The rise of the pervert primordial

’Good sister my foot, those punches are strong enough to break the bones of body cultivator like twigs in this place’, thought Aria.

Like previously stated the foundation of her body is surprisingly strong, so while the ice princess’s flesh and skin are "weak" to Alice’s heavy punches, even the wild dragon princess would not be able to damage her bones even if she had metal reinforced gloves designed for attacking, the only exception would be if Alice directly used her tail.

That being said, while shattering Aria’s bones with her punches was not possible, Alice made sure they hurt as much as possible with the knowledge of her manual, not out of malice but because that was of help for Aria’s training.

If the ice princess wanted to keep up in a close-range combat with Alice, she couldn’t be distracted by pain in the slightest, nor let the damage interrupt her momentum, because a fraction of a second of distraction would mean getting hit by the wild dragon princess, that was the "motivation" Alice mentioned.

Because to achieve that she had to make it so that her recovery was fast enough for her to not feel the pain or for her body to not falter due to the damage, now, even mortals can endure pain to a certain extent so long as they have the mental fortitude needed for it, so a strong-willed girl like Aria didn’t let out a peep even when hit by Alice in a way that would make adult veterans cry like kids who scrapped their knees.

However, no amount of will can allow a mortal to control things like spasms, tissue trauma and nerve irritation caused by a strong impact, which would weaken the affected area, but what Aria can do is heal fast enough to prevent that from happening.

After yesterday, she had managed to recover fast enough to prevent the nerves misfiring and firing off contractions, bruises don’t form immediately but swelling can happen on the spot, she is still far from healing fast enough to even prevent reddening and swelling before others can notice though but there is noticeable progress indeed.

"Your real intentions are showing on your face you shameless dragon princess, even with my recovery abilities I would be all bruised up if I hadn’t improved as fast as I did, you only wanted me out of the picture at night", said Aria as she took a training dagger out of her pocket to slash it at Alice who smiled in response.

"I wonder what are you talking about~", Alice blocked the dagger with her free hand, but then she felt a "twitch" coming from her tail which was in contact with the ground until now.

’She was using her tail to feel the vibrations of the ground, Espi’s camouflaging abilities must have been really annoying for Alice if she had to rely on direct contact to detect her, not that I don’t understand why, that little wyrm is hard for my eyes to notice even when she is moving’, thought Aster.

Alice has really sharp instincts, the fact that she couldn’t detect Espi unless she used her tail to be in contact with the ground was quite something, not to mention that it’s not like Alice had a good track of where the little wyrm was, this only gave her a vague feeling of Espi’s position, she only had a clear image of her position when she took impulse for her attack like right now, as it was impossible to not produce reactions when propelling herself.

The little wyrm who appeared on the air out of "nowhere" after deactivating her camouflage, lashed her tail at Alice at an incredibly high speed.

"Clang!", though the aesthetic aspects of a clash between a white scaled tail and a black scaled one were pretty, the result of it was not in the slightest, an ear-piercing metallic sound accompanied by sparks was the result, followed by thunderous explosion.

"Booom!", it was as if two hammers were swung with full strength against each other, both the little wyrm and Alice ended up repelling each other.

"Hisss!", with the little wyrm giving the signal, a whistling sound reached Alice’s ears as Kana shot the arrow, she had been keeping on her bow since earlier.

Kana’s arrow was incredibly fast but Alice instinctively jumped so the thing passed without hitting her, but then a second arrow arrived only a second after the previous one, right at the spot where Alice was, which is midair, but from a completely different direction.

"Crack!", the round metal tip of the arrow heavily landed... on Alice’s tail, the wild dragon princess had covered her thigh where the arrow was going to land with her tail at the last second, the impact was so strong that the training tip broke against the black scales of the tail.

"Phew, the little roc archer and the little whip snake had gotten used to play dirty, they nearly got me there~", jokingly said Alice as she landed on the ground while using her tail to grab onto the arrow which she then proceeded to break in half.

"Don’t break them every time sister Alice and that was fair!", exclaimed the little girl, she had a limited amount of training arrows but that’s not what got to Kana, but the part about being accused of "playing dirty".

Basically, Kana had it hard at the time of hitting Alice with her arrows because the wild dragon princess has really sharp senses, moves around a lot and more importantly because there are others fighting with her at close range and the "punishment" for her arrows being closer to hit others than Alice, was letting Alice attack her.

Of course, the wild dragon princess wouldn’t punch Kana like she did with Aria, she would actually hurt her if that was the case, the little girl does have a stronger than normal body even here, courtesy of her spirit beast lineage, however unlike in Sarina’s case, her lineage doesn’t give her more bonuses in terms of physique, but in the energy path and at the same time she is not planning in taking the body as her secondary path like her mother, but the soul one.

So, Alice resorted to the same "punishment" she gave to those girls she didn’t want to hurt but still wanted to mess with, like the ones from the sect who asked to spar with her to try and earn a date with Aster, and that’s how Kana’s clothes ended up being ripped here and there yesterday.

’Well, she sure is good at motivating others, it would be better if Alice wasn’t enjoying messing with them so much though’, thought Aster.

In Kana’s case, she was not training for her profession type manual, she has no trouble with that and in fact triggered her mission even before the siege battle with the bear’s army, because she interacted with a lot of different animal races, explored a larger part of the forest in the process and "got along" with them since there was no conflict majorly thanks to her and Guardian’s cooperation.

She was training for her attack type manual and her movement type ones instead, which is why the little girl needed to improve her shooting ratio while moving on her own, there was a little setback on the latter because Kana teamed with Ember and the filly had them covered in terms of speed.

So, she had it hard to deal with the Alice who already was in the top five combatants before being further empowered by her tail, but that was good motivation for the little girl, she now could shoot two arrows basically one after the other and from different positions, which was enough with her insanely high grip strength to reach Alice, though her attack didn’t land where she wanted.

At the same time, Alice was teaching her how to deal with enemies whose fighting style is "unpredictable" like hers, because the happiness Kana felt when she was able to shot two arrows with full force one after the other was nullified by Alice dodging both rather easily, with her new approach she managed to make the wild dragon princess use her tail which was more of a victory than what one would think.

"Hisss!", the little wyrm on the hard complained about being called "little whip snake" by saying "I’m a dragon and a sword user, like Aster!", now, that little girl never really cared about such a thing, in fact she liked being called "little wyrm" which is a lower ranked spirit beast and a subspecies of one of the main dragon types from which Espi seemingly descend, namely a lyndwyrm, also she didn’t mind being called "little snake" when it was done so out of affection, but she could tell Alice was mocking her, which is what triggered a rare retort from the little wyrm.

There is also a proper reason for the previous, similar to Kana, Espi is not training go trigger a profession related mission, she already had done so she was the very first one after Aster to achieve that but her situation is quite unique among the group, even currently she hasn’t completed her unique mission but she already had a "reward" given due to it, you know the one which shortened processing time when it came to working with metals, which when it comes to Aster is of a total 20% but for non-companions is of only 5%.

That wasn’t her first technique but a fraction of it, Espi could attain a similar reward for other types of materials as well but that’s not the end of her mission, because her profession which is "Companion" doesn’t really have a fixed structure, it depended on who the little wyrm is a companion to.

The little wyrm’s profession type manual is called "Master of Adaptation", it’s the thickest and largest out of all the manuals that had been obtained from the monoliths and that is because it contains base knowledge about a lot of different professions, however the very first page warns its owner to not lose sight of what’s important, which is the fact that the profession to which it belongs is "Companion".

Amusingly enough, similar to the way the little wyrm is evolving, her profession type manual while quite varied, it limits her to two different aspects per "time", it’s just that they aren’t attributes like with her evolution but professions, in this case since Espi is Aster’s companion, her first mission focuses in two professions, craftmanship which is with what she triggered it, and battle as those are two of the most notorious aspects that her companion has shown.

Of course, Aster’s talents aren’t limited to that and so Espi is not limited to that as well, but those are the professions for her first mission, as to why she didn’t need to trigger the warrior part of it, that’s because it happened automatically when she did so for the craftmanship part, it’s just that she won’t obtain her technique until both aspects had been completed.

And since the warrior part only needed her to fight and gain battle experience, spars and real battle everything counted but she needed large quantities of it, the little wyrm was instead focusing in her attack manual as she doesn’t lack in terms of speed to need to focus in obtaining that manual’s technique.

And that’s what brings us to why Alice was purposedly making Espi claim she is a dragon and a swordsman, the little wyrm’s attack type manual is "Proud Dragon Swordsmanship", which doesn’t limit her to use her tail only and that’s because the little wyrm already had the idea to double wield with her tail and an actual sword when she had attained human form, before they came to this place so she instinctively chose a manual that included both regular swordsmanship and swordsmanship for a dragon lineage owner.

As the name of the manual implies, a part of the requirements to trigger the mission is for the owner of the manual to feel pride on their ascendence, quite a dragon-like trait considering how haughty the Drage are regarding their lineage, it sounds like something simple but Espi is such a good girl that she lacks that negative personality trait of a dragon at all, also she lived in an ecosystem where she could be hunted at any time if she wasn’t careful, so she wasn’t at the top of the food chain ever since she had use of reason, she only gained peace after meeting Aster and the others.

Only lately, she has been developing pride due to being dragon but every bit of it was more than earned by the little wyrm with her actions and it mostly happened, because she knows that she shares said race with her closest person and the one she admires the most, in other words Aster.

As you can see, Alice is as smart as Aster, with a few words those two little girls seemed to have been injected with adrenaline and their eyes were burning with fighting spirit, of course she did so with the idea of benefiting and amusing herself as well, as Aria’s next words pointed out.

"Don’t let her disturb your mind, even a monster like Alice can’t take attacks from the three of us at the same time and remain as calm as she is trying to look", the ice princess jumped at Alice to then slash her wood sword at her chest.

’Heh, the ice princess really knows me the best, mom and Aster aside of course~’, thought the wild dragon princess as she used her "claw" pose hand to stop the wood training sword.

"Hisss!", the little wyrm who had disappeared earlier, suddenly became visible, she climbed through Aria’s arm and used the wood sword as a jumping pad to propel herself into the air and lash her tail at Alice.

"Hahaha, now that’s what I’m talking about!", the wild dragon princess rotated her body and used her tail to clash with Espi’s one, at the same time an arrow that perfectly avoided both the little wyrm and Aria was aimed at Alice’s shoulder.

...

The previous continued for more than an hour before those four started showing signs of being tired, Alice included, after all she was sparring with a fellow member of the top five namely Espi as well as Aria and Kana who were among those directly below them.

"Let’s stop here, fighting in a tired state won’t be of much help to us", said Aria who was the voice of reason here.

"Mm", Espi, Kana and even Alice nodded in agreement, the wild dragon princess would have pushed to continue if there wasn’t something she looked up to more than the fight, waiting for her, some nice Aster time for her.

Speaking of which, as tired as those four were, they all seemed to gain new life as they gazed at Aster who chuckled in response.

"Fine, fine, you all earned it, come here", said Aster as he sat down on the ground and opened his arms to welcome those four.

"Yeeei more sweets~", said Kana as she jumped onto Aster’s left lap.

"Hey, that’s my spot!", that was Alice who landed on Aster’s right leg instead.

"Don’t fight with little Kana, you shameless dragon princess", that was Aria who calmly walked towards Aster and sat at his right while leaning her head against his shoulder.

"Hisss~", and last but not least the little wyrm who slid away from Aria’s shoulder to then coil herself around Aster’s left arm, amusingly enough they had paired on the same side with whom they got along the most, so Alice and Aria were at Aster’s right, while Espi and Kana were at his left.

"Here, a candy for sister Aria", cutely said Kana as she offered one of her treasured rewards to the ice princess as a thanks for all the help, she offered them during the spar.

"What, no candy for your big sister Alice, I helped that little snake... wuuh~", Alice who was in the middle of trying to extort a candy from the little wyrm, stopped midway as her tail was caressed by Aster, which resulted in the wild dragon princess behaving for a change, she snuggled on Aster’s chest and closed her eyes to enjoy the caresses on her tail.

And with the agent of chaos, in other words Alice successfully contented, Aria, Espi and Kana could happily enjoy their reward as well.

’Sweets and spending time with big brother Aster, I’ll ask for more rewards like this~’, thought both Kana and the little wyrm.

’Cuddling with Aster and Alice not being a pain, I’ll ask for more rewards like this’, thought Aria on the other hand.

...

Those four took advantage of the fact that their time had combined to extend their reward, so they remained like that with Aster for more than half an hour, honestly if he didn’t tell them that he still had two more stops to make, they wouldn’t have left him leave so "fast", especially Alice who surprisingly enjoyed such an "innocent" interaction for a change, she even asked to sit on Aster’s lap and have her tail stroked by him on a daily basis.

’I guess wanting to be spoiled is the best possible outcome considering her dragon instincts were stimulated by Sarina reaching the late part of the infant stage, it was nice to see Alice getting along with Kana and Espi too’, thought Aster as he left those four’s training area while stretching his body on the way, Alice tried to keep him in place with her tail as a last resort, so, he wrestled his way out of her hold earlier.

Aster was honestly impressed that Alice didn’t lose it due to Sarina’s improvement, she is way less restrained than Lilia after all, the dragon mother had suffered periods of excitement as well but that stopped being a possibility after the "birth" of dragon Lilia, with the two of them working together their impulses are no longer a problem, this is also because Lilia wanted to gain precise control over her dragon lineage.

Alice on the other hand developed in a different way, since the moment she decided to not chase after Lilia but create her own path, she not only didn’t try to control her impulses but allowed her instincts to run wild, and yet she didn’t go out of control, apparently not being restrained and Aster was everything she needed to remain perfectly centered, she was still possessive and needy but that was Alice’s normal self, you could say that she affected her dragon lineage instead of it being the other way around as it should have been.

Leaving that aside, after such an intense moment, Aster decided to make a stop with much "easier" to deal with targets in mind, earlier he told those four that he had two stops to make, but as it turned out both people he wanted to see were in the same place, however he was still going to make it a 1v1 thing.

"Thanks for the help, it’s much more beneficial for my manuals to deal with coordinated groups of enemies than just multiple enemies without any organization", said a girl with pale gray hair and unique pink grayish eyes as she removed the large wood shield mounted on her back.

She also had small round shields on both of her forearms and was wielding a wood "spear" whose shaft widened as it moved far from the tip, that was a lance and of course the one holding onto it was none other than Alexandra.

"Don’t mention it, in the camp you are the best when it comes to entangle with large groups of enemies at close range, a formation that manages to break away from your control will be the best to deal with single strong targets that lack lethal attack power", said Mikaela.

Aster was back at the west area next to the camp where the tree agglomerations and the training area for battle formations was established.

"Judging by the different claw and biting marks on those shields, I would say that you had quite the fun time", a voice that Alexandra recognized instantly, reached her ears as she was removing the shields tied to her forearms.

"Weren’t you playing around with Eris, Mylene and the others?", asked Alexandra, after Camila, she is the one who has grown closer to those two, perhaps because they are around the same age mind-wise and it could also be because as someone who was particularly bad at socializing, she only managed to open up by being dragged into the slumber parties that those two held constantly, so her relationship with others was still rather shallow in comparison, with the exception of Camila who was the original one being dragged into the slumber partied by those two, before her arrival and ended up being amusingly compatible with Alexandra too.

"Yeah, but then I remembered that miss Tamara and Thomas asked me to take care of their unfriendly daughter and it seems like you haven’t been playing with Camila either, so here I am", jokingly said Aster making Alexandra’s eyebrow twitch a bit.

’He might not be a piece of trash playboy dual cultivator as I thought originally, but he is quite an annoying... friend’, she thought.