I took my battle stance as father offered parting advice, he wont be able to help me when the battle starts or else it may ruin the point of having a battle. As he shouts to begin I tensed and readied myself to dodge and counter while my sisters charged at me as one. I jumped back right as they swung for me, their attacks being the same made it easy to dodge. I kept the rhythm up as I looked for an opening to deal a blow without being hit in turn, and noticed that they were covering eachother by accident, the two on the ends were only covered on one side. I rolled to the left as hard as I could which forced them to be in nearly a line instead of side by side so I only had the one to in front of me to deal with, and instead of getting up from the roll I twisted and smashed her shin with my upper arm.

As she fell over due to her leg being shattered I sprung backwards out of the crouch, she was still not out of the fight, six limbs meant up to two can be broken while still having mobility, unlike that man I could not shatter a chest plate with a single blow so I had to wear them down. The other four scrambled over the fallen one and their attacks lost unity, which was good and bad, they no longer covered eachother at all but now they each had a different attack pattern. I knew all the patterns so there wasn't any surprises but keeping track of them all was difficult to do and I was sure was something I only managed because of that little boost to Int I was born with.

A new opportunity for a strike presented itself as one of them swung late so she had her arm out while the others were still pulling back their previous strike. I slid in and grabbed hold of her arm, twisted around, and threw her at a different sister, they went down in a heap together leaving me temporarily with a two on one. They didn't adjust and just kept attacking, I angled myself so one missed while the other's attack would glance off my chest but would leave her open to a counter attack to the elbow. With a snap her arm was bent the wrong way, I shoved her off as the two who collided were back up and swinging. Notcing them I also checked on the one who's leg was broken and barely dodged her own attempt to bust my leg, she had ended up behind me in the shuffle.

I lept on to her back and with a double overhead chop I broke both of her upper arms, taking her out of the fight entirely since she now lacked any weapons. I scooted to the right as the four still up renewed their assault, but with a broken arm between them it wasn't as bad as before. I could still feel fatigue setting in as I dodged the attacks but they should be just as tired as I was, but unlike them I kept my pace steady while they clearly became desperate to end this quickly. Their lack of coordination hurt them as two of them did a double overhead while a third did a side strike, a redirect caused an overhead to hit the side strike, breaking her arm from the force of the blow.

Now with only six working arms between them the openings became more obvious, they overstretched themselves without a care and I quickly broke another arm forcing one more sister to leave the fight. Three on one was when things became real easy, they were now tiring faster then I was since I could dodge their strikes with minimal movement or just let them scrape against me. As I dodged another hit my sister failed to balance and fell over, I moved to put her in between the other two who were forced to spread around her. I attacked the one arm coming in from the right with a feint to make her block, then my follow up finished her off, forcing her to admit defeat and head over to father and little sister to be healed.

The last two were handled simply, they had exhausted themselves with powerful attacks so they were sluggish and easily downed. As soon as the last one gave up the blinking light of blue box appeared in the corner of my vision, meaning that the battle was official. I took a moment to rest before going to the back of the line for little sister to heal us. After she healed the third arm she stopped and talked to father about something for a bit before she went back to healing. Eventually it was my turn, I didn't have any serious wounds but I was covered in scratches and scrapes from the fight. As father moved little sister around so her light covered my wounds I opened blue box so I could tell father what I got.

You have gained class bound trait "Five Times Victor"

Due to winning five fights in a row against people with the same class and level

New class unlocked, speak with your queen to change class

You have gained class bound trait "Five Fold Victor"

Due to winning a fight against five people with the same class and level that attacked simultaneously

New class unlocked, speak with your queen to change class

I told father what it said and he asked for more information, but blue box had nothing more to add, the traits list said the same thing as the pop up screen. With no more information forthcoming the only thing left was to visit mother and see what change of class I got from going through all this. I said bye to father as I headed inside and down to mother's room, when I got there she was in the middle of practicing that dirt magic. When father first showed it off I thought it was something silly or only useful as a support power, but when he used it to finish off that stranger I realized I could never underestimate anything. Mother soon finished whatever she was up to and asked what brought me down here, I told her about my fight and new class and she asked for my hand.

I gave her the hand and she studied me for a second before telling me "you have two classes that you can change into, the normal one is Specialist, but you also have one I don't know about, Tactical Sergeant. I know sergeant is normal third tier class for soldiers so it looks like whatever you did let you skip a class, but I don't know what it means by tactical. You have to tell me which one you want in order for me to change you into it."

I had to think, on the surface it looked like the choice was obvious but stronger classes also had more responsibility and I had no idea if I could handle those. But... father believed in me, and he was right, I had to repay him by using the opportunity he gave me, so I said "mother, make me Tactical Sergeant." She nodded and a surge of power entered me through my hand, it traveled up my arm and into my heart before flooding through the rest of my body, the intensity kept going up until I finally passed out. When I woke up the first thing I noticed was my shell had become constricting and I had to molt a third time. As I pulled free of my old self, mother helped me spread out so I could harden properly.

Once solid I stood up and looked over my changes, I was a little taller than I was before, and my armor had become even more angular as well as gained a strange new smoothness to it. My arm blades had the biggest difference, instead of being a series of spikes they now had a solid cutting edge all the way down my forearms. Opening blue box gave me the biggest surprise, I had gained two points in Int and Wis, class up for a soldier normally resulted in doubling down on Str and then Dex so this class was something else entirely. I didn't feel any smarter though, maybe I had to grow into it, or maybe no one noticed it and they just are? Okay that kind of thought was definitely more complex than I used to have, so I was smarter now.

It made sense, in a way, I was only able to win that fight due to having more complex training, I could only do complex training because I could understand father's instructions, and I could understand because I was slightly smarter than my sisters. Dang, another curse of being smart is I now felt pity for them, I could only get smarter because I had a spark of intelligence to begin with, since they don't have that so they will be stuck where they are unless there is some other way to gain some. Now that I was classed up I was free to teach them as well as I could given their circumstances, and I could hope that mother would eventually make another smart soldier like me.

I gave mother a hug and thanked her, even if it was my own power that let me change, and headed back topside to see if any were still around. I passed the soldier on guard duty and nodded to her, guard soldiers cannot train till they trade jobs with someone, since training is tiring and they need to stay alert for their shift. I could feel the fact that she was now subordinate to me, I was mid rank in the hierarchy so I could now command lower class soldiers without it being a relayed order from father or mother. I could not command workers or celestials even though they were technically lower class because even though I was smarter I didn't know how to build a tunnel network or heal a wound.

Once outside I saw there was one soldier cooking her kill, and I knew she wasn't one I had fought earlier, and father was apparently trying to mutilate himself by sticking his hand in a fire... WHAT!? I ran at him and was preparing to dive into him to shove him away when he pulled his burnt hand out on his own, and had little sister heal it. I slowed to a stop and stared as after his hand was fully healed he stuck it right back into the flames and let out a yelp of pain. I could only watch in confused awe as he repeated the action several times until his hand was healed one last time before he stood up and noticed me.

He walked over and asked "Christina, how did it go with your class, is it a good one?"

I had to take a moment to compose myself before replying "it went great, now I am getting points in Int and Wis, so I am actually smart now instead of just a little clever. Now can you tell me what you were doing with your hand and that fire?"

He let out a guffaw at my question, "I am helping your little sister level up, she gains exp from healing wounds like how you do from killing things, so I was giving myself wounds to heal. I was also trying to see if I could gain some kind of fire resistance skill so I could work more closely with the fire ants once Victoria gained enough levels to make them."

Well that answered that, now I had another thing to ask "can you take over cooking for sister over there?" I pointed to the cooking soldier "I want to try teaching someone by themselves before making a big class"

He gave a shrug and said "sure, I was getting hungry from the constant injury and healing and the cooking fire works just as well as this one for burning myself."

If he actually somehow gained some kind of fire resistance skill from doing that I would not be surprised, but it still sounded completely insane. Once by the cooking fire he sent the soldier over to me and I started up her training with some attempts to teach her how to counter attack.