Aster chuckled at the misunderstanding of those two, they left thinking he was going to get intimate with Lilia, but that wasn’t the case it was just past midday and even he preferred to leave bedroom activities for night.
On the other hand, he looked at the beautiful woman leisurely resting on his lap, with an extremely comfortable and charming smiling expression and he understood why Eris and Mylene thought that.
Seeing his mother’s cunning smile Aster sighed.
“Why did you want those two to leave?”.
Lilia hid her face in her son’s chest before taking a deep breath as if she wanted to enjoy his manly scent.
“No particular reason, I just wanted my darling to pamper me”.
Seeing her son wasn’t buying her story Lilia giggled.
“I wanted to know why do I feel as if something “mine” is inside your dantian?”.
Aster saw Lilia looked slightly worried which confused him a bit, he thought his mother more than anyone would be happy considering they were closer in another way, but since he knew she must have her reasons he still explained what happened inside his inner universe.
“Well, after I felt a perfect opportunity to break through, I entered my inner universe and was received by an interesting sight… both my original star core which contains my reserves of annihilation was having a “tug war” with Orionis to take the control of my first star”.
“At first I didn’t know what to do, there was nothing like that on the might of the dragon king manual after all, so I only waited until I understood none of the star cores were going to win”
“Since I felt a huge amount of spirit energy being drawn into my body, I lit up another star and guided it towards Orionis but… then my core fought with it for the control of the new star”.
As if he suddenly remembered something Aster’s eyes glowed for a split of a second.
“Speaking of that, Rya did you have anything to do with my star core’s strange behavior?”.
Inside the mind space, Rya nearly choked, she blushed a bit knowing she as busted, although Aster didn’t point it, when he guided the second star at Orionis, he saw his core stopping the “fight” before he felt a strand of a familiar soul energy, and then his core changed its target again.
Seeing that Rya wasn’t answering, Lilia snorted.
“Humph, I bet a certain someone was jealous of Orionis getting some attention”.
Rya reacted like a cat whose tail is stepped on.
“What jealous, I just used Cygni to “whisper” at his core … if it weren’t for my lack of a body, this empress’s star would have been Aster’s second core!”.
“Oh?”.
Both Aster and Lilia reacted the same way, this was something none of them expected.
Rya immediately covered her mouth but it was too late, she got heated up and her tongue slipped.
If she weren’t in her current soul state, Cygni would have acted as Aster’s second core instead of Orionis because of its naturally annihilation attribute, of course she couldn’t tell Aster about it since he had to discover it on his own for a variety of reasons.
Lilia smirked as she pressed her body against her son’s.
“As expected of my star, it got the “first position” in my darling’s universe, just like me ♥”.
“Humph, what first, at least Cygni makes itself be desired unlike a certain easy to get star”.
Now that the arrow had left the bow, both of them started arguing, which made Aster remember the scene of the stars competing with each other.
Then with an expression of sufficiency he made a gesture as if he was smacking something, before saying.
“I had to “spank” those two little stars who forgot who the real master is, I wonder if that wasn’t enough of a punishment”.
Rya unconsciously rubbed her butt, in spirit form she didn’t feel any pain, but Aster always made sure to take advantage of the extra sensibility to make her beg mercy.
The same applied to Lilia, up to this day her son hasn’t taken first time back there, when she asked him why, he grinned and just said “I’m saving it for a special occasion”, since that day her expectation kept growing but so did her anxiety… her son’s body was bound to grow again sooner or later after all.
Aster saw their reactions and he laughed out loud, but then their moment was interrupted by two familiar voice which could be heard coming from the other side of the door.
“You cheater, we both agreed to not use any other techniques, besides the abilities of our stars!”.
“You dare to say that after creating a fake new part of the golden armor, just to use a speed increasing spirit technique!”.
“What fake, I told you the armor which covered my legs gave me that boost”.
“Humph, then the same applies to myself, I suddenly became able to freely change the form of Rigel’s flames just by thinking about it”.
The door opened and Alice followed by Aria entered the room, to everyone’s surprise they looked as if they just went through a life and death situation.
Although there wasn’t even the slightest trace of blood, their clothes were thorned apart here and there showing their pale skins which didn’t have any scratch, their hair was also messy and there were even traces of dust in their faces.
Aster couldn’t help but say.
“Did you two got into a catfight or something like that?”.
Alice and Aria exchanged gazes before turning their heads away as they pointed at each other before saying at the same time.
“She cheated!”.
Aster saw his sister and Aria were about to star arguing so he stepped in, normally when they fight once one of them lands a hit on the other, then the match is settled since they don’t want to harm the other, but something clearly went wrong this time.
“Calm down, sis, tell me what happened and then Aria will do the same”.
Alice snorted before she proceeded to tell Aster what happened.
Turns out that earlier when she and Aria were having one of their matches, Aria suddenly started changing the form of Rigel’s flames, but not like what they have seen Aster doing before.
What Aster learned to do after some practice was to increase or decrease the size of the flames, or to affect some things while ignoring others, but what Aria did was literally give solid forms to the flames, like a cage, a spear, a whip, arrows, darts etc. Making Alice unable to properly doge her attacks.
Alice then pointed at the places of her dress which were burned after being touched by the flames.
Aster was extremely surprised, he more than anyone knew how hard was to control Rigel’s flames, it took him hundreds of fails to be able to properly create the swords he has been using, and he had to manually mold the metal part by part.
An incredible idea flashed through his mind, but he left it aside for a moment before looking at Aria to hear her version of the story.
Aria’s story was similar, but from her point of view it was Alice the one who cheated, in the middle of the fight she saw Alice’s legs being covered in a golden light before her speed increased, to the point where even if Aria’s spirit sense is sharper thanks to her soul cultivation and her higher realm compared to Alice, she barely caught a glimpse of Alice because her movements were clumsy.
“Well, that confirms it”, thought Aster, his body dazzled in golden light making the girls look away, when the light’s brightness diminished, they saw that unlike previously, not only Aster’s arms and upper body were covered, his legs also had a golden armor protecting them.
Alice smiled; she hugged her brother’s arms before sticking her tongue at Aria.
“See, I told you ice princess, my armor is the same as Aster’s after all”.
Before Alice could keep bragging, a blue flame appeared floating in the air in front of Aster before taking the form of a sword, besides the fact that it was blue and transparent, its form didn’t differ from a normal metal sword.
Aria looked at Alice with a condescending gaze before she hugged Aster’s free arm.
“What were you saying dragon princess, I told you I wasn’t cheating”.
Aster shook his head, those two were fighting with their abilities as star maidens, when he broke through, which led to a misunderstanding because both the golden armor and Rigel’s flames became stronger with his advance.
What surprised him were the new properties of the abilities, for the golden armor, now that it covered his legs, he felt as if his body was light as a feather, although it was a bit weird, it wasn’t hard to understand.
When he got the armor of the arms his strength was increased, as for the chest plate it was his defense which was boosted, to the point that he became able to protect a certain area around him with the golden light projected by the armor, so now with the protections of the legs it was probably something like a speed or agility boost.
Although it was an incredibly useful skill, the upgrade in Rigel’s flames wasn’t worse at all, specially since he now could mold the flames as he wished, something that might not be that style changing since he mostly uses Rigel’s flames to suppress his enemies, unlike annihilation.
But if the idea he got worked then… the benefits of mastering Rigel’s flames would be practically unmeasurable.