Chapter 612 Tiana’s flashing spear & Nerissa’s flowing sword (part 8)

With a casual snap of Aster's fingers, the cloud of dust that was raised by Tiana's accidentally triggered innate ability, was immediately dispersed to reveal their two figures, Aster was standing behind Tiana while gently holding her free hand with his.

It took Tiana a whole minute to react, not only because Aster was holding her hand gently but firmly preventing her from falling frontwards, which made her want to dig a hole to hide, but because she looked at the result of the previous accidental trigger of her ability.

'I-I did that… ', she thought in awe, the result of her spear barely grazing the ground was not only that large curtain of dust as she had previously thought, but the seemingly bottomless two-meter large chasm that stood exactly a centimeter away from her feet, a bit more and she would have fallen into it, in fact the next second the ground below her feet started to crumble apart.

Naturally for Aster this happened in slow motion so he simply placed his other hand on Tiana's waist and then with a slight tap of his feet jumped around fifty meters backwards.

Seeing Tiana observing her spear while still lost on her thoughts, Aster chuckled.

"Why didn't I think of using my spear if I needed a larger range to gather my ability, why didn't I think on a way to extend the control that I barely managed to obtain?", he said to then add.

"It's not your fault, up until a moment ago you "could" have reached our points of contact with a part of your body and the level of control you had obtained, or at least that's what our previous exchange was supposed to make you believe".

"Even a moment ago you could have kicked me, in fact your leg was closer to me than your spear", he said with a playful voice which made Tiana visibly blush.

'That's right, this bastard's lewd hands were about to… no wait, why did I choose to attack him with my spear if my leg was indeed closer to him', she thought as she repeated the scene in her mind.

"That was the result of your mind surpassing the limit of what your soul and instincts can do separately or working together, in other words a true integration unlike what you have been doing until now and as you can see the result is quite different", said Aster as he gazed at the deep pit on the ground created by Tiana's spear.

There is a big difference between piling one thing on top of another and combining them, while the former brings a quantitative change the latter causes a qualitative one, it's like comparing a handful of feathers against a handful of metal.

Tiana who was amazed at the possibilities of what Aster told her, was harshly returned to the real world by his next words.

"Of course, you barely grazed the umbral for a mere split of a second, otherwise your instincts wouldn't be instilling you to remain like this without you being able to tell", he jokingly said.

Only then Tiana realized that she was perfectly being held by Aster, his right hand was on her waist while his left hand was still holding hers.

To Aster's surprise, even if her face was red as an apple, Tiana didn't scream, instead of that she calmly turned her head around.

"You could have simply used telekinesis to bring me along with you earlier when the ground crumbled apart, so why the… hand there?", she asked as calm as she could.

As much as it annoyed her to be toyed by Aster, she isn't stupid, it wasn't hard for her to notice that the moments when her skin made direct contact with Aster's, what she gained was more than just mind clarity, it was different than he touched her through her clothes.

'Ahhh damn why does it feel so lewd, damn lascivious dragons', she thought while waiting for Aster's answer.

"Well, at this point it holds no meaning to keep it a secret since I have guided you as far as I can for the time being through that method, the contact was needed to help you consolidate the small steps you needed to integrate your mind and body, as for the technique you just used that's a side effect or should I say it is a gift~", he playfully said.

Tiana's eyes sparkled for a second, her mind which was still agitated became as clear as a mirror as if she had crossed some kind of umbral, and that was the case, Aster could see her soul energy taking a qualitative change, much to Tiana's surprise instead of her reserves of soul energy increasing, they decreased.

"What a scam…", she mumbled before her words stopped in cold, the "decrease" was because her reserves doubled, so if she earlier had around 50% of soul energy left, now she had 25% of her new reserves.

Tiana slightly bit her lip in response, she could feel Aster's mocking gaze piercing her like a spear, but of course she refused to take it lying.

"Humph, in other words you are just landing your lewd claws on me for fun now", she said only to be at a loss of words when she heard Aster saying.

"A benefit of the training I would say".

Tiana sighed knowing that she couldn't win this shameless dragon, with words, it was something she learned the hard way with Alice, so instead she rolled her spear which she was holding with her free hand and used the base of the shaft to slash at Aster's abdomen.

Aster softly laughed as he let go of the fierce girl to give her some distance, seeing the "invisible" diagonal slash that followed up from Tiana's attack which by the way left a scar on the ground and also broke a couple of spears, he knew that the end of the training session was close.

Also, he found Tiana's excited expression at the fact that she could somewhat trigger the result of combining mind and body synchronization and her innate ability at will, rather cute.

'Heh, for someone that has such a big rivalry with Alice, she surely has quite a few things in common with her', he thought.

Without forgetting to charge at Aster, spear first, Tiana asked. "I now understand that if I gather mi ability through my spear, there is a 50-50 chance to produce that strange chance, but I still don't know exactly what is the change about?".

Aster chuckled as he caught Tiana's spear by its head, producing a metal clashing sound.

"That's because you haven't crossed the breaking point, all the previous just brought you to the umbral, right now you are shooting in the dark which is why I can casually hold the most dangerous part of your spear like this", he said as his armored fingers laced through the edge of Tiana's spear head producing sparks.

Tiana pouted at the fact that Aster didn't answer her question, just for Aster to then add.

"Of course, as a benefit of our first "real" date, I don't mind giving you a small hint".

'Tease-loving bastard', thought Tiana but she was all ears, she knew that he meant only good for her even if his methods were somewhat annoying.

"What's the essence of your ability", limited to say Aster.

"Repel…", mumbled Tiana, while she seemed to be falling under a trance, she jumped frontwards and tried to knock him down with her spear.

"Oh, integrating feigns for your technique now, that's a bit of a stretch considering you can't activate it at will yet", said Aster as he crouched down to dodge Tiana's spear which as he could see even before she tried, didn't succeed to activate her new technique.

That being said Tiana's eyes shone for a split of a second while she inwardly exclaimed.

'I can see him!', unlike before where she just managed to see Aster flashing when he moved, she saw him crouch down at around five times her maximum speed, you might think that such a thing is useless but from being completely unable to react to just be unable to attack him it was a huge change.

This not only helped Tiana mentally, whenever Aster got to hold her, he stopped moving and it was the same right now that he was touching her right shin through her clothes since earlier, he didn't have the chance to.

It's worth mentioning that despite being through the clothes, for Tiana it felt as if that wasn't the case, she even felt her skin getting slightly warmer as if it was direct contact, just like earlier when he held her hand.

'I swear I'll wear gloves for our next date', she thought unaware of the fact that she wasn't against the idea of a next time now, back to the fight even if Tiana was still far from being able to keep up with Aster's speed, she now knew his general direction instead of having to make up with predictions or instincts, just as Aster said, she had surpassed what she was able to do with just her soul and her body.

Which led us to her current reaction, which was to roll her body breaking her contact with Aster to then slash his back with her spar, to her surprise and as if to "reward" her effort, the change in her innate ability did succeed this time and so an invisible line was produced by her slash.

While Aster dodged the spear's head with ease, the invisible line that was produced which was still pretty much visible for him, suddenly accelerated to then clash with his right hand, the result was a thunder like sound as Aster slapped the thing aside, which then landed on the ground opening another deep but not too large or wide rift on the rocky floor.

"This technique which involves my innate ability as well as body and mind harmony doesn't affect the essence of my innate ability it just uses it in a more advanced way", confidently said Tiana to then add.

"Normally I would be unable to make such deep scars on the ground of this place with my innate ability, it's really hard to repel solid things with strong support which is why I simply couldn't break through that absurdly tough light protection to reach your armor with just my soul energy and ability before, but now… I still can't even after I repelled the attack itself to accelerate it", the light on her eyes diminished quite a bit upon seeing the light around the gauntlet of the armor still in one piece.

Earlier Tiana finally understood what changes has her innate ability underwent due to the integration of mind and body synchronization with it, originally her repelling ability while amazing considering she could affect spirit energy to such an extent by using soul energy, it was still quite crude, But now, it had become much more refined and concentrated, the result was that invisible for others, "line" as Aster described it, that line basically repelled till the last bit of spirit energy first and then blew away material things, in that exact order and with a difference in time so little that it didn't cause lag between the attacks.

To put in simple words, before Tiana simply pushed things as a whole, which as result meant she had to face two obstructions with one attack, or more accurately three, one physical and two energy ones, one active and one passive.

Everything in this world had spirit energy, even cultivators who didn't walked down the energy or body path, had a natural defense in the form of spirit energy in their very flesh, bones, blood, organs, the difference between that neutral state and that of a body cultivator who actively temples its body is of course abysmal, but bulletproof vests are made of many layers and the same thing applies to this.

The point is that now, Tiana's attack was both precise and strong enough to repel spirit energy at that level, to then follow up with physical obstructions that had lost both passive and active spirit energy enhancing.

The result could be seen on the ground of this place, since it was both naturally strong due to the level of this secret realm and artificially enhanced by the formations stablished by Aster's godmothers when they transformed it into the Treasure Graveyard, it shouldn't have been possible for Tiana who couldn't even destroy the light around Aster's armor with just her soul energy and innate ability, to create such deep scars on the ground.

And yet she did, because when her ability was channeled through her spear now, she pushed the spirit energy away from the target and then the second part of the attack landed on a weakened target.

It is obviously far from perfect, she realized that she can only produce this effect when she uses her spear, probably because she is used to use her intent only on her spear and her technique involves her intent, which is why she was unable to reach the starting point earlier, she was limiting to use her body only and her mastery of this technique is too shallow for that as of current.

Seeing her downcast expression Aster smiled, he walked towards Tiana who felt a bit wronged since he wasn't giving her even a few seconds to recover from her failure, only for her to freeze when Aster warmly placed his hand on top of her head with a smile on his face.

"To breach the light protection, you need an attack that can harm a sole path early-stage Genesis Manifestation body cultivator, mmm let's see, for an early-stage Star Tribulation body and soul genius like you, that would be around 82% strength output, since you recently became a Star Tribulation your original 81% had returned to 80% but now you have solidly reached 82% of strength output, not bad at all", he honestly said.

Aster wasn't praising her for nothing, keeping up the strength output with each break trough is hard, since that is what defines one's battle prowess which translates into being a genius or not, so with each advance the percentage most of the times diminishes and has to be raised once again, the difficulty of the previous will be defined by how solid one's foundation is.

An example of the previous is Aster whose strength output has been fixed on 90 ever since his appearance changed, never once he has gone below that but at the same time it didn't go up permanently but was boosted by mind and body synchronization, until recently when he went up to 91%.

"Congratulations Tiana, you win", said Aster as he patted her head a couple of times, which made Tiana's mouth twitch for a second, not because of the head pat, she felt surprisingly calm with that but because she didn't meet the conditions they set up to win, but as if Aster could read her mind, he casually said.

"Don't look at me like that, the conditions I put are actually for your long-term training, as of right now, there is no chance for you to keep me away from you for a whole minute, the limit should be around 15-20 seconds at most", naturally that made Tiana softly snort.

"Humph, I know I'm too weak compared to a monster like you", she mumbled as she looked away, just for Aster to gently grab her chin and make her look at him. "A single one percent past 80% is enough to put you on a whole new level when compared to other cultivators, and every two percent has an even bigger gap, due to recent events Aria and Alice are the ones at the highest among your relative range, both having a maximum output of 86% but that is only on spikes, their general limit is 84% and you should be able to reach that when you master this new technique".

"As a kind reminder having a higher output isn't necessarily a good thing if you can't handle it, Alice and Aria aren't actually the best in that aspect in your group, those two can spike up to 86% temporarily, but Vivian has been at 86% since I met her, she actually had to lower her output and can only fully access to it using the special path that Esmeralda and me helped her create in her body".

"So, you aren't weaker than them, you just need more training and experience, they have had much more dates than you after all", he jokingly said.

Though Tiana only had a rough idea of what those percentage meant, she knew that it didn't define who was stronger among them, it was just how much strength they could produce, but properly using it was a whole different thing, Vivian is the perfect example of that.

Ignoring the fact that Aster was blatantly promoting the benefits of these "dates", Tiana softly laughed.

"So even lascivious dragons like you can be decent guys from time to time… also don't call me Tiana, Tia is fine…", she said.

Aster chuckled in response.

"I don't know about others, but I can", with those words he let go of Tiana very much to her surprise, since she thought, he was going to keep messing with her, but just when her belief that Aster wasn't as perverted as she thought was taking form, she saw the pillar of blue light that rose from the area where Nerissa should have been meditating.

"You two are pretty much synchronized, she took the exact same time as you to reach her advance, well if we take into account the little laps of "assistance" I gave you", he said.

"If by "assistance" you mean taking advantage of me, I'll agree", added Tiana, her face reddening at the fact that he touched her face earlier.

Aster shrugged, he only stopped playing around because Nerissa was now arriving at their location by riding on top of a water stream.

Nerissa gazed at Tiana whose face still had a tinge of red and she couldn't help but raise an eyebrow, but since it was obvious that there was nothing bad going on, she didn't dwell into it, instead she happily gazed at Aster but just as she was going to tell him the good news, he stopped her from doing so.

"I think actions speak better than words and so here are the gifts I promised", he said as he waved his hand to take out a couple of large rectangular cases from the mind space.

Tiana and Nerissa couldn't help but look at the cases, not out of greed but because the things inside were "calling" them, which is the effect Aster was looking for after all, so he mischievously smiled as he opened the cases at the same time.

The contents couldn't be more different, but they both achieved the same result from their now owners, both were surprised and happy.

"Come on try them on, I made them for you two after all", said Aster, his voice was like that of a devil, tempting a pair of innocent girls to sign a shady contract, unfortunately or not this time curiosity won and so they both reached for their gifts.

On Tiana there were actually two things, one was something that could be expected, a weapon, predictable yes and no, for the sole fact that what she was holding wasn't a spear but a glaive, similar design different purpose.

"Your war spear is not bad at all, miss Felicia asked an experienced spirit blacksmith to make it in one of her travels and it can be upgraded up to the peak Transcending realm, but that was before you even developed first level intent, your second level isn't "piercing" but "slashing" and it is pretty noticeable for my eyes that you aren't comfortable with a spear design".

"This glaive design will help you maximize the range of your "slashing" which will perfectly align with your new technique, I also added a few little surprises, I bet you can already tell one of them just by looking at it, so feel free to be as rough as you want with it, since it won't break", jokingly said Aster.

"Stalker…", mumbled Tiana, still she couldn't prevent a smile from appearing on her face as she looked at the black shaft but golden metal head of the glaive which she was holding, she called Aster a stalker because she has been considering to change her spear for a glaive, but since it is not a standard weapon even for a training one, she had to look for one that fit her criteria.

A glaive essentially is a deviation of a classic spear, the same applies to the halberd and other similar weapons, so it's not that hard to adjust her intent to become glaive intent, her next mission will be perfect for it.

As for the second item, it was a silver tiara with blue gems embedded on it, the thing perfectly matched with the white-silver tone her hair gained when she started using her innate ability and more importantly, she felt a familiar soothing and relaxing sensation coming from it, which was natural since those gems were created by bathing pieces of the subproduct diamonds, that grew around the diamond orchid, on Aria's Rigel's flames for more than a month to then be coated with melted yin accumulation crystal to prevent the effect from fading, Milene's courtesy.

Aria's flames were yin oriented unlike Aster's and her calming and mind refreshing effect was much stronger as well, so with that and a small yin gathering formation courtesy of Eris, though there were no flames stored, a lesser but permanent effect was granted to it.

"That way you can train your technique proficiently and then show me the results on our next date", said Aster.

"Humph when did I agree to a next one… soon", mumbled Tiana, but her smile betrayed her. ?r?ew?bn?ve?.c??

And now it was Nerissa's turn, her gift was only one but the effort required was on par with Tiana's double gift, specially for Aster since he hadn't put much effort into crafting armor as he didn't need it, he became a spirit blacksmith to create swords for himself originally after all, only recently he has become able to make things for the girls as he became a soul cultivator after all.

Anyway, Nerissa isn't a body cultivator and while she does have a strong body as she was made to train by Valentina who was inspired by Agnes's obsession for physical training, her physical defense isn't the best. She is actually better in the physical strength department which isn't that weird, considering that her focus was completely set on offense a mistake that she has solved just a couple of minutes ago.

So, to go along with that and taking into account the fact that her blue jade sword is actually an Immortal grade treasure that has safety seals placed on it, so that Nerissa can use it, Aster instead made her armor.

Well though it is soft armor, it would be more accurate to call it an outfit, formed by a white blouse with detached sleeves and a skirt with different tones of blue and a few golden decorations, both adorned with blue floral patterns.

The design though seemed to be focused on fashion, was quite thought through so that it would perfectly protect Nerissa's vitals without limiting her movement on the slightest, it also went perfectly with her dual toned blue hair and pale white skin.

But as much as Aster was satisfied with the advances, he made in his spirit blacksmithing thanks to this set and Vivian's dress, the biggest benefits were added thanks to the runes engraved on it, the same applied to Tiana's glaive.

And for that, one last exchange was needed so with those two's sparkling eyes, they prepared their newly acquired equipment for a small demonstration.

'Let's punish this teasing lascivious dragon~', they both inwardly exclaimed.

Naturally Aster knew what they were thinking, he prepared these gifts for that, also it's not like he lost anything by cheering up this pair of pretty girls.