Later that evening, sitting in front of the camp fire roasting three mutant bunnies that I caught in the wild, I was waiting patiently for my panther to be to show up.

I was still prepared with my boar horns and my repulsion field at the ready which wasn’t really hard to do these days as I just needed to mentally arrange the necessary casting requirements with my crystal cores energy like arranging a puzzle really fast or solving the rubix cube within seconds before the repulsion field activated.

Death machine casually strode in with some scratches on its body like it usually has in the evenings, whatever fight club it joined seemed to be rather lively during the day.

“Hey, buddy. Come over.” I call it over not nervous at all since I felt a calm like never before due to having been wanting to do this all my life and finally getting the chance to tame a rare wild beasty like death machine, I was ready to face the challenge which seems to contradict my regular paranoid self but something you truly desire, a man got a fight for it.

The beast walked over like usual, it wasn’t too afraid of me these days as we usually had our meals less than a meter apart. I still wanted to pet the furry fuck but whatever pride it had totally ignored my casual begging of “ Please let me pet you” with growls whenever I got too close on my own initiative.

“Here ya go.” I threw it one of the roasted hare/bunny/whatever else damnation reproduced with it. It caught it like usual and I also just enjoyed my evening meal while listening to the wind and casual bird songs and beast roars in the distance.

It didn’t take long for either of us to finish before Phoenix gave me some tips on the process of trying to initiate a connection and I firmed my resolve to proceed to the next step.

“Beasty, I want to try something on you. If you let me, I’ll give you the rest of the meat tonight.” I looked at it straight and said what needed to be said.

The panther simply looked at me while tilting its head slightly with a bit of confusion in its eyes. I didn’t want it to misunderstand so I had to clarify “I’m not looking to pet you this time, I want to see if my pure energy can heal your wounds. Just trying to help.” I said those words with as straight of a face as possible, my entire being was as calm as a still lake as I asked Phoenix to make sure nothing spikes in my system which was pretty simple to do according to Phoenix, just save some hormones that match mine and send them out whenever something spikes in my system, like releasing a calming hormone related to sleep whenever my heart rate tries to speed up. I even realized this feature could totally help me lie to basically anyone who depends on heartbeat, sweating, or whatever other clue to judge if someone is lying which could come in handy when overtaking the throne of the empire or cheating those shrewd merchants.

The panther slightly understood or at least I think it did so I played my part and made a small sphere of my pure inner energy appear on my hand while motioning the with the other for it to come closer.

It was still hesitating but it looked between my calm expression and the roasting bunny near the fire and walked forward after a few moments. I was getting excited again but Phoenix came in for the save while reminding me with her voice to keep it cool jack.

When the panther was facing me about less than two feet away from me, I could finally reach out slowly and place my palm on its forehead or… at least I thought I could but death machine nudged back. I stayed calm as I can understand it being skeptical or just too stupid to understand what I actually said.

“Relax, it’s just some of my energy that I’ll send over to you. Won’t even hurt a bit.” I tried coaxing with the most sincere tone I could muster. I even started applauding my amazing performance as even I felt like I was going to magically heal all its wounds from the tone of my voice.

Hearing me again, it moved closer again with less hesitation which I simply smiled at. I reached out my hand again and slowly pressed it onto its forehead like a gentle petal falling onto a still lake.

Phoenix immediately yelled “NOW” which almost shocked me but her great control over my hormones made sure I wasn’t nervous and stayed calm.

I revved up my crystal core like the engine of a jet engine on max and just ignited my crystal core to transfer my energy towards the panther at an alarming rate. I had to breach its mental barrier first before I could forcefully create the connection so I had to basically attack its brain first with my mana which couldn’t take too long and had to be fast enough that before it could react I can affect its brain.

As my mana started pouring into the panthers brain in the shape of a spear ready to pierce the heavens itself I managed to surprise and stun the panther as I was simply too quick and the level of precision my mana had was unexpectedly high for the amount of power I actually held. I had been focusing the past two months mostly on precision and control since I lacked quantity when it came to my mana due to having crystalized my core so early in the journey which led to its own benefits I guess.

Due to the surprise, the panther wasn’t able to react fast enough before I breached its mental barrier due to its weak composition which was exactly like Phoenix mentioned, that of a wild beast still.

Breaching the mental barrier, my mana started to flow into its brain and this is where it got tricky as I had to basically change the intention of my mana from “breakthrough” to “capture” which basically meant I had to a quick shift in the intent of what my mana was trying to do while trying to manipulate the panther into submitting to me as if that was how the world always was. Jupiter first death machine second.

It sounds easy but the changing mana composition on a whim isn’t the walk in the park it sounds like and manipulating a slightly intelligent creatures brain through said mana is basically like planting a bomb in its head that says you are the boss and that you will detonate said bomb if you are no longer the boss or death machine grows into some legend level demon hellhound panther that tames Jupiter into its bitch.

The panther had already fallen on its stomach while growling with anger and fear because of the sudden shock to its mental barrier it was left slightly paralyzed which was good news for me but that paralysis wasn’t going to last forever so I had to focus as hard as I could to change the entire intention behind my mana which is always easier done when its already in your core and affected simply by a thought rather than in someone else’s brain fighting off their own mana while you try to change its original pierce effect into tame.

The battle of wits and mana lasted close to two minutes as I started dripping sweat from my forehead with my eyes closed while Phoenix was keeping an eye on the panther which was seemingly recovering. Phoenix had told me that I had to dig my mana deep into its brain towards the “inner zone” which for humans holds the ancestral brain components like the hypothalamus, the cerebellum and the more developed inner regions. Once my mana finally arrived there, I had to implant my mana into it as some sort of friendship bracelet that Phoenix didn’t really know much about aside from me having to leave my mana there with some sort of command or will.

What I ended up doing was simply creating a mass of my mana which held something along the lines of “new squad member, beasty buddy, let me pet you, ride you, hunt with you and I’ll take care of you.” It wasn’t some genius level taming technique nor did it seem to even be a proper one but it wasn’t like I was going to treat death machine as some tool because I did like animals especially mega size panthers that can run faster than yours eyes can see and if it could help me I would never be stingy in helping it stay happy and fed.

Those were the thoughts I had while leaving my mana imprint or whatever it is that I left before finally sending some of my pure mana into its own core to allow it to recuperate so I technically wasn’t lying about the whole healing affair.

I felt exhausted when all was said and done and completely drained close to 95% of mana which felt like the biggest hangover I have ever had if I were to be precise in its description. This was worse than the time I drank for 3 months straight, not missing a day and having my feces be nothing but dirty water coming out of my anus.

I was panting heavily as I looked over to death machine who also seemed to be tired from the whole ordeal so I reached out to the meat that hanging by the fire before grabbing a drumstick for myself and throwing the rest towards the panther.

“How did it go?” Phoenix asked seeing as I seemed to be done with it.