Rhydian didn't have the guts to disobey Mira's orders, nor did she have a reason to. These two beasts came here to kill her, after all. If Mira wanted to return the favor, then she was all for it.
Without Mira needing to say anything else, she dropped from the sky onto the Earth Titan Bear's back, who didn't even realize Rhydian had moved until he felt something land on him! Regaining his senses, he shifted his attention away from Mira, not realizing she had 9-tails, and onto the thing attacking him. In
*ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAR!*
He released a thunderous roar in rage and used his Qi to turn all the hair on his back into tiny yet durable Earth Needles, which weren't as simple as just being sharp. This is one of its defense mechanisms. With its large size, his back is one of his major weak points, as he can't see or reach it. If his species didn't have a way to counter this, they would have gone extinct.
Rhydian felt her feet sink into the bear's back and yelped in surprise and pain as thousands of tiny barbed needles punctured her paws. She quickly hopped off his back, but the barbs on the needles stuck to her, ripping out chunks of flesh as she jumped.
"Arf!!"
Rhydian cried out in pain, but her enormous vitality went to work, healing her injuries as fast as it could. She stared down out the bear's back wearily, aware that she may have been too hasty with her attack, but now that she knew of its defensive measures, she could prepare for them.
However, before she could come up with a plan of attack, the Earth Titan Bear had already turned around and swiped his massive paw in her direction. The strength behind his attack caused the air to tremble and the ground to shake.
Not wanting to get hit by such an attack, Rhydian dodged, appearing a few dozen meters away, only to catch a glimpse of another bear paw coming at her from a different direction. Dodging that one as well, Rhydian flew higher up in the air to avoid it, but it seemed the bear had other plans.
Its two front paws landed on the ground, causing a giant explosion and creating two massive craters underneath its feet. Ignoring the destruction of its movements, it bent its knees, then launched itself up in the air!
*BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!*
Just that action alone was more than enough to shake the entire mountain, causing a spiderweb of cracks to run down all sides of it.
Rhydian, Mira, and even the panther all turned to see what all the commotion was about and were surprised to find a bear the size of a large hill floating up in the sky.
However, sensing the mountain's collapse, Mira's expression changed from cold indifference to rage.
"This fucking bear!!! Can you stop destroying my mountain?!?! How will you compensate me if I can't reach my loot after all you've done?!" She yelled, her voice filled with killing intent.
A scythe appeared in her hands, and a pair of Paragon Wings manifested behind her, which exuded a much more overbearing aura. She prepared to go all out to kill the bastard causing so much destruction.
Due to the increase in grade of her affinities, the power of her Paragon Wings increased exponentially. She could feel that each feather was so densely packed with Elemental Qi that each one was now like a mini-nuke.
'This'll be a good time to test out how strong my affinities are. How thoughtful of a giant punching bag to come my way just when I wanted to test my strength!' Mira thought. While it would've been better if it waited a week or so to appear, Mira could still use the bear as a way to gauge how strong she's become.
For some reason, as soon as those thoughts appeared in Mira's head, a shiver ran down the bear's spine, but he quickly ignored that feeling and turned his focus back on the pesky wolf.
'But first, I'll have to take care of the sneaky bastard trying to hide from me.' Mira pried her eyes away from the sky and turned her head. Although there was nothing but rubble where her eyes landed, she could sense a gaze coming from that direction.
"I know you're there," Mira said confidently, walking in that direction with a steady gait. She noticed a slight fluctuation in the air when she said that and smirked, but she didn't stop walking.
"I'll give you one last chance to live on account that you haven't caused any trouble, nor have you tried to kill my companion or me. If you leave now, I won't pursue you, but…" Mira's eyes narrowed and glowed, leaking out just 1% of her killing intent, "If you stay, then you will die. That, I promise."
Her words were like Heaven, or in this case, Hell's decree. From the look in Mira's eyes, the panther knew that even if it failed to kill her now and managed to escape, she would track it down until there was nowhere else to run. It wouldn't live another peaceful day in its life as the panther would constantly be looking over its shoulder, just waiting for Mira to arrive.
"I really should kill you since you've seen my appearance, but you seem like too much of a pain in the ass to deal with right now. Though, if you're smart, you won't leak my whereabouts to anyone unless you're willing to send them to their deaths." A wide, malicious smirk spread across her face as she kept walking toward it.
"I'll give you 3 seconds to decide."
"3."
"2."
"1."
*SWOOOOOSH!*
A black shadow appeared in front of Mira, but before she could get a good look at it, the panther was already long gone.
Mira shook her head, both disappointed and relieved that it chose to retreat as she didn't have the time to waste on fighting it. That panther was able to hide in plain sight. She only knew where it was because she could sense its gaze. Other than that, she couldn't see it at all.
Dealing with such a troublesome opponent when she had to stop the rampaging bear from destroying everything while she was already on the clock was not what Mira had in mind. Sure, she was confident she could kill it, but the amount of time and effort she'd have to put into doing so was not worth the rewards.
Though she hated to let it go, the two didn't have any kind of blood feud, so she wasn't upset that she had to let it go.
'Should we meet again, you'll die by my blade.'
"A good choice," Mira muttered and turned her attention back to the floating Earth Titan Bear that Rhydian was battling, "All that's left is you, big guy. Let's see how I fare against a Rank 8 beast!"
Mira held out her free hand and circulated her Qi around it. Soon, a black ball, no bigger than a marble, manifested above her hand, which sucked in all the light and Qi in the surroundings to fuel it.
Nodding her head, she muttered, "While it's not as impressive as the black hole the Guardian made, it's still a black hole."
She raised her hand and aimed at the bear's giant body, not trying to hit anywhere in particular, and flicked her finger.
No sound rang out as she did so, but the disturbance it caused to the space around it made it easily recognizable.
The Earth Titan Bear felt something dangerous coming toward it and wanted to dodge it, but it was already too late. The black hole had crashed into its body!
"ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRR!!"
It released an earth-shattering cry filled with pain and agony as the black hole tore out chunks of flesh, muscle, and bone, creating a hole the size of a watermelon in its body, which kept on expanding.
This continued until the hole grew another half a meter in diameter until the black hole eventually fizzled out.
"Tch. So, that was the best I could do, huh?" Mira clicked her tongue in disappointment, hoping it would last longer, but it seemed she vastly underestimated the gap between hers and the Guardian's.
She heard a chuckle rumble in her mind but promptly ignored it and sent a few more black holes at the bear. Maybe if it were a bit smaller, she would've switched to a different attack, but since it was so large, she might as well get as much data on her strength as possible.
The bear released another agony-filled roar and stared at Mira with bloodshot eyes, but the woman didn't care. She floated up into the air and launched a series of feathers from her Paragon Wings without warning.
*Swoosh!**Swoosh!**Swoosh!*
*Boom!**Boom!**Boom!*
About half of them exploded on impact, leaving a hole in the bear's body that was bigger than the black holes, while the other half cut through its metal-like fur and into its flesh.
The bear couldn't take it anymore and fell to the ground, grunting in pain and wailing about, but Mira continued her tests.
"Hmmm~ It seems that the effectiveness of my Paragon Wings has gone up significantly, but so has its consumption. In terms of efficiency, black holes are more destructive and use less Qi, but my Paragon Wings are clearly more powerful." Mira muttered, taking note in her mind.
Next, a few Yin Fireballs appeared around her, and she tossed those into the bear's open wounds. Immediately, she witnessed it dissolve the beast's flesh as if it was acid, and the flames used that as fuel to feed its endless hunger to destroy. However, unlike normal fire, these weren't nearly as hot and almost seemed cold.
The effects of her Yin Fire still puzzled Mira, and she reminded herself to do more research on them later, but this test was more than enough to determine its power.
Mira continued to run through these tests for each element for about 10 minutes until she cycled through everything.
Satisfied with the results, she nodded with a slight smile, saying, "The Guardian wasn't lying. All my elements, except lightning and wind, are equal in strength. Now, all that's left to test is my physical might!"
Mira raised her scythe into the air, and her smile grew. She charged at the half-dead Earth Titan Bear's head, not bothering to hide her movements as the thing was barely alive in the first place.
By now, its body looked like swiss cheese, and a lake of blood had formed beneath it. The poor beast was on death's door, but there was nothing it could do as Mira did everything she could to ensure she dealt as much damage as she could while keeping it alive.
Now, it just wanted to be put out of its misery, and that's exactly what Mira intended to do.
"Huup!" Mira grunted as she jumped up on the bear's head and jammed the blade of her scythe into its skull, cutting through it like butter.
Light began to fade from the bear's eyes, but before it died, instead of rage, sadness, or pain, its eyes shone with relief that it would no longer have to suffer.
Mira grinned as she understood that her physical strength was indeed terrifying, thanks to the Magma Dragon Body technique. However, she didn't have time to waste standing around on top of a corpse.
Hopping off of its dead body, she glanced at Rhydian and said, "Do whatever you want with the corpses and go make sure those Star-Horned wolves are safe. I'm going to go back to what I was doing."
With that, Mira disappeared from Rhydian's view and excavated the tunnel she had already created down to the Lightning Spirit Stone Mine.
