Kana who was hugging Aster right now, noticed he looked tired which was something new, in her mind her big brother has never shown any sign of tiredness without doing something incredibly flashy, like that time he blew away a part of the desert with a single slash of his sword.
"Big brother, are you alright?", she asked in a genuinely worried voice.
Aster chuckled as he patted her head, his breath was indeed a bit irregular right now, but he still said.
"Yeah, I'm just tired because I sent the bad guys a little "message", and it was harder than what I have expected… speaking of that I have a little present to congratulate you for your advance".
Kana's eyes sparkled.
"Then can I kiss…", her sentence was interrupted by Aster, which made her pout.
"You haven't reached the first level of intent, so don't think you can trick me, little girl, this and that are separate matters, besides you will have to wait a bit for it since it came in a hard to open package", said Aster.
He was amused at Kana's slightly sullen expression, even like this she looked cute, he looked at golden giant hand which was floating at his left and kept it closed.
But with his soul energy he brought a spatial ring towards him, it was a lime-green crystal ring with a pair of feathers carved at its sides, it looked pretty detailed, but had a blood stain on it.
He produced a wisp of Rigel's flames which covered the ring and then sent it to the mind space, as he had to purify the safety measures it had, and annihilation would have destroyed the ring and probably its contents.
After keeping the thing in the giant golden hand to a spare spatial ring he had, he dismissed the golden armor and took a deep breath, as he was really low in spirit energy reserves right now.
And why was that if he was dominating the fight previously, you may ask.
Let's go back in time a bit, a few momenta ago:
Inside the portal Ley's eyes became decided as his legs were being crushed by the armored golden hand, he abandoned defense on his legs and then with a swing of his spear, he cut everything below thighs.
But then after experiencing freedom for a split of a second as he tried to get dragged by the portal to disappear from this horrible place, he felt a tug on his back, then without a warning, he felt a huge amount of pain on his back and a lung-tearing scream scaped from his mouth as a response.
"Aghhhhh!", Ley's scream could be heard even from outside of the portal, then in a moment of madness, he bit the tip of his tongue off, in fact he bit with such force that he even opened his lips, and spat a large amount of blood.
But this blood had a different color than normal, it had a couple of lime-green strings into it, similar to Aster's blood which had a part of it dyed in golden.
Ley's face paled, his hair which was originally vibrant green lost its luster, and he even got a few wrinkles under his eyes, essentially aging a few decades in a second.
But in exchange he became a flash of green light which dived into the portal, without caring that his wings were thorn apart due to that.
Outside of the portal Aster felt his prey escaping from his grip and it was then when he sent the twenty-meter sword into the portal, and he actually managed to touch Ley with it, but not even a second later he lost contact with the sword, probably because the both entered the dimensional tunnel, travelling hundreds of thousands of kilometers in a matter of seconds.
And even if Aster's soul was really strong, he couldn't reach those kinds of distances with his spirit sense… yet.
…
The different entrances to the secret realm had different properties, and one of the reasons as to why ley was sent only recently, besides giving his little sister a chance to get the Emerald Whirlwind was that the travel in and out only took a minute or so.
At the other side of the portal, there was a big welcome committee, communicating from the secret realm to their origin was stupidly expensive resource-wise, so the last time Ley spoke to the people back at home, it was to say he found the green castle and that he will be entering the trials in a couple of minutes, along with their allies the people from the Black Vulture race.
So of course, with both the young masters of the two families, they were expecting the good news.
Then just a couple of minutes later a portal opened, meaning someone was returning.
Both envoys from the two families were over the moon right now, and were bragging to each other.
"Don't worry Max, I bet young master Ley wouldn't mind helping little nephew Rox now that he has gotten the Emerald Whirlwind", said a tall slim man with an erudite outfit, but a slightly disdainful expression.
"Humph, you mean that young Ley, will be glad to receive my young master's pointers now, Trey", answered a long black haired bulky man, who was missing an eye.
Both men had sparks flying over the place as they argued of their young masters had gotten the Emerald Whirlwind.
In the middle of it, the black-haired man suddenly felt something ringing in his pocket, which made him frown, he took out a bracelet with a wing emblem engraved on it before saying.
"This is an emergency line, it better be fucking life or death…", the angered voice of the man was immediately cut, when a hysteric man's voice came out of the bracelet.
"You fucking bastard, where is my son!!!".
"P-Patriarch, what is the problem, the portal just opened and no one had come out of it yet", answered the man recognizing the owner of the voice, as the patriarch of the Black Vulture family.
"Rox's soul tablet exploded a second ago and the beacon elder and on top of that the beacon elder told me its killer wasn't marked, Max, you were in charge of his safety, so tell me where was my son!!!".
Max's face paled, he tried to explain Rox didn't tell him anything, but the patriarch was having none of it and instead yelled at Max.
Trey who was gloating over Max's misfortune, smiled from ear to ear as he saw a green flash coming out of the portal.
"Worry not, venerable Vultari patriarch, young master Ley had just left the portal and he…", Trey's words stuck in his throat as the green light that was covering Ley faded away, revealing his battered body which landed on the ground a couple of meters away from them.
Trey was in shock to the point that he didn't react on time to catch Ley, who had fainted and he only came out of his trance after a second figure came out of the portal, which then closed meaning there was nothing else travelling through it.
And not only that, the spatial distortion disappeared meaning it was impossible for anyone to reach the secret realm anymore.
Max who got a second away from the Vultari patriarch's screams, saw the second figure which came out of the portal and he frowned, as the hairs on his back stood on their ends.
"Is that a sword?", was the last thing he said, before the twenty-meter sword shattered into pieces, revealing an arm sized golden sphere, which upon contact with the atmosphere contracted to the size of a marble, before it exploded.
The sky in the whole area was illuminated in golden light, as the explosion took the form of a sword of about two kilometers of diameter per ten of height.
There wasn't any explosion sound, nor a shockwave as one would expect, no, instead of that, a quarter part of what would be the biggest planet Aster has seen so far, equal to at least ten times the size of the fifth planet used by the Myriad Occupation sect, was cleanly "shaved" out of existence.
Max and Trey who managed to react on time and left the vicinity of the planet, appeared on the open space while they both gasped, Trey was holding Ley as a sack of potatoes over his shoulders, as his face had the word "impossible" written all over it.
"What the hell just happened!", he shouted as he saw all the debris and planetary dust which was floating around what once used to be a normal round celestial body.
Once all the debris made way, Trey and Max saw that in the part of the planet which disappeared there was a… message written.
[The next time I won't be as merciful, Atte. Hyperion]
Both Max and Trey nearly spat blood due to anger, upon realizing what just happened, someone just used a high ranked planet, property of their families as a piece of paper to deliver a message.
And that was not all, now that Trey had Ley on his shoulder, he couldn't help but notice, there was a wound in the form of a word on Ley's forehead, also his legs, wings and his left ring finger were gone and there were horrible burns there from which he could see the bones, he was an inch away from death.
[Asshole]
"Blegh", Trey finally couldn't hold it back, a vein popped on his neck and he vomited blood due to anger, seeing an insult carved into his young master's forehead.
Still, this wasn't the moment for that, Trey immediately took out all the medicines he had that wouldn't aggravate his state, and fed them all to Ley who seemed to be withering after having burned his bloodline to use a forbidden technique to escape, just like his little sister did.
"I'm sorry patriarch Vultari, I need to take young master to the clan for immediate medical attention, once he wakes up, I will personally contact you if he knows anything regarding young nephew Rox "disappearance", I'll take my leave".
After saying that Trey exploded in lime-green light and became a flash which disappeared from Max's sight, despite them being in such a vast thing like the open space.
Max was the only one who was at a loss here, his life now depended on how the patriarch felt, if he was angrier towards the loss of a talented warrior than his son, then he'll be able to live… barely, but if he was angered due to his son's death, then he could start writing his last will.
And that wasn't all, since many people in the Divine Feather Firmament knew that some of the high ranked families had access to a secret realm, they were staying in spaceships near those entrances, at a respectable distance of course, gossiping is a thing no matter where you are after all, and these high ranked families were the equivalent of "celebrities", in the cultivation world.
But this time, what they saw was completely different to what they expected, not only an incredibly valuable planet had a big chunk of it destroyed, but someone half killed the son of the Tempest matriarch, and considering only two of the "welcome committee" from both families, escaped on time from the catastrophe, then the son of the Vultari patriarch was as good as dead in their eyes.
And as to rub it in, whoever did this send the two families a message saying that this was him being merciful, while also carving an insult in the half dead body of a young master of one of the renowned forces, maybe not the strongest but definitely not weak by any means.
"Who is this Hyperion, has anyone heard of it?".
"If he is so domineering then it must someone from a higher Firmament".
"Heh, the Tempest and Vultari are bullies, this time they kicked an iron plate, it was just a matter of time".
Different versions of what happened today, immediately spread like a forest fire, and soon all the Divine Feather Firmament was boiling, as this would be a day that would be marked into the history books, as the first clash between a raising power, and the families that had existed during millions of years.
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