Ashlock focused on Bob, the slime acting as a door to the tunnel that led from the cavern deep within Red Vine Peak to the outside world. Bob's body was a dark shade as there was still Void Qi left over from when Elaine had tried to punch her way out, but it seemed the Void Qi had dissipated over time, and Bob was slowly turning back to his Qi-less grey state.
Bob was an interesting specimen. A slime without a soul core, but rather had a cloud of nodes serving as its consciousness. Because of this, the slime had no affinity and absorbed whatever type of Qi it was hit with and slowly grew stronger the more it got hit with the same kind of Qi.
It was neither alive nor dead, some bizarre state in the middle. So Ashlock was curious how his new {Necroflora Sovereign} skill would affect him.
"Bob proves I can still use {Root Puppet} just like before, as my hair-thin roots still control the slime," Ashlock was glad that the system didn't strip away old functions of skills when they upgraded. "How weird is it that Bob consumed a large portion of my Qi output and was one of my strongest weapons against the rats at one point, but nowadays, I have forgotten about him."
Ashlock sighed. Thinking about how far he had come in a few short years was nostalgic.
"Well, let's give it a go. I don't see much reason to keep Bob the way he is right now as a simple door." Ashlock focused on the root that linked him and Bob and activated his new SS grade skill.
The hair-thin roots spread throughout Bob's body, retracted back into the black root, and then the tip split open to reveal a seed before Bob could wrestle back control from Ashlock as his conscious nodes were freed from {Root Puppet}'s control.
"What the?!" Elaine shouted from within the cavern, her head practically snapping to look straight at Bob when the seed bloomed within the slime's body.
Ashlock didn't worry about Elaine; his focus was entirely on Bob. The void Qi within the slime's body was pulled toward the blooming seed as if it were a black hole, greedily devouring all Qi within the body.
The viscous grey slime that made up Bob's form began to harden slightly and turn into a wooden shape, yet it kept that slime consistency. Within moments, Bob morphed into an Ent that was too big to walk down the tunnel as he ballooned in size vertically to around five meters tall.
Elaine was at the bottom of the tunnel and looked up its slope to see Bob the Ent obstructing the exit. A sword was summoned to her hand, and she assumed a battle position.
Ashlock honestly didn't blame her. Compared to the Ent on the mountain peak that was obviously related to him in some way with the black bark, red leaves, and purple flames, Bob looked like something that had crawled straight out of hell. He was a smooth grey thing resembling an Ent, but was faceless and constantly looked like he was melting like an ice cream.
Bob honestly looked like a thing of nightmares, but Ashlock didn't want Elaine attacking the slime Ent, so he tried to order Bob to wave at her. Through the root still attached to Bob, spatial Qi pulsed through the grey form and gave the slime Ent a lilac glow.
Only then did the slime seem to acknowledge his command and eventually turn very slowly to give Elaine a wave. The woman only frowned at the slime tree thing.
Luckily she didn't seem confident enough to launch an assault, so Ashlock could take a moment to better grasp what made Bob different from the other Ent.
"Actually, I should give that nameless Ent a name since Bob has one... hmm, what about Titus?" Ashlock pondered. It seemed like a good fit, so he rolled with it. "Right, let's see. Titus is in the 5th stage of the Star Core Realm and, therefore, can produce Qi independently. Whereas Bob doesn't really have a cultivation stage at all."
It had always been a point of interest for Ashlock regarding Bob. The slime seemed near invincible once it absorbed its attacker's Qi. Even now, he couldn't exactly say what cultivation stage Bob was at.
However, if he had to guess, he would put Bob at the peak of the Soul Fire Realm, as Bob didn't have his own gravity field around him or the capability of generating Qi passively without cultivating.
Ashlock then decided to test what would happen if he detached from Bob. Would he cease functioning? Return to a slime? Or was he not giving Bob enough credit?
Pulling the root free, nothing happened straight away. Ashlock could still give Bob commands, but the lilac hue from the spatial Qi within his grey body slowly dimmed until it ceased entirely.
"The rate at which Bob burns Qi is concerning," Ashlock mentally frowned. While the spatial Qi had remained within the slime, he could give Bob commands without problems, but once it ran out, Bob remained motionless and as motivated to listen to him as any ordinary puddle.
Which is to say not at all.
"Mhm, so when Bob's Qi run's out, I lose control, but Bob has no control over his own body anymore either, so we enter a stalemate where nothing has control of the slime, and he just sits there."
Meanwhile, even when Titus was detached, Ashlock could still order him to move around due to the spatial Qi coming from his Star Core.
"Well, this is annoying," Ashlock grumbled as he kept trying to make Bob do anything at all.
"Losing control over my own minions is dangerous. Maybe I should only focus on getting Star Core and above Ents to avoid this issue." Ashlock mused as he regained control over Bob via his root and felt a significant tug on his Star Core for Qi.
"Fucking hell Bob you are a greedy bastard, aren't you." Ashlock couldn't believe Bob took over ten times the Qi to charge up compared to Titus, a 5th Stage Star Core.
"Alright, this isn't going to work out," Ashlock ordered Bob with the Qi he had just pumped in to block the tunnel's entrance like before.
The grey slime lumbered into position while making squelching sounds and crawled into the tunnel. Ashlock was somewhat surprised that despite Bob's woodlike appearance, he was still just as flexible as before.
Once Bob was in place, Ashlock ordered him to stay in place and then cut the connection. Slowly, the lilac hue of the spatial Qi radiating within the grey slime dimmed, and Bob eventually returned to a dull grey.
Elaine had watched everything, and once she saw Bob return into a much larger and thicker door, she seemed to figure out what was going on and lowered her sword.
Ashlock ignored her for now as Douglas was waiting restlessly in front of his trunk on the mountain peak for his job. "I think I will use Bob in the future when needed, but keeping him constantly pumped with Qi is pointless because he dispels Qi from his body too fast. It's just a waste."
Returning his sights to the peak, Ashlock wrote on his trunk, 'Douglas, I need you to uproot twenty-one demonic trees that I pick out.'
Standing beside Douglas, Stella translated the words, and the impatient Douglas nodded, "Sure thing, Patriarch, just lead the way."
Ashlock took to the skies with {Eye of the Tree God} again and felt through the fused root network he shared with his offspring to identify the ones that were the farthest along in their cultivation. He found a few at the peak stage of the Qi Realm and then sent Douglas to dig them up through portals.
***
A few hours later, Ashlock finished placing down the twenty-first tree exactly in the middle of where the Mystic Realm had spawned the last few times. He wasn't sure if the Mystic Realm would open there again now that a tree was in the center of it, but that was an experiment for later.
Removing these trees from the mountain had been more challenging than before. Ashlock had to mentally detach from the trees due to the fused roots, which caused them a lot of stress. However, they seemed much happier once they were planted closer to their dad.
"Okay, with that done, I just need to fuse my roots with them again to test {Progeny Dominion}." Ashlock wrapped his roots just below the rocky surface with the freshly planted trees in a perfect circle around him and felt their waves of happiness, yet the roots weren't fusing.
"Fuse! Come on, fuse with Dad!" Ashlock tried to encourage his unruly children; as expected, he only got waves of simple emotions back. "Sigh... what am I to do with you lot if I can't fuse my roots?"
Ashlock then spent the next few hours until dusk trying to figure out a solution. Meanwhile, Douglas went back down into the cavern to be with Elaine, and the girls were happy to cultivate under the shade of one of the new trees.
***
Idletree Daily Sign-In System
Day: 3523
Daily Credit: 1
Sacrifice Credit: 0
[Sign in?]
Ashlock awoke the next day to the usual sign-in message. He had spent all of yesterday trying to fuse with his children but had been unsuccessful—
[Fused with nearby offspring]
Ashlock mentally blinked at the system message and then groaned. Of course, the system had been the one to conduct the fusing the last time, so why wouldn't it handle it again?
"Can I only fuse overnight while I am asleep?" Ashlock contemplated but didn't have an answer, so he swiftly moved on.
Red Vine Peak was no longer a desolate peak with a single demonic tree and a bench. Now Demonic trees—his offspring—encircled him in a sparse ring so they each had plenty of room to grow upwards and outwards without impacting one another.
"Best to plan ahead. I could have easily fit a hundred trees in a tight ring around me to the point they formed a literal wall with their trunks, but then their branches would be intertwined, and that would cause problems if they start to develop at different rates."
Besides the distance between them, Ashlock had made a conscious effort regarding the locations of the demonic trees. Those trees about to form a fire affinity and covered in the Blaze Serpent Roses were placed on the northern flank to face the White Stone Palace.
Then on the western flank facing the misty forest that lay between Red Vine Peak and Darklight City were trees about to form water affinity. Diana sat below their shade and enjoyed the water Qi from the Serene Mist Camellias.
Ashlock was also enjoying the mist as the wind blew it toward him.
Meanwhile, Stella was cultivating on the southern flank under the shade of trees that weren't affected by a Qi-producing flower, so they were developing spatial affinity due to the thick amount in the air around the mountain because of him.
These spatial affinity trees were also on the eastern flank facing the farms, villagers, and the large wall flattened by the Dao Storm.
Ashlock did have plans to build groves on the mountain around him that were little pockets of trees that created perfect pockets for cultivating different Qi types, but he would get around to that another day. As for now, his mountain peak alongside the Qi gathering formation was ideal for fire, water, and spatial cultivators.
Fire and water due to the Qi producing flowers growing on their trunks, and spatial because he naturally radiated spatial Qi with his activities that drenched the area.
With that aside, Ashlock's mind was finally awake as he basked in the fresh morning sunlight. "Now, what should I do first... ah yes, the system message."
With a quick check, he confirmed without a doubt that he was fused with all the trees around him.
"I can provide them all with Qi, nutrients, and water, but I should be careful pumping too much spatial Qi into the trees attempting to form fire or water affinities. I don't want to force them all into becoming spatial affinity trees."
Slowly increasing the amount of Qi, he was sharing through the local root network, he felt his offspring's excitement.
However, his focus was on the tree opposite him, as it was his firstborn.
Ashlock had found and located the first demonic tree that had ever bloomed from his seed and felt it only fitting that he brought the eldest child up onto his mountain peak to be the one that would help him explore the Mystic Realm.
"Eldest, are you ready?" Through their fused roots, he asked, "You will be the first tree I test {Progeny Dominion} on."
As expected, the tree just sent waves of happiness back. The Eldest was just delighted that its father was speaking to him. Ashlock ran through a mental checklist to make sure he had everything ready to use the skill as unlike a lot of his other skills, {Progeny Dominion} had a lot of requirements that had to be met first due to how overpowered it was.
"Alright, let's see... fused with offspring, check. Offspring has a formed ego capable of emotion, check. I haven't used the skill for a week, so there is no risk of soul damage. What else... ah yes, it's the start of a brand new day, so I will get the most out of the skill as it will cut off on sundown. And I believe that's it?"
Ashlock ran through the list one last time, but he was convinced there was nothing to go wrong. "Okay, let's do this." Focusing on his eldest child, he cast {Progeny Dominion}.
There was a brief pause before he suddenly felt a divine force pulling on his soul—it wasn't painful per se, but it also wasn't pleasant. A moment later, a fragment of himself was torn away. This fragment then traveled seamlessly through the fused roots and into the eldest tree.
Ashlock felt that horrible sense of loss he had experienced when Tristan Evergreen sucked away 1% of his soul, but this time it was ten times worse. It was a sense of despair and loss that was hard to describe to a mortal mind.
And then that feeling vanished as if it were a fleeting memory, and he felt whole again with a special connection with the tree in front of him as if he were staring into a mirror of himself.
"Oh, this is so weird," Ashlock muttered to himself. He felt both disconnected and complete with the tree before him. "Now let's see if I can cast {Consuming Abyss}."
Black vines surged out of the ground, not just from around his trunk, but also the rock encircling his eldest offspring cracked as thinner black vines emerged and met with his black vines in a tangled dance.
Was he holding hands with his son... or himself?
Stella awoke from meditation under the shade of a spatial tree and wandered over in a confused daze, "Why are the trees fighting?" She muttered while glancing between Ashlock and his eldest, surging black vines at one another.
Ashlock saw her coming over and had a sudden idea. 'Stella, do you want to duel again?' He wrote on his trunk, and she grinned upon translating it. A sword—the one he had gifted her—materialized in her hand.
"Sure, who am I fighting?" She questioned while looking at the tangled mess of Ashlock's black vines.
'Both of us,' Ashlock replied, 'We are one and the same.'
Stella seemed confused, but as the black vines untangled themselves and parted. Ashlock brought out his swords from his inventory and floated three of them to be held by his eldest's vines. Stella then seemed to see the hundred-meter gap between the two trees as the battleground.
Walking forward, she stood between them. Her back was turned to Ashlock's offspring as she seemingly decided he was the threat. Raising her sword into a battle-ready position, she gestured for him to bring it on.
Ashlock's trunk split open like a maw and revealed his {Demonic Eye}, which made Stella shiver only slightly. However, Ashlock had suspected that. He hadn't activated his eye to intimidate but to observe.
"My demonic eye is great for seeing the flow of someone's Qi within their body, but due to the red hue I see the world in and its limited perspective, it usually inhibits my ability to fight... but the {Progeny Dominion} skill says I can use all my skills at full capacity through my offspring, and that doesn't only include attack skills."
Through his eldest offspring he was now soul bound with, Ashlock activated {Eye of the Tree God}. His vision became split, yet joined at the same time. Surprisingly, even without two brains, he had no issue analyzing Stella through his {Demonic Eye} from his main trunk and tracking her from the sky overhead with {Eye of the Tree God}.
With this, he had no blind spots. He then sent all the sword-wielding vines after Stella in varied attack patterns that he could orchestrate perfectly by utilizing his two different visions. He attacked from the left when he noticed through his {Demonic Eye} that Stella had mobilized the Qi within her Star Core to travel down her right arm.
Her eyes went wide as she tumbled to the side to avoid the attack from her weak side, but from the skies above, Ashlock had already seen this coming and had a sword bluntly smack her from below, sending her tumbling.
Stella staggered to her feet with a wild grin. "Now, this is a real challenge. How could you get so much better in only a week?" She tilted her head, and her blonde hair obscured her expression.
There was a sudden burst of spatial Qi, and Ashlock was surprised to see Stella vanish through a portal and reappear behind the surge of vines heading toward her, and she effortlessly chopped through a few of them.
She then tried to suppress the vines with her own Star Core's gravity.
Ashlock responded in kind with his own gravity from both his main trunk and also his offspring after sending a load of spatial Qi through their fused root, and despite the tree only being in the Qi Realm, the {Progeny Dominion} let him ignore this and use his full power by transferring his Qi.
Stella groaned as she stood between two trees unleashing a Star Core gravity two stages higher than her own. Yet even in this situation, she laughed and teleported again through the spatial plane.
"I wonder if there is a way I can stop her doing that." Ashlock wondered. He could track where her portal led to before she exited it but couldn't move his vines fast enough to attack her.
"Hold on, I can make portals too..." Ashlock laughed evilly as he waited for Stella to take another portal. She got cornered again by his vines, so when she vanished—
"There!" Ashlock spawned a rift right before Stella's portal and sent the blunt sides of three swords right into Stella's face before she could even react.
The force was more than he had anticipated, as Stella was sent flying across the mountain peak and even flew between two of the demonic trees and off the side of the mountain.
At this point, Diana had left her state of meditation, and her gaze followed the flying girl without a hint of concern.
Stella zoomed down the side of the mountain with her arms crossed, a frown on her face, and a small red mark on her forehead, "Stupid tree and his cheap tricks." She muttered as the space warped around her, and she reappeared back on the mountain peak.
"Fighting you is no fun," Stella put her hands on her hips, "Can't I fight that thing instead?"
Ashlock followed her gaze, and it landed on Titus, the looming twenty-meter-tall Ent with four stages in the Star Core higher than Stella. He wanted to say no... but even he was a little curious.
Diana wandered over and seemed interested, "How about we both fight this monster? I think it might be fair then."
Ashlock contemplated momentarily but eventually sighed as he flashed his leaf once.
It was time to test the limits of Titus.
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