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Without Larry\'s ash absorbing much of the attack, even with their Star Core Realm bodies and soul fire, they likely would have perished in the Blazing Radiance. Thankfully, they all escaped with their lives, which just so happened to include Nox, who recovered faster than the rest.

The bulky woman hissed in pain as she staggered to her feet while everyone else remained on the jagged stone among the tree roots.

"Is that bastard crazy?" Nox\'s trembling hand emerged from the folds of her cloak—it was severely burned, with the skin a bright red and cracking. Her face had followed a similar fate, but it was mostly hidden under a hood. She coughed up blackened blood in her hand and wiped her face, "ugh, this poison."

She looked around the clearing as molten ash fell like rain. Ashlock followed her gaze, which landed on Stella. A crooked grin appeared as Nox summoned a dagger to her hand, "All of this is your fault. I don\'t even care about the artifact anymore. Only your death will satisfy me for making me waste a Dimension Locker and months of cultivation."

Even though she was injured, Nox was still a peak Star Core cultivator adept at assassination that could instantly decapitate Stella, so Ashlock didn\'t hesitate in casting {Progeny Dominion} on the tree Stella was resting against. He had been saving his S-grade skill for a moment like this.

[Progeny selected: Initiating soul transfer...]

[Soul fragmented: Damage to soul mitigated]

A tidal wave of power passed over the entire mountain range as a fractured piece of Ashlock\'s soul traversed the root network to the glee of his children and united with his offspring, turning the unassuming demonic tree into an extension of himself, much like Lucius had done for his sun god.

[Connection complete: Time till sundown 0:10]

The tree\'s branches and leaves blazed with lilac soul fire as Ashlock unleashed everything on Nox through his progeny.

Nox stumbled back in shock as Ashlock cast {Abyssal Whispers}. His presence bloomed within her mind as a withering mass of enraged eyes and a thousand voices screamed, "Die."

As the woman stood there bewildered, the ground before her exploded as many thorn-covered vines emerged and tried to entangle her, but they were blocked by a shadow clone that materialized at the last second, absorbing the attack and allowing her to use Shadow Step to vanish into the darkness.

Stella didn\'t react to everything happening as she was completely passed out. Lucius\'s light blast had burned off half her hair, and her body hadn\'t fared much better. Her sleeping face was twisted in pain, and her breathing was erratic.

"I don\'t care if you\'re the descendant of a sword goddess or some kind of demon in human skin like Diana," Nox whispered as she climbed out of Stella\'s shadow and raised her sword, "But I\'m never one to leave loose ends."

"No!" Ashlock roared in Nox\'s mind as he cast {Consuming Abyss}. A lake of void Qi flowed out from the tree\'s roots, and from the void shot out hundreds of tendrils.

Nox\'s eyes widened as she blocked the onslaught with her sword coated in flames of darkness, but the void tendrils cared not for her puny attempts to stop them as they devoured the sword and even her hand for good measure. Howling in pain, Nox stumbled back and almost tripped over another tree root as the ground exploded and more black vines covered in thorns rushed her.

"Shadow! Cover me," Nox said while coughing up more blood and turning to flee into the forest.

Ashlock watched in surprise as Nox\'s shadow actually detached itself from her and stood up as if it were a real person. The shadow was clearly far stronger at a glance than the other shadow clones she had conjured previously, as it quickly grabbed his vines and ripped them apart.

"Let\'s see what\'s stronger," Ashlock spoke into the mind of the fleeing Nox, "My void or your shadow..."

Nox didn\'t even look over her shoulder as her shadow was dragged down by void tendrils and devoured in the lake.

[+427 SC]

Ashlock was surprised by the notification.

"Does that mean a part of her soul was in that shadow?" Ashlock quickly checked on his system.

Idletree Daily Sign-In System

Day: 3541

Daily Credit: 14

Sacrifice Credit: 824

[Sign in?]

"Huh, it wasn\'t a bug in the system. I really did get points for that," Ashlock looked back to where Nox had been, but she was gone. Vanished into the darkness of the forest.

Ashlock spread out his spiritual sense but struggled to locate her, "Where did she go?"

To his surprise, the answer to his question came from an unexpected source... his children. A small group of them further down the mountain were crying out for his attention.

His vision blurred through the root network, and he found himself dumbfounded. Since when had all of his children surpassed the Soul Forged realm, formed their Soul Cores, and reached the Soul Fire Realm? Before, it had just been a set few trees here and there that he had carefully cultivated like those on his mountain peak, with the rest near the peak of the Qi Realm and still condensing their affinities and forming their Soul Cores.

They all seemed to cheer excitedly when his spiritual sight arrived at a small clearing near the mountain\'s base where Nox was leaning against one of the demonic trees and gulping down the antidotes Stella had given her less than an hour earlier.

"Now, how can I kill her?" Ashlock pondered as he quickly considered his options. With Nox so far away, his only way to attack her would be through portals, which wouldn\'t be enough. He was still five stages in the Star Core Realm lower than her, even if she was poisoned and weakened. "I could send Titus after her, but I need him to deal with Lucius... oh shit."

Ashlock forgot the walking demigod of light was still up at the mountain peak, so he reluctantly left Nox alone.

"My children, keep track of her as she tries to escape. I will capture her shortly," Ashlock felt a wave of agreement as his vision shifted back to where he had left Stella only seconds before.

Lucius, thankfully, hadn\'t made his move yet as he was buckling under the pressure of his presence from using his S-grade skill.

"Immortal, may I be of service?" The Grand Elder said with a hint of rage as he floated next to his progeny. Ashlock hadn\'t noticed the man\'s arrival as he was focused on Lucius, who blanketed the whole area in his light. The Grand Elder looked terribly solemn while standing upon his flaming sword with his hands clasped behind his back, and his gaze fixated on the destroyed eastern wing of the White Stone Palace. His home.

"Yes," Ashlock replied, "I will deal with Lucius. I need you to go kill Nox for me. She stole something from Stella that needs to be returned."

The Grand Elder\'s solemn expression cracked and twisted, "They dared to steal from the Mistress? Where should I go to find this wretch?"

"Look to the forest," Ashlock said, "The trees will guide you, for she lurks in the shadows."

The Grand Elder nodded and took off down the mountain on his sword in search of Nox, leaving Ashlock to focus on Lucius.

Without delay, Ashlock used {Abyssal Whispers} to force his way into Lucius\'s mind. However, to his surprise, he could not manifest much of a presence other than some swirling white fog, as within Lucius\'s consciousness was nothing but a blinding white light that was impossible to penetrate.

"This ends here," Ashlock shouted with all the intensity he could muster in Lucius\'s mind.

Lucius laughed as he stood despite his pressure and cracked his neck, "I\'ll be the decider of that," he said as he basked in the rays from the distant sun half-set behind the mountains.

"You\'re the spatial cultivator, right? Hiding in a tree?" Lucius tilted his head as he raised his palm, "Then I am going to need you to burn for me."

"Geb!" Ashlock shouted through his connection, and the ground below Lucius crumbled, making the man lose his footing, causing the light beam to barely miss his progeny\'s trunk, but it did eradicate a few of its branches.

The Ent which was a strange mixture of a human and a turtle, sprung from the ground below in a shower of dirt and tried to pull Lucius down into the earthy depths.

"Get off me," Lucius punched down with a glowing fist, caving Geb\'s face and pummeling the Ent back into the ground.

"Titus, trap him—" Ashlock commanded, and before his sentence was even done, Lucius found himself crushed under the titan\'s palm like a bug.

"Zeus, get ready to blast him with lightning," Ashlock said as he opened rifts and teleported his eight swords from Red Vine Peak to his progeny. The void lake around the tree also expanded over the rubble toward Lucius by rapidly consuming his sacrificial credits.

The sound of wood crackling like a campfire filled the air, and Ashlock saw Titus\'s blackwood hand begin to glow like lit coals. A mere second later, Titus\'s hand exploded, and the now handless titan\'s arm flew back from the force as a ball of light expanded out rapidly and lit up the evening sky.

"Blast him now!" Ashlock shouted to Zeus, and the marble statue Ent brought down his finger like a Roman emperor executing someone at the Colosseum. The darkened storm system spread across the sky until the horizon lit up as the most violent lightning bolt Ashlock had ever witnessed lashed out and stuck Lucius in the back, knocking the man to his knees.

"Don\'t give him a second to recover," Ashlock sent all eight of his vines that were wielding swords at Lucius and even utilized his spatial Qi to compress the distance, making his swords seem like nothing but a blur as they skewered Lucius.

Lucius let out a gargled scream as his body tried to heal, but Ashlock kept the swords firmly in place and even pushed them deeper. Yet even with all this, the man simply refused to die. With the sun yet to set below the distant mountains, Lucius could pull on a limitless source of Qi to remain alive.

The problem was Ashlock needed to kill Lucius before the sunset, as the moment that sun vanished, his {Progeny Dominion} skill would cancel out, and his fractured soul would return to his main body. He would then feel sleepy as Lucius wasn\'t the only one who relied on sunlight for power.

Lucius yelled out as he stood and tried to pull the swords out one by one. But vines erupted from the ground and coiled around his arms, legs, chest, and neck. Honestly, the fact he was still alive was a testament to light Qi\'s overwhelming healing capabilities.

The sound of muffled screams and breaking bones came from Lucius as the vines tightened, and Titus brought down his remaining hand. However, this time, instead of trying to squash the puny human, Titus formed a cage out of his fingers that blocked the sunlight. Spatial Qi swirled around within the cage and compressed the space, increasing the cage\'s gravity a hundredfold, forcing Lucius\'s forehead to kiss the stone.

Ashlock felt the blinding light within Lucius\'s consciousness begin to dim, allowing him to further invade his mind.

"You brought this upon yourself," Ashlock said, letting his rage engulf the man\'s mind. A storm of pure chaos and wrath manifested around the blinding light, suffocating it like a forewarning for this fool\'s inevitable death.

"Just humor me one question," the light of Lucius\' consciousness asked Ashlock, "Who is truly behind the Ashfallen Trading Company."

"You\'re looking at him."

Lucius raised his head from the stone and locked eyes with the tree blazing with lilac flames directly in front of him.

"Ridiculous," Lucius muttered as his body, skewered by eight swords and half crushed to death, began to break apart and dim, "You claim I will depart from this world not at the tip of an immortal\'s sword or in the mouth of a great beast but to a spirit tree of all things... I can\'t accept it."

"Who said I would let you depart from this world?" Ashlock\'s haunted laughter filled Lucius\'s mind, "The afterlife is too good for the likes of you. Instead, you will serve me for eternity in a new body of my design like these other Ents to repay what you have done."

Lucius\'s eyes widened, "These cursed creatures of wood were once your enemies?" Ashlock could feel the fear festering in his mind. The light of his soul began to glow as he regained his will to resist and tried to struggle against the many restraints keeping him down, but it was useless. The void lake was now within strike range.

"Lucius, this is goodbye... for now," Ashlock said calmly as he mentally ordered hundreds of tendrils to shoot out of the void lake and carry out his execution.

"No, wait!" Lucius cried out as the void lake surrounding his cage lurched at him, "I just want to see the sunset one last time—"

The headless body slumped forward but was kept partially propped up by the eight swords and vines still wrapped around his limbs. Lucius was dead cold and would never see another sunset.

Ashlock created a portal to Red Vine Peak under Lucius\'s corpse and unceremoniously dropped him through. He needed to turn Lucius into an Ent before nightfall to save Diana and heal everyone else injured during this fight, but he wasn\'t foolish enough to rush the process. If creating Khaos had taught him anything, creating a high-ranking Ent without enough Qi stored up was a recipe for disaster.

Thankfully, Ashlock had a freshly butchered spatial cultivator to consume and a forest of Soul Fire offspring to call upon. Using a mixture of telekinesis and his vines to gather Hammond\'s remains, he dumped them through a portal beside his main body as the sun fell behind the distant mountain range.

The moment dusk turned to night, Ashlock felt an intense pull on his fractured soul, ripping it from his progeny and returning it to his body. With sleepiness beginning to rear its ugly head, he wasted no time devouring Hammond\'s remains.

[+1870]

After just minutes, Hammond\'s delicious corpse had been consumed, and Ashlock felt an ungodly rush of power throughout his entire trunk and roots as his Star Core expanded in size, and he went up a stage.

"System!" Ashlock shouted.

[Demonic Demi-Divine Tree (Age: 9)]

[Star Core: 5th Stage]

[Soul Type: Amethyst (Spatial)]

He was now in the 5th stage of the Star Core Realm and had 2,694 sacrificial credits to spend, but more importantly, his Star Core was filled to the brim with Qi, meaning now was the perfect time to turn Lucius into an Ent.