Continuous explosions followed by electricity discharges, could be seen around the mountain as Aster kept ascending, every time a gust of wind assaulted him, Aster parried it with his own body, enduring the shockwave before he simply continued.
But when he was about to reach the peak of the mountain, his instincts rang like an alarm, the last gust of wind was completely different than the previous ones.
It would be more accurate to call it an air cannon, than a gust, wherever it passed the sky vibrated due to the heavy pressure it brought with it.
Also, the area it covered was so wide that it was impossible to dodge.
Aster smirked as his aura changed, from the majestic and calm one that the paragon body granted him, to a sharp and indomitable one.
His left index finger shone with golden spirit energy, which was then cladded by another type of energy which blurred the space surrounding Aster's hand.
"Sever", with his finger pointing at the wave of wind that was charging against him, Aster mumbled a single word and then under the surprised eyes of the woman at the second floor of the castle, the wave of wind was cleanly divided.
The wind passed at both sides of Aster, disheveling his hair a bit, but not clashing against him.
"Ghost sword plus sharpening and he also added spirit and soul energy… how the hell did a kid of the young generation managed to balance a combination of four different energies at the same time, without it exploding on his face, just how much control over energy does he have?", mumbled the woman.
In defense of the woman, even Rya has once said that Aster's body was a miracle, the fact that so many different lineages and other things were able to reside within the same host in harmony, it was simply incredible.
After surpassing that last obstacle Aster landed on the peak of the mountain, and took a moment to look at his surroundings from above, then he nodded as if he confirmed something.
Aster's spirit sense spread across the whole area, and he was able to feel the limits of the place in which the trial was taking part.
'I wonder how much time it took to the Emerald Whirlwind to create a lot of similar "stages", so that everyone could face the trials at the same time without having to clash with others', he thought.
Aster came out of his daze as he felt the ground below his feet tremble, before the mountain shrank until he was again at ground level, this time there was only one path left which left to a huge golden decorated door, Aster saw that the sign at the side of the road changed one last time.
[Congratulation on surpassing the three riddles, please advance to the second trial and good luck]
Aster chuckled and then walked towards the door, opening and closing it behind him.
The next thing Aster knew was that he appeared in a closed space with the size of a room, something that caught his attention was that the room was in blank, it had literally nothing, just a white room.
But then a sign appeared on the wall in front of him.
[Please wait a moment while the other participants finish the first trial (the time flow is the normal one)]
"Oh, so we are back to the outside world, for this trial", mumbled Aster as he sat down cross legged.
Inside the spaces designated for the first trial, everyone was already finishing either the three riddles or accepting they wouldn't be able to solve the next one and advancing to the second trial.
Among Aster's team, Ixas, Natasha and Charlotte were finishing the second riddle, while Vivian advanced after completing just one, but the latter had a big smile on her face, for her the discovery she just made was more important than increasing the possibility of getting the Emerald Whirlwind as she was sure everything will be alright.
Kana on the other hand managed to get some advantage over the other participants, since the poisonous spirit beasts gave her a ride through the swamp, so at this point she had already climbed half of the mountain.
How do you ask, well the answer is simple, when the gusts of wind appeared besides a messy hair, most of the wind simply flowed around her, there were cases in which her feet slipped but the wind blew in the contrary direction which sent her upwards advancing a couple of meters up the ladder.
…
What was hours for the others were just some minutes to Aster due to the difference in the flow of the time between the outside world, and the space for the trial.
And a couple of minutes later, the ones that were able to finish the three riddles, two or at least one passed to the second trial, while those who failed all their tries at the three, or passed one but got greedy and then failed at their second, or third were expelled from the green castle without any word of goodbye.
Just when Aster was starting to get bored, the sign on the wall changed its message.
[Congratulations on making it to the second trial, here your problem-solving skill will be tested, get out of the room in less than fifteen minutes (What will be evaluated to pass to the third trial, is not the fact of being able to escape or not, but the process) good luck]
Aster stood up from the floor as he saw the walls of the room illuminating with runes, divine runes to be more accurate, thanks to Eris's lessons he was able to recognize some of them to a certain extent.
"Fire, water, metal, wind, life, integrity…", Aster raised an eyebrow, the runes representing different attributes and elements kept appearing, until all the wall was fully covered by them.
But the runes didn't stop there, instead of that more runes kept appearing and overlapped with the first layer of runes, and the process continued until Aster couldn't tell one rune among all that mass of mixed formation.
The world seemed to slow down for Aster, without him having to do anything, the golden armor manifested itself over his body.
Then without any warning rocks, fire, water, ice, poison, wind and other things Aster didn't even recognize, were shot at him from the walls of the room.
He was still in the invincible period of the armor, and his body was sturdy enough to not be sent flying due to the impact, but the barrage of attacks did manage to slow him down as he was "navigating against the current".
But then as he was about to reach the door, the whole barrage of attacks completely stopped, Aster who was pushing through nearly lost his balance due to the sudden change on the situation.
"Oh, come on".
Aster looked upwards, just to see a white cloud forming on the roof of the room, before electricity started crackling on the cloud.
When he thought that maybe the Emerald Whirlwind cut the source of spirit energy of the formation, which were clearly not working as intended, all the formations condensed in a sole rune that occupied the whole roof of the room, then about two circles of different runes encircled that one, meaning it wasn't a divine rune formation, as there were just three properties included.
But that didn't mean it was weaker than the previous barrage, in fact the sensation that formation gave off was one he had already experienced before, but this one wasn't as strong as that time.
"Punishment", mumbled Aster, recognizing the meaning of the rune to some extent.
The electricity changed form the normal blue tone, to a blood red one, before all of it gathered in a single lightning that was shot towards Aster, clearly aiming at him.
"Humph, even the real deal was unable to kill me, a mere imitation can go to hell", Aster snorted, his body became a miniature sun as he started radiating an intense amount of golden light.
"Haaa!", with a roar, Aster punched the red lightning, for a split of a second the world seemed to stop, then a everything went blank as the two attacks clashed.
"Booom!", the result was that the whole room was blown away, due to the clash, the roof which was producing that red lightning included, though the source of spirit energy used had a deeper reserve than Aster, annihilation was the doom of any spirit formation which wasn't fully hermetic.
Aster focused all his reserves of annihilation in a single ray, and cut a hole though the lightning erasing a part of the formation making it collapse, which destroyed the room while a pillar of golden light raised all the way from the room to about one hundred meters.
It was only stopped as the woman on the second floor of the mansion, appeared and redirected a tsunami of spirit energy which was ate away by that monstrous golden energy, which devoured about thirty times its amount to be neutralized.
Needless to say, but the woman was in awe right now, previously when she saw the misfunction of the room she actually cut the source of energy of the formation, but the formation didn't stop.
She then tried to intervene as what was being summoned by that formation on the roof, wasn't something a mortal should see in its lifetime.
"Hey, are you alright!", shouted the woman as she approached the debris left from what used to be a trial room, she then saw a collapsed wall being pushed away, and then the black-haired youth whose group has turned this round of trials a rollercoaster of emotions for her, emerged from the ruins.
Aster cleaned his mouth with the backside of his hand, the mix of red and golden liquid which was left on it, was the proof that the previous confrontation still affected him.
"Damn, though the feeling of danger was less, the intensity of the attack was stronger, luckily my lineage had increased, or that lightning would have left a mark", mumbled Aster.
The blood in his hand then moved and entered through his skin as if it was alive, and the scratches and cuts in the hand he used to hit the red lightning, started healing releasing steam due to the high-speed regeneration of cells.
Only then Aster turned to see his surroundings, and was surprised to see that they were in a black space whose end he couldn't see, there were dozens of white cubes floating around, which he could tell were similar to the room in which he was a moment ago.
After that, Aster noticed a new face, a woman who was standing a few meters away from him to be more accurate, she was the one that asked if he was alright a moment ago too.
"I guess you are the Emerald Whirlwind, right?".
The woman who was having a hard time processing the current situation just nodded with a slightly lost expression in her face, but then she shook her head and returned to reality.
"That rune wasn't part of the trial; it was part of my security from when I have to deal with a very specific group of people and I'm pretty sure you aren't one of them, unfortunately I set it so no one could de-activate it for safety measures and yet you are completely fine so… what the hell are you?".
Aster raised an eyebrow at the woman as he shrugged.
"My name is Aster".
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