Ashlock stirred awake as the sun crested the distant mountain range and bathed his bark in warm sunlight. As his spiritual sight lazily expanded to encompass the courtyard, there was an all too familiar system notification.
Idletree Daily Sign-In System
Day: 3533
Daily Credit: 6
Sacrifice Credit: 339
[Sign in?]
"Over three hundred credits?" Ashlock murmured as he finally woke, "Oh yeah, I ate Kassandra yesterday. That makes sense."
Dismissing the notification as he had no plans to sign in with only enough for a guaranteed B grade draw, he checked on his Star Core. After yesterday's events, he waited a whole night to recharge some Qi and allow everyone to recover.
"Half full should be good enough to raise Roderick as an Ent," Ashlock swore this would be his last significant Qi expenditure for a while. After this, his only costs should be growing some plants for alchemy and expanding his roots toward Slymere in anticipation of the war.
Glancing around the mountain peak, Ashlock caught sight of everyone except for Stella.
"Where is she?" Ashlock's vision blurred as he checked on the cavern below and found Stella standing over the cauldron fruit with a line of freshly made Mind Fortress pills on the earthen bowls rim.
"Thank you, Stella, these will help a lot," Ashlock said within her mind once he noticed she had finished her work. The girl was briefly spooked by the sudden voice in her head but soon calmed down.
"Don't scare me like that!" Stella grumbled but then smiled, "I made these for everyone. I think they should all have the pleasure of hearing your heavenly voice."
"The sarcasm is practically dripping from every word," Ashlock noted.
Stella shrugged and withdrew her soul fire from the cauldron. Her silver spatial ring then flashed and absorbed the many Mind Fortress pills.
"Since when did you have so many silver spatial rings?" Ashlock asked as he noticed that many of Stella's fingers were adorning silver rings.
"Oh, these? I looted them from the corpses," Stella replied, "I broke the seal on them overnight after much effort. Kassandra and Theron had a lot of money we could use, Lilian had almost nothing but some void crystal things I am planning to give Elaine, and Roderick's ring was just sad with how dirt poor its contents were."
Ashlock had totally forgotten about the rings these cultivators wore, so he was glad Stella had the foresight to loot them off their fingers before he devoured them.
"Make sure to share some of that money with the others," Ashlock pointed out, "Everyone helped that day and deserves to be rewarded for their efforts."
Stella nodded, "I planned to. I will also stop by the White Stone Palace and give some to Redclaws, as I am sure they will need the Spirit Stones and Crowns to hire all those people you asked for."
"Good idea," Ashlock was proud that Stella was starting to think more about those around her.
Stella snapped her finger, and a portal manifested. Stepping though, she appeared thousands of meters away on the mountain peak. Walking around, she woke up the sleeping or cultivating sect members and gave them a lump of money alongside a few freshly made Mind Fortress pills.
Diana eyed the pills with unease and didn't seem to care much for the money. Elaine was ecstatic to learn she would be able to hear my voice and also seemed happy with the weird void crystals. Douglas was naturally the most excited for the cash and eyed the pill suspiciously.
"You aren't trying to poison me, are you?" Douglas asked Stella with narrowed eyes.
Stella just snorted, "I could slap you out of existence. Why would I bother poisoning you? Just eat it and go speak to Ash."
"Fair," Douglas sighed as he swallowed the pill and walked over to stand before Ashlock. His face was terribly serious—which made sense. He was about to receive the words of a supposed immortal and even needed a specially crafted pill so his mind didn't break from hearing the words.
"Hello, Douglas," Ashlock said calmly as his presence slammed into the man's mind.
"Holy fuck," Douglas stumbled back and glanced around as if something was going to jump out and eat him, "What is with this weird white fog all of a sudden, and why do you sound like a hundred people at once?"
Douglas then controlled himself and replied mentally, "I apologize for my careless words, immortal. Please ignore me."
"Relax, I just wanted to ask what type of Ent you want," Ashlock chuckled, "Do you want a large one like Titus? Or one on the smaller side, like Khaos? Would a certain shape work better, or is a humanoid fine?"
Douglas seemed anything but relaxed as he hesitantly answered, "Earth Qi works best with a large surface area, so if the Ent could have large hands or feet, that would be ideal. Also, it should be around the height of Khaos or me. Any taller and it may struggle to get through man-made tunnels."
Ashlock was glad he had asked for Douglas's insight before proceeding, as he hadn't known that earth Qi benefits from more surface area. "Maybe that is why that giant earthworm was so large? Usually, size has many downsides, but it makes sense if it allows the worm to utilize earth Qi better."
His gaze drifted to the smashed-up corpse of Roderick. How much could he change the corpse? Clearly, his {Necroflora Sovereign}skill utilized the corpse's DNA or something to influence the Ent it creates, and changing that for Lilian had cost an absurd amount of Qi.
"Would a turtle with large feet work? I'm not sure how close I can get, but I can try—"
"Yes!" Douglas shouted with a little too much enthusiasm, "I would be grateful if you could make the Ent look like a turtle."
Ashlock was a little taken aback, "Is that a tear in his eye? Why is he getting so emotional over a turtle?"
Deciding it was better not to ask, Ashlock went ahead with his plan.
"Douglas, tell everyone to get ready. I am going to create the third and final Ent now." Ashlock warned
Activating {Necroflora Sovereign}for the last time today, a familiar black root emerged from the stone and forced its way down Roderick's slit throat to deposit the seed.
"I wish for a hunched-back shell and four large flat-footed limbs," Ashlock said while picturing a turtle in his mind. A moment passed, and he suddenly felt that all too familiar pull on his Star Core as if the plug had been removed and was draining out through the black root into the seed.
Ashlock grew nervous as his Star Core nearly emptied of all the Qi he had gathered through yesterday afternoon and last night.
Luckily, as he was about to start pulling on his network again or ask Stella to dump more Qi into the Qi-gathering formation, there was a pulse of death Qi as a tree began to sprout from the smashed-up corpse.
The thick beige-colored tree grew to around a meter tall before it began to curve in on itself and grow back toward the ground. Then a resounding crack echoed throughout the mountain peak as a giant maw formed, and the tree split down the middle, creating four thick turtle-like limbs.
Much like Khaos, this creation was an abomination. It had no apparent eyes, yet it had human-like hair in the form of black vines. It was hunched, like a turtle, but looked more like an old man with serious back problems. Roderick's human appearance had clearly battled with Ashlock's desire to create a turtle.
"Well, that confirmed I can alter the appearance of an Ent, but even for such a large amount of Qi, I was unable to fully change the species of the corpse," Ashlock mused. Overall, he was happy with the creation, even if it looked cursed.
"What do you think?" Ashlock asked Douglas, and the man awkwardly scratched the back of his neck while shuddering, "Errr, I like it..."
Ashlock did not buy his answer, but there wasn't much more he could do at this point, so he decided to just roll with it, "Now to determine a name. Gaia does not match the abomination before me, and Terra would get confused with the Terraforge family. What if I switched pantheons to Egyptian and went with Geb, the God of the earth?"
He contemplated other names like Tellus, Adonis, Demeter, Ceres, and Jord. Nevertheless, he felt the word Geb matched the weird turtle abomination he had accidentally brought into this world the best.
"He will be called Geb," Ashlock informed Douglas, "And he will follow your orders from now on. All you have to do is bring him back to me or one of my offspring at least once a month to stave off the decay."
Ashlock then connected mentally with Geb, "Follow this human's orders."
The turtle uttered a strange cry that sounded like splintering wood as it turned to face Douglas, who took a few steps back.
"S-Sit?" Douglas stammered as he raised a hand. The chonky turtle shook the ground as it rolled back onto its hind legs and awkwardly sat.
The two stared at each other momentarily, and then Douglas grinned, "Try to nibble some of Stella's hair."
Stella had been half distracted and yelped when Geb turned around and tried to bite the hair on her shoulder. Reflexively she slapped the creepy wooden turtle away, caving in its face in a shower of wood and sending the Ent tumbling back a few meters.
The color drained from Douglas's face as the seriousness of his little prank set in, "Immortal, I am terribly sorry about my foolish actions. I will repent by working ten days straight—"
A root emerged from the ground and plugged into the Ent. Qi rushed into Geb's body, and the wood that made up its body began to regrow.
"Don't worry about it," Ashlock chuckled, "It's not me you should be scared about..."
Douglas gulped as he met eyes with an angered Stella.
***
The wind roared in Douglas's ears, and the blood rushed to his head as he dangled upside down. The only thing stopping him from plummeting a kilometer through the air to the lush meadow below was a hand clasped around his ankle.
Straining his neck to glance up, he saw Stella smirking at him through the wobbling portal. He could punch the portal and survive the fall, but he knew escape from this woman was hopeless. She was a spatial cultivator able to cross thousands of meters with a snap of her fingers.
What made the whole situation even worse was the person currently messing with him—Stella. She was so unhinged that it was hard to tell when she was just messing around or genuinely trying to kill him.
"Stella, I'm sorry for asking Geb to nibble your hair!" He shouted for the tenth time. He wasn't actually sorry, but anything to make her stop dangling him mid-air through a portal was a win in his book.
Douglas knew Stella couldn't hear him through the portal and that his shouting was useless, but maybe the immortal would pity him and save his condemned soul from this psycho.
Am I to spend eternity here? When will Stella's vendetta fade?
Douglas frowned. He wasn't sure if it would ever fade. He saw how she slit Roderick's throat despite already being half dead—that girl has no idea how to let a grudge go.
I really fucked up, didn't I?
When all hope seemed lost, he brightened up when Elaine came into view through the portal. She spoke with Stella as she looked at him, and he could see them conversing about something.
"Save me, Elaine!" Douglas begged with his eyes, "She's crazy! Why are you laughing with her?"
He then saw Stella poke her head through the portal and grin at him, "Elaine says I should drop you. What do you think?"
"Eh?" Douglas wasn't sure how to feel. On the one hand, that would save him from Stella's clutches, but it was also a rather far drop and wasn't likely to be painless.
Stella swung his body side to side, "What if I just killed you right now? Do you think Elaine would be mad at me?"
Douglas felt his heart turn cold as he looked into Stella's crazed eyes.
Unsure what to say, he opened and closed his mouth a few times, but no words came out. She wasn't wrong, she could kill him, but didn't they have a deeper connection than that?
Suddenly he felt Stella pull hard on his ankle, his ears popped as the pressure changed, and he found himself back on Red Vine Peak.
"Only joking~" Stella giggled as she patted him on the shoulder to stabilize him from stumbling face first and then walked away toward the bench under Ashlock's shade with a carefree stride.
Douglas just stood there for a moment, stunned. What the hell had just happened?
***
"Stella, that wasn't very nice," Ashlock scolded the blonde girl as she lay slothfully on his bench, "Not everyone understands your dark humor."
"What do you mean? I was just messing with the guy," Stella replied mentally with her eyes and mouth shut.
In moments like these, Ashlock was reminded that Stella had a slightly different worldview than the others. To her, threatening death was a funny joke.
"Stella, don't retaliate that harshly again. It was just a joke," Ashlock explained.
"Fine," Stella replied, "I won't dangle Douglas through portals again."
All Ashlock could do was sigh.
A while passed, and with the mountain peak calming down, Ashlock decided to give Douglas and Geb a job as the new rogue alchemists, and Kane Azurecrest had nowhere to work within the White Stone Palace.
Neither the Ravenborne, Winterwrath, or Evergreen families had been into alchemy, so the White Stone Palace lacked a proper alchemy lab.
"Douglas, take Geb over to the other mountain peak and create a cavern within the mountain just below the White Stone Palace for a new alchemy lab," Ashlock explained, "I need a place for the new alchemists to work that won't get in the way of us."
The last thing he wanted was for Red Vine Peak to become overpopulated with people he didn't know. Best to keep them all sectioned off over on the other peak and let the Redclaws handle annoying matters.
"Alright, I can do that," Douglas motioned for Geb to follow him, and the weird wood turtle tottered over.
Ashlock created a portal that led to the other mountain's base to shorten their travel time, and Doulgas left with a short appreciative bow. With him gone, it was time for Ashlock to expand his roots westward toward Slymere.
