Chapter 597 A treasure’s allure (part 5)
Everyone looked upwards at the countless cursed weapons descending from the formation that popped out of nowhere, their numbers kept increasing without a sing of stopping, at least until the formation showed signs of distortion.
There are quite a few reasons that could make a spatial type formation to distort, a fierce energy radiation is the most common as it basically interferes with the runes used for spatial transportation, that is why portals and space gates are always custodied by strong cultivators.
Of course, it's not like one can just release spirit energy and interfere with a spatial formation, you'll have to find the right frequency to do that and that is normally only known by the rune master who created the formation and the one who is in charge of the force or family using it.
On the other hand, there are cultivators that have a particularly high affinity with space after reaching the Void Manipulation realm, but even then, to bent a spatial formation at will, one would need to be at the level of a Heavenly Conqueror, the sole living beings that can use a spatial movement to jump from one Star Cluster to another in a matter of seconds without the need of external help.
Natural phenomenon such as storms and other disasters where the spirit energy of the atmosphere becomes erratic, like what can be seen at the borders of the Heavenly Quadrants.
And what would be the most dangerous situation would be the decay of the atmosphere caused by the imminent destruction of a planet, galaxy and the like, which makes the space unstable, like what happened back at the Silicon Forest as the secret realm was
Luckily, the reason behind the formation on the sky showing signs of distortion, belonged to most common category which is a strong energy radiation interfering with the runes, at the same.
That being said, the origin of it was a bad notice for the participants of the Treasure Hunt, and the main reason behind this event having quite a high number of wounded.
'But of course, those godmothers of mine would do it…', thought Aster as he saw the last thirty or so weapons that came out of the formation.
Unlike all the other cursed weapons that had appeared so far and were going crazy since cultivators entered their range of detection, those last ones remained floating in the sky above the others.
Besides not being as impulsive as the others, the other major difference was that they were all middle Stellar grade weapons, and thanks to his dragon eyes, Aster could see that their weapon spirits were also on the Stellar grade, and that was bad news.
"Woah, look at those treasures, their quality is amazing!", exclaimed one of the deacons from the Brown Anvil faction.
"Their aura won't lose to the peak Stellar grade treasures exhibited on the walls of elder Riley's workshop…", added a girl from the Yellow Anvil faction.
The disciples of the Purple Lotus and Red Sword factions, saw Aster and the girls from the Black Sword faction eyeing those treasures, and a couple of them couldn't contain their greed as they shouted.
"Don't let them get in our way, those treasures are special, the others aren't daring to approach them, the one who gets to reach one first, will be the winner!", their images flashed as they rushed upwards using movement spirit techniques.
The others hesitated for a second, but then the thirty strongest treasures shone and a batch of treasures with their same respective shape, came down from the cluster of cursed weapons to form what could be considered a "path".
They were just a mass of weapons that stuck together though, so there was a path made out of hammers, one made from swords and the list goes on, all of them converged on one of the thirty treasures of their respective kind.
"They are basically telling us to get them, what are you hesitating for!", shouted the senior disciple from the Brown Anvil as she jumped towards the path formed by spears, followed by the strongest deacons on her group and a couple more of the junior disciples of her faction.
As if the previous was the initial shot for a race, a large number of participants rushed towards the paths, even the girls from the Black Sword, Green Lotus and Yellow Anvil did so, not only because there was no point in not participating, but because Aster and Camila were going.
'Weapon spirits can't be created at the Stellar grade as of current, however they can grow overtime just like cultivators do, still there shouldn't be this many weapon spirits successfully imbued into middle grade Stellar treasures, even if they are just cursed weapons, at least not in a single place at a middle grade Stellar System… not to mention they aren't being treated as especially valuable treasures', thought Aster.
Lilia has one of the only two peak Stellar grade sentient weapons that the Drage family possess, of course as a ruler level family they have a large quantity of Sky grade and a decent amount of low Stellar grade formal sentient weapons.
The numbers drastically decrease at the middle Stellar grade and plummet at the peak one, not to mention the Immortal grade.
And while cursed weapons can't be mentioned in the same sentence as sentient weapons, due to their large number of flaws, they are still stronger than regular spirit treasures, not by anything, treasures with a weapon spirit are considered the next step of evolution when it comes to both rune mastering and spirit blacksmithing.
So, for Aster, this was a subject worthy of studying as he is aspiring to become the permanent Spirit Blacksmith of his family, unfortunately, Eris's family rune mastering isn't specialized in weapon making, they specialize in large scale formations and wide area affectation arrays, probably because of their amazing processing speed.
And so, while she knows some of the theory behind creating weapon spirits, her knowledge starts at what comes after the Heavenly Conqueror realm, meaning she can't talk about it as to not incur in the wrath of the heavenly law of this "mortal plane", it's a strange case of she being over skilled for the job.
As she actually has to work on learning the runes that can be used here, to try and replace what she knows is needed, and there hasn't been too much progress on that, in part because they aren't acquittanced with a rune master that is both trustable and skilled enough to fulfill the role of a guide in that aspect, but that might be changing soon.
"Oh, well, I guess I have found a nice playmate for Eris, so I'll take this as a win, or perhaps it was a "strike of good luck", brought to us by a certain someone", said Aster, which made Camila's face redden a bit.
Aster had to force himself to stop enjoying Camila's cute reaction, because those thirty or so cursed weapons were about to demonstrate the reason as to why there is an abysmal difference in the existences between weapon spirits imbued in low and middle Stellar grade treasures.
"Hahaha, idiots they started moving later than us and are also trying to climb through those stupidly long and complicated weapon paths, the faster will be the winner!", said a deacon from the Purple Lotus faction who was using the walls to run at high speed in order to reach the top where the thirty middle Stellar grade treasures were calmly floating.
"Don't blame them, unlike us who are temporarily free of stupid spoiled brats, they have to obey the ones with the "thicker blood", not to mention the fools who get deceived by flashy bastards who don't know the immensity of the world", added the deacon from the Red Sword faction as he gazed at Aster who was just landing on the path created by spears along with Camila.
Speaking of Aster, he mockingly gazed at those two idiots and then snapped his fingers, covering himself, Camila and a few more people with the protection of the Paragon Body, next, the whole area rumbled as the thirty spirit weapons released their spirit pressure all at the same time.
Then, those who had yet to reach the treasure paths, the ones who were being "smart" and outrunning others by ignoring said paths, and those who weren't prepared enough, all said the same thing
"Aghhhh!", being hit by the combined pressure of what would be equal to thirty genesis core realm cultivators, of different stages, at the same time, made those poor bastards scream in pain, as they vomited blood and were forced out of the secret realm by the lifesaving arrays.
When the tremor stopped and the atmosphere returned to normal, out of the around seventy something participants that had reached this part of the event, there were less than forty left.
And the vast majority didn't know what just happened right now, judging by their terrified expressions, the girls from the Black Sword and Green Lotus factions who noticed the protection that could be traced back to Aster, gazed at him with sparkling eyes.
"Don't look at me like that, I won't interfere for you twice, go walk in the path that guides to the type of weapon you have preference for", said Aster as he dispelled the protection of the Paragon Body.
"Thanks, senior brother~", said those girls with a grateful voice, as they jumped to their respective paths, most participants landed on the closest paths to the ground, which were the spear, shield, hammer and rapier ones, and it wasn't a coincidence that the ones who were standing on the paths but still got blown away by the pressure of those treasures, were cultivators who didn't train in the weapon that composed said paths.
Some were lucky enough that their paths coincided with the weapons they trained in, mostly the rapier, since it is a popular weapon among the female disciples for its flexibility, light weight but still decently high offensive power without discarding elegancy.
As to why Aster helped those girls, in part he wanted his allied factions to gain some credit, and also, he wanted to screw his enemies over, and while he could do so by himself, what would be the fun on that, this was a date not a training day after all, not to mention those girls weren't at fault for not knowing about sentient weapon's traits.
What differentiated low and middle Stellar grade treasures with weapon spirits, was that the unlike the first, the latter are able to use spirit energy by itself, as they have already developed a "core", even if it's a flawed one.
It's not a coincidence that the middle Stellar grade is equal to the Genesis Core realm, while these are cursed weapons and not sentient ones, meaning their weapon spirits don't match with their physical vessel, not to mention their objectives are "twisted", meaning they lack the ability to use spirit energy, they still are able to use spirit pressure.
Earlier when the cursed weapons chased and attacked the participants, they didn't use any kind of technique, they were simply using their physical vessels to stab, slash, pierce and the like, only when a participant wielded them, their non-physical attacks powered by spirit energy were activated, against their own wielders of course.
But those thirty treasures on the other hand, were different, they didn't require a cultivator to give them spirit energy to use one of the abilities engraved into their vessels, and that ability is "control", which was used to form those paths, they were basically ordering the other cursed weapons around.
"I guess those are the origin of the term "treasure hunt", a stage prepared by cursed weapons where you'll lose if you don't follow the rules or if you try to rebel, quite an interesting concept", said Aster.
Those abnormally strong cursed weapons controlled the other ones and they also had the capacity to restrain the participants, however they couldn't really kill them as their usage of spirit energy was limited to spirit pressure, at most the participants would end up with inner damage and fainting, that is by no means a light wound though, so those godmothers of Aster were quite serious in making the participants get some real-life experience.
Aster's dragon eyes shone as he felt the "ground" below his feet shaking a bit, he a swordsman was standing on the spear path, which was against the wishes of those thirty weapons, so of course retaliation was on the way.
Not to mention Camila's presence overall, drew the attention of the nearby treasures even if she didn't use her treasure aura, so as expected a stream of spears came chasing after them.
Aster laughed and then summoned the incomplete black sword soul weapon, while he grabbed Camila's right hand, to then make a run for it.
"A-Aster!", Camila who was about to use treasure aura to fight back was taken by surprise, though she didn't resist at all and started running alongside him.
Which apparently angered the cursed weapons, as another batch of them joined the hunt, and that wasn't all, Aster even used a bit of his sword intent to cover the black sword incomplete soul weapon.
Camila suddenly felt a tense sensation flooding her chest, she glimpsed at from the sides and saw that what used to be a stream of spears, was now a tsunami of them.
And she wasn't the only one to notice it, the other participants that were running through the spear path, noticed that their footing became harder to maintain since the path thinned a bit, as a lot of spears were taken out of the path to chase after them.
Among them, there was the senior disciples from the Brown Anvil, who was the one taking the lead in the spear path, her right foot suddenly sank and she tripped over, rolling on the ground and getting a few cuts on her legs.
"Ahh what the hell!", she yelled, to then look back at the strange phenomenon caused by Aster, the two deacons that were accompanying her, soon caught up and helped her get up.
"Second young miss, are you alright?", asked one of the two deacons, just to be slapped on the face in response.
"I told you to call me "young miss" already, or are you thinking on disobeying the orders given by the patriarch!".
The other deacon bowed her head and then apologized in behalf of her companion.
"Please don't pay mind to that young miss Cecilia, it was just an honest mistake caused by our upbringing", she said.
Cecilia snorted but ultimately, she limited to nod.
"Whatever, I guess a dog must be retrained, I'll allow it this time but if this happens again, I'll have you resign your position, one of you go slow down the others, the other stop the bleeding on my leges", she ordered.
The two deacons exchanged gazes, the girl who was slapped turned around and then flashed towards the direction from which the other participants were coming, as for the other girl, besides clothes, not even armor was allowed, so she ripped a piece of her sleeve and used it to tend to Cecilia's wounds.
"These damn restrictions, if I was able to use my armor, these spears wouldn't be able to do single thing to me, however who would have thought that there were so many middle Stellar grade cursed weapons here", she said.
…
Back at the area near the start of the spear path, Aster and Camila who were being chased by a giant wave of cursed weapons, caught up to the others, they weren't slow, but having to dodge the constant assaults of the cursed weapons made them advance slower than others.
"Aster, shouldn't we split and start destroying those cursed weapons…", mumbled Camila, just for Aster to playfully smile at her.
"Nope, you'll need at least this much motivation, otherwise the "flaw" won't appear and you won't be able to reach the next step".
Aster saw Camila's nervous expression and he inwardly sighed to then whisper a couple of things at her.
Camila's eyes widened a bit, she was then covered in a sphere made out of golden light, Aster's arm tensed and she was thrown at an incredible speed, essentially becoming a flash of golden light that surpassed almost all the participants and directly put her in fifth place among the ones running in the spear path.
At the same time, Aster's smile widened as he was engulfed by the sea of spears, which surprisingly stopped advancing and instead turned into a tornado of cursed weapons, rotating at an amazing
speed from which sparks and metal clashing sounds could be heard.
Camila who was still frozen inside the golden sphere, finally reacted when the sphere dissolved, the moment she landed on the path once again, she saw the tornado of spears afar and bit her lips, but ultimately turned around and started running towards the goal.
Easily surpassing the fourth placed participant, to then meet with the deacon that was sent by Cecilia, who casually grabbed a spear from the path and pointed it at Camila.
Camila tried to summon her natal treasure, since that isn't technically a spirit treasure, but a lineage ability, it wasn't banned, similar to how Aster was using the incomplete soul weapon and the paragon body, despite they manifesting as "equipment".
Seeing the opponent coming at her, Camila covered her hands with her treasure aura and then punched frontwards, clashing with the spear of the enemy.
"Clang!", the sound of metals colliding echoed through the whole area, as the two attacks clashed, resulting in Camila taking one step backwards, but the opponent being sent flying away, that being said, the deacon was unscathed though the spear was destroyed with a single punch.
'What the hell, how is this the level of someone from a middle ranked Stellar System, I'm a body cultivator!', thought the deacon as she stood up to grab another spear and prepare for the next clash.
All the previous was witnessed by Aster who was sitting cross-legged inside the tornado of spears, with the golden armor protecting him and the black sword soul weapon slashing down weapon spirits all over the place.
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