"What is that thing heading toward us, young master?" A nervous servant of the early Soul Fire realm tentatively asked one of the Winterwrath scions.
The man with wild white hair heaved the greatsword he had used to cleave a portal in half over his shoulder. All around him were frozen roots that had wiggled their way through the earth.
Upon his servant's words, the scion's eyes drifted to the mountain, and he squinted at a large creature scuttling down its side.
Due to the lack of light and the fact the monster had some veil around it that was masking its presence, all he could see was a large shadow.
"A monster of some kind? It doesn't look human at all." The man wondered aloud, and the servant beside him agreed.
"I think so as well, young master. We should flee while we still can—"
"Flee?" The man looked over his shoulder at his servant and showed him a toothy smile, "Now, why would we do that? Do you see the other scions running with their tails between their legs like skittish beasts?"
"N-no, young master, but did you not see the heavens opening, and then this large monster appears? To fight a monster from a higher realm would be a death sentence!"
The man rolled his eyes and began to walk toward the mountain, "You and I both know the heavens have been out of reach for a long time. So there's no reason for someone—monster or man—to come down here, even if they could."
"Young master is wise but—"
"There will be no buts."
The man pointed his great sword at the approaching beast, and white flames roared to life across his skin that caused the surrounding air to freeze and snowflakes to cascade around him.
"I smell an opportunity here. Tristan Evergreens' sudden ascension overshadowed the Winterwrath family, but I will become the new hope of the Winterwraths!"
The servant shrank back, terrified of his master's peak Soul Fire realm strength, as just standing within its presence made his skin burn from the pure frost Qi.
His young master may be a muscle-brained fool, but he had the Qi purity and cultivation to back it up.
However, the servant's eyes couldn't help but linger on his young master's spatial ring and sword. If his master were to perish here tonight, he could seize those items, and nobody would ever know if he played his cards right.
The servant's eyes followed the looming shadow racing down the mountain. He couldn't help but sneer as his young master joined shoulder to shoulder with the other talented and equally arrogant scions and marched toward their deaths.
He had seen the portals, the roots, and the heavens cracking open. To think staying here any longer was a good idea, was the thought process of a truly delusional and arrogant fool, something the scions happened to be masters at.
Born to a minor branch family and assigned as the young master's servant since he was five, the man naturally had a deep hatred for the young master that couldn't come to light until the very last moment. Living in another man's shadow for so long as a cultivator was intolerable and spawned numerous heart demons that the man fought daily.
It was how the main family line kept the branches in check. Suppress talent by limiting resources, and instill a sense of inferiority from birth. On the surface, when times were good, it worked. But all it took was a little nudge, a push over the edge, and all hell would break lose.
And as the servant observed his young master's back and then looked up at Red Vine peak, he could feel the tides of change were upon him.
Tonight was going to be a tipping point.
As the group approached the base of the mountain path, the servant stood a step behind his young master, who had paused at the end of the dirt path. Ahead of them were the worn-down stone steps that ascended to Red Vine peak's pavilion, which resided thousands of meters up in the clouds.
Standing between the pavilion and them was a shadow resembling a spider. It had a large abdomen and eight legs longer than they were tall. None of the scions flinched as the monster that loomed over them came into the view of their white and green flames.
Many scarlet eyes the size of their heads peered through the darkness. A halo of ash orbited a crown of curved black horns, and its ivory fangs gleamed in their soul light.
The servant didn't even wait for his young master's permission and began to back away. Just one look at the creature told him that it was far more fearsome than his young master, and its mythical presence wasn't what warned him of that fact.
It was the intelligence in the monster's eyes. It had paused, appraised them individually, as if committing their faces to memory or mentally counting and evaluating its foes.
That wasn't something a bloodthirsty monster does—only a spirit beast could accomplish such a feat, and they were in the Nascent Soul realm and above.
As he had suspected earlier, staying any longer was a death sentence. Before his master noticed, he turned and ran for the forest with all his might.
A wave of Qi warmed his back—green and white light illuminated the dirt path. He heard a shout, a scream, and then the ground shook. Curious, he glanced over his shoulder and saw the spider had opened his abyssal maw, and a tidal wave of ash spewed out—but that was only the start.
The wave wasn't pure ash as it wiggled around as if alive.
It wasn't until the servant saw the ash latch onto people's robes and crawl around—that the true horror of the situation dawned on him. It wasn't simple ash; it had to be ash spiders—literally millions of them.
The small group of scions and servants fought to fend off the tide, but it was useless.
Evergreen cultivators erected mud walls. And the grass morphed into ropes that would usually bind cultivators' limbs—shot out into the wave to little effect. It simply ignored the grass and went around the walls. In a last-ditch effort, the Evergreens threw boulders, burned the spiders with their Soul Fire, and slashed with swords.
Nothing worked—the Winterwraths were naturally better equipped for the task, quickly freezing the wave in place and creating safe zones of swirling frost Qi around themselves. But the surge wasn't their foe—the enormous spider barreled through the ice with a blast of ash and lept at the cultivators with a speed that didn't match its size.
The servant saw his young master gallantly raise his great sword—ready to chop the foul demon from a higher realm in half.
"You fool." The servant muttered under his breath as the spider opened its maw that could fit an entire person inside and bit down—on the sword—chomping it in half as if it were a fickle toothpick.
Seeing the blade, he had dreamed about wielding for so long treated like a plaything made the servant feel even more insignificant. Was he such a frog in a well so far down the ladder of the realms?
Then right as the servant broke into the tree line, he saw his young master collapse to his knees with a hole through his chest—one of the spider's many limbs had impaled the man through his enchanted robes and Soul Fire realm skin.
Retracting the limb, the spider vanished into the cloud of ash like a ghost to stalk its next prey.
The servant watched as the young master looked at Red Vine peak one last time before falling flat on his face and being devoured by the thousands of tiny ash spiders.
The servant held back the hysterical laughter from the gruesome sight and continued to run without looking back. He aimed to escape into Darklight city and take the first airship out of this crazy valley.
***
Ashlock watched from the sky and marveled at his pet's slaughter.
When he saw an opportunity, he opened portals below Larry's kills before they were devoured by the literal tsunami of ash spiders that had emerged from Larry's mouth.
And when Ashlock said tsunami, he meant a literal tsunami. It was over ten meters high, and there was no way the spider could have stored them all inside himself.
"Is this the power of the Ashen King? To call upon his brethren whenever he needs them throughout the realms?" Ashlock wondered and then had a funny thought, "If I became the Demonic Tree King, would I be able to spawn out a load of demonic trees like that—"
In a way, he already had.
The forest that had once been a sea of greenery now had smears of red, like some infection upon the land. Ashlock checked back on his neglected offspring, but they still seemed happy, even with the death and destruction around them.
Which felt odd until he checked the site with his {Eye of the Tree God}, and it all became clear. A white-haired cultivator's corpse lay face down near its roots. His offspring was delighted because it was eating such a delicious meal.
Ashlock didn't know if he should feel proud or disturbed, but he could understand his kid's feelings. He also loved snacks, especially ones that gave him lots of Qi and sacrificial credits.
He debated taking the corpse away from his kid with a portal as it looked to be in the middle stage of the Soul Fire realm but eventually gave up on the idea. Stealing food from his kid seemed a bit too selfish, even if his pet secured the kill and his kid making the ground a bit damper wasn't the deciding factor.
"Enjoy your meal, kiddo, and grow to lofty heights—you'll need it to survive the incoming beast tide." Ashlock still didn't know what the beast tide entailed, but he wasn't looking forward to finding out.
Was the underground safe? What about the skies? Does it last for a single day, or does it take years for the tide to pass? These were all questions he would seek answers to soon, but Ashlock looked at the world from above for now.
He had a few objectives he wanted to achieve before the beast tide came, and with Larry evolving into a one-person war machine, he felt it was time to expand the Ashfallen sect.
Once Larry eliminated the Winterwrath and Evergreen families. Darklight city and the old Ravenborne peak would be without a ruler—a position Ashlock planned to fill.
He needed cultivators, alchemists, builders, and servants to have a functioning sect, all of which his sect was severely lacking besides two cultivators, a pet spider and Maple.
As if reading his mind, a white squirrel popped into existence on Stella's head, and surprisingly the girl didn't even flinch.
"Maple!? Where were you? We all almost died!" Stella shouted while crossing her arms and refusing to give the lazy squirrel head pats. Ashlock also wanted to know the answer—they had a pact, yet the squirrel had gone off alone and offered no assistance when he had needed it most.
"Maple, I really could have used your help back here! Stella basically died, and I had my soul sucked away by some Evergreen bastard." Ashlock was fuming. He knew the squirrel was secretly stronger than he let on, and his help could have been priceless. "Even Diana overexerted herself in the battle and has gone crazy—these problems could have been avoided if you pulled your weight!"
The squirrel just rolled his eyes and fell asleep. The little bastard was even pretending to be exhausted, as if he had done something useful.
Stella was also distraught about Maple, but she surprisingly didn't push him off. Instead, her idea of punishment was refusing pets and deliberately tilting her head to make Maple's sleep a bit more uncomfortable.
The squirrel cared little for Stella's antics and somehow stayed on her head while crossing his little arms and basking in the moonlight.
Ashlock decided to be annoyed at Maple later and continued watching Larry's destruction from above.
It took hours for the epic battle to end. Thousands had perished as the break of dawn illuminated the forest of death. Some half-eaten corpses lay strewn and hung from demonic trees, whereas the rest were in a large pile in the central courtyard due to Ashlock's tireless efforts with his spatial Qi.
He was now running on an overexerted Star Core that was dimming, so the sunlight was a welcome change as it made him more awake and improved his Qi intake.
Stella was dutifully rummaging through the pile of corpses to retrieve spatial rings and anything else of value. If Ashlock had to guess, there were enough corpses here to aim for an S-grade draw, and with his Star Core realm, he felt it might be time to try for one again.
But before that, he needed to secure his surroundings, which involved informing Larry through their enhanced tether that went way further than before to clear out the white palace upon the old Ravenborne peak.
As the walls blocked his view, he had no idea what was happening inside as the spider launched his assault upon the place.
But Larry seemed to come back out the front entrance looking confused only minutes later. He then rotated toward Red Vine peak and spoke in his gruff accent, "The humans have already perished to something much more terrifying than me—a true ancient creature. I have no idea such a fearsome foe was lurking in the lower realms."
It took a while, but Ashlock slowly began to connect the dots.
Had Maple done this?
"Maple, did you kill everyone in the palace?" Ashlock asked the sleeping squirrel, and perhaps unsurprisingly, he ignored him. Just like he always did.
Well, hopefully, it had been Maple. Otherwise, Larry was in real danger of dying—hell, they all were, if an ancient creature was only a mountain peak away.
"Larry, get your spiders to bring all the corpses outside. I can then portal them over here."
The faithful spider servant moved to fulfill his master's commands, and Ashlock began to {Devour} the literal heap of corpses higher than the walls.
The rush of Qi was heavenly, and the thrill of incoming sacrificial credits even more so—it was time to try for an S-grade draw.