Sometime later, after Nox successfully made a Faustian bargain with Ito Takeru and dealt with all the family drama that comes with using her disciples as sacrificial pocket monsters to evade her relatives. Nox dragged her disciples off to the training arena of the Yang estate.
"So, ya all ready to fight?!"
Of course, they were all joined by a certain battle-maniac dragonewt aunt of Nox's whom practically treated these grounds as her personal playground.
"Shut it! I dragged them over here for a lesson on stuff! Not for you to fight em! So, fuck off!" Nox told off Ning who came along cuz she got interested in fighting Nox's other disciples after tussling with Kenji for a bit.
"Hmph! Make me!"
"…!"
"Hey, why are you bringing that out? HEY! NO! THE PAIN STICK AIN'T FAIR GAME! *Bonk* AAAAAAHH!"
"NO DISTRUPTING MY CLASS! *Bonk*" Nox shouted as she swung down the pain stick on the large muscle-filled woman rolling in pain on the ground.
After shooing Ning off to the side who was patiently waiting for a chance to spar in silence under threat of the pain stick, Nox turned back to her disciples.
"Okay, so let me just give you all a quick heads-up before I forget! It's no big deal or anything, but in like, uh, let's say somewhere between a week to a month from now, you are all being shipped off to war! A proper one this time and not just a quick insurrection! Now let's-! Yes, Wimp!"
"Who are we fighting?" Aiko asked.
"Don't know yet! Now, back to the-! *Sigh* Yes, mister Crybaby-mac-explainy-pants?"
"Just to be clear! You wanted me to look out for them during the war you're about to start, right?"
"No! I didn't start it! But yes to the rest!"
"Right." Alex said sarcastically.
"Now any other obvious information that you want to waste our time explaining?"
"Yes! Are you going to be stationed in the same place as us, and follow up question, if you aren't, are you going to be busy somewhere else meanwhile?"
"No, and yes!"
"Okay, and you won't be suddenly popping in to make things harder last second?"
"Look! If you don't feel confident being in charge, I'll call you a babysitter!"
"…?"
At her words Alex just squinted his eyes giving his master a suspicious look as he tried to discern whether her suggestion would be a good or a bad thing. Meanwhile, his juniors let out a slight sigh of relief knowing that they would be accompanied by their senior rather than their master to whatever is awaiting them.
The last time their master made them participate in an armed conflict, they were made to cosplay as reindeer while trekking through a dangerous mountain range filled with traumatic memories and in the end, Shinji was nearly killed. While Aiko was not there for that experience, she did understand that going to war with their senior disciple would be a lot less traumatic than going with their master.
"Okay, so in the meantime while we wait for war to break out, I will be-! Yes, Wimp!"
"How do you know there will be a war?"
"She's obviously gonna start o-! *Bonk* AAAAAAAAH!" Kenji said before getting a bonk to the head for speaking out of turn.
"The answer to your question, Wimp my girl, is that I see the signs! Yes?"
"What signs?"
"Same way you knew that had you not raised your hand for asking that question, I'd have bonked you on the head! If you still don't understand then you can ask Crybaby over there later, as he will be hanging out with you here for the foreseeable future!"
"What?! Hey, I got work to do! CRAP! NO! WAIT, NO! FINE I'LL DO-! *Bonk* AAAAAAHH!" Alex screamed after being punished for speaking out of turn.
"Okay, so, back to the thing I was originally going to say! While we wait for war to strike, I have some homework for you to do in the meantime, so you don't get bored! Wimp, since you didn't go to summer camp, you'll be playing catch up with your brothers. Slowpoke, you're, okay, on the aura front. Your control is decent enough, and though your soul is a little behind the others in terms of growth, it's adequate for now, so instead of practicing aura, I want you to focus on learning and using new spells! Let's set a stretch goal of, uh, 100, 1st tier spells, 90 2nd tier, and 80 3rd tier, and if you have time, maybe a 4th tier spell. Let's see, you first Slowpoke!" Nox said, giving Shinji permission to speak before his senior.
"That's impossible!"
"What is?"
"Have you forgotten how long it took me to just master a single 3rd tier spell? And you want me to master 270 spells in a month, 80 of which are 3rd tier, and don't even get me started on how I'm supposed to go up a tier in spite of my aptitude! Nobody could do this! It's impossible!"
"Hmph! Shows what you know! I mastered 300 spells the month I first became a 4th tier spellcaster, only 29 of which were none-original and my aptitude is way worse than yours, so there!"
"Come on, boss! Even you know that's to unrealistic a boast!" Shinji commented as both Kenji and Aiko had the same words written all over their faces.
Most magicians could take weeks, months even, just to learn a single new spell, and although maybe some experienced mages with perfect memory might be able to pull off learning multiple 1st and 2nd tier spells in a matter of days, even they would need a considerable amount of time on learning triple digit amounts of them. However, Nox was not only claiming to have done this while also advancing a tier, she had even claimed that 90% of them were original spells, or in other words, entirely new and functional spells she herself has designed and developed. The average magician could spend an entire lifetime on just a single one of such spells, and even the common arch-mage might only have one or two original spells in their arsenal. Of course, the anomaly Nox could be described as many things, but 'average' or 'common' are none of them.
"Crybaby!" Nox said, gesturing for him to speak up.
"Trust me, I know how ridiculous it sounds, but that actually happened!"
"…?"
'Are you being threatened?' Shinji asked in code.
'No' Alex replied.
"So, was that all you had to say, or can we move on?" Nox asked Alex.
"*Sigh* No! What I wanted to say was to stop holding everyone to your standards! Lower the god damn bar!"
"Watch your potty mouth young man! We don't feed poor gods in my house!"
"We're outside!" Alex added.
"Also, I already lowered the bar by subtracting 30 spells, and he doesn't have to be original about his spells! I learned my lesson after I tried to make you do this! Remember! 27 spells in and you dozed off mid casting and blew up my Herbert garden!"
"Who is Herbert and why does the boss have a garden named after him?" Kenji asked Alex.
"HAD! I HAD a garden of Herberts!" Nox emphasized.
"*Sigh* She means 'male-dryad cloning farm'. She had genetically swapped the gender of an all-female species of man-eating humanoid plant creatures and then tried farming them for their valuable organs!"
"Poor baby Herbert 1 through 67 never stood a chance! It was just before harvest season to!" Nox sulked.
"*Sigh* Point is! You need to stop putting the same insane standards you have for yourself on others! Unlike you, our minds can't process peering into higher dimensions, and we can't read spell circles as if their a type of language!"
"Of course you can! You just refuse to try hard enough! And as the stenographer eating a sandwich over there can confirm, I did lower the bar!"
"First of all, that's a corner, and nobody's there! Second of all, you need to lower it more! You kept me up all night and day practicing spells, and by the end of the month, I didn't even manage a third of them!"
"You got close though! 89 spells! Had you not slacked off on the microsleep practice we had before that, the results might have changed!"
As master and disciple continued quarreling like this for some time, Alex eventually managed to talk Nox down to about a hundred total spells, but she also demanded that Shinji become a 4th tier spellcaster by the end of the month.
"Also, I'll be confiscating your spirits for a training montage!"
"HEY! *Bonk* AAAAAAHH!"
"Eh-!"
As Shinji saw he was beaten to the punch in his protests by little Thunder herself who promptly got her first real taste of the pain stick's fury, he decided to hold his tongue.
"Having some time apart is good for you, and you'll get em back before the war anyways, so calm your tits! Now as that's settled, let's move on to what my honor student will be doing! Meathead, well, firstly, let me just say, well done! When we first met, you were actually trailing behind the others in the soul department, but now you have the strongest soul amongst your peers by far! Congratulations! *Clapping*!" Nox said, applauding her cultivator disciple.
After hearing a rare word of praise by their spartan master, Shinji and Aiko looked astonished, while Kenji went from disbelief into a smug look directed towards the others for this honor. Alex, his senior however, only looked on in pity as he knew from experience that only terrible things follow whenever their master offered such kind words.
"Yes, your soul has grown so strong in fact, if you were a demon, you would be classified as a greater demon. Unfortunately, that has all been wasted on you!"
"And here comes the scolding!" Alex muttered having expected as much.
"Shut up!" Nox barked at her oldest disciple.
"…!"
Knowing better than to even give a word of affirmation to her commands, Alex only responded with absolute silence.
"Good! Now, Meathead, where do I even begin! Hold on, I actually have a list of things! Now where did I put it! Ah! There it was! Now, first up, I got a report saying you nearly starved to death going to town on demonic cuisine. I don't know which is worse, the lack of self-control or the lack of intelligence that could have led up to this!"
"But, I didn't know?"
"THINK FOR YOURSELF! Not everything is gonna be spelled out for you in life! You had plenty of time to notice the lack of nutrition in that food before it got serious! However, that's not the end! Even though this actually contributed a lot to your soul's growth, it's thrown off your build entirely and your souls starting to go out of balance. Congratulations, you lost ten pounds of muscle in the body and gained twenty pounds of fat in the soul, good job. Now, whenever you hear that famous 'it's what's inside that counts' line, you'll know the answer will always be 'childhood obesity', I hope you are happy with your health! And speaking of health, because you wasted so much time ruining your body and soul's fitness instead of, I don't know, Learning, which was the whole point of sending you to summer camp, your body is still playing catch-up with your soul, meaning it can't properly handle entering that 2nd form of yours. Had you not become the posterchild for spiritual obesity, not only might your soul have become stronger, but you'd be able to hold that form for at least five minutes, instead of just five seconds. AND FURTHER MORE-!"
"Okay, I think he gets the point! We don't have all day so let's move on!" Alex said, wanting to cut this short before Kenji lost what little feeling of accomplishment he had for his achievement.
"OH, HELL NO! I AM JUST GETTING STARTED! THE NEXT THING YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF IS! Oh this is a good one! Now Meathead! Can you explain to me exactly how is it, after having spent an entire year, living, in the greatest library in all of the demon realm, which contains enough knowledge on the dark arts to turn even the lowest of lesser demons into a pseudo-demon lord, that in all the time you spent there, the only thing you learned was some basic bitch aura tricks!"
"Uh, well it was all kind of confusing and, eh, hey did you know that Shinji wasted most of his time on-!"
"DON'T CHANGE THE SUBJECT! I am well aware of Slowpokes wasting his time on a worthless piece of trivia, and we'll talk about that later! NOW ANSWER ME!"
"Well, it was too confusing and my head started hurting trying to understa-!"
"YOU IDIOT!!! THERE IS LITERALLY A HOW-TO GUIDELINE ON GOD-SLAYING IN THERE, AND YOU'RE ONLY EXCUSE IS A HEADACHE! I'LL SHOW YOU WHAT A REAL HEADACHE IS LIKE!" Nox shouted as she raised a humongous club of solid pain.
"Wait! Boss! I'm sorry! I promise I'll do better, so please! Mercy!"
"HELL NO!!!"
*BANG**RUMBLE*
After about an hour of continuous screaming, shouting, and a painful bludgeoning that shuck the earth so hard it woke up the battle-maniac on the sidelines who had dozed off at some point, the scolding finally came to an end.
Though, every harsh word Nox said was true, it is also true that Kenji's soul has grown an impressive amount. By having a soul comparable to a greater demon, if Kenji had mastered even a fraction of the forbidden knowledge contained within the Library of Babble, paired with his aura and cultivation, he'd be a pseudo-immortal right now.
*Sigh*
"Okay! I think that's enough for today! Oh, right, I need to give the assignment! Meathead, your homework is to get in shape, cultivate, and whenever you have time to spare, you'll be taking practical combat classes, probably with that muscle-maniac over there!"
"Finally! So, let's get-! *Bonk* AAAAAAHH!" Ning said, cracking her knuckles right before taking a black stick to the head.
"Did I say I was done talking?! Now, here is your assignment Crybaby!"
"Huh? Me?"
"Yes, you! I'll be busy setting the stage, so I'll leave teaching these brats to you while I'm off doing important shit! Good luck!"
"HEY, WAI-!"
"Smoke bomb!"
*Poof*
And just like that, Nox smoke bombed her way out of the conversation, as she snuck away to places unknown.
*cough**cough**cough*
"*Cough* DAMN IT! MASTER *Cough* GET BACK HERE! *cough* IF I KNEW I'D BE THE ONE TEACHING*cough**cough**cough*!" Alex coughed out, lamenting not fighting harder to lower the difficulty of his junior's homework.