It didn't take long for everybody to reach the area that the middle-aged lady was leading them to. What entered the examinee's eyes was a large mountain with a thick forest that surrounded it and went about halfway up it. Once they neared the forest, the middle-aged lady spoke up.
"This is where you will spend the next week. The magical beasts generally get stronger the closer you get to the mountain. There are more Rank 3's on the mountain than in the forest as well, so if you are looking to hunt Rank 3 magical beasts then you might want to head there, but it is also more dangerous. Rank 4 magical beasts also live on the mountain and a Rank 5 magical beast lives at the peak of the mountain. That is all of the information you get. Your one-week timer starts now!" The middle-aged lady said and then she left the area.
"Let's go! If we get a head start then we might be able to kill more beasts!"
"We should rush to the base of the mountain and hunt all of the beasts around that area! Let's go hunt and get ourselves in the top 40 groups."
Almost all of the groups rushed into the forest because they wanted to get a headstart. There were only a couple of groups that didn't rush into the forest like a bunch of idiots. One such group was Mira's group. Mira just stood there and waited for the other groups to go.
"Why are we waiting here, Mira? Shouldn't we try to get a headstart to kill as many beasts as possible? Why are you just standing there waiting?" Maria asked her with a barrage of questions.
"Why don't you use that tiny brain of yours and think? How can you trust what that woman said so easily? We know nothing about this place. If everybody rushes into the forest, then it might scare some of the beasts. This is also the time when these groups will be planning what to do next, except now they have to plan while in the forest surrounded by danger. We will be here for a week, there is no need to rush. I also said that I plan on taking a look at your abilities didn't I? How can I be a good leader if I don't even know what you do?" Mira said to Maria in an irritated voice. All 4 of them now understood Mira's thinking and found it to be quite smart. But Nisha had a question.
"What about our beast companions? Do you plan on using them to search for other beasts to attack?" Nisha asked and everybody else was curious as well.
"I'd rather not use them unless we are looking for something specific, but what we will be fighting will also be able to fight back against your beasts. I'm not going to send mine as she will probably just kill them. The only beast I'd send would be Maria's fox, Vulcan, but I'd rather not since other groups might spot him and attack him. I'm sure he'd be fine, but we are hunting not trying to make a bunch of noise. If they sense something that's around us then we can go in that direction, but anything other than that is not needed. Alright now that I've explained that, let's enter the forest and find a beast for Celaine to demonstrate her abilities to me since she is the weakest." Mira explained as she started jogging towards the forest. Celaine was shocked when she heard she was first and starting shaking. Maria just grabbed her and started to drag her along with her as the 4 of them started running into the forest in a different direction than the other groups.
"It'll be okay Celaine. Just do your best! I'll give you a tip though when you fight you need to not hold back. Don't be so timid or you might find yourself at the mercy of someone who is much scarier than any magical beast! Good luck!" Maria gave Celaine a word of advice, but that only stressed her out more.
The 5 women and 4 beasts trekked through the forest silently until they came across a Late-Stage Rank 2 Magical Beast. It was a deer-type magical beast and had huge sharp antlers. It was a light green deer called a Gale Deer. They are able to shoot sharp wind needles from their antlers and are faster than normal deer-type beasts.
"Alright, Celaine. You're up! Go kill that beast! We will be watching you so don't die." Mira commanded Celaine, but she looked a bit hesitant and not confident.
"What? You scared? You've made it this far in the Exam so you are clearly stronger than an average cultivator at your stage and you can also handle pain pretty well. That's more than enough to kill this thing. Now go!" Mira grabbed Celaine and tossed her in front of the deer. Celaine panicked but she still took out her saber. Mira was a little surprised to see her wielding a saber.
Celaine started attacking the deer but her attacks were severely lacking in power. It was like Celaine was too scared to even attack. It also seemed like this was her first time fighting a beast. The deer started charging at her with full speed and shooting wing needles at Celaine. She was able to block most of them but was panicking too much to be able to block the rest. The battle between the two continued for a couple of minutes and Celaine wasn't able to even get a hit in while the deer had caused several cuts to appear on her body. The deer then went in for something like a finishing move and charged at Celaine with its antlers. Celaine just closed her eyes as she wasn't able to stop this with how her mind was in chaos right now. She was expecting to get hit but never felt the impact. She opened her eyes and saw Mira standing in front of her holding the deer with one hand.
"What the fuck was that?! You didn't even try! Did you hear what I said?! I told you to attack, but you just stood there like an idiot! I know you didn't even use half of your power, so why don't you tell me why?!" Mira scolded Celaine as she held onto the deer, the deer tried to get out of Mira's grasp, but when it realized it couldn't it started to try and shoot wind needles at Mira. Mira broke off its antlers before it could do that and waited for an answer.
"I-I-I-I c-c-can't. I-I-I've never killed anything before. I've only sparred with my grandpa to learn how to fight. I don't know if I can bring myself to kill it." Celaine muttered.
"Are you fucking kidding me?! You've never killed anything before and you don't think you can bring yourself to kill this thing?! Were you expecting to live your whole life frolicking in the flowers hoping nothing bad ever happens?! You do realize that this thing just tried to kill you right?! Don't you care about your life? I guess it falls upon me to teach you how to be a cultivator instead of your family that seemed to never tell you that killing is part of being a cultivator." Mira kept yelling at Celaine as she felt like crying right now. She felt bad for disappointing Mira, but why did she have to be so mean.
Mira pinned down the deer and looked at Celaine.
"Kill it!" Mira commanded and Celaine just looked at Mira and started crying while shaking her head.
"Very well. I will give you two options then. You can either kill it or you can die. I won't allow someone this weak-willed to ever be on the same team as me even if it's only for a week. Now choose!" Mira said as she took out her scythe and directed some of her killing intent at Celaine. Celaine now started to bawl her eyes out because she didn't know how to handle this scene. Nisha and Audra wanted to go up and stop Mira, but they were both stopped by Maria.
"Why is she doing this? Will she actually kill her?" Audra asked as her voice was full of concern. Nisha nodded as well, as she was wondering the same thing.
"Well, she might actually kill her, but people usually break and give in under Mira's pressure. Mira doesn't want to kill her, but she won't hesitate to do so if Celaine chooses death over killing the beast. Just let this play out. I think Celaine will break and end up killing the beast… Hopefully." Maria tried explaining to them as they just continued to watch the scene unfold.
Mira kept increasing the killing intent and the air around them started to freeze. She then placed her scythe on Celaine's neck and drew some blood with it. Celaine was shaking like crazy as this was the most terrifying scene she has ever been in. Mira's scythe now entered into her neck a bit as more blood started to flow. Celaine's survival instincts started to kick in a bit as she slowly lifted her saber with her shaking hand and lowered it onto the deer's neck. She then pressed her saber down onto the neck of the deer and cut through the spinal cord, killing the deer.
"So you decided that you wanted to live, huh? Wise choice. Heal your wounds fast because we are going to head out soon. I need to test the other 3 as well so hurry up." Mira said as she collected the corpse and walked towards the group.
"You didn't have to be so rough on her you know?" Maria said to Mira.
"Huh? She's a cultivator. The moment she entered the Qi Condensation Realm, this entered her into the free-for-all known as the cultivation world. People kill each other all of the time over the slightest thing. She has to learn how to kill and I'm not going to waste my fucking time trying to coax a child into killing something. If I need someone to do something then they better do it with maximum effort. I plan on hunting for a Low-Stage Rank 4 magical beast during this week, and if she can't do her job properly, then she shouldn't even be here. Even if she is only used as bait, I need her to put maximum effort into being bait. If she can't do what we literally came here to do then I can't trust her to do anything. We have other things to do." Mira explained as she sat down and rubbed Rhydian's head and waited for Celaine to heal her wounds. Though Celaine was currently on her knees bawling her eyes out. The 3 of them were shocked by her answer but found themselves unable to argue against it. Maria stopped thinking about it and just ran over to comfort Celaine.
After a couple of minutes, Celaine regained her bearings and started to heal her wounds. Around 20 minutes later, Celaine was back in top condition after Maria gave her a rejuvenation pill.
Mira then ran around the forest in search of a Rank 3 magical beast to test. It took her a few hours, but they eventually found a Low-Stage Rank 3 magical beast for Nisha to fight. Mira understood that Nisha is stronger than it, but it might take them longer to find something stronger and she only needed a general understanding of their battle prowess. The beast they found is just a normal Low-Stage Rank 3 Fire Fox.
"You're up, Nisha." Mira said and Nisha nodded. She took out two daggers as it seemed Nisha's weapon of choice is dual daggers.
Nisha coated herself and her weapons in darkness as she quickly approached the Fire Fox. Before the Fire Fox even knew what happened, it was already sliced in half. Mira was happy to see such a quick ending. Nisha gathered the corpse then walked back to the group.
"I see. Very useful indeed." Mira nodded as she already had a few ideas on how she would utilize Nisha in a fight.
They then searched for another Rank 3 Beast for Audra. It didn't take them much longer as now they were closer to the mountain. They found another Low-Stage Rank 3 magical beast, but this time it was a large rabbit-looking beast.
Audra immediately summoned orange lightning wings on her back, took out a spear that was around 180 centimeters long, and gathered lightning at the tip of the spear. She then charged towards the rabbit and skewered it with her spear as its insides blew up from the lightning. She gathered the corpse and walked back.
"So we have a saber, dual daggers, spear, sword, and scythe. We also have 5 different elements with Celaine having a wind elemental affinity. I can see some great synergy with all of our attacks. We should be able to take down a Low-Stage Rank 4 magical beast with our team, assuming everyone follows their roles. I will need to temper Celaine a bit more so she can be more trustworthy in a fight though. Alright, I got it!" Mira muttered to herself as she started coming up with battle plans.
Mira brought everyone around to look for another beast so Maria can show off. It only took another 30 minutes to find a Mid-Stage Rank 3 for Maria. Maria didn't do anything special other than activating her light sword and triple draws and rushed towards the beast immediately cutting it in half. A small crater formed under the beast as the ground around her cracked. She didn't need to use either of those techniques to kill it, but she wanted to show off a bit to allow the others to understand her prowess.
"Alright. Now that everybody has a good understanding of everybody's abilities, we will hunt beasts while looking for a Low-Stage Rank 4 magical beast to kill. You are probably wondering what my abilities are like. I'm a little stronger than Maria, but I'm better at fighting. I use a scythe and ice. Now onto what we have to do immediately. You 3 can either follow me as I make Celaine kill a bunch of magical beasts or you can go kill some beasts on your own. We will meet back at this spot at around this time tomorrow." Mira said and the 4 of them were a bit surprised.
"I'll go with you, Mira. I need to make sure you don't actually kill her." Maria said immediately.
"I'm going to go fight some beasts to warm up for the Rank 4 beast fight." Nisha said.
"Me too." Audra also wanted to go and fight as she didn't feel like watching poor Celaine.
"Alright. See you at this time tomorrow." Mira said as she walked off with Celaine and Maria in tow.
They were walking back towards where they found the weaker beasts for Celaine to kill. For the next 24 hours, Celaine will be forced to kill every magical beast they see. Even if it's stronger than what she can handle, Mira will just pin it down and force Celaine to execute it. Anything that moved was a target.
