Aster carried the sleeping ice princess in his arms and then he and the girls entered through the portal to return to the castle, the breaches on the space will still take some time to spread through the whole secret realm.
The Runic Oak was already which had left a copy of itself in the room, just in case, saw Aster and the others returning and then said.
"I felt the whole space around the secret realm shake a moment ago, was it you… or are those bastards coming here?".
Aster let Aria down on the bed and then he also sat to rest, honestly, he wanted to go to, but he still had some things to deal with, so he will only allow himself to fall asleep after everyone was in a safe place.
"It was me, if we left this place alone, there is a chance that the Yin Azure Palace finds a way to use it as a bridge to my galaxy, so it needs to be destroyed".
The tree nodded without any sign of resentment over the fact that the secret realm that has been acting as its home for quite some time, will crumble apart, in fact the Runic Oak was speeding to finish its preparations so that it can leave with Aster's group.
"The breaches on the space will still take a couple of hours to reach this area, I'll take everyone to the entrance of the outer area of the forest, so rest without any worry, in half an hour I should be finished", said the tree.
Aster nodded and the he left his body fall backwards, while he closed his eyes for a moment, the scene of what happened earlier when his consciousness was connected to the chains that were attached to the suns and moons, repeated inside his head.
Apparently, Aster indeed eliminated any connection and ownership over the chains, but there were still slight lingering consciousnesses on the suns and moons, probably the people that originally controlled those specific stars, didn't fully lost their connection to them, similar to what happened to the yin chain.
The order for Mira to return was coming from the yin chain, which had a blood connection with the guy to which the Yin Azure Palace wanted the Ligress girl to form a contract with, and these weak presences Aster could feel were similar.
Naturally after the disaster caused by the Blood Despair Sovereign and all his army self-detonating themselves, there was so much damage that only these five stars which were tied to the strongest people of the group survived, but they were barely still connected to them.
And the Law Integration spirit beasts weakened them even more, still Aster could tell they wanted to spy on them, probably to get to know who had stolen Mira from them, but why would he allow them to.
With a smirk, Aster mixed what he had recovered of soul energy and annihilation to surround his and Aria's consciousness and then enjoyed the show.
"Who dares to steal from the Frozen Valley of the Yin Azure Palace…aghhh!!!", the previously high and mighty voice that seemed to belong to a middle-aged man, suddenly let out a high-pitched scream, before its presence disappeared from the two yang stars.
"Beast how dare you; we'll find you and… aghhhh!!!", a second much older seeming voice tried to threat Aster just for his menacing tone to become a pained one before it could finish the sentence.
Aster genuinely laughed at the whole situation.
"What kind of fool sees his companion fail miserably and immediately rushes to do the same', he wondered before shaking his head.
What was left in the formations and in the yin chain, weren't really the consciousness of those people, just a projection of them, it was a similar principle to most high ranked life-saving talismans.
When a treasured descendant of a strong person is in danger, the life-saving talisman will not only will automatically save the target's life, but there were some that projected a saved image of the backer of the target, to scare away the enemy and to register what the enemy looked like.
Rumors say that the ruler level families had a special talisman that even allows the strong elders or the patriarch himself, to be able to talk through them and even show some of its might, but they are reserved only for the heir of the family and some incredibly special descendants.
How does Aster know it, well, because Lilia gave one of those to Alice and him, which is naturally linked to her, before they ventured outside of the Wolfstein castle for the first time, courtesy of his godmothers, since they were created by the same person that made the array Lilia used to conceive, who is related to one of them.
Of course, Lilia didn't tell them that until much later, in any case back then the talisman wouldn't have had the chance to activate because even at her worst, her spirit sense covered at least a quarter part of the Azure Sky planet and she could appear anywhere within that same range.
Now that the projections were eliminated, the stars were at the mercy of Aster, it was then when Lilia and Rya acted forcing them to descend before they were sent to the mind space, by those two who could handle to transport things way larger and more complicated than Aster.
And that's what led us to the current situation, where Aster and the girls were standing in the main hall of the castle, where the main body of the Runic Oak resided.
"The place where I will take you is one of my most important secrets, so you'll have to make an oath to never be my enemy", said Aster to the tree.
"Sure, if I fight with you, you won't answer to my questions, besides I don't think there is a better person to explain me about the customs of other races, than someone like you who will most likely have a mate… no, "lover" was it? of every race in your pride!", enthusiastically said the tree.
Aster was weirded out at the reasons as to why the Runic Oak wanted to be his ally for, but ultimately, he shrugged.
'If its not broken don't fix it', he thought to himself as he and the Oak changed their oath to become full fledged allies, the Oak even chose a name and included it in the contract, technically the trick that the spirit beasts could do, didn't apply to plants because they didn't have a true name.
But the Runic Oak which has started its journey to gain human form, realized that not having a name is a problem so it chose one for itself, and so "Nim" as the tree chose to be called, joined the group.
Aster placed his hand on the main body of the tree which had stopped its roots from keeping it tied to the castle, and then Nim's main body was dragged into the mind space, but it let the same miniature copy of itself out, since the tree wanted to see the world outside of this secret realm, a dream that even its ancestor which was destroyed by the Yin Azure Palace, or more accurately by the Frozen Valley according to the projections Aster heard earlier, managed to achieve.
Naturally Aster left how to deal with the tree to Lilia and Rya, since those two were the ones in charge of "decorating" the mind space, and with that, there was nothing else for Aster and the girls here.
Sadly, the castles will stay here, because even for Lilia and Rya they used a lot of their energy to transport the stars into the mind space, and the giant tree which is also a peak Gate Transcending realm being, wasn't easy to take in, technically plants and spirit beasts don't separate their realms in paths like humans do.
But Nim stated that when it gains human form its strength will be in the body and soul paths, but currently its strong body is what it takes pride in the most, so it chose to use the Gate Transcending realm as the comparison, the same applied to the yin spirit beasts, since they were using an energy as their source of strength, they categorized themselves as "Law Integration", instead of just saying they were at the peak of the Transcending Realm.
"The space breaches will spread here soon, so let's leave", said Aster, the miniature Nim nodded and then the last two roots it left for this purpose formed a circle, in which a portal appeared.
Aster and the girls could see the other side, which was the desertic landscape of the outer area of the Silicon Forest and they jumped into it.
…
At the most outer area of the Silicon Forest, two miserable looking figures rushed with all their might towards the exit, they were none other than the Lord of the Metal Mountain Valley Edward and his companion, the strongest core disciple from the Purple Lotus faction, Julia.
"Dam, I never heard about this, what the hell are the guys from the mission hall doing, at most we were supposed to find Genesis Manifestation enemies, the mercenaries that the Supreme Elder hired to discard later and keep the merit for ourselves were killed by that thing in an instant", said Edward while he gritted his teeth.
The Supreme Elder of the Blacksmith Peak made this little plan to help Edward raise in the Heavenly Ranks fast, he took only a few spots in the mission hall and then they hired a group of mercenaries that were unrelated to the sect, so that they worked for him, at the end they could either buy their silence or kill them, depending on the situation, this way the merit for the completion of the mission will be kept in the small official group that took the mission.
But things didn't go as they planned, first of all, after the girls from the top disciples of the White Sword and Yellow Anvil factions, broke their agreement since he was publicly humiliated by Aster, so he had to find new companions, due to the promptness of the situation, the Supreme Elder could only convince a girl from the top 100, to join Edward.
And when they tried to claim three spots for the mission, someone else took the third spot they needed, so ultimately Edward chose Julia who has become more than his companion, since that day when the other two left, still the mercenaries who had gotten the spots due to the connections of the Supreme Elder with a few small forces from the Fritz Stellar System arrived on time and everything went smooth at first.
Until he went to check one of the mysterious areas, of which the envoy of the Steel Tower talked about, naturally the Patriarch Sean Fritz wanted to use Edward to solve the mystery, but in exchange Edward would be allowed to keep what he found, it was a win-win situation for the two of them, at least in paper.
Because the only thing Edward found there was death, he gloriously charged into the underground space that was under the management of the evil spirit, the mercenaries he hired were mostly wiped out by the giant skeleton which forced Edward and Julia to run with their tails between their legs, along with the captain of the mercenaries which had the battle prowess of a Void Manipulation realm.
After getting as far as possible from that area, Edward focused on finding resources instead, and everything was going fine until an insane amount of spirit beasts appeared out of nowhere.
The last mercenary fought because he had no other choice but to obey Edward according to the oath he had to make, but with the many beasts whose realms were boosted by the yin energy radiated by the moons, it was ultimately overwhelmed, killed and consumed by the beasts.
Edward and Julia used the life-saving treasures that the Supreme Elder handed them and were able to escape from the encirclement of the spirit beasts, after that they could only run and hide, all the way to the exit of the Silicon Forest.
Luckily for them, something seemed to have gotten the attention of the spirit beast armies, and they were ignored so they ran and ran hoping that the distraction lasted enough for them to leave this god-forsaken place.
And they managed to successfully escape, as the portal waiting for them at the exit of the secret realm, that was within their sight right now, suggested.
With one last effort, Edward and Julia jumped through the portal and landed on the hard cold metal ground, that symbolized they were finally back at the territory of the Steel Tower sect.
But Edward didn't allow himself to rest, considering there were real Void Manipulation spirit beasts among the armies he saw before, it was obvious that the leaders would be stronger than that, so he immediately got up and then shouted at the people that were guarding the portal.
"Hurry up and close it, there are countless spirit beasts at the other side, there should be peak Transcending Realm ones leading them!!!".
The nearby people who belonged to all the forces and families that entered the secret realm, frowned after seeing the panicked expression on the member of the young generation that was shouting to them.
A man left the crowd and, it was a tall man with a muscly constitution, wearing grey robes, the symbol of a gray tower was magnificently engraved on the back of his robes.
"Calm down young fellow, how many Void Manifestation spirit beasts did you see, where are the others?", he said.
Edward could feel the strength behind the voice of the man, he was a peak Transcending Realm cultivator, so this man's identity should be high enough to do what he was requesting.
"There were countless of them, at the very least I saw a hundred Void Manipulation beasts, if they break out and come here it will be slaughter, as for the others, I was at the outer part of the middle area of the forest and my group was annihilated, so they should be all dead".
Sean Fritz, didn't recognize Edward in his current haggard state, and Edward never met the patriarch, just the envoy that was sent to give him "privileged" information, so those two didn't know they were to a certain extent allies, not that it would have changed anything, since Sean couldn't close the portal before publicly asking what the situation was like inside of it, there were too may forces and families involved, including the top three middle grade Stellar Systems after all.
He turned around to see all the people that were left out to guard the area, most where non-combatants and then said.
"You all have heard it, my Steel Tower sect can leave the portal open but all of you will have to take responsibility in case those spirit beasts come out, the other option is closing the portal right now, call your superiors you have five minutes", the moment Sean's words reached the ears of those persons, they already had taken out their communication talismans and were informing their respective superiors about it.
Sea on the other hand had already considered everyone inside of the secret realm as good as dead, because if that wasn't the case, the people from the Castle Armored sect would have been the first to return.
What angered him the most was that his son joined too, so he was also dead, but in any case, he had other children with his multiple lovers, he could just choose the most talented and send him to the Castle Armored sect in Renard's stead, so there wasn't that much of a loss on his side.
'Luckily I have a free request from the young master of the Castle Armored sect, or they would have definitely asked for a huge compensation since their group died in the Silicon Forest', thought Sean.
Almost at the same time, all the representatives kept their communication talismans in their rings, before they gave the answers their superiors communicated to them.
"Close the portal", they all said at unison, the ones sent in weren't their heirs or their best disciples, though the loss of the strong elders that were sent, was a big loss for the sects and families, the risks weren't worth it, some of them had only a peak Transcending Realm cultivator backing them and it was the ancestor of their force of family, if the main pillar of their force was sent to fight and died, they will end up being swallowed or eliminated by their enemies, so the choice was obvious.
Having gotten the answer he wanted, Sean approached the main control of the portal to close it, but then a purple line of light landed in front of him, creating a crack on the ground, that extended for around a kilometer, the crack was so deep that the end couldn't be seen from above.
"Those who cross that line die", the calm voice of a woman echoed through the whole area, all the presents Sean included turned to see the origin of the voice, and were welcomed by the sight of a blond-haired woman that was descending from the sky, with a purple light halo surrounding her.
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