It took an entire day to {Devour} the heap of corpses which was now nothing but a small pile of tattered cloth and scraps of weapon the corrosive fluid from his vines failed to digest.
While devouring, he had also used the excess Qi to portal over the corpses that Larry had gathered outside the white palace.
Who had killed all the people in the white palace was still a mystery, but Ashlock had his suspicions—a fluffy white squirrel who still looked exhausted and sound asleep on Stella's head was his primary suspect.
The girl sat on Ashlock's branch next to Diana, who was chained around his trunk. Initially, Diana had been chained to a wooden supporting pillar for the pavilion's roof—but it was destroyed within seconds when Diana began to thrash around in a crazed state.
So Ashlock's sturdy trunk became the only thing in the courtyard capable of holding her in place.
"I don't think she will last much longer like this," Stella said with a sigh as she tried to feed the girl another beast core. Every time she provided Diana one, she would regain rationality for a while before going insane again. "The corruption is already too deep."
Diana's eyes were completely black again, and the dark lines covering her skin were only spreading. Ashlock had no solution other than hoping his truffles would do something, but they still had three days left until they were fully grown.
Ashlock felt awful about the whole situation.
If he had been stronger, this could have been prevented. It was a fucked up thought, but if he had slaughtered more cultivators and even mortals, he might have had the strength to protect those closest to him, but then he might have crossed a line and drawn the ire of the Patriarch or other families.
The fact he was an immovable tree limited his options from the very start. The inability to run away made making enemies less than ideal—hence he had taken the stance of slow growth in favor of keeping a low profile.
Even with this stance, his growth had been insane. While Diana was stuck in the 6th stage of the Soul Fire realm, he had gone through the entire realm and was now a Star Core.
Of course, Senior Lee providing that peculiar fragment had helped tremendously in speeding up his progress, but it had also brought a whole host of troubles.
His mind would feel more turbulent from the war he had just experienced, but the constant wave of happiness coming through his roots from his offspring lightened his mood. Over the past day, he'd spread his roots out further and made contact with many of the baby demonic trees. They were having an absolute feast on the cultivator's corpses that he had left them.
The cultivators had been eliminated, the neighboring peak was deserted, and everyone was alive.
Larry returned to the central courtyard, deposited a few corpses he had been carrying in his maw, and lept into Ashlock's canopy.
"Master, I will be slumbering for the foreseeable future. However, please do wake me if my services are required." The spider said in his gruff accent that was still hard to decipher even with his system automatically translating it for him. How Stella could even piece together a single sentence from the spider was impressive.
"Sure, go ahead." Ashlock replied, "You earned a good rest after yesterday's antics."
A night passed, during which Ashlock allowed himself a short sleep. His slothfulness had finally caught up to him, and he wanted a fresh mindset for the system draw ahead.
As the sun shone into the courtyard and warmed his leaves the following morning, Ashlock cast {Devour} on the few corpses left and felt a rush of power like no other. His Star Core, which had been overused and exhausted just a day ago, was now so overfilled that it pulsed, and Ashlock felt his realm go up a stage.
[Demonic Demi-Divine Tree (Age: 9)]
[Star Core: 2nd Stage]
[Soul Type: Amethyst (Spatial)]
"Larry and his spiders ate most of the corpses, and I left a few to my offspring, but I still ate around a hundred corpses, resulting in me going up a single stage in the Star Core realm." Ashlock sighed, "The path to the next realm will take forever."
After feeling the rush from going up half a realm in a single day from Senior Lee's present, going up a single stage in the Star Core realm felt like nothing but a buzz that faded quickly.
Had he become a cultivator junkie like the others?
While he had been distracted, Stella had left Diana to her thrashing and screaming and had gone to the runic formation in one of the other courtyards to cultivate.
"I wonder if she will break through to the next stage?" Ashlock wondered as he let his Star Core calm down.
It would be interesting to see, but for now, he couldn't resist the excitement of his sign-in. Aiming for an S rank draw might be foolish, and he may end up wasting all the points he’d acquired during the battle, but he felt it was a gamble worth taking. A-grade skills simply weren't going to cut it if he had to wage war against the entire Blood Lotus sect.
"System!" Ashlock shouted, and the familiar letters within his mind materialized.
Idletree Daily Sign-In System
Day: 3474
Daily Credit: 2
Sacrifice Credit: 3222
[Sign in?]
If he still had a heart, it would be pounding in his chest after seeing so many points. So much had happened in the last few days it was honestly insane. Just a week ago, he had been near the bottom of the Soul Fire realm, but now he was a Star Core tree with an Ashen King as a pet and over three thousand credits to his name.
It was time to draw.
He had already committed—there was no turning back now.
All he could hope was for the system to be magnanimous on this fine day and not give him some god weapon or try to summon some ancient creature from another dimension like last time.
"Sign in..." He said with way less confidence than usual.
[Sign in successful, 3224 credits consumed…]
[Unlocked an S-grade skill: Mystic Realm]
Ashlock was calm, waiting for the information to hit his brain...
But then everything faded to black.
***
A feeling of great melancholy overtook his mind. A sense of agelessness that was indescribable. Time had no concept or meaning anymore, like money to a trillionaire or a drop of water to an ocean.
Nothing held significance when you could bend reality to your desire and lord over all creation.
He looked around with a chronic bordem gnawing at his mind for all eternity—his roots spread into the lower realm, fighting off the swarms of demons hellbent on a senseless conquest he couldn't understand. The endless fog of the void swirled around his trunk that grew throughout the realms.
Numerous branches sprawled out, anchoring billions of micro dimensions created by past monarchs on their journey to his canopy—the immortal plane, a land of Qi so pure it was liquid and purified the soul.
But the great tree knew one thing. The eternal cycle was coming full circle. Those at the top had become too greedy, pretentious, and disillusioned with the truth. But that was natural, as were all things involving the great tree.
A cycle had to end for it to begin once more.
It was time to die.
And return to ash—to regrow anew.
The cycle would be broken if only the great tree could remember its past.
But what lay beyond the eternal cycle?
It did not know, for it could never remember... its past or present.
Nobody did.
The fog parted, and the immortals came. As expected.
But one seemed familiar, as if he had seen him before, but the great tree couldn't remember.
They wished to cut themselves off from the lower realms, with the naive belief they could survive without the great spirit tree in control.
A foolish mistake.
As the great tree was cut down over a thousand years and nothing but ash swirled throughout the fog of creation, fragments of itself were deposited to every corner of the multiverse.
And a single seed fell to oblivion.
Because from the ashes, it would rise once more.
Like it had every time before.
But this time would be different.
For it could remember.
It's past.
Once more.
***
Ashlock awoke to dusk.
A dream so vivid it had almost felt real washed away and became a distant memory. Fragments of that dream remained, but the more Ashlock tried to focus and reach out for them, they fell through his hands like sand.
Fickle and fleeting.
Gone, but not entirely forgotten.
[Upgraded {Transpiration of Heaven and Earth [C]} -> {Transpiration of Heaven and Chaos [B]}]
The system notification made him dismiss the fleeting thoughts and fully awaken—or at least try to. "My cultivation technique upgraded? Why?" Ashlock felt baffled. What had happened during that weird out-of-body experience that he could barely remember?
For a brief moment, he swore he had felt like a tree.
Not a human soul stuck inside a tree, but fully a tree. One that had unbelievable power and reach yet felt so cold and alone?
The feeling was fading, but those emotions had been so dull it was terrifying. That sensation of nothing mattering, of eternal loneliness and a detachment of everything that happened to it... him? Was that a memory of the past or a vision of the future?
Ashlock did not know, and it shook him to his core.
He looked around the central courtyard of Red Vine peak, his home of nine years. Surrounding him were people he cared for, whom he wished would stay and grow by his side.
This was a world of immortals! People could live forever, right? So it shouldn't matter that he's an ageless tree. He shouldn't be destined to feel nothing but the cold embrace and silence of the void.
Ashlock felt Diana thrashing around on his branch with madness consuming her mind. She had seemed strong and confident only days ago, a true mentor for Stella's cultivation and a voice of reason.
Now she was nothing but a feral beast in human skin, drowning in the corruption of her heart demons. Ashlock could only hope his mushrooms had the answer to her problems. Otherwise, she might never return to being herself again.
Only as Ashlock looked around did he realize how close everyone had come to leaving him. What if Stella had died a few days ago from the heavens lightning or had her head chopped off by the Evergreen cultivator?
What if Larry hadn't escaped within a slither of his life and evolved into the Ashen King?
What if Diana never recovered?
Life was so fickle.
Eventually, everyone died and returned to the earth. A truth he had been ignoring. Nothing lasted forever.
But he still wanted to make the most of it while he could. His spiritual sight drifted to Stella, who was cultivating her heart out. Qi swirled around her in a vortex, and her breathing perfectly aligned with her cultivation technique.
Ashlock could sense she was near a breakthrough. Something impressive, sure. But not enough—she needed to go faster to keep up with him. As he had the system assisting him and his biology that was naturally superior for cultivation, it was inevitable that Stella, Diana, and even Larry would be left behind.
And what was the point of cultivating immortality to be alone at the top?
He had been the underdog, the weakest member of his group, but within a few days, he had become potentially the strongest. He needed to bring the others up with him and find a way to train them faster. Because for a tree, he sure wasn't slow anymore.
His mind was still adjusting after that surreal experience, like waking up groggy from a long nap and feeling dehydrated, so he opened his status screen to check his skills and see what had changed.
[Demonic Demi-Divine Tree (Age: 9)]
[Star Core: 2nd Stage]
[Soul Type: Amethyst (Spatial)]
[Mutations…]
{Demonic Eye [B]}
[Summons...]
{Ashen King: Larry [A]}
[Skills…]
{Mystic Realm [S]}
{Eye of the Tree God [A]}
{Deep Roots [A]}
{Magic Mushroom Production [A]}
{Lightning Qi Barrier[A]}
{Qi Fruit Production [A]}
{Transpiration of Heaven and Chaos [B]}
{Language of the World [B]}
{Root Puppet [B]}
{Fire Qi Protection[B]}
{Devour [C]}
{Hibernate [C]}
{Basic Poison Resistance [F]}
It had taken a long time, but his list of skills was growing nicely, and many of them had upgraded to A-grade. From the SSS-grade divine fragment he had used to fuse his soul to his trunk, he knew the upper bound for his system should be around the SSS grade.
He didn't even want to think about what kind of nonsense an SSS grade skill or summon could be as, for now, he wanted to try out his first-ever S-grade skill.
{Mystic Realm [S]}
The problem? He still had no idea what it did. Was the dream he had supposed to be the explanation or was he supposed to use the skill to find out?
What even was a Mystic realm anyway?
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