After Mira and Maria left the Mission Hall, they both went their separate ways to complete their missions.
As Mira was making her way out of the Outer Court, a grin crept up on her face. She couldn't hide her excitement to finally test out her new powers!
Thus, she quickly made her way to where the Rocky Boar was last seen. Fortunately, it wasn't too far, and with her speed, Mira was able to make it there in a little under an hour.
When she entered the area, her entire demeanor changed. Her eyes glowed with a crimson hue, her newly acquired beastly instincts were raging, and power surged through her body.
This didn't happen because there was a dangerous enemy or anything of the sort. No, Mira just wanted to hunt! She's been restraining herself all this time, and now she's finally able to let loose!
She took out her scythe, which was now surrounded by a crimson-black aura that seemed to come straight from the depths of hell!
Feeling the weight of the scythe in her hand, Mira gave a satisfied nod as it had been a while since she's actually held her scythe in battle.
Suddenly, her senses picked up on a nearby beast, so she immediately took off in its direction.
Scythe in hand, Mira soon appeared in front of a large boar with a small mountain of rocks on its back.
Sensing its impending doom, the boar glared in Mira's direction and screamed as if trying to intimidate her.
*SCREECH!*
Naturally, Mira wasn't fazed by the boar's screech and continued to rush at it.
Seeing this and feeling the wild and savage aura radiating around the thing in front of it, the boar immediately took off in the other direction. It had enough intelligence to know that it would certainly die if it faced Mira, and so it turned around and ran without hesitation.
Mira was, of course, a bit surprised by this behavior as most of the beasts she's met up until now have been brainless weaklings who only know how to fight.
Still, that didn't prevent her from approaching the boar, and with Mira's speed, there's no way it would outrun her.
Like she thought, just a few seconds later, she caught up to the boar, and with a-
*SWOOSH*
Her scythe came crashing down on its body, slicing through the rocks on its back as if she was cutting through butter, and without any resistance, the boar was cleanly cut in half.
Even after cutting through the boar, her scythe didn't stop until it ended up cutting about a meter into the ground.
Mira stared at her scythe in astonishment as she wasn't expecting it to be so sharp! To be fair, she did put a considerable amount of strength in that attack, probably around 40%, but she didn't think that'd be enough to slice through a Low-Stage Rank 6 beast who clearly seemed more defense-oriented in one strike.
Although a Low-Stage Rank 6 beast is nothing to her, and she could take them on while she was still in the Foundation Realm, it wasn't so overwhelming. She still needed a few strikes to take them down.
This all seemed… a bit too easy.
So, she collected the corpse and then began replaying the scene in her mind to try and understand why she killed it so easily. She didn't believe for a second that her physical strength alone allowed her to cut through it so easily.
If that were the case, the cut wouldn't have been nearly as clean.
She figured it must have something to do with the aura surrounding her scythe, and after replaying the scene, she found this to likely be true.
Right when her scythe was about to touch the boar, the crimson-black aura condensed around the blade, seemingly increasing its destructiveness and sharpness.
However, Mira's instincts were telling her that that wasn't the end of the benefits brought by the hellish aura. Unfortunately, she killed the boar a little too quick for her to understand this, so for now, she could only look for another target.
She's got plenty of things to test out, after all.
Mira tried remembering some of the other missions, and although she could remember the targets for the other missions, she had no idea where they were.
However, it'd be a waste to go back now, so Mira decided to just go around killing-no, practicing her abilities on every beast she comes across and hoping there's a mission related to them.
Focusing her beastly senses on the surrounding area, Mira was able to track the locations of some of the nearby beasts partially. Luckily, they are all Low-Stage Rank 6 or above, so Mira didn't have to be picky.
Without a second of delay, Mira traversed the rocky environment and soon made her way near a large goat-like beast!
This goat was also a Low-Stage Rank 6 beast, and this time, Mira was going to use it to do some actual testing.
She used her Core Formation cultivation to fly up in the air and dove at the goat, not giving it any time to react.
Thus, before the goat even had time to move, Mira already had its neck in her hand with her vice-like grip.
The goat screamed, kicked, and fought for her to let it go, but it was too weak to do anything to Mira, especially in its current state.
Mira floated down onto the ground, conjured a few ice vines to tangle around the goat, and released a murderous smile.
Seeing it safely secured, Mira took her scythe and controlled the hellish aura to condense around the blade; she cut a few centimeters into the goat's skin.
It screeched in pain, but Mira's facial expression didn't change. Instead, she stared at the goat as if she was examining it.
However, the goat just kept screeching in pain…
'No, that's not pain. Although the cut should have hurt, it's not enough to screech like that. Looking at its body, this goat has clearly received more severe wounds. Therefore, its pain tolerance should be considerably high. But for some reason, it's acting like I just chopped its legs off and ripped its tongue out! What the hell…' Mira thought to herself.
She had a few theories as to why this might be the case, so she used her scythe and the hellish aura to make a few more cuts on the goat.
After another cut, the beast seemed like it was losing its mind. After the third cut, Mira noticed that tears of blood were coming out of its eyes. Finally, after the fourth cut, its eyes rolled back, and it passed out.
It was then that Mira realized that the aura didn't just simply sharpen her scythe, but it also attacked the target's mind.
However, she also noticed that the aura around her scythe had dimmed considerably after those few attacks, and she'd probably only be able to unleash a few more.
This made her wonder:
'Can I control this aura's output and effects?'
If she could do that, then she wouldn't have to waste so much of the hellish aura on all three of its known effects. She could make it, so the aura only attacked the mind, increased the sharpness of her scythe, or increased her destructive power. There's no need for all these effects to work in tandem unless she absolutely needed it, but with it only being able to last a few strikes at full power, Mira knew that she had to tone down its effects a bit if she wanted it to be useful.
Still, these discoveries put a smile on Mira's face as she was truly happy to see how powerful her scythe had become after breaking through to the Core Formation Realm.
"Let's keep testing it out! Hehehe~"
