Ashlock enjoyed how peaceful the cavern within the ink Bastion had become since everyone except Kaida and Elaine had left.
Kaida lay beside the bookshelf built into the rock wall and flipped through a book. Ashlock had asked him why he didn't always input his Qi into the words to gain heavenly insight, and the Lindwyrm's response had been a simple one.
Apparently, It gave him a massive headache, and he used a considerable amount of Qi to absorb a single page of content, so he would rather try and read it first. Which, in hindsight, made sense. There was no way directly absorbing heavenly insight into one's brain wouldn't come without drawbacks.
Elaine was sitting casually on the shoreline of the ink lake as if she were at the beach. Ashlock didn't mind. He would prefer she felt relaxed and comfortable while they talked instead of standing all stiff and serious.
"So you had a question for me?" Elaine asked.
"Do you think it would be possible for Kaida or Quill to learn void techniques and then inscribe them into ink?" Ashlock suspected the answer was no, but he felt it was essential to check with an expert before jumping to conclusions.
Elaine shook her head, "The void is all about stripping everything—even time—from reality. From my understanding, ink Qi allows you to write a request to heaven for something to be manifest into reality in exchange for the spent ink Qi. Since the void is everything that heaven is not—I doubt heaven will be of much help regarding void techniques."
"I feared that would be the case," Ashlock replied and then moved on to the next topic, "I was thinking of turning Quill into a sort of living defensive array. Not only to protect Kaida, the Midnight Inkwing egg, and these books but also the whole Red Vine Peak. Do you happen to know how defensive arrays usually work?"
"That's a pretty good idea since Quill will be staying here... Mhm, let me think." Elaine fell into deep thought for a moment, "Defensive arrays are usually specialized depending on the Qi type of the operator or environment. You can also have defensive arrays serve wildly different purposes. For example, one surrounding a building with a shield would differ from an array that summons golems, but both would be considered defensive."
"I see what you mean," Ashlock agreed, "What type of defensive array would you suggest Quill could imitate?"
Elaine sat up straighter and seemed excited by the question, "Oh! Let's see. Since Quill has ink Qi, he isn't limited by Qi type! So he could easily summon golems even though an array like that would usually be used by the Terraforge family as the underlying techniques built into the array need earth Qi to operate..." Elaine bit her lip as she fell into thought again, "Errr, with so many options, I suppose it's better to focus on what you want to defend from rather than focusing on the potential options?"
"Good point," Ashlock said. What did he want Quill to be capable of doing? If he thought about how Stella had robbed the Azure Clan library in the pocket realm, he should have Quill capable of stopping Stella. What was she capable of? Spatial Step?
"Quill would need a way to stop someone from escaping this room until help can arrive, or I can personally kill them since this is near my trunk, and I might just have been distracted or something," Ashlock mused, "So something like Spatial Lock would be good but for that technique to work Quill needs to be of a higher cultivation realm than the intruder and he is only in the 1st stage of the Star Core Realm right now. So that might not work since he's too weak..."
Ashlock felt a wave of sadness from Quill, and then he realized he had been talking aloud to himself within Quill's soul so the tree could listen in to his thoughts.
"Don't worry, bud. You will grow in strength soon enough, especially if you sleep well at night under the nine moons." Ashlock reassured his offspring.
He hadn't meant to make Quill feel depressed for not being enough. The poor tree was only a few weeks old, after all. Actually, wasn't he a surprisingly bright tree for being so young? He was the only one of his offspring capable of communication.
"Does ink Qi contain the Dao of knowledge or something?" Ashlock asked Quill, "Wait, can you explain how you can understand me in the first place?"
The ink on Quill's trunk rippled, and words formed. 'I learned from Father.'
"You learned from me? How?"
'I came from your seed. Inherited some knowledge.'
Ashlock thought back, and Quill had come from a seed he had shoved into a dead monster's stomach and then dumped in the ink lake. Did offspring spawned from his seeds differ from those that sprouted from his cursed sap?
"What else did you learn from me besides the ancient runic language?" Ashlock asked while ignoring Elaine's confused expression as she read one-half of the conversation from the shore. The ink rippled, and a new answer appeared.
'How to cultivate.'
"You have my cultivation technique? Really? You know how to cultivate with the Transpiration of Heaven and Chaos method?"
'Yes.' Quill replied through shifting ink.
"Interesting... anything else? What about my resistance skills, like poison or fire resistance?"
There was a long delay before the ink rippled with an answer. 'My body knows how to resist poison and fire. Though it might differ from how Father does it.'
Ashlock now remembered how Willow had been able to control a black vine covered in thorns to consume Nox's hand when Stella threw it to him. He hadn't thought much of it back then, but now...
"What about devouring things? Can you summon black vines to eat corpses? What about fruit and mushrooms? Can you grow them? Oh! Can you talk to others with Abyssal Whispers? Do you know telepathy?"
'No,' was all Quill replied to that string of questions. So it seemed his offspring inherited his more passive skills than his active ones? And if he used an active skill like {Consuming Abyss} through their body, they could take over control from him, much like with the Bastion, which was also a skill of his?
As interesting as this revelation was, he was getting sidetracked... as usual. Being trapped inside a stationary body fostered a bad habit of letting his mind do the wandering that his body never could.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
"Okay, all of that aside. Let's get back to the topic of teaching you techniques. Did you inherit my knowledge of spatial techniques such as Warp Strike or marking portals?" Ashlock asked Quill.
'I don't know any techniques. I am sorry, Father.' Quill replied, accompanied by another wave of sadness. Was Quill easily made depressed or something?
"That's fine. It just means you have all the more to learn!" Ashlock said as passionately as possible to uplift his offspring's mood. An unmotivated tree was a dangerously slothful existence, and since ink Qi literally meant knowledge was power, he needed Quill to foster a love of learning.
Ashlock felt Quill's mood raise, so he continued, "Okay, let me teach you about Spatial Lock as I feel that will be a useful place to start..."
***
Elaine waited to the side patiently. Judging by the constantly shifting ink on the tree's surface, Ashlock was engaged in a deep conversation with Quill, and she didn't dare interrupt. She could decipher half of the conversation due to learning to read the ancient runic language a few months ago. Still, she wasn't interested in eavesdropping once she figured out Quill wasn't talking to her, so she looked elsewhere.
The calm ink lake looked beautiful as the late afternoon sunlight shone through the hole in the ceiling and onto Quill's scarlet leaves, giving the whole room a warm autumn glow.
Minutes dragged on, and with no questions thrown her way, Elaine decided to get up and see what Kaida was doing. The snake had grown tremendously in the short time she had known him, and something about seeing a Lindwyrm flipping through books and engraving things into his own scales was fascinating. Since she could read the ancient runic language, she could also decipher some of the technique names inscribed on his scales, and she was surprised when she didn't recognize most of them. Everything about this scene was ridiculous to her.
Yet, it isn't the most ridiculous thing I have witnessed since joining the Ashfallen Sect. Elaine thought with a smile. She wasn't even sure what the most absurd thing she had seen was, but Ashlock was undoubtedly up there.
Elaine had long seen through Ashlock's immortal persona that he presented to the Redclaws, and according to Douglas, he was just a spirit tree with a peculiar way of seeing the world. How a spirit tree was capable of so much in the Star Core Realm still confused her to no end, but she wasn't about to question it.
I suspect only Stella, who has known Ashlock since the beginning, may know the answer to his many mysteries. Elaine shuddered at the thought of asking that girl anything that might put Ashlock at risk. Stella was incredibly protective when it came to the tree—hell, Stella openly admitted to advocating for Elaine's execution just because her overly curious uncle had caught wind of the tree's existence.
"Hey, Kaida, what are you reading?" Elaine asked in a hushed tone to respect the tranquil environment.
Kaida twisted his head away from the book he had his snout buried in to look at her and hissed softly, making Elaine realize a slight issue with her question. She had forgotten that Kaida couldn't speak.
"Oh, sorry. Can I borrow one of your books?" Elaine gave an awkward smile as she tried to decipher Kaida's responses based on the tone of his hissing. Since the Lindwyrm didn't seem adverse to her request, she picked a random book and got reading.
***
As it turned out, Spatial Lock was not a good starting place.
Quill turned out to be a fast learner, and within an hour, the smart tree had gotten the hang of Qi Resonance—at a conceptual level, at least. But then an issue arose: as versatile as ink Qi was, it had a requirement. Quill couldn't simply change the frequency of his soul ripples and match them to the others in the room like Ashlock could. He had to write his intent in ink and let the heavens handle it.
"This is frustrating," Ashlock grumbled. "Reminds me of trying to get code to work. I would compile and run the code, and then I would have to wait five minutes for it to reach the point of the issue I just tried to fix, only to find it still broken and have to start all over again."
It wasn't Quill's fault, but the tree would promise he understood what Ashlock was trying to teach him. He would then spend upwards of ten minutes carving out his insights into his bark with ink, and upon activating the ink with his Qi, it would not work as intended, and then Ashlock would have to figure out where the hell it went wrong.
All of that aside, the hour had not been a total waste. Quill understood Qi Resonance and could write a 'request' in ink to heaven to match his soul ripples with a target. Great. But that led Ashlock to a problem.
"Why did I pick to teach Quill Spatial Lock when I don't even fully understand it myself?" Ashlock had used telekinesis to retrieve the Azure Clan book from the bookshelf, had it floating before Quill, and was trying to read it to him with little success. It was like the blind leading the blind.
"Hey Kaida," Ashlock called out to the slothful Lindwyrm who had been so smug earlier, "You learned how to use Spatial Lock, right? Come teach it to Quill for me."
Ashlock wasn't so sure how Kaida would manage to teach Quill. But he was desperate at this point as he felt a headache coming on, and the day was nearing its end.
Kaida snapped closed the book he was reading and, like an angry librarian, slowly slotted the book back on the shelf and turned to look at the tree sprouting from the ink lake.
"Don't get grumpy with me. You and Quill should help each other out and become friends," Ashlock said. In his mind, he didn't want Quill to feel lonely, and since they shared an affinity, it only made sense that they shared knowledge and grew in strength together.
Kaida let out an understanding hiss and slithered into the small lake that was more like a swimming pool in size. He soon reached Quill and wrapped around the tree's trunk.
Ashlock was curious how Kaida planned to impart his knowledge, and to his surprise, the Lindwyrm seemed to have an idea as he began to write something into Quill's bark with divine ink.
It took a long time, but Ashlock hardly noticed the passage of time because he was mesmerized by the process. Eventually, Kaida pulled back his claw and admired his handiwork.
Ashlock compared the many paragraphs of divine words written into Quill's bark as if he were a signpost at a national park. They matched those in the Azure Clan's book perfectly.
"So Kaida transcribed everything written in the book onto Quill's bark but in divine ink? What's the point of this?" Ashlock mumbled to himself. "Wait... Quill, try to surge your Qi into the words."
Quill did as instructed, and the words lit up with a golden light, but instead of going into Kaida's brain, the heavenly words sunk into the tree and entered Quill's mind.
"Huh? You can do that—" Ashlock shut up as he felt his soul fragment become overwhelmed with heavenly whispers. Unable to handle it, he pulled his focus away from Quill and back to his main body.
"Whoa, what was that?" Ashlock was bewildered by the experience—he felt like he was trying to piece his brain back together from a concussion. No wonder Kaida complained about a headache if he experienced that every time he used that heavenly insight skill. That aside, did this mean he now had a way to learn techniques instantly?
"If so, where is my knowledge about spatial techniques? Do I need to accept the torment and keep my focus on my soul fragment inside Quill?" Ashlock wondered, but he wasn't willing to return even for the chance of learning Spatial Lock—it was that bad. He felt like heaven had taken a battle axe to his skull and chopped it open to shove information into the crack.
A while passed, and Ashlock saw the sun dip below the distant horizon. He felt a sudden rush as his fragmented soul was pulled from Quill and forced to remerge as his {Progeny Dominion} skill ran out.
Suddenly, the deeper meaning behind the words in the Azure Clan technique book became crystal clear. His returning soul fragment had brought with it the complete Spatial Lock technique.
In disbelief, Ashlock called on Elaine.
"Yes, Patriarch, how can I help?" Elaine shouted as she stood on the floating platform and floated over.
"I need you to gather as many technique manuals as you can. Get some from the Redclaws and the academy. You can also take a lump of spirit stones and try to buy some from anyone you can." Ashlock said.
"Sure, I can do that. The books from the academy will be a little harder to sneak out, but I can leverage my rank as a professor there to at least lend them out to me for a time. Is that okay?"
"Yes, that works." Ashlock agreed. Kaida didn't damage the books when he used his heavenly insight technique, and it was best they avoided suspicion by robbing the academy bare.
Elaine nodded and left to gather the books he asked for. If Kaida could teach any technique to Quill, Ashlock would have Quill learn every defensive technique he could find.
This place would become an impenetrable fortress that Ashlock could use to protect his precious sect members from harm.
