With a light groan, Eiro started rubbing the bridge of his nose in thought and annoyance. He had to figure out a good way to help these guys level up as quickly as possible to increase their strength properly. Because right now, they wouldn't end up being as much of a help as the Demon wanted them to be.
"What are your classes right now?" Eiro asked them, and Jess quickly responded for everyone.
"I'm a Mage, James is an Assassin, and Krog is a Heavy Warrior." Jess said, still baffled at how high Eiro's stats were.
"What's your guys' class history then? Let me guess, Jess, you were a Mage Apprentice, James was a rogue, and Krog was a regular warrior?" Eiro asked, and Krog quickly nodded his head.
"Yup, but how'd you know?" The Warrior asked, and Eiro slowly closed his eyes and started thinking.
"I'll tell you later, but for now, we'll have to get you guys to level 100 so you can change your classes again. Jess, sorry to tell you, but I think you should get back to being an apprentice. Krog, you should get a specific weapon-based class. And James... We'll see about that, I don't know your skills and abilities that well yet."
"Wait wait, what? Why should I become an apprentice again?"
"And why should I restrict myself to just one weapon?"
Jess and Krog immediately protested, and Eiro just stared at them with his arms crossed, "Since you have four basic elemental magic skills, you should have all the apprentice classes, right? Apprentice Water Mage, Apprentice Fire Mage, Apprentice Earth Mage, and Apprentice Wind Mage, right? You need to go through all of those and then get the advanced versions of those classes." The Demon told Jess and then looked at Krog.
"And you really need a class that actually supports your usage of different weapons. You don't stick to just one, right? Sure, a warrior can probably handle himself well with all kinds of different weapons, but it's just not efficient. If I had the choice to return to former evolution paths like you guys have with classes, then I'd do it as well." Eiro pointed out.
"We'll go out hunting soon to get you guys to level up. But before then..." The Demon muttered, "Have you three ever heard of Life Force?" He asked them.
James immediately shook his head with a light frown, "Isn't that the thing that Life Magic uses?"
"That's Life Energy, something actually completely unrelated. No, Life Force is another term for your Health. Basically, it's a sort of energy in your body just like mana is. Depending on how you manipulate it, you can increase your strength considerably." Eiro explained as he started stepping over to the corner of the room while picking up one of the training dummies.
"What are you even saying? 'Life Force'? 'A sort of energy'? This is starting to get completely ridiculous. Are you just playing around now?" With an angry expression, James looked at Eiro and stared him down, trying to figure out if what this demon said was true or not.
Eiro just side-eyed James and placed the training dummy down onto the ground and properly attached it there. He stood in front of the dummy and took up his regular stance, "This is a normal punch." Eiro said, and with all the force and speed he could muster, Eiro hit the dummy's chest. It was pushed back a fair bit and a light snapping sound was created by just this already. Everyone stared at Eiro at the power he was able to produce.
"This is a punch where I manipulate my life force to strengthen my shoulders and arm." The demon explained, and then repeated the same motion, simply with his life force manipulated in the way he described.
And instead of just being pushed back, the dummy's strengthened chest was ripped open and the whole thing fell to the ground, together with a loud whistling sound created through the speed of Eiro's fist.
"See the difference?" Eiro asked, "I don't care if you believe me. But if you're so against trying to listen to what I have to say, I'll leave right now and this whole party deal is over. Right now, you're too weak to be of any real help to me, but I know that you all have the talent to become very, very strong as long as you properly work for it." The Demon told them in a clear tone. It was a fair surprise to hear that the stat growth of these guys was so low so far, but it was fine. He would help them figure it out. He would help them get stronger.
"Hurry it up already. I want to get there before the sun starts setting." The Demon groaned as he slowly turned around and looked down the mountain-path behind him.
"Shut the fuck up!" Krog yelled out annoyedly, "You're not the one literally carrying a fucking boulder!" The warrior yelled as he slightly adjusted the straps digging into his shoulders. That was because on his back, he was currently carrying, as he just complained, a literal boulder that was just held up by some cloth and chains.
"I told you, this is important. Your natural stat growth is based mostly around strength, so you need to know how to best support your greatest asset using Life Force manipulation. And stop complaining, netiher James nor Jess are." Eiro told the warrior, and then looked at the Light-Elf man and Human girl in question.
James was currently trying to solve puzzle-toys with not only his regular hand, but also the wooden hand that the Demon made for him. Due to James' willpower, dexterity, and overall health, Eiro could basically instantly give James an advanced prosthetic that he could try and use properly.
It wasn't nearly as capable as a prosthetic at the level of Eiro's hand to begin with, but James could still increase its dexterity the more he used it and got used to it. After all, he didn't have a hand for the past seven or eight years.
And in the meantime, Jess was practicing to circulate her mana throughout her body to learn more about her mana veins and increase her proficiency at manipulating her mana in general. It was pretty hard, especially since she had to climb this mountain while she was at it.
"That's because you let those two wear warm coats, but why the fuck can't I?! Even the fucking stag has blankets on 'im!"
"One, because it helps with your resistance growth. Two, those blankets aren't for Lugo, they're for Avalin and Leon." Eiro replied immediately, and Krog just kept glaring up at Eiro.
"Speaking of..." James finally spoke, "Why are those two coming along?"
"Because it's too dangerous to leave these two alone. I trust the others, and they're taking basic tutoring to make sure they're up to par for the academy all day anyway, but it's too risky with these two. They wouldn't have anyone I trust taking care of them, and there are things that can't be revealed about them or else bad things will happen." Eiro explained quite clearly, before he finally spotted the cave entrance a bit away from the path.
"Also, you guys, stop practicing. We need to climb a bit. And Krog, you can leave the rock here." Eiro said as he reached up to grab Leon and Avalin off of Lugo's back, while the three others sighed in relief at being given at least something similar to a break.
Eiro pushed his leg against the rock-wall in front of him and created steps that he could quickly climb up. With just a few jumps, Lugo also made it up the rock-wall, before Eiro squatted down in front of the children while the others also climbed up.
"You two are good, right?" Eiro asked, and the two of them quickly nodded their heads, "Mhm!" Avalin exclaimed first, her face nearly completely concealed in the thick children's coat she was wearing, while Leon just looked around a bit, "But what are we doing here?" He asked, and Eiro pointed toward where the cave entrance was.
"We need to go through a tunnel to go meet a few people that I need you to use your skills on a bit, yeah?"
"There are monsters there..?" Leon asked, "Bad ones..?"
"Don't worry, not even all of them together can go up against me. And I have a plan to make sure they won't be bad ones for too long." Eiro pointed out while rubbing his hand through Leon's black hair before turning toward the rock-like substance wrapped around Lugo's antlers, "Isn't that right?" Eiro asked the slime.
"Fuck you..." It muttered quietly, and Eiro just loudly groaned, "Why does everyone keep swearing in front of my eight years old children...?"
The demon stood up and walked over toward Lugo before pressing his palm onto the slime's hardened body, "Now, tell me, what were we going to do again?" He asked, slowly starting to scrape away at the rock with one of his daggers, and nervously, the slime spoke up again, "E-Erm, we'll try to seal their monstrosity?"
"Exactly, buddy! And then we will do what..?" Eiro asked next, and the slime thought for a little while, "We... we will use the boy's skill to train them not to be inherently violent against other creatures, and then remove the seals off of some of them to see if it worked?"
"Good job, buddy!" The Demon exclaimed with a sarcastic laugh, before just patting the slime's body a couple times and turning back around.
"Wait..." Jess groaned as Krog helped pull her up the rock wall, "Where exactly are we going? You just said something about monsters, right? Are we heading to a monster nest to level up?"
"Something like that, I guess." Eiro replied, before realizing that giving them such an idea would be rather bad, "Wait, actually, not at all. Don't even think about attacking any of those guys over there, I still need them." The Demon told them, "I'll explain it when we're there, I think it might be hard to explain otherwise."
Once everyone was up there, Eiro just put Avalin and Leon back onto Lugo's back and started walking toward the cave entrance ahead of them. He slightly widened the entrance using earth magic and let everyone get inside, before closing it back down once everyone was in the cave.
The closer they got to the other side of the passage, the more everyone heard sounds that made them creeped out, while Eiro himself was just getting a bit annoyed. Well, they did their job, in the end, but they were just lazing around right now.
When they stepped into the Mountain-Goblin village, they saw numerous goblins sitting around a large fire, eating different kinds of animals while playing around with the magic stones Eiro told them to mine in the first place.
