Sometimes things don’t go according to what one expects, for example Alice didn’t hold onto Aster just because she wanted to be close to her brother, although that was the main reason, she also did it because they didn’t want to separate while they were traveling through the space to the secret realm.
Unfortunately, it seems like the one who created the entrance didn’t want people to enter in groups because the very moment they entered the portal Alice disappeared, Aster immediately reacted.
“Sis!!!”, but when he was about to use the manifestation of the paragon body, everything changed, if he had to describe the rest of the travel since Alice disappeared, in one word it would be “horrible”, everything was blurry, his body moved chaotically and there were so many changes in the illumination, that Aster’s eyes eyes had no time to adapt before it changed again.
While he was being thrown around by the chaotic turbulences his feet suddenly touched ground, Aster took the opportunity to use the paragon body, golden light surrounded him before a pair of giant golden armored arms appeared at his sides, they immediately buried their hands on the ground.
Aster felt dizzy, it took him a moment to recover his balance, although he couldn’t manifest the whole paragon body both of the arms were attached at the golden light that covered him so now that the hands were firmly holding to the ground he managed to stabilize.
Once his vision returned to normal, he could finally see the true appearance of the inside of the portal, it was a grayish tunnel, there were big and small pieces of land floating around, the tunnel forced you to keep moving forward, luckily the stone in which he landed was big enough to not be easily dragged by the “flow” of the tunnel so he was moving slower than before.
Now that his mind was clear, Aster gritted his teeth.
“Who was the idiot who created this stupid portal!!!”, he thought.
After taking a second to calm down he started contemplating what happened, when he entered the portal, he managed to see Eric and he didn’t have to go through the same thing as him, so the most logic answer was that there was a rule against people maintaining “together” while traveling through the portal.
“If Alice has even the slightest wound due to this stupid portal, I swear that I’m going to destroy the idiot who created it”.
Rya woke up from her meditation when she felt Aster’s erratic emotions.
“Calm down, it was nothing harmful or I would have detected it, you were just separated from her and sent to a different spatial tunnel but the destination is the same… I’m sorry I was to immersed in my meditation”.
Aster shook his head.
“No, this is not your fault, I… just lost my control for a moment”.
During these three years, he has noticed that his temperament has become more explosive when it comes to things that affect any of his girls, when he asked Lilia if there were records of something like this happening, she told him that it was normal for young Drage males to be short tempered and licentious but not the point that Aster was showing.
“Hurry up and complete the evolution… stupid Drage bloodline”, according to Rya all this will end when his bloodline finishes its evolution.
After a couple of minutes floating, he could finally see the end of the tunnel, but it was not a good way to enter the secret realm, what was on the other side of the exit was… the sky.
“Who was the idiot that designed this death trap!!!”, he shouted before using the arms of the paragon body to propel himself, like a rocket he left the space tunnel and appeared high in the sky, normally you would need doubt if a travel of only about 15 minutes would transport you to a different world but this time it was really easy to see… because the sky had a light green color”.
Feeling the wind on his face, Aster turned to see downwards and he smiled, there were more or less 2000 meters of free fall distancing him from the ground, well more accurately it was a huge forest within a valley and a river crossing the whole place.
“I’m so going to beat the guy who created this portal”.
Rya laughed.
“Judging by the fact that the secret realm just opened for the first time and none of those families had a clue of what is inside, then the creator of the portal is probably death already”.
…
Aster sighed.
“Whatever, there will be a tomb less in the world once I leave this place then”.
Only those at the stellar constellation realm and above could fly and the entrance of the secret realm only allowed star formation cultivators to enter so him appearing at such a high height and without the ability to fly was on the best case the origin of a lot of broken bones and more realistically a horrible death due to the impact.
But again, things tend to not go accord to what one expects, little exploding sounds echoed through the sky, similar to thunders, the problem was that there was no sign of storm clouds nor any signs of rain, instead there was a black-haired young man… gliding through the sky, while his image continuously flashed.
Aster was smiling, he had a battle prowess that surpassed his realm by a lot but being tied to only move on the ground was a huge limitation, after all what is the use of having the strength to kill your enemy if you can’t reach him?
Although you could start flying at the stellar constellation realm, only by reaching the star tribulation realm one would be able to freely soar through the skies, that’s when Aster thought “what would happen if I move at a high speed but at a high height instead of the in the ground”.
When he told his mother about his idea she answered, “star tribulation cultivators move through the sky, law integration cultivators move through the space”, movement techniques existed but all of them had one thing in common, your feet had to have a strong supporting point, one that resisted the huge tension of a body moving at a high speed.
You might think that those who have earth element affinity can maybe create a floating stone to step on to imitate flying, unfortunately that is impossible, earth element cultivators below the genesis manifestation realm can temporarily make throw thinks like rocks and earth at an opponent but not because they float, it’s more as if an “invisible hand” threw it instead of them.
The solution… the paragon body, more accurately a piece of the manifestation of the paragon body combined with a movement technique called “lightning step”, Aster could freely manipulate the paragon body, the arms floated after all, of course seeing a huge golden arm floating in the sky would for sure give away your position.
And that’s when the thing he learned when he fought Alessia, came in handy, “partial manifestation” and “compression”, in other words if you were to carefully see the soles of Aster’s feet, you would see two little golden platforms appearing any time he took a “step” while being in the sky.
The paragon body compressed was stronger than the normal manifestation, just like a spring and combining that with the fast speed acquired thanks to lightning step… Aster managed to do something no one was able to, freely move in the sky while being below the star tribulation realm.
While Aster was quickly descending from the sky, he heard Rya’s proud voice in his head.
“I swear, you always do reckless things but… the results are amazing ♥”, she said.
Aster nodded.
“This “lightning trail”, was really hard to master but, I’m really enjoying the fruits of all my efforts”.
He couldn’t help but smile while the scenes of him not stepping on the paragon body and falling just to be saved by Lilia, or the many times he lost control of his movements and ended up clashing against a tree.
“One year to polish the concept and other one to train until I mastered it to became usable in combat”, he thought.
Still using such a refined technique used quite a bit of spirit energy, Aster didn’t have any trouble with the consumption rate thanks to his abnormal both gathering speed and the capacity of his Dantian, basically lightning trail was a perfect fit for him and only him.
After descending from the sky for almost one minute Aster landed on top of a big tree, he was still recovering from the chaotic ride he had in the dimensional tunnel so he wanted to stop for a moment before starting to look for Alice.
He took out a bottle of water and drank all of it, all that he could see even on the top of such a tall tree was forest and a river.
Aster closed his eyes for a moment, he focused on Pollux until he felt Alice’s presence, it was far from his current position but according to what he could currently see, if he went all the way up the river, he would find Alice.
This was something he learned not too long ago, since every star was linked to one of the girls then, he would always be able to feel them no matter where they were.
“Just wait a bit sis, I will be there soon”, he thought before using lightning trail again.