Chapter 57: Challenges are a fleeting moment
After the first month, Sam had the acknowledgement of two elders. After the second month, he had earned the acknowledgement of eight elders, and in his third month dealing with these elders, he was tackling three of the more complex elders.
Among them,
Elder lady Testerosa had declared her wish to only acknowledge his abilities after seeing his taming method herself.
The elders had already concluded that the boy was using a strange taming method that did not fall into any of the existing schools of taming.
It wasn’t even as if he was using the principles of the existing school for a new kind of technique. In the first month alone, the elders had figured out how he was so different from the others.
The fact that he could control, command, and even use bond factors with the creatures under someone else’s command meant the tamers of this world were doing something different from what he was doing here.
His connection with his mystique was also unusually close. And, the elders had attributed it to his taming technique itself.
The elder lady was the best person to test out that aspect of their speculation so, they left it to her.
Furthermore, Elder Hume was evaluating his character and whether the boy would spread their family name correctly outside of the family.
They did not interfere with each other’s methods, but along with these two, Sam was also dealing with a cranky elder that took him deep inside the demonic forest for ’hunting’ games.
Much different from the other elders who tried to fight the boy themselves with their weaker beasts, Elder Valor left him in the demon forest, helping the demonic beasts take him down with their original abilities.
-Booooooooooooooom!
He was forbidden from using the mystique arts, and he had to deal with the demonic beasts with any other method to prove that he wasn’t planning to leave the family on the basis of a single skill.
And for Prism, someone with no offensive capabilities to go against the hoard of demonic beasts, it wasn’t an easy task.
"Haaaa! Haaa!"
He spent days inside the demonic forest trying to hunt down the demons with tactics and items.
He used all kinds of potions and poisons, enchanted items and magic scrolls, he even used the consumable items that took him weeks to prepare for this hunt.
Every time he went against a demonic beast directly, he needed to be more careful of his vitals than his abilities.
Without his mystique arts, he was left vulnerable to the demonic energy and its corrupting powers.
For someone with the energy decay syndrome, he did not have to worry about the internal energy corruption, but his outer body was still very vulnerable.
He focused on avoiding direct attacks from the demonic beasts.
First spending a considerable amount of time studying the beasts he was going to hunt, he formed a plan around the hunt.
At first, his tactics worked well against the opponents, but then the elder increased his interference.
The demonic beasts weren’t fighting by themselves anymore. They weren’t falling into his traps.
All the weaknesses that he may find, there would be no benefits of them with the elder backing the beasts.
"Arghhhhh!"
For the first time in his life, Prism was experiencing what it was like fighting against enemies that were far behind his level at an obvious disadvantage.
Some days went by where he could not even approach the beasts knowing they might attack him again and the elder wouldn’t stop them.
As a matter of fact, there were days when he got injured badly and despite laying flat on the ground in the puddle of his own blood, the elder would not save him.
The message from the elder was clear: either learn and win or give up and stop.
Every time he would wake up in the infirmary, Lady Isha would scold him for pushing himself so far.
She even wanted to confront the elder for going so far when the boy was trying his best.
But, she knew she couldn’t speak against the elder and expect a change. The only reason he went so far was because Sam had not given up.
He was pushing himself as far as possible so that in a real life scenario where he needs to survive the impossible, he knows what things he could use.
The training was brutal.
In the forest of the demons filled with all kinds of death-flags, in a mere span of a month, the elder pushed Sam to develop the qualities of a ranger, a hunter, an archer and swordsman, as well as a beast in human skin.
-Oooooooooooooong!
He already had the knowledge required for the basic skills. He had seen and trained the individuals that were far better at what he was learning right now.
He just needed to internalize those things. And to do that in a short time, he needed to be on the edge of his life.
Somehow, even though the elder did not know his limits at first, he started discovering how much potential the boy actually had with each passing day.
There was no need for him to worry about him, so, after only a few days, he started pushing him further.
"Ghaaaaaaaa!"
First it was a battle against an expert level beast of (U) rank. Then multiple smaller creatures. And now, he was fighting a creature of (SR) rank himself.
The battle was not easy... for someone who technically wasn’t using any of his Beast skills, the difficulty was far more cruel than what he could have experienced with his mystic skills.
He was a tough lad.
"No! I win this!"
He used raw strength after exhausting all the gimmicks he had prepared.
In a fight of pure strength, he was up against a demonic beast resembling a gorilla.
The match wasn’t fair to begin with, however, when the gorilla attacked him with both of its arms, he lunged off with a big rock in his hands.
"Yaaaaaaa!"
"Ghaaaaaaa...!"
The demonic beast wasn’t stupid enough to get hit by such a crude attack, but Sam had exhausted the creature enough for it to let go of all the rationality it possessed.
-Ghaap!
Prism targeted the most vulnerable part of the beast’s skull and smashed the rock in with all of his body’s concentrated force, avoiding the opponent’s deadly attack with a perfect maneuver.
Immediately after that, he took out a certain dagger he had been hiding all this time strapped on his calves, and threw it at the demon right when it was the most vulnerable.
"Ghaaaaaa...!"
In the battle, he had most certainly broken a few of his ribs, was bleeding from the cuts and wounds all over his body, and, despite the protective gear that had remained on him, the demonic corruption was starting to take over his body.
"Haaa... haaa..."
The potent poison on the dagger that he used just now was derived from the same curse that almost killed him at the 6th cradle.
The demonic beast, so dangerous it would have needed an entire party of tamers to defeat, now lay flat on the ground.
"Haaa..."
He was doing this to get out of this house. He was doing as these elders wanted him to because that was the only way for him to get what he wanted.
However, this time, the training of the elder had made him forget all that he wanted to do, all that he needed to do with his life.
"...haaaaa."
When he faced this demon, the only thing that remained in his head was how he could defeat this thing.
The only thing he wanted to do was to finish off this creature.
He wasn’t always like this, he didn’t know where this came from, but he knew one thing: if he didn’t kill this thing, he would fail everything that he needed to do going forward.
Even though he knew the elder was there, he believed that the only way to prove his conviction to that elder, and to his past self, was through survival.
And right now, despite his many injuries, he has succeeded.
"You’re crazy, lad."
He was going to survive and he was going to recover. And he was going to face each and every one of these elders’ challenges with everything he had inside him.
"Haaa... ha ha ha. Ahem!"
He was coughing up blood, but his laugh sent a clear message to the elder and the rest: he wasn’t going to stop anymore.
They were not going to stand in his way with their unreasonable, unjust requests.