[Tree] Chapter 272: World Stage

"Morning, sleepyhead," Ashlock said to Stella as she sluggishly got off the bench and wandered over while yawning and rubbing her eyes.

Her hair was disheveled, and it seemed a few fallen fruits had smacked her on the head in her slumber, judging from the variety of colors staining her blonde hair.

"Morning Tree..." Stella yawned again before smacking herself awake, "Wow, I am exhausted. So... why is everyone shouting so early in the morning? Oh, hi Larry."

Larry waved one of his legs, "Hello, Mistress."

"You look shinier than usual," Stella squinted.

"That's because I am a demi-divine being now."

"Oh... I see," Stella shrugged, "Good for you."

"Thank you, Mistress."

"Why is there smashed fruit everywhere?" Stella grumbled as she reached up to comb her hair out of her face with her fingers, "Ugh, it's even in my hair."

"Ashlock got a little angry that Larry ate his breakfast. Let me help you." Diana summoned a ball of swirling water to her hand.

"What are you talking about—agh!" Stella spluttered as Diana hurled the water in her face, drenching her head to toe. "Diana! What the hell."

"Relax..." Diana drew back the water alongside all the fruit juice and dirt, leaving Stella dry and clean. Discarding the water on the ground, Diana smiled. "See? Isn't that better?"

Stella blinked, clearly wide awake now after being splashed with cold water. "Yes, though I disapprove of your methods."

Diana shrugged as the water she had just discarded rose from the ground toward her hand, "I can always give it back."

Stella vanished and reappeared behind Diana with the blunt side of a dagger's blade pressed against her neck, "Oh yeah?"

"I forgot you could do that," Diana clicked her tongue and let the water drop back to the ground.

"Okay, enough nonsense, you two. We were discussing the beast tide and potential countermeasures. Care to join us, Stella?"

Stella stepped back from Diana and spun the dagger in her fingers before it vanished in a flash of silvery light. "Nah, that sounds like a headache and rather pointless." She frowned, "Wouldn't Ash just win against a wave of monsters? Sounds more like a feast than a threat to me."

"I appreciate your blind trust in me, but this is definitely something we need to plan and discuss. If you don't want to join in, what are you going to do today?"

Stella shrugged, "Train my Disciple, I suppose."

Ashlock could tell Stella was in a bad mood just by how she spoke and acted. She was likely still exhausted from yesterday and was now annoyed because their shouting interrupted her sleep, and water was thrown in her face.

"Sorry to ask this of you, but could you grab a heavenly contract from Kaida and deliver it to the Silverspires while on the way to pick up your Disciple? That's the only task that needed completing today. Oh, and you can return here via a root near Nox."

Stella huffed the freshly dried hair out of her face, "Fine. But no more meetings. I'm done with those for a lifetime."

"Sure, I promise," Ashlock said as Stella vanished from where she stood and reappeared at the entrance to the ink Bastion, where Kaida resided.

Now that she was gone, Ashlock glanced back at the illusionary map cast over the stone pulsing red. The beast tide was most certainly a threat, but with two years to go, that gave him dozens of Mystic Realm visits to power up, and he already had some solutions at his disposal to help him survive.

"You really plan to fight this thing?" Elaine asked seriously.

"What other choice do I have?" Ashlock laughed, "Worst case, I can teleport all of you to another leyline and face the tide alone."

Elaine shook her head, "Stella would kill me if I even suggested leaving you behind. If you are staying, so is she. And therefore, so am I. Whether I like it or not, it seems like fighting this thing is our only option. It may be two years away, but laying down the groundwork for a defense would need to begin today."

That was true. Some things couldn't be rushed, even with Ashlock's powers and the system. Examples included making Bastions and Ents as he needed to farm the credits and find the necessary corpses. The cultivators of the Ashfallen Sect would also need time to cultivate up to Nascent Soul Realm.

"Be honest with me," Elaine looked up into his canopy, "What are your strengths? Since you will be the focal point of our defense, Ashlock, we must work to your strengths and cover your weaknesses."

Ashlock had no intention of sharing anything to do with the system with anyone except Stella and maybe Diana, but he could still give Elaine some clues.

"My strengths? Let's see... I have a massive pool of Qi and can quickly regenerate my reserves by pulling on all my offspring."

Elaine brought out a parchment and made notes. "Big pool of Qi, and you can... pull on your offspring? What does that mean."

"I am linked via my roots to every demonic tree you see, whether on this mountain range or out in the wilderness. I can pull from their Qi reserves to substitute my own. Each may have a small amount of Qi to spare, but it becomes a significant amount when there are thousands of them."

Elaine scratched her head, "I see. But spirit trees cultivate extremely slowly, right? So this must be a one-time thing you can do. I will note it down as a trump card—"

"For a typical spirit tree, cultivation may be slow. But these are my offspring. Not only do they cultivate and grow faster than normal, but during the night, I take them to a dreamscape where their cultivation speed can increase upwards of ten-fold depending on the moon's position."

"Huh?" Elaine glanced at Diana, "Do you understand what he is talking about?"

Diana shrugged, "Not really? It sounds like he takes all his children to an alternate dimension during the night."

"How is that possible? I have never seen him or his offspring go anywhere."

"Trees are mystical beings, Elaine. I have seen him create rifts and drag creatures through them when he was weaker in cultivation than you are now. I stopped trying to understand Ashlock's nonsense a long time ago."

Elaine let out an exaggerated sigh, "Okay, fine. Your main strength is effectively unlimited Qi. That is certainly useful. Anything else?"

"Mhm..." Ashlock ignored his production skills and summons as he didn't consider them his personal strength since they gave him indirect strength through others. But on that topic, he did have something. "I could technically create an army of Ents and Bastions to fight back against the beast tide."

Elaine glanced at Khaos, "I see; what's the cost of making these, and how many could you control?"

"Other than upkeep, they cost me nothing to make. I just need a mostly intact corpse. As for how many I can control, it should be unlimited."

"Unlimited?" Elaine noted that in disbelief, "And no cost to create?"

"Well, the main cost for me is that I gain power from eating corpses, so those I turn into Ents would become external power rather than personal power."

"I fail to see the downside," Elaine grumbled, "Both options result in more power under your control."

Ashlock chuckled, "I suppose so."

"Right, so you have infinite Qi and the ability to turn the beast tide into your own army." Elaine pushed up her glasses, "Dare I ask, is there anything else?"

Ashlock thought for a while. Since this would basically be a war, gathering information and holding down locations would be important. "I can see and project my influence to anywhere within the reach of my roots and unleash my full power through any of my offspring."

"Mhm, yes, how reasonable." Elaine muttered as she noted it down, "So just to be clear, you can fight a faraway battle without even being present? How far do your roots currently go?"

"That is correct, and if I had to guess, my roots currently go around a thousand miles or so in every direction," Ashlock replied, "I am also burrowing deeper as we speak to seek out the leyline."

"Fascinating, anything else?"

Ashlock thought awhile, "I can kill things with my roots and void tendrils. I can also turn small areas into bubbles of a certain affinity by overlapping a pocket realm. I think that's about it other than the strength of the Ashfallen Sect."

The scratching sound of Elaine's quill was deafening as she noted everything down. Ashlock felt like he was taking a test and being graded for his worthiness. It didn't help that Elaine kept pulling different faces between disbelief and resignation. She finally laid the quill to rest and pushed up her glasses.

"Despite your ridiculous advantages, survival is still not assured. The weaker waves of beasts can be ignored since you have infinite Qi to deal with them and can create an army of your own." Elaine mused, "However, there is still the issue of the Nascent Soul Realm and possibly even Monarch Realm monsters. You seem to lack direct attack power compared to your other advantages, so those strong monsters still pose a significant threat."

Elaine clicked her fingers, and the illusion rose from the ground, becoming a three-dimensional map. Zooming in by spreading her hands, Ashlock could see a vague reconstruction of Red Vine Peak with a projection of him at the top of the mountain. Purple glowing lines that he assumed represented his roots began to sprawl through the mountain. Some spread outward in all cardinal directions, while others continued into the depths.

"Unlike you, I don't have my presence spread out for a thousand miles, so most of this is guesswork." Elaine clapped her hands, the map zoomed out to show the leylines, and Ashlock could see his purple roots sprawl out. "From the maps I have seen, this is around where I would guess your roots reach as of now."

It was nowhere near as big of an area as he expected. In fact, his roots barely touched the edges of the thick leyline upon which he was growing.

"No wonder I never saw these mortal cities nestled between the leylines, as I haven't even left the area of my own. However, I am getting close to the leyline along which the Tainted Cloud Sect is built." Ashlock's gaze drifted to the South, "Meanwhile, the Celestial Empire might as well be on another continent. It's so far away."

When shown his presence on the world stage, Ashlock didn't know how to feel. With Larry's evolution, the Ashfallen Sect was undoubtedly a powerhouse of the region, but there was still so much out there.

"I might have a way we can win for certain," Elaine said as she circled the illusion while biting her thumb.

"Really?"

Elaine gestured to the spiritual spring to the North that was easily ten times further away than his roots currently reached, "Do you think you could grow your roots to reach the spiritual spring before the beast tide begins?"

"If I had to guess, I can grow a few miles daily. So yes, I could reach there in a year."

The purple roots on the map spread up the leyline and intersected the spiritual spring to the North.

Elaine tapped the pulsing red area, "This is where we will fight. As far away from your immobile body on Red Vine Peak as possible. This way, we can fight without risk."

"How so?" Diana asked while squinting at the map, "It's pulsing red because it's dangerous. The beasts are concentrated there. It's easier to deal with them when they come in small groups or alone while in the tide."

"No, I can see what she is thinking. Very clever." Ashlock sighed at how blind and defensive his thinking had been. "I blame it on being a tree. While you humans instinctively flee danger, I only considered facing it head-on. Launching an assault on the beast tide before it began never occurred to me."

Elaine nodded, "Ashlock, your main advantage is turning monsters into allies and being capable of fighting wherever your roots are. This gives you a unique way of fighting. Pardon my analogy, but your fighting style is reminiscent of rot. If you sent Larry or anyone else capable of killing a single Nascent Soul monster through your roots, they could ambush the monster, kill it, and then flee. You could then turn the corpse into an Ent and have it wear down or kill the other Nascent Soul level monsters in the spiritual spring. Every monster that succumbs to your persistent assaults joins your power."

"Slowly, the beast tide would become under my control..."

It was a great plan. One with minimal risk and maximum gain. Ashlock had been ready to hunker down and fight the beast tide on his own terms, but if he could carve out an area of the spiritual spring, grow a forest of demonic trees, and wreak havoc there. It might even be too easy.

"Elaine, this is a great plan. There's just a few slight issues." Diana sighed.

"What are they?"

"Larry's main way to attack is by decaying things to ash. I assume you can't turn a pile of divine ash back into a monster?" Diana asked Ashlock's canopy.

"That's true. I need a mostly intact corpse," Ashlock replied.

"That's what I thought... and although you can fight anywhere your roots are, would you be capable of killing a Nascent Soul Realm monster away from your offspring?"

"No, over my roots, the best I can do is make portals, lock monsters in place with Spatial Lock, and attack them with spatial Qi. Even if I am in the Nascent Soul Realm, I doubt I could defeat such a monster with these methods alone in the spiritual spring, which will be overflowing with other Qi types."

Diana crossed her arms, "So we need someone that isn't Larry or Ashlock in the Nascent Soul Realm that can go and hunt monsters far away. A few come to mind, such as Maple, the Silverspire Grand Elder, or perhaps one of us if we get that powerful within the next year, but I propose we kill two birds with one stone and make an Ent out of a certain someone."

"You can't mean..." Elaine muttered.

Diana grinned, showing her fans, "Wouldn't turning the Blood Lotus Patriarch, Vincent Nightrose, into an Ent solve all our issues?"