Ashlock had been so focused on keeping his offspring alive through the tribulation that he had mostly ignored the system's messages in favor of keeping the {Lightning Qi Barrier} active and directing Zeus to catch some of the stray lightning bolts.
"Of course, you can have a name. Just give me a second." Ashlock went into a slight panic as no names came to mind. He had named Willow in the heat of the moment, but now that he had an offspring capable of writing to him patiently waiting for their name, there was a lot of pressure.
"It should be something ink-related. Inky? No, that's too generic. What about Jet? Raven? Ebony? Those all mean some form of black like the color of the ink, but they also don't feel right..."
Thankfully, trees perceive time on a longer scale than humans. Ashlock spent over an hour mulling over options while his offspring happily waited. He had never been that interested in having children back on Earth, but after raising Stella and now having thousands of offspring that look like mini versions of himself, he was glad he didn't miss out on the joy of children in this new life.
"I think I got it," Ashlock said with far less certainty than he probably should after having spent so long in thought. "What about the name Quill?"
A wave of happiness came from the ink tree he was inhabiting. Ashlock could only chuckle. He suspected Quill would have been happy with any name he could come up with, but he felt the name was very fitting.
"Okay, from now on, you shall be known as Quill Ashfallen."
[Bastion's operator has been successfully designated as {Quill Ashfallen}]
"Phew, okay, now that you have a name, could you fly the Bastion to Red Vine Peak while the storm is still going? It will act as a natural camouflage." Ashlock asked.
Quill responded by pulling on Ashlock's Qi reserves.
Spatial Qi from Ashlock's Star Core poured through the ethereal roots that connected them and entered Quill's soul, where the spatial Qi was converted into ink Qi and then sent down into the Bastion Core.
Despite the drain on his Star Core, Ashlock let the events play out. This was the first time he had a Bastion of a different Qi type, as Willow had a spatial Bastion Core. So, this was a worthwhile experiment.
"I guess it works similarly to my Ents, where Titus is the cheapest to power up, as there's no need to convert my spatial Qi into another Qi type like void or fire."
The ground began to shake as Quill operated the ship and made it rise. The rock supports tumbled down into the hole the Bastion had been carved from.
"Titus and Zeus, keep up the spatial distortion and storm overhead until the Bastion has reached the mountain peak," Ashlock instructed the two Ents standing on the Bastion's surface. So far, their concealment had worked as nobody had shown up in the last hour, so there was no reason to relax until the Bastion was safely secured on Red Vine Peak.
Quill certainly wasn't the greatest pilot, as he clipped the canopies of some nearby evergreens while trying to fly up into the sky. Still, it would be unfair for Ashlock to expect such expertise from a tree that basically became fully conscious an hour ago.
"Take it slow and steady. There's no rush," Ashlock informed Quill, and he felt the Bastion slow to around half its maximum speed. Clearly, Quill had found the Bastion's top speed too much to handle.
Ashlock planned to take control once they neared the top, as he didn't want Quill accidentally ramming an astroid-sized lump of flying rock into him. However, while he had Quill pulling on his Qi and they were shrouded by Titus and Zeus's efforts, he wanted to test the Bastion's capabilities as he might not get another chance since he planned for this Bastion to remain as a defensive one on Red Vine Peak.
"System, activate the Bastion's shield," Ashlock said, and he felt the dense ball of swirling ink that was the Bastion Core below Quill's roots begin to spin faster. It then began to expand outward, and as if it were ethereal, it passed through the rock, and soon enough, there was a thin bubble of ink surrounding the ship.
[Ink Shield: ACTIVE]
"I can't see anything..." Ashlock laughed. It was as if he had turned off the lights. "This is so unlike the spatial shield on Willow's Bastion that dyed the outside world in a purple hue but was still translucent so one could see through. This ink shield is like the cultivator equivalent of black tinted windows."
Perfect for obscuring what was going on from outsiders, but terrible for those on the Bastion as they had no way to see what was happening beyond the ink shield.
"Okay, I'm glad I tested this out beforehand," Ashlock deactivated the shield and then asked the system to activate the artillery. Giant flowers that looked like roses dipped in ink sprouted from crevices in the rock.
[Ink Artillery: ACTIVE]
Ashlock dismissed the system notification and surged some Qi toward one of the flowers. He only targeted one as he didn't plan to waste more Qi than needed. A glob of ink formed on the flower's petals by consuming far more Qi than he felt reasonable.
"Is that it?" Ashlock wondered, "All that Qi for a mere blob of ink? Surely not." He tried to transform it into something to little effect, which was concerning. He didn't see how an overpriced blob of ink being hurled at someone would do much.
"Hey Quill, are you able to do anything with this?" Ashlock asked his new Star Core offspring, "I will take control of the ship so you can concentrate. Just try to shape it or something."
Ashlock felt Quill concede his control of the ship to him, and he promptly doubled the speed to the maximum, which made the demonic tree blaze with purple soul fire. But ink also covered its trunk, which showed that when Ashlock merged his soul fragment with Quill, they became a dual affinity. Two minds and souls in one body. The ink rippled, and Quill wrote on his trunk: 'Father, what effect should I do?'
"You can put an effect into the blob of ink?"
The ink rippled to show a new word, 'Yes.'
"Mhm..." Ashlock spread out his spiritual sense. All around him was a sea of his offspring, so firing anything at the ground could cause harm to his children. "Put the effect 'Flash of light' into the ink blob and fire it into the sky."
'Okay, Father.'
Ashlock saw the blob of ink compress into a noodle of ink and then begin to take on the same of the ancient runic translation for the effect he had told Quill to add. The giant black rose then twisted to the sky, and he saw the floating ink shoot into storm clouds overhead. Moments later, the dark skies lit up with an intense light that lasted for a split second.
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"Interesting. It seems operating a Bastion is more of a two-person job than I originally thought," Ashlock contemplated. "I could operate and do everything on Willow's Bastion as we shared an affinity, but here on Quill's Bastion, everything is far more expensive to use. I even need Quill to operate the artillery."
The only other operation to check would be the ink storm, but there was no way he was wasting that much Qi, even on a test. If firing a single blob of ink cost him this much Qi, what would a storm cost? Even on Willow's Bastion, it had been Qi intensive.
Deactivating the artillery, Ashlock also cut off access to his soul and told Quill to use his own ink Qi to power the Bastion's flight rather than relying on his due to the horrible conversion rate. It was hard to nail down just how bad it was, but Ashlock estimated he was spending between ten and a hundred times more Qi than when he operated Willow's Bastion.
Arriving at the summit of Red Vine Peak, the Bastion floated over the mist wall swirling around the perimeter of demonic trees. Ashlock now needed to decide where he could hide this darn thing.
"I want to keep it out of sight from any other cultivators if possible, especially since it will contain all of our books and other important documents, and in this world, there are far too many infiltration techniques like Void Step." Ashlock mulled as the Bastion loomed in the sky, casting a shadow on Red Vine Peak as the storm overhead slowly cleared up.
"There's only really one place that I can hide such a large thing," Ashlock floated the Bastion over toward the giant hole that went through the center of the mountain. It was around a hundred meters across, and a fifty-meter-wide obelisk was in the middle.
Over the last few weeks, the Mudcloaks had been hard at work, and the eight-thousand-meter-tall obelisk was the first thing they completed. Only the tip of it was yet to be done, leaving the top flat and not quite reaching the surface. Construction had likely been halted due to the rain, so it was empty right now.
"I can park the Bastion over there. It's only thirty meters long and ten meters wide, so it won't even take up all of the obelisk's top and block any sunlight from making its way down the hole." Ashlock slowly lowered the Bastion on top of the stone pillar covered in the moss the Mudcloaks like to eat that went all the way down into the darkness.
"What the hell is going on?" Douglas hollered as he emerged from a room built inside the hole and lumbered up the spiral staircase jutting out from the rockface. Excited Mudcloacks flanked him and pointed up at the obelisk.
"Big rock! Big rock!" They shouted while gesturing wildly and tugging at Douglas's cloak that shielded him from the dying storm as he made his way to the surface.
"What are you fools on about? What big rock?" Douglas grumbled as he squinted through the rain. "I can't see anything through this darn rain, and my spiritual senses aren't picking anything up. You guys aren't dragging me out here to see a bird again, right?"
Ashlock realized the problem and commanded Titus and Zeus to cease their concealment. As the spatial distortion faded away, Douglas's eyes widened.
"You fuckers were right, there is a big fucking rock all of a sudden."
Ashlock waited for Douglas to reach the surface before speaking into his mind with {Abyssal Whispers}. "Sorry to bother you, Douglas, but could you make a bridge to the new library?"
Douglas popped a Mind Fortress fruit and squinted at the Bastion, "Library? Is that Kaida's home that I helped build?"
"That's right, and I felt this was the best place for it." Ashlock replied, "It's right next to my main body, surrounded by dozens of my most powerful offspring, on top of an eight thousand meters tall pillar and surrounded by a twenty-five-meter wide gap. If anyone wanted to break in from the sky, they would have to do it under my nonexistent nose, and if they came from below, they would pass by hundreds of Mudcloacks and my roots."
Douglas nodded along to his words with an increasingly wide grin, "The Patriarch is wise. This is a far better location than down at the mountain base far away from you."
Ashlock hummed in agreement, "Since it's a Bastion capable of combat, it doubles up as a shelter during a battle with its shields and artillery. Not to mention Kaida and Quill, who would be inside."
"Quill?" Douglas asked. "Who's that."
"My offspring... Quill is the ink affinity tree that's inside."
"Ah, I see," Douglas nodded, "So. What type of bridge do you want?"
That was a good question. Ashlock was cautious about building a giant stone bridge as it would cut off sunlight from reaching the moss and Mudcloaks below. It would also serve as a massive hazard during a fight. If it were to be blown up by an attack, large chunks of stone would rain down and cause enormous damage.
"Would a floating bridge be possible?" Ashlock asked. "Like perhaps a single slab of stone that, when stepped on, would float to the other side?"
Douglas crossed his arms, "Mhm, it's possible for sure. The slab would need inscribed runic formations, such as a Qi gathering array and something like levitation or telekinesis. Formations would also need to be built into the wall of the hole and into the obelisk so the floating platform knows what two points to travel between."
"Sounds good," Ashlock replied, "Once the storm settles down in a bit, get Kaida and Stella to assist you. They know those techniques and the ancient runic language."
"I will get to work then," Douglas set off to find a suitable stone slab—unbothered by the heavy rain and Mudcloaks that clung to his legs.
With that sorted, Ashlock returned to within the Bastion as he still had something he wanted to confirm with Quill before his {Progeny Dominion} skill wore off. Even though he could use it far more now as he had a way to heal soul damage, he still wished to avoid damaging his soul as much as possible. It wasn't like healing a cut. The strange emptiness and missing of oneself caused by soul damage was unnerving rather than painful.
Inside the Bastion, the ceiling was still smashed in from weathering heaven's wrath, and lumps of rock jutted out of the ink lake like icebergs. He would need to get Douglas to fix that next.
"Quill, I need to confirm something with you. As my offspring, did you inherit my demi-divine nature?"
Ashlock remembered that in Kaida's evolution message, it had stated: As a lesser evolution of the Midnight Inkwing, Kaida would inherit the blood of a divine being from the upper layers of creation, granting him unlimited cultivation potential.
It would seem that being related to a divine being through blood—or sap in this case—resulted in unlimited cultivation potential, and he wondered if his offspring had inherited that from him.
After a long while, Quill confirmed his thoughts.
'Yes, I have.'
"So you have unlimited cultivation potential?"
'Yes, just like Father.'
"What about divine ink? Is your ink Qi divine?"
Kaida's evolution also mentioned turning his body into one of divine ink due to being a lesser version of the Midnight Inkwing, which gave him powers such as comprehending the heavenly intent behind written words in ink and making contracts overseen by the heavens.
'No, Father, my ink is normal, I think,' Quill replied as the ink on the surface of his trunk rippled to display the tree's thoughts.
"So no two divine beings are made the same. We just all share unlimited cultivation potential," Ashlock concluded.
'I am sorry, Father.' Quill wrote, and Ashlock realized he had fallen silent.
"Don't worry. I had half expected that to be the case, so there's nothing to be sorry about." Ashlock quickly replied before his offspring got the wrong idea. "Let's try something out, though. Kaida can inscribe runic words into his scales. Would you be able to do the same to your bark?"
Kaida's entire body was made of divine ink, so he could change his body's size at will, and losing a scale wasn't any more of a deal than spending some Qi. However, Ashlock didn't see why Quill couldn't follow suit. He could regrow his bark, especially with Ashlock's S-grade skill {Nocturnal Genesis} boosting growth at night.
'I will give it a try,' Quill wrote. The ink coating a section of his bark then shifted until it spelled out the ancient runic words for Flash of Light. The ink then began to slowly harden and fill with Qi, and Ashlock was reminded of how it took a while for Kaida to inscribe his ink scales.
"Doesn't that make the Bastion's attack really powerful then?" Ashlock mused. "It had fired almost instantly with the effect I told Quill to add."
An hour or so passed, and the ink finally finished drying. Even when Quill withdrew his ink into his Star Core, those ancient runic words remained on Quill's bark.
"Alright, Quill. People are coming, so now is a great time to test it," Ashlock said, and he felt Qi surge through the tree. The ink words glowed with power—
The door to the room swung open, and Stella strode in with Diana, Douglas, Elaine, and Kaida in tow. "Tree! Are you in here—" The entire room lit up with a weak but blinding light that surprised the three intruders.
"Agh, what the hell," Stella cursed as she blinked away the light.
Ashlock felt a wave of amusement from Quill. It seemed the ink tree and Kaida would get along as friends as they both enjoyed pranks.
