Aster saw the woman smile and thought, “well it looks like she accepted my offer I really don’t want to act like an overbearing noble but since I have my eyes on her and there seems to be some background story a bit of show off will not hurt”.
Aria did not imagine that a little lie would be the biggest turning point of her life, and while smiling she said.
“Very well I accept your offer young man as a representative of the Ghale family, I promise you that Aria will not have to do any work besides having dinner with you when you request it”.
Aster nodded and headed to the restaurant for breakfast before heading to the bloody forest, while eating he thought.
“It’s good that before I left, I decided to bring the spiritual stones that mother looted… got from the Wolfstein family treasure”.
Actually Aster believed he was richer than the Wolstein’s at least in the number of spiritual stones because for Lilia they were useless, so she had given them all to her beloved son including the ones she found on her spatial ring, of course he did not take them all with him but still he had more than one hundred spiritual stones in his ring right now.
Once Aster finished having breakfast, he left the inn and went to the forest, before leaving the city the guard recognized him and gave him a token that would allow him to enter without paying for a month, normally he would have had to pay 1 silver coin for it, but having given the guard such a large tip, this token was not considered relevant.
When he got to the forest, he started looking for magical beasts that were in the nascent soul realm or above, his goal was to train and gain experience in battle so there was no point in hunting weak spirit beasts, if it weren’t because he promised Lilia that he would stay in the external area he would have gone further into the forest to look for beasts that were in the earthly origin realm to test the strength of his soul idol.
While searching, he felt observed and when looking for the source of that ominous sensation he saw a purple snake about 30 meters away.
“That is a purple scale snake, a spiritual beast on the earth origin realm so why is it here?”.
The serpent stared at him for a moment and lunged towards him while it opened its jaws that dripped blood, when he saw the serpent charging towards him Aster extended his hand and his soul idol appeared, a white sword with engravings and gold finishes.
Aster disappeared from where he was standing and for a moment the world went silent, when he reappeared a small scratch could be seen on his right hand while there was blood on his sword, he shook the blood off his sword with a movement and then a dull sound was heard … the head of the snake separated from the rest of its body
When Aster approached the corpse of the snake, he saw a stab wound on its left side and thought, “hmm I originally believed that the blood on its snout was from previous prey but it seems that the snake had a fight with a human that left it injured and that’s why it was in the outer area of the forest to recover”.
He took the important materials of the snake such as the fangs, the skin and the poison sack, unlike the iron-backed boar the meat of this snake was not edible so he set it on fire and waited until only the bones remained, after all the bones of a beast in the earthly origin realm could be used to make weapons, potions etc. so he could sell them, naturally he did not forget the core since he also planned to sell it.
It was around 2:00 PM and Aster felt a little hungry so he decided to return to the inn, he also took some pieces of wood that he found in the forest since he had an idea to surprise Aria, without delay he walked back to Ghaleria, since the guard was the same, he did not even have to wait in line and was allowed to enter directly.
Aster went straight to the inn, sat at his exclusive table and ordered the same dishes he ate yesterday, the manager assumed that he was the guest of room 103 and as soon as he heard that he had ordered food he told Aria.
Naturally Aria didn’t want to appear in public in her true appearance so she simply told the manager to let her know when Aster ordered dinner.
Aster finished his meal and went up to his room, he took out a piece of wood that he had collected in the forest and put it on the desk.
Using a knife he cut a small rectangle 4.5 centimeters long, 2 centimeters wide and 1 centimeter thick, then he lit a candle and heated the tip of a knife with which he carved a horizontal line that divided the piece of wood into two parts, then he carved six points on one side and six on the other, he had created a token of domino.
Aster spent the rest of the afternoon creating all the domino pieces to complete the game, this was the surprise he was preparing for Aria, Aster was sure that women were intrigued by the novelty and since this game did not exist in this world then surely, she would like it.
When he finished it was approximately 6:00 PM so he began to get ready for his “date” with Aria, first he went to take a bath, he changed his outfit into more comfortable clothes to be in his room, then he spent a couple of hours cultivating and when it was 9:00 PM, he activated the communication device and asked for dinner to be brought to his room.
“Well, I hope she likes the gift I prepared for her”.