Immortal Ice Empress: Path to Vengeance

Mira spent the whole night providing her Qi and Lightning to the beast egg. At the crack of dawn, she stopped providing energy to the egg and walked over to grab Maria. Maria was still asleep when she was all of a sudden dragged out of bed.

"What are you doing so early in the morning, Mira?! I want to sleep! Aren't you supposed to be nicer!" Maria complained as she tried to crawl back into bed.

"The hell? I'm going to train you in unarmed combat today! Now get your ass out of bed before I give you an early lesson!" Mira yelled at her and kicked her in the back to wake her up.

Maria really wanted to cry right now. She's been duped! How is this nice? She eventually got up and started to prepare for the day.

"Go get your mother and father as well. I need to test what skills he gave my 'dear friend'. Meet me in the courtyard with everyone else. Go!" Mira commanded Maria to participate in more training.

Maria then left to go get her Mom and Dad. They were still asleep, but all of a sudden they heard a knock on the door.

"It's Maria!" Maria said through the door.

"Come in, sweetie!" Erika said with a tired voice.

"What is it, Maria?" Cole asked confused. They literally just got back and they are already up so early. He started to get a bad feeling.

"Mira told me to get you and for both of you to gather in the courtyard. It seems she wants to start her training in unarmed combat today and wants you two to join. Oh! Dad, do you know any unarmed combat? I have a feeling Mira might use you as an example for the women." Maria explained to them.

"Well, I know how to punch and kick. Cultivators don't really learn these kinds of things as most things aren't so close range." Cole tried to explain to Maria and she just nodded.

"Well, good luck! Better you than me! WAIT! Maybe this is her way of being nice to me?" Maria tried to muse and felt that might be the case. Well, this was just what she hoped.

Cole and Erika reluctantly got ready for the day and made their way over to the courtyard to meet with Mira and the others.

Mira was currently in the middle of waking everyone up when they walked into the courtyard.

"Today, we will be starting our course on unarmed combat! Many cultivators think that this type of combat is useless, but I disagree! What if you forget or lose your weapon? What if your weapon breaks? What if you are too close or in a tight space where a weapon can't be used? Weapons are big and are able to cause a lot of destruction, but fists don't make a noise and if used correctly can be more effective than any weapon. It can also be used for assassination as well. Cultivators who focus more on tempering their bodies also believe that your body is the strongest weapon. BUT! Cultivators suck at coming up with fighting styles without a weapon! This might be why fighting without a weapon is idiotic! But fortunately or unfortunately for you lot, I am here. You may find it presumptuous of me, but if you find someone who is more knowledgable than me in the way of unarmed combat then I would be truly surprised! Consider yourselves lucky that you get a Grandmaster as your instructor. I will show you guys an example of how useful fighting barehand can be! Cole! Come up here!" Mira finally finished her speech as everybody was a little suspicious. They didn't doubt that she knew how to fight without a weapon, but to call herself a grandmaster with being less than 20 years old is a bit much.

"Good luck, Dad! Your cultivation is higher, so you shouldn't die!" Maria tried to cheer him up and pushed him over to Mira.

"Limit your cultivation to mine and throw a punch at me." Mira ordered him and he did as he was told and lowered his cultivation to match hers then threw a punch at her.

Mira grabbed his arm and leg and lifted him up off the ground then slammed him into the ground and put him in a chokehold. Cole tried to escape, but he could barely move his body especially now that his strength was limited.

"Now that I have him like this, I can pretty much do whatever I want. I can't break his neck, dislocate his shoulders, break his arms, or even move into a position to break his legs. Like this." As Mira was explaining she was also showing them. She started choking Cole, she dislocated his shoulders and started bending his limbs in the wrong direction. His body is too strong for her to break so she doesn't need to hold back.

"Arg! Mira stop!" Cole felt like his body was bending in ways it shouldn't and begged Mira to stop.

"As you can see, even though he is a cultivator so am I. If he doesn't have a lot more strength than me or the knowledge to counter what I just did, then he's as good as dead. This is just one of the styles of combat that I have learned and mastered. What I just showed you works great if you are against a larger opponent as you can use that to your advantage. That's what's great about fighting with your body, you can use the enemies' strength against them. I even have my own style, but it's not really meant for use during spars as most of the moves are instant-kill moves. I will now demonstrate the other styles that I've learned and mastered." Mira started to explain as she helped Cole up and punched his shoulders back into place. She then had Cole try to punch and kick her like before, but she used a different move every time. Anywhere from Jiujitsu to Kick Boxing to Boxing to other styles from various worlds. Cole never managed to hit Mira and was only able to dodge some of the attacks, but Mira would instantly follow up after he dodged. Cole now started to regret agreeing to learn this type of combat. Mira also isn't weak even though she is only in the Qi Condensation Realm. She might even be able to compare with Early Foundation Realm Experts. Her punches, kicks, and grapples hurt as she never once pulled her punches.

Mira also started to have a dangerous glint in her eyes. Her eyes were turning into slits as she had a devious smile on her face. It's been a while since she has fought something using only her body. It is truly exhilarating! Unfortunately, Cole didn't feel the same way. He was just getting beat up by Mira's ruthless attacks. This day seemed like it was mostly a show and tell type of day for Mira to relieve some stress. As the whole day went by with her showing every technique that she knew as well as sharing her own knowledge. Cole punched at Mira one last time and Mira just threw him on the ground and stepped on his chest.

"Obviously, I can't teach you everything I've shown you today! I don't have the time or patience for that and for all of you to master these techniques might take many years or even decades. Actually, if you wanted to master everything I showed you today, you might need at least a century, probably several. I will just teach you the more useful techniques. Punching and grappling will be dedicated to the morning and kicks will be dedicated to the afternoon. Feel free to do whatever you want for the rest of the day. Once I see that you understand the techniques then we can shorten these sessions until I see that you can at least use the moves well enough in a spar. Cole, Maria, and Erika will switch off being my partners and the 2 that aren't my partners will be partners. I will also spar with the person I deem the worst at the end of the day. Learn these techniques as quickly as possible because I won't hold my punches! That's it for today! You are free to go!" Mira ended the day on this note. She stepped off of Cole and walked off.

Maria and Erika ran over to Cole who was still laying on the ground.

"Are you okay?" They both asked and tried to help him up. They noticed his body was messed up. He was bruised all over, some of his joints were a little out of the socket, and he even had some hairline fractures. Mira really didn't pull her punches.

"Ahhh! I'll be fine. The devil finally left me alone. She really didn't pull her punches, actually, it seemed she was rather enjoying beating on me. How are you not dead by now Maria? Does she always train like this?" Cole asked as he had a newfound respect for his daughter. Maria just scratched the back of her head and laughed dryly.

"Ehehe. I don't actually know. She always pushes me in lava, freezes me to death, beats me to death, sends me to places that almost kill me, I actually did die one time, but was brought back to life. I'd actually say that you got off easy as you are strong enough to not be in a half-dead state right now. The most brutal thing that I've seen her do is how she started to train the women over there. Guess what she did to motivate them to train." Maria started to name a bunch of times where she had to suffer through large amounts of pain and torture.

"By your tone, it was worse than those other things. Did she let lose magical beasts on them or something or make them fight each other to the death? I don't know." Cole said as he tried to think.

"She executed one of them in front of everyone and was about to kill the rest of them." She said solemnly as she still didn't like that memory.

"What?! She actually killed one of them and almost killed the rest of them? Why are they following her orders then? Isn't that a bit much?!" Both Erika and Cole shouted at Maria in disbelief.

"I'll tell you a little bit about those women so you understand their position. They were captured as mortals by bandits and were abused and raped by them. They had their entire families and villages slaughtered by the bandits. After Mira killed all of the bandits, she gathered all of the women that were captured together. They all looked lifeless like they wanted to die. Mira went over to one of them that had no hope left. She wanted her life to end so Mira killed her right there. She said that if one more person feels the way the woman she just killed did, then she would kill every one of them. Not all of them were able to say with confidence that they wanted to live, so Mira picked one of them out and psychologically tortured her along with forcing her to watch her slaughter all of the people in front of her than killing her last just so she can know that she was the reason for all of those deaths. The lady begged and begged, but Mira only stopped when she heard her give a suitable answer for living. After all of them agreed to live, she put them through a hellish training course and forced them to live in the Inner Region of the Forest after she left. I'd say that I had it easy compared to them." Maria explained to her parents the situation. They never expected Mira to be so brutal. Did she not have any empathy for these people? Does she not care about their lives? How is this okay? And Maria watched all of this? How is Maria still okay? The more they thought about it the angrier they got. They could never do something like that.

"I know what you are thinking. 'How could she do something like that?! Doesn't she care about life?'. I thought the same thing after watching, so I asked her those questions. Feel free to ask her yourselves, but you probably won't feel better after hearing what she says. You might not even understand what she's saying. I want you to know that I feel that Mira did the right thing after thinking about it. Those 500 women wouldn't be alive right now if she didn't do that and they certainly wouldn't be that strong. I think you two misunderstand Mira. While I can't say she is nice or caring, I can say that she never acts on a whim, she acts without the slightest hesitation and puts in all of her efforts whenever she does something. She also never does anything for fun and is brutally honest about everything. She didn't want to execute that woman nor did she enjoy doing it. If she wants you to know something, there is always a reason for it." Maria tried to cool down her parents a bit.

"Very well Maria. I will trust your judgment. You seemed to have grown up quite a bit during your journey. Why don't you tell us about your travels as well as your Magical Beast Companion, Vulcan? He doesn't seem normal at all." Cole said as he patted Maria's head as the 4 of them walked off as Erika and Cole listened to Maria walk with Vulcan sharing the stories from her journey.

After Mira's display earlier, the 500 women started to prepare for Mira's training. They knew that they would have to give this their all and a lot of them were able to put together that unarmed combat might come up in the trial that was mentioned earlier.

Mira had walked back to her room and continued to feed the egg her energy and blue lightning. She would also drop some of her blood onto the egg to see if that would do anything as well. Mira had no idea how to hatch an egg as the caretaker only said to provide her Qi and it needed lightning energy. Did she need to drop blood on it to form a connection with it when it hatched? Her blood might also be beneficial to the beast if it absorbs it while still in the egg. Mira decided that she didn't want to resume cultivating until this thing hatched. She spent the whole night doing this until it was time to start training.