"We should leave Master Cain alone so he can work and rest after his duel today. I'm sure he has a lot to talk to his new disciples about as well." The Sect Elder from the Lightning Dance Sect informed his acolytes, intending to lead them up to their rooms.
"The copy work shouldn't take too long. How about we meet again this evening? I'm sure Miss Luna will be bored by then, and ready to have more people to talk to after her nap." Cain suggested.
"Excellent plan. I will return later unless you need a guard on the Inn so you aren't disturbed?" The Sect Elder asked.
"I will be here all afternoon, talking with my former disciple. They will be safe." The Immortal Rank Sect Master answered with a dismissive wave.
Nobody in the city could deny that he was the strongest one here, but Cain suspected that in the grand scheme of things, in a Realm that was called the Immortal Realm, the Sect Master was actually a small fry to some degree.
The man was clearly stronger than Cain was, even with the Echoes buffing his abilities, but the name of this place implied that he was at its power level, not the half step above it that Cain would expect the true powerhouses to be.
While Luna went down for her afternoon nap, still not fully adjusted to a more human sleeping schedule, Cain worked on the creation of the skill books for the two Sects and talked to his newly acquired disciples.
"So tell me, how did you all end up following a man like that? You don't seem like the sort that would follow just anyone for the merest chance at power." Cain asked as he took out the Inscription Desk and began to write.
"It's fairly simple really. We were all traveling together with a few others, looking for a rumored female sect that takes in Mortals when we were caught, attacked, and bound with a Legendary device that prevents you from breaking an oath willingly.
After that, we literally couldn't leave him. In terms of our survival, he required that we promise to follow his orders and learn his techniques. But he never taught us any decent techniques, and the orders only got more and more demanding as he tried and failed to add more women to his group.
He had a grand dream of creating his own all-female Sect as his personal harem. Obviously, he wasn't nearly strong enough to manage that, as Female Cultivators are in high demand everywhere. Usually, as wives, since the more powerful live longer and can have more children with greater ease due to their stronger bodies, but also as assassins and bodyguards."
Penny's explanation made a lot of sense to Cain, it was the same sort of thing he had seen all over the last world he was in. The only thing he wondered was if the System's level ranking and the extended lifespans it granted in the other world matched up with the amount of extended lifespan that an equivalent level assignment that it gave to Cultivators did.
Obviously, that wouldn't apply to Immortals, but below that it still made sense.
The power level of this world was incredibly high as well, even just sitting here, Cain could feel himself get stronger. That made him wonder if things were still basically the same, and if they just needed to make a breakthrough in body quality to advance and used some sort of meditation technique to speed up the process.
That could be very useful to Cain. The faster he could cap out his level, the less danger he would be in, and the more easily he could refine this Dragon Core and finish his quest.
Before he noticed, his thoughts had stretched to a rather awkward silence, so he finally remembered to respond.
"This world is very different than the last one I was in, and even more different than the one I was born in. But I think I might be able to help you. Not as much as an actual Immortal, but I think I can help you reach a reasonable power level for a Mortal, enough that decent Sects would take you in as acolytes. It might take some time though if you're willing to travel with me." Cain suggested.
"We are still bound by our oath. He promised the winner of the duel would get everything he had, and we are required to obey, so we can't actually refuse you." Penny told Cain bitterly.
"You know what, that is annoying. Let me find that stupid trinket once I finish with this book." Cain decided.
It proved to be easy to find, the man didn't have much that was of value in his bag other than a huge amount of pills that made Cain wonder if this world had a rather serious addiction issue. The Librarian said something about them helping you level up, but this guy had enough to open his own pharmacy.
"Ah, here it is. [Rod of Oath] forces compliance with an oath until released. Now, how does this thing work? I, Cain, release all oaths bound by this device." Cain tried, adding a few mana to activate the rod.
The result was not at all what he expected though. The device pulled his entire mana pool dry, over two hundred thousand mana all at once. There was no way that anyone else had enough to actually activate it if it took that much to bind a few low-level fighters.
Penny leaped over the Inscription table and gave Cain a huge hug, knocking him backward onto the bed in the small room, which woke up Luna.
"Oh, we're cuddling? You could have woken me up before you started." Luna said sleepily, then attached herself to Penny's back and closed her eyes again.
"I know you're thankful, but keep Luna entertained for a moment. She is still adjusting to the time zone differences, so she needs her sleep. But I need to finish up this other book for the Sect Elder." Cain informed her, making the other two girls giggle at the Lycan's plight.
"Can you really help us level up? I have been stuck at this bottleneck forever, and I just can't seem to understand how to move past it." The small, dark-haired member of the group asked Cain suspiciously.
"That's seriously not an issue." Cain agreed. Level 100 was the first class change, but these people didn't have classes, so Cain assumed that they just needed a skill that was good enough to be from a first awakening class and they should begin to progress again on their own.
If that wasn't enough to get things moving, he could always just use [Modify] and tweak their bodies to a higher quality level and save everyone some time.
Penny had crawled into the bed, pulling the blankets up over her and Luna, who was now snoring softly and mumbling about candy, but she was staring directly at Cain.
"Yes, you too. It won't be an issue to get you past that blockage you are facing. In fact, there might be something in idiot's inventory that would help." Cain agreed.
Looking through the piled pills and random objects, Cain found a small chest inside the storage ring that had a stack of books. None of them were all that good, but Cain sifted through them carefully looking for something that could at least get her moving past the Second advancement blockage.
Second advancement classes had pretty good innate skills, at least one that was A Rank or better, so Cain hoped that that would be enough to fulfill his promise.
"How about this one? [Divine Strike] deals holy damage to your enemies while using a sword." Cain recognized it as an essential Crusader Class skill, so maybe it would be enough to push Penny past her breakpoint.
"He had something that powerful in his inventory and he never taught it to us? How stingy could he be? If I hadn't managed to learn [Quick Steps] on my own, I would have remained stuck at the first transition bottleneck the same as the others." Penny whispered so she didn't wake up Luna.
"In that case, here, put this somewhere that all three of you can read and memorize it, and then you can practice the skill as we travel until you have it mastered," Cain told them, passing the book over.
To Cain's eyes, it required a Warrior Skill book proficiency, but that should mean pretty much everyone in this world, he assumed. Once both books of [Emergency Resurrect] were finished, Cain looked them over, noting that they completed as A Rank Skill books, the same as always. Emergency Resurrect was the lowest grade of resurrection the system offered. It brought people back at one HP, without curing them or closing their wounds, so you needed a potion or healing spell ready almost instantly to prevent the recipient from simply dying again.
It would do the job to fulfill his promise to the Cultivation Sects without giving away the good stuff though.
