The travel didn't last long, time flowed differently in the dimensional tunnel so while for him it was more or less one minute, but in the outside world it was just a matter of a few seconds.
Once they left that gray world, they appeared above the ancient forest, according to the map there were nearly fifty corrupted hiding here, after finding an open space they descended from the sky.
Aster evaluated their surroundings, leaving aside the corrupted that roamed here and there, the ancient forest was actually quite a decent place to rest, although the trees were tall the vegetation wasn't dense enough to not let the sunlight illuminate the place.
Kana started running around the place, looking at the different flowers followed by Sarina, Alice and Aria placed a blanket on the floor and laid down to look at the sky and enjoy the breeze, Lilia on the other hand was clinging to her son.
Mylene and Eris left to get rid of the corrupted, Aster originally was just going to laze around to wait for those two to return, but after reaching the spirit opening realm he felt like stretching his body a bit.
"Ladies, how about we take a little walk around the forest while we wait?".
Lilia smiled, "Sure darling let's have a little date ♥".
Alice listened to her mother trying to get an advantage over them, and she immediately stood up.
"I also want to go, who know what will you two do in the forest if we leave you alone".
Aria nodded; this was one of the rare cases where she completely agreed with Alice.
"I also want to go, this forest is quite relaxing after all".
Kana tugged Aster's sleeve, "Me too big brother!!!", he smiled remembering how she was so eager to play with him and Alice but it was postponed thanks to all the things that have been happening.
To everyone's surprise, Aster lifted Kana by her waist and helped her sat on his right shoulder, there was a light faint of golden light surrounding her because he used the paragon body to prevent her from falling.
Kana's eyes sparkled, she smiled at Aster and then said.
"Things look different from this height, thanks big brother!!!".
Aster saw Alice looking at him from the corner of her eyes and he laughed, "Sis are you feeling jealous of little Kana?".
Alice looked away, "We have done extremer things anyway humph".
Aster didn't know whether he should laugh or cry, back when they were "young", unlike Kana, Alice has always been similar in height with him due to the difference in age, besides she became his lover quite early so they skipped these little interactions.
He looked at Kana and made fun of Alice, "You heard that Kana, your sister Alice is jealous of you".
Kana laughed, "Big brother don't tease sister Alice too much".
Leaving that little episode aside, they started walking into the forest, to make up for teasing his sister, Aster wrapped his left arm around Alice's waist and kept her as close to him as possible as they enjoyed the beautiful natural scenery of the place.
Kana explained about some of the trees and flowers that grew in the forest, the ground trembled from time to time but the origin of the impacts were quite far, a sign that Mylene and Eris successfully found the corrupted.
The leaves of a three a few meters away shook, a second later a shadow was shot from one of the branches, the thing pointed its claws at Kana's throat but it suddenly screamed and grabbed its own head as if it was suffering some kind of severe pain.
*Aghhhhrr!!!*, the sounds became louder until the thing stopped moving, there was blood coming from its eyes, nose, ears and mouth.
Lilia frowned her brows; she didn't see nor feel her son attacking with her spirit sense, so it was a mystery how he killed the corrupted, it was just the equivalent of a star axys realm cultivator but still.
"Darling, how did you do that, was it some kind of hidden weapon?", although it was something Lilia hardly imagined, she wouldn't be surprised if Aster managed to discover a way to avoid her spirit sense with a weapon, but apparently that was not the case.
"No, I wanted to try combining a basic soul attack and annihilation but it worked better than what I imagined".
Soul path cultivators could use their soul avatars to attack others, but they needed to learn an offensive technique for that, besides at the spirit opening realm the effect should not be strong enough to kill a star axys cultivator.
Aster smiled, "I focused my spirit sense into that thing since the leaves of the tree moved, it took me a while for the attack to kick in".
"That's… only logical, that's the basic kind of soul attack, it shouldn't be lethal but considering how dangerous is your attribute I guess it's understandable, still your soul avatar should be worn out after that right?".
Aster closed his eyes, he looked into the mind space, more accurately right below Hyperion, his soul avatar which was like a copy made out of golden light of him did look dimmer than before.
Lilia shook her head, "Don't be too impulsive the next time darling, your soul might be quite strong but it's never a good idea to exhaust it, because it will cause side effects like dizziness, headache, loss of memory or worse things… later I will give you a soul attack technique for you to practice".
Aster nodded, right now he felt like a kid with a new toy, long time ago his mother explained him what path had the higher ground against the others, body was strong against energy, energy beat soul and soul was the weakness of body.
Of course, the realms affected the result of a battle, and although it was not a good idea to rely in external things, most body cultivators had a treasure to protect themselves against soul attacks for example.
The rest of the walk was quite relaxed, they saw some little animals but none of them was even in the earth origin realm probably because the corrupted killed everything that could become a threat, the problem was that damaged the ecosystem which resulted in the patches of yellow vegetation that could be seen from time to time.
Not too long after they returned to the open space where they originally landed, Eris and Mylene caught up with them ten minutes later, Eris didn't say anything but Mylene on the other hand handed Aster a couple of spatial rings.
"Not all the corrupted were mindless beasts, there were a couple which retained their rationality, these are their rings".
Aster looked at the contents, there were just a few spirit stones and some low-level treasures and spirit herbs, nothing he needed so he just returned them to Mylene.
"What you get is yours… the only exception is things that are needed to help other members of the family okay?".
Mylene received the things and nodded, although these things were not valuable, seeing that Aster wasn't greedy enough to just strip her out of everything she earned, left a good impression on her.
"Thanks, if I find one of the things on your list, I will give it to you right away", she mumbled.
Now that there was nothing else to do here Lilia transported everyone to next most agglomerated spot in the map, apparently the corrupted had some kind of "camps", because the first place they visited was near Luonto, and this second one was in the forest of what used to be Riga.
This time things were faster, because the corrupted weren't as spread as back at Luonto, so Mylene eliminated them in just one go, these guys were more organized than the previous ones an underground shelter which could be entered through a cave.
Of course they entered the cave to see of they could find something, but besides some inner constructions similar to rooms carved in the rocks there was nothing else.
The process repeated until there were no more spots in the map, Eris then told Lilia the coordinates of the place where she hid the master key to the barrier that isolated this galaxy.
The next stop was something Aster didn't expect… a graveyard, and not only that but it was one that has clearly been neglected by at least a dozen of years.
p
"Eris, I have to say that your tastes are slightly weird for me".
Eris sighed, she pointed her hand at a random tomb and the ground exploded revealing that there was nothing there, no coffin nor corpse.
"This place was created by me so there is nothing on these graves, and it's so poorly maintained that no one would come to look for treasures".
She didn't lie there was nothing on the graves, Eris instead approached an old tree and touched a couple of specific places, then a hidden compartment which contained a box covered in bandages appeared at the base of the tree.
Mylene sighed, she has been looking for that box for a long time, and judging by the methods used by Eris, she would have never found the thing.
Eris opened the box and showed the content to everyone, it was a little disc made out of some kind of ore which no one recognized, on which there were a lot of symbols engraved.
Eris remembered she agreed to teach rune mastering to Aster, before she explained the function of the disc.
"This is a formation core, although there are runes engraved on many places of the planets that conform this galaxy, even if they were to be somehow destroyed as long as this thing exists, the barrier won't disappear".
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