"I will let this one slide, but if you get too hyper to sleep, I will confiscate all of the sweets that they make," Cain informed Luna, whose crestfallen look was almost enough to make him reconsider his words.
"Sleep is important to your health. You might be able to heal your teeth from all of the sugar damage, but you still need lots of rest if you are going to be productive the next day and not feel sick." Penny lectured her.
"Okay, fine. I will go easy on the sweets. The Pixies like them too, so they're not going to go to waste."
That little pocket dimension was unlike anything that Cain had seen before. Luna's class, the Princess of War, was one that he had never seen before either, so there might be other unique techniques that Cain had simply overlooked because he had never thought to try something like that.
The fact that she was using it to create snacks and not as a battlefield, as the name of the skill suggested it should be, was very Luna of her, but Cain couldn't really fault her for keeping the skill active all the time so that she could have a mobile source of huge experience gains when she didn't need to use her Summons for combat.
As he looked inside, Cain realized that she hadn't even used most of her summon spells for the purpose and had called for three dozen Pixie Queens as Supporters, who summoned all of the other Pixies on their own. Like the Spider Queen, creating their own force was an innate skill of their class, or maybe their species, since the System counted them as separate from their kinfolk.
"That would explain why Solara is advancing so quickly. Boosting your rewards to hundreds of times the baseline is practically cheating, even if it does save you so much on resources. I mean, we could even use the cheapest of the cheap and still get good gains." Tena suggested, with her eyes glittering.
"Have you thought about your next Class advancement? You have been a Dragon Monk since you began, and you should have completed the skill tree some time ago." Cain asked the curly-haired monk.
"I thought about it, but I don't see anything cool. Usually, Monks just use the same skills, but stronger as they advance, so I never really thought about expanding my repertoire." Tena shrugged.
"Well, you certainly could stay the same as long as you wanted, but if you find a skill that you would like to have but that isn't in your abilities, let me know, and it might open up a whole new path for you." Cain offered.
Dragon Monk was a decently powerful advanced class, and Tena was still young. Not as young as he had transformed her to look, but she wasn't an adult by much, even before she met him. She had plenty of time to make up her mind.
"What about you, Sabbat? Got any grand ideas?" Cain asked the last of his team, who hadn't advanced yet from the first class she had when he awakened the System for her.
Sabbat was a Change Mage, a First Advancement Class similar to Misha's, but without the clerical overtones, so there were plenty of ways that she could advance, even if she moved away from the Demonic influence that the Change Mage had over their skills.
"I don't know. I have mastered most of the spells that I have, and I'm getting pretty good at using them in combat, but I am still so squishy that even my shields can't take a decent hit. They are based on my own durability and mana, and with only a strong mana pool to rely on, the barrier isn't hard to break." Sabbat explained.
"So, you want more durability and a stronger barrier spell? I know how to make both of those." Cain agreed.
Evangeline was incredible with barrier spells, and Mythryll had a [Demonic Transformation] spell that could make even the most fragile of casters a force to be reckoned with in close combat. It had manifested more like a Dryad for the Elf, who was a nature mage to start with, but it would likely be something psychedelic or flaming when Sabbat used it since her class was based around the arcane flames of the God of Magic.
[Layered Barrier] and [Demonic Transformation] were both relatively easy skills for Cain to write out, despite their higher quality, so he set to work right away, letting the girls watch the matches while he worked.
After most of an hour, Luna was called down to the ring, where a group of Disciples wanted to challenge her Demons, to test their skills after their leader made a breakthrough during afternoon mediations.
That distracted everyone long enough for Cain to finish the books, and he was ready to hand them over as soon as Sabbat finished cheering for the Demons to win.
It was a lopsided victory, as Luna had summoned Carnage so that the Disciples could have a decent fight without getting ambushed or set on fire. The fight was mostly blade-on-blade, with many of the team members attacking at range, but the problem was that Carnage had no qualms about throwing his weapons since he could summon them back to his hands.
Being hit in the face with a hundred-kilo axe was a very fast way to be eliminated.
"You've got to dodge that. That girl must not have been watching the last time Carnage was out, or she would have known that the weapons he throws bypass most barriers without even slowing down." Sabbat sighed, having hoped for the team to do better against the overjoyed Demon.
Carnage was way too happy to have a chance to "educate" Disciples on the ways of combat. Like with the Blood Dancer girls, any class lesson that involved bloodshed was one he was eager to teach.
"I swear that Demon is still holding back. Every time I think we are winning, he breaks out a new technique and just crushes us into the dirt." One of the team members complained.
"If you could defeat me in a sword fight, you wouldn't still be Outer Disciples. Now that you're healed let's go again." Carnage suggested.
"Master Cain, can we have the full arena? I think we need more room if we are going to fight him properly." One of the girls called up to where Cain was watching their match.
"Of course. Pay attention to his words. Carnage is an incredible combat instructor whom even the Demon Realms highly respect. It is an honor to learn to fight from him." Cain replied.
Cain rearranged the arena into one large space as soon as the last of the other fights was over, and Carnage moved to stand in the very center of the arena.
"Bring your very best. I will teach you the proper way to overcome a superior force with numbers today." The big red demon laughed.
They couldn't even argue with that. Despite fighting him five-on-one, he was the superior force. He didn't even have much of a level advantage on them, as they were all Awakened fighters already, just not strong enough to make the Inner Sect.
The arena began to fill with onlookers, as any combat lesson was one worth watching. They could learn more from the Demon in a single fight than they could from each other in weeks of practice, and fighting multiple opponents was a lecture that they all had difficulty learning from the Sect's Elders.
"Learn these books while you watch. If they don't give you a class that you like, we can try something else to see if it will awaken what you are looking for." Cain whispered to Sabbat so that he didn't interrupt the others who were watching the match.
Cain looked up when he heard laughing, only to realize that someone had gotten too close to the back of Carnage, forgetting that he had a tail and had been swatted across the arena. Not hard enough to eliminate them but hard enough that they bounced off the barrier and collapsed on the ground while Carnage lectured the team about the importance of spatial perception.
Sabbat was so engrossed in the match that she didn't even use the books right away, only held them while she stared at the bloodshed on the arena sands. Carnage had chosen to allow them to rejoin the fight when they were healed, so he wasn't holding back on beating the unfortunate challengers to his heart's content.
Of course, the thought that Carnage could find a level of carnage that would satisfy him was ridiculous, but he certainly was enjoying himself.
[That's not even fair. He can heal faster than they can deal damage. There is no possible way that they could ever defeat him.] Oath Breaker laughed in Cain's mind.
[Maybe he will get tired. But they are getting better pretty quickly. Maybe brute force has some validity as a training method.] Cain replied, then noticed that Sabbat had gone vacant, engrossed in the Class Selection Screen.