Seeing Iris leaving along with all the guys from the Red Sword faction, Aster chuckled, contrary to her fire attribute, the sword obsessed red-haired girl was quite taciturn, a rare characteristic to find on people with fire attribute, as they tend to be wilder.

A good example of that is Natasha, who despite the traditionally demure and composed attitude of the Sun Graceful Luan clan, is quite… “intense” and free spirited, of course it’s not a rule, but the Luan girl happens to be a perfect case of a common believe.

In comparison, Iris channels all her energy into her swordsmanship, that being said, she is quite emotional when it comes to certain things, like the well-being of her three maids, and she also knows how to repay kindness.

And that made it easier for her and Aster to get along, despite the fact that she is technically the representative of an enemy faction.

Anyway, Aster put this matter at the back of his mind, right now he had other things on which he should focus, namely the blushed pretty pale girl in front of him, but before that he talked to Lilia who was of course messing with Rya inside of the mind space.

‘You know what to do mom’, he said only to hear Lilia softly snorting.

‘Humph, you ignored your poor mother earlier but now you are talking to me’, she said as she pouted, which made Aster smirk, no one in this world knows how to content that jealous mother of his, better than him.

‘Oh, well, I guess my date with my beautiful Lilia will also be interrupted, like it happened earlier, what a shame, unlike with Vivian, I will only have a day with you, so we’ll lose at least a third of that…’, Aster hadn’t even finished his sentence, when Lilia already answered.

‘I’ll be there in a second, if those bastards try to get in the way of my time with my dar… I mean in the way of our family, I’ll go level the Blacksmith Peak!’, she said as those red ruby eyes of hers shone in a dangerous light, before she left the mind space.

Aster limited to softly laugh, maybe he was unable to resist Lilia’s charm, but that mother of his was also unable to ignore certain him, even if she tried to act as if she was angry, securing her time with her beloved son took priority over it.

Rya could only sigh at the previous scene, on the other hand she was amused to see Lilia acting with such promptness, so she limited to say.

‘Lascivious dragons…’.

Aster then focused on Vivian once again, she hadn’t cancelled her poison, because she can only use it once, the cycle is limited to a single use per day, in exchange she can keep it, until her spirit energy is completely depleted, since this original poison of hers, was created by using her spirit energy instead of her body as the medium, so that she could stay “clean”.

Aster approached her and then extended his hand to first touch the snake-like illusory figure, floating behind of Vivian.

Naturally his hand passed through it, as the image was just a “fragile” agglomeration of spirit energy, that being said, similar to its creator, though the image lacked physical solidness, its strength was no joke.

Aster’s vertical pupils shone, the spirit energy which conformed the illusory image was contained a poison at least three times stronger than what was being radiated by it, through the range of Vivian’s technique.

It was to the point that his hand which was in direct contact with it, felt a bit numb, as Vivian’s spirit energy gathered around his hand, naturally the Paragon Body reacted, but he suppressed the automatic defensive effect, which was summoning the golden armor, as he took some notes.

‘Her spirit energy is not trying to harm me, as I feel zero malice from it, it’s just that its effect doesn’t disappear even for me, so when it gathers around my hand, I’m actually somewhat affected by it’, he thought as he retrieved his hand, to then change his target to the source.

Vivian blinked a couple of times when she saw Aster placing his hand on her head, but she didn’t resist nor felt uncomfortable with it.

Of course, Aster wasn’t just touching her for his tact’s delight, though her white hair was indeed quite silky, he did so because he noticed that Vivian’s body was also covered in the poison that the snake-like creature was radiating.

And the curious thing is that, unlike the previous, he was completely unaffected by the poison directly created by Vivian, could be because the cycle was inside of Vivian, while that snake-like image was created out of her.

‘Mm, I guess I just found what to focus in training for the next mission’, thought Aster, he came out of his daze when he noticed that Vivian’s face was red like an apple.

“Ahem, I was just wondering, how come though you produce the same poison as the “Black Dragon Overlord” pattern, the result is different”, said Aster as he retrieved his hand.

“Mm”, Vivian slightly nodded and let out a low sound of affirmation, as she released the poison, making the Black Dragon Overlord pattern dispel, to then say.

“The principle behind this technique is completely different than the way I used my constitution previously, when I use my body as the medium though I can’t decide where it will appear, the pattern will never fully cover my body, instead my senses will be used to compensate for the effectiveness of the poison, at worst I lost my sight, mobility

/tact and taste… that was before I met Aster, after that I stopped losing my senses”.

“That being said, the first method had the advantage that I could use different poisons, as long as I still had things to compensate for them, which is how I used more than one poison at once”.

“When I use the cycle, the result is quite different, the entirety of my spirit energy takes after the one poison I’m using at the time, so I can’t use anything else, which is why I instead focused on creating the strongest poison I could, one that has a sole but overwhelming property that can be used in all cases”.

“So, while I’m using the Black Dragon Overlord, even the spirit energy that circulates through my body has the same poisonous properties, the difference is that I can control it as I want thanks to the cycle, the downside is that it can’t be externally manifested, as the pattern is the one that occupies that aspect, in fact after I created it, that’s the only poison I can manifest through the cycle, it’s like having another version of Aster fighting at my side~”, she happily said.

Her inspiration was the fact that Aster was quite versatile, having shown to excel in the three paths, not to mention being a talented spirit blacksmith, and also a future spirit tamer.

Aster was genuinely interested in her new fighting style, she lacked in terms of variety but in exchange obtained an explosive increase in both offense and defense, for battles with small groups or individual strong enemies, this was perfect, while her original fighting style was better to deal with large groups of small fries.

But then it’s worth mentioning that currently Vivian only has one cycle, but that won’t always be the case, still for now she had to learn how to properly take advantage of the cycle she has before she can even think on getting a second one, which means that she has to polish the Black Dragon Overlord to perfection.

Aster was already flattered that she inspired her first original poison on him, but only now he understood the weight behind Vivian’s decision, even if in the future she obtains more cycles, the first one is and will always be the main one, which is why it was created as close as possible to her heart, the origin of her body constitution, such was the position of Aster had in her heart.

“I’m starting to feel hungry, a nice meal at the top of a mountain where we can enjoy the view, sounds good, right?”, said Aster.

Vivian smiled in response, they weren’t that far from the exit of the forest, normally it would still take them at least the whole day to reach the other side, but earlier Aster’s aura had scared away all the spirit beasts as for the other participants, the number that reached this far into the forest wasn’t big to begin with.

Even when the three groups used others as bait and avoided as much danger as possible, for them to advance fast enough to get ahead of Aster and Vivian, a lot of them ended up being eliminated,

to reach this far, so they had a free pass to the exit of the forest.

So, in Aster’s eyes, no other participants could be seen, they literally eliminated all the ones that had reached the inner part of the forest, and at this point it was going to be really hard for anyone to reach this far, so they had a free pass to the exit of the forest.

…

If anything, Aster stood aside and allowed Vivia to have her fun again, as she guided the way, avoiding all the poisonous things that they encountered on their way to the exit of the forest.

It took them around two hours to finally see the other side of the forest, they were reaching the part where the top scorers were eliminated, but Aster understood why, the moment he saw what laid in front of them.

There was a table with a lot of different vials of all forms, sizes and colors, as well as a board with the instructions to enter the last part of the first stage of the trial.

Welcome to the Poison Tasting trial, choose a vial to give to one person in the group, and said person will be able to select a vial for you, both parties must willingly accept the vial from the other, otherwise both will be disqualified, those without someone to exchange vials will be disqualified, please do so to get the next set of instructions

Aster laughed, this explained why no one has been able to enter the third stage of the trial, after everything that happened during the first days of the trial, how could the other participants trust each other enough to accept a vial of poison from another person.

Not to mention, they both had to agree for it to work, and even if they managed to reach an agreement of some kind, the trial wasn’t over, since there were “next” instructions.

Aster observed the poisons with his dragon eyes and then casually grabbed a small vial with a transparent

/orange liquid and offered it to Vivian, she had already selected the vial for Aster, which contained a light green liquid.

“Cheers”, said Aster to which Vivian swallowed the contents of her vial in a single go, without a second of hesitation, Aster did the same as well.

The liquids inside of the vials had no taste, in fact Aster was sure that they were meant to be transparent, but some color was added just to mess with those who had to drink them.

“Mine was a paralyzing poison, how about you?”, asked Aster as he played with the empty vial.

“Internal bleeding and thorn muscles, I must say that Aster seems to have quite a talent for poisons”, mumbled Vivian.

Naturally those poisons had no effect on Aster and Vivian, what was important was to see if they truly would drink the poison selected by the other, and in this case the answer was yes, so the table disappeared and the path to the mountain was revealed.

Unlike the previous stages, the mountain didn’t have even a single spirit beast, nor any poisonous herb, from the outside it looked like a regular mountain, but that was just a façade, the truth is that it had a ton of formations engraved on it.

‘Heh, so depending on the vial we drank, a formation will activate for each one of us, so if I try to help Vivian or if she tries to help me, it will increase the difficulty of the trial’, thought Aster.

The lesson of the last part of the first stage, was a hard to swallow pill, it was to show the members of the young generation that companions may betray each other when venturing outside, which is why it required at least two people for them to continue.

Also, the increase in difficulty wasn’t limited to “help”, but any kind of interference with the others, will increase the difficulty, so it was easy to see why no one has been able to climb the mountain.

Naturally when the others saw that they could screw over the one that had a higher chance to obtain fame and glory, they didn’t let the chance go, and fighting during the mountain stage was prohibited.

In other words, you had to either eliminate almost all the participants, but one to enter the mountain, then take a poison selected by that one participant and lastly climb the mountain while being affected by the poison as well as the formations, while there was a possibility of being stabbed on the back by that person.

‘This one is quite a specific test, I guess I’ll ask mom later’, thought Aster as he approached Vivian, this should be inspired on something that those three had experienced.

Which is why he already has the perfect answer for it.

“Mm?”, Vivian saw Aster approaching her with a smile and she was confused for a moment, to then be taken by surprise as he lifted her up to carry her like a princess.

“Alright, this should do the trick”, said Aster as he applied strength on his legs to then take a wide jump all the way from the base of the mountain, to around a hundred meters ahead of their previous position.

The moment he entered the range of the formations, they activated and hit Aster with everything they had, Vivian also felt the effect but she was being carried by Aster, so the effect on her wasn’t much.

The main one was an increase of gravity, followed by getting one’s sight to blur as well as an extreme fatigue, from Aster’s point of view the formations were imitating what a severely wounded person would feel like.

“Aster, shouldn’t I…”, though Vivian was enjoying the ride, with her sharp senses due to her being a soul cultivator, she could tell that these formations were different, even Aster felt their effect, they were designed to affect even peak Gate Transcending realm cultivators after all.

Of course, the effect will be lessened depending on the number of participants and how they were interfering with the other, but the point is that the effects couldn’t be ignored.

That being, Aster could have used the golden armor, but that would be missing the whole point of this.

‘Those two are really something else’, thought Aster, if he tried to “cheat” in this trial, they would have been disqualified immediately, the true nature of this trial was pure and stubborn, endurance.

“Don’t worry, Vivian has fulfilled her role perfectly, now it’s my turn so just relax, we’ll be at the peak in a moment”, said Aster to which Vivian nodded.

“Mm”, she accommodated closer to Aster so that she wouldn’t fall in case Aster had to maneuver through the tricky parts of the mountain, of course she knew Aster wouldn’t leave her fall, but she wanted to help him even if it was just a bit.

She trusted that if he was doing something like this, it was for a good reason, since she knows that Aster doesn’t chain them by trying to make them depend on him, since that isn’t love but egoism.

He instead he is the force that impulse and motivates them to improve, while being there for when they really need him, of course a bit of spoiling here and there doesn’t harm anyone.

So, Vivian just rested her head against Aster’s body and enjoyed this moment of “need”.

‘I wonder, why do I feel so at ease with him around, I originally thought that it was because he wasn’t affected by my poison, but even now after finding out that he isn’t completely immune to it, I don’t feel any kind of worry, just calmness… I guess that invincible or not, Aster is Aster~’, she thought as she closed her eyes.

Before Vivian noticed and more importantly, before she even had enough of this blissful peace that flooded her heart, they reached the peak of the mountain.

She opened her eyes just to see Aster sweating quite a bit, as a proof that the formations were no joke. 𝑜𝒱𝓵xt.𝒞𝑜𝗆

Even if the poison didn’t make any effect on him, the fatigue and increase gravity did make their part.

‘Those godmothers of mine, share the barbarian way to train that mom used back in the day for sure’, thought Aster as he left Vivian down, to then sit down on the ground.

Vivian’s eyes sparkled, she looked into the improvised bag and then took out a fruit and a vial with water, but before Aster could take them from her hands, she shook her head.

“No, Aster fulfilled his role as a leader perfectly, now it’s time for me to help him”, she said as she sat down and then patted her lap a couple of times, leaving Aster speechless for a moment.

The mix of expectancy and shyness that appeared on her face was rather cute, apparently this wasn’t “taught” to her by Alice or Aria, but she took the initiative to do so, so how could Aster refuse.

He laid down on the rocky floor while using Vivian’s lap as his pillow, as she personally fed him the fruit, like he has done for her previously, she even gave placed the vial on his lips so he could drink the water without any effort.

“I don’t know how much have those two tell you but… this goes way beyond the line of friends you know”, said Aster, he did enjoy the closeness that Vivian had with him as a friend, he could understand the weight she put on it, because he was the same, which is why he didn’t want to take advantage of Vivian’s lack of experience.

“…”, Vivian remained silent for a moment as she looked for the answer to what Aster said, ultimately, she just smiled as she looked downwards, straight to Aster’s eyes as she said.

“It’s fine because it’s Aster~”.

Aster softly laughed and then nodded in response, she is still too new the whole expressing emotions thing, but there is no need to rush, it’s not like she doesn’t know about the matters between men and women, due to the unfortunate situation with Joseph.

“You know, I always thought that your pale hair and eyes looked really pretty, not because of their color because they don’t seem to have been stained by this world’s filth, but there is no need to only wear white all the time right”, said Aster as he looked into the mind space to then take out a flat large gift box.

The trial had ended the moment they reached the top of the mountain, and to everyone’s surprise, the sight from here was rather amazing, flying past the height of the trees was forbidden, meaning that they were the first ones in a really long to witness the sight of the plain and the forest from above.

It was truly worth of including the word “Wonderland” in its name, the say that the most colorful pretty things tend to be poisonous doesn’t exist for no reason after all.

But right now, Vivian’s smiling face was more captivating than that, she leaned downwards and to Aster’s surprise, she hugged him, though the position was rather strange, it was quite a meaningful moment.

“Thanks, Aster”, she mumbled as she hugged him, making Aster inwardly chuckle.

‘You could have opened the giftbox first, what if it isn’t what you expected… nah I guess this “whiteness” is part of what makes Vivian herself’, he thought.

While those two enjoyed their moment at the top of the mountain, outside the sect was in a turmoil, the top ten of the monthly trial has changed for the first time in quite some time, but that’s not what surprised them, but the words written next to the new names that appeared on the leader’s board.

Aster—- Perfect Score

/Mountain stage

Vivian—- Perfect Score

/Mountain stage

For the first time in the history of the sect, someone cleared the infamous mountain stage in their first time on the trial, what’s more there were two of them!