Reborn as a Demonic Tree-Novel

Ashlock rustled his leaves in anger, causing ripe fruit to rain from his branches like hail. He had gone to sleep and dreamt of waking up to a delicious stack of fresh corpses overflowing with Qi, ready to be consumed. The taste of devouring a Nascent Soul Realm cultivator a few days ago still lingered, making him even hungrier than usual.

So, to wake up and find his breakfast not only missing but also catching the culprit in the act made him rather angry for the first tin a while. He had really been looking forward to his breakfast...

As angry as Ashlock was, he marveled at his first-ever summon to reach S-grade. After all, Maple wasn't his summon. They were simply in a pact to not kill one another.

Larry looked somewhat different after finishing his divine evolution to beca Herald of the Divine Ash. Upon a quick glance, he appeared as a giant spider with silver fur, scarlet eyes, a crown of horns, and a halo of swirling ash. There was also a sense of majesty, as if he were a mythical creature. However, upon looking closer, Ashlock noticed that Larry's body was not made of flesh and bone but a condensed storm of divine ash in the shape of a spider. His horns were also made from dense ash, and his eyes were floating orbs of Qi.

"How kind of you to leave half a corpse for me," Ashlock said sarcastically as a black vine emerged from the ground, "And welcback, Larry. I missed you."

As his black vine approached the half-eaten corpse, Larry seemed to shrink back as if something terrible was going to happen.

"Mhm?" Ashlock found his summons actions rather strange. The spider only seemed further distressed when he wrapped his vine around the corpse. "Whatever, I am starving—"

The corpse disintegrated into a pile of silver ash the moment it was touched.

"..." Ashlock was speechless as he stared at the remnants of his breakfast. He had already forced himself to accept that his food had been stolen and to make do with the little he had left. But to watch his hopes and dreams crumble into a pile of ash was heartbreaking. "Okay, deep breaths... in and out, in and out. It's fine. Everything is going to be fine."

Ashlock calmed down as best he could. His breakfast was gone, reduced to a pile of silver ash. There was no point holding a pity party over it, and it was best to move on. Larry had never acted with malice before, and the spider knew how important corpses were to him, so there must have been a good reason.

"Larry, why did you steal my food?" Ashlock spoke to everyone present. Hints of his suppressed rage were carried by his {Abyssal Whispers} skill, so they all flinched as his presence descended on them in a flood.

"Even Stella?" Ashlock asked.

Ashlock glanced at Stella, and despite everything that had happened with fruit having rained down all around, she was still fast asleep. Either someone had cast a sleeping technique on her, or she was so exhausted from teaching Jasmine yesterday it had put her in a coma.

"Knowing her, it's far more likely that too much socializing put her in a coma than for her to lose to a sleeping technique," Ashlock sighed. He had entrusted her to watch over the monster farm, but unlike his Ents, who mindlessly followed his orders until they ran out of Qi, Stella was still human, even as a cultivator. Sometimes, the mind's need for rest could not be ignored.

"Okay, Stella aside, what happened next."

"You were small?" Ashlock asked. Larry was definitely a tad smaller than his past self, but he was still massive for a spider at around two meters tall.

"So, how did you get so big?"

Larry answered by crawling over to the pile of ash formed from the half-eaten monster's corpse. Because he was a storm of ash rather than an actual spider, he crawled as if floating slightly above the ground, which furthered his mythical nature.

Standing over the pile of ash. Like metal attracted to a magnet, the ash flew off the floor and into Larry's body. Becoming part of the ever-swirling ashen storm in the shape of a spider.

"So it was for a good reason then. All is forgiven." Ashlock said, and Larry raised his head.

"A thousand years in hell? Forget it. There's no need for punishment over something so reasonable. I can always find more corpses for breakfast, but what am I to do if you blow away in the wind, never to be seen again?"

"What... when did you get so silver-tongued?" Ashlock was baffled. Since when did Larry speak back to him like that? Was it something to do with his evolution?

Curious, Ashlock glanced through his system screens and navigated to the section about his summons.

{Herald of the Divine Ash: Larry [S]}

Having consumed the flesh of a divine being from an upper realm, Larry has unlocked a new path to power. As a Herald of the Divine Ash, he will begin his path to beca deity. Alongside unlimited cultivation potential, Larry now has divine authority over ash and decay. He can decay any matter at will within his realm of influence. Also, as a divine being with governance over an affinity, Larry's body has been reformed entirely from divine ash, allowing him to reincarnate from ash and gain immortality.

"Nothing here says anything about talking back to his summoner," Ashlock grumbled to himself. If it wasn't anything to do with the evolution option he picked, perhaps it was because Larry had reached S grade? He had started being capable of speech at A grade, so maybe it had upgraded?

"Larry, be honest with me," Ashlock said, "How do you viewafter your evolution? Are you as loyal as before? What do you feel about being a summon?"

"That's good. I would be sad if you grew to hate me."

Ashlock gave his past self a big thumbs up for treating his summons well. To think Larry ascending to the equivalent of S grade would cause the system's leash on him to weaken to the point he could make decisions by himself, such as eating a pile of corpses without being given permission.

A sudden feeling of something moving below ground alerted Ashlock to a monster coming through his roots.

"Something's coming..." Sure enough, a wolf-like creature with two curved horns sprouting from its head and rotting skin appeared a moment later with a confused growl.

Nobody even had tto react as Khaos executed the wolf on the spot. Its death had been so swift and silent that it was almost unbelievable that it had died until its headless body slumped forward in a pool of rancid blood.

"This is even better than food delivery back on Earth," Ashlock chuckled as he wrapped his black vine around the meal and moved it far away from Larry so it didn't disintegrate into ash. "I didn't even have to order anything, and I had food appear. It was even free too! This is the ultimate way of life."

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Diana and Elaine had been there from the start, watching from the sidelines in interest. They had likely been drawn here by the mountain trembling as Titus pulverized monsters like a gof Whac-A-Mole.

"My ethereal roots allowto connect two places with a tunnel of compressed space, almost like a portal, but you still have to walk a few steps to travel the distance." Ashlock explained, "The monsters are coming from a demonic mist grove far out in the wilderness that I made for you, Diana."

"Yeah, Stella theorized that it had to do with my roots appearing as leylines to the monsters."

"We are?"

Ashlock had forgotten to investigate or ask more questions about the beast tide since becoming a powerhouse of the region. The level of threat he associated with it had vastly reduced since he grew in power and unlocked his {Skyborne Bastion [SSS]} skill. The fact the sect had also grown, and he had more Ents than ever, further reduced the severity of the beast tide in his mind, so he hadn't put much thought into it.

"Forgive my ignorance, but could you explain more about the beast tides, the leylines, and these spiritual springs?" Ashlock asked, "Diana has mentioned a bit about it toin the past, so I know the basics, but..."

"Even flying monsters?"

"How long do beast tides typically last?"

"Why is that?" Ashlock always wondered.

The ground shimmered and changed color as if it were covered in a thin layer of water with dyes poured into it. Elaine clicked her fingers, and the colors gathered into a sparse web of glowing blue lines. Swere very thick, while others were thin. On occasion, they were intersecting each other, causing crossroads.

"These are all the leylines I know of. We are based somewhere in the middle on this thick one here for reference. The rest of the Blood Lotus sect is also built upon this leyline, while the Tainted Cloud Sect is actually built on this smaller one that curves below us from the East to the West."

Only upon seeing the map did Ashlock realize something. Nox had said the tainted cloud sect lied to the West, yet she escaped to the East. He had thought she planned to loop back around, but perhaps she was heading to an eastern portion of the Tainted Cloud Sect on this curved leyline.

Ashlock suddenly felt very jealous. He was growing along a single leyline here, but the World Tree got three? "The Qi in that area must be obscene! No wonder the Celestial Empire's people do not need to absorb the demonic Qi from beast cores if they are swimming in the stuff."

"They would fight to the death for supremacy?"

The red on the map grew darker and began to pulse.

The thick leyline that happened to be the one Ashlock's sect was built on slowly turned red as if a river of blood was pouring along it.

Everything was starting to fall into place.

"Letguess, the original spiritual spring eventually runs out of Qi, so the strongest beasts have no choice but to move to the next one?"

"No, no, this is all very useful information," Ashlock said as he looked at the map. Having built a city in a day, he could see how easy it was to move a sect. Especially considering fighting waves of monsters involved spending years of gathered Qi for little gain. Sometimes, it was best to simply move on...

"But I don't have that choice unless I turned the entire sect into a Bastion and floated away." Ashlock sighed, "I may do that in the future, but for this tround? I don't have the hundreds of thousands of credits I need. I have no choice but to stay and fight. So, what I need is practical solutions to help fight off this tide."

An obvious one would be digging down deep to hit this leyline. Considering how it was hundreds of miles wide, hitting it was assured so long as he dug deep enough. "Let's secure a link to it first." Qi and nutrients flowed from his trunk as he sent a hundred roots to sprawl downward at the maximum speed.

While that was going on, he looked back at the map.

"What lies between the leylines in those dead areas?"

Ashlock had not been expecting that answer at all. "Really? Why does anyone live on the leylines then if there are beast tides?"

Ashlock couldn't believe it. "From the sounds of it, the mortals of the Qi-deprived lands live lives comparable to those in the medieval times on Earth but perhaps even worse."

"So monsters can't survive for long outside of areas with Qi."

Ashlock looked back on the map. If the leylines were like borders to places of death for ordinary mortals, then in the smaller pockets of land surrounded by leylines, wars for space between these cities and villages were also likely fierce. As Elaine said... life sucked fucking ass for them.

"To think the mortals under the cultivators had it better," Ashlock mused. "Mhm, but since I can pump Qi through my roots, couldn't I make a Qi-rich city within one of these pockets between the leylines? That could be a way to move all the mortals of Ashfallen City out of the way, but that doesn't help me. I am stuck here..."

"Elaine, these beast tides are predictable, right?"

"The biggest in recorded history..." Ashlock suddenly didn't feel so confident as he looked down at the map that was pulsing red. It wasn't even here, and they were just talking theoretically, but it was starting to feel far more real and a significant threat. "What would the biggest in recorded history entail exactly, and how would you suggest we could survive it?"

"Move?" Ashlock said slowly, "And how do you suppose I do that?"

"Well, shit..." Ashlock looked to the North. He might need to speed up his own and everyone else's progress if such an apocalypse was on the horizon.