Chapter 854: The second day of the evaluation trial (part 7)

Now, this guy was left in charge of what is basically a third of the well, now former total of members of the camp given that they weren’t fifteen anymore since Alice had killed the two in watch duty, for a good reason, he is quite strong.

Not only as a main body path cultivator, he didn’t weaken as much as the majority of mercenaries, but he is also one of the three who had accompanied the leader of their group for the longest period of time.

So, he is also one of the most experienced among their whole group, amusingly enough out of the original three, one was burned to ashes by the blue flaming board, which is why this one who was third in rank within their team, got an ascension.

But the death of his former "superior" didn’t only bring good things for him, you see, this guy in particular had actually not landed a finger on those girls, for whose suffering Blue Sky had punished their side as much as it was allowed to.

Aside from James, only the leader of the mercenary group and this guy hadn’t touched those girls, so why did they receive a completely different kind of treatment from the blue flaming board you ask, well, it’s actually quite simple, their position and reasons for the previous were like night and day.

James, genuinely didn’t like what was being done by his teammates, and while he wasn’t also the type to stick out his neck for the sake of others, it is also true that he was at the bottom in terms of position within his group, not because he was the weakest or the youngest, but because he was the newest.

And even if he had said something about it, nothing would have changed, that doesn’t change the fact that he was a coward because if he honestly had put his mind into it, he could have helped those girls, a little of poison in the food of his "teammates" here and there would have done the trick, he was given annoying tasks such as cooking alongside Maurice, so no one suspected him of handling the food.

But he didn’t want to risk his life and to be fair it’s also not like he knew those girls, that’s why he still was punished with having his cultivation reduced, but the blue flaming board wasn’t born yesterday, so it also took his situation into account and judged him to have a chance of redeeming himself.

That didn’t mean he was out of the hook just by the previous, because his life was ultimately in the hands of Aster and the others, so you could say that the reason as to why he is still breathing was both due to him not being a piece of trash and because he got lucky too.

James also proved to deserve this chance, because when he handed the notes with till the list detail about his former teammates in them, Aster and the others could tell that he didn’t put so much effort into squeezing his brain to fulfill that, because he was ordered or because he wanted to completely eliminate the threat that the team to whom he was considered a traitor, represented to himself.

There was guilt in the letters he wrote as well as anger and hatred towards his own cowardice in his eyes, which is why he while on the low side, was put in charge of something in the camp by Aster himself, namely treating and processing the leather which was later used to make the brigandines to protect the girls.

In comparison, the other two who also didn’t lay a finger on those girls, were irredeemable trash, the leader was the one who gave the green light for all that to happen, with a single word of his, he could have stopped the hell those poor girls experienced but he actually didn’t even think about what happened to them after giving his permission.

As to why he didn’t participate, it’s because he was occupied thinking on how to obtain benefits from this place through the red cloud supervisor and didn’t care about anything else than that and surviving of course.

Then we have this other guy, who was the fourth in the food chain at the time, right below the leader and the other two who had accompanied him from the very beginning, he could have persuaded the leader if he wanted to, but he wanted to use this situation in which they were "vulnerable" given the existence of the red cloud, to show the leader that he was more "responsible" than the other two, which is why he didn’t participate as well.

The direct second in command was the first one Blue Sky burned to ashes by the way, so you can imagine how actively he participated in what happened back then, and there you have it, that’s what earned them a nicely designed scar "tattoo" and losing their cultivation completely as well as losing their balls and everything down there, instead of the kind of punishment that James received.

Ironically, whether the blue flaming board did it on purpose or if it was karma getting back to this guy, he did get the ascension he wanted so much courtesy of the death of the former vice-leader, and since he was a main body path cultivator, while he couldn’t jump to said position, because the former third in command still lived, he was now third in terms of authority, but second in terms of strength in the camp.

"Crack!", which is why he couldn’t believe it when he saw his bone knives which he slashed at full strength towards the red-eyed girl who had just mocked him, violently crumble when they landed on a black scaled tail which got in the way of his attack.

"What... aghhh!", before the enemy had the chance to properly react surprised by the previous, he was overwhelmed by a huge killing intent-driven lineage pressure, which as a result made the enemy fall on his ass to then scream in fear.

"Hey, they might be harmless toys, but how dare you aim to attack this beautiful face of mine which belongs to Aster", said Alice whose eyes had gained a brighter red glow than before, as she kicked the enemy on the face.

"Bleeegh!!!", Alice didn’t put her back into that attack, but a casual kick from the dragon princess whose foot was properly protected by metal reinforced shoes, resulted in blood and broken teeth splattering all over the place, naturally she completely destroyed his mouth, nose and eyes as well.

"Mmm, the purpose of catching some bastards from your camp alive is to have them answering a few questions for us, but in that state there is... no wait, you could use your hands or feet to answer", casually said Alice as she lashed her tail at the enemy who was laying down letting out muffled sounds while covering his destroyed face with his hands.

"Crack!", and that was the sound of all the bones in his arms and legs being shattered by that pretty black scaled tail.

"Mmphhhhh!!!", unable to properly articulate words, only a strange sound was produced by the enemy when he tried to scream due to pain, which was met with the wild dragon princess happily adding.

"Now you are completely useless, which means that I won’t have points reduced from my score if I kill you~", Alice’s red eyes glowed in a pretty light of the same color as she used her tail to blast away the enemy’s head from his neck.

"Boooom!", said head turned into mush as it heavily landed on the wall, which startled both the sole one guy among the young ones who had managed to recover his consciousness as well as Mule who was in the middle of dragging the fainted enemies to the side.

The results were different though, the black horse was only startled because the head landed close to him, but the gory result of it exploding by the impact didn’t cause him any effect, that other guy who had regained his consciousness on the other hand... well, he peed himself.

’S-She is a damn monster!!!’, he screamed to his insides as he fainted from shock again.

"I stopped feeling that leader guy’s presence when I dealt with the bow users, so I guess there won’t be any more fighting on my end, I didn’t get to use the swords and the shield but whatever", mumbled Alice with a disappointed voice to then giggle as she added.

"Mmm, it’s a shame that the fight for me is over, but on the other hand, I just completed my unique mission, there are so many "rewards" I want to ask from Aster~", happily said the wild dragon princess as she sat down to then lose herself in her own imaginary scenarios.

In case you wonder why is she not going berserk given the kind of scene it was just described when Alice utterly destroyed that guy just because he aimed to slash her face, which by the way would have resulted in the enemy realizing that his bone blades were unable to cut though Alice’s outer skin.

Such inferior weapons could only realistically harm the wild dragon princess if aimed to the most delicate and unguarded areas of her body, like her eyes for example, and similar to what happened when the ligress casually blocked the steel needles thrown at her eyes, if Alice closed her eyelids, despite the bone knives being wielded at short range and by a main body path cultivator, the attack wouldn’t have reached her eyes.

Both Alice and the ligress are that much of a menace, to cut through their bodies, you need steel weapons, to fight them at close range and a decently high amount of physical strength, only with strength on par with the current Aria and a decent weapon could you change to middle range fighting and still be able to do something to those two.

And evidently that guy didn’t have neither of the previous, so from the very beginning, his attack was mere child’s play for Alice, but that just seemed to trigger one of those periods of excitement in which she could become extremely violent without any real provocation, given the red light that shone in her eyes.

So why was she instead happily humming while imagining future happy scenarios, was that perhaps not one of those dangerous periods of excitement which stimulated her lineage you wonder, and the answer is that it was, in fact it was one strong enough to compete with the ones Alice experienced first, in case you have forgotten they originally happened by their lineage experiencing big moments of growth and because Sarina had entered the scene too.

The previous was because during the few years in which Aster had travelled through their native planet and its surroundings to gain experience, he had met other women but none ended up joining the family, Aria was the only "outsider" as Alice called the ice princess to mess with her.

But then Sarina entered the scene and it was during a mission where Alice was supposed to be the main center of Aster’s attention too, of course both Alice and Lilia were calmed down with a bit of help from Aster, not to mention that from the very beginning they really didn’t mean any harm towards Aria, Sarina, Kana and the other girls of the family, they were simply a pair of "rough" dragonesses in their early stage of growth.

And that was supposed to be over, so what is going on then, why did Alice seemed to be going through the same, with the difference that it appears to be under her control you wonder, well, that’s exactly the case.

Alice is not nicknamed "wild dragon princess" for nothing, unlike Lilia who reached balance by having dragon Lilia with whom she shared her love for Aster, appear, Alice took a completely different path ever since the moment she stopped chasing after her mother.

Instead of reaching balance in a similar way as Lilia, Alice instead purposedly made her lineage grow wilder and then overwhelmed the havoc that the periods of excitement could cause with her own, you could think of it as fighting poison with poison, it worked for her, so now, no matter how strong her impulses grew, she won’t lose control of herself.

Well, when she explained that to others, Aria directly complained that the "normal" Alice lacks control anyway, so that shouldn’t be considered an improvement, but yeah that’s how the wild dragon princess handled herself, she controlled her lineage’s impulse with her own impulses.

The funnier part is that when she was asked how did she even think of approaching the problem from that angle, the answer was that if she could, she wouldn’t share Aster with anyone, not even with herself, and that’s why a "dragon Alice" wasn’t created.

As one would expect from Alice, even her reason was quite something else, but then, that’s what made her Aster’s wild dragon princess.

’If we assist the red eyed female human in appealing to the human king, then she won’t pay us any attention besides the strictly necessary, I must instruct those fools to cease any thought of rebelling and behave if they don’t want to die!’, thought the black horse as he "softly" kicked away the guy who had peed himself, instead of holding onto him with his teeth.

The black horse was relieved after discovering that it was safer to be in the devil’s hands than in its way.

Leaving aside Alice who completely opposite to how she behaved a moment ago, now actually looked like a calm beauty, softly smiling under the morning sky previous to the sunrise, and Mule whose plan was a success aside, there are still more than half of the members of this camp whose fates we haven’t seen yet, so let’s change the scenery.

...

Like Alice had said earlier, when she knocked out the bow users, the leader of this camp who was looking from afar, seemed to disappear and the reason behind of it is simple, he directly turned around and ran away.

What a joke, even he couldn’t do such a thing as completely incapacitate one of his subordinates with such ease as the red eyed fully equipped woman did, not to mention that the leader of the mercenaries had seen Mule’s actions and he too reached a similar conclusion as that other guy, which was that Alice was probably a spirit tamer, so, his chances of defeating her in a direct confrontation were either zero or in the negatives.

As an experienced leader of a mercenary group, and someone from a heavenly quadrant that later joined a divine firmament, this is naturally not the first time he has found himself facing an overwhelmingly higher ranked "obstacle" in his path, and while he had lost a lot of mercenaries and temporary teammates in all of said cases, he had managed to survive every time, because he wasn’t stupid.

It’s worth mentioning that contrary to what that guy whom Alice destroyed, believed, despite the long time they had been with the leader, they are not even close to be the first mercenary group led by said leader, precisely because of the previous, this was his tenth time leading a mercenary group.

’Damn it, nothing is going well ever since that stupid red cloud disappeared, first we were crippled by those horrible blue flames, then the guys we had captured freed themselves and taking advantage of a moment of weakness joined the group as equals and now, some crazy bitch appeared out of nowhere and it just had to be someone leagues above our level, what fucking bad luck!’, cursed the mercenary to his insides as he rushed through the camp, towards a "hidden" spot at the back of the camp.

’Whatever, I just need to start over again, same old story, but given the current situation I can’t discard those guys so soon, since I haven’t given the signal, they must have left towards the designated meeting spot far from the camp, so I’ll just get rid of that crazy woman and leave as well’, he thought.

It has just been established and by the camp leader himself no less, that he perfectly knows he is no match for Alice, and it was also said that he is not stupid, so how come he was affirming that he was going to get rid of the wild dragon princess and if that was the case then why he was clearly planning to leave the camp you wonder.

Well, both situations were tightly related, given that to where he was rushing was the area where Regina and Fawn saw and noted down that there was a large wood container with a foul-smelling viscous liquid in it, in other words he was rushing towards where the poison they applied to their weapons and other defensive measures was stored.

"Just you wait you crazy red-eyed bitch, I’ll kill you and every other person on your side before you notice it", said the leader as he took out a piece of cloth to then tie it around his lower face, covering his mouth and nose as he approached a now closed container, given that they of course didn’t leave the poison out in the open, and only removed the lid when they had to take some of it or put more materials into the mix.

But then, the strong rancid smell which the enemy leader expected to be hit with, despite the wet cloth he had put to cover his mouth and nose, didn’t reach him when he first raised the lid of the large container.

"Huh, what is going on?", wondered the enemy leader, they never removed the lid in a single go, but first simply raised it to let most of the toxic fumes that accumulated to come out, before completely moving the lid aside.

Now imagine his surprise when the enemy leader moved the wood lid and was met with not the blackish viscous liquid he was expecting, but instead a clear-water like substance.

"What is this, did those bastards betray me and took the poison with them while filling the container with water... no, there is no way they could have cleanly replace the poison in such a short time, besides this is not water, there is some herb scent to it, what the hell is happening!", cursed the enemy leader

There is an old saying that states that one should be careful with their wishes, because they might come true and right now, the wish for an answer of the leader was listened to, and what’s more, by a pretty angel-like girl with pale white hair and skin, as well as eyes of a soft lavender tone that were barely noticeably different from the white tone of her sclerae.

"That’s antidote, so no matter how much you spread of it on dry branches and leaves, the smoke produced by them burning won’t be detrimental for neither people nor the surrounding environment", said the white haired "angel", which was of course Vivian.

"Antidote, nonsense how the hell did the poison we worked in for weeks, turned into antidote out of nowhere, this has to be a trick!", exclaimed the enemy leader, only realizing a second later, that he didn’t notice when did that girl whose appearance is too outstanding to be ignored, appear close enough for him to see her at the distance.

"Are you a member of the white ghost race or something, where the hell did you come from, why is your group attacking us!", said the leader as he jumped a few meters backwards, he was using the fact that the white-haired girl seemed to have the predisposition to chat during a fight, to gain some distance.

The white ghost race of whom the enemy leader was talking to, is a high ranked race that can be found in yin rich divine firmaments by the way, like a fourth part of the one to whom the flame meridian heavenly quadrant from which he originated was now connected.

"How rude, I didn’t appear out of nowhere, you just arrived later than me, as to why we are attacking you, that’s simple, you guys are a bunch of pieces of trash, so of course we’ll get rid of you if you ever cross our path", said Vivian.

She wasn’t lying, she has been here from the very beginning, which makes you wonder how the hell did the enemy leader not notice a girl who seems to incarnate the white color, in a low illumination environment like early in the morning, which should have made Vivian stand out like a sore thumb, as she is doing right now.

And the answer is related to another girl whose "skin" tone is also particularly of an eye-catching white pale tone, Espi.

Vivian was using a new alchemic product created by Mylene, which used a pulverized scale of the little wyrm and Aster’s blood as its base, a "camouflage" elixir.

Of course, the thing didn’t turn Vivian impossible to notice from her surroundings as Espi does, certainly the little wyrm’s ability works through her scales, but they have to be integrated to her body for that to work, at mortal level Espi’s scales lose the vast majority of their adaptative capacity when they leave the little wyrm’s body, but that’s what Aster’s blood is for, given that it has the capacity to "boost" the effect to whatever it is used for.

So, with that at her disposition, Mylene made an elixir that if applied to the body would reduce one’s presence, that’s why the enemy despite seeing Vivian felt such a light impression from her, that he thought she was a member of the white ghost race.