"Yes," Shang answered. "What kind of beast is that green eagle? It was in the Late Soldier Stage, but it was able to damage a General Stage beast to this degree with only a single attack."
"First, I want to know what happened to the green eagle," the teacher ordered. "Don't omit any detail."
Shang frowned, but he complied. "The green eagle was the one that found the snake. I can feel the approach of the weaker variants, but I hadn't felt the approach of this one."
"The eagle attacked, but it failed in its assault and released that powerful attack before retreating," Shang said as he pointed at the three gashes. "I decided that this is the best opportunity to earn some money and combat experience, which is why I attacked the snake."
"Near the end of the fight, the green eagle returned and severed the tail. After that, I killed the snake. I saw that the green eagle was a huge threat to my safety, which is why I didn't want to fight over the corpse with it. However, funnily enough, it just let the corpse lay there and ate the tail instead."
"I haven't seen it since."
The teacher looked into Shang's eyes for a while, trying to make sure that Shang wasn't lying.
Then, she nodded. "Everything you said makes sense."
The teacher stood up and stepped away from the corpse, looking at Shang. "It's good that you didn't attack it."
"What kind of beast is it?" Shang asked.
"Progeny of the Storm Eagle," she answered.
"The… Storm Eagle?" Shang asked in shock.
The Storm Eagle!?
The very beast that had this Zone named after it?
The very beast that could kill all the humans if it wanted to?
The teacher nodded. "Its young keep flying around in this area. It has a couple of them, and you met the youngest. Luckily for us, they don't attack humans."
"Of course, that means that we also are forbidden from attacking them. The last time a human had killed one of the Storm Eagle's young, the Storm Eagle went on a rampage."
The teacher pointed in the direction of Warrior's Paradise.
"This city was built after the Storm Eagle's last rampage, but it isn't the first version of Warrior's Paradise. There have been a couple of them before, but as you can guess, when the Storm Eagle got angry, they stopped existing."
Shang took a deep breath.
If he had decided to kill the green eagle, and if he had succeeded…
"Now you get why I am so interested in the Storm Eagle's young's whereabouts," the teacher added. "I'm not interested in being turned to dust anytime soon."
Shang nodded, but he also fell into thought.
The Storm Eagle's young.
That also explained the discipline and sheer power of the green eagle.
It came from the most powerful beast that Shang knew of, which meant that it was already destined for greatness.
However, greatness could only be realized with hard work and discipline. The young eagle had shown hard work by attacking a General Stage beast, and it had shown discipline by not consuming something it hadn't killed.
Just based on its bloodline, the green eagle was already a prodigy beyond compare, but on top of that, it was working and training intensely.
It was a perfect beast.
And then, Shang remembered something.
"It ate the tail," Shang said. "What about the eggs?"
The teacher lightly kicked a part near the end of the corpse. "Right here," she said.
That made Shang release a sigh of relief.
"Tell me where you found the snake," the teacher ordered. "We need to document where the adult ones appear."
Her voice pulled Shang out of his thoughts, and he recounted his journey up to where he had found the snake.
After he was done, the teacher combed her long black hair with her fingers, her eyebrows furrowed in thought.
"It's a bit further than normal, but it isn't crazily out of place," she muttered. Then, she looked at Shang with slightly narrowed eyes. "Why did you decide to go that far into the northeastern forest? Was your goal a General Stage beast from the very beginning?"
"I'm not suicidal," Shang answered. "If I had known that a General Stage Vanishing Snake could appear there, I wouldn't have gone there. If the green eagle hadn't been there, I would have died without even noticing."
The teacher furrowed her brows, but then she noticed something. "I don't recognize you. Have you been in my class?"
Shang shook his head. "I only joined a couple of days ago, and I have only visited one class up to now."
"That explains things," she said. "Listen. Yes, the Wild Forest is a Rank One wilderness, but that doesn't mean that you can't find the occasionally General Stage beasts there. Especially the older ones need to go there to have their young."
"In the northeastern Wild Forest, you can find the occasional adult Vanishing Snake, Poison Toad, Ancient Slug, and Mud Pangolin. Not only will they most likely kill you, but the latter two are even on the blacklist."
"If you want to hunt in the northeastern Wild Forest, don't go further than the spot where you found the Vanishing Snake. That spot should be your cutoff point for the northeastern and southern directions."
"From that point onward, you can draw a straight line north until the end. Everything east of that is dangerous territory, while everything left of that is relatively safe."
While explaining, the teacher drew a couple of lines in the dirt to show a map. Then, she drew a line through the map, starting at the bottom left corner and ending in the middle of the top, separating the map into two parts.
"You can safely hunt in these 40% of the map," she said, tapping on the northwestern part of the northeastern forest. "The remainder is dangerous."
Shang looked at the map and burned it into his mind. "Thanks," he said.
"I would advise you to enter my class first before going hunting again. You obviously don't know anything about the wilderness around here, and it shows. I'm teaching the beast knowledge class," she said.
Shang nodded. He had already expected something like that.
The teacher had given off a threatening, solitary, and explosive aura since the very beginning. When Shang had seen her, he had immediately been reminded of that one scout he had met on his journey to Warrior's Paradise.
"I will keep that in mind, teacher," Shang answered.
The teacher nodded. "I would advise against handing that corpse over to the academy," she suddenly said.
Shang furrowed his brows. "Why?"
"Under normal circumstances, it would be in your best interest to give nearly everything to the academy since Contribution Points are more valuable to you. However!"
The teacher lightly tapped on the three gashes on the snake's side.
"The value of this corpse goes beyond its materials," she said.
Shang looked at the three gashes in confusion.
"People all over the world are in awe of the Storm Eagle," she continued. "However, nearly no one is insane enough to capture one of its young or steal from them. Because of that, finding something that one of the Storm Eagle's young had left a mark in is very rare, and there are several wealthy individuals in the world that collect these things."
Shang's eyes widened.
That actually made sense!
If a celebrity on Earth had owned something before, its worth would increase.
'So, these three gashes are basically an autograph?' Shang thought.
