BANG!
Kyle was flung back by the pangolin's head and crashed through two trees.
His wrist broke due to a bad landing, and he gritted his teeth.
For some reason, this pangolin felt extremely powerful.
'This is just an Initial Ferocious Beast. I beat plenty of those. Why does this guy feel so strong?' he thought.
Just when Kyle recovered, the pangolin was already on him. It used the huge claws of one of its hands to swipe at Kyle, but he managed to block it with his hammer and armor.
BANG!
But due to the power difference, Kyle was shoved several meters to the side.
'I can't practice Ether Strike like this. This thing is actually dangerous.'
'Just win!'
Kyle readied his hammer and looked at the pangolin with narrowed eyes.
He would kill this thing!
This time, the pangolin didn't immediately charge forward.
Instead, it walked sideways while keeping Kyle in its vision.
Earlier, it had charged at Kyle without hesitation, trying to kill him as quickly as possible.
But now, it was suddenly careful.
'Hesitation?' Kyle thought as he looked at the pangolin.
Then, the pangolin roared, trying to intimidate Kyle.
When he saw that, Kyle charged forward with his hammer.
The pangolin swung around, trying to hit him with its gigantic tail.
Yet, Kyle just spun and activated Air Current on his hammer.
BANG!
The hammer hit the tail, and Kyle felt the satisfying feeling of breaking bones.
The pangolin moved back, but Kyle just charged after it.
It tried to hit him with another swipe, but he just destroyed the claws with another strike before burying the pick of his hammer into the pangolin's head.
Some seconds later, the big pangolin died, and Kyle just looked at it with furrowed brows.
'Huh?' he thought. 'It felt so powerful earlier, but it actually went down like a sack of potatoes.'
"Boss, what the fuck just happened?" Kyle asked.
"Momentum," Theodor answered. "You weren't confident when you entered the fight, which meant you had no Momentum. This allowed your opponent to unleash its full power."
"When you decided to get serious, your confidence and experience kicked in, and your Momentum activated. This intimidated your opponent. It was overwhelmed by your Momentum and became hesitant and nervous."
"Its attacks were not as fast anymore, and it fought very carefully, trying to keep you away from it instead of trying to kill you."
Kyle blinked a couple of times. "Momentum has such a huge impact?"
"Of course," Theodor answered with a snort. "It's one of the most important aspects during a battle."
"Without Momentum, you would have fought for your life against your opponent. It could have turned into a very close and desperate battle."
"But with your Momentum, it became one-sided."
"Do not train new techniques in real battles. You have to become comfortable with them first. Otherwise, you might find yourself in an early grave," Theodor said.
Kyle sighed. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Would that have made a difference?" Theodor asked.
Kyle wanted to say yes, but he knew the truth.
No.
He would have tried it anyway.
"Okay," Kyle said. "I'm stubborn sometimes."
Theodor just snorted again.
"Find a weaker beast to train with," Theodor said. "You can't train against Ferocious Beasts."
Kyle nodded and consumed a chunk of the big corpse.
Sadly, the corpse was too big, and eating the entire thing would take days.
'The hide is probably worth quite a bit.'
'Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to take it.'
This was part of the law.
Non-hunters were allowed to fight against any beasts they wanted, but they were not allowed to sell them for profit.
Otherwise, this would become a way to earn resources, which meant that they would use this to earn a living.
At that point, they would essentially be hunters, and professional hunters had to follow their own guidelines.
It was not a problem to allow people to kill a couple of beasts since they wouldn't kill beasts every single day. Especially when they wouldn't earn any resources from doing so.
Because of that, these individual battles wouldn't damage the ecosystem since it had time to recover.
Of course, wanton killing of beasts also wasn't permitted.
The person needed to have a reason.
Practicing a technique was a reason.
Of course, the laws were not completely rigid.
They were written in very vague terms to stop people from making use of any loopholes.
If someone was found to kill too many beasts, they would get a ban from hunting for a couple of months or get a hunting license.
And getting a hunting license was not easy.
Lots of studying.
Exams.
Rules that had to be followed.
And if a hunter broke these rules, they would receive severe punishment.
After all, they knew the rules. They had proven that they knew the rules by passing the exams.
So, if they broke the rules, it could only mean that they did so deliberately.
If a normal human gave incorrect CPR that led to a person's death, it was most likely an accident, but if an actual doctor administered incorrect CPR, it would become extremely complicated.
Why was the CPR incorrect when the doctor knew perfectly well how to administer it?
The only explanation was that the doctor wanted to kill the person.
Naturally, Kyle didn't want to get a hunting license.
This would make life so much harder for him.
He went into the forest again and found a Peak Beast.
This time, he could properly test Ether Strike since one strike wouldn't immediately prove fatal.
Kyle's armor almost made him invulnerable to any Peak Beast.
He also avoided killing the beasts and just retreated after fighting one for a while.
After a couple of hours, he became a bit more comfortable.
Then, he returned to the Stark Brotherhood and studied mining and forging under Theodor.
The next day, he took part in another one of Gill's courses before training more with Bonk.
He trained Ether Strike some more with some weaker beasts.
After that, he took on a very easy mission to earn some Ether Pebbles.
More training.
More learning.
Time passed, and Kyle was growing stronger.
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