Ashlock's Star Core pulsed with power as he directed all the ambient spatial Qi on the mountain peak to create a bubble around Lucius's corpse.
"That's not going to be enough," Ashlock muttered as he looked around for a solution. His gaze eventually landed on a badly beaten spider with two broken legs dragging on the ground, and one of his eyes was missing crawling through a portal he had left open to the White Stone Palace, "Larry, sorry to trouble you, but could you engulf this corpse in your ash?"
Ashlock had noticed that one of the greatest strengths of Larry's ash was its ability to nullify other affinities, which made it the perfect affinity type to contain the inevitable wave of death Qi that would be emitted during the creation of an Ent, as nobody on the peak was in any condition to protect themselves with soul fire.
"Certainly, Master," Larry said gruffly as he slowly crawled over and vomited ash into the spatial bubble. Ashlock upped the gravity within the bubble, causing the ash to swirl around the corpse like a dense snow globe.
The portal snapped closed behind Larry, leaving Sebastian and Geb behind as the former wasn't too injured, and Ashlock didn't want him to see his main body. Meanwhile, the latter was pummeled ten feet under and was most certainly dead, having taken the full brunt of a punch from a peak Star Core cultivator while wielding the power of a god.
Geb's demise was unfortunate, but if not for his sacrifice, Lucius would have landed his light beam attack and obliterated the tree that contained part of Ashlock's soul, which would have lost them the fight and given Ashlock permanent soul damage. Not to mention Stella would have been killed seconds later. Sadly, Ashlock didn't have time to mourn the loss of one of his Ents right now as he glanced around the mountain peak.
Elder Margret, Zeus, and Titus were missing limbs, Diana was lying in a glowing ink array, half dead, and Stella was passed out cold on the bench and clearly in terrible pain from the burns that covered her entire body if her scrunched up face was anything to go by.
"Okay, here goes nothing," Ashlock said as he activated his SS-grade skill {Necroflora Sovereign}. A black root emerged from the ground and entered the snowglobe of swirling ash and spatial Qi that Ashlock had created.
As the black root entered Lucius's body to deposit the seed, Ashlock mentally depicted what type of Ent he wanted and prayed to the heavens that he had enough Qi, "His name will be Sol, an eternal worshiper of the sun. His light will shine on all who bear witness as he simultaneously heals, protects, and obliterates foes."
Upon his final thought, while picturing a devoted worshiper praying to the sun, he felt an immense tug on his Star Core that blazed like a god's furnace within his trunk. As if the plug had been pulled, his Star Core dimmed within his body as Qi poured through the root and into the seed within Lucius.
"No way," Ashlock muttered as he began to grow concerned. Despite his Star Core being near maximum capacity and having expanded to the 5th stage, he found his reserves depleted within seconds, and the Ent's creation was still greedily demanding more. This made sense, as he was trying to create a new being in his image that was many stages above his cultivation realm, but that didn't mean it wasn't worrying.
"Sorry my children, could you lend Father a helping hand once more?" Ashlock implored the forest of demonic trees that covered many miles in all directions. The response he felt through the network was less than enthusiastic, which made sense as the sun had dipped below the horizon. He also felt the warm embrace of sleep at the back of his mind, calling him to the land of dreams.
Nevertheless, his offspring answered his call for help, and Ashlock watched through his spiritual sight as the entire mountain range lit up and Qi of various affinities traveled toward him. Ashlock didn't bother trying to convert all of the Qi types into spatial Qi and instead directed them all straight into the black root, feeding the seed and letting the skill deal with it.
"Why does creating powerful Ents always have to be stressful," Ashlock cursed as his thousands of offspring barely kept the SS-grade skill from sucking him to death.
Eventually, after a long ten minutes, the seed was finally formed. How such a small thing contained all of the Qi he had in reserve, plus all of the Qi a forest of a thousand Soul Fire trees could provide, baffled Ashlock to no end.
"Whatever, here we go! Everyone brace yourselves—" A wave of death Qi exploded out with the snowglobe containing the majority, and Ashlock used his presence to suppress the rest so none reached Stella as she slept.
However, the sudden column of light blasting through the bubble and piercing the heavens wasn't contained. Ashlock marveled at the beacon of white light that was so bright it illuminated the entire valley and briefly turned the night into day.
Ashlock then saw two grey-colored arms of wood slowly emerge from within the bubble, the palms aimed upwards as if they were praising the sky... followed by six more arms for a total of eight. Then Lucius, who had become Sol, stood up, and half his new treelike body became exposed. Ashlock dismissed the spatial Qi bubble, letting the swirling ash fall to the ground.
The column of light brightening the night sky ceased and condensed into a ball of light that looked like a white dwarf that floated where Lucius' head once was before it was deleted from existence by the void Qi tendrils.
With the blinding light and the ash-filled bubble gone, Sol stood there in silence, and Ashlock could finally get a good look.
Sol stood around three meters tall and retained a humanoid frame with two legs and a regular torso, but that's where the similarities to Lucius's previous form ended, and the differences began. Eight arms jutted out in a perfect circle from Sol's shoulder area, with the palms all facing inward as if they were forming a crown to hold the floating ball of white light that served as Sol's head and bathed the whole mountain peak in warm light.
Ashlock felt his weariness briefly subside, and his leaves subconsciously tilted on their stalks toward Sol in a vain attempt to absorb the light. Despite Sol's strange appearance, Ashlock could tell much like Khaos, who was incredibly Qi-intensive to run, Sol was on another level. The Qi within Sol's body left over from his creation was literally being burned to keep that floating star for a head lit, and Ashlock didn't have the Qi on hand to charge Sol up, so time was of the essence.
"Sol, stop being a glorified streetlamp and go heal Diana," Ashlock commanded, and the Ent went to wordlessly fulfill his orders. He understood his tone was a little harsh, but the Ents were no different from wooden golems or machines. The Ents he created from intelligent beings like humans could understand complicated commands, but that didn't mean they were conscious like a person or animal. They had no thoughts or desires of their own. Despite what Ashlock had told Lucius before he was executed, he was as good as dead. It's just his soul was forcefully mutated and now resided in Sol's body as a power source for as long as it lived.
Unlike Geb, an expendable Ent made from a weak cultivator with the very common Earth affinity, Ashlock planned to take far greater care of Sol as he was a near Nascent Soul Ent with a relatively rare light affinity that was great for healing.
Talking of healing, Ashlock watched closely as Sol stood before Diana.
Kaida hissed at the strange Ent as it bent down. The closest of its eight arms dipped its hand into the floating sun that served as its head and plucked free a whisp of light. Holding the whisp between its fingers, Sol bent his arm downward as if he were a priest at a church giving a blessing and pushed the whisp into Diana's forehead.
Kaida slithered back and let off a worried hiss as Diana's body bathed in a glowing white light, with the spot on her forehead as the epicenter. Her flesh began to wiggle around as if worms were under the surface, and her broken feathered wings shuddered and snapped back into place as the crushed bones underneath reformed.
A few moments passed, and Ashlock noticed Diana's body begin to revert to her usual human form. The wings retracted into her shoulders, her claws became regular nails, and her body shrunk. She also became less curvy, like a succubus, and returned to her usual self.
Diana's eyes snapped open, and she instinctively raised a hand to shield herself from Sol's blinding light. She opened her mouth, likely to scream in confusion, but Kaida slammed into her like an uncoiled spring, knocking her to the side.
"Agh, hey!" Diana protested as she tried to push away the snake, licking her face and hissing happily, "Ow, stop it. Ah, help! What is going on?"
Sol rose to his feet and stood there unmoving like a lampost, having completed his task.
"Now go heal Elder Margret," Ashlock said impatiently, and Sol moved to comply. Even with Sol's ambient light illuminating the mountain peak and keeping him awake, Ashlock knew Sol would run out of Qi very soon, which would plunge the mountain peak into darkness, and he knew sleep would quickly follow.
With that in mind, he wanted to ensure everyone with life-threatening injuries was cared for. Then, if Sol had any Qi left, he would use his light to keep him awake so he could go after Nox, who was currently being chased down by the Grand Elder with the help of his offspring.
"Coming to help me, how kind," Elder Margret said dryly as she tried to sit up from her resting place against one of the fire affinity trees but winced, "Ow ow ow." The bloody cloths around her missing arm had drawn most of Ashlock's focus before. Still, she had injuries everywhere else alongside severe burns, which was ironic considering she should be somewhat resistant to heat as a fire cultivator.
Sol didn't react to Elder Margret's words as he once again put a hand into the blinding light and conjured up a whisp. Having watched what Sol did with Diana, Elder Margret pushed herself up with a grunt and received the light whisp on her forehead without making Sol bend down.
"You wouldn't need to bend down if your arms weren't stuck in an upward position trying to hold the sun up," Ashlock sighed at the ridiculous design flaw of his new Ent.
Elder Margret let out a pleasant gasp of surprise as she began to glow, and Ashlock watched in real time as her severe burns disappeared. It was like watching mold grow in reverse as the bright red skin retreated. Then, the light spiraling down her body from the spot on her forehead where Sol had touched reached the stump where her arm used to be.
The bloodstained cloths she had tightly wrapped around were pushed off as the stump exploded with wiggling worms of flesh and muscle that all spiraled outward together and twisted like a steel cable to form a brand new arm.
Elder Margret inspected her freshly grown hand, which was so smooth and perfect that it almost looked like it was made from plastic. Gone was her aged hand covered in callouses and scars that showed her past as a warrior of the Redclaw family.
"What do you think?" Ashlock asked within her mind.
She winced slightly at his presence in her consciousness, but it seemed the healing glow still making its way through her body helped protect her mind from his madness, "It's... offputting for the lack of a better word. It feels and acts like my hand, but my brain refuses to recognize it as mine."
Elder Margret pulled back the half-singed sleeve covering her other arm and compared the two with a frown, "Gosh, when I compare them like this, since when had I let myself get so withered? I never quite had an arm this dainty in my youth, but if I had to guess, it's close to how I looked before my first war—"
Her thoughts were interrupted by her clutching her rumbling stomach, "Why am I suddenly so hungry?"
"Interesting," Ashlock mused, "It would appear regrowing limbs requires nutrients or something that you can't derive from the Qi in your Soul Core."
"It could also be because I am out of Qi," Elder Margret smiled wryly as she collapsed back against the tree and summoned a black ball to her hand that Ashlock recognized as the skin improvement truffle, "I was hesitant to eat this as I feared I wouldn't recognize myself, but if my entire body looks like my new arm then I will grow used to it."
Sol stepped back, having finished providing healing, and Ashlock decided to send him to heal Stella next. She seemed mostly stable, just terribly exhausted and burned from Lucius's Radiant Blaze attack.
The light Ent strolled off to fulfill its orders, leaving Elder Margret to eat the truffle and some other fruits in peace while absorbing the swirling fire Qi that came from the demonic trees.
Ashlock was curious how drastic the change for Elder Margret would be after consuming the truffle, but those changes would take time, and he had more pressing matters.
"Sol, after healing Stella, go and heal Larry," Ashlock said as his vision ascended into the skies above with {Eye of the Tree God}. It was a cloudless night, so a beautiful galaxy of stars dominated the sky until the horizon. Ashlock took a brief moment to relish in the view and the cold breeze that rustled his leaves.
"If only life could always be this peaceful," Ashlock sighed as he shifted his gaze from the endless sky of stars to the scarlet forest below that was bathed in the moonlight. Everything seemed like a typical night until he looked east and saw the forest that the mortals inhabited was ablaze.
His vision blurred as he got closer, and within seconds, he could see the Grand Elder standing on his sword with manifested phoenix wings of crimson flame and hurling fireballs at the forest below, where there was the shadow of a woman dashing through the foliage and skillfully dodging the onslaught.
It was Nox, and in the short time Ashlock hadn't been looking, she had almost made it to the wall that separated the Blood Lotus Sect and the wilderness.
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