To be honest if it was not for the fact that Cade was locked up in a cage in front of him, Aster wouldn’t have interfered with whoever was camping here, however a confrontation would have happened anyway because the vine that was giving them a ride wasn’t exactly something people could ignore.
There were only three tents in total, two of them opened and some men came out of them, visibly there were no differences between the people from the azure sky planet and this people so they were probably native humans.
As Aster expected they actually spoke the same language as them, it was not so surprising considering Lilia once told him that almost all the races no matter where they lived, based their languages on an ancient one called “Rania”, although there might be some minor differences, in this case the natives of this world seemed to have a weird accent.
While looking at the vine below Aster’s feet, a bearded man took the initiative to speak.
“Who are you, we found this safe spot first, if you want to camp here then you will have to pay, we accept spirit stones, spirit treasures or…”.
At first Aster let the man speak because he wanted to know the currency of this place, now that the bearded man mentioned spirit stones, he only wanted to know why the captured Cade.
He interrupted the bearded man.
“Why did you capture that guy”, he said while pointing at Cade who was quietly watching everything from the cage.
“Huh?”, the bearded man was surprised by Aster’s way of speaking.
“So, you are also not from Luonto, like that guy… he is a cage because he suddenly landed over one of our tents, when we wanted to interrogate him, he tried to escape and stabbed one of us in the process so we put him in a cage to sell him as a slave to pay for his crimes”.
Aster smiled, he noticed that the five men stole some glances at the third tent which was still closed, he snapped his fingers and the three tents exploded in blue fire, not even a second later a woman’s screaming voice made its way to everyone’s ears.
“Kyaaahhh, what is this this fire looks so cool and it’s not hot!!!”.
The bearded guy was about to draw his sword when the oldest looking of the five stopped him before bowing his head and saying.
“Esteemed superior, please don’t harm our young miss, we won’t lie anymore, that guy in the cage did land over one of the tents but he didn’t stab anyone, still he was dressing as an assassin and the tent he destroyed was our young lady’s one so…”.
Without dispelling the flames around the tents, Aster used them to destroy the cage, Cade was actually a bit afraid of the flames accidentally burning him but he didn’t suffer any harm, after being freed from the cage he walked until he was standing next to the Vine.
Aster asked.
“Are they saying the truth?”.
Cade took a few seconds to consider things, for a moment he thought of telling Aster to finish them all since they were truly planning to sell him, but to be honest, it was also partially his fault for not explaining himself properly, he appeared out of nowhere with a knife in his hand over the tent of some kind of noble girl so of course a misunderstanding was bound to happen.
“Yes, they aren’t lying, I’m angry because they locked me up but that’s not a reason to kill them, since they were only doing their job”, he said.
Rigel’s flames disappeared revealing that the tents weren’t damaged at all, contrary to what the five guys thought, Aster now had a quite precise control over the flames so this was nothing for him.
The bearded man and other two hurried to the enter the third tent, after a moment they returned while escorting a blonde young girl in a sundress which she was probably using as a pajama, the other two men joined them to make a formation so the girl was in the middle protected by all of them.
The older one spoke again.
“I hope you don’t take it personally, as guards our mission is to protect our young lady… even if you might be stronger than us”.
The girl’s blue eyes glowed when she saw up close that Aster and Alice were riding on top of a vine.
“Uncle Marco, have you gone senile already? they are being protected by the forest so at the least they aren’t bad people”, the girl pushed away her guards before presenting herself.
She rose the sides of her dress as a noble lady would do.
“My name is Kana Millefiore, the daughter of the Archduke Robert Millefiore, it’s a pleasure to know someone who has gotten the blessing of the forest!!!”.
Alice had a weird expression in her face, “of course the first probably important person we meet in this stupid planet and… it has to be a girl”, she thought.
Aster could feel Alice’s gaze on his back and he didn’t know whether he should laugh or cry, “sis, she might be cute and all but I’m not a womanizer, you know?”, he said in a low voice which only Alice could hear.
It was quite obvious that Kana wasn’t just any random girl, she had long blonde hair, her eyes were blue as sapphires and her pale well preserved skin was a clear sign that she hasn’t spent time working under the sun not even once, basically a young noble lady in all the mean of the word.
Alice tightened her hug around her brother’s arm before replying.
“Says the one who didn’t even let his own mother nor big sister out of his harem, humph”.
Rya nodded in the mind space.
“You might not be a womanizer but you are definitely a pervert”, she added.
Aster sighed, “these two have become quite close in these three years”, he thought before answering to Kana.
“It’s a pleasure, you can call me Aster and this is my sister Alice… that guy isn’t an assassin or something like that, he is the companion of one of my friends, we are not from this place and we got separated while travelling”.
Kana smiled.
“He didn’t try to harm me so I don’t have a problem if you know him, judging by your way of speaking you are not from our Luonto continent so you might not know but… those blessed by the forest have a high status here”.
Kana exchanged gazes with the old guard Marco which made him sigh.
“Young lady… this case is an exception, in the future please leave us behind and run if we meet someone who outpowers us”.
“Yeeei!!! I will go to change my clothes and then we can drink some tea”, Kana returned to her tent without saying anything else while Marco spoke to Aster.
“Our young lady is quite energetic but she is a good girl, please don’t take it personally”.
Aster shook his head.
“I don’t know what status does someone “blessed by the forest” have here, but I don’t like too many formalities so just take it as if I’m a normal person you just met”, he said.
Marco was surprised, “perhaps this young man is not like the ones I have met before”, he thought.
The rest of the guards decided to stand still around the tents while Marco took out a table and three chairs, Aster and Alice sat and after a moment Kana now wearing a blue dress sat in front of them, Marco stood still behind her while Cade no other option than to do the same.
Alice was curious about that “blessed by the forest” thing that Kana mentioned a lot of times so she took the initiative to ask.
“What does be blessed by the forest mean, has it something to do with the fact that the vine helped us to move through the forest?”.
Kana poured some tea on three cups; she took the first sip to show good will as it is traditionally done between nobles.
“It’s related, those are guardian vines, they attack all the things that seem to be harmful for the ancient forest, you probably noticed that there were some spaces were the trees and other vegetation were yellow or maybe even black… those are extremely dangerous zones where corrupted beings live, they contaminate the ground and drain the vitality of the area until there is nothing left”.
Aster took a sip of his cup, the tea was actually quite good, it had a sweet but gentle taste, it reminded him the green tea from earth.
Kana smiled seeing that he seemed to enjoy the tea she prepared, she also took out some kind of little cookies before continuing.
“The title of “blessed by the forest” is how we refer to those people who have defeated at least a middle disaster level corrupted creature thus earning the approval of the ancient forest, being helped by the guardian vines is a one of the signs of a blessed one”.
As if she remembered something she added.
“I forgot you aren’t from Luonto, corrupted beings are classified as, Disgrace, Disaster and… Calamity, that being said a Calamity level has never existed before, thanks to the efforts of all the kingdoms and the blessed ones that exist and constantly purify them”.
Aster couldn’t ignore kana’s words, the creature he killed was in what seemed to be the star constellation realm which is in the middle of the earthly realms, so a Disaster level creature could have the strength of an earth origin to a star tribulation cultivator.
Alice also thought of the thing that her brother killed and now she understood why the vines didn’t attack him but she still was confused about why she got attacked.
“My brother defeated one of those things, one that tried to imitate me”.
Marco’s eyes widened; he interrupted the conversation.
“You killed the shape changing disaster!!!”.
Aster nodded and he was surprised seeing the old guard crying, Marco took a moment to calm himself down before saying.
“That thing killed my little brother when we were exploring the outer area of the forest a long time ago, I’m stronger than it now but I had no chance to reach so deep within the forest because there are other corrupted creatures near that thing’s area… thanks… really thank you, with this he can finally rest in peace”.
The other guards listened to Marco’s words; the bearded guy gave the old man a pat on the back before dragging him along with him to where the other guards were standing a couple of meters from Kana.
Aster saw Kana’s eyes shining in admiration and he shook his head.
“I didn’t do anything to be thanked for, that thing simply got in my way and that’s why I destroyed it”.
Kana doubted for a second before saying.
“Uncle Miles told me that uncle Marco was going to stay in the outer area of the ancient forest because the shape changing disaster sometimes comes out and goes to the town disguised, I secretly escaped and came here because I wanted to see the forest, now that there is no need to stay here we will be returning to the town, if you want why don’t you stay with us, I bet uncle Marco wants to repay the favor anyway and I would love to hear how is the deepness of the ancient forest”.
Aster thought it was not a bad idea, it was getting dark and who knows how many restrictions there might be in the entrance of the city considering all this corrupted creature thing, seeing that Alice didn’t seem to oppose he accepted.
“We accept, but we need two rooms one for me and my sister and another one for Cade”.
Kana had had a bright smile in her face.
“No problem, it is a house property of the Millefiore family so it has a lot of big rooms and an incredible front garden”, she answered.