Mira had fallen asleep with the little winged wolf next to her. Constantly giving all of her Qi away to the beast egg had definitely drained her mentally. Mira decided to take a nap to rest her mind. After a couple of hours of rest, Mira had awoken and found the little winged wolf standing on top of her just staring at her. Mira rubbed its head and sat up.
"I see you've awoken. I've come up with a name for you. It's the combination of the name of a mythical wolf made of lightning and a Lightning Goddess. Your name will be Rhydian." Mira said as Rhydian started to wag its tail.
*Woof**Woof*
Rhydian barked at her happily as it seemed to like that name. Mira just nodded her head and got up. Rhydian jumped off of her and stood beside her as she waited for Mira to move. Mira noticed this and was glad that she didn't get some rambunctious little beast that didn't listen to her.
"I guess I should tell Maria that the beast finally hatched from the egg. She's been losing her shit the past few days as she was expecting the egg to hatch. I think she was more excited to see you than I was. Well, I can also have you meet Vulcan. Speaking of which, I haven't noticed what cultivation Vulcan is at after we left the trial. Let's go, Rhydian." Mira said as they started walking towards where Maria is.
After looking for Maria for a while they finally found her. She was also playing with Vulcan, but when Rhydian saw Vulcan she started growling as the hairs on her back stood up and strands of lightning shot across her back.
*BARK**BARK*
Rhydian stood in front of Mira as even though it was just born it still wanted to protect Mira. This is truly the loyalty of a wolf.
Vulcan sensed the wolf and heard it barking at him. He looked at the wolf and also started to get into battle mode as bright orange flames started to circle around him as the two stared at each other.
"Rhydian, that's enough. You two can spar later. You see that girl standing next to that fox? That is Maria and the fox is Vulcan. Vulcan is Maria's beast companion." Mira tried to explain to Rhydian, but since it was just born, it didn't quite understand human speech. But it did sense that Mira felt no danger and was trying to tell it to stop. She looked at Mira and slowly walked back towards her with her head down. Mira just bent down and rubbed its head as Mira then stood back up and noticed Maria looking at her with shining eyes.
"IS THAT IT?! Is that the little beast from the egg?! How cute!! To think a wolf actually came out of an egg! WAIT! That's not a normal wolf. It also seems to have wings. What's its name? Is it a boy or girl?" Maria started bombarding her with questions.
"Yeah, this little shit was the black hole in the egg that sucked up all of my blood and Qi. As far as I can tell, she is some type of lightning-winged wolf. I named her Rhydian. She is at Peak-Stage Rank 3. It also seems that she mutated into a variant of her species when she absorbed my blood and lightning, but I have no idea what that means." Mira said as she introduced Rhydian to Maria and Vulcan.
"Wow! That's amazing! Can I pet her? She looks so fluffy and cute!" Maria asked and Mira just shrugged.
"That's up to her." Mira said as Maria started walking towards Rhydian.
Rhydian saw Maria approach her and started to back away, but Maria just kneeled down and put her hands in front of her as a gesture that she wanted Rhydian to come to her. Rhydian just stared at Maria for a couple of seconds before looking at Mira. Mira just looked at her.
"If you don't want to go to her then don't go. If you want to, then go." Mira said, but Rhydian just backed away and stood to the side of Mira.
"I guess there's your answer. You will have to earn her trust if you want to pet her." Mira said as Maria just pouted. She really wanted to hold the little winged-wolf.
"Anyway, I just came to show you since you've been bothering me nonstop about it. I was thinking that I should kill a bunch of magical beasts to feed her. I don't want to use all of my money just so I can keep her stomach full. I'm going to bring her to the Dark Moon Forest and start killing other magical beasts so she can learn to fight and control her strength. I don't want an almost Rank 4 cub running around the streets. She might just start killing people by accident. Vulcan can come with as well, he might be able to give her some ideas on how to fight if she doesn't know how already." Mira explained as Maria expected this answer. All Mira ever thinks about is training!!
"I'll go with you! I should gather food for Vulcan as well! I also want to see Rhydian in action!" Maria exclaimed as Mira just nodded.
"Let's go then." Mira said and started to leave the building. Maria already had everything she needed and followed Mira. Mira held Rhydian in her arms to try and cover up the wings as they are not natural for a wolf to have and Mira didn't feel like being questioned right now.
They swiftly exited the city and ran towards the forest. Mira had put down Rhydian and noticed that when she ran, her wings would extend and push her forward allowing her to take longer strides and move quicker. Mira had to admit that she was a little excited to be able to ride on Rhydian's back in the future. The thought reminded her of how Valkyries would ride on a Pegasus. But Mira preferred the winged wolf rather than a pegasus as it fit her style more.
They kept running deeper into the forest after they entered the forest and then went on the hunt. Mira just wanted to kill anything that moved and didn't care about the rank of the beast. They soon spotted a Rank 1 beast.
"Rhydian, go kill that beast. Show me what you can do!" Mira commanded as the little wolf just looked at its prey. The little wolf was aware that Mira wanted her to kill this thing. Rhydian wanted to give it her all even if it was impossible for her to lose.
Rhydian charged up her body with lightning. Gold lightning with blue streaks shot across her body as she shot towards the magical beast. It seemed like Rhydian was lightning itself as in a split second the magical beast just exploded into a bloody mess. There was almost nothing left of the beast. Maria just looked at this sight with wide eyes. It was a really good thing they went out of the city to work on having Rhydian control her strength as she might accidentally cause a massacre.
"Oh? That was pretty quick. I also didn't expect the Rank 1 magical beast to just explode on impact. I guess that's to be expected. We will have to work on damage control though as I don't want all of the magical beasts to blow up." Mira thought out loud.
Rhydian came running back to Mira as it wagged its tail and wanted to be praised.
"That was rather impressive, Rhydian. Though I expected you to be strong. Let's go find the next beast." Mira said as they went off to find the next beast.
It didn't take long for them to spot another Rank 1 beast and Mira told Rhydian to kill this one as well but told her not to blow it up. Rhydian didn't understand fully but guessed that she needed to do something different. Rhydian jumped up in the air and spread her wings. She then rained down her golden and blue lightning on the beast. The beast turned black as the whole beast was burnt to a crisp. The beast then started to crumble and fell apart. Mira just sighed as it seemed that it will take a while for the beast to understand what she wanted, but it's not like she did anything wrong. The beast didn't blow up, it crumbled.
"Hahaha!" Maria started laughing as Rhydian just came running back, expecting Mira to praise her for killing the beast. She was just like a little puppy.
"Well, you didn't blow it up so it's a step in the right direction. Let's go find another beast and Vulcan will show you how I want you to kill it." Mira said as she rubbed Rhydian's head.
They then ran off and soon found another Rank 1 beast and Mira told Rhydian to watch Vulcan kill it. Mira told Vulcan to cut off its head.
Vulcan just ran forward at full speed and cut off the beast's head with his claws.
"That's how I want you to kill the next one." Mira said to Rhydian as she just looked back at Mira.
They found another beast and Mira told Rhydian to attack it like Vulcan. Rhydian rushed forward and gathered lightning in her wing. She hit the neck of the beast with her wing, but the force of the impact and the lightning blew up the head of the beast as it was being removed. Rhydian ran back to Mira again asking for praise.
"I can't tell whether these beasts are too weak or you are just too strong. Even Vulcan doesn't just blow up the heads from the impact alone. Vulcan is also at the Mid-Stage Rank 3 and almost Late-Stage after absorbing that fire essence. We might have to stay here longer than I thought." Mira said as she tried to figure out what to do with Rhydian. The problem is that she has too much power, but doesn't know how to limit her strength.
Mira moved onto the next beast and just charged at it with her scythe and removed the head. Mira held the head in front of Rhydian and repeated "head" as she kept pointing to the beast's head. Mira kept holding the beast's head until they found the next beast. Mira held it out in front of Rhydian then pointed to the beast and pointed back to the head. Rhydian soon charged towards the beast and used her claws to remove the head. She didn't cut off the head, no, she stuck her claws in the beast's skull and forcibly removed the head. Rhydian then carried the head of the beast in her mouth and dropped it in front of her. Mira just face-palmed and Maria couldn't stop laughing. Technically Rhydian never did anything wrong and only did what Mira told her to do.
The next beast, Mira just grabbed Rhydian and charged towards the beast. She knocked it unconscious and grabbed Rhydians claws and started cutting off the head with them. Mira then stored the corpse and told Rhydian that she wanted her to cleanly remove the head like this. Rhydian's eyes shined as she now understood what to do. With the beast after that, Rhydian immediately charged at it. She extended her claws with golden lightning and sliced off the head of the beast. Rhydian flew back to Mira as Mira just rubbed her head.
"That's it. Kill the beasts like that until I tell you to stop. We will also work on you attacking other parts of the body as well. We will also work on you trying to control your strength a bit, but I don't think you will understand this part right now. Whatever. We can gather food for you and train you at the same time. Let's continue." Mira said as they continued with Rhydian killing beast after beast. Now that she knew what to do, she started getting better and faster at removing the heads of the beasts.
Mira had Rhydian keep cutting off beast heads until she wanted to have Rhydian understand other parts of the body. She moved onto legs, stomach, chest, back, and even eyes. She had to go through the same process with each body part as Rhydian started to understand some of the words Mira was saying. Now, whenever Mira said head Rhydian would remove the head and whenever she said legs or a different body part then Rhydian would attack that part of the body.
This kind of training went on for around two weeks and they started to collect a ton of corpses and all of them were Rank 1 and 2. Mira must've had several hundred corpses, maybe more by now. Mira wanted Rhydian to keep gathering experience as well as fight tougher beasts so they kept going deeper into the forest and were actually around the border between the Core Region and Inner Region of the Forest.
Rhydian kept 'fighting' more difficult magical beasts. Although they weren't really fighting as each beast would die in one hit from Rhydian.
Mira and Maria kept making their way through the forest with their beast companions until they spotted another group of people in the forest.