Aster’s eyes became those of a dragon and then he looked at the sky where the fight between the black tornado and the orange light was getting rougher with each second, to the point that the space had started showing signs of being unable to hold out.

“Heh, for being the one who inspired me to focus into control for my intent, she sure is going wild up there”, mumbled Aster, his pupils glowed and his sight bypassed the sphere of accumulated energy that was created when high ranked cultivators clash.

Inside of the half black and half orange sphere of spirit energy, Agnes was clashing with the falcon repeatedly.

Each time she waved her sword a line of bright orange light was shot from it, and the falcon had to force his body to move sidewards using wind, that’s right this Law Integration spirit beast was unable to follow Agnes’s attack with its regular speed.

Its mind wasn’t able to react on time, but its instincts did and that’s why the black wind that is surrounding it forcefully pressed itself against the falcon moving it aside to barely dodge those rays of orange light.

Agnes on the other hand was like Aster said, going wild, her mage flashed all over the place as she attacked the falcon from all the directions, everything that could be seen was the afterimage of her soul avatar, because the moment she drew her sword from its scabbard the thing disappeared from sight.

“Fuck, enough already!”, the falcon which had lost some feathers just by being grazed by Agnes’s attacks, which blew holes into its wind defense to burn them, exploded in black yin as it increased the output of its yin radiance.

From outside the percentage of the sphere of energy that was occupied by the black wind suddenly increased, from the previous 50% to around 80%, anyone would think that will mark the end of the enemy, but Aster who was enjoying the fight with Aria sitting on his lap, while he caressed her silky hair, inwardly shook his head.

Having more energy doesn’t mean one is stronger, the falcon originally wanted it to be an attrition battle, its realm is higher than Agnes, so in a contest of spirit energy reserves it thought it will win ten out of ten times.

Unfortunately, it miscalculated the fact that it was going to be forced to be the one on a passive position, as much as a physical training maniac as Agnes is, not only she isn’t a musclehead, she is a soul cultivator too, and one from the same family as one of the only two people in the same range of age who Lilia considered to be on par with her.

Aster once heard Lilia mention that his Fey godmother was able to hit a coin with an arrow a star cluster away, and now he understood why, these girls from the Fey family had an insane control over their spirit energy.

The potential in every bit of spirit energy Agnes was using, was exploited to its fullest, Aster didn’t understand what her soul avatar could do, she seemed to have fire attribute since her attacks radiated an insane amount of heat, but he could tell that wasn’t the case, because there was no heat when she summoned her soul avatar, only after she slashed her sword that effect will be produced, it was strange.

Anyway, the falcon found itself in the uncomfortable position of being forced to change its plan, because it was using too much spirit energy just to avoid and fend off Agnes’s attacks.

In simple words, if Agnes used one gram of spirit energy on her attack, the falcon was using ten to prevent its body to be shot a new hole through it, it was ridiculous, what’s even worse, despite the fact that it isn’t a spirit beast with a high defense, it is still a spirit beast, which means it should be able to depend on the defense of its body to a certain extent.

But from the very beginning, it didn’t dare to receive Agnes’s attack head on, as if it knew that those rays of light will burn through its body.

The falcon practically used everything it had, some of its feathers lost their luster but in exchange its aura increased and it actually got bigger.

“Hell Tornado!”, the energy exploded out of the body of the falcon, the black wind moved so fast around it that it started creating slight cuts on the space, since it couldn’t keep up with Agnes’s speed, the falcon decided to use a wide area attack.

The wind was trying to suck Agne’s body into the tornado to rip her to pieces, the pressure was also insane, the falcon who knew Agnes is an energy

/soul cultivator tried to exploit the natural weakness of those who follow those paths, which happens to also be the weak point of humans when compared to spirit beasts in general, physical body.

Agnes noticed she was being slowly dragged towards the tornado, the pressure of the wind would have normally made a Genesis Manifestation cultivator vomit blood due to veins rupturing and inner wounds, but she simply snorted.

“Spiral Blaze”, she grabbed the hilt of her sword and her soul avatar appeared behind of her, then she cut diagonally and an orange tornado appeared and clashed against the black one.

“Crack!”, the clash was so strong that a small breach on space opened, and lightning came out of it.

The sphere of energy that accumulated around Agnes and the falcon exploded, the clouds of black yin energy were blown away, and the shockwave was so strong that it travelled all the way to the ground.

“Boooom!”, a curtain of dust was released due to the impact, but it was soon dispersed by the gusts of wind that were left over from the clash.

When the dust settled, Aster’s group which was being covered by the upper body of the golden armor was revealed, Alexandra was also covered with her black metal sphere, just the secondary effects of that attack forced them to defend.

But right now, they didn’t put much attention into that, but into the large corpse of a bird that was cut into many parts which was falling from the sky.

Agnes descended next to Aster, her sword was glowing due to the high temperature it reached, but she was smiling from ear to ear, it’s been a while since she had a fight in which she could be serious, also she finished her fight first!

Or so she thought until Eris’s voice woke her from her daze.

“A second earlier and you would have been the winner, but it’s a tie again, what a shame”.

Back when Agnes made her movement, Eris who was fighting with the snake did hers too.

The snake has been stalling using its ice to block the heavy artillery created by Eris, the ice was destroyed by the snake managed to slip away from the attack.

And noticing that the fight on the sky was getting more intense, her soul energy exploded out of her body, she could feel Agnes strong soul energy radiating from above and she didn’t feel like ending second, as childish as it may sound.

“Wood Arsenal, Obliterate”, the snake which was fully covered into a thick layer of ice felt the ground trembling, it was as if a 10 magnitude tremor was happening below the snake, but then it realized it was something actually worse than that.

“Ice Dome!”, the snake bit its own flesh and black yin poured out of its body, as it covered itself into a black ice dome, but Eris didn’t seem to care, she was now using the small fraction of the power of a Soul Queen, that she has recovered.

The result was that an insane amount of wood towers raised from the ground surrounding the snake in every direction, runes appeared on all the wood towers and then an insane amount of spirit energy was drawn from the atmosphere, this is one of the advantages formations have, they can use an external source of energy to produce the same output as a cultivator.

Naturally there is the big inconvenient of the deployment time needed, but for Eris were milliseconds, the runes in all the towers illuminated and the formations all activated at the same time.

Then night became day, it was contained by the barrier Eris set up earlier, but the bright explosion produced by one hundred of those wood towers attacking at the same time, was amazingly strong.

“Booom!”, the ground in the nearby area trembled, and despite the barrier deep cracks appeared on it.

And that wasn’t the only thing that cracked, the ice dome exploded along with the snake which was hidden inside, pieces of meat and blood rained were spread all over the place, luckily Eris which was covered in the barrier created using her cube necklace, avoided getting stained into all that organic material.

“Ah, damn I got carried away as if I was fighting with Mylene!”, exclaimed Eris, previously Aster asked her to get the core of the snake for Espi, since a mount was needed for the group to be able to travel when they are in a mission, the core will help the little wyrm advance to the Mortal Transcending realm.

Luckily after a close inspection she found that the core of the snake was still in one piece, apparently it protected its core since its cultivation would have been wasted if it was destroyed.

Probably it thought that if it survived that attack, it would need its cultivation so it reinforced the area where it was located with its yin radiance, it did the same to its head, unfortunately Eris’s attack destroyed everything else besides that, the bones fractured, the meat was ripped apart and the scales were crushed.

Eris dragged the huge core out of the lump of meat using her soul energy and then kept it in her ring after cleaning it, she then looked at the sky, the sphere of energy had disappeared from the sky.

She flew towards Aster and the others and arrived just in time to see Agnes’s triumphant smile, but of course she announced her arrival, which broke Agnes’s fantasy of victory.

Alexandra saw Agnes who she respected since she beat the crap out of Renard due to his licentious attitude, approach Aster and enthusiastically chat with him, despite the fact that he had a girl in his lap currently and she frowned, but didn’t say anything.

She used to think Agnes was tricked or something, but after seeing her previous fight, she realized her mind was perfectly clear, which planted a seed of doubt in Alexandra’s heart.

‘This guy’s aura isn’t like the one from the elder of the Pleasure Palace, he also rejected the offer of that whore, is he really a dual cultivator… but if not, then why is his yang so eye catching?’, she wondered.

Though she despised the way he was flirting with Aria in the middle of a battlefield, the fact that Aster was able to easily crush his opponent meant he wasn’t a paper tiger like most dual cultivators, he was an experienced warrior, and his sword intent was especially amazing.

When she realized he was just a bit away from reaching the third level, at such a young age, surpassing anyone she knows or has heard off, she couldn’t help but re-evaluate her impression of Aster, that being said she still considered him a dual cultivator.

The group’s attention was suddenly drawn towards the same direction, a black vortex swallowed a large part of the nearby forest, and at the other side the forest seemed to have been transformed into a living treasure, there was a silver and golden glow enveloping the whole area.

By the time the two phenomenon ended, there was a deep crater at one side and the ground and trees on the other side had been covered in a shiny metallic glow.

“It seems like those two also finished their fights, now the only one left is the Runic Oak”, said Aster.𝒪𝓥𝗅xt.𝗰𝑶𝐌

The girls saw the figures of Camila and Felicia coming towards them, they captured someone per Aster’s request, seeing the familiar face which was now all beaten up, Aster smirked, it was Patrick, the son of the Steel Tower sect’s patriarch, surprisingly it separated from the group of the Castle Armored sect, probably because he wanted to earn some merits for himself.

Speaking of the Runic Oak, Aster saw that it was still fighting with a couple of spirit beasts, and then he looked at the sky, the reaming visible part of the sun that managed to avoid being covered by the two moons, had become smaller.

In other words, the eclipse was advancing, and the creatures affected by yin were becoming stronger.

“I’ll finish things here, the fights took a toll on the nearby space and I have to make some preparations to leave to the next castle, feel free to take the Orchid in the meantime”, said the Runic Oak through the wood bracelets.

Aster nodded; he couldn’t help but smile as he thought.

‘I seem to remember my cute Empress will reward me per each material I found, and this is one of the most important ones, so I’ll look forward to it’.

Rya who was training inside of the mind space, heard Aster’s voice and her face blushed, Lilia’s eyes on the other hand glowed, she knew her son better than anyone else, so of course she had a few ideas on how to reward him.