Miles returned to the stronghold the next day after meeting up with Cale, Lucy, and Quinn. At night, they said their goodbyes, and everyone went to their own lodgings. Thankfully, Quinn and Miles managed to fool Lucy to take over the helm with a lot of pampering, and Cale watched from the side with a chuckle.

The day of the auction was around the corner, and Miles was getting ready to increase his weapons. He already bookmarked lots of orbs that would suit his choices. But for the time being, he wouldn’t hunt. Hunting was unpredictable and any mishap could delay Miles’s return. For he had to be in the auction, he tried to spend a little time with his one and only pet, thus he came to the Umbra Forest to visit Culga, the black panther.

After entering the forest, a pair of shining gold eyes appeared in front of him. Miles had long switched to dark vision, so he could see his pet was standing in front of him, despite the dark forest. Culga’s appearance of course wasn't a coincidence. Miles and Culga had a physical bond connecting them, so Culga knew Miles was coming.

In little over more than a month, Culga conquered the forest. Umbra Forest wasn’t that strong, and after the death of the overlord of the forest, the humanoid vampire monster, the forest was as good as abandoned, so Culga’s reign wasn’t questioned after she let her aura out.

She was already at the peak of the Grunt-Rank and the feeling she was giving off was stronger than the weakest Frenzy-Rank monsters. It wasn’t surprising for others to bow in front of her, especially when she wasn’t trying to enslave other monsters, and only took over the best place in the forest and from time to time ordered them.

Today was an odd one, as the Queen of the forest left her nest to come to the periphery. It made many monsters worry, and they were hiding while shivering. Normally the smell of prey would excite them and all of them would try their chances to see if they could cope with the intruder, but since the Queen was at such a close distance to the human, none dared to approach.

“How are you Culga? How was your time in your new home?” Miles started to scratch back Culga's ear as he petted her. If other monsters in the forest were to see their queen like this, they would kill themselves by smashing their heads into rocks.

The lofty and noble queen was enjoying her master pet and making weird sounds. From their psychic link, Miles could perceive her emotions and understood she was having a good time in her stay. It was to be expected, Umbra forest was much better than her previous home thanks to its dark elemental nature. She could strengthen her element in the forest at least twice faster. But Miles wasn’t sure if it was enough.

Lately, he was researching monsters and their evolutions. Miles wasn’t the first person ever tamed a monster. There was a special type of rare orb with psychic elements that allowed people to tame monsters. Of course, there were many limitations on the usage of the orb, but it was still better than nothing. In the last few decades, close to a hundred beasts were tamed, and they were researched to be evolved. After all, the stronger the beast, the stronger was the owner.

One of the most obvious solutions to this would be elemental minerals. As can be understood from monsters’ behavior of taking over the minerals as their nest, minerals were helpful to let monsters understand their innate elements, thus leveling up.

The other easiest way was, using natural treasures growing up in Portal World to strengthen their elements. Of course, monsters with the same element were included in this, just like how humans gained more mastery over energy by consuming monster flesh. But ever since moving here, Culga was feeding on many of the dark element monsters, so she was already doing that.

Unlike humans, monsters could also eat monster cores to strengthen their own. By consuming the same elemental monster cores, monsters could advance to the next step.

The least favorite way was to teach monsters their elements. For example, a fire elemental monster could be educated through a psychic link and taught specifics. By adding experiments with different kinds of fires, monsters could broaden their horizons to level up.

But there were many limitations to this, and in Culga’s case, Miles didn’t know much about her element. What was darkness? Lack of light, was pretty much everything he knew, but in this fantasy world, elements had more than what humans could perceive, so instead of clouding Culga’s judgment, he decided to keep his mouth shut.

Unfortunately for Miles, he didn’t have a dark element mineral, nor did he know if there was one in the Endless Mountain cave. So, he could only let Culga feed on monsters and live in Umbra Forest to level up on her own.

“Wait a second.” Miles thought something all of a sudden.

“What happened?” Coin asked after noticing Miles’s accelerating heartbeat.

“What is darkness?” Miles asked, wheels were turning in his head.

“Lack of light.” Coin answered tersely.

“Exactly,” Miles exclaimed and called Culga. “Culga come over here for a second.” Culga approached Miles and crouched to the ground. She was giant for a cat, so she had to prostrate on the ground for Miles to talk to her face to face.

“Your main element is darkness, and your secondary elements are nightmare and metal, right?” Miles asked without expecting an answer, but the giant cat nodded her head and looked at Miles with expectation.

“Nightmare is such a rare element and I can’t help you train it at all, and metal can be trained by consuming metals, but they have to have dark attributes also it is weaker than others too, so you have to cultivate darkness to level up, right?” Culga nodded once again.

“I know this might sound absurd for you because your way of thinking is different, but I have an idea,” Miles said and fished out a shiny piece of stone from his bag. With the sight of stone, darkness in the forest withdrew, and part of the forest could be seen. As if a miniature sun born into the forest. But the most drastic reaction came from Culga. She hissed and jumped back.

“Easy girl, easy.” Miles tried to calm her down and patted her nose. He could feel terror from their link. Culga was afraid of stone more than anything.

“Light is the counter of the darkness, and its presence might damage your very existence, but that in itself is also helpful to you. By resisting light and trying to overcome it, you can strengthen your own element and have new ways to use your element. Darkness isn’t the lack of light, light is the lack of darkness. If you manage to quench this light, you will get into another realm.” Miles explained softly and tried to appease the pet.

Culga looked at him like a madman and pondered over Miles's words. She wasn’t as smart as a humanoid monster, nor was she in a position to refuse. She couldn’t overcome that barrier limiting her growth. From her birth, it only took two years for her to reach pinnacle-tier, but even after five years, she was nowhere close to Frenzy-Rank. Her eyes changed and became more resolute. She approached Miles and placed her paw on a shining stone.

“Sizzle, sizzle.”

An actual sizzling sound was heard and Culga grimaced in pain. “Take me to your nest, and I will bury this stone there. By living on top of it, you will manage to strengthen your element and will reach that tier.”

Culga nodded and Miles hopped onto her back. After arriving at the center of the forest, Miles dug a hole and placed the Light elemental stone there. He covered it with tree barks and if Culga wanted, she could remove the barks to train with the stone, and when she was resting, she would close it back.

After taking Miles back to the entrance of the forest, with great determination, Culga returned to his nest to train. This decision was her first step to get stronger.