The law enforcer immediately reduced the close up of the display until he could see what was happening from afar, the result made his pupils contract as he stood up immediately spilling his wine on the process.
“The mountain range…”, he mumbled.
Besides a golden pillar which was illuminating the sky, the most noticeable thing was that the peaks of the mountains, trees and everything which reached a certain height, around five or six kilometers, lost their top areas leaving behind a perfectly flat area, it was as if someone or something has cut them with a single swing.
And as expected the chaos surged on the stage, all the elders whose seeded internal disciples entered stood up and looked at Lilia and the others, with interrogatory gazes.
But to their surprise even some among their group were genuinely surprised, everyone but Lilia to be exact.
‘That’s my darling for you~’, thought Lilia feeling her heart beating faster, as this was the first time her son used a serious attack since the three years period of training, prior to the exploration of Prasil.
“Humph”, she then noticed some of the elders trying to use their spirit senses to spy in the cultivation realm of them, so she let out her spirit pressure making them fall from their thrones and seats while blood came out of their mouths and eyes.
“V-Void Manipulation cultivator”, shouted the elders, their expressions were truly worth seeing, besides the law enforcer everyone here were only Genesis Manifestation cultivators, meaning Lilia could crush them if she wanted to, so they immediately retracted their spirit senses and then looked at the law enforcer as if they wanted him to seek justice for them.
“Senior, she attacked us elders in front of everyone”, complained the red haired elder called Ruben.
But to his displease, not only the law enforcer ignored his complain, but he even scolded him.
“Using spirit sense to scan others might be allowed, but so it is defending against it, you can only blame yourself for being humiliated”.
The red haired elder was livid his nephew’s life tracking talisman broke which meant he was dead, and the law enforcer wasn’t was siding with the family of an “outsider” since when he an inner elder had to swallow such humiliation.
“Y-You, this is favoritism, the law enforcer showing preference for a newcomer over an inner elder is outrageous!”.
The law enforcer snorted as he pointed at the black stone slate.
“I know why you are mad Ruben, but the rules are clear, the third trial, rank S tasks, as well as the life and death arena, regardless of the result, complains aren’t accepted as none of them are forcefully imposed on anyone”.
The law enforcer turned to see the other elders who had aggrieved expressions on their faces, now that the golden pillar faded away, they only saw a single figure standing on the air, so it wasn’t hard to guess what happened to all the others.
“The same goes for you all, if you want to blame anyone, blame yourselves for encouraging them to attack a candidate to core disciple, now either use your seeded spot on those who are still alive or get lost from my admission trials”.
Needless to say, but some of the elders were unconvinced, but the law enforcer was right, it was them who wanted to block Aster’s path, and they lost, so they had no right to complain.
Without other choice, those who knew the disciples they selected were dead, chose someone from the ones that didn’t enter the third trial before leaving, others on the other hand stayed behind and waited to see the final result.
…
Inside of the trial grounds, Aster floated there alone, in his right hand he held a small piece of a golden grip which was what was left of the sword he used.
Aster looked at his surroundings, the destruction left behind after his attack as well as the fact that nothing remained from those who were surrounding him a moment ago and he frowned.
He expected not feeling any guilt, they were aiming for his life so he didn’t show them any mercy, that’s the ideology he has forged and so that wasn’t what made him frown, but the fact that his blood was boiling right now, his heartbeat could be heard from the outside of his body, it was as if a war drum was being constantly hit.
‘Aster…”, seeing that Aster seemed to be lost in his thoughts, Rya called him from the mind space, worried that the violent instincts of his dragon bloodline were trying to take over.
But her worries disappeared immediately as he exhaled, his heart beat slowed down and his usual smiling expression returned to his face.
‘I’m okay, I just used quite a bit of my spirit energy in that attack, but the result was better than what I expected, I should be able to kill a Mortal Transcending realm even without annihilation now, just with sword intent and spirit energy’.
That’s right, the natural tone of Aster’s spirit energy was golden, he was the one who decided whether he used annihilation or not, in that last attack he didn’t use it.
Inside the mind space, Rya smiled, the gave Aster the “challenge” to achieve the same battle prowess he could manifest by using annihilation, without it, for a good reason of course, the first two levels of sword intent were the same for everyone, ghost sword and sharpening, but the third one was different, it’s strength and properties depended on the battle experience of the user.
That being said, that attack used about half of Aster’s reserves of spirit energy, but he was willing to create this image of him pushing to the limit, because annihilation was his hidden ace.
After a couple of minutes, Aster spread his spirit sense through the whole surrounding area to see if there was anyone else aiming him, but as expected those who were too slow to join the main group, managed to see from afar how he obliterated about 17,000 participants with a single attack and they were hiding in fear.
He flew nearby to see if anyone else was willing to fight but they simply looked at him with horror filled eyes before they willingly let their tokens on the ground and distanced themselves.
Aster looked at his token which’s count of points was above five million and he decided to not chase the others, he instead looked at the sky and showed his token knowing the law enforcer would get the message.
The law enforcer saw the count on Aster’s token and he didn’t know whether he should laugh or cry, on the other hand there was no need to continue with the trial because those who survived lost any will to fight.
Still for him to put an end to the trial he had to ask for the other elder’s opinions.
“I think the trial for male candidates has no meaning anymore, if you agree then…”.
Even before the law enforcer could finish speaking, those elders whose seeded disciples managed to survive interrupted him.
“I agree, please end the trial senior”
“Me too, let’s end the trial right now”.
Their anxious voices filled the area, what a joke they just saw that monster eliminating almost a whole batch of new disciples who attacked him together, those who were left had no chance even if they joined.
The law enforcer chuckled and then used his token to force the leftover male candidates to be transported out, including Aster of course.
A couple of seconds later they appeared in the plaza and all the gazes fell on Aster, some of them were clearly hostile while others had just surprise or even fear, if he was able to do that while being an early-stage Stellar Constellation then… what would happen once he became a Mortal Transcended.
The red haired elder gritted his teeth knowing that he had no chance to take revenge, so after giving Aster a poisonous gaze he left, those who lost their seeded disciples followed not too long after, surprisingly not all of them were the same, as some of the throne elders and most of the neutral elders nodded at Aster before choosing from those who survived.
The law enforcer was resisting the urge to laugh out loud, such a genius appeared in his sect, of course he was happy right now, but he had to wait for the female candidates to finish their trial.
Aster simply ignored everyone and walked towards the girls, with each step he took, the other now recently accepted disciples opened a path for him, some out of fear others out of respect and others in admiration, the fact that there wasn’t any male core disciple in the guardian sect of Galatia was a sore spot in the ego of the male population.
But now that was all in the past, just thinking on the waves that this would cause, was enough to send chills through the spines of everyone.
Lilia dragged her son into her arms with a happy smile on her face, before she whispered at him.
“You caused a big uproar darling~”.
Aster closed his eyes and enjoyed Lilia’s softness, but he had to open them a few seconds later when he noticed the law enforcer approaching them.
“Kid, you don’t seem to be too excited despite having broken all the records in our sect, so have to ask, are you going to join any faction… or are you all just joining as guests?”.
Aster didn’t even have to answer as Agnes jumped from the stage and answered.
“They all agreed to join the Black Sword faction, I hope elder can let them skip the trial for elders”.
The law enforcer let out a sigh of relief, he was afraid that Aster would join just as a guest which would make the sect look like a joke as such a genius was escaping from them.
“It’s okay, with that miss’s demonstration of earlier, there is no need for them to participate… in fact we are going to have to repeat the admission trials because only three thousand aspirants made it through this year”, he said as he looked at Aster.
Normally most people would pay attention to the female trial, but this time although there were some decent fights being displayed on the black stone slate, no one was in the mood to watch them.
Instead of that, the notice that the first ever male core disciple had just appeared spread through the whole sect like a fire, and before they noticed, tons of disciples mainly outer ones were arriving at the neutral city, to see the crowning of a new core disciple.