once the sun settled down, aster and agnes returned to the mansion at the valley, since it was time for them to have a dinner together with the others.

during the day helena and dahlia visited them to fulfill aster''s petition, since he wasn''t in the valley, kana showed them the forest and the other areas, until they decided on the place where to build a spirit herbal garden.

surprisingly it was near the area where espi now lived, apparently the little sand wyrm instinctively chose one of the best areas to live, of course they didn''t start to build the garden today as they came just to inspect the valley which took them almost the whole day.

since aster couldn''t receive them, earlier he sent lilia a message to invite helena and dahlia to join them at dinner, so they stayed up and saw aster and agnes returning at the same time, not only that agnes was still grabbing aster''s arm as they walked.

"oh my, now i understand why all the small sized stores targeted us despite not having anything to win from doing so... they are fully ran by male disciples~", jokingly said helena.

"uwaah, an elder and her disciple, how daring...", dahlia whose face was blushed upon seeing such a "forbidden" relationship bloom, mumbled.

agnes was the one who brought aster and the others to the sect, for those who joined as guest elders it didn''t apply, but for the members of the younger generation, she was seen as their "teacher".

in the cultivation word, a master or teacher is considered like a second parent figure, that''s why agnes was so worried about tiana being treated just as a lover, when she first met aster, she scouted her and from that moment onwards she had the duty to watch over her.

needless to say, but romantic relationships between masters, teachers and their disciples or students are seen as immoral.

on the other hand, even if that was the case, for aster who embraced both his mother and sister, a teacher figure joining his harem would be the least of his worries, though his relationship with agnes wasn''t that of a teacher and student to begin with.

eris, mylene and camila who knew about aster''s romantic life, bitterly smiled at dahlia''s words.

''if you knew the truth'' they thought.

the girls also noticed that agnes seemed somewhat closer to aster than before, and lilia noticed her son also was closer to her, which made her giggle.

''among all those attires i helped her select a few sexy ones, for special occasions, and some for when you are training with her, enjoy it darling~'', she said directly to aster.

aster noticed his sister and also aria seemed a bit down, but before he could ask, kana who was coming from the kitchen bringing the dishes along with sarina and felicia, explained him why they were like that.

"sister alice and sister aria have been like that since the order of the next dates was decided, sister eris and sister mylene have better luck than them~", said the little girl with an innocent smile on her pretty face.

aster laughed as he approached to help them place the dishes on the table, he didn''t forget to kiss sarina''s cheek and pat kana''s head, they always helped prepare the food while the others trained or just lazed around in alice''s case, so a little reward was in order, not to mention he just felt like spoiling them lately, to realize one''s own family only sees you as a resource is something ugly.

that''s why aster showered them with love, well he does it anyway so it''s just an excuse to be more open about it.

feeling lilia''s intense gaze on his back, aster sat next to her and then they started eating their dinner, along the conversation, helena mentioned espi.

"sure, i''ll built a castle fitting for my empress, it might be a small temporal one though", said aster, he poked rya''s nose and then disappeared, leaving a happy giggling rya behind, she loved when he called her "my empress".

aster then opened his eyes in the outside world, he gave each of the girls a morning kiss and then they all took a bath together, to prepare for the day, after that they had a nice breakfast together, before aster went to look for eris and mylene to their rooms, they apparently took breakfast before the rest, because they wanted him to came to get them.

childish maybe, but it was the first time they will have a "date", so aster didn''t mind doing it the way they wanted, their rooms are now next to his, aster knocked on both doors, but it was mylene''s one the one which opened, to reveal the pair of beauties waiting at the other side of it.

"so how do we look?", asked eris.

aster didn''t hesitate to answer them.

"both of you look pretty", eris was wearing a long dark pink skirt and a shoulder less black blouse, akin to the name of her clan she had roses of different tones decorating her attire, though in her family the fashion could be considered "goth", due to the majorly dark colors and the metal spikes or other elements they use, eris was more on the bright side adding purple, blue and even white roses to her attire, which balanced it a lot.

mylene on the other hand, was quite a "rebel" now, from the pastel pink princess-like voluminous dress she used to wear, to a simpler but elegant long red dress with black ornaments, apparently she took a liking to black and red colors, since she was now allowed to use whatever she wanted.

both girls slightly blushed as they accepted aster''s compliment, that being aster found it a bit weird that they were going to teach him alchemy and rune mastering dressed up like that, it was honestly going to be harder to focus on their lesson than on them, but he didn''t say anything.

instead, he waved his hand and the three of them disappeared from the mansion, normally they would use the many empty rooms in the mansion, or the alchemy and rune mastering rooms prepared for them there, but since today was a date, they went to the second floor of the store, which also had a hidden space like the one in which helena''s garden existed.

eris opened the door behind the counter and they entered, the first thing aster noticed is that the secret room was divided in three areas, the right one was equipped to fulfill any needs a rune master might have, the one on the left was prepared for alchemy, having tons of ingredients, a cauldron and other things in the many shelves and racks.

lastly the space in the middle had everything ready for spirit blacksmithing, a furnace, anvil, the hammer and other tools.

"we decorated a bit while you were gone, hope you don''t mind~", said eris, since mylene went with aster to the secret realm, she was the one who prepared this place for them, aster was the spirit blacksmith of the family so he got the space in the middle while each one of them got one of the sides.

spirit blacksmithing is actually a profession which combines knowledge from more than one discipline, they use alchemy in the sense that to forge many different ingredients have to be mixed and refined, to get the desired metals, also raw weapons must be engraved with spirit formations to be completed, meaning both alchemy and rune mastering knowledge was required for a spirit blacksmith, if one lacked in any of them, then the result won''t be good.

"it''s amazing, i can''t wait to see what our results will be here", said aster as he inspected all the devices, tools and other stuff here and there.

"mm", the two girls nodded and then they took out one of the scales of espi, the first to impart a lesson, was eris this time so mylene sat next to aster and waited for her friend''s explanation.

"today we are going to use one of the dreamed materials for basically all the professions that exist, dragon scales, though they are the ones of a subspecies, their properties, durability and other aspects made them incredibly good base materials for a lot of things".

"for example... formation cores", said eris as she pointed at her necklace.

aster nodded, eri''s cube necklace has proven to be a really useful treasure, the capacity to deploy a formation without having to fulfill the requirements is a huge advantage.

"that being said, due to the current materials we have, we''ll be making simpler versions of them, they will be disposable one-time formation cores", concluded mylene.