A few minutes before Lilia woke up from her meditation:
Aster finished refining the ingredient number one hundred, and the result was always the same, the amount of time needed was always half of what was registered as “average”, it was an amazingly good starting point according to Mylene.
But that didn’t mean he was born to be an alchemist, those who descend from races with warmongering tendencies, such as dragons, are normally not fit for professions which require patience.
It’s not that they can’t or that they are bad at activities like that, but dragons and especially young ones are quite energetic to the point that it’s hard for them to be quiet, or at least that’s what Rya told him.
Which Aster found hard to believe after seeing his lazy ass sister sleeping or simply laying down on the bed reading something, whenever she wasn’t training of course, the same applied to Lilia, leaving aside her excitement episodes and night activities she was always calm.
But that also had an explanation, only “low” ranked dragon species had that problem, and both Lilia and Alice were evolving into their own unique species, the excitement episodes were the only moments in which they lost their rationality and even then, they have managed to somewhat take control over that state.
Even Aster was affected by that innate “hyperactivity”, or maybe he just wasn’t fit for just sit and wait for the ingredients to be refined, after a couple of hours of refining he realized… he hated following the process, but then an idea struck him like a lightning out of the blue.
‘If my brain isn’t overcharged when I use my spirit sense which is many times stronger than what it should be then, what would it happen if I were to use my processing capacity to the fullest”.
And that was the start of the current situation, under Mylene’s surprised eyes, Aster brought a pile of cauldrons and made them float with his soul energy.
Then he threw an ingredient in each of them and used Rigel’s flames to refine them, of course Mylene tried to warn him, as many soul cultivators have tried to do multitask before, to shorten their concocting times, only to fail miserably.
As the say goes “Jack of al trades master of none”, dividing one’s attention makes the chance to screw things go up quite a bit, and in a process which requires precision like alchemy, that is a terrible thing.
But after a few minutes what Mylene expected didn’t happen, as if it was timed, Aster kept the track of what all the cauldrons contained and accurately followed at least thirty different processes of refining for the variety of ingredients.
In Mylene’s opinion it was like an orchestra director, he moved his hands to help accelerate some of his commands and his soul energy did the rest.
And that’s how we reached the current scene where Lilia saw her son refining ingredients like there was no tomorrow, it was as if he was in a trance, so Lilia decided to not interrupt him and instead returned to the captain’s cabin, not without telling Mylene to stop him when she notices he has used too much soul energy.
…
By the time Aster retuned to reality, he noticed the countless bottles around him and Mylene looking at him as if she was seeing some kind of legendary magic creature, which made him realize he might have overdone it.
The slight feeling of lethargy he was experiencing also told him he basically depleted his reserves of soul energy, which was good as it was his way to train in the soul path.
“How much time has happened?”.
“About 6 hours… just how big can a spirit opening realm’s reserve can be”, mumbled Mylene.
She wasn’t a soul cultivator, but there were some in her family and even the betters would have collapsed from exhaustion after two hours, if they were able to handle doing so many things at the same time to begin with.
Mylene softly shook her head, even if she was fascinated with Aster’s performance, it was time to sleep, or in her case she had a lot things she wanted to speak with Eris.
Aster also felt the same, he wanted to go rest at his bed with the girls, so after saying goodnight to Mylene, he used the formation to appear inside the bedroom.
And just as he expected, as soon as he appeared, a soft pair of arms immediately hugged him before their bodies fell on the comfortable bed, where the rest of the girls were waiting for him.
Aster smiled feeling hi fatigue fading away due to Lilia’s embrace, he directly closed his eyes and turned around burying his face in his mother’s chest, and just like that while enjoying the soft and sweet scent of Lilia he fell asleep.
The other girls noticed Aster was actually tired so they didn’t interrupt him, of course Sarina and Kana properly hugged one of his arms and also fell asleep.
The lights of the spaceship dimmed down, and then everyone entered the land of dreams, maybe because it was his first time sleeping in a dimensional tunnel, but Aster noticed there was something different.
He opened his eyes and the scenery he expected of either the mind space or the bed in which he was laying down with the girls didn’t appear, instead he was dreaming, or at least that was the conclusion he reached.
‘How weird, certainly I only started dreaming after reincarnating in this world to be aware in one it’s a new thing for me’, thought Aster, he looked at his hands and saw they were blurred, giving him an appearance, which reminded him of his soul avatar.
The other thing that caught his attention was that there was nothing here, it was literally him floating in a blank space, feeling bored Aster was about to try leaving this place even if it meant waking up, when he felt something calling him from afar.
,m Aster raised an eyebrow finding this sensation rather familiar, so he decided to give it a try, he wished it and his body moved towards the direction he wanted, after an undefined amount of time moving at an unknown speed, he reached the source of that familiar call.
“Well, this does for sure bring me some memories from the past”, he mumbled.
In front of Aster there was an imposing castle which right side was completely jet black while the left side had a bright white color, as flashy as it might sound, it had a nice elegant contrast.
While Aster was lost in his thoughts the gates of the castle suddenly opened, but instead of the normal insides of a building there was only a black space inside.
“You know that even if you hide your presences, since you two are mine, I can still detect you inside of the castle, right?”, said Aster as he chuckled.
… After a couple of seconds two different voices could be heard coming from within the castle.
“Come on, can’t you play along for once, it has been quite some time since we met!”.
“It was Aylin’s idea”.
Aster smiled, perfectly recognizing Aylin’s energetic playful and Alessia’s cold but gentle voices.
“It sure has been… still did you consider that the last time I entered in a castle which’s doors opened by themselves, a certain pair of sisters caused me a lot of troubles right?”.
“That was sis’s fault, I’m innocent~”.
“Humph, betraying your own sister for a man, you need to be punished… besides weren’t you the one that revealed about this being Aster’s second life”.
Aster laughed before he entered through the gate of the castle, apparently the dark mysterious thing that made it impossible for Aster to see the insides of the castle, was just a joke from the twins, as far as he remembers this place was an exact copy of the castle that was inside of the black book.
Following the same path that once guided him to Alessia he reached the throne room, or at least that’s what he expected, but inside the throne room there were instead a pair of crystal cocoons one black and the other one white, from which Alessia and Aylin’s figures could be barely discerned both of them had symbols which resembled divine runes floating around.
‘Another new type of rune”, thought Aster not recognizing the symbols.
Back then he listened to the resumed past story of the twins from Alessia, but they still had that pending thing to take care about, after all they seemed to come from a higher plane of existence just like Eris and Mylene, the difference was that their place of origin is probably even higher than those two, while still being lower than Rya’s.
‘Whatever, there is no need to worry about stuff that surpasses the Heavenly Conqueror realm, if I can’t properly know about them’, he concluded.
In any case, he had more important matters to discuss right now.
“How have you two been, and what is this place?”.
…
While Aster and the twins were catching up, in the outside world, a soft alarm sounded in the bedroom making the girls unwillingly wake up.
Still since the only one piloting the spaceship is Lilia, the others returned to sleep after seeing her getting up.
Lilia inwardly sighed, she let go of her son and went to the captain’s cabin, then she saw through the double-sided windows that they were about to leave the dimensional tunnel.
Instead of returning to the bedroom, she sat on the captain’s seat and just waited until they left, they would appear at the border station.
“Darling said they would come to for us at the border station, so I guess we can wait for our transport in a restaurant”, mumbled Lilia.
It didn’t take long for the spaceship to finally leave the dimensional tunnel, besides that white spaceship which seemed to transport someone with a high status, and Lilia’s which was invisible for others, the rest had to go through some procedures to get the permission of the city lord to land in the border station.
Lilia which was getting a bit bored of waiting suddenly smiled when she noticed her son’s presence, but she feigned ignorance and waited for him to take the lead.
“Good morning, Mom”, said Aster as he dragged Lilia into his embrace.
“Good morning darling~”.