To Elaine, the world was a blur without her glasses, so she planned to stand beside Stella and Douglas and keep quiet while listening in on their conversation. Of course, she had debated asking the Silverspires for help, but without her vision, she couldn't tell how powerful the Silverspires were.
Her hopes of salvation had been squandered when she overheard that only two people from the Silverspire family had shown up, and one was a child. She had experienced the mist demon's killing intent before, and with the presence of the immortal that supposedly lorded over this place, she didn't want to hedge her bets on a Silverspire brat and a tired butler.
If I could guarantee a route out of here back to my family, I would take it. Her hands clenched at her sides as her mind raced. But if there's no opportunity, it's best to stay on my captor's good side and maybe reap those promised rewards.
Elaine didn't fully believe Stella's claims of such miraculous cultivation resources. If they truly existed, the Blood Lotus Sect would be the most powerful demonic sect throughout the wilderness, and they would have no reason to fear the beast tide.
Lost in her thoughts, Elaine felt startled when someone tried to reach for her hand.
"Big sister, I haven't seen you before," The Silverspire child asked with childlike innocence while trying to shake her hand, "What's your name? Where are you from?"
Elaine was unsure what to say. Her body had completely frozen up as she couldn't see the child before her. Other than handing her a mask, Stella had told her to keep quiet about anything she had told her, so what could she even say?
"Are you friends with Stella?"
Elaine almost screamed no into the child's face, but she refrained.
Fumbling to find the child's shoulder, she patted it and answered, "I'm no big sister. I just work here."
"Come on, Ryker," The butler spoke with exhaustion, "We can sit back and cultivate for a few weeks while we wait for the tournament to start."
Elaine almost frowned at how quickly Ryker let go of her hand, losing all interest in her. Does he love cultivation that much? What a weird child. Although I'm rather jealous, I felt his cultivation was superior to mine, yet he sounded so young!
"Nice job Elaine." Douglas's gruff voice broke her from her depressing thoughts. She then felt a warm hand lightly grasp hers, "Hold my hand so you don't trip and fall," he whispered into her ear.
Elaine hated to admit it, but she liked his presence, and soon enough, her hand had intertwined with his, and he thoughtfully led her deeper into the cavern. However, once the distant conversation between the Silverspires and Diana faded, Elaine felt slightly sad when Douglas unlinked their hands and paused beside her.
"Here's your glasses." He held them out for her. She happily took off the mask and put them on, the blurry world becoming crystal clear.
They were near the stone bridge that went over the slow-moving stream, and Elaine enjoyed the view of the grinning Douglas standing beside the soil patch overflowing with flora.
"I had expected you to beg the Silverspires for help," Douglas said, and Elaine felt her blood run cold, "Glad you didn't. I have no doubts you and the Silverspires would have died today if you had said anything."
Elaine couldn't believe how off-handed Douglas had mentioned the murder of a Silverspire heir. They were beyond powerful, and their standing within the sect was second to none. Was this mysterious Ashfallen Sect really all Stella had made them out to be?
The Silverspires had even handed over such a large sum of Spirit Stones and Dragon Crowns for a small profit share... who else could demand such a good deal from a Silverspire other than an immortal?
Elaine feared she was making leaps in logic to justify all the nonsense she had witnessed over the past day, but things were starting to add up, no matter how ridiculous they seemed.
"Douglas, come with me!" Stella shouted from the entrance to the mineshaft, "I need help with some runic formations."
"Coming!" Douglas yelled back and gave a reassuring smile to Elaine, "You stay here, alright? I will be back before you know it."
Elaine nodded and watched Douglas leave with an odd feeling of abandonment in her chest. Then, with a long sigh, she sat on the stone bridge, watched the stream slowly flow by, and decided to try cultivating.
"Brother, please come and save me soon." She murmured as her body drifted off into a state of deep meditation.
***
Ashlock sighed in relief as he opened a portal for Stella, Douglas, and Diana to return to the mountain peak. That meeting with the Silverspires had many chances to go completely wrong, so for it to have ended without much incident was a blessing in his books.
With the meeting that had been hanging over his head for the last few days now in the past, he felt a similar sense of relief to what he had experienced when he left job interviews back on Earth when he had been a man of flesh and bones, doomed to work an endless 9-5 job in software development.
An exhaustion he didn't know that had been plaguing his body and mind was expelled all at once, and all he wanted to do was turn into a couch potato and sleep.
"Wait... aren't I kinda close to that right now?" Ashlock chuckled to himself.
The point was he felt fantastic and free of worries. So he cleverly decided to pretend the upcoming tournament that was guaranteed to be a massive headache at the end of the month wasn't quickly approaching.
For now, he was chilling. Basking in the glorious afternoon sunshine, he allowed Stella and Douglas's conversation regarding array formations to play in the background as he listened to the chirping birds.
"Say, Tree, what type of formation should we make?" Stella was tapping his trunk with a look of excitement.
"Ugh..." Ashlock groaned. He really didn't want to use his brain right now.
***
By late afternoon, Stella had settled on using the thousand high-grade spirit stones provided from their fruitful partnership with the Silverspires to create a concealment array, which had been his suggestion.
There were many varying options for array formations to choose from, but since the spirit stones provided were all high-grade, a smaller-scale but highly Qi-intensive formation was the best decision.
Of those, Ashlock could pick between a shield or concealment array as they were the only two Stella felt confident at trying.
He had gone for the latter for the simple reason that the current technique he was utilizing to obscure Red Vine Peak from outsiders with spatial Qi was consuming around half of his Star Core's passive Qi generation.
With the many truffles he was growing for the girls and his plans to let his Star Core fill up so he could advance his cultivation, he could not continue that continuous high-cost technique. It needed to be replaced asap.
He had the system-granted skill that gave him a shield against his arch nemesis, lightning, so he felt a concealment array was of more importance for now.
"I don't quite want to announce my presence to the world just yet, so concealment is ideal."
Ashlock couldn't wait to finally start throwing his weight around and stop cowering on his mountain peak, "Once Stella and Diana return from the Mystic Realm even stronger than they are now, and with my new void ability and the Silverspires name behind me, the Ashfallen Sect should rival the other mid-sized families here in the Blood Lotus Sect."
"Patriarch, may I return to my duties down below?" Douglas asked with a hint of impatience below his trunk. Ashlock was a little confused about his rush to get back down into the dark, dusty cavern below as his job had been satisfied for now, and didn't Douglas want to rest?
Seeing that Stella was busy drawing out the runes on the ground for the concealment formation that went around the rim of the mountain peak, Ashlock also couldn't see much reason to keep Douglas up here, so with a mere thought, he created a portal and let him leave.
"Thank you." He said with a cheery wave as he vanished into the depths.
"What an eager worker," Ashlock noted as he looked for something to do.
Diana was cultivating on top of the personal runic formation, and Stella was happy at work. So much had occurred over the last few weeks that it almost felt weird to have a moment of calm.
No immortals were appearing out of nowhere, cultivators knocking at his door wanting to fight with Stella, or Dao Storms hellbent on his destruction. Just a peaceful summer day.
Ashlock felt oddly restless, so he decided to get some hunting done.
"System!" He called out to his eternal friend that lived in his head, and soon enough, the words he was familiar with materialized in his mind.
Idletree Daily Sign-In System
Day: 3511
Daily Credit: 10
Sacrifice Credit: 5
[Sign in?]
Obviously, he didn't plan to sign in with so few credits. Being too preoccupied, time had slowed to a crawl, and he had little opportunity to go out and hunt. The few SC he had accumulated were from testing his void skill {Consuming Abyss}.
"Time to go check on my traps..." Ashlock had been building the wall of demonic trees in the wilderness for various purposes. One was obviously for it to serve as an early warning system so he wasn't caught so unaware as he had been with the Dao Storm. But another reason was a place to draw in monsters he could hunt efficiently.
The last time Ashlock tried hunting in the wilderness, he had wasted hours searching for a few chicken monsters that gave almost no sacrificial credits. It wasn't until the incoming Dao Storm sent a wave of monsters his way did he finally have a decent amount of monsters to hunt for credits.
So like a cast-out fish net, the wall of demonic trees had flowers and mushrooms releasing attractive smells and Qi into the surrounding area to attract any wandering monsters. The stronger ones would feast on the weaker ones that wouldn't give him many credits anyway, and then he could swoop in and consume the biggest fish!
Or at least that had been the idea.
Ashlock's vision blurred across the vast grassy plains and rolling meadows of the wilderness until he arrived at the wall of demonic trees. He was disappointed to not find the large gathering he had been hoping for, as he had felt a large presence of Qi near the trees, but he had a reason to suspect the cause.
A grotesque worm-like creature that reminded Ashlock of a train from Earth spanned the entire length of his demonic tree wall. Toxic puss coated its body like a slug's slime, and Ashlock noticed the trees bending toward the worm as if it had its own gravity.
It was, without a doubt, a Star Core-level monster. At one end was an abyssal maw of razor teeth, while at the other was the torn-up ground from which the worm was still emerging. The hole was so large he questioned if it was an open-air coal mine. "How fucking big is this thing? It has to already be miles long, and there's still more of it below ground?"
The Dao Storm had been terrifying due to its sheer looming presence, but this monster was scary to Ashlock for a different reason. What's to stop a Star Core monstrous worm that was miles long from burrowing through the mountain and emerging within the cavern? Or even eating away the entire mountain and him included?
The worm was that big. Its maw could have enveloped him and his canopy without a problem.
If the beast tide was supposed to force all monsters, no matter their strength, to charge along the path of a leyline below the surface that the Blood Lotus Sect had built itself upon. How was he supposed to keep his allies safe if sheltering underground wasn't an option?
Ashlock observed the grotesque monster some more and wanted to look away due to the way it moved. Seeing its segmented body ripple and convulse as it slowly lumbered forward irked him.
"I wonder how I should go about killing this big boy." Ashlock mused to himself. As a Star Core level monster, it would be worth many sacrificial credits. "What about blasting it with spatial rifts?"
Ashlock's Star Core pulsed with immense power as he directed an obscene amount of spatial Qi down his roots that linked his mountain and the wall of demonic trees many miles away.
The roots coiling around the planted demonic trees' trunks lit up with spatial Qi, and the enormous worm seemed to notice something was amiss as it began to try to shift away.
"Shit, it's going underground." Ashlock worked quickly as he wasn't confident in ways to kill something below ground, despite his vast network of roots down there. Spatial Qi didn't bode well underground due to the abundant earth Qi present, so fighting above ground was his best bet.
"I need to keep it above ground somehow. Mhm, I can control the black vines of the {Consuming Abyss} skill as if they were my own limbs now." Ashlock suddenly had an idea. Even if this monster was of equal strength to him, it relied on its enormous body and giant maw to fight. But how could it fight against being dissolved from afar?
Without much time to waste, as the worm was about to dive underground, the sky rippled and cracked as hundreds of rifts opened above the worm. Ashlock felt a large quantity of nutrients he had been storing vanish as he activated his {Consuming Abyss} skill hundreds of times.
He had obtained this vast amount of nutrients because, over the last week, the residents of Darklight City had noticed that the Qi-enhanced demonic trees were very eager to absorb their... bodily waste and were terrific at absorbing it quickly due to their acidic soil.
Of course, Ashlock had told most of his offspring to cease production of their corrosive fluid, and in exchange, he gave them Qi and nutrients. But those nutrients had to come from somewhere, and as it turned out, becoming the waste disposal manager of the city was lucrative.
Absorbing people's shit aside, it gave Ashlock access to a disturbing amount of nutrients that he could utilize to quickly create black vines that surged out of the ground and through the hundreds of portals.
"What in the nine realms!" Stella yelled from the side of the mountain peak where she had been carefully drawing out runes as she looked up at the sky above the mountain and witnessed Ashlock going to war.
'I'm killing a pest.' Ashlock wrote on his trunk in spatial Qi before focusing his full attention on controlling all the black vines.
Like a ship trying to hunt a whale, the black vines ending in sharp spikes shot forth with Qi-empowered speed and burrowed deep into the worm's soft, slimy flesh. A feral screech escaped its titanic mouth, and Red Vine Peak trembled slightly as the worm thrashed against the vines.
Earth Qi rippled across its exterior, but it was already too late. The black vines had penetrated deeply, all the way to its organs, so he had a direct route to try and burn the thing alive with his soul fire.
His pure soul fire shot down the vines, and the creature screeched some more, its flesh boiling on its skin, and a toxic gas cloud rose upwards and outwards, blanketing the entire area.
Ashlock didn't care much for the toxic cloud as he didn't have a nose, but he soon heard a shout from Red Vine Peak, where he noticed the poisonous cloud had leaked through his portal and was now blanketing the mountain peak.
Stella had thankfully gotten away mostly unharmed, having been already up and moving. But Diana had been deep in meditation and unaware of his battle.
Quickly closing the hundreds of portals that had torn the sky apart, the thick vines that were cut fell to the ground with a thump, and Ashlock worriedly looked at Diana, chugging pills from her spatial ring while stumbling away.
[Upgraded {Basic Poison Resistance [F]} -> {Poison Resistance [E]}]
A system notification briefly distracted him and showed how truly potent the poison really was—
[Upgraded {Poison Resistance [E]} -> {Greater Poison Resistance [D]}]
Ashlock began to worry as he saw the purple grass surrounding him begin to wither and die, and he even began to feel a burning sensation on his bark.
[Upgraded {Greater Poison Resistance [D]} -> {Superior Poison Resistance [C]}]
Wasting no time, Ashlock opened portals next to Diana and Stella, quickly relocating them below ground, away from the toxic cloud.
"I really need to be smarter with my portal usage." Ashlock cursed to himself. It always felt like the obvious way to fight, but he needed to remember it was two-way. His foes could fight back.
Confirming that Diana was indeed okay after chugging many pills, he quickly opened his {Qi Fruit Production} skill and chose fast-growing fruit to have his newly acquired {Superior Poison Resistance} skill.
He wasn't sure how widespread of a disaster this poisonous cloud would become, so he decided to get prepared, as even with his Star Core, his body and skills were still slow and required preplanning.
With that headache of a problem to think about, Ashlock's vision blurred as he checked on the giant worm.
But it was gone. A large hole laced with poisonous sludge was all that remained. If that was all, Ashlock wouldn't be too worried, but the huge tremors below ground concerned him.
The monstrous worm was on the move.
