Divine Beast Tamer

After some time, Ronald finally calmed himself. He now thought of his main intention on why he had come to this area, that is to test Freya's skills.

"Let's start from the first skill. Freya, try using and let's see what's the effect of this skill."

" is an active skill that targets an area, which means that Freya doesn't need to determine the specific location of her target. Even if she can't see her target, she can still attack it.", Ronald said to himself as he watched Freya preparing to use her skill.

Freya positioned herself on top of a big boulder, then raise her head proudly.

After Freya raised her little head, a loud roar was heard and echoed throughout the area. The normal reaction of an animal when it heard the roar that came from a beast was to panic and find a way to leave the area immediately and escape, causing a chaotic scene to happen. But a different situation occurred after Freya's roar. Birds didn't escape in a panic, the rabbits just stayed in their original places and stopped moving, they weren't escaping or something. The area became quiet which made the situation rather weird, even the little insects Ronald was confused when he saw this.

But after a moment, all of his doubts had been cleared. As if the animals were coordinating with each other, they started to fall at the same time, making a loud *THUD sound, then the surroundings became quiet again.

Ronald also heard Freya's roar, but due to Freya's will of excluding him from the effects of the skill, he had avoided the fate of having the same situation happen to him.

Ronald was astounded by the effect caused by the skill and started to think of many ways to apply Freya's skill during a battle.

But when he saw Freya's situation after using the skill , he denied all these things.

Freya was currently laying on top of the boulder, gasping for breath and sweating profusely.

The skill is one of the basic skill of a creature that has the blood of the dragon. If a pureblooded dragon used this skill, this side effect wouldn't affect them as it was a skill that they knew and practiced since their birth and they had already developed a way to counter this side effect. But Freya was different, as she wasn't a pureblooded dragon and it was her first time using this skill.

Ronald checked Freya's stats and released a short sigh, as Freya wasn't in any dangerous situation or something. She was only tired after using the skill as it uses a huge amount of stamina to activate it. Though Freya wasn't in any dangerous situation after using the skill, Ronald didn't think that it can be used easily during a battle, as some beast may have a way to resist this skill and have an opportunity to attack Freya due to the side-effect of the skill.

Ronald had realized something when Luna told him about his near-death situation. He doesn't want Freya's protection. Ronald treated Freya as his little sister and treated himself as her older brother, as both of them lost their parents, he treated her like her kin and not like a tamed beast. And as her older brother, he wanted to protect her. When Ronald first asked Freya if she wanted to come with him, he had already decided in his heart that he would protect her.

After pushing his current thoughts to the back of his head, Ronald observed his surroundings as he petted Freya's head. He let Freya rest and waited for her to regain her energy. As Freya was a beast of the Beast Lord rank, her stamina recovery speed was very fast when she is not in any form of battle.

After some time Freya regained her stamina, so they continued testing her skills.

"Next let's test the duration of your skill and see if there are any limitations on how far you can fly."

Hearing what Ronald said, Freya stood up and flapped her wings as a white energy tinged with violet covered it.

She flew around Ronald, then flew around the trees. After a moment she started to fly higher and higher. Freya enjoyed the experience of flying very much, she happily flew around, like a child that just discovered the wonders of her toys.

Time passed slowly, after more or less 30 mins. Freya fell down from the sky luckily Ronald was very attentive to her as he caught her directly.

Seeing Freya on his arms, Ronald sighed and recalled some memories from his past. One time, when he was a child, he sneaked away from his mother's watch as he wanted to climb some apple trees and his mother won't allow him to, though apple trees didn't belong to the category of tall trees, it still looked tall when compared to a child. He climbed up to the top of the apple tree to prove himself to his mother that he can climb, though at the end a branch which he was currently stepping on broke and he fell.

Luckily his mother was very attentive to him. When she noticed that Ronald was gone she immediately thought of the possible places on where could he be. After thinking, she remembered that Ronald wanted to climb an apple tree and she forbid him to, so she directly went to where the apple trees were located and found Ronald on it, climbing his way to the top.

By the time Ronald fell, she was already at the bottom of the tree watching him, she caught the falling Ronald and hugged him.

That was the first time when Ronald felt fear.

Thinking of these things Ronald hugged Freya tightly and promised in his heart that he will become stronger faster, as he would surely become strong with Luna as a guide, so all he needed to do was to accelerate his speed in becoming stronger.

***

It was late afternoon when they finished testing and analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of Freya's abilities.

Seeing the setting sun, Ronald decided to go back to the village, as he wanted to sell the pile of carcasses in his inventory.

Ronald came to a butcher shop located near the village entrance. As Ronald entered the shop, his eyes traveled over the different sizes of vague pieces of meat that are hanging on the hooks alongside one part of the shop's left wall.

Ronald wasn't disturbed by this kind of sight, as he was accustomed to this.

Ronald looked around, his eyes searching for something or someone, then he approached a big fat man with a big butchering knife hanging on his side and wearing a white apron stained with red blood. Though the man looked very scary, Ronald approached him with a warm and lively face.

"Uncle Bart I'm here to sell my catch."

"Oh. It's you little brat."

"Uncle, I'm not a brat anymore, I had already finished my coming of ceremony, so I'm a grown adult now."

Ronald treated this butcher uncle like his real uncle. As Bart was the first person who had helped and had taken care of him when his mother died, Ronald didn't know the reason why he was helping him as he would always answer him with, "I had a very huge debt to your mother."