But then the leader discarded his previous assumption, the spirit energy he could feel coming from the black-haired youth, was only that of a stellar constellation cultivator, so it didn’t make sense that he a mortal transcending cultivator was outclassed in spirit energy terms.
Also remembering the terrifying murderous intent of earlier he reached more logic conclusion, he was in front of a rare cultivator which focused in the soul path first, probably reaching an equivalent to the sea of knowledge realm as a soul cultivator, before starting to cultivate in the energy path.
That would explain the low cultivation in the energy path but with an incredibly strong spirit pressure and a lot of enemies which had fallen under his sword creating that terrifying murderous intent.
As for Aster’s young appearance, that was intransigent, strong cultivators remained young although their ages were on the six digits, so a few thousands of years of age weren’t enough to be considered old.
Knowing quite well that his death was approaching the leader decided to not give his assassin-to be, the pleasure of getting answers from him.
With a sinister smug the leader glared at Kana as he spoke to Aster.
“After saying all that nonsense about not doing things out of benevolence, you killed Richard and Victor, I guess you are a watchdog from one of those “righteous” sects which has the ability to “see” the marks that evil cultivation methods as you call them, leave in our bodies”.
He then licked his lips before saying.
“You know, our orders were to bring only girls below twenty years old, so the target was that little girl which we unfortunately wouldn’t get to enjoy, but the older one would have entertained me and my two vice leaders all the way back to our base”.
The leader saw Aster’s eyebrows immediately frowning and he smiled in his heart.
“You hypocrites from righteous sects which haven’t experienced the real world are easy to manipulate”, he thought seeing Aster extending his hand towards him, the leader thought his plan worked, the idea was to anger Aster so that he kills him quickly.
The leader closed his eyes and waited for it to happen, but then after a couple of seconds the liberation he expected didn’t reach him, he opened his eyes just to see Aster coldly smiling at him.
Aster looked back at Sarina and his expression became tender and caring as he made a gesture for her to approach.
Sarina sweetly smiled before she walked towards Aster entering in his embrace as he wrapped his free arm around her waist, understanding what Aster wanted Sarina let her cultivation be visible for the leader of the mercenaries.
Of course, Sarina was careful to not exert too much of her power to not damage the planet, but only that little show was enough to make the leader of the mercenaries to fall in despair.
“A-Another freaking dual path cultivator!”, exclaimed, his face paled realizing that from the very beginning he and his subordinates were simply courting death, not only he could clearly feel that Sarina was a mortal transcending cultivator, he also felt the pressure in his soul increasing.
Although Sarina wasn’t cultivating in the soul path, the power of her star was a soul constitution, just like Alice had the Paragon Body, she had the Ruler’s Soul now, so even if she wasn’t a soul cultivator, others would mistake her as one.
Aster smiled getting the reaction he expected, even if he wasn’t here, Sarina would have wiped the floor with these guys, her manual was of the highest grade possible and she was a star maiden now too, although she is only an early-stage mortal transcending, her battle prowess goes way beyond that.
Seeing the expression of the leader of the mercenaries becoming gray ash death, Aster snapped his fingers and the eyes of the leader widened before he screamed from the bottom of his lungs.
“Arrrghhhhh!!!”.
In his life the leader has experienced pain enough times to call it an old friend, he has been captured and tortured, he has lost a couple of limbs which he managed to recover with pills and elixirs later on, but nothing of the previous was even close to what he was feeling right now.
And the reason was simple, Aster was using annihilation to consume the left leg of the leader of the mercenaries, although he could have achieved a similar effect with Rigel’s flames, he wanted to test something with annihilation… that and although he was doing his best to not show it, he was of course furious after listening what those bastards planned to do to Kana and Sarina.
Rya who was watching everything from the mind space suddenly let out a sigh of relief.
“To think that all this time the solution to the volatile emotional status of most dragon races was soul cultivation… thanks to the heavens he didn’t start cultivating his body before reaching the spirit opening realm”, she mumbled imagining the result of Aster going berserk.
Back at the outside world, the tough attitude of the leader of the mercenaries didn’t last even one minute before he started shouting.
“Wait, I will tell you whatever you… arghhh!!!”.
Unfortunately for him Aster simply slightly increased the output of annihilation so that the pain increased, the feeling of being decomposed particle by particle was hard to describe, but the reason as to why the pain was impossible for the leader to endure, was because not only his body was being erased, but his soul too.
This is something Aster has had in mind since he saw that Eris and Mylene’s real bodies were exact copies of their spirit forms, his soul avatar too although it was still vague, the general figure was like a copy of him.
Aster’s theory was that the soul extended all over the body but below the skin, flesh, bones and organs, in other words it was like another layer of the body and that’s why it had the same form.
To the surprise of the leader, the horrible pain suddenly stopped, but the momentaneous relief disappeared when he saw that everything below his left knee was gone, just like Aster previously thought, what people fear the most is the unknown.
When the leader of the mercenaries noticed that he wasn’t feeling any pain, he panicked, having lost a limb a few times before he knew the feeling, but this time it was different, it was as if he was born without it to begin with… he felt void which he couldn’t explain followed by the sensation of having lost something important.
“What did you do to me!!!”, he shouted.
Aster didn’t answer him, he instead took out a pair of pills, one of them was a bone constructing pill and the other was called flesh regenerating pill, with a wave of his hand he forced them down the throat of the leader.
“What was that!!!”, the leader was starting to go crazy when he noticed his leg was growing back, meaning he was fed with some precious pills, initially he entered the “business” of hunting young girls for a certain person, to buy medicine capable of recovering lost limbs, and the black-haired youth simply threw two of them away… just to prolongate his suffering.
Of course, Aster didn’t do it with that intention, he was just trying to confirm a wild supposition he had, also if any of the girls were to suffer any kind of wound, they all had a couple of bottles of his blood which worked even better than any healing pill Lilia has seen in her life.
“Now that think about it, I should give one to Camila just in case”, thought Aster as he saw the leg of the leader growing back, but then after it finished the healing, the skin turned dark purple similar to the color of a bruise.
The leader saw his leg which he couldn’t feel and he felt chills running down his spine, he looked at the indifferent face of Aster and for the first time since he was a little thief who thought cultivators were gods or demons.
He felt a fear which seeped into his bones similar to when he witnessed an evil cultivator sucking the vitality out of a random person, and then being looked by him, just to be spared since he wasn’t “aged” enough for the tastes of that cultivator.
While the leader of the mercenaries was having a mental breakdown, Aster inspected his leg, the flesh, bones, veins, everything was okay, even the blood properly circulated through it, by all means it was a perfectly normal leg, and yet it felt “wrong” as if there was something missing, and judging by the expression of the man, Aster knew he couldn’t feel it nor move it.
He then remembered what Rya once said when she explained the fight she had with the twins, “Something which has been cut by my sword will never be able to heal nor be restored, unless I allow it”.
Of course, due to the difference in their strength, Aster couldn’t do that, back then when he was fighting with Robert after he was transformed into a corrupted, the black liquid which his body produced slowed down the process of decomposition caused by annihilation.
But he could do something which Rya couldn’t, use annihilation with his soul energy, so now he managed to achieve something similar, even if the soulless leg was healed it was useless now.
“What a shame this guy doesn’t have a soul idol and I can’t see his soul, but I guess it’s safe to assume that the left leg of his soul was erased, so even if he recovers the physical part, it won’t work like before”.
And that wasn’t all, he also felt his murderous intent increasing in a noticeable amount, something that didn’t happen when he used Rigel’s flames to kill the two vice leaders, confirming what he believed.
Murderous intent is something developed after taking a big number of lives, and although Aster has killed before, it wasn’t to the point where he should have such a terrifying murderous intent.
So, he supposed that a “true death” caused by him using annihilation to not only destroy the body but the soul too, had more weight than a normal kill and it turned out to be right.
The amount of living beings he has killed with annihilation isn’t that big, besides Robert and Isaac, all the others were the corrupted of Prasil, the number should be about a couple of hundreds which isn’t even nearly enough to develop a faint trace of murderous intent.
“Whatever considering where we will be going, there will be plenty of “volunteers” to further confirm this theory”, he thought before saying.
“I got a bit heated and took your whole leg at once, shall we continue, don’t worry we’ll start with one finger at a time now”.
“Arghhhh!!!”.
The screams of the leader could be heard not too long after.