After a refreshing sleep and feeling extremely energetic after waking up, Thiago left the inner world with Faye, who had also woken up at that time, and had breakfast with Faye outside in the cave, after which Thiago also transformed into his beast from that moment on, as it somehow felt more natural in the forest.
Thiago did not lead them directly deeper into the forest, as the beasts there would be too strong for the current Faye, and for Thiago it did not matter anymore, as he was already the strongest in this forest, so it really did not matter where he would train.
Suddenly, Thiago communicated with Faye to stop them, as he could sense a beast that was naturally weak in his eyes, but perfect for Faye to train with.
As he quickly scanned it with his Eternal Eyes of Truth, he already knew the basic information of the beats that looked like a regular large ape.
It was called Apekin and was not a particular strong race as its fighting capabilities were not that great nevertheless, they could easily get angered and would promptly attack whatever irritated the without bothering to check their winning chances.
This certain Apekin before them was at the 4th Tier of the Student realm which was three small stages higher than Faye.
In addition, the Apekin had the same Earth affinity as Faye, which was simply a perfect testing ground for her, and with Thiago watching her, nothing could happen to her anyway.
This was also a great test for Faye to test her current display of her Earth affinity. Even though she had no specific attack techniques, her main cultivation technique, the 'Ore Devouring Ascension Art', allowed her to better control her affinity and command the surrounding earth according to her will, depending on her achievement of the technique, she should still be able to show some of her affinity with her current state of practice.
Thiago quickly told her that he would let her fight this Apekin, but she did not have to worry too much as he would pay attention to the fight.
"Well, I suppose this amazing me will have no trouble dealing with this shabby monkey," Faye said, her words laced with disdain and contempt for the Apekin, even though he was clearly from a much higher cultivation realm. It seemed that she would soon learn not to be as arrogant as she was right now.
In fact, Thiago was quite happy to see that, and even expected it a little, because he really was a little afraid that she would one day court death with her arrogance, not that he had been much different a few days before, but those were obviously things from the past, cough.
Originally, Thiago had not planned to deliberately find an opponent for Faye, but it just so happened that this unfortunate Apekin had appeared before the duo, so Thiago had promptly changed his previous plan from immediately starting to train his own techniques to having Faye fight this Apekin and keeping an eye on her while doing so, Well, the time this fight would take was not too much anyway and it was just fine for him, as Thiago had nothing pressing him at the moment, so theoretically he had all the time in the world to train his techniques and there was absolutely no need to get stressed about it.
At his signal, Faye immediately rushed forward like a headless fly, and you could really see all her flaws and lack of fighting experience at that moment, but that was also the desired effect, because you would learn from making mistakes. So, it was better that she made all these mistakes now in a 'training fight' than in a real fight to the death.
Although Thiago could hardly be described as the most experienced fighter, he still had a certain amount of knowledge from all the techniques he had engraved in his mind, as well as his own honed fighting experience from the time he had spent in this forest, which was certainly a lot more experience than Faye's.
So, what he was doing now was watching the fight closely, trying to memorise most of Faye's flaws and deep mistakes so that he could explain them to her after the fight was over, which would certainly be of great help to her, as the person fighting often did not even realise that they were making mistakes or revealing huge flaws.
One of the main things Faye did wrong from the start was to underestimate her opponent, but that was another matter. One of the things that Thiago saw Faye do wrong time and time again, right after she had attacked the Apekin head on, who at first was a little dazed by the sudden attack but quickly recovered and showed his own ferocity, was that she only attacked her opponent head on, meaning that she did not attack from different angles or from tricky positions.
She seemed to only focus on the front of the Apekin and granted the other body parts of him no attention whatsoever, due to whatever reason.
Well, that obviously didn't work out for long, because shortly afterwards the Apekin promptly swung one of its long arms forward and would have almost hit Faye if she hadn't been able to dodge it at the last second.
"Who do you think you are, you dumb monkey, almost hitting this princess!" Faye shouted in anger as she had almost been hit by the Apekin.
It was surprising that she was still able to hold her own against the Apekin, even though she was clearly in the weaker position, but there were still three small realm levels of difference between them.
It seemed that Faye was truly blessed with great strength and was clearly able to fight across realms, although the technique that Thiago had given her was of course indispensable.
It seemed that the Apekin did not want to speak, or was unable to speak for some reason, but it seemed to understand Faye and seemed to become a little angrier at that moment.
The speed at which ex leapt from the ground and flew through the air towards Faye was so fast that you could see a hint of seriousness even in Faye's eyes.
Nevertheless, it seemed as if Faye was not ready to give up yet and still wanted to continue the fight.
On the other hand, Thiago had to praise Faye's persistence, as it was clear that she had no chance of winning at the moment, but she had also realised that she would get a lot of training out of a serious fight with the Apekin.
"I wonder how long she will last," Thiago muttered at that moment, so quietly that not even Faye could hear the slightest sound, which would have surely annoyed her to death if she had heard it so outrightly.
Even when Faye suddenly summoned earthen spikes from the ground beneath the Apekin, the Apekin seemed to have anticipated the attack and was able to dodge most of them, which was easy to explain since the Apekin was also of the earth affinity and had a natural sense of danger when it came to the earth element that gathered in the ground, They could hardly do any damage to the Apekin, which frustrated her, but before she could complain about their ineffectiveness, she suddenly felt a huge threat approaching from behind. It was also a kind of ground attack, which the Apekin had launched from a tricky angle behind her, so that she would only notice it quite late, if at all.
"Sigh, that seems to be it," Thiago muttered before preparing for action, as he did not want her to get hurt unnecessarily by the attack, as it would not necessarily bring her many benefits in terms of her training.
And when he saw that there was really no surprise and no unexpected turn of events like Faye suddenly using a trump card, that the attack was about to hit her, Thiago quickly took action and dashed forward with an unimaginable speed that he had now that he had already reached the realm of Superior Students.
The Apekin had absolutely no time to react before something like a sledgehammer suddenly hit him hard on the head and then everything went black for him, and his consciousness seemed to vanish quickly.
From an outsider's point of view, it could be seen that Thiago just swung his giant paw at the Apekin's head and on contact the head burst open like someone had squashed a watermelon violently as all the blood and other matter exploded into a blood mist, and this was obviously after Thiago had held back much of his power, otherwise the Apekin's whole body would have exploded into a blood mist or even been reduced to nothing.
It was the first time that Faye had seen such a violent scene, but she was not frightened in the least, for she herself was an beast who had lived in this forest since she was young, where the strong preyed on the weak, so she did not think that Thiago was bad just because he had killed the Apekin, the only thing she thought was that it was perhaps a bit too brutal, but no less.
And most of all, he had saved her, so she was obviously grateful in her heart, but she could not quite say what she thought.
"This venerable self quite appreciates your act of saving me, not that I would have been unable to do anything myself, humph!"
"Haha, yeah, I naturally know that" replied Thiago after chuckling a bit after hearing her arrogant as usual answer.
He didn't know what was wrong with him, but he actually kind of liked her, or rather found her way of talking extremely funny, which was probably one of the main reasons why he subconsciously, without knowing it, secretly liked her, simply because she brought fun and laughter into his otherwise bleak days.
After that, Thiago quickly took the Apekin's corpse into his space storage for later use and then turned back to Faye, telling her that he was now going to tell her the most important mistakes that he had seen her make during the fight and that he hoped that she would take them seriously as they were really important.
To Thiago's delight, Faye seemed to be taking it very seriously and so he began to explain some of the mistakes and errors, obviously starting with the first and most important, which was underestimating an opponent, which could lead to extremely serious consequences and even death if you were unlucky.
Thiago turned back to Faye, who was still catching her breath from the fight. She looked up at him with a mixture of exhaustion and anticipation, still with an air of disinterest, but obviously eager to hear his feedback deep down.
"All right, Faye," he said, "let's talk about what went wrong in the fight."
Faye nodded, her ears slowly perking up with interest. "Humph! I want to hear what this self did wrong."
Thiago could see the change in mood and a tiny bit of anticipation in her eyes and was pleased. He began to explain: "The first mistake you made was to underestimate your opponent. You can't assume that just because it's a new opponent that they're weaker than you. Always assume the worst and be prepared for anything".
Faye gave a slight nod of understanding with a slightly embarrassed look. "Well, the princess wasn't in top form, so it was this stupid monkey's luck that he won me over, humph!"
"Well, of course I know that, cough, cough," Thiago said, trying to calm her down. "But it's important to always be on your guard, especially when you're facing a new opponent. You never know what tricks they might have up their sleeves."
Faye nodded again, taking in his words while ignoring the fact that he seemed to be mocking her excuse. "What else is there?" she asked, seemingly eager to know what else had caused her to lose, even if she would not admit it.
"Well, for one, you rushed into it too quickly. You should have taken a moment to assess the situation and come up with a plan of attack. Rushing in blindly can be very dangerous," Thiago explained.
Faye frowned as she too realised her mistake. "I see. This venerable self just wanted to finish it off quickly, who could have known that it would hide its strength so deeply, what an insidious and despicable monkey, humph!"
Thiago grinned at her answer as if he had expected nothing less. "I know, but it's important to keep a cool head in a fight. Emotions can cloud your judgement and lead to mistakes."
Faye nodded, silently taking his advice to heart. "What else?"
"Well, in addition to that, what I noticed from your fight just now was that you were far too direct and attacked frontally most of the time, giving your opponent an extremely large amount of room to dodge and anticipate your future attacks, making you like an open and readable book to your enemies, which also makes you predictable.
Do you understand what I mean?" Thiago looked at Faye questioningly as he said this, to which she shook her head somewhat dejectedly in agreement and mumbled that she understood.
Thiago went on to explain her mistakes and offered suggestions for improvement...
...