Eve, she is doing extremely well. She has got the basics down and might be half as good as you right now, taking account that you had your mana."
"That's good to hear. So why are you here?"
"Just to say that you aren't training your men as efficiently as I thought you would be. As well as to remind you that you should get ready for battle."
"What do you mean?"
"That failure is coming for you."