For some reason the mansion lights were turned off so outside of the room was a bit dark, still the light coming from the room was enough for Aster to see the face of the person that was in front of him, it was one of the two guards that were protecting the entrance to Sarina's room.
But there were two differences from her current appearance, first her eyes had a vague look and seemed to be out of focus and the second and probably most important was that… there was hand piercing her chest.
Her body fell to the floor making a dull sound.
*thud*
Aster took a few steps ahead before closing the door of the room behind of him, the hilt and half of the blade of a knife could be seen sticking out of his chest.
Sarina rushed from the first floor and when she saw Aster, she immediately took out some medicines and other first aid elements.
"Are you okay? one of the guards suddenly went crazy, I managed to run with Kana but then I noticed her returning upstairs…".
She stopped speaking before looking downwards only to see a sword stabbed on her stomach.
…
"Why?", she asked before her body fell backwards, although she was still breathing.
Aster smiled.
"I would like to say something like "the same technique doesn't work twice against me", but to be honest it didn't work the first time anyway", he said.
Sarina spat some blood; her face twisted a couple of times before it changed back to her original appearance… the maid that guided them to their room "Lynn".
"So now, the question is why the guard attacked me but I guess you won't say anything even if I kill you, blah, blah, blah or something like that right?".
Lynn laughed out loud while blood dripped from her mouth.
"Since that poison knife stabbed your body, you are dead anyway, so I can tell you that my master asked me to kill you while looking like someone related to the Luonto continent, since you are not a native from here then this will for sure bring a calamity to this place".
Aster waggled his index finger.
"Villains surely loose because they talk too much", he said before the knife "stabbing" his chest simply came off, the part of the blade that was supposed to have been inside his body was nowhere to be seen.
Aster dusted off his shirt, which wasn't even ripped on the part where the knife was "stabbed", "I'm becoming an especial effects pro sooner or later", he thought.
Lynn's eyes widened.
"Y-you what the hell are you… that knife is supposed to pierce trough the defense of a star alignment cultivator easily".
Aster smiled, the last time Lilia tried how tough was his body she had to use the strength of a star tribulation to cut his skin, of course she stopped immediately when the first drop of blood appeared, he needed some of his blood for a little experiment anyway.
Aster was about to start interrogating when Lynn's veins became visible and turned black, she was dead, which made him frown his eyebrows, he didn't see her breaking a capsule of poison or something in her mouth, but right now that wasn't his priority.
He walked to Sarina's room and the other guard was leaning against the wall, there was blood in the floor and she had foam coming from his mouth, he tried to open the door but there was some weird pitch-black talisman stuck to it which gave off a dangerous aura.
Aster extended his hand and the whole door illuminated in golden before it was turned into nothingness, whatever was the effect of the talisman it didn't have time to activate, now that the door was gone, he saw Sarina standing in front of her bed where Kana was peacefully sleeping.
Her expression relaxed when she saw that it was Aster the one entering her room, her legs gave in and she fell to the floor, Aster finally felt her current cultivation, she was only a middle stellar constellation cultivator probably because corruption has been eating away her vitality for such a long time.
After a moment of silence Sarina spoke.
"I'm sorry, I suddenly heard some noises outside of the room, my guard closed the door while she fought against the other guard, the next thing I knew was that Kana fell asleep, I tried to open the door but…".
She showed her hands to Aster which made his eyes widen a bit, he immediately took out a bottle with some kind of red liquid mixed with golden and poured it on her hands.
He did the right thing eliminating the door along with that black talisman, Sarina's hands were covered in chemical burns, like the ones caused by some kind of acid, to explain how bad were the wounds… her bones were visible in some parts.
Sarina saw the caring expression on the young man treating her wounds and she felt warm, but on the other hand she was angry, she was the host but due to the stupid corruption she was so weak that if not for the man in front of her, who knows what could have happened to her and more importantly to her daughter.
Feeling the burning sensation in her hands suddenly disappearing, she looked downwards and saw her hand healing at a visible ratio, after pouring the whole liquid of the bottle on her hands, Aster covered them with bandages.
"This should be enough for them to heal in a couple of hours".
Sarina sighed and Aster helped her to stand up and sit on her bed.
"I keep increasing my debt with you… please check if Kana is fine, I didn't see anything bad but my spirit sense is still not completely recovered so I might be wrong", she said.
Aster nodded, he placed two fingers above Kana's nose to see if she was breathing properly and there was no problem with that, he gently moved her a couple of times which made her slightly open her eyes.
*Yawnnnn*, with a cute sound Kana rubbed her eyes a couple of times with her hands to fully wake up, she saw her mother sat close to her and Aster standing next to the bed.
"Mm? Big brother Aster why are you here, do you… want to hear mom's night stories with me ?".
Aster smiled, he turned to see Sarina before saying.
"She is fine but… we have a problem in our hands right now".
Sarina let out a sigh of relief, she hugged Kana and gave her a kiss on her forehead while being careful enough so she didn't notice the bandages in her hands.
"Stay in bed dear, I need to speak with your big brother and his sister, okay?".
Kana would have normally accompanied her mother but for some reason she felt quite sleepy so she nodded and accommodated her head on the pillow again.
"Ok, tomorrow I will play with big brother and big sister anyway", she said.
Sarina smiled, she stood up while unconsciously letting her weight lean on Aster since she was having trouble to move after receiving such heavy wounds while her body was still recovering.
Aster didn't mind her actions, they needed to see discover what the hell happened, so he wanted Sarina to see the corpses in case she noticed something he didn't.
They left the room, fortunately the corpse of the guard was leaned almost a meter away from the door so Kana didn't see it although the door was gone, Sarina's expression was angry, the girl that was dead in front of her was the one of the two persons that have been following her for a really long time.
"Hellen… I swear whoever did this will pay for what they did to you", she said before personally closing the eyes of the corpse.
Since she didn't notice anything weird on her corpse with the only exception that she was killed due to a poisoned weapon, they walked away to the part where the corpse of the other guard was laying in ground close to Lynn's one.
"Andrea… what happened to you", she mumbled.
Sarina saw Lynn's corpse using clothes similar to the ones she normally wears and she gritted her teeth, that gave her a hint of what happened here, Aster suddenly extended her hand and a screeching sound echoed in the hall.
*Grreeechhh*, a black worm with spikes all over its body was surrounded by Rigel's flame, once Sarina saw it all the points connected, she asked Aster to destroy the worm which he did, in less than a second the little thing disappeared within the blue flames.
"Let's go to the dining room, there should have been more maids… but I guess they are in a similar situation or they fell asleep just like Kana", she said.
They went downstairs, Alice who was dressed again tagged along, Sarina changed her "support pillar", she noticed how close she was to Aster so she asked Alice to help her go down the stairs instead.
Alice gave her brother a couple of gazes but she noticed he didn't do anything to Kana's mother, so she just went along to find out who was the culprit of disturbing her fun.
As expected, when they were in the dining room, they saw the other two maids that stayed in the night shift dead in the floor.
Sarina sat on the table and rested for a moment, Alice sat in front of her while Aster saw the wounds on the corpses, they were clearly done by the same weapon that killed the other guard which was probably the knife which was destroyed when the second guard tried to stab him.
This time he tried to look with his spirit sense to see if there were other worms similar to the one, he saw near the corpse of Lynn but Sarina stopped him from doing so.
"There is no need for that, that thing was a heart binding worm… something used by the royal family of the Riga continent to control their assassin squad, there aren't too many of them since it's really hard to nourish them, so there won't be two in the same place".
Aster sat next to Alice; they both were interested in whatever Sarina discovered after looking at the bodies, especially Alice, "someone has to suffer for ruining this young lady's important night", she thought.
Since her hands were wounded, she was wearing her spatial ring on her neck using a necklace, Sarina took out a bottle of some kind of liqueur, she took out three cups and poured some of it in each cup before drinking hers in one go.
Aster tried the liqueur, maybe because of the paragon body or his bloodline but his metabolism was so fast he didn't get drunk so he enjoyed trying the different drinks a cultivation world had to offer.
Sarina sighed.
"I more or less can reconstruct what happened, the question is if you two really want to be involved on it, I already have a big debt of gratitude with you Aster, so I would understand if you want to leave this place and never see me nor kana again…".
Alice shook her head.
"My brother doesn't offer his help too often since not too many people is worth it but once he does, he will do it to the end, besides they interrupted our… "sleeping" time so whoever it was, it won't go unpunished".
Aster was amused by his sister's reaction, "she is really pissed because we couldn't continue with what we were doing, I wonder how much Aria asked to the heavens for Alice to not succeed… to the point that something actually interrupted us hahaha", he thought.
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