As Ashlock canceled the {Dimensional Overlap} and the light Qi bubble collapsed, he realized he might have gone overboard.
He had chosen from the long list of options in the {Dimensional Overlap} menu a pocket realm with near Nascent Soul level light Qi and had set it to encompass the entire Bastion. Which at the time had seemed reasonable. However, he had failed to foresee how badly it would affect the dark-haired man who cultivated darkness Qi. The man had been hardly able to fight back, let alone escape, under the intense light as if he were being eaten alive.
"The man gave 824 credits, but I spent over 800 to kill him with the {Dimensional Overlap} and the void tendrils." Ashlock sighed, "I wonder if delaying his death to ask him a question also reduced the number of credits I received, as he burned away a lot of his Qi before dying."
Ashlock still wasn't sure of the man's true strength, but he felt a bit easier to kill compared to Nox, so he was likely closer to the 7th or 8th stage of the Star Core Realm rather than at the peak, which would have also contributed to the lower sacrificial credit gain.
"You gluttonous Tree!" Stella scolded as she held up a cut-off hand that was still dripping blood on the black stone of the Bastion. "If I hadn't dived in there to cut off his hand, the spatial rings would have been eaten."
"Blame Willow, his hunger distracted me," Ashlock replied half-jokingly. Since they shared a body, Willow's emotions and feelings were impossible to ignore. He could override and suppress them to an extent, of course, but the black vines had originated from Willow's body, so the young tree that only just reached Star Core Realm got its first taste of high-stage human flesh.
"You're just a bad parent to them," Stella waved him off with her extra hand, spraying blood everywhere, which only made Willow hunger more. "You should teach them some restraint! I almost lost my own hand to the vines and void tendrils."
"Do you really think I am a bad parent?" Ashlock felt a little wounded. He thought he was a rather good parent, all things considered. He was great at listening and sometimes dropped gifts on people's heads. What more could someone expect from a tree?
"I was joking," Stella chuckled as she walked over to the once blonde-haired man's headless corpse. "You raised me, and I turned out just fine, right?"
"Okay, maybe she has a point..." Ashlock muttered to himself as he watched her crouch down and pull free two spatial rings the other guy had failed to steal a few minutes earlier.
"Right?!" Stella insisted.
"Yes, Stella, you turned out perfectly." Ashlock reluctantly agreed. Who was he as a man-eating tree that was lazy and forgetful sometimes to judge someone else's personality issues? Okay, she had many problems that were partially his fault, but life wouldn't be as fun without them! Or so he liked to think.
Stella just smiled at his response while humming a pleasant tune to herself. After depositing the spatial rings in her pocket, she turned on her heel and shouted, "Here, Willow, catch!" She tossed the now ringless hand that had belonged to Nox's cousin across the Bastion, and without Ashlock doing anything, a black vine shot up like a snake and snagged the hand.
Ashlock felt a wave of happiness as Willow devoured the snack.
"Willow says thank you," Ashlock relayed the tree's feelings.
"I know," Stella replied as she walked back over, "So what should we do now? Is there any point going after Nox?"
"Let me see if she is still lurking around, but considering that fight took longer than I expected, she is probably long gone by now." Ashlock still had the spatial storm encompassing the wilderness for many miles, and the sun was still overhead, albeit nearing its conclusion for the day. So using {Eye of the Tree God}, he scanned the mostly burned forests and tried to feel for traces of shadow Qi.
There was indeed a faint trace he could follow, but in the few minutes he had spent engaged in combat, she had already escaped his sphere of influence. He searched for another hour and even expanded the spatial storm further but could not catch up.
Which was deeply frustrating. Ashlock knew he wasn't a tactical genius and had likely messed up somewhere. Still, everything that happened today was so far from his expectations that he didn't know how many contingency plans he would have needed.
"I expected Nox to either have been turned into a tree, deeply weakened, or at least poisoned and cursed. But instead, she was as strong as before, had an environmental advantage by hiding in a massive forest, and did everything she could to run rather than fight." Ashlock couldn't help but sigh. If he had known it would be such an ordeal, he would have tried to bribe Maple to come and throw everything he had at her immediately.
"It was my mistake for putting so much faith in my SSS grade skill {Skyborne Bastion}. Although it can move, its primary purpose is for defensive battles on home ground. The fact it moves this slow outside of my root range lets Nox simply outrun the range of its artillery and forces me to waste so much Qi on expanding out the spatial storm as far as possible so I could assist my allies."
Ashlock looked to the distant horizon and saw the sun was setting.
[Time till sundown: 0:30]
"Whatever, this was a great learning experience, and even with Nox escaping, I got a lot out of it." Ashlock returned his attention back to the Bastion.
"Couldn't find her?" Stella asked the moment he returned. She was busy leaning against Willow and seemed to be trying to break the seal on one of the spatial rings.
"The fight took too long so she could get away," Ashlock replied, "And without your earring to track down her exact location and with night approaching, it's pointless to try and chase after her."
"Night huh..." Stella mumbled as she drew her attention away from the ring and looked at the darkening horizon.
"Something up?"
"I don't know why, but Nox told me to live until nightfall." Stella shook her head, "What a confusing woman. She went from trying to murder me to helping me when those bounty hunters arrived."
"Mhm, that is strange." Ashlock ran the conversation he overheard through his mind and tried to piece together the puzzle. "Say Stella, the cousin mentioned coming here because Nox had placed the bounty on your head. You don't suppose she wanted you to live so she didn't have to pay the bounty?"
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Stella tapped her chin, "Possibly? But didn't the black-haired guy mention before he died that the bounty hunters would keep coming no matter what? If she didn't want to pay the bounty, why would it matter if I died tonight or next week?"
"That's true." Ashlock mulled, "I suppose the only way she could get out of paying the bounty now is if she kills you herself."
Stella glanced over to the dead body, "That seems plausible, considering she offered no words of advice to these fools and even distracted them with conversation when they arrived. It really did seem like she wanted them to fail. I wonder when Nox will return seeking my head."
A moment of silent contemplation passed between the two.
"Say Stella, you don't feel scared, do you?"
"Huh? What about?"
"The bounty on your head, of course." Ashlock sighed. "There will be people trying to kill you all the time now."
Stella tilted her head in confusion, "So? How's that much different from my life until now? I've almost died so many times I'm starting to wonder if I really did die one of those times, and I'm just a ghost now sent to haunt you."
"Mistress Stella," Larry attempted a bow, "Don't worry, I will protect you from these pests."
"Thank you, Larry," Stella said sincerely and then patted Willow's bark, "But I have nothing to worry about. So long as I am near Ash, I feel safe."
Ashlock felt happy that Stella had faith in him but feared it was misplaced. When fighting near his trunk or offspring, he was far stronger than his cultivation stage suggested. Still, even these advantages wouldn't bridge the gap between himself and their supposed leader, who had a thing with Nox and was in the middle stages of the Nascent Soul Realm.
"To think the Tainted Cloud Sect has a Nascent Soul Realm expert as well," Ashlock said, but he had to admit the gravity of the realm had diminished somewhat after his brief encounter with Nascent Soul Azure Clan members during his last Mystic Realm visit.
"I need to remember I only stood a chance back then because they were all spatial affinity cultivators, which made the Bastion's shields very effective against their onslaught. What would a void or cosmic Nascent Soul Realm cultivator be capable of? Would I even know how I died?"
"They should have multiple," Stella muttered a reply regarding his earlier point. "They said something about a Lunarshade family raising Nox's bounty, and apparently, their leader went on a rampage within the sect, but someone was able to stop him."
"Huh. You're right." Ashlock replied. "So why haven't they invaded the Blood Lotus Sect? As far as I know, we only have Vincent Nightrose in the Nascent Soul Realm."
Stella shrugged, "Your guess is as good as mine. But if I had to speculate, I would assume either the Blood Lotus Patriarch is stronger than we know or there are some politics we are unaware of... agh, this thing is so hard to open." Stella huffed the hair out of her face and seemingly gave up on breaking the spatial ring's seal.
"I'll break the seals when I wake up tomorrow," Ashlock promised. He was at a higher cultivation stage than Stella and had far more Qi to throw at the problem.
"Fine," Stella slowly collapsed against Willow's bark and ended up sitting on one of his roots with her back to them. "So, are we heading back now? Wait..." panic appeared in her eyes, "we don't need to fly all the way back, right? This darn Bastion is too slow. I will die of boredom before the bounty hunters get to me."
"Relax. Since a fragment of my soul has temporarily bonded with Willow, I can open a portal to bring the Bastion back to Red Vine Peak in seconds."
"Oh, thank the nine realms," Stella seemed genuinely relieved.
"Was cultivating inside the Bastion for a day or two really that bad?" Ashlock wondered.
That aside, he decided to do one last thing with only a few minutes remaining on {Progeny Dominion}. The landscape down below was devastating for him to look at. So many trees had pointlessly died, so he wanted to ensure their deaths were not in vain and that a new forest took root from their ashes.
Hundreds of portals opened up throughout the spatial storm that still raged across the land. A single fruit containing a {Demonic Seed} fell to the ground from each. No monster corpses were left to speed up their growth as he had eaten them all, but the Qi within the fruit alone would mean a forest would appear here within a few months.
"I wonder what Nox's reaction will be if she ever returns and passes by a random forest of demonic trees." Ashlock was still slightly annoyed that Nox had escaped, but so long as that bounty remained on Stella's head, she might return...
"Say, Stella," Ashlock pondered as he reeled in the spatial storm and prepared to leave. "You know how there's a bounty on your head and supposedly strong cultivators will travel across the realm to claim it?"
"Yeah?" Stella looked up at Willow's canopy. "What about it?"
"Doesn't that mean an endless stream of snacks will be knocking on our door soon?" Ashlock realized he had been focusing on how much danger this put Stella and him in, which was a definite cause for concern. But what about the positives? An endless stream of clueless cultivators heading for their deaths in the name of a bounty sounded like a good opportunity.
Stella nodded, "Seems like it from what we know so far."
"Okay, let's head back quickly and prepare." Ashlock's Qi surged through the ethereal root connection, and an enormous portal manifested between the Bastion and the distant setting sun.
He would need to set up better and stricter defenses around Red Vine Peak and conduct more research into these Eternal Pursuit people as soon as possible.
But first, he deserved a well-earned sleep, counting his newfound riches and deciding what to spend his sacrificial credits on. He still had the blonde-haired cultivator's corpse to eat, but he needed to determine if he first wanted to draw the gacha with the 2480 credits he currently had saved up.
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