It took a full fifteen minutes before Sabbat returned to reality with a huge smile on her face and a whole new class.
[Magus Dominus] wasn't a Class name that Cain had been expecting or that he thought would appeal to the ranged magic-preferring slender brunette. If it had been a class name that Penny or even Tena had picked, Cain might not have been as startled, but the System's naming sense usually assigned words like Dominus to violent melee classes.
"I have picked all my skills now, and I think that I have rounded out my skillset well enough that I shouldn't have any more troubles in fights with being attacked," Sabbat whispered to Cain.
"Oh? What did you gain that gives you so much confidence that you aren't squishy anymore?" Cain asked while he recorded her new form so that he could look through the skills she had learned.
"I got a bunch of new barrier skills, but more importantly, it comes with elemental weapon skills that can make up for the defensive shortcomings of most mages. I can actually fight now and not just stand back with my flames.
It's got lots of new area attacks as well, but the ability to fight is the real change. I will have to challenge a match as soon as the lesson is finished."
Cain nodded, then reconsidered. "You might as well spend the night making plans and becoming more familiar with all of your new spells. A bit of time planning how to make them work better together will make it easier to learn your class in the first fight. If you don't have a good enough grasp on your skills and how they work together, it will be impossible to learn."
Sabbat was eager to fight, but Cain had a point. She would just be wasting her own time and skills if she didn't have a plan about how to make her skills work together. Since she had skipped so many levels due to quests, she was overloaded with Skill Points and had started with a full class tree, unlike most advanced fighters who would only get one or two skills from the new class to start and would learn to use the new ones as they become available.
"You know, I hate it when you're right," Sabbat muttered, then closed her eyes to plan how she would fight her first match.
After seeing Carnage in combat, she had learned a lot about how to defend against multiple attackers, and with the addition of her flames and new skills, she thought that she could do the same thing, at least to some degree.
That should be a shock to anyone who was expecting to fight a mage, but the most important part of her new skillset was the skill that gave the class its name.
[Energy Domination] would let her devote a portion of her mana to lock down the energy in the area, with a two-to-one rate of returns. Fighting opponents on her level, she could lock them out of their energy skills with half of her own mana, making them fight with blades, while Sabbat could still use flames and the rest of her skills.
Stronger opponents could break the effect of the debuff, but against opponents who weren't expecting it, those few seconds before they resisted the skill would be enough to totally overwhelm them.
As she had learned from watching Carnage, it wasn't enough to simply have skills. You needed to control the battlefield so that you were always at the advantage by default. Carnage did it with pure skill and experience, but Sabbat was certain that she could mimic a fraction of that power on her own right now, and it would only get more powerful as she advanced.
After another hour, the Disciples admitted defeat, and Luna dismissed Carnage so that the referee would announce that the fight was over without waiting for them all to individually admit that they had lost.
[Winner Carnage] The ethereal Seraphim announced, bringing a chuckle from the crowd. Even if he was dismissed first and forfeited, the Arena still knew that he had crushed that fight.
Everyone was waiting to see who was next when a group of young men in Golden Robes with bright orange trim flew over to the edge of the camp and called out to those inside.
"The Enlightened Blade Disciples respectfully challenge the Forbidden Treasures Disciples to a match." Their leader called.
That was fairly normal. Even outside the competition, the cultivators loved to fight challenges. This one was at least polite, so they wouldn't start a big issue between the two Sects.
Cain could also see that similarly dressed Disciples were challenging dozens of other Sects in the area, so this must be a newly arrived Sect who had missed the early competitions and wanted to make a name for themselves.
"The Forbidden Treasure Sect accepts your challenge. Please enter the Arena. It is protected by the Seraphim. There will be no death inside, so you may fight with your full strength." Cain replied on behalf of his girls.
"Tena still needs inspiration, so don't hold back. If they are confident enough to challenge, they should be good enough to give you girls a workout. Just don't call too many demons against them, Luna. It wouldn't be sporting." Cain instructed.
Instead of summoning anything new, Luna took a pair of Pixie warriors out of her battlefield and gave them instructions to help out in the battle. Luna was a skilled fighter even without her summons, and a pair of tiny assassins would be a nightmare for most Sects to deal with, so she was confident that it would be enough to ensure their victory, even if Sabbat had issues getting her new class to work correctly.
"So much for waiting until she knows what she is doing." Solara laughed from her spot beside Cain as she watched the others head to the arena.
"Are you not sending them all?" One of the ten men who had come to challenge them asked, looking at Solara, who didn't look any younger than Luna or Tena.
"This one specializes in Alchemy, not fighting. The others are skilled at fighting superior numbers, though, and I am certain that they will give you a good workout." Cain replied sedately, not at all concerned about the chances of his Disciples losing.
Ten young men faced off against five young women and two pixies. The cultivators thought it was a bit odd to see the small creatures, but they were familiar enough with skills that could create helpers out of energy, so they assumed that the Pixies were a form of talisman that would help in some way, either giving a buff or causing a distraction.
"Alright, we each take two, and the last one to clear their attackers has to fetch dinner for everyone else tonight," Penny suggested.
Her thoughts said that she was encouraging Tena to find a way toward more power, thinking that as long as Sabbat did well that the Monk would be the last to finish her targets. The Enlightened Blade team didn't see it quite that way and believed that the victory in the Outer Sect competition had made these girls overconfident.
Unlike their opponents, their team had plenty of time to work out how to deal with the tricks that the girls had shown during their matches, and they were sure that they could deal with even the insane attack speeds that Luna had shown.
The referee appeared overhead and announced the start of the match, giving only three seconds' warning before calling for the fight to begin.
The girls spread out so that they had more room to fight, and a pair of big men charged Sabbat the instant the announcement was made. She had shown vulnerability to close combat before, but this time she simply conjured a halberd into her hand and swung it in a full circle, creating a dome of flames around herself to block the first attacks.
Four blades rushed out of the fire, all made of glowing pink energy, catching the pair off guard and dealing damage before they could react and fight them off.
Sabbat wasn't holding back, though. She had no intention of carrying meals for the entire Sect tonight, so she decided to start the match with her new Ultimate Move.
[Energy Domination] locked down the area around her, and the two men fell from the air, unable to continue channeling energy to fly.
The blades didn't let up, and a tornado of flames suddenly formed over the pair before slamming into the ground around them and contracting, throwing them into the air and lighting them on fire.
Without the ability to exert external energy, they couldn't fly away or even put up a barrier to protect themselves from the flames, and the two were quickly ejected from the fight to sit in the waiting area and heal.
"Wow, she has no pity left in her, does she? That was savage." Solara laughed, while Sabbat was looking extremely proud of herself as the first to eliminate her targets.
Luna was only a few seconds behind her, though, using her speed to put the fighters on the defense while the Pixies concealed themselves with magic and snuck around to assassinate them with a single strike to the neck.
Penny's targets didn't last much longer than Luna's did, but both Tena and Jen were stuck in a hard battle. Jen had gotten two highly aggressive fighters who were trying to break her defenses, while Tena got a pair that had much better energy control than she did, and were able to fend off all her attacks, keeping the fight at a stalemate.
It would be rude to draw out the fight and just watch the others fight, so the three victorious Disciples rejoined the battle, instantly crushing the Enlightened Blade fighters and sending them to the recovery room.
"When you are healed and refilled with energy, you can just request for the room to return you to either the arena or the area around it." Cain informed the defeated team, who were busy marveling at the effects of the recovery room.
"Thank you for the Enlightenment, Elder Cain. We have learned many new things today." The leader of the team responded politely.
He seemed to be the only one that wasn't either immersed in self-pity or awe of the healing effect of the recovery room, but he had attacked Sabbat, and his Sect Robes were mere rags of charred cloth at the moment.
"You might want to change as well. This is an all-female camp, excluding myself, and the other Elders might not take it well if you came back out half naked."
