A year passed ever since the second coming of the invaders.
During this time, Fantasia entered a new norm. Last year, Spatial Tears opening out of nowhere was something that didn't happen regularly but it is now.
Sometimes, Humanity's ability to adapt and adjust to its surroundings was incredible. The fact that they have gotten used to these changes so fast could give anyone a whiplash.
Spawn Portals, that's what they're calling these types of Spatial Tears that vomit out invaders. They had become a norm for Humanity's lifestyle. At this point, nobody would be surprised upon seeing them.
Most people are tired of it, that's for sure. But they couldn't really help it if there was no available method of preventing them from occurring.
The truth is, yes there is a way to prevent Spawn Portals from appearing, but it was Ashton's choice to not do anything about it.
Although constantly dealing with threats was annoying, it also has its advantages.
For one, the constant fighting has given the Mystic Guild plenty of experience. Said experience allowed them to flourish even more and become much stronger compared to before.
Now, most of the time, the task of exterminating the invaders that show up falls to the rookies. The seniors were there to make sure that nobody dies.
Jeeves went active a couple of times but at some point, it didn't anymore. Since Humanity had grown stronger and used to this kind of event, it no longer qualified as an existential threat to humanity anymore, that's why Jeeves no longer wakes up to help.
Fantasia changed to adjust to the new norm of course. The Federal Centers now serve as evacuation spots. All of them received an upgrade to make sure that they were doing what they were supposed to do.
The infrastructure of Fantasia had also received some upgrades to make them more durable so that there wouldn't be a need for constant repairs every time the invaders attacked.
Suffice it to say, Fantasia and its citizens had adjusted wonderfully to its new norm, and all of that was because of Ashton's foresight. If it weren't for him increasing his aggression toward Humanity's developments, they might be in a dire situation right now.
But of course, this is far from sufficient.
Ashton still has a lot on his sleeves, he just lacks the time and manpower to achieve his grander schemes.
There's still a long way for Humanity to go before they could clash head-on with their enemies.
***
Whistles!
Ashton stood at the rooftop of the Morning Sun Federation's Headquarters. He was wearing a suit which mostly meant that he was doing office work, but right now there wasn't much for him to do.
The longer Jerry handles the administrative work, the more efficient he gets. At this point, Ashton's schedule was becoming more and more vacant. Which was of course a great thing for him.
He's at the rooftop, whistling sharply at the horizon. After that, he placed his hands in his pockets and waited silently.
After around three minutes, a creature suddenly appeared on his shoulders.
It was a bird, one that resembles a swallow, for the most part, however, its feathers were completely mesmerizing. It was rainbow-colored, the way how the colors blended smoothly and how they behaved was completely ethereal.
This was Skylar, the companion beast that hatched from the Beast Egg a year ago.
Skylar had grown so much within the past year. It went from a bald chick to a majestic avian beast that even peacocks would be jealous of.
The beast had been nurtured by Ashton's Mageroot directly so it got nothing but the best. Along with its growth also came the varying levels of its innate skills.
And just as Ashton expected, Skylar's abilities were top-notch. Skylar's a natural at them too.
Skylar loves to sing, and being a Dream Weaving Songbird, Skylar could instantly drag someone into a Dream the moment they heard Skylar's voice.
The songbird's voice isn't completely auditory either. Even deaf people would be able to hear Skylar's voice. So long as the songbird's target didn't have a strong spiritual defense, Skylar could easily drag them into a dream and make them suffer.
Additionally, Skylar also could phase from Reality to a Dream. Meaning that the bird had the same ability as Ashton where so long as he didn't want anyone to see him, they would never be able to.
Skylar could grow as large to serve as a flying mount for Ashton and this wasn't the bird's limit at all. Remember, Skylar's a year old. It will grow stronger alongside Ashton's progress so Skylar had the potential to become something incredibly terrifying in the future.
Ashton petted Skylar for a bit before it turned into a streak of light. Skylar has returned to his mageroot to rest.
With Skylar's abilities, Ashton had trained it to do some tasks for him. Nothing too crazy though, just some errands if you will.
See, there had been some sightings of Invader Spies around the vicinity of Last Bastion. This was nothing new of course, they were a regular occurrence for a while now.
They were sent here to obviously gather some information about Humanity while also attempting to infiltrate their home. They never succeeded of course but Ashton wouldn't lie, they were getting annoying at this point.
So, Ashton decided to send Skylar out once in a while to drag those fools into a Dream. Since they have nothing better to do, they might as well serve as training dummies for Skylar's practice.
And so far, the training was bearing fruit.
He could've ordered Skylar to kill them directly but where is the fun in that? Plus, he didn't want to raise any alarms for the invaders in the meantime since he has some important things to do that needed to be kept a secret from the invaders specifically.
Ashton left the rooftops and teleported to his personal training area.
"Jerry, I'd be in seclusion for a bit. Have West Two cover for me in the meantime."
"Are you preparing for your Breakthrough, Sir?" Jerry asked.
"Yeah." Ashton took a deep breath to calm himself down.
"Should I send a message to Mistress Aria?"
"Yes. But tell her that I'd be fine. She can't be beside me while I'm making a breakthrough for obvious reasons."
"Understood. Message sent. I wish you good luck, Sir."
"Thanks, buddy."
Ashton then activated the formations in the training area which immediately isolated him.
Now, he was in a closed space. It was stable enough to hold up to some serious abuse...hopefully. Ashton can never really predict what's going to happen in his breakthrough.
Before sitting down to start, he called out to Skylar, saying:
"Buddy, things might get hectic in there. Come out for a bit and hide, just until I finish my breakthrough."
Skylar obediently followed his orders. After settling that down, Ashton began his breakthrough.
Waiting for an entire year to finish all 9 refinements of his current realm was exhausting for him. But in truth, this speed was already incredibly fast.
Refining a Sorcerer Rank 9 times in total should've taken years or decades at most. But he did it in a single year. He shouldn't be complaining like this.
But see, Ashton felt jealous. Blake, Mary, and Alice are now entering the late stages of their current cultivation rank, which is the Void Rank. In fact, there had been more people who had managed to reach the same rank as well.
He felt left behind, even though none of them still managed to defeat him cleanly whilst he held back for some.
This might be a power trip or something but he's not reckless enough to skip stages just to make a breakthrough.
Ashton might complain a lot but he's not stupid.
But now, it's time for him to catch up. He had waited for this, it was finally happening.
The moment he started circulating his Aether Energy, something deep within him buzzed in activity. Ashton's focus instantly gathered that spot because that is where he needed to be to make his breakthrough.
Gathering his consciousness at that spot allowed him to sense the barrier that was preventing him from moving forward.
He took a deep breath and collected his energy. He controlled it precisely to be like a drill and started attacking the barrier with fierce intent.
The activity caused his body to tremor physically. Ashton felt a sharp pain that made him wince but he maintained his focus. He absolutely couldn't lose that focus now since that would spell his failure, and he obviously could not afford to fail.
Despite his preparations, Ashton still felt immense pain in this process. This was the downside of refining his current cultivation rank repeatedly; the bottleneck also got refined.
Ashton was sweating. Wisps of blood seeped through the corners of his lips. His brows were furrowed deeply and Skylar was worried about its master.
Still, Ashton pushed through. He did his best to endure the pain and focused on the act of breaking down the bottleneck. Unfortunately, even his calculated method of breaking through the wall proved to be a little more difficult than he initially expected.
'God damn it! Why must you be this fucking hard!?'
