"Dao, you're up. Show us what you got," Hera smiled and stepped back.

"Can I leave now?" Lurize asked. He was gasping for air, even if he wasn't able to breathe. Parts of his armor were singed while others were frozen, but his shape was still holding strong. If this were when he first became the Royal Tutor, he would already have lost his bipedal form. But now, five months later, his Exoarmor skill ranked up a couple of times. The main reason for that was the way they were training. According to him, doing so allowed him to practice reducing damage and notice the openings that others would show better. That was something that only helped when the basics were already drilled into someone. After all these months, with everyone just focusing on leveling up and getting stronger, most of the party and court were already past the point of needing his advice to practice the basics. This meant that they would all attack Lurize, who wouldn't fight back, just defend to both help others and train his defense. The ultimate goal was to increase his defense enough to protect the entire court. Not as a way to take Nimbus' place but as a way to help him and make sure no one would get hurt.

"No. You can't," Hera replied with a cold gaze. Still angry for what he had done.

"But… I… I… I apologized," Lurize pleaded.

"That won't solve anything, will it? Will that bring it back? No, it won't. Did you ever consider the number of things that had to happen at the right time for someone to make that?"

"I… I didn't… You gave Nimbuz, Dazkka, and me one, zo I thought it was ok for me to have another."

"I begged everyone else to give a small piece to the three of you. And that only happened because I got a smaller piece to start with. You three don't need to eat!"

"But Hera…" Lurize tried to speak, but he was quickly cut off.

"No buts! Do you know the odds of us being able to make that here? We had to get milk, eggs, and flour from a dungeon reward! And they all had to be within a certain time frame. Milk in this heat would get bad in a day! We had to make butter Lurize, make butter! In a day, we had to build that thing and then make it. And the chocolate came from our power bars. The last ones we had. After everyone had eaten the cake, we had three slices left, and we played cards to decide who would get them. Bonnie got one, Alex got another, and I had the third. It was mine, and you ate it without even asking!" Hera let out a grunt and turned to Dao, "Go for it and give it your best. Lurize, the safe word is platypus."

Dao stood up perfectly straight, and from the empty blue sky in the Crystal Fisher dungeon, a soundless lighting came crashing down, covering the sword that enveloped the blade and continued to course through it. Just that visual effect showed that Hera's hard work paid off. She now could make not just an elemental Mana Reinforcement on her blades but what was called Elemental Strength. In reality, it was simply an evolved version of the evolved version of the same spell. The order was Mana Reinforcement > Mana Strength > Elemental Strength.

Now the attacks would be 2 times stronger, and so would the effects of spells or skills. In addition, when affected by the Elemental Strength, each attack had a chance of causing elemental-based effects when applicable, courtesy of the Mana Strength version. For instance, Dao could paralyze and shock his targets. Frost could freeze, Core could trigger a persistent burn, and Scythe could make their target feel bound by rope or chain for a brief moment. Even for the elements that wouldn't have something like that, they also got an extra benefit. Armory, for instance, would increase the defense of anyone who was wearing her. Edge also had an interesting effect. He would make whoever was wielding him recover from wounds at an accelerated rate. This second evolution, which only happened recently and could only affect weapons that had a clear elemental affinity, came with yet another feature. An elemental-based skill that would be available depending on the element.

In Dao's case, this was very straightforward. The sword pointed at Lurize and, in a flash, lunged at him attempting to stab him with the flat tip of the blade. Dao was able to cross a 10-meter distance in less than a second with that attack, thanks to the extra lightning elemental effect, but Lurize was already expecting that. He stepped to the side, letting the blade graze the side of his armor. That was enough to make a large scratch on the metal, which was already incredible, considering most attacks would just bounce off his rank 3 Exoarmor.

"You ztill give too much of an opening when you do that," Lurize said. If this were a regular training session, he would have grabbed Dao's handle as he stopped behind him, but since he couldn't fight back, he just turned around to face the sword.

Dao continued to attack. Now instead of trying to deal one big hit, he focused on several small ones. The goal was to trigger the shock affliction. More than just that, but every time he would leave a large opening for a counter-attack, Dao would dash forward using the lightning movement from the Elemental Strength. Doing so made Dao use a lot of mana. In a real fight, that would consume too much mana to keep being used repeatedly while all other blades were also out. Each centimeter he traveled would make him spend 500 points of mana. Moving just 1 meter would cost 50 thousand points, and with the first move Dao already spent close to half of Hera's maximum mana.

The sword went for an overhead swing, but it was just a faint. Instead, he stopped midway and stabbed Lurize's neck. Again the attack barely did any damage, but it was still more than enough to bother the Royal Tutor. The fight continued, with one side attacking with all he got, and the other blocking and evading but not fighting back.

"Platypus," Daskka said.

"You don't get a safe word," Hera scoffed and looked to the side. Daskka was standing up on her tail while looking at the sky, and Nimbus was by her side, in a variation of something called the horse stance, where you would keep both legs apart as if you were sitting down on an invisible chair. But instead of having his arms parallel to his tights, they were pointing up too.

"But… Mum!" Daskka pleaded.

"No, you two saw him doing that and didn't stop him because you thought it would be funny. You are lucky I'm not making you two fight," Hera huffed.

"But…" Nimbus started.

"No buts! I don't care if Daskka told you not to say anything. That's what you get for following the troublemaker," Hera turned back to the fight and saw how Lurize was with one knee on the ground, small sparks of electricity surrounding him, and a small but deep cut on his leg, "Ok, stop."

The Empress walked over without saying anything, making Lurize increasingly uncomfortable as she got closer. Hera looked at the Royal Tutor's current state. He had small scratches everywhere but nothing that could cause a serious problem, with the exception of the cut on his leg. Even that wound wasn't deep enough to break through his armor, but not by much.

Hera kneeled by him and touched the deeper cut, "This is enough for you to ask to stop this. Why didn't you?"

Lurize was breathing heavily. Even if he didn't actually need to breathe, he could still get tired, "I am being punizhed. I have to endure."

The Empress placed one hand on his armored face, "No, you don't. Yes, I'm angry, but I don't want to hurt you. You need to tell me when it crossed the line between a tantrum and something more serious."

"Do you forgive me?" Lurize looked into Hera's eyes.

"Yes, and no. I won't be mad anymore, but you, Daskka, and Nimbus are going to learn how to cook. And you will have to bake me a cake every week when we get back," Hera got up and reached out her hand to Lurize, "Now come. This was enough training for today, at least for you."

She brought him back to Nimbus and Daskka, who were still in their punishment positions. It had already been 40 minutes since they started, and both were clearly tired of it.

"Mum… can we… stop?" Daskka asked.

"That depends. What did you learn?"

"We shouldn't let someone else make a mistake if we see it happening," Nimbus said.

"And we shouldn't prank you," Daskka added.

"Nimbus got it right. You didn't, Daskka. I'm fine with pranks, just don't cross the line. You two can stop."

Daskka flopped on the ground with a heavy thud, and Nimbus fell back, both sweating and gasping for air. In Daskka's case, it wasn't actual sweat but cold mist to help her control her body temperature. It was funny how even though she was supposed to be a construct, she would behave like a living snake more often than not.

"Did you tell them already?" Lurize asked.

"When I told you, I made sure to speak it to the entire court. I hope you three get used to the kitchen. You will stay there for a while," Hera squinted at Daskka and Nimbus, who just groaned in response, "Either way, stay here. I'm going to practice with the rest of the court."

"Don't you need to recover mana?" Nimbus asked.

"They let me borrow the bad mana crystal today. I have 10 million mana to waste, and as long as it's a continuous effect, I don't have to worry so much about the rest of the mana vanishing from the crystal," Hera tapped a pouch on her waist. This was where the crystal they got from the cube monster was.

Hera called her entire court. Ooze, Armory, Scythe, Core, Frost, Edge, and Dao floated around the Empress. With Armory on top of her head, all other blades moved around to reach their positions. As they moved, Hera created some strands of mana that would latch on the weapons to assist in making a pattern between them all. It took them just two minutes to set up their positions. Then, the Empress activated the Elemental Strength on all of the blades. She spent the last few months working on getting the right element for each of them, and she managed to do so with a little bit of help from her friends. Another minute and a half went by, and she finally was able to complete the formation, which was just a massive spell circle around them.

"Field of Elements!" Hera yelled. This wasn't necessary for the spell, but when using anything that could affect the other members of her party during a fight, she promised to shout the name of the spell she was using. That way, they would all know what would happen if they got close. That was a lesson she learned the hard way. During a dungeon, Hera made a circle that would increase one's speed and strength, but when Mylo passed by, the fighter didn't expect the changes and ended up slamming his head against a steel door, passing out as a result. That happened in a fight against the Proto Slime, and they almost died because of it.

This spell, however, wouldn't have that effect. Instead, it would simply increase the elemental power of all her allies in the area. The moment she activated the formation, Dao's lightning became stronger, and Frost's ice was so intense that it froze some of the crystal under him. Hera started moving around, running from side to side and zig-zagging everywhere to make sure she managed to keep the spell up even when she was moving.

At first, it took her around 20 minutes to make this particular formation, and if she moved on her own without talking to her court, the spell would vanish. Now, taking only three and a half minutes to make this spell was already a big improvement, and she could run around without any issues. However, the mana cost was still a problem. Just to maintain this, it would take 100 thousand points per minute. And since she had to use the Elemental Strength spell on all her weapons while inside it, the upkeep reached 250 thousand when her entire court was present. If she was to use all of her mana, that would last around 7 or 8 minutes.

Hera dropped the spell and tried a few more times, managing to bring down the time to closer to three minutes. Satisfied with the result, the Empress left the dungeon and waited for her friends. Tomorrow would be a big day, and they would finally go on a trip to Abyssia.