After repeating the same drawing nearly twenty times Eris nodded satisfied with the result, for a rune to be effective the lines needed to be clear and well defined, or the effect would end up being poor.
“That’s enough, now just use your soul energy to activate the rune, first try with one of your early designs”.
Aster did as she told, his soul avatar inside the mind space glowed and the draw illuminated, but instead of activating the rune, the paper burned itself.
“That in one of the most common mistakes among new rune masters, when the lines of the rune aren’t perfectly defined, instead of activating the effect outwards, it activates inwards, that’s why the paper burned instead of producing fire”.
Aster nodded, he then tried to infuse his soul energy into the last rune he drew, the paper illuminated and after a moment a wisp of flame floated above the paper for a few seconds before it dissipated.
Eris frowned her brows; she took the paper which now had a hole burned on it and inspected it.
“The draw was fine, the activation of a rune wears out the material on which it is engraved, but that is normally dealt with using some reinforce and support runes… also your soul energy is incredibly strong so we are going to need better materials to train”.
Aster more or less expected something like this, after all even without a soul attack technique he was able to kill a corrupted at the star axys realm.
Even if their low rationality made corrupted beasts subjective towards spirit attacks, there was still a big gap between a star axys creature and a spirit opening realm cultivator, and Aster still easily killed it.
“Well, I guess, tomorrow we’ll have a shopping spree”, thought Aster, Lilia’s materials were high ranked, but the wasn’t going to waste them to train, so he will have to buy the best ones the Azure sky planet had to offer.
Lilia chuckled, “Out of all of us, seems like you also inherited the necessity to burn resources like crazy to train just like me darling ♥”.
Aster cleared his throat, although he indeed wanted to get a source of income for his family, in truth he was genuinely interested in rune mastering,
Although his interest started out of necessity, he managed to create a sword resistant enough to withstand the use of annihilation to a certain extent, by mixing his blood into the materials used.
Then of course he asked Lilia to engrave a spirit formation increase the sharpness of the sword… but as soon as he coated the sword in annihilation the formation was destroyed before the effect could activate.
Even when he tried to use his blood instead of the ink, it didn’t work, he was part dragon but the origin of his Drage bloodline was a spirit beast which didn’t outstand in soul, and even the paragon body was not oriented to the soul.
So, it didn’t work, that’s why he instead focused on adding more of his blood into the mix to make a sturdier sword, the model which he used to break the barrier around the capital of Riga “Dragon Buster” was the result of that.
The problem is that with the pass of time they will be going to higher ranked places and his enemies won’t be using raw weapons (weapons without any spirit formation), that’s why he got interested in rune mastering, and now that he had a soul avatar, Aster was eager to try again now using his soul energy.
From the mind space Rya felt Aster’s happy mood and she smiled.
“A soul which harmonizes with annihilation can be anything but weak, don’t underestimate the talent of my lover”, she thought.
Aster took the paper from Eris’s hands, he noticed something familiar on the burn mark and immediately looked into the mind space, just to see his soul avatar being enveloped by Rigel’s flames, then as if something made click in his mind he understood from where the sudden “talent” in the soul path came.
“Aria… I only paid attention to the ice attribute of her Pristine Jade Yin Body, but it also gives her a high talent in the soul path”.
Rya laughed, now that Aster deciphered it by himself, he gave him a little explanation.
“I told you, the star maidens are connected to you in more ways than what you can imagine, just like Lilia helped you recover the Drage bloodline even when you haven’t refined her yin due to the lack of a dual cultivation manual, you benefited from taking Aria’s first… not to mention the naughty things you did to me”.
Aster nodded, everything matched, he took Aria’s primordial yin just a couple of days earlier and the very little amount of yin he “absorbed” from Rya helped him going from practically zero to reach the spirit opening realm.
His eyes had a slightly surprised glow on them.
“Does that mean that I will get something from everyone of the star maidens… then what about Alice and Sarina?”.
Rya sighed, “Getting girls makes you stronger, I guess that’s so like you, in Alice’s case it helped you further increase the density of your dragon blood, that’s one of the reasons of their “episodes”, as for Sarina she still hasn’t become a star maiden, so we still don’t know how it will affect you”.
“But everything is being integrated into your evolution, with the paragon body as the base and all the things you have gotten from us… I can’t imagine what you will become in the future”.
“Wait, does that mean my evolution will only finish after all the stars have found their maidens?”, asked Aster in a worried voice.
Rya shook her head, “No, Aldebaran doesn’t have an “active” effect unlike Pollux or Rigel, but in exchange the potential to evolve is always there, you will keep becoming better and better, remember the star always resembles the maiden… and the book girls aren’t average at all”.
Aster was in awe, if that was true then Aldebaran’s blessing was really incredible, although the benefit wasn’t immediate like the paragon body, the potential was practically limitless, the only problem is that it took quite some time before the effects manifested.
“I hope those two come out soon”, he thought remembering the stern but cute Alessia and the relaxed and playful Aylin.
The lesson continued, since Eris now discovered that Aster’s soul energy was really strong, she decided to give it a go at drawing a divine rune.
“I have seen those weird blue flames you used to cure corruption and Alice told me you forged your own weapons, so you should have a decent understanding of fire, a divine rune can be as good as the understanding of the one drawing it”.
Eris started drawing a rune in the air in front of her, at first it looked the same as the one she previously taught Aster, but then Eris started adding different patterns around it and one inside of the core of the rune.
“This is the best divine rune for “fire” I can draw”, she pointed at the first of the three outer patterns around it.
“This here means “duration”, it helps to extend the time the fire will be burning”.
She then pointed at the second pattern and continued with her explanation.
“This means “spread”, it boosts the property of the fire to expand itself at the slightest touch with other materials”.
“The last outer pattern means “temperature”, it increases the heat of the fire produced by it”.
Eris then pointed at the pattern she drew in the core of the rune and she couldn’t help but put a slightly proud expression.
“The other patters are only for support, this is what makes it a divine rune… you can only add one pattern in the core of the rune which means other people might have different divine runes for “fire”, the one I choose was “physical combustion”, basically it’s good against body cultivators”.
Aster had a weird expression, while Eris cultivated energy and soul, Mylene was an energy and body cultivator, in other words that fire rune Eris created was with the idea of using it against Mylene.
Eris noticed it and she cleared her throat.
“Ahem, now things are different of course, but this rune design was passed down to me by my grandmother, I’m working in creating my second divine rune for fire”.
“Can you create a lot of different runes for the same thing and use them together?”, asked Aster.
Eros shook her head.
“It’s not that easy, the patterns might seem to be jus floating around the core of the rune, but you can’t imagine the headache it gave me to perfectly align them to properly work, and the pattern in the core is even harder to master”.
“If it doesn’t work then the rest of the rune is useless, that’s why no one has ever being able to add two different patterns to the core, it makes the rune unstable which ultimately cancels the effect, the same happens when you add more than one type of rune with the same meaning”.
The amount of information was quite big, so to finish the lesson Eris activated her divine rune, unlike the first time, on this one the flame not only had a deeper blue color, the heat radiated by it was so intense that if it weren’t for Lilia keeping it in check, the floor below the flame would have melted.