Cultivation Struggles of a Lowly Fox

"This is crazy..."

The Foxes no longer trained and only strained their eyes at Aiko.

Aiko was currently still trying to walk, but she always failed.

The only difference between her and the other Foxes was that she never bathed in that mud.

'It's tiresome.' Aiko thought after she fell for the 400th time.

She had been at it for several hours now, and she felt tired.

Aiko jumped down, this time by herself.

"Done?" Grandpa Lin asked, looking at the tired, Vicious Fox. 'She had done much better than I expected, even though she was unable to walk.'

"Yeah..." Aiko said tiredly. She stared at the audience, who were munching on food while watching her.

Grandpa Lin shrugged. "They are not under me, so I don't bother with them unless they break the rules." He murmured.

Aiko rolled her eyes, it was obvious he could do something about them, but he chose not to.

"You are amazing!" The Umbra Fox startled Aiko with her enthusiasm.

'Her tail is like a windmill...' Aiko glanced at the whirling tail. "I couldn't take a step, so it's bad." Aiko dismissed her praise.

The nearby Foxes almost vomited blood. 'What are you talking about?! We couldn't even stand on them!' They were livid, but since their cheeks were stuffed, they couldn't yell at Aiko.

They had a short break and they wanted to enjoy the food, but if they bickered with the Vicious Cub, they wouldn't be able to do that.

...

Aiko left the Shadows Peak, returning to the Grandmaster's place to rest. She would take the test tomorrow, since today was too late already.

Aiko transformed and plopped her body on Mei's tails.

Mei twitched but didn't move.

Soon she noticed gentle, yet stable breathing. Aiko was fast asleep.

'She falls asleep too fast and she is completely defenceless...' Mei clicked her tongue.

Mei Refined another Spiritual Herb, this one was used to boost one's energy past the limit, allowing one to display much greater power than what they are supposed to.

Mei sighed.

From the time she started practising the fundamentals of Alchemy again, she realised that her Refining rate greatly improved. She didn't burn as many Herbs as previously and their quality was also preserved much better.

She caressed Aiko's fluffy back, before returning to Refine more.

...

Aiko woke up, but this time Mei was asleep, which surprised her. What was even more surprising was the fact that she was still in her Human form.

Aiko stared at the picturesque Mei and wondered if she could snuggle there with her.

This time Aiko resisted that temptation as it was already late and she needed to take that Assassination Training so she could get some quests and explore the world.

Aiko promptly left the Den.

Mei woke up almost immediately after Aiko left, and she tilted her head. Her mind was strange, but she suppressed that strangeness and returned to Refining those Herbs.

'Why should I care if she wants to snuggle or not...' Mei's mind was still strange and she needed more time to clear her mind.

...

Aiko arrived at the Shadows Peak. She already knew the way and went there a few times, so she also used a few shortcuts to arrive sooner.

The Guard nodded at Aiko and Aiko nodded back before entering. She found Grandpa Lin almost immediately and sat next to him.

"Are you ready?" Grandpa Lin asked.

"I'm not sure?" Aiko felt strange from yesterday and today didn't help, but she couldn't pinpoint that wrongness.

"Then let's start, at worst you will have to repeat it a few times." Grandpa Lin smiled gently and guided Aiko towards the marble-dodging room.

This room was the least used room out of all the training rooms. The reason was simple, this room was the most painful. Those small marbles were quick and painful.

This room was designed to train your dodging skills, so it reduced your Beast Core Energy output, thus reducing the defence of your body. This in turn caused much more severe injuries, as those marbles might not pierce the skin, but the bluntness and speed caused a shock-wave spread through one's body.

That was alright, until you passed a certain threshold, after which those marbles had a chance of shattering, with those sharp broken pieces getting lodged into the body.

One would have to remove those shards, piece by piece, before using the Revitalizing Pills. This in turn meant that the pain would be prolonged until you removed all the bits and pieces, as such this was the most hated training room ever designed.

"Your first test and training is to last in this room for at least 5 minutes, after 5 minutes you will return and we can begin training in this room." Grandpa Lin said.

"Why the test?" Aiko passively asked.

"Because we need to measure your current skill, if we don't do that then the training would be either pointless or too deadly." Grandpa Lin slowly explained.

Aiko nodded in understanding and stepped inside. She was scared of pain, but she couldn't just back off, so she braced herself for what was to come.

Aiko breathed in and out, waiting for the first marbles to arrive, but...

'This is a bit too easy...' Aiko frowned.

Her [Intention Perception] warned her each time the marble would be shot from the hole. This allowed Aiko to work in advance and dodge with ease.

What she didn't know was that this room was not automatic, as such someone had to fill, power and shoot those marbles. This caused Aiko's [Intention Perception] to trigger, allowing her to guess the trajectories in advance.

"Stop." Grandpa Lin said and the marbles stopped shooting.

Aiko turned around. "What is it, Grandpa Lin?"

"Do you have some kind of Prediction Divine Ability?" Grandpa Lin asked, but he was constantly frowning.

"It can't really be called that, but I can guess whenever someone wants to attack me?" Aiko concealed her Ability with this as she didn't 100% believe this Grandpa.

Grandpa Lin frowned. "It's difficult to train you if you can predict it, let's go somewhere else."

Grandpa Lin guided her outside towards the obstacle course and told Aiko mostly the same.

She is to run once to guess her skills and then she would be trained based on those. There was one slight issue.

Aiko was at the starting point and rushed forward with her [Quick Double Jump]. In front of her was the first obstacle, a nice lake.

Which was completely skipped by Aiko with a double jump...

Then another obstacle which was climbing...

Was skipped due to repeated use of the double jump...

Then...

You get the point.

Grandpa Lin almost fainted when he saw Aiko bypassing everything in almost record time.

Aiko finished this obstacle course easily and returned towards Grandpa Lin.

"Oh, this Soul is different..." Aiko stared at the milky blue Soul, which was leaving Grandpa Lin's body.

...

"Could you do the obstacle course without that... thing?" Grandpa Lin looked exhausted.

"Thing?" Aiko tilted her head.

"The relic that allows you to double jump." Grandpa Lin stared at the innocent Aiko.

Aiko fiddled with her dress. "But that's my Ability..." She murmured and Grandpa Lin almost passed out.

"That's your Ability?!" He was shocked. "But we can't train you if you bypass everything..." He frowned, staring at the still innocent little Fox.

"I can do it without my Ability, but..." Aiko trailed her speech.

"Sure, sure, I will train that strange double jump too, just clear this one without it for the time being." He shook his head.

At first, he thought that that double jump was just her jumping on the Pillars, but now that he witnessed the true essence of the double jump...

'No wonder she didn't fear such great height. I would not be scared if I would be able to jump mid-jump.' He shook his head and observed Aiko.

She was in front of a lake and jumped into the lake. She swam with some difficulty to the other side. Her body was completely soaked and the one-piece dress was stuck to her body.

"Wohoooo!"
"GO GO GO!"

The Foxes from nearby training that were passing by stopped to admire the sight.

Grandpa Lin frowned, but wouldn't shoo them away, so long as they were not too loud.

Aiko arrived at the jumping obstacle course. This time she didn't use her double jump, but jumped normally. She was much slower as her [Quick Double Jump] gave her a boost of speed in addition to the jump.

Aiko cleared the simple rock jumping obstacle and arrived at the climbing obstacle.

This had two parts:

The first part where there was a rope and you needed to climb it
The second part is where you climb an actual mountain.

Aiko didn't have much trouble with the first part, but struggled on the second one, as she was not used to climbing with her body and her Fox form had powerful claws that dug into the rocks which would allow her to climb easily.

Grandpa Lin noted down Aiko's shortcomings and continued to watch over Aiko.

The peanut gallery more than quadrupled at this point, but since they were still tame, he still didn't drive them away.

The next obstacle was the tree branch jumping obstacle. There you had to make your body lighter and jump from tree branch to tree branch, but there was a catch.

Some of the tree branches were partially cut or already weakened, which meant you had to choose your footing properly or one would fall down and have to redo the whole thing.

What was even more damning about this place, was that it was littered with illusions, so it was difficult to see which was fake and which wasn't.

Aiko blinked her eyes and for a moment they shined in silver light.

Aiko activated her [Moon's Eyes] to spot all the low-tier illusions or branches that looked weak.

This still didn't help her clear it fast as she had to take a detour because of those illusions, but she also didn't fall during this obstacle.

The next obstacle was tightrope walking. The catch was that this wire was extremely thin and if one didn't focus their Beast Core Energy into their soles, the wire would easily cut into them, injuring them.

Aiko took a lot of time before she managed to gather her Beast Core Energy into her soles and even then she was overly cautious about the approach.

She felt some fear when she stared at that wire, but it had to be done...

Aiko stepped with one leg on it and it didn't cut her, but she didn't use her full weight.

She stepped with her other leg and she was still fine, but...

*Crash*

That wire was too thin and Aiko was still not used to balancing like that, so she kept crashing and crashing. Fortunately, it was not all that high, so she wasn't injured.

It took her a whole day to finish that thing.

The last one was mud crawling.

Aiko truly didn't like this one, as her body was much smaller than others and there was a slight possibility that she could drown.

She was intimidated, but she also believed that Grandpa Lin wouldn't hurt her intentionally.

'Mei is behind me and Grandmasters likes me too... probably.' Aiko glanced at the mud lake with spikes here and there and planks above the lake that limited the height.

'Let's go...' Aiko hyped herself up and crawled under those boards, avoiding those spikes.

'How strange...' Aiko frowned. She was not really sinking into the mud.

The mud still dirtied her, but since she didn't sink entirely, only half of her body was covered.

Eventually, she managed to crawl to the other side, where Grandpa Lin was waiting.

"Barely passable." Grandpa Lin said. He made a hand gesture and the mud fell off Aiko.

"Awwwww."
"What a shame..."
"A pity..."

Aiko noticed the peanut gallery staring at her and she stiffened.

"Ignore them, let's discuss your performance..." Grandpa Lin noted a few last things before looking at Aiko.