The rise of the pervert primordial

Of course, Aster wasn’t going to leave right away, sure they had manuals now, but to get even the smallest results to show it would require hours of training, since meditating won’t be useful in the short run now that they can’t access any kind of energy.

Hence, they had to rely in what normal humans would have relied to defend themselves, weapons, and as previously stated none of the tools which would have perfectly worked as weapons, like axes, hammers or even kitchen knives for example, was allowed to be used in such a way.

With the word “penalty” explicitly written in the description of all the tools, the rules were clear, if they wanted weapons, they had to make them by themselves, and of course that would lead the participants to think on blacksmithing.

Especially because there were objects needed for blacksmithing, such as anvils, hammers, tweezers and even a furnace, on display at the exchange monolith.

However, there was a big problem with the previous, two of the key components for blacksmithing were lacking, first and formal, there were no ores or ingots to be used and second, there was no fuel for the furnace.

“There are some materials that can’t be just melted with flames generated with formations and require other fuels, I remember elder Riley making a demonstration using the wood of an Explosive Flame Oak… so we should be able to use wood to fuel the furnace, right?”, said a girl from the Yellow Anvil faction.

“Mmm, while that will overlap with the wood gathering mission, I don’t think it will be possible, the sap and humidity of the tree will make it hard for it to produce the heat you will need”, said a girl from the Green Lotus, she might not know much about blacksmithing, but she is experienced when it comes to plant type resources.

Which made Aster chuckle, those girls looked cute as they tried to squeeze their brains to make do with what they had, but it was obvious that they had no idea of how to forge without using spirit energy.

As for Aster, he came from a world where there was no spirit energy, but don’t get it wrong, it’s not like he was a master blacksmith or something of the like, he was just a normal teenager who helped doing small jobs here and there after school until he reached a legal age get a proper part time job.

However, internet and tv were marvelous things, so even a student like him had watched some shows about the subject, just for fun, and that alongside the fact that Aster originally was unable to use weapons with runes engraved on them, because annihilation destroyed them too fast, is what drove him to become a spirit blacksmith.

And unlike the people of the cultivation world, Aster started by learning and using the methods of earth, which he complemented with information from the blacksmithing techniques that mortals of the cultivation world, had developed for their use, which mostly didn’t rely on spirit energy, since even if it lingered around them all the time, the amount was either too small, or they simply lacked the manuals to cultivate it.

“Using wood as fuel is not a good idea, it will produce a low heat flame which might be able to soften the metal, but it won’t be easy to forge for you with that, the best option for us as of current would be coal and while mineral coal is better, charcoal will have to do for now”, said Aster to then point at a tree which was far from the river.

“Unlike those resources we were able to take earlier, the trees are not treasures, they are “mortal” versions of spirit trees, oak is good to make charcoal, to make things easier you have to let it dry a bit, water will help you remove some of the sap, remember to chop the wood in pieces not much thicker than a wrist, otherwise there will be a lot of unburnt results, besides that, we’ll need small twigs around two fingers thick and some dry grass”.

“I’ll tell you what to do next tomorrow before going to explore you are free to start with your missions, Erick and members of the Wanderer sect, I need you to cut down two different trees, first an oak like the ones those girls will be busy chopping down and one of those too”, added Aster as he pointed at a linden.

Of course, when Aster said he needed Erick and the other guys to chop down two of them, he meant it as in chopping those trees as fast as possible, that’s why he gave the task to them and not those girls.

“No problem, it will be down in a second, brother!”, said Erick, he craned his neck and then grabbed the axe he bought from the exchange center to then start working on one side of the oak first, with his big frame and natural disposition for physical work, Erick made a good progress quite fast.

Of course, he was going to be tired once he finished, because he was prioritizing speed over efficiency, but that’s what he liked and that’s what Aster needed, because they couldn’t lose much time of the day to explore.

“Down it goes”, around half an hour later, a strong impact drew the attention of the members of the sect as a tree fell down from its previous straight standing position, Erick actually finished cutting down the oak alongside Cayden’s subordinates who worked together to thin out the other side.

“Now, you three chop a part of the trunk around eighty centimeters large and then split it vertically into eight pieces”, said Aster to then add.

“Pick two branches that are thick and pluck out the leaves and any smaller branches that cover them”.

At this point some had guessed what he was planning to do, and it became obvious once he handed a carving knife and bandages to all of the exploration team members.

“Sharpen the narrower extremes of the branches and wrap the bandages at the two spots that you are comfortable with in order to wield them as spears”.

While among the group that was going to explore, no one used a spear besides Tiana, stabbing them into an enemy shouldn’t be much of a problem, even without any technique since both people and animals couldn’t use spirit energy.

However, killing with just wood spears is not as simple as it might sound, an animal’s hide is tough to pierce through, even with metal spears and they only had sharpened wood ones, and that’s why Aster asked Cayden’s subordinates to chop a piece of the trunk as well.

“Are those clubs?”, asked Felicia, she uses both blunt and sharp weapons, as in her clawed gauntlets can be used for both crushing or cutting enemies down, so she was more comfortable with clubs than spears.

“Yeah, the hides of animals are not easy to penetrate without metal weapons, so a blunt weapon will work better just to scare them away, we’ll make shields out of the linden as well, but that requires more work since we have to make planks and the wood needs to have been dried a bit at least”, said Aster.

Luckily, simple alchemic products like glue were available, because it would be a hassle to have to process even that, but enough of that, after those three finished preparing the base form of the clubs, Aster handed out a splitting wedge and a hammer to every member of the group, it’s worth mentioning that they already had protective gloves to work without destroying their hands.

And using the base of the oak which Erick and the others had chopped down, Aster grabbed one of the thick wood pieces to then start carving it, in a way that one end would be disproportionally thinner than the other, a simple yet efficient form for a wooden club, as for the details they were handled with the help of the carving knife.

And in case you wonder why Aster did this part himself, and made the exploration team do the same, it’s to improve the fit, in a sense they will be personalized clubs, also it didn’t require much work to do it, so it was efficient.

And with that everything was ready, each member of the group had a backpack, which contained two wood spears and a club on their backs, the space of the backpack was limited so besides that, they brought an axe, a machete, a pickaxe and a shovel, just one of each, distributed in different backpacks, which they will be taking turns carrying to not tire just some specific people out, while the others carried extra backpacks which were empty, that were supposed to be used to bring back whatever they see fit.

While the previous might not sound too heavy, add to that a bottle containing a litter of water from the river which was luckily clean enough to be consumed as it is, and other small things like matches, a compass, bandages, a change of clothes an extra pair of shoes, paper, pens and the like, then try to carry it for a few kilometers and I promise you’ll think otherwise after that.

“Okay, let’s get going…”, Aster who was about to set out, looked down as he felt someone pulling onto his shirt.

“Big brother, we prepared this for you”, it was Kana who offered Aster a small bag which contained some of the precious snacks that the girls of the sect had smuggled earlier, they had packed two for each of the members of the exploration group.

Aster chuckled at those cute girls, who were hiding behind their fellow disciples, they apparently decided randomly who was donating their snacks this time, not because there weren’t volunteers, but because all of them volunteered for it.

‘Well, it looks like you are more “delicious” looking than cookies and cupcakes for them, darling~’, playfully said Lilia from within the mind space.

“Ahem, thanks, we’ll bring you some good things to play with”, said Aster as he patted the little girl’s head, he had a “surprise” prepared for Kana, but we’ll leave that for later.

With Aster’s green light, the exploration group set off towards the area of interest which he had gazed from afar, a group of tall rock formations that lied behind a small forest, northward from their point of start.

“Here this is for you”, said Aster as he passed a couple of things to James, who expected to get a share of the snacks, but got a compass, paper sheets and a set of pens of different colors instead.

“Besides being our “guide”, you are in charge of making a map, I assume you at least took a couple of glances out of that cloud you were riding on, so make a simple sketch from what you remember and complement it with what you are seeing at ground level now”, he said to then add.

“Speaking of which, I don’t think I have to remind you of our deal right, so start talking, where does your team come from, I want to hear till the last important detail”, James who was trying to feign ignorance in a try to delay this conversation from happening, sighed to his insides.

“I can’t say much about my place of origin, we are at war with another Heavenly Quadrant, so we from a low standing had to make an oath to not divulge…”, before he finished speaking, Mylene coldly snorted.

“Humph, don’t try to play smart, the Heavenly Law in this place is incredibly weak, and you are a mortal now, so nothing will happen even if you speak”, she said.

With the weakened heavenly law, one would need to be a high ranked cultivator to catch any attention, in a rough calculation, only Heavenly realm cultivators would need to be worried about any repercussions from breaking an oath here.

Of course there was a replacement for them in place, like that ritual which James and Maurice used to make a deal with Wade, which involved a handshake which was backed by that red lightning cloud, the blue flaming board had its own ritual, in which two parties reached an agreement with it as their witness, and if one broke it, they will suffer the appropriate repercussion.

But any oath made with the heavens as witnesses was basically useless in this place, interestingly enough, Eris’s ability which allowed her to make a once in a lifetime oath with the Cosmos Tree as witness which she used with Aster, still worked here.

“I… didn’t know that, in that case, I’ll start with a short introduction, I’m a mercenary from an inferior Stellar System, with some luck I ended up joining a decently sized mercenary group which was hired by some “blue blood” bastards from a superior Stellar System, because they needed a bunch of teams below the Transcending realms, to explore distortions that appeared all over our Flame Meridian Heavenly Quadrant”, he said, which made Aster frown right away.

“What is the name of the heavenly quadrant with which you guys are at war with?”, he directly asked, to which James answered with a confused voice.

“With the Frost Despair Heavenly Quadrant, well it was originally called the Frost Bone Heavenly Quadrant, but they changed it a long time ago, why?”, he asked.

Maybe his standing in society was low, since he wasn’t even a Transcending realm cultivator, but as a mercenary from a group which was hired by a high ranked force, he was well informed at least, and there wasn’t such a thing as a “high ranked gate” in both his Heavenly Quadrant, nor the only other one which he knew about, which was the one his was at war with, he was sure of it, which means that the group of people he was dealing with, wasn’t a from any of those.

Thus, it didn’t make sense for him that the black-haired youth’s interest was immediately drawn towards such information, it’s not like Heavenly Quadrants could invade each other easily, they had to be close for travel to be possible.

And while there were other two which connected with his place of origin and the one, they were at war with, those two were neutral because they had a shorter history and naturally had weaker forces, any of the two at war could obliterate the two of them combined, if they messed with them, so they wouldn’t open access to other Heavenly Quadrants to use them as intermediary to reach them.

‘Who would have thought, apparently the universe is smaller than it might seem, not to mention that the crazy old evil spirit from back then actually became a hero renowned enough to have a part of its tittle included in the name of a Heavenly Quadrant’, amusingly thought Aster.

Back at the Silicon Forest, there was an evil spirit which originated from a fragment of a Soul Sovereign, the sole survivor of the final battle of the war that created the Silicon Forest which Aster collapsed after obtaining the Diamond Orchid and freeing Mira from her prison.

And his legacy, a manual that surpassed the Immortal grade, still lied in the mind space, since he passed it onto Aster, whom he considered decent enough to even tell him the name of the Heavenly Quadrant he died to protect, the Frost Bone Heavenly Quadrant, which was just mentioned by James.

But coincidences didn’t end there, the Flame Meridian Heavenly Quadrant from which James originated, was also mentioned in the story of that evil spirit, but they were allies with the Frost Bone Heavenly Quadrant and fought and died together to fend off against the bastards from the Yin Azure Palace that tried to use them as sacrifices.

Anyway, while Aster was indeed interested in knowing more about it, not because he liked to meddle in the affairs of people, he had no relation to, but because there were Soul Sovereigns at that old evil spirit’s place of origin, and knowledge about that will for sure be useful for the soul cultivators of his family, considering the lack of it at the four Heavenly Quadrants.

Right now, there were more pending matters to tend to, so he didn’t even bother answering James and just told him to continue his story.

“A squad composed of twenty members from our mercenary group was employed by the Burning Sky sect and we entered through the “Low grade south gate AZ0001″, alongside another two external groups from other forces subordinated to those guys, for a total of eighty people included them”, said James to then add.

“I doubt you are interested in our trials, but we were supervised by that red lightning cloud and though with difficulty our cultivations weren’t restrained so we passed them and reached the end of the road after a month of walking and it took us another week to cross the wall to reach the portal that took us to the other side”.

“That being said the four teams were split in the spatial tunnel, besides our twenty-person team another ten people that were randomly taken from other gates ended up with us, the red lightning cloud welcomed us, allowing us to take resources for a certain period of time like you, but nothing of what happened after that is similar to what you have gone through”, he said as he stopped for a second before adding.

“Like Maurice mentioned some of the guys of the group made some “tests” on what was allowed and what wasn’t, the first week there was a protection period and just some beating was allowed, but after that… let’s just say they didn’t have a good end, especially the female cultivators”.

James could see the disgust in the eyes of all the girls of the group of exploration which were listening to his story.

“Scummy bastards”, mumbled Sandra, which made James immediately add.

“Just to make things clear, I didn’t participate in anything of that, I volunteered to watch over the male prisoners and the punishment I received was only because I fought with them when they tried to escape, they weren’t even from the same teams and just were randomly taken to where we ended, so none of them worried about anyone but themselves”.

Though Aster also felt displeased by what he heard, it’s not like those guys had anything to do with him, if anything, should the chance for it appear, he wouldn’t mind doing the world a favor and erase those disgusting bastards from existence, but he won’t especially go out of his way for people he doesn’t care about, nor will particularly target them unless it benefits himself or his close ones.

Because these kind of situations are really common in the cultivation world, in every area where there isn’t a major power to enforce public safety, the fate of the weak is to be trampled upon by others, and even in places where there is law, abuse from those in power is not strange, just look at what happened to Tamara and Thomas, the only way to have a decent life in the cultivation world, was either being strong or having a strong person to back you up.

And Aster has accepted that as the fundamental truth of the world, which is why he has never stopped pursuing strength, ever since he became a cultivator.

Leaving that aside, at this point it was obvious that those guys had almost no restrains within the trial road, and they weren’t under the watch of the blue flaming board which wouldn’t have allowed any of the previous to happen, but that red lightning cloud which was obliterated earlier.

Their “supervisor” was different and that’s probably why the conditions they were subjected to were way laxer, which might sound as something positive, but in this case that wasn’t the case at all, not only did displeasing situations like the one previously mentioned were present, but they also missed on a lot of things.

“Besides that, we didn’t get any merits from the trial road, the reason as to why we wanted the Immortal grade resources from those guys is because we had to exchange what we were allowed to obtain for merits, so we ended up with empty hands, and after that welcoming gift, we… didn’t find anything that was worth something in the area during the two weeks we have been stranded here”.

“Not to mention that we didn’t have anything as amazing as those monoliths that could be accessed by everyone, our leader got a bracelet which gave him access to exchange and mission centers, but it could only be used twice a week and it was the leader the one who assigned the missions and made the exchanges”.

“Also, the rewards were miserable in comparison, I heard some of those girls from your group saying that she will get 10 low grade merits just for gathering some wood, we had to gather hundreds of trees just to get one merit per participant, and while those damn trees had no spirit energy in them, it took us hours to chop them down”.

“It’s worth to mention that even with our spirit energy intact, we couldn’t use any techniques… except the ones we bought, like that “Cloud Carriage” movement technique you saw, which I lost after that flaming board appeared”, said James to then add.

“After two weeks of that, me and Maurice failed one of the missions because we couldn’t finish gathering fruits in time and that’s why the leader assigned the welcoming mission which had a duration of three days and only rewarded two merits, to us as a punishment”.

“So, you basically were slaves for that stupid cloud, pretty much deserved if you ask me”, casually said the wild dragon princess, as always Alice had an incredibly sharp tongue. Follow current novels on N0veI.Fiɾe.net

James had nothing to say to that, he also didn’t consider himself a saint, but in his life as a mercenary, he at least had set some limits to himself, which is why he didn’t participate in what some of his teammates did to those women.

“How far was the camp where your team was stationed, from where we appeared?”, asked Aster, the cold light in his eyes made James hesitate for a fraction of a second, knowing what would be the fate of his previous team, if they ever encountered the black-haired youth’s group.

“Northeast, but it’s too far from here, it took us more than four hours while riding the cloud carriage, so it would be a travel of at least a whole week by foot, since there are a lot of harsh areas with different environments in the middle, I remember seeing a desert, a frozen wasteland and even a volcanic area among them”, said James, with that he had shown his stance, as in he had completely destroyed any chances of going back with those mercenaries.

What he didn’t know is that Aster was simply preparing for the future, if those guys dared to do as much as to appear within their sight, they will be killed on the spot, let alone by him, but by the army of fierce girls from the sect, since their standing against that kind of trash is clear as day.

By the time James finished his story they had been walking for a bit more than an hour, and while Aster still had a lot of things to ask, since there appeared to be differences in the way the Flame Meridian Heavenly Quadrant administrated its territory, when compared to the four Heavenly Quadrants, for example, they had reached the entrance to the forest and it was better to completely focus on one’s surroundings.