Outside the Cave in Great Demon Law Forest:-

Three people were standing with their eyes vigilant.

These were Harry, Qing and Shin.

Today was the day that Qing and Shin were officially allowed to hunt in the forest.

They had wanted to start hunting much, much earlier. But Harry never allowed them, always saying that they were too weak.

And after the sort of hellish training the two of them underwent, they truly felt that they had been nothing but ants in the past.

But now, with the go-ahead from Harry, they felt that they had truly improved by leaps and bounds and were ready for anything the world had to offer.

For example, when they got used to not screaming out their next moves, they found that though very minuscule, a tiny bit of energy was saved each time they attacked. This didn't seem much, but in a long-stretched fight, even the slightest bit of extra power could completely flip the outcome.

However, even after getting so much stronger than their past selves, they still couldn't hold a candle to Harry's fighting prowess.

And, therefore, Harry had ordered them that though they may hunt on their own, he would be following them closely, lest they end up in front of some beast that's too powerful for them to handle on their own.

This was also because (though he never told them), he had come to see the two of them as his students after spending all those agonising days beating them into shape.

And now, finally, it was time to see the fruits of his training.

"Now, remember guys. This is just an advanced version of training only.

I'll be giving you two hours only. And in these two hours, you can hunt as much as you want to.

But, one thing is to be kept in mind. Don't overdo it.

Don't try to extend the time limit or overexert yourself. If you do, there will only be hell waiting for you after you guys come back.

And whatever you do, do while keeping your limits in mind. I don't want you to start chasing some demon beast that's way above your levels just to impress me or something.

You can die if you do something like that. But, remember, even if you survive the demon beast, I'll make sure that you can't survive what I do to you guys later on.

And as that one dark mage once said, 'If you die… I'LL KILL YOU!'

Understood?"

The brother-sister duo gulped hard and spoke in unison.

""Y-y-yes, sir!!""

At this moment they felt like they were facing someone even stricter and more demonic than all those ultra-strict elders they had back in their sect.

They knew from experience just how bad it could get.

The guy had been holding back a lot when dealing with them.

This was something they found out only when they came to check on him one day.

Earlier, they thought that the sort of training he put them under was horrendous.

But one day, when Harry got a bit late for lunch, they went to check on him.

And it was then that they saw just what sort of training he underwent himself.

The sort of training Harry underwent himself made him look like a one-man-band. But with all sorts of training equipment instead of musical instruments.

Somehow, the guy used to run at the top speed on a treadmill while practising his kicks and punches along with lifting weights.

And in the middle of all this, he somehow also managed to insert periodic sets of push-ups, pull-ups and crunches. All while running on the treadmill.

But an even bigger shock was in store for them when they saw him going towards the bath, looking all sweaty…

Right before entering, he started removing weights from his body. Lots of them.

By the end of it, the weight of weights Harry removed from his body made Shin almost collapse out of fright and Qing had to drag him away.

In comparison, all that these guys did was meditate and fight each other as practice.

Gulp.

This dude was a demon!

'No use thinking about that nightmarish sight right now.

We need to focus on the hunt!'

Thought Qing as she looked towards the forest while double-checking her qi levels.

Her qi levels had grown a lot. But what had been truly great was that her control over her qi had also grown a similar amount.

This was one of the rare things she could attribute to her brother.

After watching Harry's fights for a long time, Shin only had suggested she try limiting the qi she used.

This idea came from how Harry's movements never seemed to hold any excessive moves or energy.

When they tried those moves themselves, they found how they couldn't do it half as properly as Harry.

So, even though they gave up trying to learn his martial arts (it was difficult since Harry's stuff was significantly different from the arts they had learnt and seen since childhood), they did try to incorporate his lack of excesses in their martial arts.

And they did it by manipulating the amount of qi.

Naturally, as Qing found, the martial arts they did, wasted a lot of qi in looking fancy.

Take the "Thousand Tigers Kick" as an example.

Practitioners wasted a lot of qi just to make a giant wall of good-looking tigers that they threw at their enemies, along with various other effects like making them glow and produce roaring sounds.

But, as they found, if you limited the number of tigers to less than a thousand or reduced their sizes and increased the density of qi per tiger figure, the attack power of the technique increased a lot.

They felt like they had been living with sea fairies! (The term used for jellyfishes in Etheldor.)

And when Harry saw their progress, he couldn't help but laugh.

He could see why the gods favoured these two.

Those sect dudes could have had literal gold mines in terms of cultivators if they kept these two. But they chose their egos and allowed Harry to take the siblings instead.

Such fools!

Harry gave a signal.

The two of them ran ahead while he followed, staying close behind them.

About five minutes later, they spotted their first target.

It was an eight-limbed spider monkey.

Except for the extra limbs, it looked pretty similar to the ones found back on Earth.

But, of course, this was a fantasy world. You can't have a monkey called a "spider" monkey and not have it spit spider webbing.

But then again, the webs these guys shot were mixed with a bunch of neurotoxins that paralysed even some of the biggest preys.

The monkey that Qing had spotted was sitting in the middle of its disgusting looking nest made of webs. The nest looked something like the stuff made by Fall Webworms on Earth.

Thankfully, they didn't have to touch those disgusting things. All that they had to do was to go close enough that their qi can reach the webs and throw something like the "Soul Burning Qi" technique to light the webbing and the monkey on fire.

Just as they were moving towards the nest after hiding their presence, the monkey looked in their direction.

'Must be some animal he saw-'

Qing started thinking but quickly stopped when she was the monkey lock eyes with her.

It had somehow spotted them!

That's when she noticed a huge network of extremely thin webs covered in poison all around them.

'Sh*t! This isn't how spider monkeys behave!

How in the world did it learn this trick!?'

Qing started freaking out.

Everywhere she had read and seen, spider monkeys were amateur level prey. If you dealt with them properly, you could defeat them even as a child.

They were known for setting up large amounts of webbing to make nests and used webs to hunt prey.

But they had never, at least in her knowledge, been observed making traps this intricate!

They weren't very strong creatures. Their main form of attacks was to trap the prey in their webs and inject huge amounts of poison into them.

They definitely did not go around making networks of poison covered webs that were thinner than human hair!

They had to run!

Though the poison wasn't strong enough to kill them and could be removed if they just used qi, they currently had enough of the neurotoxins that it would take them a few hours to remove it.

And time was something that they didn't have.

The monkey was slowly approaching them, knowing that they were too deep in its trap to run away.

Qing was still relatively composed and kept thinking about how to run away.

Her brother, on the other hand, let's just say, he became a "fertilizer factory"... Lots of ammonia and manure was produced within seconds…

Seeing her brother's condition, her condition and the closeness of the monkey, Qing blanked out about her next course of action.

'If I try to run myself, my idiot elder brother would end up dead. If I tried to push him away, I'll end up dead.

Gods! Why did you have to make such a beast?

To think I that I'll meet my end to a spider monkey of all creatures...'

That was when the monkey suddenly dropped dead and Harry came towards them with his gun's barrel smoking.

"Come on guys! You're poisoned, so we're going back for now!

I guess the beasts here were a bit too much for you.

But don't worry. I'll let you try once more once your poisoning gets fixed."

Then Harry took out a simple lighter and set the web on fire. And then proceeded to drag them back to their home.

After a few hours of rest and a bath for Shin later, Harry called for the two of them.

Apparently, with all the hunting he had been doing in the forest, many of the smart demon beasts had learnt new tricks to survive.

This made them completely different from regular demon beasts and also made them that much more dangerous.

Harry preferred to snipe his prey with his rifle unless he specifically went to train his fight skills.

So, many of the demon beasts had developed methods to sense and incapacitate prey from a much greater distance than before, like the spider monkey that Qing had seen.

Thankfully this phenomenon of demon beasts evolving was only seen in the Great Demon Law Forest and not anywhere else.

It mainly happened because the large quantities of miasma present in the forest cause several mutations in the creatures living here.

Harry's place was protected by the system. So, there wasn't any miasma there.

But the rest of the forest still had miasma and, therefore, the creatures there kept getting stronger.

But the fact that Qing and her brother got caught was Harry's fault.

He had become used to the improving skills of the animals and never bothered to consider that other people would find it very difficult to deal with them.

After resting a bit more, they resumed their hunt around four in the afternoon.

But this time, they were much better prepared for what was in store for them.

Qing still couldn't believe that the monsters here had strengthened themselves to this extent.

But then again, she couldn't deny it after experiencing it herself earlier in the morning.

Shin was very scared to come along after his "incident", but both Harry and Qing had forced him to join.

Harry also figured that it was important to not delay this any longer.

Hunting monsters would improve their strength faster than just training with him.

He feared that if he waited any longer, there wouldn't be any weak monsters left to fight.

"Chop, chop guys! We're already late!

Be grateful that I'm not punishing you for not lasting even ten minutes by yourselves!"

But, naturally, the hunt this time wasn't a walk in the park either.

90% of the time they had, was wasted running away from crazy strong monsters or being stuck in traps of crazy smart monsters.

And in the remaining 10% of their time, the monsters they managed to defeat ended up exhausting their supply of qi.

By the end of their "hunt" (though they were being hunted most of the time instead of the other way around), they truly felt that they were in Hell.

And this entire experience only strengthened their belief that Harry was some sort of heavenly being descended on Etheldor to help them.

And due to this, the system kept laughing at Harry for a long time, without ever telling him why.

Thankfully he caught them before they could set up a shrine in his name and banned them from doing anything of that sort.

But he still couldn't get rid of the fact that they thought of him as a heavenly being.

And, unfortunately, when he asked the system for help, the only thing that happened was that the system laughed harder than before.

But he did ensure to send the siblings out to hunt daily alongside their meditation and practice fighting time. And, of course, he also ensured to never listen to their ever-increasing complaints and curses about him being the devil.

And while these guys were here, hunting in the place called "Hell on Etheldor", their past acquaintances were planning things of their own...