Ashlock spread out his spiritual senses and confirmed that the entirety of Red Vine Peak was enshrouded within a large void bubble. However, he could still sense his roots that ran under Darklight City and the wilderness, confirming Ashlock's suspicions regarding his new S grade {Dimensional Overlap} skill. It created a pocket realm in a bubble around him, but foes or his allies could escape at any time by simply walking out of it, so its size mattered, but that drove up the cost drastically.
"Should I teleport Diana and Kaida out of here?" Ashlock wondered as he saw Diana nervously backtrack toward his trunk with Kaida at her side under the petrifying gaze of two giant alien pupilless eyes that floated in the void. One was a dark red, like a dying star, while the other was a misty blue.
"Maple, what did you do?" Ashlock asked the fluffy squirrel, but the menace raised his paw as if asking him to be quiet.
Ashlock then felt a ripple through the void as incomprehensible whispers began between Maple and the two giant eyes belonging to titanic creatures barely visible in the eternal darkness.
Maple then leaped off his branch and floated up to put himself between Ashlock and the Worldwalkers. The whispers calmed down, and under the alien gazes, Maple suddenly exploded outward in a mass of wiggling black tentacles as if an eldritch abomination had broken free from the tiny squirrel's body.
Kaida hissed loudly and moved to protect Diana, who stumbled back and pushed herself against Ashlock's trunk as if hoping he would swallow her up. Which he could technically do, but he would rather just teleport her outside of the pocket dimension as he was confident these Worldwalkers would be unable to affect anything outside the pocket realm's range. However, he wasn't sure how the two Worldwalkers would react to him suddenly mobilizing his Qi to create the portal, so he refrained.
The wiggling mass of tentacles that had been Maple began to condense down and take on a humanoid shape. Ashlock watched in awe as the eldritch thing morphed into a naked, androgynous humanoid body with no defining features other than long white hair that reached his legs, fluffy ears, and a white tail that curled around his entire form. He floated back down and stood on one of Ashlock's more exposed branches.
"Now you two do the same," Maple said in a perfectly neutral voice as he pointed to the eyes in the sky. The two eyes looked at one another, and then they began to condense down into humanoid forms.
Unlike Maple, who retained some of his squirrel body features, these two Worldwalkers were androgynous humans who reminded Ashlock of those plastic toys with no defining characteristics of either gender. Although their shoulder-length dark red and icy blue hair that matched their totally black eyes gave them a slightly feminine look?
"Apologies for showing such unsightly forms," one of the Worldwalkers spoke in that same neutral voice as Maple, "This is one of the first times we have shown ourselves to a human, so we just copied your basic genetic signature. So I hope this appearance is less traumatizing to gaze upon for the human present?"
The question was directed at Diana, and she hesitantly nodded, "Yes, it's better. But it feels like I am looking at a strange reflection of myself."
Ashlock compared the two and now understood why the Worldwalkers had a slightly feminine look, as they used Diana as their basis. However, Maple looked different, and it took a moment for Ashlock to realize that Maple had used Stella as the basis for his humanoid form, as he had a bit of a roguish-looking face.
"Well, we could take on the appearance of a tree or a rock if you prefer?" The Worldwalker suggested, "To us, appearance is a useless concept that constrains our soul to a certain vessel that will limit our power."
"N-no, it's okay. I can get used to it," Diana said awkwardly as she stepped away from Ashlock's trunk and sat on the bench while shaking, and Kaida stopped hissing and calmed down.
"Maple, is this the tree you told us about last time you visited us?" The blue-haired Worldwalker asked as it flew a lap around his canopy and squinted at his leaves, "I can see why he caught your interest."
Ashlock didn't like the sound of that, so he switched topics, "Maple, are these your siblings?" He asked using {Abyssal Whispers}, surprisingly carrying his voice through the void as if he were speaking normally. After using the Mystic Realm for the first time, he remembered Larry mentioning meeting Maple's family, so he assumed these Worldwalkers might be related to Maple.
"Yeah, they are my elder siblings," Maple grinned. "I don't see them often after entering a pact with you and being confined by this realm's suffocating pressure that takes all my Qi to endure. But whenever you have accessed the Mystic Realm in the past, I have taken the opportunity to contact them."
"That was self-inflicted," The red-haired Worldwalker scolded Maple, "Didn't anyone tell you not to enter suspicious portals and agree to pacts with magical trees?"
Maple blinked his liquid golden eyes, "No... but I have no regrets. It's more fun down here!"
"You seem more talkative than usual, Maple," Ashlock was surprised at how normal Maple and the Worldwalkers were, "and since when did you have a human form?"
"Well, talking is a waste of energy, and so is fighting off those weaklings that keep bothering you for some reason," Maple licked his lips, "As for this human form, I had a feast recently, which helped me gather a large amount of energy for my growth so I can display this form for a short while now but only in this void. Would be a waste to use anything but that small squirrel body outside."
"Interesting, so Maple seems so lazy all the time because he is conserving energy," Ashlock mused to himself, "and is that what he was doing instead of helping us against the Merchants? Off slaughtering some poor monsters for food?"
"Wait, Maple, is that you?" Diana shouted in surprise, "What is going on? What are you? Where did that cute squirrel go?"
Ashlock realized Diana had likely been terrified out of her mind being stared down at by two Worldwalkers and hadn't been keeping up with the conversation all that well.
"In your language, we are known as Worldwalkers, and our purpose is to guard the void." The red-haired one answered with a hint of pride, and the blue-haired one continued, "We are superior lifeforms enslaved by heaven to ensure cultivators only ever ascend and don't travel back down to cause extinction."
Maple snorted, "You two are both children like me. Don't act like you do anything other than float around aimlessly absorbing ambient Qi that escapes the pocket realms. You couldn't even stop a Monarch Realm if you tried."
Neither seemed to refute Maple's claim, but they did glare at him, and Ashlock felt the void ripple with power as if an invisible battle was occurring between the trio.
Sibling banter aside, Ashlock found the description of their purpose a little confusing, as hadn't Senior Lee traveled down from a higher realm? "What about Senior Lee?" Ashlock asked Maple, "Didn't he travel down from a higher realm?"
"That's actually one of the reasons we wanted to meet you. Few attract the attention of a true immortal," Blue-haired said as they floated down and tapped his trunk, "Could you open up?"
Confused, Ashlock opened his {Demonic Eye} and blue-haired didn't even flinch as their gazes met.
"A true immortal? What's that?" Ashlock asked, but blue-haired was busy humming and staring into his eye.
"There are some people even heaven can't contain within its own rules, and they are known as the true immortals." Red-haired explained as they floated down, "From Maple's description, Senior Lee is likely one of them, and they are not beings to be trifled with."
Ashlock wasn't that surprised that Senior Lee was some godlike being. He had basically paused reality, and Ashlock swore he saw swirling galaxies within the man's eyes once. What did bother Ashlock was that the Worldwalker referred to Maple with the name Stella had given the squirrel when they first met.
"Do you two have names?" Ashlock asked as he looked at both of them with his Demonic eyes and felt confused when he saw literally nothing but blackholes in a humanoid shape.
"Not ones you would understand," The blue-haired Worldwalker replied, "Why? Do you want to give us lower-realm ones?"
"I mean, I can, but why do you call Maple... Maple?" Ashlock asked.
The two Worldwalkers exchanged a look, "We aren't..." The Red-haired said, "We are calling them Maple."
"Okay, something fucked up is going on here," Ashlock grumbled to himself, "Their mouth movements definitely didn't match the word Maple, yet that's what I heard. Is it my {Language of the World}skill acting up?"
"Let me test something," Ashlock told the Worldwalkers, "Blue hair, your name can be Neptune, and Red hair can be Mars. Now tell me your Worldwalker names."
"Mars."
"Neptune."
"Yep, that's definitely some system bullshit," Ashlock thought, "My language skill is now translating their supposed incomprehensible names into the ones I assigned them in my head."
"Do you understand them?" Diana asked nervously as she shifted to the very edge of the bench, as far from Neptune and Mars as possible, and was downing Mind Fortress pills like they were Skittles, "To me, their names sound like strange gargles that seem to stroke my brain from within. It's deeply unsettling."
Neptune looked at Diana in confusion, "Aren't you a daughter of the Ravena clan? Why would our names unsettle you—"
The void began to tremble as if something from the outside was trying to crush them.
"Shut up," Mars yelled as they covered Neptune's mouth with their hand.
A tense moment passed, and the void eventually returned to its usual calm. Neptune looked around and then pulled Mars's hand down.
"Sorry," Neptune whispered, "I forgot bloodlines were forbidden knowledge to the lowest realm."
"Can you two stop messing around and hurry up with what I brought you here for?" Maple shouted down from the tree branch he was standing on, "I can't keep this link to the void open forever. Whatever gives Ashlock power is wrestling me for control."
"What did you come for?" Ashlock asked and began to worry they would stumble upon his system as it was most certainly the thing wresting Maple for control.
Neptune returned to poking their head through the slit in his trunk and inspecting his eye while Mars answered, "Remember how we mentioned we were enslaved by heaven? Well, Maple found a way to break from its control."
"How?"
"You," Mars replied, "And we were hoping you could be our way out of those shackles as well."
"Isn't that because of the pact Maple and I agreed on? And what do you mean enslaved by heaven's control? What does it make you do?"
"It's more about what they can't do," Maple grumbled from his branch, "They can't leave the void. Ever. It may be vast, but it's their prison."
"As Maple said," Mars nodded, "Although Maple is significantly suppressed in your realm, he can feast on condensed Qi in the form of souls and grow quicker. Within a short time, he will overtake us despite being centuries younger."
Ashlock didn't want to be that guy, but just maybe heaven's rules were a good idea? One Maple running around was already unhinged enough, but imagine if all these Worldwalkers could freely wander around eating to their heart's content. There would be no realms with anything alive left!
"Mhm, there's certainly something strange," Neptune concluded, "Other than a fragment of divinity gifted by that Senior Lee, which means Ashlock can rise through the void between the realms of creation without being bothered by other Worldwalkers, but there's something else semi-dormant accumulating energy, but the only way I can detect it is because of energy going missing which is impossible."
"Is Neptune talking about my system and its daily sign-in credit?" Ashlock pondered as that was the only explanation unless his system took in some of his Qi. But it was very reassuring that Neptune could not actually detect his system.
"Do you have any idea what it could be, Ashlock?" Mars asked, "It's not every day you run into a talking spirit tree with higher authority over the world's laws than even heaven to the point he can break a Worldwalker from their enslavement, which is part of their existence since birth in the demonic realm."
"Not a clue," Ashlock effortlessly lied. There wasn't a chance in hell he would tell these world devourers about it, even if he had a way to free them.
"Maybe whatever is absorbing energy is affecting Ashlock without him knowing?" Neptune suggested as they clapped their hands, "Oh, I know! Why don't we try to form a pact?"
[Neptune wishes to form a pact]
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