Chapter 33: World Tree

Ashlock had never been a big fan of spiders—so he could only question his decision to summon one. Ashlock looked up in total terror as a spider the size of a large car slowly crawled out of a crack in space. Eight blood-red eyes peeked through the gap, followed by many grey-haired legs.

The worst part? The summoning was happening right above him. So the only place for the spider to go was down... onto his branches. The thought of such a creature crawling around on him made him feel skittish and want to run. But it couldn't—he was a fucking tree.

The courtyard door slammed open as Stella and Diana scrambled into the central courtyard with purple and blue flames lighting up the dark evening. They both had swords drawn, and their heads snapped upward toward the spider crawling from the rift.

"Not again..." Stella murmured as she shuddered.

"What do you mean not again?" Diana gritted her teeth, and mist began to gather around her, "Tell me!"

"This has happened before." Stella stood rooted in place, sword shaking in her hand as the memory of the Worldwalker played in her mind, "But last time, the godlike creature on the other side just looked at me with its terrifying gaze before leaving."

"Is the tree doing this?" Diana's flames flared up as she prepared to fight.

Before Stella could answer—Ashlock flashed his leaf a single time to signal yes.

"Tree said yes." Stella lowered her sword so the tip pointed to the ground, and her flames died down a bit. "It should be fine then."

"You can speak to the tree?" Diana grumbled as she raised her sword, "You trust it way too much. Do you have any idea what this implies?"

"No?" Stella tilted her head. "Tree does many strange things, but I see nothing wrong with it."

"Like what?" Diana glanced at Stella and saw her apprehensiveness to answer, "I promise to tell no one, but this is way more serious than you realize. I need to know the full truth before I devise a plan to save Tree."

"Save Tree?" Stella seemed bewildered, "Is it sick?"

Ashlock was only half listening to the conversation between the two girls and hoped that Diana didn't cut him down or kill his new summon. "I wasted 500 points on this, so even if the thing is creepy as hell, I will still find a use for it!" But the news that there was something wrong with him was worrying. Had she figured out he had a system?

Diana shook her head as half of the spider had crawled out of the rift. "Not sick, but a possible threat to the world." Diana pointed to her jeans, "You see this clothing? It's sold by the merchants. Ever heard of them?"

Stella had heard of them, so she nodded, "Those tiny groups of super powerful cultivators that roam the wilderness in search of secret realms and then sell the artifacts they find at a ridiculous price, but I have never bought anything from them, too expensive—"

"Exactly." Diana cut Stella off as she spoke quickly, "These clothes were part of a set made with artifacts found from secret realms monopolized by the merchants. They will do anything to enter a secret realm and take its contents." Diana then gestured to the rift in space above Ashlock, "And that right there is an opening to a secret realm."

Ashlock felt like he had been hit with a bombshell. Was he opening rifts to other realms? Attracting the attention of these merchants seemed like a terrible idea.

Diana continued without pause since Stella still seemed apprehensive to reveal secrets, "Have you heard about the secret realms and how they formed?"

Stella nervously shook her head and clenched her fists. She didn't like the idea of these merchants coming to take Tree away from her. "No, I never really cared for the secret realms. Only Star Core cultivators can enter them and survive."

"Well, long story short," Diana said as the spider was almost through the rift. "The secret realms are formed by worlds getting too close to each other for a short period, creating an overlap between them. However, this wasn't always the case."

Ashlock tried to distract himself from the incoming spider by listening to Diana's exciting information. The knowledge that there was an overlap between worlds suggested the potential to hope or interact with other worlds. Maybe he could return to Earth one day—but did he even want to? His life on Earth had been cut short, but it was a rather dull life with few friends or family to care for him. "Would I even be able to cultivate back on Earth? Does it have Qi?"

"Back before the current Monarch realms walked this land, all the worlds were held together by a world tree." Diana said with a huff since Stella stared blankly at her, "Stella, this is knowledge you should know! The world tree used to connect all the worlds with its roots, but it sucked up all the Qi for its growth. So everyone banded together to cut its root and unleash the Qi back into this world! Which led to the rise of the cultivators and also the beasts!"

"What is your point?" Stella was clearly baffled.

Diana pointed at Ashlock and shouted, "That is no demonic tree. It's a fucking world tree!"

Stella blinked her eyes, and Ashlock's brain froze.

Was he a world tree? Nowhere in his system did it suggest that... On the contrary, it clearly states that he is a demonic tree. But his system had to have come from somewhere, and so did the items and powers he gained.

"Did I obtain Stella's earrings from a secret realm? Did I pull it through a rift in space and into my inventory?"

Ashlock had no idea what to believe anymore.

Stella rubbed her temples, "So Tree is a baby world tree, and merchants may wish to take him away to gain access to the secret realms?"

Diana nodded, "But not just that! Even the Celestial Empire will want to chop him down—the birth of a new world tree signifies the end of the cultivator era!"

Now, this was just getting out of hand. Ashlock highly doubted he would cause the end of an entire era and ruin the world. But it gave Ashlock some ideas about his system's origin and why he might be a man stuck in a tree.

"Let's think... I consume the Qi from beasts and people, and in return, I get points I can use to summon things—which I now know are likely from secret realms or gaps between worlds. These new skills, items, and summons help me grow, so I can acquire more points to grow even bigger..."

Maybe he was a world-ending tree.

Ashlock looked up again and saw the spider had finished coming through the rift, but if he looked really closely, he could see a tether of Qi, as if the spider was being dragged through the gap with a leash.

With a pop, the rift in space closed, and the spider fell and landed heavily on one of Ashlock's many branches, causing the branch to bend slightly and groan.

"Holy shit, it's heavy."

The spider was the size of a car and weighed as much as one. Yet, surprisingly, it didn't feel as weird as Ashlock had thought, perhaps due to his bark's lack of sensitivity to something as delicate as hairs. Instead, all he felt was eight points of weight spread out over a few branches.

[Name Summon: ???]

"Name?" Ashlock stared at the prompt for a moment. What was an appropriate name to give to a car-sized spider that had been pulled from another dimension?

"I will give it something normal to remove how monstrous it is..." A few generic names flashed through his mind, but a particular name seemed fitting.

"Larry."

[Ash Spider {Larry} has been summoned]

The knowledge of how summons worked flooded Ashlock's mind. He had hoped the creature was something he could summon over and over by spending Qi or daily credits, but after the knowledge from Diana, the fact that it was an actual living creature that, once dead, was dead forever made sense.

He had literally made the system open a rift, dragged some poor creature from its home, and placed it under mind control. "Larry, I will take good care of you, my very creepy-looking but fluffy new friend." Ashlock cast his sight away from the spider and tried to pretend it was a cute dog.

The spider stood there, motionless as if it were a reanimated corpse. Ashlock tried to talk to it in his mind, but nothing happened. "Do I need to do something special..." Ashlock's nonexistent eyes wandered to the thin tether of Qi he could see connecting him and the spider.

Focusing on it, he sent a command, "Take care of yourself and roam the mountain. Catch food outside if you need it, but stay close by."

Ashlock could likely cut the tether and free Larry from the mind control, but he wasn't sure Stella and Diana could survive fighting against a rogue ash spider from some demon realm since it looked rather powerful, even though it was only a C-grade summon.

The spider seemed to come back to life after receiving the order as it looked around. Its many red eyes landed on Maple, who was still sleeping, and it backed away while hissing. Maple opened an eye and glared at it, causing Larry to scurry off across Ashlock's branches with as much elegance as a dump truck.

Stella and Diana both screamed as the massive spider threw itself over their heads while casting a looming shadow, landed in the training courtyard, and then made its way over to the broken wall to leave.

Then a fantastic idea occurred to Ashlock, and he shouted down the mental link he had with Larry, "And bring me some snacks too!"

Happy with getting rid of the creepy spider for a while, Ashlock turned his attention to the two remaining piles of corpses and cast {Devour} on the nearest one. "I wonder what my next reward will be."