Fighting Tigers is Terrifying!

Three days. Three fucking days.

Three days of what? Fighting. That's what I've been doing for three days. Exhausted? Too bad, I was forced to get up and keep fighting.

That way of increasing my stamina apparently capped out at being up for a day straight, add that into the fact that I wasn't allowed to use any of the skills I've learned up till now and was only allowed to train with the tiger powers and I wanted to fucking die.

Actually I almost did a couple times, especially in that first day. One if the tigers that was my opponent tried to claw off my head since these fights are no holds barred, if they kill me then I just wasn't strong enough.

These tigers definitely taught me that there is always someone stronger than me, that's for sure. I mean I didn't think I was unbeatable before, but I did think I was strong. I haven't suffered a defeat like this since I tried to fight my friend in a fighting game that he had mastered without me knowing.

Can I repent for my sins? Which of the seven deadly sins was it, pride? Yeah pride. I got my ass beat for having too much pride, and I feel no shame in admitting by the second day I was in tears. I never want to go through that shit again if I can help it.

Oh yeah, I never explained what exactly it was that happened in those three days. Well give me a second to collect myself and I'll tell you.

So here's what happened at the beginning, well granted it can be summed up with the sentence 'I got my ass handed to me' a lot more than that happened.

So my first fight after being bewildered was against a small cub, and I was tasked with just keeping my sage mode aura up while in battle. Hard? Shouldn't be as I can keep it up fairly easily. Oh but was this ever different, that little tiger cub was a demon.

As soon as the fight began it jumped at me right towards my crotch and I desperately leaped up like I was a cheerleader and split my legs (this hurt a lot as I'm not flexible). After that the cub quickly spun around and pounced onto my back and used me as a springboard. The sudden surge of power from that tiny cub actually made me fall flat on my face and then my aura went off.

From out of the ring I heard a loud voice, the sage tiger, talking to me, "Again! You are not to stop fighting" This is the only thing that he repeated whenever he wasn't giving me a brief explanation of the next task. It actually got pretty annoying since I heard it every time I fell, by the end of my fights every damn time he said it I'd just go and say it along with him like one of those edgy teenagers that was upset with their parents.

Wait, getting ahead of myself again. Well I kept getting knocked down by that hyperactive cub for around 2 hours until I was barely able to keep my aura up after being knocked down, running, jumping, and really every rigorous task. Though it was a just barely thing the tiger had called out, "NEXT!" and the small tiger cub walked out revealing a larger tiger, I will assume around the same age as Ezekiel.

That little bastard started doing the same exact thing but worse. The little tiger didn't hurt me much, but this guy? Oh every time he ran by me and would go and leave scratches all over me, it ended up tearing my shirt and pants to shreds. My shoes and underwear almost went with them, but thankfully I have something important behind my legs that I feel would be deathly painful if I got it cut.

Once I was able to barely keep my aura up against him he sent in another tiger. Then once I could barely keep my aura up with that one the next one was thrown in.

The next one was a fully grown (I think) tiger, one that had just barely grown up, and it basically beat me down with no mercy. This made me cry because out of all of them this was the hardest. At least at that point it was. It was so hard that it actually took me 7 hours just to keep my aura up on this step.

When the next tiger was sent out, it thankfully wasn't too much more difficult to the strength not increasing much, same with the next few tigers I fought. They each took me about an hour to get past them, but then all of a sudden it got much more difficult.

The tigers that fought me after those were the old ones, but they didn't get weaker as they got old. They got stronger. Much like with the sage tiger they all were absolutely fucking ripped. Should I call these roidgers? Stergers? Tigerods? Stiger?! These things are just too beefy to be normal tigers, like if someone shot it with a gun, I think it would be able to just make the bullet get deflected off of it. So how in the hell does someone fight against this? Well not even really fight, but just be able to survive! I'm setting the bar pretty low here so please?

...

No dice huh? Damn.

Well anyways this fight was the worst for me physically. Mentally it was definitely the one against the adult, but at least for that fight I wasn't exhausted. Right now I am exhausted and that wasn't even the worst of my troubles.

The tiger I fought, almost instantly after being given permission to fight, went and ran right up to me in a speed I could barely see, and drove a claw into me from my left shoulder, across my chest, and then ended at my abdomen at the right side of me.

I fell down from the pain and landed on my back, then so I could give my regeneration time to kick in before I bled out I put pressure at the important area, my abdomen since I don't want to see my organs go and slide out since I need those. After a few minutes of me focusing and healing I heard a voice I didn't hear before while trying not to die, "If you don't get up in 3 seconds I will personally get in there to give you a wound to cry about."

This guy is a monster? Can you believe him? I know I fucking did. I had gotten up faster than if I had heard that there was a bomb in my heart that would blow up if I didnt move. At this point I knew that the bomb would be less painful than if I kept staying there.

After I got up the tiger kept clawing me and clawing me, and at one point it got me across my throat and I had to hold my breath while keeping pressure in my throat until it closed up. I could have tried to breathe but I didn't want to inhale any blood as I think that would just make things worse. Also, that was painful yeah, but it was made way more painful because of the fact that I kept trying to hold my breath and almost passed out because of it.

After suffering injuries like that for, well I don't know how long it was. Definitely more than 6 hours, but it wasn't a day. I didn't have the freedom to check my clock when I was busy trying not to die. Eventually the sage tiger just sent in another tiger that was a hit stronger than the last one, maybe because I finally managed to keep my aura up?

After being knocked down and getting up over and over again, suffering various wounds, including a place where I got stabbed by claws that would end up scarring, I was not just mentally exhausted but also physically and emotionally. I had cried so much by now that I was very dehydrated and hungry, I hadn't gotten a single chance to eat or drink while fighting, and honestly if I did I would probably just vomit it everywhere and make myself feel worse in the long run.

Finally after so long of just fighting the last tiger revealed itself as it walked into the ring, it was the tiger sage. It then spoke to me, "Your aura is now strong enough and we have almost nothing to teach you that isn't left on a scroll. If you wish to earn those scrolls though, you must fight me for the last 6 hours you are here without letting your aura fall at all and not being down for more than 10 seconds. Do this and you will be completely done with the training and will be acknowledged as worthy to summon tigers and use our techniques."

That brings us pretty well up to now. I'm laying on my back after getting knocked down again, I am putting all of my focus onto keeping my aura up and I have no clue how long its been or how long it is that I've been down. I climbed to my feet as the scratch on the chest healed, as soon as I rose it tried to leap at me so I jumped to the side and turned around quickly. After he reoriented himself he ran at me then tried to pounce again and I tried to go out of the way, but his tail grabbed me as I tried.

His tail then whipped and with how much force it had, it knocked me over and made me hit my head hard onto the dirt, disorienting me for a moment. I stood back up as I held my head that was making me see stars only to see a black blob running at me. I tried to jump in my stupor but ended up losing balance and fell on my ass, so I pushed myself to roll out of the way. After I got back up again I kept moving around the arena and kept trying to keep the tiger away from me, at least until my head stopped hurting.

It didn't work out as well as I wanted it to though, as I continued getting scratched left and right. It was incredibly painful, especially when he slashed my Achilles heel, I had to limp around for what I could swear was at least half an hour since my healing can only be so fast. After running and dodging as well as I could my head finally stopped hurting and my vision started being normal instead of like I just got smacked in the face with a flash bang as it went off.

My vision didn't help me too much more honestly, it just helped me know that the pain was coming for me, and I couldn't do shit to stop it. It's times like this that I need Might Guy here to help me out and kick this tiger's ass for me! Well actually I doubt he'd be helpful as a thought right now since Shisui isn't even born yet. Oh shit! Claw!

I bend my body to the side to try and avoid it but it tears into my side, leaving a deep wound. I put pressure on it to reduce the bleeding as much as I can and try not to move my side as much. I duck under a leap, but since he wounded my side and I can't move as much due to it he pins me down and bites my shoulder before he releases his jaw and backs away from me.

He then speaks with a different tone of voice, "Congratulations. You have the approval of the tigers now. Though you didn't fight back against any tiger, or maybe it was that you couldn't, you did complete the tasks I had set for you and lasted against all opponents. Eat, drink, then sleep. Tomorrow I shall let you study the scroll and allow you to leave." The tiger then flicks its tail in my direction as it turns around and walks out of the small arena.

God I have had sage mode on for so long and even that exhaustion resistance thing didn't help much when constantly fighting. Sleep sounds so good right now. I lay my head down on the ground once I know that the wounds on my shoulder and hip close up and then lay my head down on the ground and get some sleep.