Chapter 861: The second day of the evaluation trial (part 14)

The mercenary who had lost his balance and slid backwards due to both the impact and the humid ground due to the proximity to the shore of the river, immediately got up to then retreat a few meters.

’What the hell was up with that attack, I’m a main body path cultivator and my hand is numb not to mention that her sword cut my spear in half like it was nothing!’, he cursed to his insides.

You probably have seen swords easily cut through things like dried wood as if it was buttwe, well, the same applies to the mercenaries, which is why after they were deprived of their spirit energy, they nearly lost it after realizing that their bone swords and knives had a hard time even making a spear’s shaft splinter with a single strong attack.

On the other hand, the mercenary was aware that a huge difference is present when the weapon in question is made out of metal, why, because he saw the leader testing one of the short metal knives that the treasurer had made, before.

That being said, since he was a main body path cultivator, and to make use of the previously described situation, this mercenary purposedly used a thick piece of wood for the shaft of his spear, sacrificing maneuverability and lightness, since he had the strength for it and preferred to have a weapon that could still be used if the bone spear head, which he knew was susceptible to breaking due to impact, was to crumble midway through a fight.

But then, the red-haired girl in front of him just split said dried wood shaft like it was nothing with a single strike, that didn’t even look as if she was going all out, because that was indeed the case.

"Mm, those other guys seemed to hate you a lot after you escaped, because they thought you were strong enough to create a chance for them to survive, so I expected more, but this is disappointing, you are not even as strong as an energy/soul cultivator as Nerissa", said Iris.

The mercenary isn’t to blame over being overwhelmed by her earlier though, despite her looks which don’t give the impression, Iris is really physically strong for someone whose body path is only the secondary one.

It could be because well, she trained the Bladeheart way as her main and used the Fireheart one to further empower her swordsmanship, so for every round of fire training, she did four or five of physical training.

Still, she kept the energy path as her main and there was a gap between her main and secondary paths, which is why she didn’t gain a much more "athletic" appearance, but looked very much like someone who focused more in the energy path, which combined with the soul one, were the most popular among female cultivators, as it created that "soft", "fragile" and "elegant" image that was considered the most beautiful by the standards of the cultivation world.

"Shut up, if you are so strong then don’t use the power of your contract with your spirit beast and let’s see who forces back who in a fair fight!", shouted the mercenary as he glared at the horse which Iris was riding on a moment ago.

’Fall for it, that damn mare is definitely not a mortal horse, so that bitch must be getting stupidly strong because of her connection with it, just a second, let it get to you so that I can kill you!’, inwardly screamed the mercenary.

As you can see, he confused Vivian with a spirit tamer, for three reasons, first because she was the one leading the group that suddenly appeared after them whole riding on horses, second because of that attack which was too strong for someone that clearly didn’t took the body path seriously enough to be her main one.

And third, because after getting a close-up glimpse at the horse which the red-haired girl was riding, made it clear that it couldn’t be a normal horse, well, the mercenary was wrong in the first two things, but he did get the third one right, as that mare was Selene, so she is indeed not your average member of the horse races that are native to this place.

"A fair fight", mumbled Iris as she charged towards the enemy, which made the mercenary almost laugh out loud.

’She fell for it, dumb bitch, who cares about fairness in a life and death fight, as I thought she must be a sheltered princess of some high ranked clan or force, perhaps she is even damn divine royalty given that she is a spirit tamer, but so what, thanks to mortal limitations you can be killed easily under the correct conditions, just like everybody else!’, thought the mercenary as he retreated further back until he was almost at the short of the river where the anacondas were stationed, ready to jump him if he tried to escape their way.

Only after the mercenary saw Iris cross a distance that surpassed the twenty-meter mark, more or less, did he who was holding onto the half of his spear which had the spearhead, also reached to his waist and took out a one knife to hold onto with his free hand.

"Go to hell... aghhhhh!!!", the mercenary who thrusted his now short spear and slashed his bone knife at Iris, screamed like a pig in a slaughter house as his arms were twisted in a weird direction.

"Thud!", his arms were broken by Iris who hit them with the lateral part of her sword, because if she cut them the enemy would have probably died due to blood loss, also while his broken bones won’t outright heal on the spot with a healing elixir from Mylene, with it, there won’t be any trouble to interrogate him later, but before that.

"It fucking hurts, how, how do you have that beast-like strength after getting so far from your contracted beast in this place where there should be limitations applied to you!!!", shouted the mercenary as he rolled on the ground trying to distract himself from the pain coming from his broken arms.

"You have been talking about taking power from miss Selene since earlier, but I’m not a spirit tamer, but a sword user, to make the fight fair I stopped holding myself back that much and used a third of my physical strength in that swing, that’s all", casually said the red-haired girl as she stomped her right foot on the mercenary’s right leg.

"Crack!", which of course resulted in the bones of his leg to shatter on the spot, this time the enemy didn’t have the time to scream, he directly fainted due to the shock.

"Mmm, was I still too straightforward... no, I used only a tenth of my strength in my first clash with him, so that he would get a wrong idea of my power and it worked, he thought I was a spirit tamer and that I depended in proximity to miss Selene", mumbled Iris.

She was aware that Aster was a spirit tamer, because she was present back at Esmeralda’s realm when Natasha and Charlotte talked about it, and she saw him take the sand "worm" that later transformed into that pretty white "snake", in other words Espi.

Though Iris didn’t learn the specifics, Aster didn’t particularly hide what he could do with the little wyrm, so she knew about the "beast space" which Espi could use to stay at Aster’s side at all times.

And Mira has also mentioned that when the tamer and the contracted spirit beast are together, they can empower the other, so based in all that, she saw through the "plan" of the enemy, which was to get her far from Selene whom the mercenary thought was the source of Iris’s overwhelming strength, to then take her by surprise.

"Oh, there it is, I guess my unique mission of not being "straightforward" is not as easy to judge as Nerissa’s one which only requires her to mainly not focus in using her sword and not move around so much", said Iris as she saw the message which alerted her of her unique mission being triggered.

Amusingly enough, her attacks were still overwhelmingly strong head on, but that’s because the enemy was too weak, it wasn’t her fault as she had already limited her physical strength output a lot, also Iris did successfully make the enemy create a completely imaginary scenario of her being a spirit tamer, which is why a certain wicked red-haired older sister of hers had asked Selene to accompany Iris by the way.

And Iris didn’t "finish" the enemy with her sword either, but made him faint by stomping on his leg, not to mention that she had properly led the girls earlier, so she met the conditions for her "sword maniac" manual’s unique mission to be triggered.

"Tricking the enemy to this point is not as easy as sister Mina and Aster make it look like... speaking of that, isn’t Aster’s "absolute" both straightforward and fluid, he cut that red cloud head on back then, but also when he holds onto a sword, it created the impression that everyone has a blade pointed at their necks in a huge range, I’ll ask him to let me experience it!", excitedly said the red-haired girl as she threw the half-immobilizing poison at the mercenary’s face and then taking a rope out of one of the bags that hanged at Selene’s sides, she tied the enemy and then placed it on the mare’s back laterally while she sat behind of him.

"Sorry miss Selene, I originally wanted to try and fight while riding on your back like little Kana does with Ember, but my riding skills are not that good, so you couldn’t participate much", said Iris with an apologetic voice to which the mare smiled as she answered with a soft sound.

"Neigh", that meant something along the lines of "It’s fine, you have to train in "tactics" for your mission right, I could use more than one training partner aside little Kana’s mother".

By the time Iris had returned to where the other girls of the sect were, a "plan" to complete her unique mission has already been formed between her and Selene.

"Weren’t you supposed to not defeat the enemy with a single strike, sister Iris?", asked a girl from the sect, they had applied the immobilizing poison to those two mercenaries, after beating them up when they tried to escape of course, well, that and because their burn marks gave their status of pieces of trash away for the girls of the sect, who were informed by Aster that those with burn marks at the place they were going to, should normally be killed on sight, and were only captured for the sake of being interrogated.

"Yeah, you returned too soon, did you fail to trigger your mission?", asked another girl, to which Iris who heard their worried voices softly smiled in response.

"I’m your senior sister and the top core disciple of the red sword, of course I successfully triggered my mission since my juniors cooperated with me", she said to then add.

"Let’s take these guys to where sister Mina is, if we hurry up, we might arrive earlier than Tiana’s group, you were competing with them about that, right".

"Yes~", exclaimed the girls of the sect in unison as they rode towards the reuniting point previously discussed with Mina.

As you can see, Iris was being not only a bit more talkative than usual but she also expressed much more emotions than normal, until now that only happened when she was alone with the three sisters and Layla, but later extended to when she interacted with Aster, slowly but surely, she opened to even these girls of the sect with whom she had never personally spent time until now.

Leaving that aside, let’s change to Tiana’s side, who after separating from Iris’s group, led the girls of the sect towards the east, which contrary to the west that was mostly open terrain with only the river and rock formations ahead occupying a vast expanse of territory, had tree agglomerations and other lush green areas spread all over its place.

It’s worth mentioning that this happened just when those two had separated to guide their respective groups.

...

"Those bastards, I still get angry just thinking about them", cursed one of the two former prisoners as he spat to the side in disgust.

"Forget it already, I’m honestly thankful that they didn’t pay much attention to us when we were captured, some mercenaries are as twisted as damn evil cultivators, and back then they still had access to some spirit energy, so we could have ended as resources... or worse as their playthings", said the other former prisoner, he couldn’t help but get goosebumps for a second.

Evil cultivators are rather unrestrained when it comes to satisfying their desires, so if they had crossed the path of someone that didn’t care about gender, because their preference was to just cause pain to the other party, they would have been done, in more than one way.

But the mercenaries were not interested in them, and while they were rather ruthless, they weren’t evil cultivators, though things would have been way different if they didn’t have access to spirit energy from the very beginning.

By the time Aster’s group arrived at this place, they had been here for more than a month, the very first days the mercenaries who sucked at mortal level things, slept in the open, they gained almost zero merits and even had little to eat, because they made too much noise and alerted the animals of their presence, so they hid in the green areas and the red cloud forbid them from destroying anything larger than a tree basically.

Therefore, fruit was everything they had to eat, under those conditions, while the male members of their group who arrived midway through the second week of James’s former group in this place, would have still not been a target for the lust of the mercenaries, they might have been turned into food instead.

Guardian has seen it firsthand, the ugly side of humanity when driven by selfishness and hunger, it’s not like the lynx is a hypocrite, animals often eat members of their same species in the wild after all, though most only do so when there is no option and prioritize other prey normally, but the difference is that animals are not as "rational" and "social" as humans appeared to be for her when she met them, so it was weird that they who seemed so close and trusted the other, starved one of their teammates to death and would have eaten him, if their leader didn’t burn his corpse.

"I guess you have a point there, but still, if they had let us out back then, we could have also had some fun with... aghh!", the former prisoner who was in the middle of complaining because he who was previously working in "courting" one of the girls that died at the hands of the mercenaries, had his efforts go out in flames when they were captured, suddenly felt a burning pain in his lower abdomen which forced him to bend down while holding onto his stomach.

"Hey, what’s wrong with you?", said the other guy, to then feel his scalp numbing, his back felt cold and his legs trembled, as a deep sensation of dread invaded him, it was as if he was being watched by a terrible predator, he turned around and was met with the sight of a few girls riding on horses as they charged towards them.

But none of that is what had his attention of current, but the blue piercing glare that was coming from a girl with two tone grey hair, who was using one of her hands to point a spear at the guy who was on his knees right now.

’What the hell, is that a gaze a mortal... no, a human can have!’, screamed the second former prisoner to his insides to then... leave his friend behind and rush into the abundant vegetation area ahead.

"Sorry, but you would have done the same in my stead!", he said as he took the weapon of his former teammate and rushed into the distance.

"B-Bastard... why, why does it hurt so much aghhhh!!!", said the guy who left behind.

"Those girls suffered way more than this and you dare to complain that you didn’t get to lay your filthy hands on them, scum", said Tiana as she jumped out of her horse.

"Sister Tiana...", mumbled a girl from the sect as she saw Tiana’s glare who could kill right now, they didn’t have as sharp ears as Tiana so they didn’t listen to those two’s conversation since their hearing was pretty much occupied by the galloping sounds produced by the horses below them, but they knew that Tiana though pretty much on the fierce side, wasn’t the type to get violent on the spot out of nowhere, unlike Alice for example.

"Don’t worry, I’m fine, if I was the one ultimately dealing with them, they wouldn’t properly pay for what they did, so I’m not going to kill them, but it would leave a bad taste in my mouth if I let that conversation go unpunished", said Tiana as she pressed the tip of her spear against the stomach of the enemy.

"Crack!", now, the spear didn’t even pierce the enemy’s clothes, and even if it did, why would a spear produce a shattering sound when piercing an area that has no bones like the lower stomach.

The reason behind of the previous and also why the enemy suddenly bent down in pain earlier is one and the same, he was experiencing a new aspect of the energy constitution daughter’s ability, which the anger of their conversation, triggered.

Aster already had guessed it, because Erick’s constitution was tightly related to beast lineages, not to mention that Felicia whose constitution is the exact same as Tiana’s one but she has light attribute instead of darkness and well, Felicia’s constitution was called "Heavenly Behemoth" and her way of fighting was indeed quite wild.

Though, the energy constitution mother made it pass as her being playful and to mess with the enemy’s minds by using one of the most ancient fears of people, which is the worry that "something" might pop up out of the darkness, Tiana’s often beatings to Erick and the recent aspect that Felicia’s hands had taken, confirmed that they were beast descendants.

It’s nothing strange though, constitutions can be born out of lineages, none is considered superior to the other by innate, the main difference is that lineages are passed to the next generation with basically a hundred percent of certainty, though the strength of the inherited lineage varies, that being said, lineages thin down with each generation, unless someone with high talent appears to "restore" its purity.

Constitutions on the other hand are not "guaranteed" to be inherited, it’s not weird for a variation of the original constitution to end up being what the offspring of parents with constitutions, have, and its strength is also quite a random thing.

For example, someone with a constitution at the bottom of the list might have offspring which ends up having one that is at the top in terms of strength, so, as you see both have their respective advantages and that’s why one of the most preferred unions for families and forces is to have a constitution and a lineage owner whose special traits are compatible with the other, marry and produce offspring.

And that appeared to be the case for, Felicia, Tiana and Erick, the difference being that Erick didn’t seem to have any problems with it, probably because his constitution was perfectly compatible with the lineage in question and integrated with it.

Felicia on the other hand, was in a bad state earlier, which earned her a scolding from Aster and to have him watch over Tiana, who had yet to reach the point where her lineage will become active, until now.

"Aghhhhh...", the enemy who had Tiana’s spear pressed against his stomach screamed for a moment before his eyes rolled backwards, a bloody foam came out of his mouth and for a good reason, what produced that shattering sound was his genesis core inside his dantian cracking.

As to why it happened, that’s because Tiana had tightened her hand whose fingers now had pretty white toned claws instead of the semi-transparent nails of a human, and she pierced through the protective glove and accidentally cut her palm, then her blood flowed to the tip of her spear.

’Long range capacity to make the targets of my gaze to have their spirit energy go wild and close combat capacity to directly make it damage the enemy, so long as an object with my blood touches them’, thought Tiana as she retrieved her spear.

Unlike Felicia, she "pushes" things with spirit energy away instead of dragging them towards her, so she "pushed" the inactive spirit energy inside of the enemy’s body crazy and that ruptured that guy’s genesis core, because it was as if he had tried to break away from the restrictions applied to participants in this place.

"Not bad", mumbled Tiana as she then gazed at the forest, from which a loud rustling sound could be heard,

"What the hell!", shouted the enemy who had actually returned the exact same way he left earlier, of course not willingly, but because he was being pursued by large snakes which were clearly venomous.

"Hissss!", those were king cobras who just like the anacondas were sent by Mina to watch over an area that the enemies could use to try and escape, the anacondas were amphibious so the river was their perfect stage, while the king cobras lived in the forest and their scale colors were perfect for them to camouflage in such kind of green environments, so they were sent to this area.

And had now forced the remaining enemy back on his track, just to be met with the sight of his former companion foaming from the mouth, to then be glared at by that dual grey tone haired girl.

"Aghhhh!", the result was similar, he felt a burning pain in his lower abdomen which forced him to bend down on the spot, Tiana’s mind wasn’t on him right now though.

’I just awakened to this and I feel like my blood is boiling... is mom really alright?’, she thought to herself.