Close to a month later...

Muku's clones could be seen fighting with the girls.

Surprisingly, unlike before, the battle seemed to be almost matched. It was like thee girls were all veterans in battle instead of people who only learnt for a month.

This miraculous effect could be easily explained though. It wasn't that they were super talented in fighting. Well, some of them were.

But more than that, what mattered most was their evolved bodies. The thing about R4 bodies is that they are countless times better than normal people's bodies.

And so, for that reason. Things which would take normal people many years to learn, they could learn in a month as proven here.

The other reason they could keep up with Muku's clones was because his consciousness was literally split into nine parts which were all working at once.

Eight were training with the girls and one was keeping everything else in order.

Honestly, if it wasn't for his mindscape making his mind extremely flexible and capable of doing so many things at once... He would have crushed like an overwhelmed computer a long time ago.

However, even then, he was far from being able to operate like he normally would.

He was slower in both thoughts and reactions. And this allowed the girls to keep up with his clones.

If it was him at one hundred percent. They wouldn't be able to even touch his shadow. Even if they knew all the techniques and knew how to execute them correctly. After all, experience matters... Quite a lot too.

Anyway, despite being able to keep up for a while, the girls eventually lost... Like all of them.

Which was stifling since they understood that they were fighting a severely nerfed version of Muku in literally every way.

However, they didn't linger on it too long. After all, their leader has always been outstanding. So their loss was to be expected... Even if they wished he'd be more gentlemanly by letting them win.

"Hmm. Great improvement everyone. If you keep on getting better at this pace I'm sure you'll be as good as me soon" Muku complimented the girls after restoring his fragmented consciousness.

"How soon?" Jade asked with narrowed eyes.

"Umm... Not too long just.... Around five years" Muku replied in a dodgy time while avoiding eye contact with the girls.

"Tsk" Jade clicked her tongue but did say anything.

As much as she wanted to disagree. She knew that he was telling the truth. After all, they couldn't even defeat his clones which had their strength calibrated to match theirs physically.

On top of that, the clones had trash reaction speed. Yet, they still won based on experience alone.

"Come on now. Five years isn't too bad. I literally started learning martial arts when I was nine and only stopped when I started teaching. Which means it took me like nine years. And before you say that y'all should be way faster than that. Well, you're right, you've long surpassed the me from back then. However, the current me has gone way beyond that. That's why I complimented you. You beat nine years of work in less than a month after all. And that was with other things getting in the way" Muku explained.

Hearing his explanation, the girls finally felt good about themselves. They had misunderstood him before as they thought they hadn't even reached his level from back then.

"Anyway. Enough of that. Today we aren't going to train The Force Technique or your mindscapes like before. We're doing something else. Anyone want to take a guess?" Muku asked the girls.

"Umm, are you going to teach us another secret technic?" Jade replied without bothering to think about it deeply.

The others refrained from saying anything before properly thinking about it.

And they thought even harder after Muku simply shook his head to Jade's answer.

This was because that thought had crossed their minds too... But of course they would never admit that they thought the same thing as Jade. After all, it was long established that Jade was a muscle brain.

She was smart, but a muscle brain nonetheless. A title distinguished ladies like them didn't want to be associated with... Cough.... Cough.

Anyway, it took close to a minute of thought before someone finally said something...

"After thinking about deeply, I remembered that we've all reached the PR4. So the only thing which remains to be done is building our avatar in preparation for the breakthrough to R5? Is that the next thing?" Layla asked.

"As expected of Layla. However, you're incorrect... The first part of your answer is correct though. What we're doing next is a result of you all reaching PR4. But it has nothing to do with advancing..." Muku replied smilingly.

"Uh! Is it fighting?! Are we fighting?!" Jade exclaimed excitedly.

Her brooding from being incorrect was completely gone. Her eyes glowed with happiness and desire.

It had been so long since she had a real battle that she was practically starving.

After all, she had those berserk episodes before Muku came and those weren't fun. After he came, she was stuck in training. Which sucked too.

What sucked the most was how all the kills she had made to reach the peak were too easy and practically spoon-fed to her.

Muku would lock the beast in place then she or the others would kill it where it stood.

She once begged him to let her fight the beasts fairly. However he ruthlessly refused with the excuse that they didn't have time for such things.

Which she understood with the impending World Evolution, so she backed off. Though it wasn't like she could rebel against him anyway.

After all, with their current strength difference, he was like a god to her...

She had literally seen him oneshot kill a few R5s in the past month. While she could barely breathe infront of those things.

So yeah, his words were law... Now more than ever.

And that was why she was so excited to the point of seeming a bit like a crazy person.

"Yes... You're correct. We're finally having that gauntlet we spoke about. Oh and Mana or Beast Aura are off the table for this one. Any other means is okay though..." Muku replied with words that made Jade almost burst with happiness.

However, the others especially Hope and Emily weren't too happy.

After all, if they could use mana, their elements would give them quite an advantage even if the other party was expecting it.

After all, fire will still burn you even if you're expecting it, as poison will also poison you.

Hope was even more disappointed than Emily though. After all, she had a new ability she wanted to show off to Muku. Something she had kept a secret from the others up to the point.

Something which would reaffirm her position as the group's most dangerous member... Maybe not strongest, but definitely most dangerous.

Anyway, the others were mostly okay with it despite some slight hesitance. After all, they should be fine as long as their opponent isn't Jade or Audrey... The two with much stronger bodies than theirs.

"Wait... Gauntlet?" Layla caught something the others didn't.

"That's right. It's not going to be one versus one fight like before. I thought we should switch it up a bit. So we're having a gauntlet instead. Which is when one person stands in the ring and gets challenged by the others one by one. If they can beat everyone, then they win, if they can't, then whoever beat them will take their place until everyone has had a turn. Now we just have to decide who will go first..." Muku replied with an excited glint in his eyes.

The girls didn't even register his excitement since it had long been established that he liked seeing them fight for whatever reason. It was probably something perverted, so they'd rather not know and just pretend like they didn't notice.

"Not it!" Layla who was usually the most confident in her abilities was surprisingly the first one to back out from being the runner of the gauntlet.

Which was understandable. After all, the first person's chances of winning were extremely low.

She who is an established winning-junkie would never put herself in a position like that.

Especially when there were two monsters like her mother and Jade.

She had a trump card... But the problem with that was that the others also had it... So it wasn't a trump card in the group.

The others all took a step back as they didn't want to be first either.

Well, all of them but Jade... And unsurprisingly, Audrey.

The two monsters of the team.

They immediately looked at each other with little smiles on their faces as sparks flew in-between them.

"Well... It seems we've got two volunteers to start us off. At least this way the others won't say that they didn't have a fair chance when they get beat up by one of these two right? After all, they'd face that person after this battle" Muku excitedly commented.

"Hey!" Multiple girls shouted angrily at the same time.

Which was understandable, after all, Muku was openly looking down on them.

If they weren't certain he'd beat them all up easily, they'd charge at him and fight it out!...