[Tree] Chapter 327: Void Reapers (Patreon)

Despite being downed, the Eclipse Behemoth continued to put up a fight.

"I guess a Nascent Soul Realm monster wouldn't be so easy to kill," Ashlock grumbled. Through his spiritual sight, he could vaguely see the flow of Qi as the veil of darkness began pouring toward the monster.

"It's using Darkness Absorption to heal," Nox informed him, "and if the amount of shadow Qi around us is anything to go by, this monster might as well be immortal."

Sure enough, the crimson flames dancing across its flesh turned black, and its badly damaged leg rapidly healed. It was slower than Sol's healing with light Qi but was still quite impressive.

Nox whistled, "It knows Dark Flame Manipulation as well."

"I should avoid imbuing my attacks with fire dao then," Ashlock said as he lowered the Bastion toward the monster's chest as it lay on its back. Just in case the beast knew Shadow Step, he cast Spatial Lock. Unsurprisingly, matching the Eclipse Behemoth's soul pulses was a breeze when he used the weight of his Inner World.

With the monster unable to teleport away and pinned down by his presence, all he had to do was take care of the limbs and stop the Eclipse Behemoth from regenerating.

Targeting each limb's joints and the monster's neck, he unleashed Spatial Blades, this time imbued with earth dao to hopefully make the attacks harder to heal. As if a spectral reaper manifested from his Qi, reality tore apart and cut deeply into the monster.

"Despite my immense Qi regeneration, the drain from these and Nox's earlier attack is significant. This accursed veil of shadow all around us eats away at my attacks, making them less effective unless I pour a ridiculous amount of Qi into them," Ashlock lamented. This was why fighting monsters in these pocket realms was always a pain, as they fought on their home ground, where they had a massive advantage.

Of course, the fact that he could exert such power through a proxy with no danger to himself was pretty unfair to the monsters, but whoever said life was fair? This was the power of an S-grade skill that he had to kill many things to afford and a level of cultivation he had gone through numerous trials to reach.

Speaking of skills, he had just the one to stop the monster's regeneration.

{Abyssal Devourer [A]}

"I had thought of making you an Ent, but you just had to seal your fate as my food by refusing to roll over and die for me," Ashlock sighed. He had no use for a corpse that would be half-eaten by the void when he was finished with it.

Ramming the Bastion into the monster's chest, which was so vast, it felt like landing on an alien planet. He activated his upgraded version of Consuming Abyss. The void lake spread out faster than before. It blanketed the Bastion in seconds, and numerous void tendrils rose from its depths. This was followed by thick thorn-covered vines wreathed in a corrosive aura that devoured Qi and returned it to Ashlock. The writhing mass of tendrils and vines flowed over the sides of the Bastion and, like anchors, dug into the Eclipse Behemoth.

Shadow Qi and life force were drained out of the monster down the vines and tendrils into the Bastion's core, where they were then redistributed to Nox and Ashlock.

"This is an impressive amount of Qi! Almost as much as I receive from the World Tree. Likely because I am draining the monster alive without restraint." Ashlock could also feel the flow of life force heading toward his Inner World. It felt refreshing. "I wonder what effects life force will have on my Inner World? Will it cause wildlife to appear, or will it accelerate the growth of nature—"

Ashlock's thoughts were interrupted as the Bastion shook because the monster unleashed a belly-deep roar of pain. The vines strained to keep the Bastion locked onto the monster's chest as it tried to shake off the leech on its body.

"Oh no you don't," Ashlock used some of the Qi he had drained from the monster to once again unleash a barrage of Spatial Blades at the monster's joints. However, this time was different. As if the monster had anticipated his attack, the shadow Qi around the joints had hardened into something solid. It looked very similar to the technique Nox had used to block Stella's attacks long ago. His Spatial Blades still managed to tear through the shadows but barely left a wound on the joints.

"Shadow Armor," Nox said, "Would be far too Qi intensive for a monster of this size to cover its whole body, but it can protect weak points with it."

"Annoying. Why does it insist on dragging out its death," Ashlock complained as he remembered how irritating Nox had been to kill. If only he had Sol with him right now and hadn't agreed to send the Ent with Jasmine, this fight would be over already.

Ashlock didn't want to waste any more Qi than he had to on keeping a struggling monster pinned to the ground. But it seemed the Eclipse Behemoth had underestimated him and was now showing off the true capabilities of a Nascent Soul Realm monster.

"To think there will be a whole wave of monsters at this level in the beast tide."

It was an almost tiring thought.

Before the Shadow Armor around the joints reformed, the Bastion core glowed with power as Ashlock unleashed another round of Spatial Blades, this time cutting deep. The wound began healing immediately as shadow Qi poured into the fissures in the monster's scales, furthering Ashlock's growing impatience.

A loud groan reverberated from the monster, and everything began to move. Despite its wounds, it shifted its weight. Like a tsunami of shadows, the monster's body rose as it heaved its titanic body into a sitting position and loomed over them. Shadow Armor coated its entire head as it opened its maw that could swallow the world, and light began to bloom in the abyss of its throat.

"Okay, this is getting ridiculous."

Ashlock had to come up with a new attack strategy. The Bastion moved too slowly to dodge the attack. The shield had shown it wouldn't hold against the light beam no matter how much Qi he shoved into it, and Spatial Blades were ineffective as the monster healed too fast.

"Perhaps {Voidstorm Aegis [S]} can block the light beam, but then what? We will be back to square one." Ashlock paused, "Wait, the void is perfect for piercing defenses. I should call on Khaos and the other void Ents."

Quickly switching his view to his main body, he opened a portal on Red Vine Peak. Khaos, who was very distinct from the other void Ent standing beside her due to her missing her head and having four arms, was standing guard alongside the four lunar Ents and one void Ent. Ashlock briefly debated telling the lunar Ents to also go through, but he wasn't even sure if there was a moon in the pocket realm, so he decided they were best left here as they would be crippled due to the environment.

"Just Khaos won't be enough," his vision blurred again as he went through his roots to check on the Voidmind residence. The three other void reapers he had left there stood silently in the empty room. Morrigan was nowhere to be seen.

"Come assist me," Ashlock told the Ents, and in unison, they moved toward a portal, brandishing their meter-long claws. They phased through the portal with a whisper and reappeared on the Bastion.

Ashlock closed the portals. "Kill the monster," he glanced up and noticed only its eyes were uncovered in Shadow Armor, "target its eyes and then destroy it from within."

Khaos vanished along with the others as they used Void Step. For whatever reason, they reappeared near the monster's neck and were unable to Void Step all the way to its head. The monster seemed to notice the new threats silently rushing up its neck toward its head.

Ashlock noticed the monster swinging its massive claw from the shadow veil in time to open a dozen portals and use telekinesis to control a dozen swords wreathed in spatial flames and the weight of his Inner World with a focus on metal dao to sharpen their edge.

The swords impacted the swinging arm, and despite how tiny they looked compared to the arm's massive size, the force caused the monster's arm to snap back the other way with a sickening crunch.

"So that's what getting hit with the weight of an Inner World looks like," Ashlock mused as he dialed up his spiritual pressure to use the monster's instability and push it back onto its back. The world trembled once more as the titan fell and was now aiming its light beam uselessly at the sky.

The void reapers, as he had decided to call them, were making swift progress, which seemed to concern the monster. The Shadow Armor around its neck began to shift into a liquid resembling oil, and from the liquid darkness rose fiends—abominations halfway between humanoid and beast comprised of haunted darkness. As if to mirror their creator's size, these fiends towered over the approaching void reapers.

Khaos and the others began tearing into them, but the wall of living shadows kept reforming faster than the Ents could cut through the void. "Shit, what can I do?" Ashlock could barely even see that far away through the shadow veil pouring into the monster, let alone assist his Ents.

"Two can play at that game," Nox stood at the bow of the Bastion and punched at the shadow shield of the Bastion. An accursed bird of darkness manifested from the shadow Qi and shot out toward the other fiends. Nox didn't stop there. She kept punching at the shield until a horde of shadow birds soared across the Eclipse Behemoth's chest into the wall of fiends and viciously attacked them.

"Nice one," Ashlock said as he saw Khaos use the distraction to carve a path straight toward the monster's eye, but that is when Ashlock lost sight of them. As the beast had fallen, the furthest his spiritual sight could penetrate was the top of the monster's maw, which was still glowing like a sun as the attack powered up.

"Just doing my part to pay you back," Nox slightly bowed, "Oh, and this monster deserves it. Any shadow cultivator that uses shadow Qi to trap light is an insult. If anyone in my family showed interest in such techniques, I wouldn't be surprised if my father struck them down where they stood."

Ashlock sometimes forgot how intertwined with their Qi-type cultivators became, as his spatial Qi didn't affect him that much. If a cultivator's soul was altered to take in shadow Qi, it made sense that shadow cultivators would have a natural hatred for their main weakness, light Qi. Taking in and trying to co-exist with their enemy must seem disgusting to them.

There was a sudden pained and panicked roar from the Eclipse Behemoth, followed by it tensing up and thrashing around its head. "I think Khaos found a way in." The monster let out one last groan before its head fell back with a crash. The light gathering in its mouth dimmed, and the shadow fiends on its neck faded away in the wind. The shadow veil slowly lifted, revealing Khaos emerging from the Eclipse Behemoth's eye with yellow blood dripping from the end of her four arms.

"Looks like we won," Nox said with relief. "If that monster hadn't underestimated us from the start, we might have struggled to leave even a dent, let alone kill it."

"That's always been the advantage of fighting monsters over cultivators," Ashlock replied, "One is far more cunning than the other. Monsters tend to believe in their strength more than they should."

Nox nodded in agreement.

"It was quite an impressive fight. You two should be proud."

Nox spun around, and Ashlock looked to where the voice had come from. Leaning casually under the shadow tree with her eyes closed was Morrigan, Elaine's mother and someone who should not be here.

"Why are you here?" Ashlock asked and was glad he no longer had a heart; otherwise, her sudden appearance would have given him a heart attack.

Morrigan barely opened her eyes. "Can I not be?"

"I gave you truffles with the agreement that you would manage the Voidmind residence."

"That was indeed our agreement," Morrigan smiled slightly, "so would you agree that as long as no problems befall the residence, it is being managed as per our agreement?"

"I suppose so?"

"Then there's no problem with me being here. I have it all handled."

"How?" Ashlock didn't believe her. When he had checked the residence earlier, it was empty, and now he had pulled all of the void Ents to this pocket realm. There was nobody left guarding or managing the place.

"Darling, I have lived long enough to not let some distance stop me from fulfilling my goals and duties." Morrigan fully opened her eyes, "You're here, and Red Vine Peak is fine, is it not?"

"Yes, but we are different..."

Morrigan smirked, "Are we?"

Ashlock thought back to the moment he saw her extra row of teeth. Whatever Morrigan was, it certainly wasn't human. Which, from what Senior Lee suggested, wouldn't be so strange on the upper layers of creation but down here on the lowest level? It was certainly suspicious. Especially since void cultivators were supposed to be cursed to remain below the Nascent Soul Realm, yet Morrigan gave him a sense of indescribable danger.

"What are you then?" Ashlock asked, "Are you even human?"

Morrigan giggled, "I'm Elaine's mother, darling. That's all you need to know."

"Fine. But seriously, why are you here?"

"I was bored," Morrigan replied bluntly.

"Bored?"

Morrigan closed her eyes and leaned back on the tree. "Yes, I heard all this discussion about a Mystic Realm trip, and then I was left alone in an empty residence with your silent creations and nothing to do. So when a portal opened in the residence, I went through it to see if there was anything fun on the other side."

"So, will you go back now?"

"No," Morrigan sat down, eyes still closed as if she was going to sleep. "Don't mind me, I won't interfere. But if you want to find the Dark Throne, it should be that way through a few shadow rifts and past the spectral tombs." Morrigan lazily pointed off to the left before dropping her hand.

"Dark Throne? What's that? Have you been here before?"

"The one who controls the throne becomes the ruler of the darkness," Morrigan yawned and ignored the rest of his question as she fell asleep.

"What a strange woman, I still can't get a read on her," Ashlock sighed. What a headache. He had enough to deal with already, and now he had an unhinged passenger with unknown motives other than to quell her boredom. "But this Dark Throne does sound quite interesting. Is it an inheritance of some kind?"

With the Eclipse Behemoth dead, over the next few hours, Ashlock finished devouring its gargantuan body alongside the shadow veil. The whole pocket realm was still shrouded in a permanent darkness, but now he could see.

Sure enough, in the direction Morrigan had pointed earlier, there was an obsidian castle of such impressive size that it made him realize the Eclipse Behemoth had merely been the guard dog. If so, what terrible monsters could be awaiting him inside that were guarding this Dark Throne and the Spectral Tombs Morrigan mentioned?

"Maybe I should call in more backup," Ashlock wondered as the results of devouring the Eclipse Behemoth flashed in his mind.

[+1298 SC]

"So many? That monster might have even been at the third stage of the Nascent Soul Realm," Ashlock mused as he brought up his sign-in system to check his total.

Idletree Daily Sign-In System

Day: 3626

Daily Credit: 60

Sacrifice Credit: 2143

[Sign in?]

"Up to over 2000 credits," Ashlock looked to the castle and wondered if he would need to upgrade one of his skills or perhaps do a gacha draw to beat it. As the Bastion floated up and toward the castle, he brought up his list of skills to see what he could upgrade but got distracted by something.

"Is that... a person?" Ashlock saw a tiny speck that soon revealed itself as a black-haired woman soaring toward them on a sword wreathed in shadows.