Red Vine Peak trembled as many enormous worms circled its base below the surface.

After a week of doing nothing but meditating and training with Elaine, Ashlock's Star Core had been brimming with Qi. Annoyingly this Qi was now being shoved down his roots and into the mountain to stave off the worms.

"Why the fuck is that worm back here?" Ashlock cursed, "And where the hell did it get friends?"

Although the other worms weren't as large or powerful, there were far too many to count, and they were still in the Soul Fire Realm, meaning they were still a threat if they attacked all at once.

"It's fine... they seem unable to dig up through the mountain so long as I keep pumping it full of spatial Qi. I have so many roots throughout this lump of rock I call home that it's an impenetrable fortress for these worms so long as I have Qi on hand." Ashlock mulled as he tried to mentally calculate a way out of his situation.

Things were okay for now, but there was still a full day and night until the mystic realm disappeared, and everyone came back out.

However, he didn't even know if they could make a difference. Even with powerups, he suspected they would struggle to deal with the Star Core worm just like last time due to its ability to stay underground.

"If only Douglas was stronger... or Elaine. Her void affinity would be beneficial here." Ashlock's gaze drifted to Elaine, who was cluelessly swinging her sword around. She didn't even seem to notice the trembling of the mountain, or perhaps she assumed it was his doing?

Sighing deeply at the useless ally he was stuck with, Ashlock kept his vision below ground and tracked the worm's movements. They were like sharks circling a wrecked ship.

There were multiple problems. Ashlock only had enough Qi to keep the eight-thousand-meter-tall mountain full of spatial Qi for a day at most, and that wasn't even the biggest concern.

"The White Stone Palace is mostly undefended with all the Elders gone." Ashlock could open portals to get the Redclaw youngsters to safety, but who was to order them around? All the Elders had gone into the mystic realm.

"Maybe I should have suggested the Grand Elder left one of the Elders behind..." Ashlock realized that had been a slight oversight on his part, but that was something to keep in mind for the future. Right now, he needed solutions.

Red Vine Peak was safe for the next few hours due to his spatial Qi, but those worms were totally free to attack the White Stone Palace or even ignore the mountains completely and go gobble up all the people in Darklight City.

"All I have on hand to fight is Larry and myself. Everyone else that could fight is in the mystic realm for another day... shit." Ashlock tried to keep calm, but it was hard. If he ran out of spatial Qi and the Star Core worm traveled up the massive hole it had made last time, it could aim for him this time and eat him in one bite. Only a mile of spatial Qi-filled roots under the mountain kept it at bay.

Hours of stress passed, and by late evening something had changed. The worms had stopped circling the mountain, perhaps because they deemed there would be no end to the spatial Qi, and they began to target something else.

His children.

Ashlock felt a wave of pain and fear through the mycelium network as the mountain range between Red Vine Peak and the peak with the White Stone Palace became the hunting grounds for the worms.

He watched in horror as a worm surged up through the rock like a great white shark and swallowed up a demonic tree as if it were a tasty fish. Other than the immense pain Ashlock felt through the network as his child was ripped from the network, shivers ran through his mind hearing his child's bark cracking as it was devoured by the monster's thousands of teeth.

"You fucker." Ashlock's mind grew deathly cold with fury. The air around his swallowed child became drenched in spatial Qi as he unleashed spatial blades that tore through the exposed worm whose mouth was still enclosed around the tree with only its scarlet leaves poking out of the top.

As this worm was only in the Soul Fire Realm, its earth Qi that rippled across its body did little to block the sliced space. As if attacked by a hundred invisible blades, large wounds opened up on the worm's body all at once, and blood spewed out, covering the nearby demonic trees.

A wave of happiness spread through the mycelium network due to the shower of blood, and seeing the worm reduced to a bloody pulp restored some emotion to Ashlock's mind. Quickly, he checked his Qi reserves and cursed, seeing how much that stunt had cost him.

"Shaved about half an hour off my Qi reserves... I can't do that for every worm that surfaces and tries to eat my children. Fuck." Ashlock hated it as he felt the mountain range tremble again, and more worms surged up through the rock and enveloped helpless demonic trees in their jaws.

As this scene played out, Ashlock saw a bunch of Redclaws standing at the entrance to the White Stone Palace and watching the carnage unfold with fear in their eyes.

Weak was his only thought. They were nothing but cannon fodder and an irritant for him to think about while watching his children get slaughtered. If they were stronger, maybe they could step in and help.

Ashlock decided, perhaps against his better judgment, to kill the worms but tried to keep it as Qi-efficient as possible. His idea was that if he could portal the corpses back to his main body, he could use {Consuming Abyss} to convert them into sacrificial credits and Qi.

"Larry." He said through the black tether, and his ever-faithful spider perked up. "Yes, oh gracious master? Your will is my command."

"Go out there and slaughter the worms that are feasting on my offspring. But make sure to stay close and keep your senses open. I may need you to return here quickly if the Star Core Worm somehow gets through my spatial Qi-filled roots and aims for my trunk." Ashlock rattled off quickly while half distracted with dragging the corpse of the first worm he had killed through a newly formed rift.

"As you wish, master"

The worm corpse fell through as the rift materialized overhead with a thud, but so did something else he hadn't been expecting. The corpse exploded open, and a smaller worm wiggled out and tried to lash at Ashlock.

Elaine screamed and uselessly raised her sword. Luckily Ashlock had been half expecting some nonsense when he opened the portal, as he had learned from the last few times that portals opened him up to counterattacks, so he had his mind ready to activate the void version of {Consuming Abyss} at the first sign of trouble.

The worm didn't even make it a few meters before the stone surrounding Ashlock turned black as a lake of void spread out from his trunk, and a hundred tendrils of void shot out and impaled the worm. A screech escaped its body as it deflated like a pierced balloon and died.

With two corpses to consume for Qi, Ashlock wrapped them in black vines, and within moments, he saw the familiar notification of sacrificial credits.

[+280]

"That's not too shabby," Ashlock mused, noticing he had recovered all the Qi he had wasted by devouring their corpses.

With the immediate threat dealt with, Larry scurried through the concealment array and into the demonic tree forest growing on the mountainside to fulfill his master's orders.

Almost immediately, the giant spider seemingly felt a rumbling below and managed to impressively leap to a nearby tree. The worm that had missed its prey screeched as Larry sunk his two fangs into its side, easily shattering any pathetic earth Qi defenses it had tried to muster up.

"Once out of the ground, they are quite weak," Ashlock noted. The problem was getting the Star Core worm to come above ground without him being the tree in its mouth. Last time he had baited it with a large gathering of Qi off to the side, so it missed him, but he feared that cheap trick wouldn't work again.

Putting those thought's aside, Ashlock tried to ignore the waves of fear and misery through the mycelium network. He knew his children were suffering for his gain.

Screeches rang out as Ashlock sliced another five worms to deathhis spatial Qi blades easily cut through their own Qi defenses and their slimy poison-coated skin.

There wasn't much wind today, so the poison from the slain worms lingered more than Ashlock would like as they burned the bark and killed the leaves of his children as they didn't share the same poison resistance that he did.

If he didn't kill the worms, they would chew his children to shreds, and if he did, their poison burned them alive. It was a truly fucked up situation.

"Why are the worms even targeting my children?" Ashlock wondered as he opened portals and deposited the fresh corpses on the mountain peak to be consumed. "Is it because they noticed my children were feeding me Qi, and they think if they kill my children, then they can reach me?"

If so, that was terribly concerning. Not because killing a few hundred of his children would make a huge difference on his Qi supply, but because that level of planning suggested intelligence, and the last thing Ashlock wanted was to face a wave of powerful beasts all smart enough to find ways around his defenses and kill him.

[+570]

Ashlock's eyes went wide at the system notification. Despite all the suffering around him, it was hard to ignore the monumental gains.

He had been hoping to devour the Star Core worm for a thousand credits, but after eating just seven of the smaller ones...

"System! Show my credits."

Idletree Daily Sign-In System

Day: 3521

Daily Credit: 17

Sacrifice Credit: 952

[Sign in?]

"Holy shit, that's nearly enough for an S-grade draw already." Ashlock turned his attention back to the mountain in search of more prey. This felt like some special event in a game where he could harvest a stupid amount of exp.

Alas, real life wasn't a game. It seemed the constant rumbling had awoken someone he really didn't want getting involved.

Standing on the wall of the White Stone Palace was Sebastian. His silver hair shone in the evening sunlight as a stream of silver liquid orbited his body. He coldly appraised the situation, and when a worm got a bit too close to the White Stone Palace's entrance and looked like it was aiming for the Redclaws, the stream of liquid shot out and skewered the worm straight through and came out bloody on the other side.

It then cycled back and returned to orbiting around Sebastian. The butler then waved his hand covered in many silver rings, and the body vanished.

"Fucker is stealing my credits," Ashlock grumbled. On the one hand, he was glad to have another ally that could protect the Redclaws so he could focus on saving his children, but on the other... his precious credits.

What followed was a hunting contest between man and tree.

Their target? The hundreds of worms hellbent on eating any human they caught a whiff of, the Redclaws and Sebastian included, or committing the most heinous crime... deforestation.

Being in the Star Core Realm, Sebastian could whizz around on a blade of pure silver and slaughter the worms faster than Ashlock could see. There was a constant whistling noise as the stream of silver flew through the tree's canopies, skewing the vile creatures.

Ashlock didn't even have a chance to try and open a portal and steal the corpse as they kept vanishing into the butler's spatial rings to stop the poison from spreading... So leaving the worms closer to the White Stone Palace to him, Ashlock focused on working with Larry to kill as many closer to Red Vine Peak as possible.

[+170]

[+335]

[+237]

[+115]

Sacrificial credits were flying in faster than he had ever seen before, and he was so distracted he didn't notice until he felt a sudden pain that something was wrong.

Blinded by his greed and the seemingly free lunch before him, he hadn't been keeping track of the Star Core worm as much as he should have. For hours, the worm had remained seemingly dormant below the range of his roots and uninterested in trying to eat its way through his spatial Qi-coated roots.

With everything going on and the worm's inactivity for the last few hours, he had ignored it until it was too late, and it was already on the move.

The mountain shuddered to the point even Elaine became concerned.

"Patriarch! What's happening? I can't see through the concealment array."

"Wait, she has been standing there this whole time feeling the mountain shake and seeing giant worms fall through a portal in the sky and only now felt the need to ask what's going on?"

Finding the source of the shaking wasn't hard as the titanic Star Core worm surged up the side of the mountain, its body completely exposed. Dense earth Qi rippled across its body that could rival an ocean liner as it effortlessly traveled up the mountainside.

Ashlock hurled blades of spatial Qi in a vain attempt to slow its advance, but its earth Qi easily absorbed his attacks. Obviously, he began to panic. "Larry, come back! Help," He shouted through the tether while preemptively casting {Consuming Abyss}.

He debated signing in to his system for an S grade draw as he had over 1800 credits, but it was too late. He didn't want to be distracted by the knowledge of a new skill entering his mind when something that could kill him would arrive in a few seconds.

Right as the concealment array shattered due to the worm swallowing a large chunk of it, Ashlock cast a portal right behind Elaine that led to the cavern below.

As expected, she stumbled back in fear from the sudden appearance of an abyssal mouth of human-sized teeth that took up her entire view. "What the" Her words were cut off as she walked back through the portal, and it snapped closed.

With Elaine out of the way, there was nothing between the worm and Ashlock apart from his {Consuming Abyss} skill and Larry, who had just arrived. The worm let out a violent screech that made Larry stumble back a few steps, and even Ashlock felt his branches creek under the force.

Ashlock felt an immense shadow loom over him as the worm blocked out the sun. Even though Red Vine Peak was over eight thousand meters tall, Ashlock still couldn't see the end of the worm as it lay against the mountainside.

The worm charged at him, and he sent out his hundreds of void tendrils to intercept. Larry also hurled a wave of ash at the monstrous being, but they met nothing.

There was a thunderclap as air rushed to fill in the sudden vacuum. The worm had literally vanished as if deleted from the world.

"What the fuck... oh... oh no." Ashlock realized what had happened.

Compared to the worm's colossal size, the mystic realm looked like a tiny fart cloud, but the worm had made contact with the fog still floating around the mountain peak when it vanished.

"The worm was sent to the mystic realm... but the skill will deactivate by tomorrow morning and automatically bring everyone back if they are still alive." Ashlock felt both relief and fear. What if all his allies returned injured and immediately had to face the Star Core Realm worm?

"Shit... should I sign in now? I don't want to rely solely on my void affinity skill to kill the worm and protect my allies."

Ashlock opened his system and stared at it.

Idletree Daily Sign-In System

Day: 3521

Daily Credit: 17

Sacrifice Credit: 1809

[Sign in?]

It was enough for an S-rank draw, that was for sure. But should he wait, kill all the remaining worms and attempt an SS or SSS rank draw? He knew they existed due to the shard Lee had given him.

"Fuck it. I don't know if I can handle something in the SS or SSS grade bracket with my current cultivation." Ashlock gave one final moment of thought but caved in.

"System... sign in..."

[Sign in successful, 1826 credits consumed]