Gravis hugged Skye and looked at its parent. "Are you sure?"
Gravis wasn't sure, but he believed that he had seen the parent nod. It wanted Skye to go with Gravis because tempering for beasts was nearly as important as for humans. They might not have a Will-Aura, but their combat experience was essential to them, even more than for humans. If beasts wanted strength, they needed to eat beasts or humans at the same level as them, or higher.
Without combat experience, they wouldn't be able to keep up with their peers, and their inherent want for strength would either kill them or disappear. Some beasts, like the low-grade demonic beast tiger or the centipede, had already fled the wilderness to be an overlord in a weak area. Their want for strength had been suppressed by their fear for the other, stronger beasts.
Making Skye follow him was also a risk for the parent bird. That was why it had hesitated for a long while. Yet, if it always kept Skye under its wing, Skye would never surpass its parent. It had to find its own path to strength, just like Gravis.
"Scree!" the parent shouted, and Skye went to it. They both rubbed their heads together, and after some minutes, the parent opened its wings and flew into the distance. It would not return to the tree anymore. This particular area was just too dangerous, and it had to find another spot to nest.
Skye released some last caws as it saw its parent flying away. Gravis saw that Skye was troubled with its parent leaving, so he jumped onto its head and scratched it some more. Skye ignored Gravis for a while but relaxed after a while. It was in a beast's nature to leave their parent at some point and find their own way. A goodbye was easier for them than for humans.
"Skye, we should leave, too," Gravis said. Skye was very smart, and it started understanding more and more of Gravis' words in the last couple of days. Skye jumped and started flying in the air, circling the tree one last time, before it shot off into the distance.
BZZT!
Gravis shot a weak bolt of lightning into a specific direction. "Let's go!" he shouted, and Skye answered him with a caw. They then flew into the horizon, leaving the tree behind.
Why was Gravis not worried about his karmic luck affecting Skye? If he hadn't talked a lot with Orpheus and his father before leaving, he would have definitely declined Skye's company. Orpheus had explained to him a lot about karmic luck, and that had also included beasts.
Gravis had still been confused back then and had also asked his father about Orpheus' words. After talking with his father, Gravis finally understood. Heaven's goal of gathering Energy only involved humans. Beasts, for some reason, didn't help Heaven in gathering Energy. Gravis was a little confused about that, but his father told him that he would explain more about that when Gravis reached sufficient strength.
Yet, why did beasts exist in the first place, if they didn't help Heaven in achieving its goal? The answer was that beasts were useful to Heaven for different reasons. Gravis still remembered the sentence that his father had said when Gravis asked him why beasts even existed.
"They're cultivation resources and tempering tools for humans," was what his father had said to him.
If there were only strong humans around, then the humans would have to kill each other to temper their wills. That would reduce the number of humans achieving higher realms. In Heaven's eyes, humans were its crop, and beasts were the humans' fertilizer.
For all those reasons, Heaven didn't bestow any karmic luck to beasts. All beasts were equal in its eyes, or more like, equally unimportant. If two beings met with the same amount of karmic luck, then there would be no inherent advantage or disadvantage for either of them. Only the stronger one would survive.
Yet, if normal humans met stronger beasts, they would often survive, due to luck. With their inherent karmic luck, humans had a slight advantage over beasts, yet this whole advantage was destroyed by the beasts' inherent supremacy regarding physical strength. Of course, Gravis had never experienced any of this luck when he had fought beasts previously.
Yet, Gravis didn't mind that so much since luck could carry one only so far in a fight. Nearly no beast could be considered a sheltered greenhouse flower since they had to fight other beasts on their level to upgrade their strength. In comparison, there were a lot of humans with lacking battle experience.
When a human and a beast on the same level fought, the beast would have the advantage in power, defense, speed, stamina, and often also battle experience. The humans only had their luck and intellect as an advantage, and without sufficient battle experience, it was difficult to make use of one's intellect.
That was why it was only considered safe to hunt a beast if the human was a minor realm higher than it. Gravis knew all this, thanks to Orpheus and his father, and, therefore, knew that his karmic luck would not impact Skye since it also had no inherent karmic luck. They were both abandoned by Heaven, which also made Gravis feel a kind of kinship to Skye, similar to his family members.
Gravis and Skye flew into the distance, and Gravis opened his arms to feel the wind hitting his body. He felt as free as never before. Gravis had dreamt about flying in the sky ever since he was a young kid. He still remembered the Sky Community in his hometown, and he always longed to fly together with all the others.
Finally, he could fly, even if it was not due to his own strength. "Skye, do some tricks!" Gravis shouted. Skye didn't understand the word "tricks", but it heard Gravis' excitement. His excitement affected Skye, and it started crazily flying through the air, fully demonstrating its agility.
Gravis laughed in happiness as he held Skye tightly to not fall off. He wanted to enjoy every moment of it because soon, he would meet more enemies. They were flying right into a dangerous territory, and Gravis knew that they could die there. Yet, if they succeeded, they could finally have some peace.
Gravis suspected that his current destination was heavily guarded by the Lightning Guild and maybe even the Fire Guild. It was Gravis' most obvious destination, and the leading brass of the guilds were not idiots. They knew that he would go there at some point. Yet, what they didn't know was that he now had a fast and powerful bird accompanying him.
They wouldn't expect him to arrive from the sky, and if he didn't have Skye with him, he would have never dared to go there.
Skye continued flying happily, while Gravis guided it to the Heaven Sect.