His eyes are filled with hope, but his body still trembles with fear. This man was captured by an unknown rising kingdom in the Dark Continent by a force that easily defeated two of their strongest A-Class hunters and dozens of elite B-Class hunters in seconds. Now, he's face to face with me, a man who tortured information out of his allies for hours without any remorse. Even if I freed him from his golden collar, it seems he's still unsure if he's now just being shackled to another tyrant. All of his thoughts are racing around now, but I can read them as clear as day, like the odd mental block from before is gone. I completely change my tone, smile, then deactivate my intimidation and gravity magic. "Very good. Tell me everything you know about the Apex Region and the reason you attacked me, and I'll consider letting you live a free life away from me and the Association if you wish." His eyes light up, and the words start flowing. I stand above him and listen with my arms crossed, and every word that comes out of his mouth is followed by plumes of green mist from my lie detector skill telling me it's true. We walk out the front door to be greeted again by the man and woman. I toss them the keys back and smile. "We're all done here, treat them nicely until I return. Seems they weren't as bad as we thought, and were very cooperative today." I turn to my teammates once we get far enough away from the prison and feel the presence in my shadow stirring. "How about we go spar out in the desert away from the city. I want to see how far you've come for myself; and there are a few training options I want to talk over with you to get your opinions on." Then I put my fists up in the air as the 4 glowing teammates around me pull out their weapons. Fisher smirks, putting a similar fighting stance to Monk's up in the air and letting his manifested blue serpent Soul Energy flow out of him.. "You sure? I'll give you everything if that's really what you want!" Lydia pulls out her katana, and it's glowing with white light. Her Soul Energy Tiger surrounds her body and the desert sand below starts to turn pristine white. Abby glows green and spears start to circle around her while Maria pulls out her sword and a dense royal blue energy form erupts from her chest to grow ten times her size. I allow my own Soul Energy to power my movements and strengthen it with yellow threads of Divine Energy. I don't activate my greater form, and don't pull out any extra weapons to prove a point as they all come at me with everything they have. The first attack I block with a simple open palm is Fisher's, catching his punch and using a wall of red soul energy covered in yellow threads around it to completely stop his manifestation of a serpent in its tracks, then making contact with his main body using a powerful blow with the same hand to send him flying backward. From the other direction, Lydia's blade comes straight for my back. I gracefully turn while in the motion of blocking Fisher's move and dodge her strike within millimeters, twisting around her body and landing the same open palm to her back sending her flying in the opposite direction. Less than a tenth of a second later, I jump upward to avoid 6 bright green spears spinning in circles coming my way. Using flight to bounce through the sky with ease, feeling as though I'm as light as a feather while closing my distance between myself and Abby in the next instant. Her eyes widen as I use the same simple open palm thrust at her chest while she's in her immortal form. The Soul Energy from my attack shouldn't be able to harm her at all. In this moment, nothing should be able to. However, the yellow threads that make my form heavier, more rooted in reality, are so strong that she's pushed backward from the blast. The Soul Energy itself didn't do a thing, phasing through her and doing no damage at all, however the mass of my body covered in divine matter that is stronger than reality itself makes an impact with where her body should be and does physical damage. I turn in mid air the moment my attack hits to see a massive ice goddess' blade coming down toward me. Full of confidence, I push my hand up to stop it. For a moment, I feel a truly bizarre weight pushing down on me, like the longer I wait to push back the heavier it will become. My muscles strain for a moment, and I'm stuck standing in place for a few fractions of a second before I channel all of my soul energy and divine threads away from other portions of my body to push into my palm. Now, I push back upward with enough force to push the ice blade away. Then, jump upward and plunge through her greater form with nothing but a Soul Energy Barrier strengthened with Divine threads to break through the attack and hit Maria's real body with the same blow I did to everyone else, easily overpowering her. It may have been an error to hold back here at first, I did so not to hurt any of my teammates, but I used enough power to show there was an overwhelming difference. I power down, standing in the middle of the four of them defeated on the ground around me. While they weren't life-threatening blows, I still hit them hard enough to shock their systems and give them a taste of what Divine Energy can do. I yell out for each of them to hear. "Again! I want you to come at me with everything, aim to kill. If you think those A-Class hunters you fended off were strong, you have no idea what kind of monster we're dealing with. My power is minuscule compared to the Director that runs the 8 Great Regions. We have to get stronger." I prepare to give them all regeneration potions or share my skill with them, because each of the blows I landed left yellow thread residue in their bodies. However, a bright green Restoration Circle spreads out beneath Abby's feet, and it covers the entire battlefield. Green energy surges into all 4 of them at once, and I watch the foreign yellow thread be torn out of their bodies similar to the soft heal technique that Nat used, but much faster and it's more efficient. I smile and put my fists back up while the 4 of them come back at me with their weapons and Soul Energy on full power. Colorful Blue, Green, White, Red, and Yellow lights all flash through the desert as the landscape is destroyed everywhere we spar. About 30 minutes go by, and the fighting only gets more and more intense. They slowly realize that I really meant it when I said they can come at me with everything they have. At first they were all hesitant to actually hurt me, but it soon becomes clear that the power gap between us has grown so much that they can really let loose and use everything they have. This is the first time I believe any of them have been able to do an exercise . Every time they break through and learn new techniques while battling all out, I up the intensity little by little to make sure they never win; having to think of new ways to fight back and continuously gain the upper hand. In less than half an hour their fighting styles drastically improve, and they become far more confident in situations where decisions need to be made within tenths or even hundredths of a second. While their basic combat training goes on, my mind is racing for more ideas on how we can all improve. While I was thinking inside the [Mind Palace] everything seemed perfectly aligned and clear. I had options to farm in the top floors of the labyrinth, to have us all gain a few trillion more MCP. It would definitely make each of us much stronger, but wouldn't bring us to levels that are magnitudes higher, which is where we need to be. The level of a strength gap that they have below me right now is similar to the power gap I felt between the Director and myself. I had thoughts of giving them my red, orange, and even yellow cores that I farmed to try and awaken cores like myself, but there are a few problems with that too. The first is that there isn't enough time. It would take weeks for them to awaken up to the yellow core state in the best-case scenario. The second is that even if they made it to a yellow core in time, we would still have the same issue. I'm recreating the battle right now that would happen if we fought against a stronger opponent of such immense strength. It's like the swarms of orange-cored insects fighting against a yellow-cored lizard, no matter how I look at things; the power gap is far too high. I can't tell if the Director's mana control is just that much higher than mine after decades of training, or if there is a second stage to the yellow core that I'm unaware of. All I do know is that there is something that I'm missing, and I need to figure out what it is...