บท 32: Devil Instructor

Mira had come back from looting the bandit leader and his house. There weren't a lot of things that were all that useful for her. She found a Late-Stage Mortal Cultivation Manual, Lunar Fox Cultivation Manual, that could bring one to the peak of the foundation Realm. She found his weapon which was useless to her. There were quite a few Rank 1 Rejuvenation Pills, but the main thing that Mira got from him was the spirit stones that were in his collection. The bandit leader seemed to have a pretty big stash of Spirit Stones for a bandit. He had 100 Spirit Stones in total. He probably got a lot from killing people from the city that explored the forest or lone cultivators. Mira now had a total of 200 Spirit Stones. She didn't know how long this amount would last for her, but she figured that it'd last her around 7-8 months.

When Mira walked back into the room, everybody went silent.

"It seems that you guys have calmed down. It seems someone has come into your new base and made a mess of it. You should probably start by cleaning up the place a bit. Oh! One more thing. Whatever you find can be yours, I've already taken what I want from this place. I will get what I need to start your training and come up with a training routine. We will start your training tomorrow right before dawn so be sure to wake up before that and get ready. Now go!" Mira said and sat down next to Maria.

"Maria, I want you and Vulcan to go kill a bunch of beasts and collect a bunch of Ironhide Grass. Get enough to last this group around a week. The bandits might have quite a bit of food storage and Ironhide grass from all of the people in the Body Tempering Realm, but it would be good if we didn't immediately touch those. I will go get what they need to start training." Mira said and Maria just nodded.

The women walked out of the building and were appalled by the sight. With dismembered corpses everywhere. People cut in half at every angle, limbs everywhere, most heads were removed from the body or blown up into pieces, and the ground was covered in a pool of blood. They realized that Mira was much scarier than these bandits could ever be. They weren't even this scared when the bandits raided their village and killed their loved ones. It was more of a primal fear, where even if they were to die they didn't want it to be like this. At least the bandits treated them like objects. They felt that Mira didn't even see them as objects, much fewer people.

Most of the women vomited seeing this scene and did not want to try to clean up this.

"Come on! We need to do this! I know it's gross, but we might end up in a worse state if we don't clean this up. I personally don't want to find out what her punishment might be for not completing our first task." Alicia said trying to get everyone together to dispose of these bodies.

"You're right. We've made a deal with the devil. All we can do now is do its bidding. Just this scene alone is enough to make me fear death from that little devil. We just need to suck it up and deal with this. I want to get as much rest before tomorrow morning as well." Another woman spoke up and everyone agreed.

The women started to grab the bodies and try to remove anything important like weapons or if they were lucky and found a space ring or something similar.

Maria and Vulcan had left to collect what Mira wanted. Meanwhile, Mira was extremely busy as well. She was constantly going in and out of the base. She would bring in boulders of all different sizes, giant tree trunks, and lots of vines that looked like rope. Mira had found a huge empty area that she decided to use as a training grounds. This area was at the back of the base and took up around half of the base. It was almost like the bandits were going to use his area to expand their group or provide individual houses to everyone. Mira would drop everything in this area. Mira continued this until she had enough of everything. Mira then started using her Ice Dao and Qi to form giant ice boulders to place around all of the people that will be in the courtyard and turn it into an icebox. This took her the longest and she was barely able to finish before dawn.

Maria and Vulcan had made it back sometime in the night with everything that Mira asked for. The women had also finished throwing out all of the dead bodies. They just threw out most of the dead bodies.

It was now right before dawn and all of the women had shown up to the center of the base where Mira was. The women had all went to wake each other up as to not have a single person missing. Mira then led them to the training grounds she prepared.

As soon as they walked into the training grounds they could feel the ice-cold air. They saw stones and boulders of all sizes along with lots of tree trunks. They started having a bad feeling about this. Mira then began to explain their routine.

"From today onwards this will be your training grounds. I will explain the various types of training later. Right now I will explain your schedule. From before dawn until midnight, this will be your home. You lot will be separated into 5 groups. There will be 5 different lunch and dinner schedules. Each schedule will be 15 minutes apart and will be an hour long. That means that there will always be a group on the training grounds until midnight. Every morning you will come to this area. There is a section right here that is full of Ironhide Grass. Take 2 with you every morning, I will show you how to use it later. I will have each of you form partners. These people will be people that will help you when you are in between life and death so choose carefully. The only breaks that you will get are when you pass out from exhaustion. Your partner will be the one to make sure you are alive and use the Ironhide grass on you. Something to note is that when your partner comes to your aid, it takes away from their break time. I already expect you lot to pass out quite frequently so I will be a bit laxer about this today, but starting tomorrow I will not. That is all! Everyone for 5 equal-sized groups, then select your partner! Remember, this partner will be someone that shares life and death with you so choose wisely!" Mira commanded and walked away to the front of the training grounds waiting for everyone to form their groups and partners.

It took everyone around 15 minutes to form into 5 groups of around 100 each. Alicia was a big help in this. She was the one that took charge and started directing everyone. After that, everyone formed a partner. This took around 15 minutes as well. Most people partnered up with someone from their village that they were friends with prior or it was just because they already knew them. There were a few people that picked someone else from another village because they felt that they might resonate better with them. Alicia had partnered up with someone from her village that she had been friends with before this. She looked similar to Alicia with brown hair and brown eyes but wasn't quite as pretty.

After 30 minutes they had all formed their groups and partners.

"Each of you grab a rock that is about the size of your head, maybe a bit smaller then find a spot! Give yourself 1 meter of space in between each other. After that, I will start explaining the various exercises that you will be doing." Mira commanded them. Soon they were all around 1 meter apart with a head-sized rock near them.

"First thing every morning you will go on a light run with your stones for an hour. Then you will work on your upper body in the morning until lunch. After lunch, you will work on your lower body until dinner. After dinner, you will train in various team exercises or sparring. The ice is here to help temper your muscles and quicken the speed at which you train. Also during lunch and dinner, I will pass around the cultivation manual that the bandit leader used. It is a Late-Stage Mortal Grade Cultivation Manual. It should be able to bring you to near the Peak of the Foundation Realm, be sure to pass it around and memorize it, but don't cultivate and collect the energy until you break through to the Qi Condensation Realm, or else you will explode. It teaches you how to circulate the surrounding Qi into your body. This will provide several benefits, but what you need to focus on is its ability to help with healing your body. Now grab your stones and go run around this area for an hour! I will punish anyone who doesn't run fast enough!" Mira commanded and they all started to run around the training area with their stones in hand.

It went fine for around 15 minutes, but the stones started to get heavy for these normal people. Many people started to slow down, but that's when their hell started. Whenever someone slowed down below a certain pace they would get whipped. It wasn't a barbed whip, but with Mira's strength, it still hurt like hell. The women got real motivated when they saw their comrades getting whipped. Some people would collapse on the ground after they got too tired, but Mira would just grab them and launch them in the air and tell Maria to catch them. Maria would then catch them and bring them back to their rock and have them continue running.

Alicia understood what Maria meant when she said they might actually die in training. If this is just a warmup then what will the rest be like? Plus Mira is whipping and tossing every one of them. If they don't die to the training then they will die to her.

An hour finally passed and most of the women were in tears.

"If you lot are already in tears then you won't survive what comes next! I will give you 5 seconds to get your bearings before I start explaining the next part of your training! I will only explain and show this one time so pay attention!" Mira yelled at them and 5 seconds passed quickly.

"This next section you will train your upper body and by this, I mean everything above the waist. We will train your core, chest, arms, and back. You will do crunches, sit-ups, planks, push-ups, bicep curls, mountain climbers, and these other exercises that don't have a name since we are using stones and not proper weights. This is also how you apply the Ironhide Grass. " Mira explained and started showing how to do each of the exercises while utilizing the stones they have. She also showed them how to apply the Ironhide Grass.

"I do have good news for you though. I won't give you a quota that needs to be hit. Instead, you will continue each exercise until you physically can't do it anymore. Then you switch to the next exercise. You will do continue this until lunch! Start!" Mira said.

The women didn't have a problem early on and were glad that they could rest their legs. They carried on their exercises until someone collapsed from exhaustion. Mira walked over to her and whipped her. The woman yelped in pain and screamed.

"I can't do this exercise anymore! I'm too exhausted! Isn't that what you said?!" The woman screamed.

"Do one more." Mira commanded and the woman grit her teeth and forced herself to do one more.

"See. You could do more. I said you will continue until you physically can't do it anymore. If you can still physically do one then continue until you can't even control that muscle anymore. Continue!" Mira commanded and went over to similar people and did the same thing.

Now they understood what it meant to continue until they physically can't. A quota would be better than this! At least they would be able to take a break once they reached it!

"Group 1! You may go to lunch now! Be back in an hour! Here is the cultivation manual that I talked about earlier. Make sure you learn it as it will be extremely helpful for healing your torn muscles." Mira commanded as it seemed to be lunchtime.

Group 1 just collapsed on the ground and stayed there until Group 2 was called which was 15 minutes later. Then they started to apply the Ironhide Grass and started to go eat lunch by the time Group 3 was called. They started just forcing down the food and began trying to learn the cultivation manual at the same time. They split their group of 100 into groups of 20 and each group of 20 had 5 minutes with it. They weren't able to memorize the whole thing but were able to at least force Qi into their muscles to try and heal them. They did that for the remaining 5 minutes then left to go back to the training yard. This was what every group after them would do as well. Group 5 just got called for lunch as they returned.

"Welcome back Group 1! We will now start on the lower body. You will be doing squats, jump squats, lunges, and some calf exercises. I will show you how to do these as I did for the upper body earlier. There is also a net where you stand as well. Put your stone in that net and hang the stone around your neck. You can let it hang in front of you or the back, it doesn't matter." Mira said and began showing them how to do the various exercises.

Group 1 then let the stone hang around their neck and they started their workout. They understood that Mira was a Devil Instructor now and knew how she worked so they had fewer people being whipped. The other groups trickled in as well and Mira told them the same thing.

They continued with the lower body until dinner time and group 1 just collapsed and tried to heal their torn muscles with the Ironhide Grass and Qi. It took them 30 minutes to stand and they tried to rush over to the food to eat. They kept circulating Qi into their muscles the whole time.

After dinner, Group 1 went back to the training area and saw giant logs and boulders along with a bunch of weapons, but mainly swords. These weapons came from the ones that the women found yesterday.

"Welcome back to the last training session of the day, Group 1. This is the teamwork and sparring training session. I have 2 teamwork tasks and have collected all of the weapons you found yesterday for sparring. The two teamwork exercises is a tree trunk exercise where a quarter of you will be in a line and have your ankles tied to log on each leg. You will have to try to walk and jog smoothly around the training area. The second teamwork exercise is much simpler. I have placed a giant boulder over there. You will work as a team to push the boulder and continue that until it's time to switch. 2 groups will be on teamwork exercises and 2 will be sparring. Choose the weapon you found yesterday and find your partner. 1 person will block and the other person will attack then you will switch positions. I won't be watching over this portion of the training. My companion Maria will be in charge of this training while I am watching her. I leave it to you, Maria." Mira said to them and left this session to Maria. Maria wasn't expecting this and was wondering what Mira meant, but she still just nodded. She got the 1st group tied up to logs and sent them on their way, made sure that the 2nd group understood their task of trying to push this boulder, then made groups 3 and 4 and had them start sparring.

More groups kept walking back in over the next hour and Mira told them the same thing as the prior groups.

Maria was having a tough time. The women weren't striking very hard and were trying to get them to strike harder, but nobody would take her as seriously as Mira. Maira didn't want to whip them, so she ended up just holding the whip and threatening to use it.

Mira just watched and took note of several things. She wasn't sure if she will bring them up to Maria or not. She might just let it be and have her think on her own.

It finally became midnight and all of the ladies plopped on the ground and collapsed breathing hard.

"Congratulations on surviving the first day of training. It only gets better from here so look forward to the days you get to spend with me. You may go and do whatever you want, but I recommend you sleep." Mira said and walked away. Maria walked with her.

"FINALLY!! We Survived this hell!!" Many of them screamed while laying on the ground.

"Mira, why did you put me in charge of the last session?" Maria asked curiously.

"I wonder." Mira dodged the question and continued walking away to find somewhere to sleep. Most of the people in the training grounds either crawled out of the training grounds or just tried to find a warmer spot and sleep there until morning and soon morning. Mira kept training or watching over them as she healed her injuries and cultivated. Unknowingly to everyone there, 3 months passed in the blink of an eye.