Once the sun settled down, Aster and Agnes returned to the mansion at the valley, since it was time for them to have a dinner together with the others.
During the day Helena and Dahlia visited them to fulfill Aster's petition, since he wasn't in the valley, Kana showed them the forest and the other areas, until they decided on the place where to build a spirit herbal garden.
Surprisingly it was near the area where Espi now lived, apparently the little sand wyrm instinctively chose one of the best areas to live, of course they didn't start to build the garden today as they came just to inspect the valley which took them almost the whole day.
Since Aster couldn't receive them, earlier he sent Lilia a message to invite Helena and Dahlia to join them at dinner, so they stayed up and saw Aster and Agnes returning at the same time, not only that Agnes was still grabbing Aster's arm as they walked.
"Oh my, now I understand why all the small sized stores targeted us despite not having anything to win from doing so… they are fully ran by male disciples~", jokingly said Helena.
"Uwaah, an elder and her disciple, how daring…", Dahlia whose face was blushed upon seeing such a "forbidden" relationship bloom, mumbled.
Agnes was the one who brought Aster and the others to the sect, for those who joined as guest elders it didn't apply, but for the members of the younger generation, she was seen as their "teacher".
In the cultivation word, a master or teacher is considered like a second parent figure, that's why Agnes was so worried about Tiana being treated just as a lover, when she first met Aster, she scouted her and from that moment onwards she had the duty to watch over her.
Needless to say, but romantic relationships between masters, teachers and their disciples or students are seen as immoral.
On the other hand, even if that was the case, for Aster who embraced both his mother and sister, a teacher figure joining his harem would be the least of his worries, though his relationship with Agnes wasn't that of a teacher and student to begin with.
Eris, Mylene and Camila who knew about Aster's romantic life, bitterly smiled at Dahlia's words.
'If you knew the truth' they thought.
The girls also noticed that Agnes seemed somewhat closer to Aster than before, and Lilia noticed her son also was closer to her, which made her giggle.
'Among all those attires I helped her select a few sexy ones, for special occasions, and some for when you are training with her, enjoy it darling~', she said directly to Aster.
Aster noticed his sister and also Aria seemed a bit down, but before he could ask, Kana who was coming from the kitchen bringing the dishes along with Sarina and Felicia, explained him why they were like that.
"Sister Alice and sister Aria have been like that since the order of the next dates was decided, sister Eris and sister Mylene have better luck than them~", said the little girl with an innocent smile on her pretty face.
Aster laughed as he approached to help them place the dishes on the table, he didn't forget to kiss Sarina's cheek and pat Kana's head, they always helped prepare the food while the others trained or just lazed around in Alice's case, so a little reward was in order, not to mention he just felt like spoiling them lately, to realize one's own family only sees you as a resource is something ugly.
That's why Aster showered them with love, well he does it anyway so it's just an excuse to be more open about it.
Feeling Lilia's intense gaze on his back, Aster sat next to her and then they started eating their dinner, along the conversation, Helena mentioned Espi.
"I was surprised to see such a magnificent spirit beast in your valley Aster".
"Mm, Espi is incredible, is it some kind of royal species of snake?", asked Dahlia.
Unlike her aunt who cultivates spirit herbs, she is adept in tracking and finding them as well as other resources, so she has seen a lot of spirit beast races, but nothing like Espi.
Aster smiled while shaking his head.
"No, Espi is a wyrm, in other words a subspecies of a dragon which one day will evolve into one".
"…", as expected both Helena and Dahlia were speechless for a moment, they weren't the only ones though, Tiana was he same, though Kana mentioned Espi was a dragon a couple of times, they thought it was just the little girl comparing its shape to one of the legendary spirit beasts from tales.
Some snake races where mistakenly called "dragons" in the Heavenly Quadrants after all, but they knew Aster wouldn't joke about it, so they were inclined to believe what he said.
"How in the name of the heavens did you find such a treasure, you were gone just two months, when I looked for a snake-tongue fruit, which grows where a strong snake beast dies, it took me six months you know", mumbled Dahlia.
"Speaking of Espi, it has changed some of its scales, so we'll be taking them for tomorrow's date", said Eris.
"Mm, it's been a while since your last lesson~", added Mylene, even they who came from a Divine Firmament haven't learned the third level of their respective intents, since they are actually younger than Lilia, if you don't take into account the years they were just "ghosts", and couldn't do much.
For them whose biological clocks work based on the flow of the time of a Divine Firmament, those hundreds of thousands of years, would have been a few dozens of them, even if they were in their bodies anyway.
In any case, they noticed Aster has gained some insight thanks to Agnes, and as the first ones to have ever taught him, besides Lilia, that made them feel slightly jealous, which Aster found rather cute.
"Sounds good to me, don't forget to give some gifts to Espi, we are benefitting from its scales after all", said Aster as he nodded.
Aster also had plans for the little wyrm, he wanted Espi to become the guardian beast of his valley, since he is planning to use this place for a long time, but that could wait, Espi still had to adapt to the atmosphere outside of the secret realm, and Aster didn't want to pressure it, since Espi would be around Kana's age if it was a human, and yet it was already about to go the Transcending realms, according to Eris who inspected it with her divine sense.
Besides some small talk here and there and the girls making fun of Agnes due to her date with Aster, the rest of the night went uneventful, tomorrow was Saturday so Helena and Dahlia stayed to sleep, since the store would be closed, they accepted it because they wanted to start with the garden.
…
Some hours later, the moon opened path to the sun and thus the morning came for the planets of the sect, Aster who was laying down in his bed at the highest spot of Hyperion with Rya snuggling on his chest, opened his eyes and gently kissed her forehead.
"Mn~", Rya let out some cute comfortable sounds, as she slightly opened her eyes, Aster hugged her tight and then let go of her.
"Have you thought about what you want to do for our date?, asked Aster as he prepared to leave the mind space.
"I was thinking we could build a house or something like that… I want to keep this private spot for our nights though", mumbled Rya, making Aster laugh.
"Sure, I'll built a castle fitting for my Empress, it might be a small temporal one though", said Aster, he poked Rya's nose and then disappeared, leaving a happy giggling Rya behind, she loved when he called her "My Empress".
Aster then opened his eyes in the outside world, he gave each of the girls a morning kiss and then they all took a bath together, to prepare for the day, after that they had a nice breakfast together, before Aster went to look for Eris and Mylene to their rooms, they apparently took breakfast before the rest, because they wanted him to came to get them.
Childish maybe, but it was the first time they will have a "date", so Aster didn't mind doing it the way they wanted, their rooms are now next to his, Aster knocked on both doors, but it was Mylene's one the one which opened, to reveal the pair of beauties waiting at the other side of it.
"So how do we look?", asked Eris.
Aster didn't hesitate to answer them.
"Both of you look pretty", Eris was wearing a long dark pink skirt and a shoulder less black blouse, akin to the name of her clan she had roses of different tones decorating her attire, though in her family the fashion could be considered "goth", due to the majorly dark colors and the metal spikes or other elements they use, Eris was more on the bright side adding purple, blue and even white roses to her attire, which balanced it a lot.
Mylene on the other hand, was quite a "rebel" now, from the pastel pink princess-like voluminous dress she used to wear, to a simpler but elegant long red dress with black ornaments, apparently she took a liking to black and red colors, since she was now allowed to use whatever she wanted.
Both girls slightly blushed as they accepted Aster's compliment, that being Aster found it a bit weird that they were going to teach him alchemy and rune mastering dressed up like that, it was honestly going to be harder to focus on their lesson than on them, but he didn't say anything.
Instead, he waved his hand and the three of them disappeared from the mansion, normally they would use the many empty rooms in the mansion, or the alchemy and rune mastering rooms prepared for them there, but since today was a date, they went to the second floor of the store, which also had a hidden space like the one in which Helena's garden existed.
Eris opened the door behind the counter and they entered, the first thing Aster noticed is that the secret room was divided in three areas, the right one was equipped to fulfill any needs a rune master might have, the one on the left was prepared for Alchemy, having tons of ingredients, a cauldron and other things in the many shelves and racks.
Lastly the space in the middle had everything ready for spirit blacksmithing, a furnace, anvil, the hammer and other tools.
"We decorated a bit while you were gone, hope you don't mind~", said Eris, since Mylene went with Aster to the secret realm, she was the one who prepared this place for them, Aster was the spirit blacksmith of the family so he got the space in the middle while each one of them got one of the sides.
Spirit blacksmithing is actually a profession which combines knowledge from more than one discipline, they use alchemy in the sense that to forge many different ingredients have to be mixed and refined, to get the desired metals, also raw weapons must be engraved with spirit formations to be completed, meaning both alchemy and rune mastering knowledge was required for a spirit blacksmith, if one lacked in any of them, then the result won't be good.
"It's amazing, I can't wait to see what our results will be here", said Aster as he inspected all the devices, tools and other stuff here and there.
"Mm", the two girls nodded and then they took out one of the scales of Espi, the first to impart a lesson, was Eris this time so Mylene sat next to Aster and waited for her friend's explanation.
"Today we are going to use one of the dreamed materials for basically all the professions that exist, dragon scales, though they are the ones of a subspecies, their properties, durability and other aspects made them incredibly good base materials for a lot of things".
"For example… formation cores", said Eris as she pointed at her necklace.
Aster nodded, Eri's cube necklace has proven to be a really useful treasure, the capacity to deploy a formation without having to fulfill the requirements is a huge advantage.
"That being said, due to the current materials we have, we'll be making simpler versions of them, they will be disposable one-time formation cores", concluded Mylene.
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