While Isaac was planning his revenge, Lilia, Aster and Alice returned to their room, as soon as Aster closed the door Lilia picked him up in her arms and threw herself on the bed while hugging him and with a happy smile on her face, she started kissing Aster’s cheeks.

“Hehe, my son looked so gallant standing in front of us”.

Aster felt as if he was drowning on sugar, he tried to stop his mother so he could speak.

“M-mom wait a second, please let me go”.

“Fufu is my son feeling shy? we have long gone past the point for you to be shy for something as little as a kiss, so accept your fate and let mommy spoil you ♥ hehehe”.

While Lilia was busy pampering Aster, Alice had a complicated expression on her face as if she wanted to say something but she couldn’t find the words to do it, Lilia saw her daughter’s expression and smiled.

She stopped hugging Aster and stood up from the bed before leaving the room but not before saying.

“Well, my dear son I will prepare the bathroom so please wait a few minutes before going”.

Aster was speechless, “how much will I have to suffer this day”, he thought.

When Lilia left the room Alice got close to Aster and she suddenly kissed his left cheek, then with a red face she said in a cute and shy voice.

“Did you mean it? when you said you treasured me?”.

Aster saw his normally fearless and aggressive sister acting like a little girl in love and his heart melted, he decided to strike while the iron was hot.

“Of course, no one should think of touching a single hair of my dear big sister while I’m here”.

While saying that he thought, “ughh that sounded like a cliché phrase from the protagonist of a movie”.

Even if that sounded a bit cheesy it was true that he would protect Alice with his life on the line if he had to, after all she was a part of his precious family.

Alice radiated happiness but she was a little confused in her heart, “what is this strange warm feeling I have” she thought but after a moment of contemplation she ignored that weird feeling as she started hugging her brother as if her life depended on it.

She gave him a another kiss on his cheek and then ran away as a scared rabbit, leaving Aster alone in the room, while he was considering isolating himself in seclusion as an excuse to avoid what was about to happen, he heard his mother whispering in his ears.

“What are you waiting darliiing? as a reward for your bravery your beautiful mother will help you wash your body ♥”.

Aster was surprised, somehow his mother could suddenly appear in the room without him noticing.

“Ughh that is more of a torture than a reward”, he thought.

Imagine having the most delicious looking dessert in front of you and not being able to eat it that’s how Aster felt every time his mother bathed with him, “calm down Aster patience will pay up on the future”.

“Well, with this childish body I can’t do anything about it anyway, but once I grow up humph, I will make her repay me for all this teasing”, he decided to act dumb and followed his mother to the bathroom.

Once they entered the bathroom, he saw Lilia locking the door and setting up a barrier so he simply stood there with an innocent face waiting for his mother to undress him.

“You are six years old there is nothing to be ashamed”, he thought but then he replied to himself, “ughh start growing my little brother so we can take the next step of my plan to happiness”.

Once Lilia finished setting the barrier, she approached Aster and with a slight smile started to take off his clothes, she used to take baths with her mother when she was a child but she never thought she would be doing the same with her children.

Before Aster was born, even if she took care of Alice when she was little, it was only until she could take care of herself, she used to be stricter with her daughter just like her mother raised her.

After all, in her family women are raised to be self-sufficient from a young age in preparation for the obligatory training they must undergo when they reach adulthood.

While some may choose to depend on those chosen by their parents to marry them for protection during the one-year duration of the training, those who do not wish to be tied up with a male partner can only trust themselves to survive in the training ground.

During the training there are no rules, leaving aside a few special people backed up by some bigshots, everyone was allowed to kill or do whatever they wanted to others, this was agreed between all the major forces and no one would try to seek revenge if their young generations perish on the training grounds, the reason of this was to teach them that the strong would always take advantage of the weak.

There were already cases where some of the girls were hunted down by lustful young masters and then disposed of so no one would point fingers to them.

When it was Lilia’s turn to face that “heaven for the strong and hell for the weak” everything turned out differently though, many of the male heirs of strong families tried to make her submit to them but instead Lilia started a bloodbath, even when some of them managed to escape at first, she hunted them down until they were all dead.

When the one-year period ended almost half of the male participants of the training were dead after that, those who survived decided to never approach with “romantic” intentions to her.

If any of the people who used to know her back then, were to see how she was lovingly having contact with a little boy they would most likely vomit blood, after all even when she was a young lady, she didn’t allow any male, family or not to touch her not even her father who she despised.