Chapter 838: The first day of the evaluation trial (part 16)

Seeing his brother be so easily defeated not even by the red-haired girl whom he had judged to be the actual threat among the enemies they were facing, Brett was at a loss for a second, he was returned to the real world by Dahlia casually saying.

"What’s the problem, shouldn’t you be ignoring him and using the moment when someone is defeated as a chance to aim for the kill?".

Dahlia’s words made Brett’s eyes contract like needles; he had mentioned those exact same words to the others of his group earlier.

’How, I spoke in a low voice specifically so that no one aside from us could hear it!’, exclaimed Brett to his insides, to which as if she could read his mind, Dahlia answered.

"You see, I didn’t think that good sight and good smelling sense would be enough to venture in the wild, so I also trained my hearing, individually my senses are not as good as Kana’s ones, but as a whole I would like to believe that we are around the same level", she said.

Dahlia was right, Kana has better sight and hearing than her, but if her smelling sense is added, then she can equal that monstrously talented little girl, because Dahlia is talented as well, she trained all that at the same time and achieved quite the results in a really short period of time.

Perhaps Dahlia is not abnormally outstanding in any of the aspects she has developed in, besides comprehension, however when everything is added to the mix, you can’t call her a jack of all trades and a master of none, because she can combine all of it and use it for complex techniques that drastically increase her power, her monstrous comprehension capacity makes it possible.

For example, earlier when it seemed as if she was reading Brett’s mind, it was because she could see his pupils contract, listen to his heartbeat accelerate and smell the sweat on his back, all at the same time, which allowed her to easily guess what was in his mind.

All of that, combined with the fact that she easily defeated Blake who is not that much weaker than his older brother, resulted in Brett taking the decision of... running away.

"Damn it!", he cursed as he turned around to then rush into the distance, he actually abandoned his brother and escaped alone, or at least that was the idea, but at this moment, a certain red-haired girl became visible on the path ahead of him.

"Abandoning one’s family, how pathetic", said the youngest of the three sisters with a sharp light shining in her eyes.

"Honestly, I didn’t expect them to stoop this low, considering how much they tried to keep the other safe, but I guess they hadn’t really faced a life and death situation together before, so their bond was just shallow pretty words", said Dahlia as she stopped a few meters away from Brett who was now between the sword and the wall, because if he tried to advance, he would have to fight Nina, if he tried to retreat, he would have to face Dahlia, either way he was screwed.

"I surrender, I request you to take me with that evil dual cultivator trash master of yours so that I can discuss the terms of...".

"Booom!", Brett’s words were interrupted by loud impacts that happened at the same time, as Nina and Dahlia hit the ground with their respective weapons.

"Denied", said both Nina and Dahlia as they charged at Brett with their weapons ready to be brandished at him.

’Damn it, they took that useless Will as a hostage but won’t take me, why!’, he inwardly exclaimed to then say.

"Hey, control these two, I have intel I can provide in exchange for my life!", shouted Brett, naturally that was directed at Aster who was casually watching the fight.

"What are you talking about, didn’t you hear Dahlia say that if any of you used those hidden weapons in your pockets, both of you will die?", said Aster to then mockingly add.

"Besides, I don’t like to ruin my cute junior’s fun, I trust that they are perfectly capable of deciding whether you should be captured or killed, so just drop dead already so that I can reward them".

Listening to Aster’s mocking voice combined with his disdainful expression, made Brett lose it on the spot.

"Fucking evil cultivator bastard!!!", he shouted as he reached for his pockets, unlike his brother, he had two pouches filled with those poisoned projectiles.

"Ah right, the classic "I’ll take you all down with me" desperate move, if you had that kind of guts, you should have tried to rescue your brother, perhaps that would have earned you a chance to live", casually said Aster.

"Crack!", before Brett could take out the pouches from his pockets his wrists were broken by a hammer and a spear which stopped him from continuing with his idea of throwing the poisoned projectiles at Aster, his real aim were the prisoners though, Brett was angered because they got to live and he was sentenced to death instead.

"With what face would I request for a reward if the ones I captured are killed by you", said Nina as she retrieved her spear to then pierce Brett’s chest with it.

"And just to make things clear, that poison won’t work on us, we have the antidote for it", added Dahlia as she landed the finishing blow, both literal and figuratively on Brett, since telling him that even his desperate attack would have been useless anyway, broke his spirit just before lights went out for him when Dahlia broke his neck with her hammer the next second.

"Humph", both girls softly snorted as they saw Brett’s corpse fall to the ground, another thing that these two amusingly had in common is that both had been helped by Aster and both respect and admire him in their own ways.

For example, Dahlia actually decided to actively aim to become a top core disciple and cultivate a secondary path after meeting Aster, what’s more she was planning to take the soul path as her secondary one and ask him, who has shown to be a monster in the soul path to guide her through it.

Nina already has her paths settled in stone, but just like Iris, she wants to train her swordsmanship with Aster and also, she has her own request for him to guide her training in the energy path, because some important changes she noticed in her attribute after taking that medicine which Aster refined for her, back then.

So as strange as it might sound, they weren’t angry to be called possessions of an evil dual cultivator, they were angry because Brett insulted the person they admire.

"Woah, I expected the red-haired sister to be quite fierce, but to think that the calm sister Dahlia can be like that too", mumbled Kana, which made those two’s faces redden on the spot.

They hurried to take the possessions of the dead older brother and then, walked towards the fainted younger brother, who was killed on the spot by Dahlia before she also took his possessions.

"Shouldn’t we have kept one of them for interrogation at least?", asked Dahlia as they approached Aster to show him the things they had recovered from those two’s corpses.

"Mm, sorry I got a bit heated and destroyed his chest, otherwise maybe Dahlia could have brought him back...", mumbled Nina to which Aster answered by patting those two’s heads.

"They tried to use lethal poison on their fight, if you two would have been in actual danger, intel or not, I would have killed them on the spot anyway, so don’t worry", he said as he stroked their silky brown and red hair, respectively.

"Mm~", those two nodded and enjoyed their head pats, at least until Kana asked.

"Mmm, sister Dahlia captured someone and red-haired sister even made someone willingly surrender, so what are you going to ask as a reward from big brother, I’ll be making candies with him, Espi and sister Mylene~", happily said the little girl, which made Dahlia and Nina exchange gazes to then softly laugh, they actually forgot about it since they were received with head pats without having to ask for it.

"It will be a secret for now", said Dahlia, to which Nina nodded as she added.

"My name is Nina, you can call me sister too", said the youngest of the three sisters as she extended her hand to pat Kana’s head too.

"Mm, it’s a pleasure sister Nina~", said the little girl as she smiled at her new sister.

’So, this is what it feels to have a younger sister, I understand why sis has never once complained no matter how much work it took her to take care of us’, thought Nina as she saw Kana smiling.

"It’s good to see you two getting along nicely, now I won’t have to worry about that scary sister of yours getting angry because I couldn’t do my part in her wicked schemes to pair you up", jokingly added Aster, which made those two softly laugh.

The shield guy who was trying to not even breath too loud so that his existence was ignored by those scary girls, nearly had a heart attack when he saw them acting all bubbly and happy around the black-haired youth.

’What the hell is up with this group, there is no fucking way they come from a dual cultivation sect given their strength, but such a relaxed mood is not apt for a battle focused sect either!’, he screamed to his insides, unfortunately no one was paying him any attention now.

Leaving that aside, you might wonder why didn’t Aster stop them from killing those two brothers, considering that currently they don’t have any prisoners from the group of the green-haired leader to provide intel for them, and the reason is simple, Aster already has that covered.

Which leads us to the next fight which is none other than the one of the blond motherly roc girl Sarina whose battlefield had turned into a storm of sword slashes as well as spear thrusts and sweeps.

"Clang!", a loud metallic sound echoed through the vicinity as Sarina fiercely slashed her sword making it clash with three spearheads at the same time, naturally the tanned man and the other pair of brothers, who used spears instead of swords weren’t dumb enough to aim all their attacks at the same spot, they tried to pierce Sarina’s body from different angles and even heights, but the roc mother slashed her sword with such fierceness that her attack was fast and strong enough to reach all the three spears at the same time, even with more of a meter of distance between each other.

"Crack!", what’s more, they have been clashing weapons since earlier and signs of damage had started to appear on them, the problem is that it wasn’t the sword which had been so fiercely slashed at three metal spearheads the one to be damaged, no, it was the spearheads the ones that had dents on their blades and one had even lost its tip right now.

"No way!", exclaimed the tanned man as he saw the tip of his spear break and fall to the ground, unfortunately he didn’t have the time to think on that because the pushing force of the sword suddenly increased as Sarina applied her strength to it, forcing the three enemies to retreat at the same time.

"Kyle, Brett and Blake are dead... we should retreat and regroup with Lauren and the others", said one of the two spear user brothers.

"Yeah, our weapons are taking quite the beating and your spear is about to crumble, what’s more I don’t think your shield can last long either", added the other brother.

’Cowards, we are not making any advance because you keep aiming at non-lethal areas, all because of that damn woman’s order!’, inwardly cursed the tanned man, also known as Kyle.

The two brothers had been trying to immobilize Sarina’s arms and legs rather than killing her, the tanned man on the other hand has either gone for the chest, the neck or the head all this time.

After seeing the end of Brett and Blake he knew that he had to kill the enemy or he will die because of his clear hostility.

"Fine you two simply watch from the side and offer support when I need it, also who says I need these toys anyway", said the tanned man as he threw his almost destroyed spear and the shield aside.

"Hey, are you for real, let’s just retreat you fool...", the older of the two brothers knew what his teammate was about to do and tried to persuade him one last time, but it was futile, for some reason he didn’t understand, the tanned man was decided to fight the blond woman in front of them, to the death.

"Ha!", with a loud shout, the color of Kyle’s skin changed from its previous tanned tone, to a dark copper one, apparently, he was also one of the people who kept a mortal version of a special ability.

Unlike the tall guy who fought with Mylene, he didn’t grow nor did get physically stronger, his ability was more like Alexandra’s one, it focused on defense, of course there is no way his defense was as good as that grayish-pink eyed girl, she literally manifested an armor of those black golden plaques to cover the area she wished to protect, the only difference is that she couldn’t control them to move around and use her special techniques as a mortal, but simply had them come out of her skin and could retrieve them into her body.

On the other hand, just like Lieze, she wasn’t being restricted in terms of attack power while in this place, what’s more Alexandra is a secondary body path cultivator, so, amusingly enough, in this place she has quite the high attack power, though her manual doesn’t focus in all out offensive anyway, but let’s leave that aside for now.

The point is that the tanned man was confident in his defense and he had a reason to, even weak points such as the eyes and mouth had their eyelids and lips changed into that dark copper tone, so they were protected currently.

"Clang!", Kyle clashed his fists against each other, which produced sparks as a sign that his skin wasn’t just metallic colored, but was actually hard like a metal.

"Humph!", the blond roc mother didn’t hesitate in the slightest though, she elegantly charged ahead, sword first towards the tall copper armored enemy.

"Clang!!!", as one would expect, sparks and metal clashing sounds were the result of Sarina’s sword colliding with the enemy’s fist, that being said, Sarina couldn’t push Kyle back easily in a 1v1 situation like before, which made the enemy cruelly smile, and Aster who watched his reaction, smirk.

’Fool, Sarina is fierce but she doesn’t brute force her way through everything unlike a certain dragon princess, her fighting style is much more of an elegant storm of attacks’, thought Aster.

Aster knew his girls really well, after the initial clash, Sarina who casually moved to the sides to avoid the spears of the brothers, tightened her grip on her sword’s hilt and then rained slashes on the tanned man.

"Clang!", continuous metallic sounds could be heard through the vicinity as Sarina slashed the enemy all over his body.

"Go to hell!", shouted the tanned man as he punched from above only for Sarina to nimbly dodge his fist.

"Booom!", Kyle’s strength wasn’t directly increased by his transformation, however he is a main body path cultivator and so even as a mortal his physical strength is way above that of a human, which combined with his hardened skin allowed him to make a small crater with just his punch.

"Swoosh!", he didn’t get slower either, so he directly recovered his stance and threw a wide kick aimed at Sarina’s side, but the blond roc mother casually avoided it by twisting her body to the side.

This situation repeated multiple times, so the ground nearby those two was now filled with small impact craters, but no matter how much Kyle tried he couldn’t land a single punch on Sarina.

’Unlike that guy I don’t get especially heavier when I use my lineage ability, so why, why can’t I land an attack on her!’, inwardly exclaimed Kyle as he changed his strategy, since he couldn’t attack Sarina directly, then he decided to target her weapon, since unlike the enemy’s body, the weapon had to make contact with him anyway.

"Stay still so I can kill you and move on to do the same to that little bit...", the tanned man’s words stuck in his mouth as his metal hardened fist was stopped in cold by... a pretty index finger.

"Crack!", shattering sounds were produced as cracks expanded from the point of contact between Sarina’s finger and the enemy’s fist, the concentrated point of impact combined with Sarina’s high physical strength resulted in the copper layer protecting the enemy’s hand to crack, but that was the minor of Kyle’s problems right now.

"Don’t get carried away, trash", said the blond roc mother.

"Hssss!", a bright current of electricity was suddenly radiated by Sarina’s hand and then sent at the body of the tanned man through his fist.

"Aghhhhh!", Kyle felt as if he was hit by hammer on the spot, his body jumped backwards a couple of meters forcing him to roll on the ground before he managed to get up.

At mortal level Sarina can’t produce the required electricity to heat up the air and produce a shockwave strong enough to send a person flying into the air, in fact with her current physical strength it would be easier and more effective to just punch or kick them into the distance, what she did was use her electricity to make Kyle’s muscles contract uncontrollably which resulted in him unwillingly do the whole jumping and rolling part himself.

Besides that, Kyle was actually a bad match for Sarina, not only was his strength nothing in front of the blond roc mother, but copper... is really good at conducting electricity, so just a small discharge was enough to make him jump like that.

"I wanted to show my darling more of my swordsmanship, but you had to go and ruin it", said the blond roc mother who slowly walked towards Kyle to then slash her sword at him.

"Clang!", Kyle actually managed to stop the attack, he grabbed Sarina’s sword with his right hand before she retrieved it to slash him again, and then tried to crush it’s blade.

"I’ve got you now... what?", the tanned man felt his hand lighter than before and then heard a clinking sound as three copper-colored fingers landed on the ground the next second, interestingly enough he didn’t bleed, a copper-colored layer blocked the wound and he seemed to receive reduced pain as well, because otherwise he would have been screaming now.

Apparently, his hardened skin blocked pain from outside impacts, but couldn’t do the same on the inside, which is why that electric discharge from earlier made him scream like a pig in the slaughterhouse.

"You guys are really bad at using pain-numbing effects properly", casually said Sarina, she saw the spears of the two brothers coming at her from the corner of her eyes and slashed her sword their way.

"Crack!", this time the impact was so strong that the spearheads directly exploded, which forced the two brothers to back away.

"What did you do, how did you cut me so easily and why is your damn weapon intact after all that!", exclaimed Kyle as he rushed at Sarina who snorted in response.

"Your defense might be high but since when has copper been stronger than steel, even if it’s a lineage ability, at the same level it’s not a match for a weapon crafted by my darling, I simply cut all your body once already so, that I can now separate whatever part I want, like this", said Sarina as she slashed her sword at the enemy’s neck.

This time there was no metallic clash, Sarina’s sword cleanly beheaded the enemy, what’s more now that Kyle was dead his ability started dissipating which resulted in his body falling apart into pieces.

"Thud!", the result was a pile of severed body parts on top of which a head with an expression of disbelief landed, Kyle died so fast that his shock over Sarina’s last words remained on his face even on death.

"Humph", the blond roc mother coldly snorted at the tanned man’s corpse, to then gaze at the two brothers who had retreated but didn’t try to escape.

"Clink", Sarina calmly sheathed her sword which was perfectly fine, its blade reflected the light one last time before it was kept in its scabbard.

"Please don’t be too violent with us ma’am, we surrender", said the older brother as he stood in front of his younger brother while raising his hands.

"Yeah, I’m sure our leader will pay you a satisfying price for our lives", added the younger brother, what a joke, they were in front of someone that could, as a mortal, manipulate such a fierce element as lightning, not to mention that swift but highly destructive swordsmanship which broke their steel spears, the blond woman in front of them was like a storm incarnated into a person.

"Take that guy’s stuff and walk towards my husband on your own", calmly said Sarina to which the brothers nodded, they saved Sarina the hassle of having to touch the corpse of the tanned man which was soaked in blood given that, well, he was basically cut into pieces.