---Growl POV---
My brother is strong.
I don't have many memories from when I was younger. Only fragments. My only real memory from before I started hunting is the day my older brother and I competed for the title of strongest.
That day I lost. No, not just lost. I was completely crushed.
After that, I don't remember much else; my memory jumps to the day of his first battle against a milon.
My older brother was already hunting while the rest of us lived comfortably at home with our parents.
He was the first to leave the house and see the world. In my arrogance, I decided to follow him, not understanding my own weakness. To my surprise, that same day my brother found himself in the middle of a battle against a beast on the other side of the wall.
But I interfered, I ended up getting in the way, and thanks to that, he was unable to finish off his prey. Not only that, he also had to save my life, and thanks to that, he almost died.
I hated my weakness.
When he recovered, I expected him to hit me, to scold me, to teach me a lesson for making him lose his prey. I expected punishment.
But the punishment never came.
On the contrary, he taught me how to hunt. He guided me through the forest. He taught me to use my senses, and above all, he taught me how to stalk my prey.
I'm sure my brother could have been stalking much larger prey, but he focused on smaller ones to show us the basics.
My brother also uses traps. I won't judge him for that. After all, you can only hunt one prey at a time, and he had to carry me and Grul. It was necessary.
Then came the day we managed to catch the largest beast we'd ever seen. A zonath, the animal fell into a trap, but we knew it would soon escape. That day, my brother failed to kill the beast and was injured.
For a few days, I believed my brother had failed. Until I realized that he didn't fail, it was me. My job was to keep the beast occupied, still, but I was unable to.
In my weakness, I was unable to hold a rope properly.
I was ashamed. I wanted to defeat my older brother at all costs. Even now that I know how weak I am, I still seek power.
That's why my first goal was to seek out and defeat a zonath.
My brother had failed. So, if I managed to defeat him, I believed I could claim to have overtaken him.
My ignorance made me arrogant. But the forest put me in my place.
The same day I defeated the beast, the largest zonath I could find, that day I encountered a hated enemy.
A milon.
I faced him and lost. I couldn't do anything. My brother faced a milon while exhausted and managed to scare it off. I couldn't even fight him for ten seconds.
That day I was saved by Grul, who rightly decided to run to our older brother for help.
And then I realized how foolish and arrogant I had been. My brother became serious. And I trembled.
That day I understood that my brother had never fought seriously until now.
And when I saw him fight, I collapsed. How can I reach such a huge mountain?
But something inside me wouldn't let me give up.
"You don't have to rush so much, you'll grow up," my mother says. But he's growing too.
"Your potential is greater, at some point you'll surpass him," my father says. When? Don't you see how much he's growing?"
"Growl looks stronger and scarier," my brothers say. Are they all blind?
And finally, after so much time, the moment arrived when my brother silenced them all.
The day he defeated Gru.
It pains me to admit it, but I couldn't have defeated him.
He dared to hurt Bru. We all wanted to jump and destroy him. But if our older brother didn't move, neither would we.
And then the fool challenged older brother.
Another blind man, just like the others. Unable to know what real fear is. Unable to understand his own limitations.
Even beasts know how to distinguish the strongest. That makes most of those gathered there worse than beasts.
The fight was over in an instant.
Older brother closed the distance in less than a second and punched Gru in the stomach.
To the untrained eye, it was just an act of strength, but I'm sure the hunters noticed. Gru wouldn't get up for a long time.
He defeated a wolf six times his age.
And he didn't even try.
That's the mountain I have to overcome.
And I'm going to overcome it