Al was excited at how much he'd improved these past few months, but he had to make one last push in cultivation, since reaching the peak of the Strengthening Realm would be crucial to improve his training speed.

When Al went to fetch Yuly to tell her that physical training time was over, he almost couldn't recognise her. 'Well, that's a hyperbole, but you gotta add that dramatism.' Her previous layer of baby fat was all but gone, replaced with some slight muscles.

It wasn't anything crazy, maybe on the level of someone who did some light exercise every morning. Al had been kind of desensitised since he was extremely muscly for a kid who's not even 3, and let's not even talk about Koro, but theirs were special cases.

Yuly on the other hand was just a kid who's too smart for her age and is obsessed with cultivation, so Al didn't expect these few weeks to produce such results. Al observed her training for a bit, and she still wasn't quite as strong or fast as a normal adult, so Al guessed her physical stats should be around F-.

'That'll suffice,' Al thought as he approached her while she rested and said "Seems like your training has paid off Yuly, you look way different."

She turned away and said "You think so? I'm kind of fed up with it..."

Al grinned internally and replied "Well that's just fine, since we're going to go back to cultivating now." Yuly's expression immediately brightened up.

Al guessed it would take four to five months to reach the next realm if the two of them cultivated with all they had. Every realm was harder to get to that the last, and although the difference was much more pronounced when reaching a new realm, every breakthrough was like that.

That meant that even though the mana levels in the atmosphere were constantly rising, they still took longer and longer each time to reach new stages.

So they kept on cultivating, and Al decided to start bringing Yuly to some of the hunts. He wanted her to get used to death and gore, though he didn't want to push it on her too suddenly.

He started by killing some small bunnies with her looking, and she seemed to take it pretty well. She had already seen the adults skin them and use their meat for cooking, but Al wanted to go through this step just in case.

Next he made her kill one herself, so he immobilised one and placed a spine in her hand, above the creature's head. She seemed reluctant, but eventually greeted her teeth and did it. She shed a few tears, but she was over it pretty quickly. 'She's more resilient than I thought. Maybe it's normal for this world?'

Anyways, a couple of days later Al made her watch him fight against a Sonic-boi from a safe distance, and once again she took it pretty well. He even took care to fight it in a pretty gruesome way, but she seemed largely unaffected.

Thus, Al kept on training her awareness and survivability by going on hunts with her, each time protecting her less and less. She had healing magic that could heal pretty much any and all injuries, but it wouldn't do any good if she got ambushed and died suddenly, or she was in to much pain to move her mana.

Luckily, his Intelligence came in handy this time and he managed to come up with some pretty good tactics to keep her safe without her noticing, so she would remain vigilant for danger.

Meanwhile they had been cultivating every single day, and after a bit less than 4 months, Yuly reached the next stage. Al followed a bit more than two weeks later, and passed the hurdle without much trouble.

[D Grade Core] skill has reached High proficiency. It gives mana capacity and regeneration equal to that of D+ Grade Will and Intelligence, and provides a prominent passive boost in physical training efficacy.

It was pretty much what he expected, meaning it was exactly what he hoped it would be.

There was a second screen, and it contained something Al had been looking forward to for a long time.

[Mana Manipulation] Skill has evolved into [Mana Molding]. It facilitates the compression and expansion of mana, as well as the movement of mana in bulk.

He used to know several mages who had gotten this skill, and even though he hadn't asked about the specifics, he knew it made creating large spells much easier, and Al guessed it would also help Immensely with upgrading his core.

He couldn't dwell on this too much though, as he could finally put his training regime into action now.

It was already the middle of winter at this point, and even though Al could bear with the cold just fine, he decided to have Yuly do her physical training indoors instead. He wanted to also teach her some basic swordsmanship, and he had already gotten a small boar fang short sword (which to an adult would look like a dagger). But they needed an open space for that, so Al made her focus on pure stat training and leave technique for when winter was over.

While checking out his improved mana capacity, Al went to hunt a bit in the forest with Misty. The mana was now more than three times as thick as when he first became able to sense it, meaning stronger beasts might start appearing soon.

Al never wanted to be caught unaware again, so as a measure to prevent that he had [Sense Enrichment] constantly activated and was feeding it a decently high amount of lightning mana, though the requirement was quickly diminishing.

He was also feeding some mana into his legs by using [Physical Augmentation], just in case he had to flee quickly. He wasn't going very fast since otherwise Misty wouldn't be able to catch up, but he zigzagged between tree trunks to train his Dexterity a bit and have his reflexes on tune

But nothing could warn him from the shower of spines that suddenly fell from the sky.

Al heard them falling, but all he could do was run out of the range. He managed to get out almost unscathed, but a few struck his lower back and the his left calf. He thanked his high Will stat and quickly pulled them out and, while wrapping up his leg with a piece of torn shirt and trying not to focus on the stinging pain, took a look at it.

They were shorter than the Badger-pine's, but they were definitely similar, although perhaps a bit harder. The wounds weren't very deep, so Al got back up when he also pulled out the ones in his back, while cursing 'Fucking AOEs, why do they always fuck me up?'

In the sky, something was hovering above Al, and seeing that it wasn't sending down any more spines, Al sighed. 'Well, he did bombard me with about 2-300 of them'

This enemy was his direct counter, since even if his attack (which he was extremely ill-suited for) failed to connect, it could just fly off. Seeing it wasn't doing that, Al guessed it was that mindless desire to kill that all beasts seemed to have nullifying the squirrel's better instincts, so it wasn't just swooping in to kill him, but neither was it flying off.

Al decided to try a risky strat, and picked up his porcuspine like a harpoon, aiming for the beast's trajectory. He threw it, and his aim was slightly off, but it struck the edge of the beast's figure. Al guessed he had hit a wing.

It now seemed to have a bit of trouble staying in the air, but it wasn't falling.

Then Al saw a smirking two-tailed cat sitting on a rock with a (somehow) amused expression. Al had forgotten Misty was even there since the rain of spines, so calming down the anger bubbling inside him, he issued a command.

"Misty, give that thing a brain-shock!"

Misty reluctantly complied, and a second later the beast hit the floor ten meters away with a loud thump.

Al examined it. He knew this would be an evolution of the badger-pine, but it seemed to have gone back to its roots, as it greatly resembled a flying squirrel, if flying squirrels measured 2 meters from head to toe. It also seemed to have extremely porous and furless skin, which meant it probably used to be filled with spines. There was one spine that covered the length of most of its back, clocking at 40-45 centimetres (It's hard without rulers).

Al ripped it off and immediately felt his body become ridiculously light. 'Damn, it's like a porcuspine, but way better!' Al decide it to name it Squirrelic, since for him the effect was like that of an ancient artefact. Normal porcuspines could only lighten him by around 20-30% at this point, but this thing went easily past 50%, maybe even 60%. It was like when he first got a porcuspine.

He ran around for a little while enjoying the feeling, though he cut it short in fear of worsening his calf injury, so he went back home to tell the adults about his encounter with the Bomber Squirrel. Al was a bit sad that the flying creature was a squirrel and not a cat, since then he would've called it Catpet Bomber. 'Ah, what a pun genius I am'

The adults showed a concerned look on their faces when Al told them Rank 3 beasts may start appearing regularly more and more often, and that mutations of the Supra Bunny and Bear-Boar would probably appear eventually too.

They immediately made plans to create several tents with roofs made of Bear-boar pelt and put them everywhere so children could hide under them if a Squirrel Bomber appeared, and to reinforce the walls as much as possible as well.

Most of the adults had [E Grade Core]s at this point, and about half of the children had rotten there too, but that wouldn't be enough to stop Rank 3 monsters if they were to wander in. Hell, they could probably only deal with a Rank 2 Bear-boar or Badger-pine if they all handed together, since the biggest issue was that they barely had any proper skills to utilise their mana, and the ones the wandering merchant had sold them were pretty shoddy.

Al considered trying to teach them [Body Enhancement] or [Quick Steps], since they were the only unevolved skills that they didn't already have and didn't require lightning mana, but he was a pretty awful teacher when it came to magic, so he decided to instead teach the two skills to Yuly, who absorbed those things like a sponge, and then have her do the teaching for the others.

Ang that's what he did the next day, and as expected she could already use both skills after a couple of hours. She fell frequently when using [Quick Steps], but her [Body Enhancement] when using life mana slowly healed all her injuries, and since she could keep it up for a while it ended up working out.

She would have to be careful not to use it when muscle training though, since she found out that if she healed her sore muscles instead of letting them regenerate by theirselves, they barely gained any strength at all. 'Well, that would be too much of a cheat. I think I remember reading a manga once about a healing mage who got crazy strong with that method...'

The next day Al went to the forest again, and after a pretty uneventful morning and afternoon he heard a beast running towards him. It sounded like the charge of a Bear-boar at first, but once it got closer Al's enhanced hearing caught slight differences. He jumped on top of a tree and prepared for a fight, and then the beast came barrelling out of the woods. Its size was smaller than the Bear-boar, but its deep footprints revealed the enormous weight packed into its frame.

The beast was covered in a hard armor made of something that resembled scales, though on a closer look Al saw that they were actually short, flattened out spines. It remembered Al of a certain animal of Earth. 'It's a pangolin! Or a, uhh... Pango-pine... A Spinegolin!!'