Chapter 33: Personal Army?

Unknowingly to all of the women in the bandit base, 3 months had passed. Even Mira and Maria seemed to lose track of time. Mira was in peak condition after a week had passed and had healed all of her internal injuries. However, when she said that they were going to leave in another week the women tried to come up with something to extend her stay by another stay. They had noticed something. Even though the way they trained to get stronger was nothing short of madness a day of training for them was like a month for somebody else. This was because Mira made sure that they lived on the verge of life and death every day with their training. And with the threat of Mira's wrath looming over them, their bodies and minds started to adapt to this situation. Their bodies unconsciously tried to get stronger faster. This was also added to the fact that just a couple of days prior they were all normal mortals with no strength, so their room for improving their bodies was a lot higher and easier than cultivators. All of these things coupled with Mira's icy training grounds made their muscles and body get stronger incredibly for the first week.

Being able to notice a significant rise in strength is an incredible feeling. The feeling of accomplishment, the explosive force hidden in your body to extinguish your enemies, and the feeling of community that the women here felt because of the sense of crisis they all felt. They were worked so hard that they didn't have the time or energy to think about anything else other than ice and boulders. Dead family? Destroyed village? They can't even think about those things even if they want to. Mira would beat the shit out of them if they are distracted and make their training twice as hard.

With thoughts like this, they actually didn't want Mira to leave just yet. They had officially turned into training masochists. They came up with a plan to extend her stay by another week. They didn't have the guts to talk to Mira directly about it because she would probably just instantly refuse and leave. So they planned to come up with a goal for all of the women to reach. A goal that would be nigh impossible to reach if they didn't put every ounce of focus and effort into their training. Once they had a goal in mind, they would bring it up to Maria. Maria was extremely sweet and innocent. She was easy to get along with and cared about the women here. They would bring up their goal to Maria and ask her to tell Mira about this but make sure that Mira doesn't know it came from them. Maria would then have to go to Mira and 'make a bet' with her and if the group of women could pull it off then they would stay for another week and if they couldn't then they would leave.

Maria brought this up to Mira as soon as training that day was over. Mira didn't know if Maria felt bad for the women and gave them this solution or if the women brought this up to Maria, but she didn't mind too much. She was mostly just cultivating and trying to figure out what Ice Dao would suit her the most. She also had plenty of Spirit Stones right now to aid in her cultivation. It also wasn't often that you get to spend time in a place with walls in the middle of the forest. She agreed to the bet. The bet this time was that Groups 1-5 would do a 3-legged race, but instead of 2 people tied together, there would be around 100 people with their legs tied together. All 5 groups would have to do this and not have a single misstep while they were running.

Mira obviously didn't think they could do this in a week. Even if Maria focused on this in the teamwork and sparring training session, doing something like this was essentially impossible.

After a week though, her thoughts were proven wrong. She saw 500 women run around the training area with their legs tied to each other in perfect unison. It was a beautiful sight, something that might not show up in any world again. This was proof of these women's determination, group coordination, silent understanding of each other, and trust for one another. Watching this scene made Mira feel like she was teaching a group of women to be super-soldiers. Mira then had a crazy idea. What if she could have a personally trained army made up of only women in the future? A city pisses her off? DESTROYED! This might not be plausible, but if all she had to do was spend a couple of months here and train a bunch of mortals... Mira decided then that she would go in more effort into training these people. She didn't know if they'd be loyal to her or if they could even live for that day, but the thought alone of having a secret army like this was enough for her. She might never get an opportunity like this again and a few months to a cultivator is nothing! This is a low-risk-high return gamble. Even if they all died before that happened, doing this would still be worth it. She has no idea where the ruins in the forest are, she doesn't know what other lucky chances there might be in the forest for her, and she doesn't know what will happen in the future. Why rely on luck when a lucky chance is right in front of her and all she has to do is put in some work.

After the women won the bet that day, their training got exponentially harder and Mira was much tougher on them. Even a slight mistake would get punished by several lashes. She also would give them chances for her to stay another week, even though she had already planned to stay a few months here. The second challenge she gave them was to hit Vulcan 1 time. They had a full week to complete this goal and Vulcan didn't know about it. It was impossible for them to even hurt Vulcan as he was at least a Low-Stage Rank 2 magical beast and was born from fire and lava. Not to mention he is just a baby. Hitting him would be incredibly annoying for Mira and Maria.

It took them until the last day to hit Vulcan. He was usually near Maria and was able to sense any malice or bad intentions toward him. Eventually, they just had the cutest girl out of the 500 of them hold a bunch of meat for him and coax him into letter her pet him. Then she pulled out a knife and just touched him. She had no bad intentions or malice as she didn't even attack him. Mira was happily surprised again by the results. She knew that this was the only way for them to even think about getting close enough to Vulcan to even try to hit him. But what surprised her was that the cute girl that pulled that off didn't even have any ill intentions when she lightly hit Vulcan. This girl could be an excellent assassin. Mira didn't really know how to train an assassin but knew of a way to increase this girl's assassin prowess as well as adding another element to the women's training. She had this girl sneak off after dinner and try to sneak around the training grounds during teamwork exercises and try to assassinate people with a wooded knife. She would also have her run around at different times at night and have her try to assassinate them while they slept. For every 'kill' she got, she would get rewarded with something and every time someone 'died' they would get heavily punished. She could get this girl to have some experience with assassinating while the other people would have to increase their awareness to avoid 'dying'. This was mutually beneficial training for both assassin and target. As one side grew, the other side would as well. Mira kept piling on the hellish training and ridiculous goals.

Mira also threw in something else. Mira would lecture the groups when they were training about things she knew about the cultivation world. She would talk about Magical Beasts and their ranks, sects, cities, currency, the different continents, Spirit Stones, herbs, how to break through the stages in the Body Tempering Realm, Daos, element affinity, weapon ranks, side jobs for cultivators like alchemist and weaponsmith, beast companions along with the different contracts, and various other things. After Mira had lectured them, she then quizzed them at the end of the week. Luckily everyone was able to answer her questions because that was her weekly challenge. After that week, she told everyone that she would stop letting them know what the challenge was, just that there would be something in the next week that would determine whether or not she stayed here to train them. This further increased the efficiency and effectiveness of their training as they had to put everything they possibly could muster into everything that Mira told them to do.

Sometimes Mira and Maria would take them out to hunt, sometimes they would bring a beast to the base and make them fight it. Mira also had them participate in a tournament with the winner getting a day off of training. Tournaments started to become frequent. Usually, they didn't involve 500 people in the same tournament as most of the time it was just between the 5 different training groups. The winners would get various rewards. This was meant to force the women to have a bit of individuality in their fighting style that set them apart from the others.

A couple of weeks after the 2-month mark of their training, they all had a qualitative leap in strength. It was quite weird, as they pretty much all hit the Strenght Training Stage of the Body Tempering Realm. They all now carried the force of over 5000 kilograms within their body. These women were able to gain strength this quickly mainly due to Mira's brutal methods. They never would've been able to reach this stage without her guidance along with the cultivation manual from the bandit leader. A month of training with Mira's methods combined with a cultivation technique to circulate Qi in their bodies to help with the healing is equal to years if not 10 to 20 years of trying to reach this stage on your own without a cultivation manual. When they hit this stage, Mira told them that she would prepare them for their journey of becoming a true cultivator and the 2 hardest stages that they will need to overcome. The Bone Forging and Marrow Tempering Stages are the most difficult to get past. Mira explained her experiences with Bone Forging and she had Maria explain breaking through to Marrow Tempering to them as Mira used the Ice-Fire Flower to breakthrough. Mira had her previous life but felt that Maria could explain it better as she is part of a big family in a city that had much more experience in this.

Mira told them that now that they have all reached this stage that she has no reason to stay here anymore. They have the strength to live in the forest as long as they don't run into a Late-Stage Rank 1 magical beast or higher.

Mira spent the next few weeks getting them used to their new strength along with their new exercise routine. Mira had them do exactly what she did to break through to Bone Forging. Mira was even tougher on them these next few weeks so she could instill the feeling of how they need to be training to progress through the stages. Mira knew that progressing through the Body Tempering realm isn't that difficult as long as you put in the work to do it.

It came time for Mira and Maria to leave as they had nothing left to offer these people. It was the day before they left and Mira was standing in front of all of the women in the base and decided to speak to them.

"This is the last day that I will be watching over your training. I have set you on the path to becoming strong as I told you I would. Unfortunately for you, I cannot just stay here and you will magically break through the realms of power. Well, I guess that could happen, but I refuse to do that. You have what you need to make it to the Qi Condensation Realm now all that matters is what you will do with it. You need resolve, determination, and hard work to continue breaking through. Just know that Qi Condensation is when you will become a true cultivator." Mira paused her speech here.

"Now onto what I really wanted to talk about. You lot have the potential to be a truly fearsome force in the world. Right now you are too weak to even be able to raise your heads in the world. I have plans for you to be able to rise to prominence in the future, but strength is required for that to happen. If you truly want to stand and hold your head high in the cultivation world, you need power. It doesn't have to come from individual strength either. The power of having a backing is also a kind of strength, albeit less effective. But why not have both strong individual power along with a powerful backing? When you get strong enough then you can be each other's backing along with me as your leader. Of course, this is only a dream meant for many years down the line, but this can be possible. If this is something that you are interested in, then speak up now. Like everything else that you have done, if there is not 100% of people in agreement then I will take it as a no and leave it at that." Mira said and waited.

Alicia, the person that usually takes charge in situations like these, looked around. After seeing everybody's expressions she turned to look at Mira.

"This is what we want! Now that we are on this path and have no reason to look back we will follow you! Even though you have done nothing, but ruthlessly torture us for 3 months we got exponentially stronger because of it and were able to find a new reason for living! Not only did you save us from the bandits, but you saved us from ourselves! We owe you more than one lifetime as debt for your help! If we are going to live in this world and be cultivators, then we might as well try to become the strongest. We want to get stronger! We want to live in this world how we please! We don't want our family taken from us again now that we have this second chance! If you want to be our leader, then what else can we do but agree?! If one of us betrays you then you may strike us all down! This is our resolve! If you tell us to go right, then we won't dare go left! If you tell us to live, then how can we accept death!? If you tell us to die, how can we continue living?! We are at your command in body and soul, as no one in this world is more fit to lead us!" Alicia yelled with conviction as she tried to describe the thoughts of everyone in the base. This is the result of having death threaten you every minute of every day. The bonds that these women have formed run deeper than any friend or family. This is the result of absolute trust in those around you, the understanding of each person's thoughts, and the struggles that they have gone through together.

"YEEEAAHHHH!!!" They all yelled at Alicia's speech. Then at the same time, they all kneeled on the ground.

"We are at your command, Miss Mira!" Every woman yelled at the same time with conviction, respect, fear, pride, and utmost loyalty.

Mira was absolutely stunned silly. Never in her life has she ever seen something like this. She had also never expected Alicia to give such a speech that seemed to convey everyone's thoughts and feelings. Mira's heart started beating slightly faster than normal as this scene slightly flustered her. She soon calmed back down. She knew that only time would prove this conviction and loyalty. If they can't survive or lack the drive or if someone decides to betray her then it would all be for not.

"Very well. But these are merely words. I can see that you have the resolve and determination to continue getting stronger, but loyalty is hard to come by and even harder to keep. You can say that you owe me 2 lifetimes or even 10 lifetimes, but all it takes is 1 person to ruin everything. With that being said, if you can survive and become strong enough for me to give you my loyalty as a leader, I want to give you something to look forward to. I like the theme of if one of you dies then all of you will. It seems to fit this group of people well. So I will leave you with this thought. I will come back again when I am done exploring this forest. If by that time, I don't see every one of you whatever the reason may be, then I will personally deal with and kill every one of you. Even though I have favorable impressions of this group, that doesn't mean I won't kill you for disobeying my only rule for you." Mira said with killing intent. They knew she wasn't lying either. This group's foundation was essentially all or nothing.

"But, if my punishment is this harsh then I feel there must be a reward of similar value. If every single one of you can reach the Qi Condensation Realm without anyone dying before I visit then I will escort you to Lunar Fox City." Mira said.

The women were about to get excited but realized that this was barely a reward. They could just go there by themselves when they reach that level of strength.

"I know what you're thinking. 'I could just go there by myself with that strength.' is what you all are thinking. But I'm not done yet. I will be your guide in the city and be genuinely nice to all of you for an entire day. I will answer your questions to the best of my ability. I won't call you worthless shit or curse at you. I will essentially be a normal girl. You might think that it will be extremely weird or wrong as that won't be my personality, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing nonetheless. You will not see something like this from me a second time. Even if you lived through 10 lifetimes, you wouldn't get a scene like this from me. If you are curious as to what this looks like or want to experience this, then you better work hard before I come back. Who knows when I will come back too. It could be several months or it could be several years."

The whole area was shocked. Even Maria was stunned out of her mind. She's been around Mira for a few years now and has never even caught a glimpse of a smile or anything remotely nice. Even when she is doing something good, she makes it sound like something bad. She tried to picture Mira talking in a cute and girly voice and talking about girly things like clothes, hair, body, boys, and things like that. Maria felt wrong thinking about it but wants to see it! NO! She has to see it now! Even if she has to stay in this base and become a demon instructor like Mira! She will not let this slip!

"If you lot don't do this then I will come back and kill you all if Mira doesn't! Listen!! I've been with her for several years and have never seen her be nice about anything!! If you can't do this for yourselves then do it for me!!" Maria yelled at them like a crazy person.

Mira just pushed this crazy woman away and said one last thing.

"We will leave tomorrow morning. I have left a couple of surprises for you that may aid you in your journey, but you have to find them first. Don't disappoint me." Mira said and walked out of the training grounds to go to sleep. Maria and Vulcan followed as Maria just glared at them.