Stella stood beside Diana on the rolling meadows of the wilderness.
Standing between her and the distant Red Vine Peak, which looked so small on the horizon, was a true titan of wood.
"Did Ashlock call him Titus?" Diana questioned from the side. Dark blue flames corrupted with demonic Qi flickered across her skin and down the length of the sword that hung loosely in her hand, with the tip aimed at the grass.
"Yeah, Ash also said Titus was in the 5th stage of the Star Core Realm," Stella frowned and bit her lower lip. That meant this behemoth was on par with the Redclaw Grand Elder, a man that had cultivated for centuries and had likely fought in more wars than years she had been alive. The fact that Ash had created such a thing within seconds from a corpse was something only a god should be capable of.
Stella tightened her hand around the grip of the sword Ash had gifted her. She needed to get stronger, faster. When she was the only one around, Ash gave her all the tasks. Then others arrived, and fewer jobs found their way to her.
And now Elaine and the Redclaw Grand Elder know how to translate the ancient language. What's my purpose, then? I can't negotiate as well as Diana, I don't have as much knowledge as Elaine, and I can't build things like Douglas. Even this stupid titan of wood has spatial Qi and is in a higher realm than me.
"You always make that face when you have pointless thoughts," Diana said flatly.
Stella sighed and hit the tip of her sword against the lush grass underfoot. The breeze out here was warm and refreshing, and the expansive blue sky overhead devoid of clouds did help to lift her spirits somewhat.
"I know..." Stella absentmindedly replied, her thoughts still spiraling. She knew her anxiety wasn't logical, but it was hard not to feel inferior and fear losing the respect of the one she looked up to when she fell behind her peers.
Diana glanced around as if searching the distant horizon for something and whispered, "Want to see something freaky?"
"Errr..." Stella blinked, "Yes? Do I? I don't like that face you're making. Why are you smiling like that?"
"Oh, I am only getting started," Diana grinned as mist cascaded off her body and blanketed the area. A moment later, Stella couldn't even see the looming titan anymore; it was just the two of them surrounded by a dense swirling fog.
"Remember when you saw my fangs? And I told you I would tell you about it when I was ready?"
"Yeah... oh," Stella's eyes widened as she noticed Diana's teeth took on a sharper edge, and there were now two prominent fangs.
"Like them?" Diana ran her tongue across their tip, "I didn't want to show them off in front of Ashlock as I wasn't sure how he would respond, so I thought of showing you first."
Stella tilted her head and realized something, "So that's why you suggested we fought Titus out here."
"Well, that and other reasons." Diana shrugged, "I mean, just one look at the thing, and it's obvious why fighting it on the mountain peak was a bad idea. Also, I know Ashlock somehow sees through my mist, but at least this way, I am near the wilderness and can run away if needed."
"Run away over some fangs?" Stella squinted, "There's no way you thought some fangs would even faze Ash? He eats people, Diana. Why would some elongated teeth bother him?"
"Ah," Diana chuckled, "This is just the beginning..."
As those words left her mouth, she blinked her grey eyes away and replaced them with liquid darkness that seemed to stare into Stella's soul.
Demonic Qi rippled through the surrounding mist and seemed to pour toward Diana and swirl around her fingers. Forming inch-long claws of shadow around her hands. Stella thought that was it, but then two large feathered wings sprung from her back and fanned out, showing off their glory as they towered over Diana.
Taken by surprise, Stella stepped back. The extreme transformation had occurred so quickly she was baffled. What the hell had happened to Diana in that Mystic Realm? Stella thought she had emerged from that realm of liquid metal and wrathful storms as a new person, but Diana... was she even the same species anymore?
Diana had always been pretty, but now she looked seductive, which made Stella a little uncomfortable.
It's the stark difference that's making me freak out. Just calm down. It's the same old Diana you always knew. You can grow used to this form with time. But darn, why is her bust like that? And that hourglass figure, nope! I can't get used to this.
"So?" Diana said in the same flat voice that didn't match her body, "What do you think?"
"Have you become a succubus?"
Diana pouted, "No, I'm a demon."
Stella snorted, "Succubus is a type of demon."
"I'm not a succubus." Diana groaned in annoyance, "I have no plans or capabilities to go around seducing men or women and sucking out their souls."
"Succ—" Stella lept backward just in time as the mist parted to reveal a massive black wood fist that barreled downward and smashed into the ground with enough force to send out a shockwave of wind and rock that Stella had to raise her hands and cycle her Qi to avoid being turned to meat paste by.
Stella closed her eyes, and the world transformed into grids—she quickly compressed the spatial plane and tore open a rift through the stacked grids. The air popped into her ears as she reappeared on the titan's shoulders.
"Aren't you curious about how I became a demon? No questions at all?" Diana's head popped into view past the titan's nose as she asked from the other shoulder of the titan. Her eyes of liquid darkness unnerving Stella.
How did she get up here so fast? Stella wondered as she diverted her gaze and looked down at Titus's arm, coated in a haunted mist. Ah, I see now... she must have dashed through the mist.
"Questions, you say?" Stella said as she coated her sword in soul flames and raised it overhead, readying to strike the Ent's head. Diana mirrored the action, and with a mutual nod, they both hit the wooden skull simultaneously.
Stella's blade bit into the thick twisted black wood that made up Titus's form but only a fingernail deep. Meanwhile, Diana's blade completely bounced off, her peak Soul Fire Realm flames unable to pierce Titus's defenses.
Titus roared, and Stella and Diana met each other's gaze and exchanged a plan without words. Stella blinked, returning to the spatial plane, and created a portal behind her. Diana charged into her, pushing both of them through the portal right as 5th-stage Star Core flames erupted from the gaps in the black wood, turning the titan's shoulders into a death trap.
"I guess I do have a few questions," Stella laughed as they observed the raging titan a mile away from within a nearby forest. "Such as why you turned into a succubus."
"Don't worry, I can change my looks to an extent," Diana rolled her black eyes, "What part do you have an issue with? Do you think this would scare away a future husband?"
Stella looked her up and down, "Eyes are a bit creepy, wings and claws could be toned down a bit, and your changed figure is way too much." Stella then tapped her chin as an idea came to mind, "Actually, you can switch between that and being human, right?"
"Yes..." Diana replied skeptically, "What are you scheming, Stella."
"Initially, I was in shock because of how drastic the changes were, but in a way, that's a good thing."
"How so?"
"Well, Elaine referred to you as the mist demon. And now that I see you like this. Why not embody that title?" Stella laughed, "Turn into this form when you need to conduct some murder on behalf of the Ashfallen sect and then appear as an innocent human the rest of the time."
"So you're saying this form has a purpose?" Diana said over the rumbling of Titus striding toward them with lumbering steps that shook the earth. "Kind of an odd approach, but I like the sound of it."
While Diana was mulling over her words, Stella wandered over and couldn't resist touching Diana's wings. Up close, she could tell they weren't solid but a manifestation of demonic Qi in the shape of raven wings.
She reached over and could feel Diana's gaze as she tried to touch the feathers. "I wouldn't if I was you—"
Stella ignored her warning but paid for it as she winced in pain with a hiss while nursing her hand, "Ow ow ow, that hurt way more than expected."
Diana chuckled, "What did you expect? It's pure demonic Qi."
"Can you fly... ow... with these?" Stella asked through gritted teeth as she cycled her Qi to rid her fingertips of the lingering demonic Qi. Expelling it was a simple matter with her Star Core Realm Qi, but that just made Stella more concerned about how powerful Diana would become in the future.
The shadow wings flapped, but nothing happened, "Nah, I can't. Maybe when I reach Star Core, I will be able to. Actually, speaking of that, have you tried to fly around on a sword yet?"
Diana then gestured over her shoulder at Titus, who was a few steps away, glaring at them with wrathful eyes of lilac flame, "Could be useful to fight this big guy."
Stella threw her sword to the floor and flexed her Star Core to reach out and make it float. It wasn't quite something that came instinctually, but it wasn't that hard, either.
"Want to go for a ride?" Stella gestured to the floating sword but then glanced at Diana's claws, "But no claws, we will be going through rifts, so you will need to hold onto me."
Diana shrugged, and the manifested claws of demonic Qi retracted, revealing her usual petite human hands. They looked so harmless compared to the claws she had just seen...
***
Ashlock was overseeing Titus from afar, but he was half distracted by what he had seen from Diana. Had Larry meant this demonic form when he claimed he smelt something ancient on Diana?
Either way, he thought her new form had potential, as Stella had pointed out. Demonic Qi acted a lot like void Qi in its destructive capabilities, so the fact Diana could wield its power and even manifest it gave her a massive leg up on everyone else. She basically had a dual affinity and a whole separate form to make use of.
"But Larry claimed he smelt the same thing on both Diana and Stella. Therefore, will Stella have some type of form like this one day?" Ashlock wondered. He couldn't imagine Stella as a demon, so what would she become? Something to do with lightning, perhaps?
That aside, he noticed the golden sun nearing the horizon. It had taken hours for him to charge Titus with enough Qi to operate independently for a while, as he wanted to test the Ent's battle capabilities without his help. So the day was almost over.
From overhead with {Eye of the Tree God}, Ashlock witnessed Stella step onto the sword, followed closely by Diana, who perched on the back. Due to the sword's length being so short, Diana had to wrap her arms around Stella's waist to avoid falling off.
Ashlock could see a sheen of spatial Qi leave Stella and wrap around Diana, and then the two vanished. Ashlock had commanded Titus to try and restrain the girls with any means necessary but not to kill them as he wanted to test the creature's intelligence.
Which so far seemed relatively high. If he had told Titus to kill them, they likely would have died when they had been talking in the mist, as they had been distracted, and Titus missed on purpose—showing that he understood Ashlock's command of restraint.
Titus sent out a pulse of spatial Qi like an EMP, and Ashlock was surprised to see the Qi wave seem to travel through reality and smash into Stella and Diana, who had been briefly traversing the spatial plane.
Reality snapped, and they were thrown out of a half-formed tear. As they were spiraling through the air, Titus's eyes glowed with power, and even from this far away, Ashlock could feel the immense pressure exerted by a 5th-stage Star Core Realm monster that was twenty meters tall.
The sheer size of Titus's Star Core gave him an immense gravitational field and overall power. Still, the downside was how fast he burned through his Qi reserves, which in turn was terrible for Ashlock because he was the one who would need to charge him back up while having a Star Core of a similar size and two realms lower.
Stella and Diana had crash-landed with some grace and now stood defiantly on the ground as the titan's black wood fist descended, casting a shadow so large it was as if there was a solar eclipse.
Ashlock was confused why they were just standing there and became concerned when Stella tried to activate her spatial technique to escape, but it didn't work as a concentrated pulse of spatial Qi left the titan's fist and slammed into them, shattering the forming portal.
Luckily, Titus had been ordered not to kill, so rather than crush them like a person killing a fly by slamming a hardcover book on its head, Titus opened up his fist and surrounded the girls with his fingers as if trying to trap them.
***
Diana felt the ground below her churn as the space around her gradually constricted. Sunlight streamed in through the small gaps between the Ent's fingers buried deep in the earth and its palm overhead, acting as the roof of the prison they found themselves in.
The air seemed to wobble and distort as it became suffocated with spatial Qi. Clearly, the titan had decided to entrap them both physically and with Qi, as Stella couldn't use her techniques when Titus lorded over all of the spatial Qi in the area.
"Stella, come with me," Diana shouted to the girl. She was staring absentmindedly at her fingers, covered in a flickering spatial flame that was likely her own.
Diana knew exactly how she felt because she had experienced the same whenever her father had decided to flex his power to teach her a harsh lesson. It was known that those in higher realms could suppress those in lower ones, but it was also possible for those within the same realm to achieve the same to a lesser effect if the gap in stages with big enough.
Glancing up at the closing in palm deadset on crushing them, Diana felt the impending doom from the Ent that was around the 5th stage. With a Star Core so large that it was incomparable to a human one because they were merely fist-sized. This size difference gave it a tremendous advantage. Stella simply never stood a chance in a contest of spatial Qi.
"Stella, we need to leave," Diana gripped her shoulder, shocking the girl from her dazed state. "I can break us out of here."
"Oh... alright," She seemed depressed, but now wasn't a good time. Diana led Stella through the closing space toward the largest gap near the thumb.
Feeling within herself for her Soul Core that felt like a tiny and useless pebble compared to Stella and Titus, Diana let the demonic Qi being suppressed by her water Qi be fully unleashed.
She gritted her teeth as her muscles rapidly expanded and felt like they were cooking in hellfire, her vision became a hazy red, and her mind became chaotic with wrathful thoughts. The usual wall to her emotions she had built up crumbled, and much of the misery she had bottled up rushed throughout her body.
She just wanted to scream, rage, punch a wall and snap someone's neck. Diana funneled this insanity all toward a single goal. Break through the black bark of a Star Core monster.
Something inconceivable for someone in an entire realm and many stages below, but that was the one upside of being overwhelmed with demonic Qi...
Destructive power.
Coating her hands in the darkness of her soul, she brought her fist back and struck out at the thumb, alongside both of her demonic Qi wings that thrust forward. A large chunk of the titan's thumb was disintegrated into nothingness as if a projectile from a god had smashed into it.
Escaping into the sunlight, Diana manically laughed as she finally felt physically and spiritually free.
***
Ashlock brought Stella back to the mountain peak, and the girl slothfully collapsed onto the bench. She was alone as Diana was still... busy being crazy. Titus and the demon girl were having a lovely brawl out in the wilderness and going wild.
This was actually an excellent test for Titus as he would need to face the beast tide in the future, which may include monsters that wielded demonic Qi. So far, Titus's defenses and regeneration seemed to be significantly affected by attacks inflicted via demonic Qi.
Which made sense. Titus was a tank, and the counter to anything tanky was true damage. Basically, damage capable of ignoring or piercing defenses easily... usually at the cost of something else.
In this case... sanity. Ashlock wasn't sure when Diana would regain her senses and leave this berserk state, but he hoped it would be before Titus ran out of spatial Qi and could no longer regenerate or fight back.
"Hey, Larry," Stella called out to the behemoth spider that had happily settled in the canopy of one of the demonic trees.
"Yes, mistress?" Larry said gruffly as he crawled down the trunk of the tree. His many red eyes deadset on her as she lounged on the bench.
"You said that Diana and I smelled ancient, and now Diana has awakened as a demon. So tell me, what smelled ancient about me?" Stella said impatiently, "Was it because of that pill Senior Lee gave me? Did that make me special?"
Larry shook his head, "It has nothing to do with the pill. Like Diana, you likely have a dormant ancient bloodline. She treads the path of a demon because that had always been dormant within her."
Stella frowned as she processed the spider's words. "But I have never felt any dormant thing within me."
"Mistress, your bloodline may still be dormant for a good reason."
"Which is?"
Larry crawled closer and flexed the ash around his crown of horns, "The blood of a ruler takes longer to bloom."
