The rise of the pervert primordial

Noticing that a few girls were missing, Aster couldn’t help but be curious about their whereabouts, since one of them was none other than Nerissa and one would believe that she as the most talented water attribute cultivator in the sect, would have been participating in the activities that took place near the lake.

Besides Nerissa, there is also Vivian whom Aster knows is curious of even the most mundane things, since she was unable to do as much as simply go out due to her body constitution until not too long ago, so he expected to see that girl who is the incarnation of the white color, sitting here with a fishing rod in her hands.

“How come I haven’t seen either Nerissa, Vivian or Lieze yet?”, he asked, to which the receptionist girl, Angela sighed as she rubbed her temples, as if being reminded of a headache.

“Don’t make remember it… that sword obsessed blue haired girl has been completing swordsmen-oriented missions nonstop since earlier, she tried to help in the kitchen to cut all the fruits, fish and other things we gathered, but she slashed a bit too much which resulted in a lot of the edible parts being wasted, so I received complaints from miss Sarina due to it”.

“Ultimately I found the perfect place for her to go crazy with sharp objects, all the logs you see in the camp, had their branches and leaves cut by her”, she said to which Valentina looked to the side as if embarrassed due to the obvious obsession her disciple had with the sword.

There is a proper reason for Nerissa’s behavior though, her swordsmanship is based in the energy path since her unique water attribute is her main focus with the reinforce of her soul path and with that gone, she didn’t feel like a swordswoman and she didn’t like that, so she put hands to work to regain her that comfortable sensation again.

And in case you wonder why Iris isn’t acting like that when it has been proven that she is also a sword maniac, that’s easy, Iris’s swordsmanship follows the one of the Bladeheart style, which is why she is a secondary path body cultivator, she balances both energy and body, not to mention that due to her own personal reasons, Iris only uses her fire attribute when it’s needed.

Thus, even without access to any energy, she still can pull off some of the Bladeheart’s swordsmanship which she has adapted for herself, so she is in a much better state than her blue haired rival and best friend, that being said, Aster did notice she looked a bit unrestful which is completely the contrary of the calm and frank Iris he knows.

Speaking of which, she is also nowhere to be seen and the answer to that doubt was given to Aster by the oldest of the three sisters, who was sitting near the shore of the lake, with two fishing rods at her side, calmly waiting for the fishes to come her way.

“Iris followed that blue haired girl the very moment she finished her role in the exploration group, you can see two tornados of leaves flying all over the area if you look that way, ah right, the girl from the White Sword tagged along to mediate between those two, so that they won’t fight over who woll trim a tree along the way”, said Mina as she pointed in a specific direction.

A direction in which Aster could indeed see an agglomeration of trees, out of which leaves were flying all over the place, there were a lot of tree agglomerations on the way to the forest, which were the main target to clean up first, it was better to have a clear sight of everything within the vicinity of the camp after all, in case an unwelcomed visitor came their way, there wouldn’t be any place to hide.

“I see”, said Aster with a slightly bitter smile on his face, those two surely took their swordsmanship to heart, but it was for the better, so he didn’t worry about it.

Mina was also a bit different than usual, from her usual worrywart older sister personality, to a much more relaxed one, maybe because her sisters were safe here, that being said she still had curiosity towards how those two performed.

“Leaving Iris aside, how did it go for those two, I kind of know Lina was as energetic as usual, because she is resting on the grass right now, but that youngest sister of mine practically flashed towards the cooking area when she heard volunteers who use the sword were being welcomed to help prepare the dinner without a second of rest?”, she asked.

“Lina was one of the scouts, she moved around more than us, so it’s understandable that she is tired, as for Nina, it was thanks to her paying attention to details that even escaped my sight, that we were able to find the boars we brought back, so I would say both did amazing jobs”, said Aster.

‘I see, so that’s why she asked me to teach her a bit about my “control of the battlefield”, I still don’t get why was she suddenly interested in cooking though’, thought Mina as she nodded at Aster, happy for her younger sisters having been able to interact so much with other people within their range of age, outside of Iris, for the first time since they were exiled.

“Speaking of helping with the dinner, Vivi really wanted to participate and her fishing talent was amazingly good, so it’s unfortunate that she couldn’t be here”, said the ligress girl who had just dragged a fish the size of an arm to the shore and casually tossed it into a large container with water which was placed next to her.

“Why, did something happen?”, asked Aster with a slight frown, only for Vivian herself to answer from afar.

“Sorry, I wanted to try and cook something for both Kana and you, but apparently I’m circulating small dosages of poison through my body due to my heart, it’s not a problem unless I directly spill blood in something, but I’m also inexperienced when it comes to cooking and I didn’t want to make a mistake and ruin a whole pot of the delicious food miss Sarina is helping everyone make”, she said.

Apparently, just like the little wyrm maintained some special functions, which didn’t require spirit energy, like camouflaging herself for example, Vivian’s heart still produced poison which travelled through her blood, it was safe for her to be around others, but if she cut her finger during the cooking she might indeed poison the food accidentally and so she opted for staying out of it completely, even though Sarina told her that she could use gloves and even offered to let her prepare a separate small dish, since she really wanted to try and make something for Aster.

“Okay I can see why you are not with Sarina, but what does that have to do with fishing?”, asked Aster, to which Vivian chuckled, this second part wasn’t disappointing for her but amusing.

“Well, animals can apparently “feel” the poison within my body and so, small ones completely stay far from me, while the middle-sized ones remain wary, as for big ones they get a bit aggressive, as if a predator on par with them has openly threatened them”.

In other words, she scared the small fishes away and the middle-sized ones like the one of a meter of length that Mira just caught, hesitate way too much more to take the bait since Vivian’s presence increased their wariness, it was interesting effect.

“That being said, I have found the perfect job for me, since even without spirit energy, poisons get filtered in my body, I’ll be working with Mylene and the girls of the Orange Lotus to make antidotes for all the available poisonous things that can be found in the area~”, happily said the white-haired girl.

Vivian has the potential to become the queen of all poisons, her body constitution basically allows her to make new poisons with the effects she wants to obtain, heck she just created one that can affect soul energy, but she is not interested in becoming a poison master herself.

While using poison is and will ever be her fighting style, she only uses them for self-defense and doesn’t want to spread them so that they can bring harm to the world, but the contrary she who has access to all poisons, is interested in creating antidotes for the ones that are used to make innocent people suffer.

Besides some really evil poisons, alchemists are free to concoct whatever they want, however poison masters, which is the term used for cultivators that fight by using poison, are most of the time labelled as evil cultivators, because they often don’t care about the consequences of their attacks, and the remaining poison affects people that have nothing to do with their fights.

Some psychotic bastards even release poison on purpose to kill as many people as they can, and turn previously inhabitable planets into lifeless contaminated rocks, hence why there are very few unaffiliated poison attributed cultivators, they all join a sect or force that is under the wing of the just faction, which acts as a backer for them.

Anyway, given their current situation, creating antidotes is way harder, much riskier and slower than creating poisons, after all even a simply rotten fruit can be poisonous, but not anything can act as a detoxifying agent, such is the world of mortals.

“If that’s the case, I have a spot for you in the exploration team, so you can get samples of every poisonous object yourself”, said Aster which made Vivian’s eyes sparkle.

“Mm~”, her ability was amazing, Vivian can literally drink or eat poisons, tell Mylene the exact effects and in which intensity would they be present, without being affected by them, in a situation where they lack the arrays to test, measure and refine poisons like alchemists normally do, and with that information proper antidotes can be developed in a much easier way, it’s double the results with half the effort.

Not to mention that her presence itself can affect the behavior of the animals, which is already something Aster has decided to make use off, long story short she has a unique role in the group which can’t be done by anyone but her.

‘Well, looks like besides that lucky charm of ours, we have gotten ourselves a protection charm of some sort’, he amusingly thought as he left the lake area accompanied by the pair of little girl and little wyrm.

Aster had his own things to do, and to a certain extent they involved the participation of both Kana and Espi.

“What do you have in that backpack big brother?”, curiously asked the little girl, besides the backpack Aster is carrying even as of current, from which he took that machete out earlier, all the others were handed to the girls of the sect so that they could separate, process and classify their contents.

But Aster kept one for himself and the little girl was dying of curiosity to know what’s inside of it, not only because she is a cute curious girl, but also because she could somehow feel that what was inside of it, was useful for her.

‘You were right Esmeralda, this little girl’s talent for the bow is incredible’, thought Aster, to which a certain green haired girl living inside Kana’s dantian, nodded in response.

‘Yeah, if she had started training in archery earlier, she would have already obtained second level intent at this point, which though still pales a bit in comparison with an absolute monster like you, it’s still at the peak in terms of comprehension for a weapon type’, said Esmeralda.

Among the things that Aster had in his backpack, there were the tendons he obtained from the boars, which are a key part of the compound bows he is planning to make for the best archers of the group to wield.

Of course, it’s not like Aster is stingy nor he is planning to show favoritism by only making compound bows, which are in average better than simple bows made out of a single piece of wood, for few people.

It’s because the process to make them is way more laborious and complex than to make the other ones, so even Aster who has genuine experience in mortal weapon making, is not sure he can make even five of them in a week, unless he of course dedicates much more of his time to it.

But unfortunately, other things take priority, if Aster were to choose between making more weapons, and making better protective gear, he would go for better protective gear ten out of ten times, that doesn’t mean he isn’t going to give his all in the swords, spears, bows and the like which he is planning to make, but his focus will be the armor and shields for sure, those girl’s safety and well-being are his responsibilities as the one leading the group after all.

And that aligned with the other objects which were occupying most of the space of the backpack.

“I have one of the materials I need to make a strong bow for you and better shields and armor for everyone”, he said to the little girl, whose curiosity grew even more now.

“This area should be fine to work”, said Aster as he looked at his current surroundings, he was not too far from the shore of the lake and there were many trees not far from him as well.

Aster placed his backpack on the ground, just in time for the guys from the Wanderer sect guided by James, that were helping carrying stuff to bring a few objects to him, to arrive.

Among said objests there was a large wood barrel, a table, a water tank, rope, two pairs of large wood sticks with one pointy end and some other tools which he has asked them to get from the exchange monolith.

“Thanks, I’ll have James call you if I need anything else”, said Aster as he opened the backpack to take out the skins and tendons of the boars which he had very carefully obtained after skinning it with his slashes.

“Wash the skins while I go look for the component needed to do the tanning”, said Aster to James, who couldn’t help but feel a bit bitter about it, the skins had blood and small bits of meat which were still stuck to it, so he was in for a fun ride. The most update n0vels are published on novel·fire.net

“Let’s go, you two”, said Aster to the little girls who happily followed him towards the nearby trees.

“Nym, among the oaks that are in the vicinity, tell me which one’s heartwood has the darker tone please”, said Aster to the miniature runic oak which was inside Kana’s pocket.

“That one over there, it’s heartwood is nearly black, can I ask why are you interested in it?”, answered Nym, to which Aster nodded.

“You see, to prepare the skin we are going to use a process called “vegetable tanning”, for that we need the bark of a tree which is rich in something called tannins, oaks are an excellent option and a dark tone in their heartwood is an indicator of a high quantity of tannins”, he said as he took out a cutting knife from the table to then proceed to take big chunks of the signaled oak’s bark.

Once Aster deemed the bark to be enough for the process, he crushed it and then tossed it into the barrel which he filled with water to then put the lid on top of it.

By this time James had finished washing and doing a second cleaning process on one of the skins, but Aster didn’t directly work on it yet, he took the large wood “stakes” and shoved them one next to the other with a certain distance between them and then tied one end of six ropes through the extension of the two stakes, leaving one free extreme on which a metal hook was tied to, on all of them.

Having finished with that, Aster used an awl to puncture a few holes on the borders of the skin and then accommodated it by passing the metal hooks through the holes he previously made, so that it was tensed and exposed to the sun, as it had to be dry or it would rot, this process would normally also use salt, but there is no access to it, so Aster skipped that part, luckily there was still some daylight left so it should be perfectly dry in no time.

As to why Aster didn’t call the girls from the blacksmith peak to look at the process, that’s because he himself hasn’t done this before, he knows the process out of a book like the back of his hand, yes, but it’s also Aster’s first-time tanning skin from scratch.

He couldn’t do much for the part that involved the tannins, he had to leave the skin marinate in that solution, the old process required actual months for the tanning to be properly done, but luckily there was a feasible way to shorten it to days, he just needed to make the drums that were implemented later on to make the tannins integrate into the skin at a way faster ratio than just storing the skin in a tank with the solution.

And that’s what the large barrel was going to be used for, Aster planned to make a support with wood to then place it on top of it, well he wasn’t going to make it, but those girls from the blacksmith peak, in fact they’ll be making the thing rotate through the day while he is gone to accelerate the process, but let’s not get too far ahead yet.

Everything depended on how would the skins will be tomorrow morning and there was one last step before they could go into the barrel, which is removing the hair, something that normally would need a solution with things like lime and sulfur, things that weren’t available, or alternatively soap powder which was available could be used, the problem is that again, that would require days of preparation and he was short in time, so he was going to use ash and friction to do the trick later.

“Hang the other skin like I did and you are free for today after that”, said Aster, as he worked in the tendons himself, the first compound bow he was going to make is for Kana, so he won’t use other people’s hands for the process but will completely make it himself.

Luckily the process to prepare the tendons was way easier, he had already pretty much removed all the meat from them earlier, so he now only removed other tissue that was still attached to them, cut them lengthwise to increase the surface that will be exposed to the sun which will accelerate the drying process and he stopped there for today.

‘Phew, luckily those animals won’t interfere with anything we do and will also keep other animals away from our camp, otherwise I would have to put some people to watch over these things so that they wouldn’t turn into snacks for a random animal’, thought Aster as he saw the skins and tendons which were drying up.

The previous has been tested by Valentina already, she literally placed food on the ground near the animals that earlier blocked them from taking more herbs and resources, and they didn’t even look in their direction, so they were perfect bodyguards for these kinds of situations.

“Dinner is ready!”, a shout in unison made by many girls from the sect, signaled the end of today’s duties, since Aster and Valentina had decided to give the girls from the sect free reign over the time they had after dinner, until 10:00 pm, because they had to be sleeping before midnight, in order to get enough rest.

Daylight is precious and the way to make the most out of it is getting up early, as soon as the sun starts appearing in the sky, so they had to go to sleep early too, speaking of which, it was already 7:00 pm and yet the sun wasn’t completely gone, so probably out of consideration they were in a season where the sun left at a later time and appeared at an earlier one.

‘It looks like a gift, but considering the power that the flaming board has shown to have, I wouldn’t be surprised if sudden changes in the weather to make it harsh for participants, were incorporated at later stages of the trial, if the concept doesn’t abruptly change out of nowhere of course’, thought Aster.

Still, that was enough worrying for the day, he looked at the pair of little girls who were drooling at the rich smell of food which the wind carried their way, and chuckled to then say.

“Let’s go wash our hands and then eat dinner”.

“Yes~”.

“Hisssss­~”.

With a happy voice and a happy hiss, those two dragged Aster with them to one of the cooking stations, the girls had made lines and were washing their hands there to then take their respective share before sitting on large tables that were set up alongside benches, not too long ago.

Or they simply chose to sat on the grass with their friends, creating a harmonious and relaxed atmosphere, it was a well-deserved meal after a day of hard yet fun new experiences after all.

That being said and as hungry as they were, those girls waited until everyone was sitting with their plates of soup and sides of fruit ready to eat, it’s worth mentioning that Aster was the last one to get his portion out of his own will of course, since all the girls offered to let him cut the line.

Seeing those cute hungry girls were waiting for him to give them the greenlight, Aster raised his cup to offer a toast.

“To a perfect fulfilling first day, cheers!”, and with that, everyone dug in, some girls took a sip of the soup with a small piece of potato while others went for a piece of the boar’s meat, but all had the same thought at the same time.

‘It’s delicious!’, and so with comfortable expressions, the girls from the sect enjoyed their deserved warm meal while Aster smiled at their cute reactions.