"Stella, don't look over there," Ashlock used black vines to create a wall around them to obscure the horrifying sight. "Just keep your eyes on me."
"But..." Stella muttered as she tried to look over her shoulder.
"No buts, one peek, and you will never be able to see Maple the same again," Ashlock insisted as he tightened the wall of vines. "Just trust me this one time, okay?"
"Fine," Stella sighed and flopped down against the tree trunk. "Let me know when he's done eating," Stella closed her eyes and began cultivating.
"Will do, don't you worry," Ashlock replied in relief.
Even with Stella deep in meditation, Ashlock never took down the wall of black vines just in case Stella opened her eyes and saw the massacre occurring over the twisted reality between this cliff and the central floating island housing the blue brick building that likely belonged to the Azure Clan.
He was able to witness everything happening within the pocket realm through spiritual sense due to the abundant spatial Qi. He would use {Eye of the Tree God}, but that skill only worked over where he had roots.
In the distance, Maple was floating in what could be described as the sky of this place. The cute squirrel had taken on a similar appearance to his Worldwalker siblings as a titanic mass of squirming tentacles centered around a single golden eye and abyssal mouth. Tentacles of void much like those Ashlock manifested with his {Consuming Abyss} skill shot out from Maple and plunged down into the kaleidoscopic expanse below that housed the birthed nightmares and reality devouring serpents.
These void tendrils delved deep into the expanse and skewered and wrapped around the waiting serpents that were a hundred meters long and then hauled the screaming monsters from the depths and up to his mouth.
As if they were noodles, Maple slurped up the rainbow-scaled serpents, and bits of flesh and blood rained down from his teeth and were swept away by the vortexes to nowhere.
Maple was having a feast, which made Ashlock jealous and terribly hungry. He tried to manifest some portals over the kaleidoscopic expanse near monsters in the distance with the plan of dragging them back with his black vines, but he soon ran into a problem. Much like his limited vision with {Eye of the Tree God}, he could only make portals a few meters from his trunk...
"Oh... I forgot about this annoying limitation," Ashlock cursed.
He could only create portals over land where he had roots. After all, they were supposed to be short-range portals designed to be made around a person's body. It just so happened that back in the real world, his body spread out for many miles so he could make these short-range portals over vast distances.
"Maple! Hey Maple!" Ashlock shouted. "Chuck some food over here!"
The mass of tentacles ignored Ashlock's plea and continued with his meal.
"Darn it, I should have spent my time learning one of those attack-orientated spatial techniques like Warp Strike or Spatial Blades rather than a more defensive one like Spatial Lock," Ashlock grumbled as he thought of a way he could grab some of the food. "But even then, how can I get the food to me?"
If he spent some sacrificial credits on {Consuming Abyss} and something came close enough, he could lash out and reel them in with a void tendril, much like Maple was doing, but nothing seemed to be nearby. This pocket realm was enormous, and Maple was easily many miles away from him.
When he had fought the cloud titan many months ago, which almost killed him, he had hurled spatial Qi around in vague forms that mimicked attack skill, but these monsters were birthed from spatial Qi. What would his malformed spatial Qi into attacks amount to in their eyes? Would they see him as a joke?
"Mhm, there has to be something I can do here," Ashlock mulled over his options. Other than his system often giving him support-based abilities like fruit production to empower his allies, he also noticed his other abilities often came with limited ranges or were empowered when near his trunk. This drawback had been reduced somewhat, with him now able to cast skills through one of his progeny.
"But I am already using my progeny..." Ashlock sighed as the hunger for slaughter gnawed at his mind. He wanted to devour those monsters like Maple was doing so badly, but how? They were so close yet so far... being a tree sure was a drawback sometimes.
"Wait, I need to stop thinking about myself. I just need someone or something to bring the corpses to me so I can eat them." Naturally, Ashlock looked to his nearest ally, Stella, but dismissed her. She was far too weak for this realm, being only at the 1st stage of the Star Core Realm, and would be killed in minutes if she tried to go hunting for him.
"Not to mention the abomination in the sky called Maple that would give her nightmares," Ashlock mused, "So if I can't rely on Stella and my sect members are in other pocket realms, that leaves me with Larry and the Ents to choose from that are defending my main body... assuming I can even bring them here."
It was difficult, like trying to look in two directions at once, and was made even worse due to the time dilation between the Mystic Realm and the outside world. Still, Ashlock managed to manifest a portal between his main trunk and the progeny a fraction of his soul was inhabiting, proving it was possible to create a portal anywhere so long as he was connected via his roots.
"Okay, so far so good..." Returning his full attention to his progeny, he gazed at his main body through the wobbling portal. "The leaves are rustling in the wind so slowly... it's like watching a nature documentary in slow motion." That aside, he now needed to decide who best fit the job.
"Larry and his spiders are most certainly useless here, so that leaves the Ents." Ashlock mused, "Maple is going to devour most of those reality-eating serpents, leaving those nightmarish creatures with deformed and shifting limbs as my targets. They are fast and able to teleport great distances in the blink of an eye, which is why Maple has mostly ignored them as they are hard to catch, so I need an Ent that can attack and kill fast."
Luckily, Ashlock had three such Ents that fit the requirements, "There's no doubt that Khaos is the best at killing a single target, but her void step to get close to the monsters consumes a lot of Qi, so she would run out after only a few kills. So that leaves me, Zeus or Sol, as Titus would be far too slow to catch any of these spatial attuned monsters."
Ashlock eventually decided to call Sol through the portal as a light beam was many times faster than a lightning bolt, and the Ent was his one with the highest cultivation stage.
Sol lit up the mountain as he stepped through and, upon Ashlock's instructions, walked over to the cliff.
As if broken from his feeding frenzy by the sudden ball of light, Maple's giant golden eye rotated to look straight at them and paused with a half-eaten snake in his mouth. Maple then slowly munched on the snake while floating toward them through the sky like some type of eldritch cloud. Once the snake had been consumed, the squirming mass of tentacles compressed down into a fluffy white squirrel and promptly collapsed on the stone next to Sol and fell asleep. He looked so round and bloated that Ashlock wondered if the squirrel would explode if he poked him.
***
Stella was deep in meditation when something bloomed within her consciousness, demanding her attention and the familiar white fog appeared.
"Maple is done eating," Ashlock said in a thousand voices. Perhaps she was just getting used to his charming voice, or she was overdosing on Mind Fortress pills, but the many voices didn't sound as jarring as before.
Emerging from the deep recesses of her mind, she woke up a moment later from meditation and stretched her back while the vortex of spatial Qi that had gathered around her dissipated. Phew, the spatial Qi in this place is so dense I should go up a stage or two during my month here, Stella mused as she jumped up and glanced around.
The wall of black vines was gone, giving her a full view of the distorted world and Sol, whose blinding light was hard to look at. Shifting her gaze away, she noticed Maple on the floor, who looked like he was in a food coma near Sol's leg.
Running over to Maple while giving Sol a confused look, Stella laughed as she scooped up the very round Maple and put him on her head. "You glutton! Look how fat you are now,"
Stella felt the weight shift around on her head as Maple sleepily reached out, grabbed strands of her hair, and rolled up like a blanket.
"So, Tree, what is Sol doing here?" Stella asked the demonic tree ablaze with power behind her.
"Well, you see those monsters teleporting around the expanse between here and the island with the building?" Ashlock asked.
"Mhm?" Stella had seen them within moments of arriving here.
"I want to eat them to advance my cultivation, so I brought Sol here to slaughter them, as even those monsters can't react fast enough to a light beam. There's just one problem..."
"Which is?" Stella asked while peeking over the cliff.
"I can command Sol to kill the monsters from here, but I can't figure out how to bring the corpses back to me. My range of influence is severely restricted in this pocket realm as I have no roots. So portals are a no-go."
Stella tapped her chin, "What if I get them for you? Those monsters look a bit strong, but with Sol's backup, I should be able to handle them?"
"You sure?" Ashlock sounded concerned, "My ability to assist you here is limited, and Maple ate enough snakes to make them extinct, so you will be on your own with only Sol's long-range support. Maple will relay my words as I can't communicate with my Abyssal Whispers technique outside the range of my roots."
Tree sure worries a lot about me. Stella smiled. But I can do this. Even if he can't talk or help me directly.
"Not a problem, I will be careful." Stella summoned two swords and threw one to the ground. Back on Red Vine Peak, she used portals to travel around, but here, the spatial Qi was too high above her stage and chaotic to listen to her, so she would have to travel by flying sword.
Hopping onto the floating sword ablaze with her spatial Qi, her Star Core pulsed, producing a force that kept her afloat. Unsheathing her star pattern sword that Ashlock gifted her and holding it before her, she closed her eyes.
Reality was far too distorted in this pocket realm to depend on sight alone to traverse the many vortexes and floating islands, so she entered the spatial plane and reduced everything around her into absolute grids that dispelled all illusions and falsehoods.
The floating sword hummed below her feet as she moved forward and off the cliff. Nothing but a monster-infested expanse lay below her.
Okay, I can't lie. This is a little terrifying, but Maple ate most of those lurking serpents, so I should be fine, right?
Calming her breathing and pounding heart, she focused on getting some food for Tree. With her eyes still closed, she held her sword before her face and dove down toward a group of deformed monsters with shifting limbs. The chaotic winds of this place rustled her hair and clothes as she dove down.
The monsters seemed to notice her approaching, and Stella felt a ripple through the spatial plane as they vanished and reappeared in a ring around her without even needing to make portals! They knew the Spatial Step technique she wanted to learn!
Many limbs ending in claws came at her all at once. Shit. Stella twisted her body to meet the nearest monster with her sword and was winded by the sheer force of its strike against her blade. Despite her eyes being closed, the world around her went briefly white, and all the monster's heads exploded with a strange pop and a shower of translucent blood.
Using telekinesis, Stella stopped the blood from showering her and the corpses from falling to the expanse below. Her spatial ring flashed, and the monsters quickly filled the space within one of her rings.
Opening her eyes, she looked down at her shaking arm, still holding her sword that had fended off that single attack from that strong monster, and then glanced over her shoulder at the distant mountain ledge. Sol stood there with many of his arms reaching back into the floating ball of light that hovered where his head should be.
"What a strange Ent—" Stella felt the words die in her throat when a monster materialized out of thin air in front of her, encompassing her entire view. Its skin was a shimmering mix of colors. Many black eyes poking out of crevasses in its flesh gazed at her with hunger, and its body split open to reveal a mouth of crooked teeth large enough to consume her in one bite.
Stella didn't even have time to raise her sword to react, but she didn't have to. A beam of light tore through its back and exploded its head with pinpoint accuracy.
"Sol may be watching your back, but that doesn't mean you can be careless, silly human," Maple reminded her.
"Yeah, my bad," Stella sighed as she re-entered the spatial plane. Everything about this place was out to kill her, so it was time to get serious and maybe even try and activate her bloodline.
***
Ashlock had given Sol a single command. Kill everything that gets near Stella. In moments like these, Ashlock understood why {Necroflora Sovereign}was an SS-grade skill, and Sol had been worth creating over the thousand points Lucius's corpse would have given if devoured.
The three-meter tall Ent stood on the cliff edge, walking in circles like a turret as his many arms reached into the floating orb of light in rotation, retrieved a ball of light Qi, and then effortlessly threw it and accurately killed any monster that got within a hundred meters of Stella from miles away like a railgun.
Meanwhile, Stella crouched down on the flat side of her flying sword like a surfboard, gripping the tip with one hand and holding the other sword over her back. She kept as low of a profile as possible as she zoomed around, narrowly missing the teleporting monster's claws aimed at her head. Crazed laughter escaped her lips as she twisted and turned through their swiping limbs.
The monsters exploded around the girl as Sol followed his master's absolute order to bring death upon those who got too close to Stella. Her spatial ring flashed with silvery light, and the raining corpses were sucked into her spatial storage, which only seemed to enrage the monsters more.
After an hour, the ball of light that made Sol's head had dimmed, and it was clear that Ent was slowing down, which put Stella at risk. Also, Ashlock couldn't hold his hunger back anymore, especially since Sol was linked to his progeny via a black root and had been consuming an ungodly amount of Qi.
"Maple, tell Stella to come back. Sol is out of Qi." Ashlock told Maple as he couldn't tell Stella directly.
Stella complied after being smacked on the head by Maple and began to return. The monsters didn't let up and pursued her by ripping through space and lashing out at her through rifts, which made it hard for Sol to support her as attacks came from beyond.
Luckily, Stella wasn't weak and fended them off with evasive maneuvers and well-timed parries with her sword. Once she got close enough to the cliff with hundreds of monsters on her tail, she created an unstable portal to the space beside Sol and hurled herself through. "Ahh!" she tumbled a few times across the stone before stopping upside down against the demonic tree.
"Ouch..." Stella hissed as she rubbed her head and placed the still sleeping Maple to the side, "That went well. I'm surprised they let me go..."
Hundreds of monsters appeared all around them.
"Looks like the feast has come to me," Ashlock cheered as he activated {Consuming Abyss}.
"Sol, flashbang them," Ashlock commanded, and the Ent used his remaining Qi to turn the world white, blinding all the monsters as a lake of void spread out, and hundreds of void tendrils shot out and carved holes through the flesh of the many monsters and dragged them down into the void below to be consumed.
[+320 SC]
[+403 SC]
[+280 SC]
[...]
Otherworldly screams accompanied the many notifications flashing through Ashlock's mind about the many sacrificial credits pouring in.
