Aster was lost in his thoughts for a moment, cultivator or not, the castles were quite impressive, not to mention the planets were also bigger than normal.
'In a rough estimation gravity here must be about… 15-20 time stronger than earth', he thought, luckily Kana had now broken through and she somehow was able to make her body lighter using her attribute.
It was as if the gravity didn't affect her, so that was one thing less to worry about.
Aster noticed that although invisible from the outside, there was also a construction of some kind in the middle of the fur planets right below the fifth one.
Which according to Agnes was the neutral area of the sect and that's where they were going, because the people who will participate on the trial could only stay there since they were basically outsiders.
A couple of seconds after the portal from which they appeared closed another one opened a few kilometers away from which the spaceship that tried to block them before, came out.
"Let's go with mom", said Aster to the girls before they transported to the captain's cabin where everyone besides those who bathed with Aster, were already gathered.
Agnes saw Aster and a glint of comfortableness flashed through her eyes, before she took out her token of identity as an internal elder, curiously while most of the times such things were shaped in the form of medals or badges, hers was that same sword she used to attack the spaceship that was now floating a few kilometers away from them.
"Speaking of that, here you go", the others turned to see Aster as he threw a spatial ring to each one of them, even Erick, Tiana and Felicia got one, the only exception was of course Agnes.
It didn't escape Felicia's eyes that while the rings she and her children had, were pretty generic, the rings of the other girls were pretty much designed to match with them, besides that each one had a golden toned inscription which could be translated to "protection" which made her giggle.
Although the space contained in the ring wasn't too big not even reaching a few dozens of square meters, the contents nonetheless were no joke, among them each one had a small jade chest which said "Lifesaving only" filled with some tubes filled with a transparent "elixir", the result of Aster refining his blood.
Nadia was lucky to not have developed a dependance, while Sarina, Eris and Mylene were originally strong enough to not be affected, but the last thing he wanted was them to change due to his blood, so now that side effect was dealt with, luckily the golden part of his blood became stronger too, so even after losing some of its effectiveness due to the process of refining, the effect was pretty much the same as before.
"The tubes and the ring have spirit formations, so only you or the others that were given a ring can use them, I have told you before, but only use those things in a real emergency", said Aster as he stole a gaze to Eris, the rings had some of his blood mixed, but she was the one that engraved and activated the runes with her soul energy.
Meaning there was no way to bypass the formation to steal the contents, unless someone that has surpassed the Soul King realm appeared, but there was no such a person in the whole plane according to Lilia.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtEveryone nodded, and then their attentions were drawn by a huge floating asteroid on which a city was build, suddenly appeared in the middle of the four planets.
Agnes kept her sword in her ring before nodding at Lilia.
"We can enter the neutral city now, the area designated for my Black Sword peak is at the northeast side of the city, we can land there".
Lilia sat down on the captain's seat and piloted the spaceship towards the area mentioned by Agnes, surprisingly or not, the other spaceship kept its distance until they entered the area protected by the barrier, before taking a detour to the southeast area.
While they flew above the city Aster saw there were a lot of people on the streets, some were wearing what he thought was the uniform of the sect which consisted in white clothes with yellow decorations, more accurately those were the colors of the clothes but the styles were pretty much different, some were eastern while others had a western design, only the colors were the same.
That and there were people who also had light blue, silver, black or green blazers over their normal clothes, besides that there were also emblems of different colors and designs on the backs of the blazers or the right side of the chest of their upper clothes.
But probably the most eye-catching thing Aster and everyone else noticed, was that the proportion of females and males was… a bit off, about 8 out of every ten people were girls, which made Aster turn to see his mother with an interrogative gaze, just to see Lilia giggling.
She cutely stuck her tongue at her son as she smiled.
"I forgot to mention it, but the Myriad Occupation sect is majorly conformed by women~".
"Mm?", Agnes noticed the surprise in the eyes of the girls and she elaborated a bit.
"Actually, the sect has more diversity now, originally there were very few male disciples due to the high criteria that was for some reason set up for boys, originally there was only about one hundred male internal disciples, while there were a few dozens of thousands of girls".
"Due to the harsh requirements most males chose others sects from the nearby stellar systems, until there was a certain addition on the backers of the sect, and that attracted a lot of male disciples to attend the trials".
"You can't see that because we arrived early, probably that huge spaceship you saw earlier is full to the brim with guys who will try to enter the sect too, still the count for internal male disciples barely ascends to one thousand and there is no male core disciple yet, you'll understand later when the trial starts".
Lilia nostalgically smiled as she remembered when the Myriad Occupation sect was created.
'I wonder what would they think, if they knew, we just set a ridiculously high or ridiculously mediocre requirement, to block those idiots who were pestering us'.
Lilia's spaceship landed on a large plain area where other spaceships were stationed, originally those who arrived from lower ranked star clusters had look for an inn to stay, those who wee lucky enough to have a spaceship with house commodities lived there while they waited for the trials to start.
But since Aster and the others were accompanied by Agnes, they didn't need to resort to any of those options.
"The trial will start tomorrow morning, if you want you can stay at my mansion, it's not from my faction but mine, so no one would bother you there".
Aster nodded and they got out of the spaceship which Lilia immediately kept in her ring, other people who were leaving their spaceships while being escorted by elders from their respective origins, gave Aster and the others condescending gazes.
"Bumpkins, suddenly jumping out of the spaceship, without having gotten used to the gravity", mumbled someone.
But then the embarrassing scene they expected didn't happen, no one even released any spirit energy to resist the sudden increase in gravity.
"Oh, I nearly forgot about it, you can all discard your veils", said Aster as he took out his mask.
The girls nodded and one by one uncovered their pretty faces, attracting the attention of probably all the people around, male or female.
But they also saw Agnes and as natives from Galatia how could they not recognize the fiercest elder of the Black Sword peak.
A middle-aged man who was accompanying the group which were blabbering before, bowed towards Agnes with an apologetic expression.
"The vice leader of the Green Suppressing sect presents his respects to senior Fey, please don't take the comments of the young ones too seriously".
Seeing that Agnes wasn't saying anything, the middle-aged man felt a chill running down his spine, as he made the one who talked before bow.
"Senior pardon my rudeness", repeated the poor guy, he hasn't even entered the sect, and yet he was already in the bad books of an internal elder, it was like asking to die.
Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you looked at it, Agnes completely ignored them, she received a message on her communication talisman which made her frown.
"Big sister, we just saw an announcement saying that the trial's date was moved to be today at 4:00 PM, hurry up and return".
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmAgnes's body trembled due to the anger, the elders of the other peaks were messing with her, it was pretty well known that she still had to return, that also explained why the spaceship from the Red Sword peak shamelessly tried to block them, even after seeing an elder's flag.
They thought she wasn't here and purposedly moved the trial date, so that she would arrive late and had her candidates disqualified.
"The trial was moved to today in a couple of hours… we still have time to eat lunch, it will be my treat".
Aster raised an eyebrow, sects normally don't change their schedules backwards, since many aspirants have to arrive from faraway star clusters and even other stellar systems.
But he shrugged, as it didn't affect them, Agnes smiled before she started flying towards the city.
Everyone followed Agnes using their own means to fly, with the exception of Kana who clung to Aster's arm giving him puppy eyes.
Aster laughed, he secured Kana with his arm and then followed the girls, he couldn't help but feel some troubles ahead, now that the girls weren't using their veils it was bound to happen, so he didn't forget to speak to them through the mental connection.
'Later if anything happens don't hesitate to cut off some throats if needed'.
The girls nodded and then continued flying towards the restaurant where Agnes was taking them to, Aster felt a little tug on the neck of his shirt and looked at the little girl in his arms, who was pouting.
"Big brother, you were talking to mom in her head again, that's not fair".
Aster bitterly smiled, apparently the talent in soul related things was something that both Sarina and Kana shared, besides the monstrous rate at which she was developing the first level of bow intent, her spirit sense also became incredibly sharp.
"It's a habit of mine, I bet you won't complain about it later", said Aster as he patted her head earning a big smile from Kana.
"Do you remember the rules we talked about?".
Kana nodded with her usual smiling expression.
"Yes, besides the family don't trust in anyone, and if they try anything I can beat them as if there was no tomorrow~".
Aster nodded, he put special attention to the ring he handed to Kana, just to be sure, which of course made the other girls mess with him saying something along the lines of, "Imagine how will it be, with our kids".
Unaware of the funny consequences that the way he trained Kana, will bring in the future Aster increased his flying speed catching up with the others in a few seconds despite how much they have gotten ahead before.