Ashlock glared at the pile of corpses of abominations that was about a person high. He had been expecting a bit more, considering Stella had been away for a year, but it was still a substantial amount.
Most surprising to Ashlock was that he could maintain his rationality in the face of so much food. The hunger was gnawing away at his brain, like a terrible itch inside his mind. But it was resistible. For how long? Ashlock didn't know, but he had an opportunity here.
"If I can resist consuming all the corpses at once, I can avoid an S-grade draw." The horror of the Worldwalkers alien gaze still sent shivers down Ashlock's bark. "All I need to do is separate the corpses into smaller piles somehow."
Ashlock could try {Devour} each corpse one at a time, but he didn't trust in his ability to maintain his rationality for much longer. His instincts as a demonic tree to consume were overtaking his logical human mind. With the option of eating one corpse at a time off the table, Ashlock looked at his skill list, and his newest skill {Root Puppet}, stood out.
Identifying the most suitable corpse from the pile of bodies for his plan. Ashlock cast {Root Puppet} on a mutated gorilla. Only its top half was poking out of the heap, so he silently prayed that the corpse still had its legs intact.
Using {Root Puppet} on the bird corpse a while ago confirmed a few things to Ashlock. Such as he needed an intact corpse with its flesh and bones—otherwise, it's far too unstable and struggles to balance while walking.
A thin black root broke up from the soil and snaked toward the gorilla monster's slightly ajar mouth. Now that Ashlock got a closer look, all the beasts in the pile could be mirrored to something from Earth but were also different enough from anything he had ever seen before to doubt this was another planet.
For example, the gorilla monster had ten clawed fingers per hand, for a total of twenty. A third eye was also located in the back of its skull, but it was snake-like with a slit pupil.
It took a few minutes to turn the large monster into a {Root Puppet}, but to Ashlock, it felt like days. Resisting the overwhelming hunger consuming his mind was more challenging than staying awake during the dark and cold winter.
The pile of corpses shifted as Ashlock took control of the gorilla. It felt like millions of hair-thin roots had infiltrated every inch of the monster, and with the skill doing most of the work, Ashlock could make the beast rise.
And that is where some new problems arose. In usual necromancy, the corpse would be powered by mana, but in this world, there was no mana—only Qi.
The beast naturally needed a type of fuel to stand and move around. The dormant beast core inside the gorilla hummed to life, but thin cracks started forming on its surface as Qi flooded the body. Finally, it stood on its hind legs while shrugging off all the other corpses; Ashlock could control it—although it still had that terrifying jitteriness that the bird had suffered from. Which made complex movements a pipe dream.
Ashlock directed the gorilla to shove the corpses into three distinct piles. If he had to guess, there were over a thousand sacrifice credits up for grabs here, but he didn't wish to draw an S grade or even an A grade skill.
Ashlock believed he needed a wider diversity of options, and by splitting it into three draws, he would hopefully achieve just that. It took a while, but the gorilla was incredibly strong, easily able to haul a few corpses at a time by skewering them with its many claws and dragging them into piles.
It was at this moment the door to the courtyard opened, and Stella strode in with a beaming smile, but she almost missed a step in surprise as she noticed one of the corpses moving around. A sword instantly appeared in her hand, shrouded in her purple flames. Ashlock couldn't even react in time as she teleported and thrust the sword straight through the gorilla's chest.
Ashlock tried to signal Stella that the gorilla was friendly by flashing his leaves with lilac flames twice, but she wasn't looking at him. Instead, her focus was entirely on the moving corpse. She twisted the sword before pulling it out and dragging out a good chunk of the gorilla's chest.
Old blood poured from the wound, which clearly smelled foul as Stella's nose wrinkled up, and she took a few steps back, bloodied sword at the ready. Then, keeping one eye on the beast, her other wandered to Ashlock, and her brows furrowed, seeing him flashing no with his leaves.
"No?" She tilted her head in confusion, scrutinizing the beast once more. It just stood there, its eyes unmoving like a corpse—a black root snaked up its leg, across its chest, and into the side of its mouth. "Are you controlling this thing? Make it raise its arm's if you are."
Ashlock complied, and the gorilla raised its clawed arms above its head, seemingly unbothered by the hole in its chest. In fact, Ashlock was curious how Stella had even killed the gorilla out in the wilderness since it lacked any surface wounds and the only weapon she used was a sword or daggers.
A question for another time. Right now, he needed to calm Stella down. The gorilla slowly lowered its hands, pointed at itself, and then at Ashlock a few times with jittery movements.
Stella lowered her sword, flicking it once to get rid of the sickly blood, and looked around at the three neat piles of corpses. She shook her head with a smile, "Tree, you have done something crazy again. What kind of demonic tree can control its food?" She couldn't hold back her giggling as she walked toward the gorilla, "And you made it organize your food! What a glutton, hahaha!"
She was practically wiping tears from her eyes at how ridiculous the situation was. Ashlock ignored her amusement at his expense since he felt his time with the gorilla was running out. The beast core inside was moments away from cracking—
A mini explosion went off inside the gorilla as the beast's core shattered. Qi rushed out of the freshly made hole by Stella's sword and made the girl take a step back as the gorilla briefly faltered.
Then Ashlock felt it. When he had used {Root Puppet} on the bird, it had demanded Qi from him to move, but due to the bird's tiny size, it was hardly noticeable.
Whereas the gorilla was the size of three adult men. Ashlock felt an ungodly pull like a vacuum as Qi was pulled from his humming Soul Core and transferred to the gorilla. "It's going to explode again, isn't it."
Last time, when he had pushed so much Qi into the bird, it had exploded as his Qi reacted with the ambient Qi left in the bird's meat, causing a rapid decay, and finally, when the heat and pressure got too much, an explosion occurred.
Stella watched as the gorilla lit up like a touch with lilac flames. Then, it stumbled to the side as its meat began to sizzle and fall off the bone. Stella quickly took a few more steps back and seemed to realize something, "Oh, Tree! You are the one who caused that explosion! I should have realized it sooner."
Ashlock naturally cut the connection to the gorilla as soon as possible to avoid it exploding. However, he knew something like this might occur, so he'd left a corpse on the far side of the courtyard to be used later as he still wanted to try and communicate with Stella by drawing in the dirt or on a slab or stone.
The gorilla tumbled to the ground like a puppet cut from its strings, and the lilac flames died out shortly after. The smell of burnt meat filled the courtyard as the corpse kept sizzling for a bit longer.
Unable to hold back his hunger anymore, Ashlock targeted the gorilla and the pile of corpses closest to it. Black vines erupted through the cracks in the broken runic formation and mummified the heap.
The sound of snapping bones like fireworks echoed out as the black vines slowly wrapped around the pile like a coiling viper, crushing the corpses and secreting a dissolving fluid.
Stella walked passed the mess and slothfully laid down on the oak bench. "I hope you like the food, although most of it was caught by Maple since the monsters out there in the wilderness are far too strong for me." She let out a long sigh, "But hopefully, Diana will teach me some techniques, and then ill be far stronger than I am now."
Ashlock only half listened to the girl's ramblings as he relished in the rush of Qi traveling down the vines and into his trunk. "Maybe after all this, I will even go up a stage in the Soul Fire realm?"
Stella talked for a few more hours, but after a while, she got up to train with Diana, giving Ashlock some much-needed peace.
[+500 SC]
The notification came right as the black vines retreated into the ground. Ashlock still felt hungry with all the corpses waiting to be eaten, so he quickly summoned his sign-in system.
Idletree Daily Sign-In System
Day: 3149
Daily Credit: 1
Sacrifice Credit: 500
[Sign in?]
Without hesitation, Ashlock decided to sign in.
[Sign in successful, 501 credits consumed…]
[Unlocked a C-grade Summon: Ash Spider]
"A C grade summon?" Ashlock was left scratching his nonexistent head in confusion. Why had 500 credits given him such a low-grade thing? From his previous experiments, a C grade draw was usually in the 100 credit range, whereas 500 credits were in the A grade range.
Thinking back, the only other time Ashlock had gotten a summon was the Worldwalker, a supposed S grade for 2600 points. "Actually... what if the different reward types cost a different number of credits? Would summons cost the most, while items cost the least?"
Now Ashlock was once again left stumped. The system seemed so straightforward, but a few mysteries remained unsolved. Ashlock pushed those thoughts away and focused on his new summon, as he had never gotten the chance to use one before. How did summoning something differ from a skill, for example? He had no idea.
[Summon: Ash Spider? Yes/No]
Like the last time he unlocked a summon, a system notification floated in his mind. Naturally, Ashlock mentally pressed yes.
A rift in space, this time much smaller, about the size of a human, opened above Ashlock's branches, and many grey-haired limbs crawled through.
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