Chapter 382: A Week After
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[Day 186]
After several days since that little "date" with Miranda, we had been mostly slowly letting her open up to us some more. We decided that we were being too overly exaggerated about future prospects and that it was better to not accelerate anything, simply accepting her as part of the family was good enough. If anything else were to develop, it would happen naturally and without us forcing something.
Due to that we simply treat her with the same love and care we do anyways, and we had been mostly just living off these three days peacefully. Cassim has been also improving, growing more confident and more spirited.
He had been recently begun to take classes with Yuki in the use of his agility. He seems to want to not just stay as a weakling and to grow stronger because that's what his father would want of him. So he had begun to train his physical abilities.
At first, he wanted me to teach him stuff, such as spear usage, magic, and so on, but his body couldn't fit with my own, which was big and too strong for him to adopt any of the techniques I knew about, so I had to put him with someone more of his size, Yuki came to my mind. She was small and agile, flexible, had sharp claws as the cat-kin boy does, and she also specializes in physical fighting mixed with magic. She's not a full-on mage, just like him.
If Cassim were more adept at offensive magic and had a lot of mana, I would have made Pekora his main teacher, but she had been made into his secondary teacher. As a Beast-kin, he probably has the innate talent for Beast Magic and quite possibly Druid or Shaman Talent, maybe even the possibility of getting an Elemental Spirit.
But for now, his training has been more about physical exercises, he wants to get in form, so he has been doing all sorts of exercises while being led by Yuki, who was a dexterous thief/rogue-type of fighter, the perfect build for Cassim. We are trying to min-max his build according to his race and special traits, so that's what he's going to train for.
Aside from that we had been doing group cultivation a lot these days, and Miranda has been training her abilities some more, finding out that her growth was locked to Benladann didn't affect her, and even with her lower stats, if she drains mana from Benladann, she can actually enhance them, like the Mold Legion form that Benladann has, which drastically enhances her stats, Miranda can do the same by converting herself into different Mold Beasts, a bear would be better for offense and defense, a wolf increases her agility and dexterity, and there's even a wyvern form she can take, which lets her fly around at fast speed with enormous wings, and also specializes in magical power with a deadly dark breath.
So she's very versatile and seems to be growing into a powerful shapeshifter-type of fighter, with all her shapeshifting forms enhancing some kind of stat and form of fighting. She must use them in unison to fight at the complete best of her capabilities, but even that is rather hard, she has to find ways around it and grow strong accordingly.
And about me? Well, I've been practicing magic, finding ways to combine my elements together, and I've found out I can produce something named Dream Ice, which is dream essence frozen like ice, it seems to be capable of even freezing dreams themselves, but I have yet to see its full potential.
Aside from that my ice is growing stronger each time I continue to develop, but I am pretty much stagnant at this point due to the speed in which I've progressed, the only way out is by cultivating my Mana for many years or well, eating Mana Cores, and eating Mana Cores is always the best way to progress.
Eating Mana Cores from lower Ranks seems to have become less and less effective, the little stats they give are nothing, and lately, they had stopped giving me stats… my other two Mana Cores are of lower Rank, but even these two are growing slower now, I need to consume bigger prey.
The monsters around these warmer areas are nothing to scoff at, we have already seen some Rank 3 Leopards, Grisly Bear Kings, and Fiery Bear Kings, who have fire-attribute claw attacks. These guys are fierce but nothing we can't handle, and they're also a rare catch, so they're not so abundant like in dungeons…
We had been going back to the Ice Moon Sect almost every day anyways to pick up food and other resources daily, the dungeons are still ours, so we keep grinding materials and stuff from them, we are mass-producing more cultivation potions using the mana cores the people hunt for us, and we have the policy where as long as they hunt for them, we'll make them their potions using these mana cores. We have recently introduced a pay system too so people have to pay the alchemists to make their potions, and so the alchemist can gain sustenance by working and the fighters use their money in more things than just food, which they already get by hunting.
Now that more people are around the castle, it has become more of a big village with over a hundred people, so having a currency system is good, but its nothing too crazy, we are just using the Mana Stone currency for the moment, it's the most valuable anyways…
Although now that the population is earning more and more money, I've been thinking of making taxes so the people that live inside the castle pay a small quota for what they're living.
But maybe I am getting too capitalistic in that regard? Nonetheless, the gardens are growing bigger and bigger, and the plants are flourishing more too, so we might soon get a big supply of vegetables and fruits from our own harvest…
And oh right, we have already almost reached Cassim's village.
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