Chapter 72 Preparations
Mira left the city with Rhydian to go test out her new techniques. She decided not to take Maria this time as she didn't plan to spend that long out in the forest as she just wanted to test out her new techniques in live combat.
Mira and Rhydian rushed towards the forest and started looking for a beast to kill. Mira wanted to find a Rank 3 Magical Beast but wanted to see how her Ice Prison would affect something that was alive.
It didn't take them that long to find a Rank 1 Magical Beast. Mira just rushed over to it and pinned it down. She inserted an ice needle into the beast and began to create a web of ice inside of its body.
No matter how much the beast struggled, it wasn't able to stop the ice in its body from spreading. After around 3 minutes, the ice had encased every part of the beast's insides. Mira quit pinning the beast down and allowed it to move. It started flailing its legs and head in anger, but as soon as it did that, the beast died. Its legs went limp as its neck snapped when it tried to escape from the prison.
Mira was rather impressed by this result and felt like this technique is perfect for her. She wanted to try out her Ice Prison some more and left to find some more beasts. She wanted to test out different scenarios, such as a piece of ice sticking to the outside of an opponent, scraping an opponent with her ice, and how well she can focus on this technique while in the middle of a fight. The last one may be hard because she will have to travel to the Core Region of the Forest to find something that can actually put up a fight against her. She didn't have the time to do that right now and would just have to work with what she's got.
Mira then started to test out different scenarios. She tried to look for only Rank 2 and above magical beasts as Rank 1 is just too weak.
She tested out attaching a piece of ice outside of the body and then try to have the ice enter into the skin and then start forming a web around their insides but this proved a bit more difficult. It took her twice as long to complete the Ice Prison on a Rank 2 beast with Ice stuck to its skin rather than already inside the body. Mira wanted to see if she could shorten this time, but the more she tried the more she realized that it would just take longer to break through the skin into the body and there wasn't much of a way to get around this.
Mira then ran full speed towards the border between the Inner Region and Core Region. She wanted to find a couple of Rank 3 beasts to fight.
It took her around a full day to find a Low-Stage Rank 3 magical beast. It looked similar to a leopard but was much bigger and was black with yellow-orange spots on it. Mira took out her scythe and came up with a plan to make this fight as difficult as possible even though it would be incredibly difficult to lose against this leopard. Mira decided that she would keep the momentum of her scythe going and only block. The only attacks she would do would be ice needles and Ice Prison. She also wanted to handicap herself a bit more and give her the challenge of not getting touched by the beast.
Mira immediately started firing Ice Needles towards the leopard and she immediately got one stuck in its leg. The leopard charged towards Mira and pounced on her immediately. Mira blocked every attack from the leopard with ease as it was not near strong enough to force Mira to even move from where she was standing.
Mira focused on trying to spread the ice that was inside the leopard's body. It was much more difficult to do this while also trying to defend and block attacks from the leopard without getting hit. But Mira has done this enough times to where she knew what it felt like to control the Ice Prison. It was just one of those things where the more you do it, the easier it will get to control.
Mira continued blocking for the next 7 minutes while she focused on spreading the ice in its body. After those 7 minutes though, she was able to complete the Ice Prison making it so the leopard wasn't able to move anymore.
"This took way too long and took too much concentration to complete. I also could've killed this beast in 1 hit with my scythe. But I believe that if I work on this some more I should be able to shorten that time and use less concentration to complete the Ice Prison. If I can get used to using this technique while fighting, then I can see this being extremely useful in battle." Mira said out loud. Mira thought for a minute and looked at the leopard that was lying helplessly on the ground. She didn't feel like searching for another beast because she had a perfectly good Rank 3 beast right in front of her. She decided to release the leopard from the Ice Prison. The leopard slowly got up and looked at Mira carefully. The leopard knew that its life was in this human's hands right now and it had no way of escaping.
The leopard charged back at Mira as what just happened to the leopard repeated. Mira and the leopard actually continued to fight for several hours. At first, it still took 7 minutes to complete the Ice Prison, but after the first hour Mira brought this down to 6 minutes. It took her another hour to bring that time down to 5 minutes and she spent another 2 hours after that to bring it down to 4 minutes.
After she got the time down to 4 minutes, Mira felt that she had started to get used to using less concentration to receive the same results. Mira started to figure out different and more efficient ways to control the ice with less concentration. She found out that if an Ice Needle with some of her Qi in it entered the body of the beast, then all she had to do was will the ice to spread and it would follow her orders. Also, rather than trying to create individual strands of ice in the body, it was much easier to create a short web around the ice and then just have that extend over the rest of the body. Mira still felt like she needed more experience with this technique, but she wouldn't be able to do her absolute best unless she was in an actual life or death battle.
The leopard also lost its will to fight and just hoped that Mira would spare its life. She still had one more technique to test out and didn't feel like finding another beast. Mira walked up to the beast and looked at it straight in the eyes.
"You fought well, but I don't have the time to wander around this forest in hopes of finding another Rank 3 beast to test this technique on. You will die." Mira said as she brought her fist back and readied her Earth-Shattering Fist. The leopard just closed its eyes when it saw this. Mira slammed her fist against the head of the beast as an explosion happened and sent shockwaves through the leopard's body. The leopard screamed in pain for a second before it exploded into a bloody mess. Blood and guts started raining down as there was not a single piece of the leopard that was still intact.
"Wow! What a brutal technique! It felt like I was popping a balloon! But damn this sure makes a mess of things! This must be what Rhydian feels whenever she kills a beast. No wonder she just can't help herself. It is extremely satisfying to just watch something pop like that. I feel like this technique has limited uses though. It's like a last resort technique or something one might use to set an example. I don't see me using this on magical beasts unless all I need to do is kill them since magical beast parts can be useful in various ways. I guess it'd be fine to use this on humans though. If I ever get caught up in a large-scale battle, then this would be a great way to destroy enemy morale." Mira thought out loud. She then started to decide whether or not she wanted to stay here and fight a couple more beasts or head back.
"I should probably head back. I want to make sure both me and Maria are fully prepared. Mainly Maria. I'll probably spar with her quite a bit in the next week to make sure she's not getting rusty. I also still need to consolidate my foundation a bit more. Let's d that." Mira nodded as she looked over towards Rhydian and released a light sigh. She wished that she could ride on Rhydian, but she's too small for that right now.
Mira then started to run back towards the city and it took her about a day to get there. She went back to the Zaria Family to finish her preparations for the Entrance Exam. There was still a little over a week left until it starts, but she wanted to get there a couple of days early so she planned to only stay here for another week before heading out.
Mira then went to find Maria to talk with her for a bit. She found Maria actually running around the house utilizing one of the techniques she got as a reward from the Trial. It was the Light Boots technique. She noticed a golden light wrapped around Maria as she was moving with fluid movements at extreme speeds. Maria noticed Mira and stopped.
"We only have around a week before I'd like to leave towards the Battle Maiden Sect. We will spend this next week preparing. I will continue training you in unarmed combat, but we will also spar with each other using weapons as well. Spend the rest of your time consolidating your foundation and practicing any techniques that you feel you still need a bit more time on." Mira commanded as she was about to turn around to leave, but heard Maria started to complain before she got the chance.
"Why do we have to fight so much?! I don't wanna! It's just you torturing me all day long! It feels like you just enjoy tormenting me!" Maria kept complaining, but Mira turned around to answer her.
"We wouldn't have to spar so much if you didn't suck at fighting. Get better if you don't want to do it anymore, but even then I will still spar with you. If you get good enough you might start being useful for my training as well. Why don't you think about doing it for me, huh? I guess you could say I enjoy tormenting you. Training and teaching other people can help you improve yourself as well. I've reached a bottleneck in my training with both my scythe and martial arts. Maybe if you work enough you would actually be able to help me." Mira said with a smirk on her face. Mira wanted to see if she could trick Maria and have her want to work harder since she is putting in all of this effort to train her.
Maria felt something was a bit off, but didn't know what. She started to feel bad about complaining as she didn't think about all of the time and effort Mira put into training her over the years. She wanted to apologize, but Mira had already left. She decided that she would try and put more effort into the training sessions since Mira is taking time and effort out of her day to help her.
Over the next week, Maria put twice as much effort into learning martial arts and sparring as she did previously. Both Mira and Maria also spent time consolidating their foundation. A week quickly went by and it was finally time to leave towards the Battle Maiden Sect.