Spirit Taming

Chapter 448: Breaking An Ego

"Line it up!" Jerold's sudden change in attitude shocked the healers. They thought that he had finally gotten serious and was about to start working the way that they thought they should train. But instead, he looked at everyone he had just forced to line up.

"Go in to the forest and come back with a beast. You're near the healing camp, so you should be fine, right? Just go outside the safe area, kill a beast, and come back. Then maybe you can learn something. You can just be healed if you are attacked, right? That's the real training you should get.

It's how I trained?"

A few of the healer's jaws dropped while one or two just laughed a little. When they saw Jerold take a seat and ignore them afterwards, they realized that he was serious. He wasn't showing them anything.

"We can't do that though, we can't fight the beasts, we would die…"

"Huh"?? Die? But you said you were safe since there is a healing camp right here. Just have it healed if you die. You will be fine. Just relax.

We can train whenever. There's no worry to have at all." Jerold was casually waving his hand. It seemed that he had completely given up. But he wasn't so soft to just let it go.

"Think of it this way, if you go out and survive, you have real experience. What if you run in to bandits or blood moon cult members? You can get cut up and tortured. Then you escape and survive while dodging beasts. You might get scars like I have and you might go a little insane. Your beast might even forcefully evolve or grow in to a form it didn't intend to since it tried to save your life.

Pretty amazing, right? Let's just force everything. The healing camp is right here. You can take the pain, right?"

While the healers had thought that Jerold was originally kidding, they saw that he was just ignoring them completely now. He was even cleaning one of his daggers like he was planning to keep it clean and sheathed the entire day.

The sudden change of what the healers thought would happen made them all unhappy. They began talking among themselves. So much so that they totally ignored Jerold. None of them noticed when he disappeared from where he had been sitting. That was until a cut showed up across the cheek of one healer trying to talk his way in to convincing someone else to help them learn to fight.

The pain and the trickle of blood was too sudden. It made the healer that had been cut wonder what was happening. This was a foreign experience. But the other healers were sure that something was wrong. Before they could react too much, another healer felt a cut appear on their arm. This time, however, they rushed away and started to panic.

The cuts became more and more as they were pushed to running and fleeing. Naturally, their pained screams attracted many of the other healers along with a few of the beasts around. Even peaceful beats would be curious about what was happening when it came to a random expression of pain and fear.

But they didn't attack, instead, they just retreated back to their steam baths because they understood there was no real threat.

Not that the healers didn't understand there wasn't a real threat. Their big talk about fighting and being pushed had been just that. Big talk. None of them really understood what training was and how resisting pain could be learned through time and effort. Instead, they had foolishly believed that there would not be a single consequence of their training.

They could just be healed without a single bit of pain or damage. They were invincible because they were around and were healers themselves.

While looking at the now exhausted, cut up, and pathetic looking healers that Jerold had bullied back in to a group while invisible, he finally spoke up. "And here I thought that battling it out in training was what you wanted? Just to get beat up and learn to fight. But all you did was run away when you were attacked. Beasts or humans will do the same.

If you had listened to me you might not look so pathetic. Check your egos then come back here if you actually want to train. Meanwhile, I am going for a walk." Jerold started to wander away while the healers started to freak out a little more. They half expected him to come back.

"That was pretty good. They lost their minds pretty quickly. They have no form or even a little muscle memory for fighting. I bet they never even threw a punch let alone a blade." What Jerold had not realized was that Reese had managed to witness everything from one of the hot spring pools. He had watched it all happen and enjoyed it all the same.

"They wanted me to fight them and make them learn through pain. It's the same as rushing off to let beasts eat them. They are stupid and think they are invincible and immortal because they have healers all around them. But they should know that some things can't be healed.

No one can be brought back from the dead unless they become a monster." Jerold was a little annoyed still but he saw that Jerold was more or less trying to talk him down.

"We should see what they might want to use as weapons. I can help you out. I know I should be recuperating my body so I can begin meditation and train my energy usage, but I need to keep my body moving too. I can show them basic sword moves and maybe one or two uses of shields. I would say we send Brad over, but I have no idea where he went." Reese laughed a little while Jerold gave a firm nod.

"I have daggers down but I barely learned anything about archery from the girls. They seem to find it way easier than I did. So I will stick with daggers and let them learn weak points on their own. They are healers, they should know the weakest parts of a body, right?" Jerold had started to think about what he could learn from the whalers. Weak points were one of them.

It had occurred to him that when he had fought in the tournament, that he had battled in just one way with the thoughts of victory on hand. But he had not studied much when it came to how he attacked. Beasts usually had weak points and Clark had helped everyone with that. But a human's weak points were normally clear. But what if they had armor? What if they were altered by their beasts?

That left most of the group inexperienced in the many weak points. Unless they learned them all, then they would potentially be at a disadvantage.

"Then Let's go fix them up. They might be a little traumatized. Not that I think that's bad. A lesson is a lesson and they definitely got what their egos deserved." Reese laughed a little and thought about how he and the others from his family were when they were little.

They all thought they could fight a dragon with their swords until they understood that they could barely even hold a real sword let alone their own beast if they had an abyssal sword beast as a partner.

"We were going to work on other things though, are you sure you want me to help you with this?" Meanwhile, Grace had managed to catch Isa in private. Grace appeared to have realized that she was very foolish to leave Nebula and come to a palace that was warmer.

While they were still in the northern area and as soon as they left the affected area of the hot spring, they would still have ice and snow. Grace was feeling that she should have been somewhere better for her frost finch and that without her training her control of ice, she would fall even further behind.

"I can help you but we have to make sure we get stronger everywhere. You should meditate with the ice energy crystals we have in the hot spring. The difference between the energies might make you learn how to get stronger rather than just talking 2ith me about ice energy." Isa wasn't trying to push Grace away, but she really didn't think that she should be pushing Grace in one direction or another.

"I already know that it will be important to learn about how ice energy works. It's similar to water to a degree, but I also know you have your wind caterpillar to worry about. We can work together on ice and wind. That way we will grasp both energies better!" Grace had thrown it out to a degree and knew just how to push Isa to her side.

While Isa had a rough handle on how she was going to proceed with her wind caterpillar due to its young age, she had thought that her and Ella would be training. But with Ella completely caught up with beast plans for the most part, Isa understood that the business side of things was also paused. Without copies of beast plans, there wasn't much else to do.

"Fine, but when we have a decent grasp of ice and wind, we are going to work on mixing the two. Your frost finch can do it, but I doubt you can work on wind pushing you faster while also adding ice to your saber or rapier. I want you using the rapier to make a stronger ice attack. Pierce right through beasts." Isa was a little harsh with her goals for Grace, but it was exactly what Grace wanted.

A push to get better so that she could have a small goal that would make her stand up and next to her group instead of fall behind.

" And I will show you how to make yourself faster with the wind. You can't meld with your new partner yet, but you can use the energy you share. Grace's energy was contagious.