To understand why Rya was in such a shocked state, we must see how the world looked through Aster's eyes right now.
Since he got these eyes back at the secret realm, Aster has been trying to find out what was their ability, Lilia's wings gave her a high proficiency in the energy path, she hasn't used it yet, since so far, she has only manifested her wings in the mind space.
Then there is Alice who got her tail which increases her physical strength a lot and complements her fighting style.
Those two have reached the baby stage of their lineage properly, being able to manifest a dragon trait at will at this point, this is proven by the fact that they now have those pretty scale patterns on their upper and lower backs respectively.
But Aster hasn't gotten to that point yet, he manifested the eyes of a dragon, but there is no scale pattern yet, so he can only suppose he hasn't fully reached the baby stage, and that isn't all.
The path he is walking through, is one that has never existed before, his dragon trait seems to be oriented to the soul path, which would explain why his eyes had gotten like this.
In Aster's eyes, he could see two things right now, either green or red lights on everything, but he had to put a lot of focus and he could only see them in a total of ten centimeters at time, that and every time he used it, his soul energy reserves diminished in 5% regardless of the result.
For example, if he were to focus in a person, he had to target a specific area of ten centimeters of diameter and only after that, the green or red lights would appear if he wished to look at them, how it worked simply appeared in his mind instinctively, similar to how Lilia or Alice were able to move their wings and tail since they appeared, despite the fact that they didn't have them before.
At the beginning he didn't know what those lights represented until he gave it a try looking at Alice's tail.
When she was resting after getting some love, he slowly inspected the whole length of the thing, imagine his surprise when he saw that there were only green lights running through the tail.
He then tried to look at other things to see if he could deduct the meaning of the lights, during his date with Camila, that spear which was supposedly a high ranked treasure appeared and confirmed his theory.
The whole thing had a lot of red lights running through it, despite how good its outer appearance looked, the very core of the spear was full of cracks and wrongly processed materials, which formed tension points in the weapon.
Without using his eyes but his experience as a spirit blacksmith, he could guess that the weapon was poorly made, Camila also stated the same, and then when he gave it a try with his eyes, he saw all those red lights in the center of the spear, while on the outer area there were some scarce green lights "covering" the red ones.
So, he came to the conclusion that what he could see where "weaknesses" of "flaws" in things, as for the green lights Aster came to the conclusion that it meant "perfection" in its relative range of existence.
For example, when a cultivator breaks through, there is a phase in which the new realm needs to be consolidated, within that period of time one's realm is unstable and there is a chance of regressing to the previous realm or suffering inner wounds if one isn't careful enough.
That being said, for those who chose to not break through as soon as the chance present and instead build their bases, such a problem doesn't present, Aster and the girls are a good example of that, their bases are strong enough to jump realms to fight, so they don't need any consolidation as long as they keep being that way of course.
Still even after going through consolidation, there are still flaws in one's dantian, in the meridians, the muscles, bones and even the soul, depending on the path of cultivation we are talking about.
And fixing them is harder than climbing the skies, unless you find some kind of heavenly medicine or some other fortunate encounter on the same level, let alone fix them, even finding the flaws is one hell of a task.
Mainly because one can't see its flaws by oneself, if you are skilled enough you can feel them, but not pinpoint them and others have it even rougher, since they can't even feel nor see them you have to look for them.
Imagine having to go through a single finger, cell by cell, looking by something which's size is on the molecular level, using only your brain, well Aster was now able to skip all that and directly spot those flaws, at least the most outer ones in a small area.
Still seeing them it's not the same as being able to fix them, that's why Rya was in awe, Aster just "filled" a very small and almost unnoticeable but still existent crack in her soul.
"Aster you…", Rya tried to say something, but when she turned around, she noticed Aster's face was a bit pale and her eyes got teary, but Aster then patted her head to calm her down.
"I'm okay, I just used a lot of soul energy to create a "bridge" between two completely separated broken pieces of your soul, with that and the effect of this medicinal bath, you should be able to create a sturdy path between them to completely heal later on".
Earlier when he looked at Rya with these eyes, his heart clenches, her spirit form was full of red lights, to the point that it was amazing she could still be "herself", and that is after she has diminished the size of her soul to repair some of the damage.
To put an example if earlier her soul was of ten meters of size, but had gaps of one meter in many parts of it, she compressed it to a smaller size to bring the separated parts closer, which resulted in this regressed appearance and other effects.
Even then there were a lot of pieces which weren't connected by anything, and what Aster did was use his own soul energy to build a bridge between one of those many parts, naturally he couldn't close the wound with his mere Star Axys realm soul cultivation, even if his soul energy was stronger, it is till a mortal level thing.
But what he could do is use his soul energy to let Rya's soul heal itself, instead of just compressing to lessen the size of the wound, if compressing was like a band aid, he put a "stitch" on her soul, now she could slowly fully heal it.
There won't even be a scar since Rya is a star maiden, they are both a part of each other, which is the reason as to why annihilation can't harm the star maidens, even if Aster doesn't order it to not do so.
Aster leaned backwards on the bathtub while he dragged Rya with him, so that she would rest on his chest, he just used practically all his soul energy to create a very small "thread" to link two pieces of her cracked soul, and his head was killing him, but seeing Rya's surprised and happy expression was worth it.
"Now, you just need to absorb and refine the effects of the elixir, my blood is nutritious and all the effect will go to the "thread" I created, making the connection stronger and accelerating the healing process, we will be repeating this process until I have created those "threads" in all the cracked areas, so that you can heal properly instead of just covering an old wound with new skin like you were doing", said Aster.
Rya remained silent for a moment, she couldn't see what Aster, but she could feel the huge sensation of relief that was filling her soul right now, it didn't come from the fact that she was healing but from the warmness that being in Aster's embrace brought her.
She honestly had discarded the possibility of her soul ever being complete again, that meant she won't regain all her memories too, but she was fine with it, as long as she could keep staying by Aster's side, it was a small price to pay in her book.
And here he was, bringing yet another absurd method to make something which should be impossible, possible, they were already connected before, but now Aster's soul energy lived within her, which means that no matter what, as long as they both exist, they will be able to feel each other.
'Even if we end up like back at earth, I will be able to hear you now… you will never be alone again', thought Aster as he closed his eyes to rest, while he caressed Rya's hair.
…
Without noticing Aster fell asleep for a couple of hours, when his eyes opened, he saw that Rya was peacefully snuggling on his chest, they were still in the bathtub and the elixir has been fully deprived of all its properties, leaving only regular water behind.
"I can't believe you came with something like this, you are still a mortal you know", said Rya.
Aster smiled, he squeezed his brains to think of this method, he approached the problem like a tissue transplant in the medic field back at earth, ultimately the transplanted part stayed alive and integrated thanks to the one who received it, not the one who donated it, compatibility was a must though.
But she was a star maiden, she can't be more compatible with him than that, so he decided to give it a try, worst case scenario it wouldn't work and he will need to find for another way to help Rya.
Luckily, he was right, and now the originally red spot had turned orange, or more accurately it only reduced the brightness of the red color a bit, just like with the other girls he just created the opportunity, Rya was the one who had to take advantage of it.
"Don't underestimate me, didn't I conquer quite an aggressive Empress, I bet Alessia still can't forget that small quarrel between you two", jokingly said Aster.
Rya pouted and then kissed Aster.
"What aggressive, I'm not Lilia", she mumbled.
Aster laughed, right now he was happy, he couldn't stand the sensation of knowing one of his girls was suffering and not being able to help, it angered him to his very core, and apparently his dragon lineage reacted to that, that could be why his though incomplete, dragon trait was in his eyes, there is also the fact that a dragon which cultivates its soul has never existed.
'Speaking of mom…', thought Aster, he opened his right eye and saw through the dome of Rigel's flames, which was still in place, though it was thinner since he ran out of soul energy earlier and the flames stopped being maintained by their own will, to allow Aster to recover, and instead burned the spirit energy in the atmosphere to keep going.
Anyway, he saw that Lilia whose wings were spread on her back, has moved all the way from her original position, to be just half a meter away from them, her red ruby eyes were glowing and she was intensely staring at Aster, as if her eyes could see through the blue dome.
"She is been there since a few seconds ago and she just managed to take out the first useful thing out of the ring you gave her, I can't believe even in that she refused to finish second compared to me", said Rya.
Apparently, just when Rya managed to fully use the effect of the medicinal bath to reinforce the "thread" Aster created to prevent it from breaking, Lilia managed to finally bring out one of the materials they needed, out of the spatial ring.
"I see… how long was I out?", asked Aster.
"Mm, around twenty hours I think", answered Rya.
Aster nodded, the time flow of the mind space was of around 1:10 with the outside world, meaning that one day outside was ten days in the mind space, this was in part why he wanted Lilia to enter, their areas of improvement were going to take way longer than the other girls, since they are stronger than the others, even with ten days what happened today was just the very beginning of a long process.
Aster snapped his fingers, Lilia was outside literally drooling waiting for her reward, Aster was surprised that she didn't break the dome of Rigel's flames and just brute forced her way to his side.
And to even more of his surprise, in that state when the dome disappeared, Lilia smiled and then said.
"No fair, you have been fooling around with Rya while your poor mother was harshly training~".
For the first time and against all her desires, Rya spoke on behalf Lilia.
"Don't act tough now, I could see your panic-stricken expression when Aster used all his soul energy, what I can't understand is how you knew it, I was also blocking what was happening inside the dome so you didn't interrupt my training".
Lilia giggled and then her image flashed, with a little splash of water, she jumped into the bathtub and forced Rya to make way, so that both of them were naked, resting on top of Aster, her clothes disappeared even before she entered the water.
"If my darling is involved even if it's in another plane of existence I will know it, it's a mother's intuition~", said Lilia as she rubbed her face on Aster's chest, she has been longing for this since before the training started, so much that her body was dying for Aster's touch.
Aster laughed and then tightly hugged them both, then just like that the three of them fell asleep in the bathtub, under the eternal starry sky of the mind space, Lilia wanted to get some love, but she could tell Aster was still tired and she made up with some cuddles and a few kisses for the time being.
Of course she didn't forget to make Aster promise her reward of tomorrow will be doubled in exchange, only after that she fell asleep with a happy smiling expression on her face, expecting the coming of a new day, they have a long time to enjoy their date thanks to the mind space anyway.
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