It took Hal the rest of the rest of the day to fine-tune his Alchemy skills and bring it to a level where it was passable as a Rank 4 Alchemist.

Over the last month, Hal had taken care to dedicate his time to refining his Astral sense with the Astral refining Art he had gotten from Grimoire and finally advanced his Astral sense rank.

Once his skills were passable, he began to do his part in assisting Arya and making it easier for her to refine more pills in a shorter range of time.

Now he could relax that things were getting back on schedule...

"Um, Master?" Arya suddenly called out to Hal where he was working on his part with his cauldron which was low grade by the way.

"Hmm?" Hal acknowledged her without taking his eyes or concentration off what he was doing.

Any lapse could prove very dangerous.

"Well, I was wondering... Well, I've been a good girl haven't I?" She asked.

Hal managed a shrug,

"You've tried"

"Well then. Can I have my ritual?" She asked.

By ritual, of course, she meant the pentagram in which she had refined all of the Plebeians' essence as well as Borus'.

Ever since the end of the war when Hal had put it into his inventory and hence kept it in stasis, he had only brought it out once and it was to take control of it and return Borus' cultivation base,

which had been so refined and made devoid of impurities that while it only put the Tretch king at the mid-stage of the Natured Beast Realm, he experienced such an increase in strength, he felt he had advanced to the peak stage instead.

After that, Hal returned it to his inventory and Arya could not take her mind off of it. After all, devious means or not, it was the result of her hard work.

Hal already knew of her past and the root of her hatred against the Haron continent.

You see, Arya's mother was a slave from the Dystopian continent. A maid who ended up working in the Imperial Palace.

A place many would die to be just for a mere glimpse of the life of grandeur. However, slavery was still slavery no matter how good it was dressed up to look and her mother's situation had not being dressed up at all.

Anyway, for reasons relating to her origin of being a part of the Devil clan on the Dystopian continent, Arya's mother proved irresistible to the Emperor's third brother who had an affair with her.

Arya was born of that union and despite her mother surviving childbirth, she still died mysteriously a week later.

A rumor spread that the Grand prince's main wife had her killed for having dared to enchant her husband with her 'Devil wiles'.

Arya described her life in the imperial palace as hell and so convinced was she of that fact that it colored her memories so deeply that it was how so many things were interpreted.

If she was given a beautiful dress, her memory registered it as an attempt to take away her identity as she preferred to dress like her dead mother.

Anyway, once Arya was sixteen and discovered her spiritual sense, she could take it no longer and was determined to escape the palace.

The problem was her father would not have it and took many precautions to keep her in.

That said, with her spiritual sense as a premise, she managed to get him to endorse her ambition to become an Alchemist on which she focused intently on and neglected her cultivation.

Not that she was been given many resources anyway.

Eventually, she created Alchemical products to aid her escape and that coupled with her now heightened spiritual sense, she attempted her escape.

As she could not make use of the teleportation circles which were mostly transportation within the palace, for fear of being caught, it took her days to complete her escape. The Palace was that large. Practically a small city of its own. (About half of the size of Sapphire city).

At which time she was only able to buy time to escape before security was heightened by saying she was going to hole up inside her chambers until she advanced to the next Alchemical rank.

Once out of the palace was when her hurdle truly began.

She was alone and had to make it on her own.

But she survived through many different means with her only true wish now being to go to where her mother was from. Where SHE was from which was the Dystopian continent.

However, it was not something that could be achieved by simply going across for a visit and the two legitimate means for her to travel there was to either join the army which would have been her asking for trouble.

Or joining an organization with enough influence to get her across.

So she joined an alchemist association that got her across and needless to say (and we will not go into it for now) she went through a lot of ordeals and nearly lost her life on more than one occasion.

When she finally arrived at the Devil tribe her mother belonged to, which was the only thing about her mother she was very sure about on account of how many times it had been yelled at her, she was required to show that she truly was a member and she passed the test.

Then she learned of the Devil cultivation techniques as well as how to use Devil/Demon spells as well as preparing Devilish rituals.

Of course, despite proving she was at least half a member of the Devil tribe, they did not share with her, the true secrets of the tribe but the little she knew was good enough.

She could have simply cultivated like a normal cultivator as she was not want of wealth as an alchemist but she felt very vindictive and through the influence of the organization that got her out, she got back into the Haron continent and the 'Master' persona was born.

Knowing how much she needed to keep it all under wraps, she focused her attention on small cities and did something similar to what she had done in Salmon city.

So many materials she had gotten at prices so cheap, they were practically giving them away in Dystopia, were so sophisticated, they could buy the loyalty of the small city folks.

They fought, they died and she reaped their essence.

She started this practice when she was at the peak of the Cosmic Armament Realm and the requirements were always getting higher.

This was why simply instigating war was no longer enough and she also took to giving them cultivation resources to fatten them up and reap them.

When she had told Hal and expected him to sympathize with her, his reaction had been natural and borderline indifferent.

He accepted that she must have gone through a lot but then again, who hadn't?

She managed to find assistance and there were those who did not have that luxury so, he felt he could not brother pretending to feel sympathetic.

It was clear that she had a vendetta against both her father and her father's wife but also had no intention of confronting either of the two.

So she took out her anger, frustration and pain on individuals who were simply living their lives and had nothing to do with the sordid affair.