Although the average member of the [Full moon] guild were not as strong as most of the gathered demigods, with the help of Kodria’s soldiers there was no major problem. Only a few wounds here and there came from the battle but they were quickly healed by the holy shamen and Sister Teresa.
When the cleanup from the quick battle was finished, only a few dozen demigods were still standing unharmed as they had not moved and were not targeted.
“We will begin the ceremony one by one in the nearby tent over there,” said Akira pointing to a large tent that had thick leather walls to block the view of others seeing what was going on inside.
One by one the Kodria guards took the demigod inside the tent to be tested by Akira.
When a demigod entered the tent he said nothing and just slowly leaned in close enough to bite their necks. His motions were slow enough so that he could pay close attention to their reactions. Those that did not react negatively or try to dodge were knocked out and given a pass… for now.
For those that had other intentions… they were taken care of. One such example was a female demigod with purple hair.
As Akira was closing in towards her neck, her hand was immediately covered in a purple glow and shot towards Akira’s furry neck.
Akira took a step back allowing the glowing purple hand to cut through empty air. As she was off balance he used his tail to ‘sweep the leg!’ and pounced forward tearing her throat to shreds and letting her bleed out and turn into hundreds of light shards that quickly disappeared.
The blood covering his face helped to sell the fact that he was going to bite them for the ceremony.
With the last demigod sorted, Akira exited the tent still with blood covering his furry face, “All right! [Full Moon] members, you have been building some muscles and discipline for a while now. Are you guys ready for some real training?”
The sight of Akira with a bloody face was a little unsettling when they thought about how it got there but they did not waver from the sight of a little blood.
“We’re ready!” shouted Beater.
“Alright then let’s start with some easy patrolling of the local area. If I deem you ready we can progress to some other fun stuff as we go along!”
***
In a nearby thickly wooded area Akira was flanked by Dolph and Vilkas, while Fluffball led the way and Zundar brought up the rear behind him. They were walking along with Akira to keep him safe as they patrolled Kodria’s nearby territory along with the [Full moon] guild members.
With the day ending and the darkness of night arriving they were currently on the hunt for wild monsters that could cause problems for the local people of Kodria.
Akira paid close attention to the minor lycans and made sure to keep them in their proper formations as they walked through the trees.
“Beater, get back in line!” growled Akira.
“Sorry!” shouted beater as he quickened his pace to rejoin the others.
With Akira’s heightened sense he could hear the sounds of rustling bushes and the crackling of dried leaves still a good distance ahead of them.
Akira stepped to the side and said, “Do everything just as we practiced several times before.”
Each of the minor lycans, including sister Teresa, scrunched their faces as they tried to transform into their werewolf form. Their faces, which were turning red, all looked like they had varying bad cases of constipation or diarrhea.
After a minute of no success, Akira sighed. This was a problem he had not truly paid much attention to. Natural-born werewolves after their first few transformations were able to go in and out of their werewolf forms as easily as putting clothes on.
The full moon guild members on the other hand were still having trouble transforming into a minor lycan.
The sound of the approaching monster was getting louder, so Akira was forced to activate his command skill [Darkness domain] covering everyone in the dark aura.
Now that they were inside the domain they received several buffs and small nudges. Quickly after this, their constipated faces relaxed as they were able to transform into their muscular furry lycan forms.
“When we get back, I’ll be sure to train you 10x harder so that you can transform without my assistance! Remember, you are to take the monster out without using any of your skills. Relying on your skills all the time can dull your skill in fighting!”
“In the future, you will be the shield against the growing threat of enemies in the north! You will be given the harshest missions because of your special bodies! This training is to prepare you to be such an elite force that can fight even if the enemy counters your skills. You will still be able to fight back.”
The low-level members all formed a shield wall with a second line behind it as they waited for the fierce and deadly monster to show itself.
Rondie and the other high levels were standing at the rear of the group. Although they were participating, it was more as support for the lower levels. They were also using this chance to practice fighting in their newly transformed bodies and improving their teamwork with the others.
Akira was not worried about the high leveled members as they knew how to take care of themselves. It was the rest of the guild’s low-level members who had gained their levels from doing random things other than fighting, that he had to watch out for.
Seconds after they finished getting into position, the sound of a loud and menacing monster could be heard right in front of them!
Swoosh!
An orange pumpkin was thrown out of the bushes and landed a few feet in front of their shield wall.
“Where is it?” asked Beater.
“Let’s hurry up and fight! We don’t have long before we’ll run out of steam and revert to our normal bodies,” said Crowbahr as she scanned the trees and bushes where the pumpkin was thrown out.
The area was completely quiet as they tried to use their enhanced senses to find the target hiding in the bushes.
“Is it trying to stalk us?”
“Ahhhh!” Sweety was dragged out from behind the shield wall by a thick green vine and held upside down high in the air.
“Enemy attack!” “Where’s the enemy!”
They immediately followed the vines down to the ground and to the large orange pumpkin that was sitting still.
Sensing everyone looking at it, two eyelids opened up revealing pitch-black eyes that stared right back at them.
A jagged jack-o-lantern mouth opened into an evil grin revealing its sharp orange teeth.
Akira watched from the side to see how they would handle the lvl 60 [PePo Pumkin] monster that was several if not dozens of levels above most of them.
“PePo?” asked the orange [PePo Pumkin] while it looked around the unfamiliar area that was now covered in a dark fog.
“What’s it saying?” asked Beater.
“Forget about what it’s saying! Get me down!” shouted Sweety who was still dangling upside down. She grabbed onto one of the vines binding her legs and clawed at it trying to cut her way free.
“PEPO!” shouted the [PePo Pumkin] growing angry.
Sweety was thrown down towards the shield wall like a club. The shield wall parted so they did not harm Sweety with a large collision. Instead, they attacked the vine with their weapons and claws.
As they stepped aside after cutting a few of the vines, two more vines shot out of the [PePo Pumkin] and grabbed onto two more of the low-level lycans.
As soon as its vines were harmed or cut, they would quickly heal or regrow as an orange sap seeped out of its wounds.
From this point on, the fight devolved into just an ugly and brutal slugfest that was based on strength, stamina, and sheer determination.
The full moon lycans had the advantage in numbers so they were able to slowly overwhelm the [PePo Pumkin] and slowly tear it to shreds.
When the [PePo Pumkin] finally lay smashed on the ground there area around it was filled with several large piles of vines that had been cut off.
The low-level [Full moon] lycans were laying on the ground huffing and puffing. They were no longer transformed since they did not have any more stamina to stay transformed.
Several of them had minor cuts and bruises. The worst wounds being a broken bone or two from being swung around like a club.
Sister Teresa was skillfully handling their wounds while testing out new things that she had heard about from Klyn and the other shaman.
“Duke sir. How’d we do?” asked Beater between deep breaths as he sat up. “I gained a level from the fight!”
“That was pretty bad…” said Akira.
“Yap,” said Fluffball, pitying the low-level scrubs in front of him.
Zundar only shook his head.
“Hey, we aren’t used to fighting without our skills,” said Sweety, who was getting her broken arm straightened enough to heal properly with a potion.
“Now that you mention it… whenever we encountered a problem as we wandered the land, there were so many of us that we had little to fear. We just bombarded the problem with all of our skills. But now that there are only a few of us left…” said Beater as he remembered their past fights.
“And with such a large group of people everyone’s growth was pretty slow,” said Crowbahr.
“Such fighting methods won’t cut it anymore. You all need to step up and take charge!” said Rondie.
“That’s why I have a perfect fighting spot being prepared just for you guys,” said Akira.
“Oh, what type of monsters will we fight? Dragons? Wyverns? Salamanders?” asked Crowbahr.
Everyone looked to Akira ready to hear what dangerous monsters he had in store for them!
“Nope! Ice Slimes!”
“…”
“Slimes?”
“Yes. Ever since we had the dwarves help us expand our slime farm it has been getting a bit overcrowded and out of control. So we need to cull them and gather the cores that any of them may drop.”
“But that’s…”
“Trust me, you may think this is an easy task. But I made sure to set up a nice arena for each of you to fight one on one with all the slimes you could ever want.”
The full moon lycans were speechless, what kind of farm was this? one on one arenas? Were they going to become gladiators fighting for massive crowds of Kodria citizens?
“If you are afraid that there are not enough slimes for everyone you don’t have to worry about that. You will be able to level up in leaps and bounds from the overflowing number of slimes we need to cull. And if the low-level ones are too weak for you we have many large ones that have begun swallowing others and have become mutated giant slimes.”
“But we’ll die from exhaustion!”
“If you do then you’ll just have to work 2x as hard to make up for all the strength and time you lost,” said Akira with a blank face and even tone.
“…” everyone was speechless as they stared at Akira.
“HA! I knew creating a slime farm would come in handy someday!” said Akira now with a large evil smile as he nodded his head in an all-knowing way.
