Unlike other stores the one to which the owner of the restaurant sent them wasn’t crowded, probably because the ingredients they sold were the best of the best, in the nearby area of course.
Aster and the girls entered the store, and just like its name stated it was truly a chef’s paradise, behind transparent glass stands there were countless of ingredients, meat of spirit beasts, herbs, spices, vegetables, fruits.
Basically, if it was edible, it was being displayed for the possible customers to buy it, as expected both Sarina and Kana immediately went to the counters and started pointing at all the things they wanted.
The many assistants kept bringing different things until Sarina mentioned she wanted ingredients of sea of knowledge quality.
“Pardon my rudeness madam, we can only sell those to a certain specific group of people in this border station…”.
Before the employee could finish, Aster showed him the card handed by the owner of the restaurant, after inspecting it, the employee slightly bowed and left before returning with an old man which turned out to be a mortal transcending realm cultivator.
“Welcome to my humble store, esteemed customers, can you please tell me the precise quantity of the spirit beast’s meat are you planning to buy so…”.
Without letting the old man finish his sentence, Sarina interrupted him.
“We’ll take everything you have in store”.
The old man froze in the spot, for a moment he thought his ears were deceiving him, although he didn’t think that the owner of the restaurant would have recommended people that didn’t know the price, of the best ingredients his store sold, he couldn’t help but think that they thought he had a little inventory.
“Ahem, including one thousand kilograms of prime meat the total would ascend to one million low grade spirit jades, with the discount it will nine hundred thousand”.
Then to his surprise Sarina simply nodded but as she was about to hand the payment, a man wearing the uniform of a city guard entered in a hurry.
“Excuse me senior Bartos, lord Ritter has sent me to buy one hundred kilograms of prime meat, here is the payment, would you please give it to me as soon as possible?”.
The old man raised an eyebrow, he literally sold everything he had just a few seconds ago, he doubted for a second but at last decided to accept the payment and wash his hands off the situation.
“Sorry, I don’t have more in stock, if you need any other thing, I will be happy to provide it”.
The guard paled, his lord was receiving a really important guest from afar, if he were to return empty handed, let alone his job, even his life might be over, he then saw Sarina absorbing a lot of bags in her spatial ring and supposed she bought what he needed.
“Excuse me miss, would it be possible for you to sell me one hundred kilograms of that ingredient, I can pay ten percent more of the selling price”.
Sarina frowned for a moment, but she shrugged, unless Lilia stopped practicing self-moderation, nine hundred kilograms of meat should be enough for them in the meantime, body cultivators ate a lot after all.
She nodded and took out exactly one hundred kilograms, the guard bowed and respectfully handed the payment before returning to the mansion of the city lord as fast as he could.
Having bought everything they wanted Sarina and Kana happily hummed as discussed what would they be cooking for Aster later, as they left the store.
After that, Aster accompanied the girls to see some other stores, but they didn’t find anything else that caught their attention, apparently the meat from the chef’s paradise was the only material at the sea of knowledge realm being sold in the whole station.
The rest was more or less at the level of Luonto, although there were a couple of things in the mortal transcending realm, the quality was pretty low so they didn’t bother in spending money to buy them.
Once they had everything, they needed Lilia used her spirit sense to see when was the next opening of the space gate to the Veluri star cluster, but the result made her frown.
“The gate is closed darling, in fact all the gates are closed, even the guards are nowhere to be seen”.
It was getting a bit late, so Aster wanted to leave but apparently something happened which made the guards turn off the gates and leave their positions.
After a couple of seconds Lilia found out what was happening.
“There is a celebration in the mansion of the city lord, the gates will be closed until late into the night when the guests leave”.
Aster nodded, if that was the case there was no problem.
“Take us to the spaceship Mom, we’ll rest there until the gate opens later”.
Lilia did as he asked and a second later, they were back at the spaceship, then everyone took their respective paths, Aria went to the training room, Alice simply threw her body on the bed to rest while she read a book, Sarina and Kana went straight to the kitchen to practice with the new ingredients they bought.
Camila followed Eris to the rune mastering floor, unlike Aster she was having some issues due to her soul energy not being pure enough, which was understandable as she isn’t a soul cultivator yet.
Surprisingly Eris offered herself to give Camila some pointers about soul cultivation, since her motivation towards rune mastering was up to Eris’s liking.
And that left Aster with two options, he could either train his sword skills with Lilia or do a little experiment that has been in his head, with the help of Mylene.
‘Well, I’m hers later, so for now I will experiment with Rigel’s flames’, he thought before saying.
“Mom, will you help me keep an eye on the gate, I have a pending lesson with Mylene?”.
Lilia smiled as she nodded.
“No problem, have some fun you two~”, before Aster could reply she disappeared, leaving a bitterly smiling Aster behind.
“Let’s go to the alchemy floor”.
“Mm”.
…
On the way to the alchemy floor on which for some reason, Aster and Mylene didn’t use the formations and instead flew towards it, things got a bit awkward as they didn’t know what to talk about.
“Don’t take Alice’s words too seriously, she has no filter”, said Aster in a try to break the ice, unconsciously he was closer to Eris than to Mylene which was normal considering it was a bit hard to suddenly be friendly with someone who he technically enslaved.
Originally, he noticed a change in her attitude since she wore the necklace, but that was within his expectations as she experienced a bit of hell in the form of annihilation, what truly surprised him was how she and Eris became good friends overnight.
It was a bit weird, if the source of their problems was so easy to solve, then why would their families be in conflict for so long after all, but he decided to not meddle into their problems, if they wanted, they would tell him at its due time.
But what truly convinced him that her change was real and not just some kind of scheme, was that he saw how Mylene got along with Kana as if she was her older sister, and Kana treated her like that too.
While Aster was lost in his thoughts, they arrived at the alchemy floor and took their respective seats for the lesson.
Mylene then showed Aster her hand above which a dim light pink flame started burning, noticing Aster’s curious gaze she cleared her throat.
“Pink is the royal color of my family… that’s why I was supposed to be using everything of that same color”.
Aster nodded, when they went to retrieve Mylene’s body, she was wearing a completely light pink dress and a crown, while she kept the little crown just like Eris, she completely changed her getup and now wore more neutral colors.
“Ahem, continuing with the lesson, let’s talk a bit about the basics to become an alchemist, the essentials are, materials, patience and the most important would be an alchemic flame”, she said as she pointed at those light pink flames of hers.
Aster nodded, although Lilia wasn’t an alchemist, she had some books of basic theoretical knowledge about them, so he wasn’t a complete amateur, still he kept silent and let Mylene continue with her explanation, as what he was learning wasn’t the alchemy of this plane of existence but the one from which Mylene comes.
“For what I know, in this mortal plane alchemists only know two types of alchemic flames, it’s either the ones of those with fire-oriented attributes, like Lilia for example, and those who are lucky enough to find and absorb a spec of a spirit flame”, she said as she rose two of her fingers before raising a third one.
“But there is one easier method, which is superior to the previous two… I can teach you how to do it, but the rules of this plane prohibit me from doing it myself”.
Aster didn’t say anything, he already knew that they were prohibited from doing anything that surpassed what a Heavenly Conqueror could do, Eris did create a divine rune in the meaning that it had an internal pattern, but the strength she imbued in the rune was really poor.
So, it was only divine in name, in other words it was merely a demonstration without practical uses, so there was no problem, the same applied to Mylene she could teach Aster things that could technically surpass the Heavenly Conqueror realm, Rya’s case was a bit more complex as Aster was sure that the Soul Crushing Parade wasn’t something a “mortal” should practice, but right now wasn’t the moment to think about such things.
“The third method requires you to find and kill a spirit beast with fire attribute, then you need to refine its flesh, blood and beast core into a beast flame spark, which you will contain in your dantian”.
Mylene waved her hand and the flame took the form of a bird with long legs and neck.
“My spark was formed using a Ruby Flamingo as the source, a spirit beast which is said to descend from the phoenix, its property is a strong resistance against high temperatures”.
Aster saw Mylene’s skin glistening with a pretty soft pinkish light, which he supposed was the way to use the flame to protect herself from high temperatures.
Alchemists and spirit blacksmiths have one thing in common, they are exposed to really high temperatures quite often, so resistance against them was a good advantage over others.