Altyria took her time grooming herself by the waterfall. She first started from her ears, face, body, legs, and then tail.

The tiger finished its business and slowly made its way back into the forest. Altyria silently watched it leave before continuing what she was doing.

After she finished, her fur was wet and stuck to her body.

I should find a spot to dry myself, Altyria thought to herself.

Altyria scanned the area where the sun shined brightly. She spotted a large boulder closer to the forest that was away from the waterfall. She trotted to the boulder and leapt on top of it. Immediately, Altyria could feel the heat from the sun warm her up. She decided to stay here to dry her fur and sunbathe at the same time.

Unbeknownst to her, the figure in the darkness watched her from start to finish and showed no intentions of leaving.

However, if that mysterious figure had intended to harm Altyria, she would have sensed it as she was very sensitive to those with harmful intentions toward her after what happened to her last life.

Hours passed before Altyria woke up from her nap while drying her fur. The sun had passed its highest point, but was still far from setting. Her fur shone brightly against the sunlight creating a white glow. Her crystal blue eyes narrowed as she gazed at the clouds.

What should I do now…? Altyria asked herself. She looked down around her as the boulder was pretty high up. She noticed black shadows in the waters of the waterfall.

Unable to hold her curiosity, Altyria headed to the waterfall to investigate. She slowly approached the lake and peered in the water. To her surprise, there were fish that had somehow appeared in this lake!

It wasn’t there before when she arrived in the morning. The only way for it to get to this lake was by going down the waterfall. Her whiskers quivered in excitement. How long had it been since she had tasted fish!

The lake was deep so she couldn’t wade in the water where the fish swam. She decided to lay a small spiritual array that would attract and trap the fish in place that would allow her to catch it.

Having made this plan, she put it into action. Thanks to her 5 years of cultivation, she was now able to set an array using her spiritual power only, and not having to use materials like she did before.

Setting this spiritual array took her 10 minutes even though is covered a small area. The stronger her spiritual power was, the faster she could set an array.

Now, all she had to do was wait.

Altyria sat under a tree, her tail swaying slowly from side to side.

1 minute passed, 5 minutes passed….10…30…1 hour…

Altyria flicked her ears in frustration.

Why were no fish going into her array?!

Just when she was about the walk up to the spiritual array to check if she made any mistakes, two fish got trapped in the spiritual array.

Altyria ran up to it in excitement. She peered into the array to find the fish swimming in circles. To her surprise, the fish were much larger than she expected and they were able to help increase her agility trait! They were about the length of her tail.

Altyria tossed the 2 fish away from the lake. She dragged both of the fish onto the boulder where she sunbathed. Altyria happily munched on the somewhat large fish while thinking that she had finally found a source of food that could help her increase one of her low ranked traits.

After filling her stomach with the 2 fish, Altyria decided to take the route with a rough terrain back to her cave in order to train her physical and agility traits. This route was twice as long compared to the route she took this morning.

Brimming with energy, she took off into the forest, jumped over boulders, climbed trees, jumped from tree to tree, and climbed steep slopes. As her physical and agility traits were still low ranked, Altyria took a very long time to complete this entire route. It took her almost 6 hours to get back to her cave!

Although she had just cleaned herself this morning, her fur was covered in dirt.

Looks like I need another cleaning session tomorrow… Altyria drowsily chuckled to herself as she slowly entered sleep while absorbing world essence.

After 15 minutes, another figure appeared inside the cave. It was the figure in the darkness that had always been watching her.

It slowly walked up to her and sniffed her body. Seeing how exhausted she was, it couldn’t restrain itself from sending some of its spiritual power into her body to help her recover.

After a while, it stepped back and gazed at Altyria with its glowing golden eyes before disappearing into the shadows.

During this whole time, Altyria never sensed it coming and going. She didn’t even sense it sending its spiritual power to her body. Instead, the moment its spiritual power entered her body, she slept even deeper.