Chapter 4

A few days had passed since Zephyr fought the tiger, and he had been recovering for the past few days. Thaddeus postponed the training again so that he could recover.

After the recovery period, even the scars from his old wounds were almost healed, which astonished Thaddeus as always.

The wolf that came back with Zephyr refused to leave his side for some reason and they could almost always be found together.

Since Zephyr's wounds had healed well, Thaddeus decided to start their training, it began with the morning run just after breakfast like before except he did not have to fight tigers like before, after the run Thaddeus made him repeat the two basics of swordsmanship, slashing and thrusting a thousand times each.

After this, Thaddeus would let him eat lunch and then rest till almost three in the evening and then he would put Zephyr through hell by sparring with Zephyr till the sunset so that he'd have combat experience.

Thaddeus would prepare dinner while Zephyr revised everything he had learned about the language the previous day and they would study more about the language after dinner as well, and Zephyr would go to sleep after the lessons.

Zephyr lived this monotonous schedule day after day for the next month.

...

Thaddeus decided Zephyr had enough combat practice and needed another life-and-death experience, a swordsman can only grow when they are face to face with death after all.

That night, after Thaddeus made sure Zephyr had fallen asleep, he went to the forest to catch a beast stronger than the wind tiger Zephyr had fought.

In this world, beasts were divided according to bloodline, the attribute of magic shows which god's lineage they come from, and the amount of dilution in that blood decides the rank of the bloodline.

The rank of the bloodline decides what stage a beast can cultivate to, a beast with a normal bloodline can't cultivate at all unless it evolves its bloodline.

Beasts evolve their bloodline by consuming other creatures with the same inherent attribute in the bloodline, for example, if the wind tiger Zephyr fought wanted to advance its bloodline, it would have to consume another beast with the wind attribute in its bloodline.

Beasts can also have multiple attributes present in their bloodline and they can also assimilate different attributes into their bloodline by consuming a beast with that attribute but it's generally not seen unless the beast is on the strong side since otherwise it would just reduce the chances of its survival if it went to cultivate other attributes instead of focusing on one and making it stronger.

So, by that logic, the wolf cub that followed Zephyr home was probably a cub with a wind attribute unless the tiger was just hungry.

The tiger was also probably a soldier-level beast since it hadn't completed its evolution into a third-rank bloodline which is a definite requirement for a beast to become a general-level beast along with the crystallization of the bloodline.

Some lucky soldier-class creatures succeed in the crystallization of their bloodlines but they won't be counted as a general class because they will only be able to store atmospheric man in their body instead of mana being generated in their blood itself.

Mana created in the blood suits the needs of the organism whereas atmospheric mana can be used by anyone as long as they know how to, so it's stronger than atmospheric mana.

A beast needs to be a third-rank bloodline for magic to flow within it by mixing with the blood, meaning that the blood of the beast alone would be magical, at this point the crystallized core of the beast acts like a second lung as it allows magic to mix with blood and flow to the whole body so that it can use it from any body part unlike the tiger which could only use it from it's mouth.

Right now Thaddeus was looking for a general-rank beast that had a third-rank wind bloodline and hadn't filled up its mana crystal since Zephyr could beat a pseudo-general class without any training and he had also substantially improved during the past month of training.

He could also feed the wind-bloodline beast to that wolf pup to create a reliable companion to Zephyr who could help him if needed.

As he was wandering around the forest he came across many beasts but they avoided him since they knew the difference in power by instinct.

As he was wandering around, he found a watering hole and a peacock next to it. The peacock saw Thaddeus, threw two wind blades from both its wings, and tried to run.

Unluckily for the peacock, it was exactly the kind of beast he was looking for. This beast had just evolved into a general class and had only filled up its bloodline crystal maybe around a quarter of the way and Thaddeus could tell all this from the fact that it was fleeing and also the level of magic it was using.

Thaddeus caught up to it pretty soon, he used the aura he had in his body to enhance his leg muscles and was able to catch the peacock without any problems.

He dragged it back to the house without killing it, the peacock tried to struggle but Thaddeus dealt with it easily, at one point he got so annoyed that he choked the peacock until it passed out.

There were metal cages in the house, they were used to keep beasts Thaddeus found interesting locked up so that he could conduct experiments on them and their bloodlines.

He kept the cages secret from Zephyr since there could be dangerous beasts kept in custody that could hurt or worse kill the boy even when kept behind bars.

Thaddeus threw the peacock into one of the cages and walked off.

....

Zephyr woke up early in the morning like always and had breakfast before starting his daily morning routine. The day went like it normally does till it was time for sparring training with Thaddeus.

But instead of Thaddeus sparring with him like normal, he brought some kind of bird with him, he was holding the bird by the neck.

The little wolf that was always next to Zephyr started growling at the sight of the peacock.

Thaddeus spoke, "I am going to the town tomorrow, If you can win against this wind-attributed peacock I'll take you with me" was what he said and then he let go of the peacock.

The peacock that was held in Thaddeus's grasp was already resigned to its fate since it knew this human was way too strong for it to beat, but then even though it didn't understand the human language it thought there was a chance for it to be spared if it could beat the young human he had been brought in front of.

Zephyr on the other hand wasn't interested in going to town but he didn't want to disappoint his master, so he steeled his courage and got ready to fight.

The fight wasn't that interesting, it went far easier than it did with the wind tiger which proved how much stronger Zephyr had gotten after this month, to be honest, this kind of improvement wasn't normal but Zephyr had been improving by leaps and bounds.

The peacock lasted only a couple of exchanges before Zephyr took it down. The corpse now lay forgotten on the ground with the little wolf pup scarfing it down eagerly while Zephyr looked at Thaddeus and fished for praise.

"Good job Zephyr, I will take you to town as promised tomorrow but try not to wander around and get lost", said Thaddeus completely unsurprised, nothing Zephyr did could surprise him anymore, he just accepted that Zephyr was different from the norm.

The plan for what to do tomorrow was already set in stone, Thaddeus just wanted to make sure Zephyr was strong enough to take care of himself.