Essence roared in horror and fear at the large mass of attacks that were hurtling at him. He quickly went intangible and phased through the majority of the attacks, rushing downward to deal with Draco and end this match while things were still controllable.
However, Draco simply smiled widely and used Mind Sunder on the approaching dragon. Essence reacted as if he had been hit by a hammer, his charge faltering as his claws grasped his Draconic head in pain.
Mind Sunder was a horribly evil skill that split a target's mind into two and forced each side to fight the other for dominance. Essence was just damn lucky he had the best bloodline to resist this attack, and the fact that he was in Dragon Form right now.
As such, despite his eyes being bloodshot and leaking actual blood, he still managed to continue his charge and started cooking up an Orb of Void in his mouth to blast Draco to pieces!
Draco frowned and activated Mind Blast, which dealt 1,000% mental damage to a target. This directly disrupted Essence's built-up momentum thoroughly, and the dragon fell unconscious as his body hurtled towards the ground chaotically.
Without his consciousness defending himself, Draco could easily lift the body of the falling dragon with his Supreme Telekinesis and stop it in midair. He then held Essence up until his transformation elapsed, then executed him cruelly as well.
Right at that moment, the timer above Draco's head came to a stop. The core members were then revived where they stood before the battle began, the traumatized expression on their faces from being crushed into a human meatball and flung aside.
Only Loving Aunt, who had watched it all, was thankful that she had basked Draco in so much love that the lad couldn't bring himself to hurt her, even for training.
Draco clapped his hands and gathered the attention of the group. "You guys honestly did well to lower my HP by 7%. You were merely 3% off from achieving your goal, which is a big deal, especially since I had estimated you to not even reach 5%."
Draco smiled warmly. "Even though I said I would give you nothing, going beyond my imaginations shouldn't be ignored either. Each of you shall receive 1,000 UPs from Sublime Notion after we're done here."
The core members all displayed expressions of excitement. After all, 1,000 UPs was not a small amount of money, especially within the number one guild in the Cario Continent. It was enough to buy a lot of good stuff, especially with how rich the Guild Shop was becoming day by day, not to mention how much interesting stuff Draco had filled it from the goodies from Treasury.
Sublime Notion then stood forth and queried with a curious smile. "You said after we are done here? Does that mean there is more?"
Draco nodded. "Of course! I didn't come here just to beat you and pat myself on the back, I wanted to first see how strong you all were together, and now I will fight you one by one in order to show you your flaws and how you can improve."
This made the fellows even more excited. They had received a lot of training from Eva, but that had been done as a group. She had taught them battle formations, skill co-ordination, technique synergy, and especially, battlefield awareness.
The recent battle against the void monsters at the Ruined Plains of Deriam was enough proof of how much these fellows had grown. However, in terms of their own individual fighting prowess, they had been training and teaching themselves ceaselessly with no real guidance.
It had some utility, in that they were able to develop their own unique styles, but they had long reached various bottlenecks on how to progress. Without some form of enlightenment or guidance, it would take a bit of time to overcome such things with their natural talent.
With Draco handling this, they were confident that all the things they had been worried about would become a thing of the past!
"Guildmaster, hurry up and begin the lesson!"
"Father Draco, your beloved son has been with you since day 1, please guide me first!"
"What, Father Draco? Rather, it's Daddy Draco! This little miss is willing to receive your love and teachings, hehe~"
"Brother Draco, it's me, your best pal! Why don't you come here, so we can discuss the Dao together?"
The shameless fellows began clamoring. After all, there was only one Draco and about 19 of them. As such, they were impatient to get a one-on-one session with Draco and increase their power.
Draco chuckled at their behaviors and made a calming gesture. "Don't worry, l have a way to deal with this."
While the various core members were confused, Draco set the Training Hall to active and had it refresh all his cooldowns. Such a building would be pointless if a person who was practicing their skills would have to wait out the entire cooldown each time they used it.
Draco then manifested his Devil Form once more.
｢System to Player Announcement
You have transformed into your True Devil form. This is a fundamental change and your attributes, as well as your skills, have been swapped for racial ones only. Please check your status page for the changes.｣
｢System to Player Announcement
Your class has been detected to be Divine. Attributes will not be re-allocated, but additional attributes will be applied for the duration of the transformation. Your equipment and class skills are blocked, but Devil racial skills can be used in your True Form.｣
Draco released a thick breath as he entered this form for the second time in minutes. He felt an imperceptible strain on his mind and bloodline, but it was light.
After all, cooldowns were implemented for a reason. One half was to limit the otherwise spammable nature of skills which would make playing Boundless very difficult and tiring for players and monsters, especially during PvP.
The other reason was to reduce strain on the user. One shouldn't forget that this wasn't a game one played on a computer, but one that was interfaced directly with the brain. If a skill was used too many times in a set period of time, especially one with a long cooldown because of its power, it would strain the body outside.
Using a Virtua Helmet would not mitigate the damage much, but a pod would significantly reduce such strain. That was why Draco only felt it lightly. Had he done this with a VR helmet, his body in the real world would have been bleeding from the nose.
If it wasn't so, why wouldn't the Training Hall be occupied 24/7? Just stay here and spam your skills until you could even learn them through your body movements and turn them into techniques.
Draco, now in his true Devil Form once more, activated Endless Mirage on each of the 19 core members here. Some succ.u.mbed to the illusion easily while others were harder to drag in, like Rina, Essence, and Warm Spring.
Draco spoke to them telepathically. "Let down your guard, otherwise, I cannot teach you."
Hearing it from the mouth of the beast himself, the fellows let down their guard and were sucked into Draco's mirage. When they came to, they saw that they were within a spacey dojo with various weapon racks around them.
Across them stood Draco, who was smiling at them. "Welcome to my mirage world. Each of you has been sent to an identical world where I can deal with you one-on-one without wasting too much time."
Draco frowned here. "However, we must be quick. My Transformation only lasts a minute and I have already expended all my mental resources dilating time within this world as much as I can. We only have half an hour, so let's begin!"
None of the core members were idiots who could not understand his meaning. As such, they quickly manifested their weapons of choice and began displaying their various techniques to Draco.
For some, Draco just watched as he gave general and specific pointers based on their display, while for others, he took a more hands-on approach and explained their faults as well as ways to improve while fighting them head-on.
Outside though, it was just Draco standing there while staring at the 19 core members, while they also stared back at him with blank expressions. This lasted for the entirety of his 1-minute transformation before he sighed with exhaustion and returned to his normal self.
The core members also regained their senses as they gazed at Draco with respect and reverence. Only their monstrous Guildmaster could do something like this and they felt a bit of dismay when they saw that Draco was visibly exhausted by his actions.
It was expected though, as what he did was absolute madness. Putting 19 people in a mirage with his Devil Form was easy, he could even afford to put a hundred or more.
What was insane was dilating the time too intensely. Doing such a thing was no longer the work of the AI, but a burden Draco was taking upon himself to emulate such conditions.
Now that he had gotten a small taste of what the AI had to go through for millions of players, he could only smack his lips and nod that yes, the AI did, as a matter of fact, work hard.
No wonder it was such a giant brain. Without being that large and possessing such extensive cognitive functions, it could not hope to dilate time, much less generate NPCs and monsters.
Draco spoke to the core members for a bit before dispersing everyone. Some chose to stay and continue reflecting on what they had learned, while others had duties to return to like Sublime Notion.
Those like Essence decided to head out on an adventure to continue to experience the world of Boundless and hone their skills in live battles. Seeing a diverse response from his core members, Draco was pleased.
He also left the Training Hall and walked through the inner section of Vita City-State with a smile. Even though this part was closed off to all outsiders, there was still a healthy amount of traffic as the various civilians of the Nshaw Tribe and the newly integrated Goddess Descendants mingled and got to know each other.
What Draco was looking the most forward to was the eventual inter-breeding that would happen between the two groups. With such interesting bloodline legacies mixing up, they would surely give birth to a powerful and more united next generation.
Draco eventually returned to the Aether Hall and changed his attire to his cloth armor display of the Dragorugio set that hid within him. He walked through the halls silently, thinking about how best to increase the grade of his internal universe.
After all, as it was right now, he could bring his family inside. He was also reluctant to go on another Unique Quest without all of them by his side, so he was stuck in a dilemma.
Luckily, the first stage of resources needed to expand the territory was listed by the system, however they were obviously so rare and hard to acquire that Draco would have to break both an arm and a leg for it.
To compare, it was at least 50 times more expensive than the resources needed to upgrade a super mini small world by one grade!
Draco could only sigh and make a note to see Money Lover soon. He would have to directly task this swindler with acquiring what he needed and selling off what Draco didn't.
As such, Draco lost in thought as he opened the door to the master bedroom that he shared with his family. However, what surprised him was that there were only two people in the room, and his sharp senses relayed a distinct scent that he understood very well.
There was the lovely Zaine, who sat on the edge of the bed wearing a thin bra that showed her lovely bust and a thong. Beside her was Natasha, sprawled on the bed with her face down and her ass up, n.a.k.e.d on top of that.