The rise of the pervert primordial

[The unique mission "Two Fronts" is now available, upon acceptance, all invisible limits will stop working for the group, fights between camps outside of the official events of the evaluation trial week will be allowed to be started by the group in question be aware that while your camp is able to freely target others, others will only be able to target yours (all members of the group must willingly agree for this mission to be accepted, rewards from official fights will be doubled as a reward for accepting this mission, special missions derived from this one might appear depending on the performance of the group, the reward for the mission itself will be decided after reviewing the results produced by the representative’s decisions)]

After reading the previous Aster couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at the mission’s description, don’t get it wrong, the mission was indeed worthy of a unique reward, just by accepting it, the rewards of the official fights that came with the second week, which Aster now knew was called "evaluation trial" probably because it was supposed to grade the progress made during the first week also called development trial, will be doubled.

What’s more, this mission basically gave him a blank check to get rid of the two nuisance of neighbors he had, and in case you wonder why Aster isn’t worried about his own camp being targeted, he was sure that was going to be the case anyway, because the supervisors know where they are, that being said he was also sure that the blue flaming board won’t let them interfere as much as they did before.

So, you might wonder, if that’s the case why was Aster raising his eyebrow at the mission if there was no downside to it, well, that was exactly why, Aster at least expected the blue flaming board to give him a "list" of targets from which he could chose to attack, rather than just letting him do as he pleased.

’The reward for the mission itself will be decided after seeing how we handle this much "liberty", so in that aspect it does follow the action pattern that the blue flaming board has shown so far, however this combined with the new strong army privilege feels as if we are being motivated to fight more, not as a trap but genuinely, the question is why’, thought Aster as he looked at the blue board with the information of the mission for a second to then say.

"If I ask why, I guess you won’t answer right?", said Aster who knew the blue flaming board personally delivered the information of the rewards as he could tell there was a "presence" in it.

"...", like Aster said, there was no answer from the blue flaming board, so he added.

"In that case, answer to this or this matter is over, are we going to be allies or this is simply taking what we need from the other and then everyone is on their own?", this time there was an answer coming from the blue board produced by the monolith, though it consisted in a single word.

[Ally]

’The key point must lie in those "special missions" mentioned above, but for now this is enough, between having all supervisors as possible enemies and having one as an ally, especially one as strong and reliable as the blue flaming board the choice is obvious’, thought Aster to then say.

"Agnes, please tell miss Valentina and miss Mikaela about this mission and ask Angela to gather all the official members of the camp before breakfast", said Aster to which the sportsy sun diamond princess nodded.

"Mm, see you in a bit", said Agnes as she left, there was one last message from the blue flaming board.

[Information regarding the official events of the development trial will be delivered at 9 am]

And with that Aster was left alone, not for long because Fawn approached him to both ask for a daily chance of activation for her profession type manual’s first technique and to give Regina’s report on the situation, this time she didn’t wait for after breakfast was over, it was for a good reason though.

"Good morning, miss Regina told me that yesterday’s night wind was good so she was going to reach the second camp faster...", mumbled the potential princess, feeling a bit embarrassed over coming to ask for this first thing in the morning.

Not that Aster blamed her, if the giant eagle arrived earlier that was a good thing, she could start her travel back to the camp earlier too, so with a snap of his fingers, Aster gave her one of the two activation chances for profession type manuals, which by the way gave Aster an interesting idea for a little experiment, but that would have to wait until he confirmed something with Guardian and for breakfast.

"Thanks!", unable to hide her happiness, the brown-haired princess smiled as she activated her technique and re-established the connection between herself and the giant eagle.

"Oh, there you are little Fawn, just in time, I’m looking at the camp on west right now", said Regina to which Fawn nodded.

"Mm, good morning miss Regina, the human king... I mean Aster, is here so you can make your report now", she said, perhaps because she has heard the giant eagle call Aster "human king" so many times, she unconsciously called him that before correcting herself, which was amusing.

"His miss Regina, how are things over there?", asked Aster to which the giant eagle answered.

"This camp is much more "normal" compared to the one of those green skinned guys, they have a trench as the first layer of defense, followed by a tall wood fence and lastly a low wall made out of logs".

James original camp had been in this place for a longer time and while they were given peanuts of rewards by the red cloud supervisor and also wasted a lot of time doing some... scummy stuff to vent their anger, they were a mercenary group so the first thing they did was dig a trench around their camp, after that the fence was built and that’s there they had stopped.

The log wall was low in height because they only started building it after the blue flaming board took over and punished them for their actions, which led Aster to his next question.

"How many of them are there?", he asked to which Regina answered.

"I see twelve, no, fifteen male humans, I also see a few animals but they aren’t like the ones in the camp of the green skinned guys, but are probably kept to be used as food exclusively".

Aster couldn’t help but frown, James’s group was supposed to be composed of twenty people, two of them in other words James himself and that other guy called Maurice who was killed by the blue flaming board as punishment, makes so there were only eighteen left, then the blue flaming board must have applied the same punishment to more of them.

’It’s impossible that only three of them were killed, there were five female cultivators captured according to James and there is no way only three participated in what happened to them, so the dead count should be...’, Aster’s thoughts were interrupted by Regina who added.

"They should indeed be humans but some of them look a bit strange, their skin looks... mmm, rough I guess?".

"How many of them look different?", asked Aster to which the giant eagle answered.

"Ten, ten of them have that strange majorly rough skin, the others look like any other human".

"Those are burning marks of some kind... the pattern is one I had never seen before though, and their bodies look a bit emaciated like those whose cultivation has been abolished", said Fawn who could see what Regina saw too.

’I see, so that’s what happened, eight were directly killed by the blue flaming board while the others suffered a punishment and were burned which resulted in that "rough" skin mentioned by miss Regina, as for the extra five, they must be the guys who were captured by the group originally, perhaps they negotiated their freedom in exchange for joining or something along the lines of it’, concluded Aster.

James was punished by the blue flaming board but it only resulted in the few merits he had amassed being erased and his powers being properly sealed as they should have been basically, perhaps this was because he didn’t participate in what his fellow mercenaries did to those female cultivators, both the disgusting part and the killing part, he affirmed to have only fought the male prisoners when they tried to escape but still didn’t kill anyone.

He wasn’t innocent of course, but he indeed was less of a piece of trash in comparison and realistically if he objected to what happened openly, chances were that he wouldn’t just have been treated badly as he was by his teammates, but he would have ended up locked as well, and the blue flaming board seemed to take that into account, so his punishment was lighter, that being said everyone else in his camp did take part on that, so if it was up to the blue flaming board, based on what Aster knows, they would have all died, however there are rules in place.

The blue flaming board probably could only directly kill those participants that caused the death of those female cultivators among which Maurice was, but other levels of punishment were completely up to Blue Sky to decide, so unlike James those other guys were covered in burn marks and instead of only having their cultivations sealed, they probably lost it, which resulted in backslash of some kind, luckily in this place cultivation didn’t count as much, so they were still able to move.

"How about the monoliths and equipment?", asked Aster to put an end to the report.

"I see two stone pillars similar to the ones at our camp, as for the equipment, they have both sharpened wood sticks and bones which have been carved into weapons, however there is something worth noticing, a large wood container with a black substance that radiates a rotten smell even from this distance, they also have a few bows and a lot of arrows whose tips they are submerging in that black substance", said the giant eagle.

One had to give it to those guys, they progressed more than Wade’s group in the same amount of time, not only because they are around the same level minus Wade and a few other noticeable members of his group, but also because they really would die if they didn’t use every available second to improve their security so there was no time for inner conflict, unlike at Wade’s group, well, before the siege and before Fawn was taken away at least.

It got to the point that they developed long distance weapons such as bows and even made a rudimentary toxic weapon by letting a lot of stuff rot to produce dangerous bacteria which they applied to the arrow tips, simple but effective.

"I have a little task for you two, describe the members of the camp, their hair and eye color, body shape, height and skin tone, if possible, then bring that information to James for him to identify those guys, also miss Regina, please make a few turns above them so that Fawn can draw a simple map of the camp’s distribution, take note especially of the number of exits and the surroundings, be careful and leave as soon as you finish with that", said Aster.

"Okay!", both the brown-haired princess and the giant eagle enthusiastically nodded as they put hands to work.

...

While Aster went to the dining area and waited for others to gather, high into the sky that was directly above the forest area, one "patch" of the sky was different from the rest, it wasn’t noticeable from below but its color was brighter than the rest of the sky and it also was absolutely clear without as much as a particle of water blocking its view.

That was the residence of the blue flaming board also known as Blue Sky, inside of it there was a large throne room seemingly made of some kid of blue stone, which upon a closer look was actually blue flames solidified, there sitting on the throne was an indistinguishable figure made out of blue flames, while in front of it a purple flag whose emblem was a black mask with a sad expression on it, was seemingly "kneeling" at a respectable distance from the throne.

"I understand that those participant’s contribution was valuable, they opened the path for your return and their performance has been excellent which is why I had nothing to say about the rewards they were granted, however... their representative’s capacities is dangerous, I don’t know how much but he clearly was holding himself back when he cut Red Cloud, is it okay to trust him with so much of your authority in the form of that mission?", asked the purple flag to then add.

"What’s more, he a mortal actually asked you to be on equal standing with them...", the purple flag’s words were interrupted by a blue flaming board with a message, appearing in front of him, apparently Blue Sky could only communicate this way.

[If those guys hadn’t messed with the arrangements of my eastern zone, he would have been allowed to fight with other camps as long as his group could make the travel to reach them anyway, because he entered the trial road with level three authority, I simply gave him something that he should have had by right]

"What!", the purple flag couldn’t help but exclaim in response to the previous information which he didn’t have knowledge about until now.

"But, obtaining level three authority from the eastern gates equals obtaining level six authority from the gates of the other zones in terms of difficulty, the harsher conditions which you set for the high grade gates were already enough for your isolation to last way longer than that of the other zone rulers and you tell me that mortal not only fulfilled them but surpassed them, should we really not try to make him leave, what if the situation of the central zone happens again...", said the purple flag who was radiating an intense bloodthirst currently.

[No, I have observed them, benefits are not what drives their group forward, but at the same time they are not naïve, their ideals are balanced, and they would rather ask for a safe fair arrangement than a risky beneficial one, a trait that is already hard to find in a single person and even harder in a group were different opinions tend to appear, their unity is incredibly high]

[What’s more, if you tried, chances are that you’ll be cut down like it happened to Red Cloud, while it won’t kill you, it will be troublesome to solve the consequences that would come with that and if I were to act myself, I’m confident that I can send them out, but it won’t be without a price, currently it will only end up with using too much energy and needing to retreat for some time to recover, but considering their representative chose "that" manual, things will be different later, he will be able to face a zone ruler in a 1v1 situation later]

"I don’t know what to say, despite all of our limitations, for a participant group to be able to cause troubles to a zone ruler in exchange for only being exiled... and more importantly for a single participant to have the potential to equal a zone ruler, besides that man from ten thousand years ago, there has never been another one and if I remember correctly that one came from a Divine Firmament so he had already shed his mortal shackles at that point", said the purple flag.

[Let’s not rush, I’ll handle things in the eastern zone, you go and look for Purple Mask, she should be in the southern zone, give White Mountain my regards while you are there as well]

"Understood", the purple flag nodded and then turned into a stream of light which shot towards south, disappearing into the distance.

...

And now we are back to Aster’s camp, where Angela had already gathered every single official member of the group, animals included.

"First of all, good morning to everyone, there is a subject which requires your approval...", before Aster could finish, the authorities from each group took a step ahead and directly said in unison.

"We all agree to accept the mission", judging by the amused light in Agnes, Valentina and even Mikaela’s eyes, they already explained the situation to the respective authorities who communicated it to those they represented and they all reached the same conclusion which was to accept the mission.

"Well, since miss Valentina and miss Mikaela pulled a fast one on me, let’s have breakfast already", said Aster as he shrugged, to which quite a few girls of the sect giggled.

"So, when are we setting out to clean those pieces of trash, thanks to the ice princess, the little roc archer brat and the little whip snake, I only need to practice one more attack method to complete my profession manual’s mission~", said Alice as she sat on Aster’s lap to then coil her tail all the way from his stomach to his neck.

Alice had practiced all her non-killing methods with the help of the black horses, Aria, Kana and Espi and most of the lethal ones with the enemies so far, she only had one left, it can’t be used for training as its only purpose is directly killing the target and that’s because it’s one related to her tail, in fact she used a non-lethal toned-down version with those three thanks to her improved control over the scales of her tail, but it wasn’t counter for the mission, though the experience was valuable for Alice.

"Ahem, first we have to wait for the information regarding the events of the evaluation trial to be given by the blue flaming board, though it should still be fights between camps, there must be some differences when compared to the past times since the supervisors for sure have interfered more than the usual", said Aster as he unwrapped Alice’s tail of his body not without caressing it to pacify that wild dragon sister of his, an opportunity that Kana and the little wyrm didn’t let go, as they jumped onto Aster’s lap as well.

"Speaking of which, Guardian do you remember at what time of the day did the participants from back then "disappear"?", asked Aster to the lynx who was munching on a piece of boar meat.

"Mmm, according to the position of the sun in the sky, it would say it was from four to five hours before night came", said Guardian as she made memory of those days.

"Perfect, considering how the blue flaming board does things, we have time to make a little experiment, all of you follow me after breakfast", said Aster to the others sitting at the leader’s table.

’Is it me, or he looked our way for a second while smirking a moment ago?’, thought, Valentina and Agnes at the same time.

The others were more interested in the "little experiment" mentioned by Aster, because they know he wouldn’t stop them all from doing their own things, unless it was something important.

And they were right, once everyone had their fill, Aster led the group of leading figures including the animal kings towards a tree agglomeration which was out of the sight of the other members of the group.

"Why all the secrecy?", asked Tiana to which Aster smiled as he pointed at the little wyrm.

"Espi, use your daily chance of "Unique Bond" to experience my knowledge about Absolute, I have a little gift for you".

"Hissss~", the little wyrm cutely hissed as she approached Aster, her body shone in a dim blue light for a second and then wisdom seemed to flash through Espi’s eyes as she took impulse to jump towards a tree as she lashed her tail.

"Crack!", as usual, Espi broke the tree with her powerful muscles and tough scales rather than cutting it, because her scales are not sharp, unlike Alice’s ones, however upon observing the stump left behind by the little wyrm, one could see that... the irregular splinter pattern caused by breaking the tree with impact instead of cutting through it had diminished in more than half, in other words Espi produced a though rough still passable cutting pattern rather than a breaking one with the help of the knowledge from Aster’s "Absolute".

"Woah, that was amazing Espi!", said Kana as she petted the little wyrm, only for Aster to add.

"Now that my "assistant" has confirmed that unique bond’s effect is the real deal, let’s begin our little experiment", he said with a smile that gave quite a few girls some post-teasing trauma flashes, the assistant in question was all smiles though.

’I’m closer to become a sword user like Aster~’, cutely thought the little wyrm.