Noah was currently watching the imps fight a pair of monsters. This time two wolves had come out of the pool, but had no effect on the imps, who just followed orders to fight and try to improve. Regardless of whether they were going to die or not, their willpower was as high as ever.
This was something that made Noah truly admire Lucifer. To be able to have an army of more than a million of these little guys, he truly must have been a terror to the enemies he had made. Noah certainly wouldn't want to fight an army that wasn't afraid to die.
The claws of the imps were very sharp to the point of being considered blessed weapons of Rank E, which allowed the imps to cut the thick skin of the wolves with their own hands. This was practically to say that each of the imps had five sharp miniature daggers that could cut the enemy at any time. Although their Rank difference made this cut a little difficult, just allowing them to make shallow cuts, even still with each attack there were at least four cuts from the hands of the imps, which after a while made the monsters bleed so much that they started to lose strength.
And it was at this point that the imps enjoyed it even more, getting more frantic and wanting even more bloodshed, which Noah obviously didn't stop at all and just let them handle it.
Unfortunately for the imps, after the battle only 4 of them remained again. Even though they had learned a little from the previous battle on how to deal with the wolves (as there were two wolves this time), they didn't get better results than the time before.
This meant that Noah had to summon those same imps again, using the energy he was receiving for burning the corpses, causing the number of imps to return to 13 again.
Despite having summoned the 9 monsters that had died, Noah was feeling his energy still increase since Rank D monsters provided much more energy than Rank E monsters, which made Noah consider what to do with that extra energy. He, after all, didn't want to waste it.
Finally, he came upon an idea. Seeing the little imp using [Heling Flames] to heal himself since he had been one of the survivors, Noah decided to teach another imp this time.
Before, it was very difficult for him to teach [Hell Flames] with destructive power to an imp, but at that moment he had practically unlimited energy; he could try to teach the imp to use his excess energy, since even if he failed repeatedly, deferential from the house him that he had to continue controlling his own energy to not run out besides having to wait several hours to recover, here he just needed to burn more monsters that the imps killed for him. He would be able to recover everything in a few minutes; it was the perfect situation for his plan.
So Noah chose one of the surviving imps. Only 3 imps had managed to survive the two battles: one of them was the imp that controlled [Healing Flames], while the other two were just normal imps but were learning more and more how to fight efficiently.
Although they had survived many injuries, this was not a concern for Noah, who, with a wave of his hand, set each injured imps on fire and in a few seconds left their bodies as good as new after being treated by the [Healing Flames].
For one of the imps it was the first time he was alive in a battle, so Noah disregarded him and chose an imp that had a more aggressive aura to be his new apprentice.
When this imp realized that his master was going to start teaching him how to control the flames just as he had taught that other lucky imp, the little guy opened a big smile which showed the big, sharp fangs he had in his mouth.
This strangely enough for Noah was quite cute. Others, seeing a red monster with teeth that looked like knives laughing in their direction, could be quite scared from what he was seeing, but Noah strangely saw that imp in the same way that people saw panda cubs, as something very cute.
And so they started the journey. First they would fight the monsters, Noah would absorb the energy by purifying the corpses, revive the dead, treat the survivors, and use almost all the energy left to train the imp he had chosen.
Each group of monsters they killed was yielding Noah an average of 42 exp points. Sometimes they yielded more; sometimes they yielded less. It depended on the strength of the monsters they were dealing with. But the average itself never changed much, which allowed the imps to finally start showing that the training was paying off.
In the beginning they had had an average of 9 deaths per battle. There was even a time when 10 imps died, which disappointed Noah greatly, and which made them feel sad and even more motivated not to disappoint their master, making the average death rate go down quickly until reaching the current average, that was much better in Noah's view.
At that time, after killing so many groups of monsters, the number of survivors had already risen from 3 to 4 that they were initially from to 7 to 8 in all battles. That is to say, only 5 or 6 died during the more recent battles.
Not only did the drop in the death rate of the imps show how much they were evolving, but it was also quite possible to see with the naked eye how much better they were fighting.
They started to coordinate attacks. While an imp would attack on one side, another imp would try to attack at exactly the same time on the other side so that the monster would not be able to defend against both at the same time. The imps started to learn where the monsters' weak points were that they were going against: like the eyes of the wolves, which despite being the place that the monster protected most strongly, was also the place that would be most easily dealt with if they broke through the defense of the monster, since the five claws on the imps' hands could take the eyes off a wolves with ease.
After the battles, whenever the imps tore out the eyes of the wolves, they began to treat those eyes as a divine treasure. Several times this made Noah raise an eyebrow. He couldn't understand what was making them think that the eye was so valuable, until out of curiosity, he let one of the imps that had pulled an eye out of one of the wolves that was killed, instead of just burning it in exchange for energy, Noah let him do with it as he pleased, causing something he didn't expect to happen.
Under the envious gaze of all the otherimps, including the two imps that Noah had personally taught, the imp caught the wolf's eye that he pulled out and ate it.
Noah could not understand why the imp was so excited to eat that thing while the others were so envious of that imp for doing something like this, but as the wolves' eyes only gave him a little energy, Noah started to leave the eyes as trophies for the imps who managed to land a finishing blow.
This made them even more frantic. Each imp wanted to take the wolves' eyes out even more, which initially caused their average death to go up again because of how careless they were for letting their greed for the eyes go to their heads, but as soon as they learned the best way to aquire the eyes safely, the average death toll decreased to even lower than it was before, which once again made Noah raise an eyebrow.
'Really, the old proverb that says you have to treat others with a carrot and a stick: using the stick to educate them when they do something wrong, but giving them a carrot as a prize so that they can dedicate themselves to fulfill what has been requested - it is truly correct...' Noah thought as he watched the quality of the imps' battles rise dramatically once again, decreasing the amount of deaths per battle to just 3 to 4 imps per battle.
Nobody wanted to die, since if they died, another imp would receive the eye they wanted so much. So even though they took longer to kill the monsters, they had become so careful not to give up the chance to get one of the eyes, each of the imps made sure that nobody died unnecessarily.
Of course, Noah realized that if he ordered them to attack with everything they had, they would go back to the frantic way they had been before where they didn't care about their lives and just wanted to do the most damage to their enemies, regardless of how much damage each would receive themselves. Noah definitely wanted them like this for a great battle: frantic demons that would scare any enemy.
But Noah didn't order them to act as such now. It was much better for them to fight in an intelligent way which would make them evolve mentally as well as improve the way they battle, not to mention saving him a lot more energy than before.
And all that saved energy was truly worth it since Noah was seeing the fruits of these efforts before his eyes.
The imp he had started to instruct, over time received so much energy and was burned so much by [Hell Flames], that now, for the first time, Noah saw the results.
The imp was running towards the battlefield while setting his own claws on fire, and each cut he made on the wolves resulted in a loud cry of pain from the monsters and an evil laugh from the imps, which in Noah's sight, was like the purring of a cat.
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Random Notes:
Seriously, I recommend you read 'My Hermes System'...
I just posted it recently, 😅 Though I did post BL, I also have nonromance ones.