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nA moment ago:

nAs soon as the dust curtain was raised from the ground, Iris had a certain premonition, so she dragged the three inner elders who were still wearing maid uniforms and jumped towards where Aster was standing a second ago.

nUnfortunately, the visibility was zero, so she didn’t know whether Aster was still here or not, so she just spoke out loud.

n“Would you mind to give my group a ride, Aster?”.

nAster who had just called Mylene, raised an eyebrow, but he nodded at Mylene who had the control over the spatial formation, and Iris as well as her maids were included in the travel.

nThe before anyone could dispel the dust, they all disappeared in from the valley.

nPreviously when the Emerald Whirlwind was still tied to the secret realm, the space as well as the sky was practically sealed to make it if not impossible extremely hard to move through those means.

nThat’s why no one arrived at the valley using a spatial gate, but now the restrictions were pretty lax or had become null, of course Aster wasn’t fool enough to believe they were the only ones that had a way to travel through space immediately, but the formation in Eris’s necklace was really hard to track.

nThe whole group first appeared at the underground space where Ixas has been leaving all these years, and after preparing a little goodbye gift in case someone managed to follow them, they disappeared once again.

nThis time they literally appeared at the same spot of the secret realm where Aster and the girls appeared when they entered, the reason being that Mylene left a marker in that place by Aster’s petition.

nOnce they safely landed Aster placed his jacket on top of a rock and then left Kana on top of it.

nHe then turned to see the sky, there were countless of distortions appearing at different points of the secret realm, apparently all of them were portals that would help the participants to return to their respective origins.

n“Thanks”, Aster came out of his daze as he heard Iris’s thanking him, only then he noticed that one of the three maid sisters was injured, though she was in one piece she had multiple bandages covering her arms, legs and sides, there was some blood stains on them too.

nIris noticed Aster’s interrogative gaze and she sighed as she helped the injured maid to sit down.

n“Where we appeared those orcrary bastards were running rampant, killing or capturing everyone they saw… Victor’s companions were all killed when they found his hideout with the exception of Rina, the orcrary had a high resistance against poison, so their traps didn’t kill them just dragged them down a bit.

n“In my case, I had better place to hide and also actively ambushed some little groups of them far from there to mislead them, unfortunately while the green orcrary were pretty much savages who only knew how to brute force their way to victory or death, the gray skinned one was different”.

n“And they outnumbered us, so in the last fight Nina was injured and I used my strongest talismans to drive them away, after that the orcrary picked up a fight with those monks, so we managed to escape from there and wile we were leaving a gate to that green castle appeared”.

nAster nodded.

n“I took you here, but you can leave to look for your own gate if you want to, I’m not chasing you away but I’m pretty sure those guys will catch up with us before the gates open and things are going to get ugly”.

nIris’s eyes glowed for a split of a second before she placed her right hand on her chest while she grabbed the hilt of her sword with the left one.

n“I, Iris Bladeheart swear upon my sword that I won’t hold any ill intent towards any of the presents for the rest of the day, if I lie may the heavens cut my path as a sword master”.

n“Young miss!”, the three maids listened to the soul oath made by Iris and they tried to stop her, but it was already too late.

nAster was also a bit confused; he knew that for Iris, her swordsmanship was as important as her life if not more, but he didn’t understand why she made that oath.

n“The more Nina moves the more she will bleed, that’s the strange attribute that gray orcrary has and I understand you can’t have strangers around since that little girl now has, what everyone came looking for, with this I can assure you I’m not an enemy, so I hope you let me tag along for now at least”.

nAster saw the maid Nina and noticed a lingering red mist floating around the places where she had bandages, each time she moved even a bit new blood stains appeared on the bandages.

n“Fine, prepare yourself, we need to hold them down until the others had crossed the gate, about one minute per person”, said Aster as he took out one of his golden swords, from the dragon buster series.

nNeedless to say, but Iris was surprised to see the abrupt change in the sword Aster was using, normally a swordsman specializes in one type of sword, hers for example is a middle-sized light sword, hard but still flexible to a certain extent.

nBut she has seen Aster using a one-handed longsword which was still in the criteria of the light swords before and now he was wielding a clearly heavy sword which should be a two-handed weapon, though he was only using one.

nWhile everyone prepared for the upcoming fight, Mylene and Camila tried to set some formations just to notice that being close to the spatial distortions, didn’t allow them to do so.

n“Humph, what kind of insufferable bastard set the rules of this place”, softly cursed Mylene.

nIn the meantime, Aster saw both Natasha and Charlotte injecting spirit energy into their pendants and then, he saw two lines of light one red-orange and the other blue-black descending from the sky all the way into their hands.

nA second later the light disappeared revealing what was inside of it, each of them was now holding a pretty arm sized feather, one was orange with a red center, it looked like a flame and was dazzling and radiating heat.

nThe other was of a sky-blue tone with dark blue lines which resembled the waves of the ocean, likewise it was shining in a dim blue light and releasing white mist due to its cold temperature.

nAster noticed they both had comfortable expressions in their pretty faces now that they were holding those feathers, which was understandable, they got a precious natural cultivation resource.

nNatasha then turned to see Aster, her long eyelashes fluttered a couple of times as she giggled and then jumped into his arms, clinging to him.

n“All this time you didn’t make a move on me, no fair, who knows when will we see each other again, at least I want a kiss~”, she said as she pointed at her cheek while circling her arms around Aster’s neck.

nCharlotte didn’t say that, but her intense gaze was practically drilling a hole in Aster’s body, so it was obvious she wanted it too.

nAster chuckled, it hasn’t been too long since they met, but he had to admit that they weren’t bad girls at all, at the very least he treated them as friends, unfortunately they now had to part ways because the portal will take each one to their respective origins, without any other option.

nWhich of course made those two sad, but they couldn’t do anything about it.

nAster leaned down a bit and softly pecked Natasha’s right cheek, which made her furiously blush, her hair literally lit up in pretty orange flames and her eyes were intoxicated right now, as she was lost in her thoughts.

nHer protector sighed and then dragged her away, so that Aster could move again since she was pretty much clinging to him.

nCharlotte slowly walked towards Aster and looked at him, though she didn’t say anything all her emotions showed in her pretty sky-blue eyes.

nAster inwardly laughed and then planted a kiss on her left cheek, and her reaction wasn’t any better than Natasha, she closed her eyes and enjoyed the feeling, which made her protector take her away too, not before Aster gave her the book Charlotte lent him.

n“Once you reach the Divine Firmaments come to look for them, if you dare to break their hearts, we’ll chase you to the end of the universe”, said the protectors as they both threw Aster a jade slip which contained the exact coordinates to the territories of their families.𝒐𝑣𝐞𝗅xt.𝒸𝐎𝑚

n“With that you’ll be received as an honorable guest, don’t lose them”, said Natasha’s protector.

nAster nodded and then went to said goodbye to Ixas too.

nOf course, this wasn’t as emotive, and he they just shared a handshake, but Ixas also handed Aster a small token with a stone man.

n“That’s the token of my family, if you ever go find yourself in the Gea Divine Firmament feel free to pay me a visit… but don’t approach my daughter hahaha”.

nAster bitterly smiled, of course Ixas was joking but he understood why he said that.

nThe others also said goodbye to each other and then Mylene’s voice put an end to the whole situation.

n“They are coming”, said Mylene as she took out her own weapon, a halberd.

nEveryone prepared for the clash, as there was still at least fifteen minutes prior to the opening and about five more for Kana to wake up.

n…

nFrom afar different flying treasures approached Aster and the others, the orcrary were riding a flying green magic beast which resembled a mix between a boar and a lizard, with bat wings.

nRox’s group was mounting a huge black feather, while Ley and the people from the Storm Roc clan were flying on top of a lime-colored spear, to no one’s surprise Victor was accompanying them, but the girl who was with him was nowhere to be seen.

nLast but not least, the monks led by Kau were flying over a huge Buddhist necklace, each one on top of one of its beads.

n“There, I can see them near that spatial distortion!”, shouted Ley making all of them land a few meters away from Aster and the others.

nThe first one to talk was none other than the orcrary guy.

n“Hand over the Emerald Whirlwind to me, Merkel, leave the women behind and I will leave you live, what do you think it’s a decent deal, right?”, said the orcrary as he pointed his axe at Aster with a wide smile that showed his tusks.

n“Fuck you Merkel, I already stated that the girl from the Moon Stream Luan clan is mine”, shouted Rox.

n“And the member of my family should return with me, I don’t mind giving you the Emerald Whirlwind in exchange for a peaceful parting”, added Ley.

nHis sister had a hatred filled expression, but she didn’t dare to say anything as she would be out of place, so she remained silent.

nKai whose eyes were still closed remained silent too, but his “attention” was completely on Aster.

nEspecially because he noticed that even after being surrounded by four famous members of the young generation, and their subordinates

/protectors sent by their families, he didn’t flinch at all, instead of that he was smiling.

n“Come”, said Aster as he pointed his sword at them, everyone stared at their respective opponents and then as if the heavens gave the greenlight a thunder echoed through the secret realm and everyone unleashed their cultivations at the same time, producing a large explosion of spirit energy.

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