"Bloodline of a ruler, you say?" Stella tilted her head, "What do you mean by that?"
"Mistress, I know little about bloodlines. I merely offered a thought of mine." Larry gruffly replied, "I know I have the bloodline of a king within me, and it was only due to my master's eternal benevolence that I could awaken the dormant potential within me."
"I did such a thing?" Ashlock wondered and chalked it up to being system shenanigans. It had given him a list of options when Larry had asked to evolve, and he'd picked the evolution that sounded like it had the most future potential.
"Hold on... Senior Lee may withhold information regarding bloodlines due to his fear of heaven, but I have two data points to build upon now." Ashlock entertained a few ideas: "Diana was able to awaken her bloodline by herself, which allows her to take on the form of a demon. Whereas Larry is still an ash spider but carries the blood of a ruler, granting him immense authority over the Dao of ash and his own species. So would Stella be the same as Larry? I could see her gaining authority over a Dao rather than transforming into another form."
While Ashlock was brooding, Stella furrowed her brows at Larry's words, "So you're telling me that I might have royal blood running through me?"
"Mistress, it was just a guess from my humble self," Larry clarified, "As mentioned before, I know little about these mythical bloodlines."
Stella groaned in annoyance as she flopped back onto the bench and closed her eyes. Larry seemed to take this as an opportunity to crawl away and retreat back into the canopy of a tree.
Ashlock didn't blame his loyal servant. Talking to Stella when she was moody was always a bad idea.
"She is only sixteen this year, so it makes sense she is moody sometimes," Ashlock couldn't believe how fast the years had passed.
It felt like only yesterday that Stella had been barely ten years old and fighting off those Ravenborne assassins that had snuck their way into the pavilion's staff, "She will mature with time and experience. A few more rounds in the Mystic Realm and a bit of practice with politics, and she will grow into a fine lady."
Ashlock wasn't worried about Stella. She had the talent to outshine other scions and a great work ethic. She had always been hyper-competitive, which led her to rival those many years her senior.
"She is already in the Star Core Realm before age twenty. That might even be a cultivation record." Ashlock chuckled, "Although I'm sure she doesn't see it that way."
Maple took this as an opportunity to appear on top of Stella's head and relax in the shade. As if on impulse, Stella reached up and gave the fluffy white squirrel that likely housed an S-grade void creature a head pat. The squirrel leaned into her touch and gleefully closed his eyes to enjoy the affection.
Ashlock left the two to enjoy the evening breeze as he went to check up on Titus and Diana. His vision blurred as he traveled a thousand miles and arrived at a peculiar scene.
Titus lorded over the wilderness as he brought up his two wooden fists, and the land shuddered as Titus slammed down, creating yet another crater. The impact briefly dispersed dense smog that blanketed the area, but it soon returned and swirled around Titus's legs and up his torso.
Ashlock could see Diana's devilish form dashing through the smog from his aerial view. The woman shot up Titus's legs, and with her demonic Qi claws, she carved out a deep tear into the Ent's body.
Titus roared and brought both his hands toward his chest in a vain attempt to capture Diana, but she was already on the move, having disappeared back into the fog with a manic laugh.
Ashlock inspected the injury on Titus and could see the demonic Qi spreading like corruption, which not only caused more damage but stopped Titus from regenerating.
"Mhm, so long as Titus doesn't use many Qi-intensive attacks, he should last until the morning." Ashlock saw the orange sun setting on the horizon's edge and knew he would soon fall asleep.
Deciding he had one last thing to do before he slept, Ashlock returned to Red Vine Peak and saw Stella playing with Maple on her lap. He still wondered if the squirrel was really a Worldwalker, it just didn't match up to his cute form, yet so many things pointed to it being the truth.
Ashlock interrupted their little play time by dropping one of the many fruits he had growing from his branches onto Stella's head.
"Ow!" she yelped in surprise and then caught the red fruit as it bounced off her head. While holding the fruit, Stella smiled at his canopy and laughed, "Tree, why did you do that?"
'You know I will always be proud of you.' Ashlock wrote on his trunk.
"Huh?" Stella's eyes widened in surprise, "Why would you suddenly say such a thing? I... I..."
A single tear appeared at the edge of her eye, and she quickly looked away, her gaze focused on the fruit in her hand. "Do you really mean that?" She murmured into her knees as she curled up into a ball.
'Of course, why would I not be proud of everything my talented daughter accomplishes?' Ashlock wrote, and he meant it. Someone needed to tell her how great of a job she was doing through life, and a few comforting words could go a long way.
Stella glanced back, read the words, and buried her head between her chest and knees, but Ashlock swore he saw her smile. A comforting silence ended the conversation as Stella was lost in her thoughts, and Ashlock felt exhausted as the sun dipped below the horizon, so he drifted off to sleep.
***
Idletree Daily Sign-In System
Day: 3524
Daily Credit: 2
Sacrifice Credit: 0
[Sign in?]
Ashlock awoke to another beautiful day with his sign-in system in his mind, reminding him once again that he was a tree in a cultivation world. A life he wouldn't trade for anything in all the multiverse.
To his surprise, people were already awake, and some work was already occurring on the mountain peak, "Wait, can I refer to this as a courtyard now that there are trees around acting as a wall?"
Seeing the gap between the trees, he felt that stretched the definition of courtyard a little too much, so he stuck with mountain peak for now. That aside, he was surprised to see Douglas and Stella working together to repair the arrays, as the Qi gathering formation and the concealment array had been damaged.
"Morning, Tree!" Stella said as she leaped out of a hole, "I couldn't sleep or meditate last night, so I got Douglas here to help me upgrade the arrays."
How had she known he was awake from all the way over there? Ashlock had no idea, but Stella's words caught him by surprise. Upgrade? Not repairs?
'How are you upgrading them?' Ashlock wrote.
"We can incorporate the demonic trees into the arrays. Or at least I think we can. Everything I do regarding arrays is trial and error, after all." Stella patiently explained.
"What Stella says is correct," Douglas chimed in, "Usually, array formations are built into structures like buildings, walls, or caves for the horizontal and added vertical surface area."
He then pointed down into the hole Stella had just jumped out of, "There were no buildings here when I originally arrived, so I advised we build deeper into the rock."
Douglas then glanced longingly at the massive hole in the mountain peak that led all the way down, "Once we have enough spirit stones, we could even turn that entire hole into a runic formation."
They were too poor to build such a massive formation like that, so Ashlock focused on the more important part for now; 'So how do you plan to use my children as part of the array?' he wrote in flickering lilac flames.
"Simple, really." Stella pointed up at the canopy of the demonic tree beside her, "Turns out trees are really good at capturing ambient Qi, so by incorporating them into the Qi gathering formation, they can share the Qi between everyone!"
"And for the concealment formation," Douglas added, "Instead of throwing out Qi into the surroundings by force, we can use the trees as focal points for the array to function, making it far more efficient."
Ashlock was impressed. It seemed his words last night had brought on some motivation and inspiration for Stella. Arrays were a perfect outlet for her intellect and helped calm her overactive mind. Even he could tell the arrays she could currently make were inefficient and likely used far more spirit stones than necessary, but at least they worked, and she would get better with time.
Perhaps she could get hold of an immortal's array inheritance or something like Elder Mo got in the future. Or he could even hire one of those formation masters to teach her.
All of that aside, their idea was a great one, and he was excited to see the results. His spatial Qi distorting the air around Red Vine Peak and their distance from the white stone palace wasn't enough to guarantee that Sebastian hadn't seen their activities. Ashlock could only hope the man was either too busy cultivating to care what was happening a mountain peak away or would keep his mouth shut in favor of future profits for his young lord.
That aside, he needed to give his feedback.
'That's a great idea,' Ashlock wrote and saw Stella beam with pride.
"I'm glad you like it," Stella turned to scramble back down into the hole. He could only see the top of her blonde head, "It will be ready later today. Just a bit more work to do."
Chuckling to himself, Ashlock saw no reason to stick around watching them work, so he cast his vision out into the wilderness with {Eye of the Tree God} as he was curious to see if Titus had survived Diana's crazed slaughter.
To his surprise, he found Titus collapsed on the ground like a felled tree. Blissfully sleeping against his shredded leg was Diana. There were no signs of demonic traits like fangs or wings—her body had returned to the usual petite form he was accustomed to.
Most curious was the fact there were the corpses of a few monsters sprawled around them, and he was pretty confident they had traveled many more miles deeper into the wilderness during their scuffle throughout the night.
Ashlock never said no to a free meal, and he wanted to bring them back through portals, but they were just outside the range of his roots. He felt like a man standing on the edge of a cliff and seeing a ship out at sea.
Maybe this was his fault for letting them fight so close to the edge of his roots, but he wanted them as far out as possible to avoid the interest of the Silverspires or any other cultivators.
"Mhm, this reminds me, I should really work to expand my roots out further in all directions and plant demonic trees everywhere I can." Ashlock then began to ponder on how to solve his current situation. He wanted those corpses and a way to bring Diana and Titus back.
Growing his roots out far enough to open portals above them would take hours, so he wanted a more immediate solution.
"Titus is out of Qi, and his Star Core only gives him enough to very slowly repair his wounds. So commanding him to drag himself and Diana toward me won't work."
If Ashlock looked closely, he could see the black wood that made up Titus's body slowly fighting off the demonic Qi corruption and mending back together, but that might take weeks at the rate he saw.
"I could ask the Redclaw Grand Elder to fly out there, but how would he even move Titus into the range of my portals? What about Larry... nah I don't see how he could either. Not even his millions of spiders working together could move Titus. They aren't magical ants able to lift far above their weight class after all."
Ashlock was sure Maple could handle the situation, but he wanted to find another solution, as the squirrel was unreliable. The scenario of one of his Ents being outside of his portal range and running out of Qi was bound to occur again, so he needed to figure out what to do in advance, and this was a good time for this to happen as there was nothing else going on.
"Let's see... I need something I can command that will be reliable and have the strength to drag Titus into the range of my portals." Ashlock hummed to himself as he mentally ran through the list of those that met his set criteria and eventually landed on Bob.
It was unknown if the slime Ent had the strength to lift Titus, but it was worth trying. Ashlock's Star Core blazed with power as spatial Qi poured through the mountain and converged toward the root in Bob.
The grey slime began to glow brightly as spatial Qi poured into him. An hour later, Bob was as bright as a light bulb with a lilac hue—Elaine wandered over in confusion due to the bright purple light shining down the tunnel.
Deciding he had pumped enough Qi to operate Bob without issue for a few hours, Ashlock unplugged his root from Bob and mentally commanded the slime to walk forward and out of the tunnel.
The five meters tall Ent lumbered out of the tunnel with wet sounds that didn't match his wooden appearance. Ashlock then spawned a portal right in front of him, which wobbled slightly due to the sheer amount of spatial Qi that Bob was expelling into the surroundings.
Stepping through with a pop, the portal collapsed, and Bob was now a thousand miles away, out in the wilderness at the edge of Ashlock's root network. In the distance was the half-dead Titus and peacefully sleeping, Diana.
"Go and bring the Ent, Diana, and the monster corpses back here," Ashlock commanded, and Bob trudged forward to fulfill his command. It was nice to finally have some servants that mindlessly followed his orders without question.
While Bob slowly made his way over to Titus, Ashlock checked back at the cavern and was somewhat surprised to see Elaine sitting at the tunnel exit and enjoying the rising sun. She seemed to make no effort to run away, which made sense. She was rather integrated with the Ashfallen Sect at this point.
Even the reason she had to hate them wasn't entirely valid anymore, as the Voidmind Elder had been given a new body by him and left with Senior Lee to the upper realms. The fact such scum was brought back to life still left a sour taste in Ashlock's nonexistent mouth, but it was good to have friends in high places, and he wasn't about to offend Senior Lee over something so trivial compared to their friendship.
Switching back to the wilderness, Ashlock watched Bob for a while. The Ent seemed to move slower than Titus, even with the size difference factored in, and it was rather funny to see leaves and bits of dirt get stuck to the slime's body—slowly turning the glowing Ent into a walking leaf ball.
Over an hour later, Bob arrived at the site and began trying to pick up all the monster corpses. The dead bodies just stuck to the slime's body like the leaves had, and then Bob went to pick up Diana, who was still fast asleep somehow.
With her secured in his palm, Bob wrapped his other arm around Titus's head. The slime's hand split up and slithered between the gaps in Titus's body, seemingly trying to get a better grip.
Ashlock then watched the comical display of a leaf blob with dead monsters stuck to it dragging a twenty-meter-long Ent body through a forest. Fellow trees were carefully avoided as Bob soldiered on and displayed impressive strength.
"Well, it's not strength in the normal sense, as Bob doesn't even have muscles."
As Bob glowed brighter and Ashlock saw the immense amount of spatial Qi pouring out of his body, he realized that Bob was basically a being of pure Qi that grew stronger depending on the amount of Qi stored in his body.
Sadly no amount of Qi would make Bob move any faster.
Ashlock waited patiently, and once Bob was within range of his roots, he created portals overhead.
"Good job Bob, drop everything," Ashlock ordered, and the slime expelled everything attached to his body. Leaves, soil, random shrubs, rotten branches, corpses, and a snoozing Diana fell to the floor. Finally, his slimy arm snapped back from Titus's body with a squelch.
Ashlock activated {Consuming Abyss}, and black vines emerged from his body back on Red Vine Peak.
Stella poked her head out of the hole in the ground and frowned with concern at the portal's opening overhead, seeing Ashlock's black vines shooting through and latching onto things on the other side.
"Is that Diana?" She wondered aloud as she squinted at the wobbling rift.
The black vines returned, bringing with them the brutally killed monster corpses that were unrecognizable. Ashlock got to work absorbing them for a few credits while Stella dashed through the still-open portal and arrived beside Diana.
"What the hell did you do?" Stella gasped as she saw the state of Titus. Noticing that Diana wasn't responding, she grabbed her by the arms, flung her over her shoulder, and carried her back to Red Vine Peak.
Once they were back and the rift snapped closed behind them, Stella laid Diana down on the bench and gave her a once-over. She then nodded to herself. "Qi deprivation, she will be fine in a day or two."
The mountain peak trembled a little as Ashlock dumped Titus nearby and linked up to him with a root. The immense pull on his Qi reserves was a shame, but it had to be done. Maintaining a 5th stage Star Core Ent was no cheap affair.
Stella glanced briefly at the Ent but then returned to her work, "Douglas, I believe it's time to activate the formation."
Douglas nodded, "I agree. Everything seems in order."
Ashlock watched in anticipation as Douglas sealed up the hole Stella had been in and created a podium on top of it. The final touch was a marble-sized spirit stone exposed like a trophy.
Stella stepped up to it and placed her finger on the spirit stone. Her Star Core flared up in her chest, and Qi flowed into the spirit stone, making it glow briefly. She then stepped back as the silvery lines weaving through the rock of the mountain peak lit up with a soft glow.
Qi began to pour in from the surroundings, and as if the encircling trees were the walls of a snow globe, the gathered Qi rushed around within their confines. It was a fantastic display of power that lasted for a few moments as Stella's Qi reached every part of the formation, and finally, everything stabilized.
The gap between the trees seemed distorted, and a perpetual mist seemed to slowly orbit around the edge of the trees, acting as the perfect wall to keep out prying eyes.
Ashlock finally had something he could consider a courtyard and was eternally grateful for it. Now all he had to hope was that no darn monster would come and ruin it again.
"Douglas, go ask him," Stella whispered into the man's ear and nudged him forward. The man gave her a betrayed look, "Didn't you say you would ask him for me? That's why I helped you all night long with your project."
Stella glanced away and acted clueless.
Douglas sighed and walked to stand before Ashlock, a look of grim determination on his face.
Ashlock was really curious about what the man had to say...
"Patriarch..." Douglas gulped as he started up at his towering form, "Would it be possible to take Elaine on a date into the city today?"
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