Reborn as a Demonic Tree-Novel

All nine moons cracked perfectly down the middle and slowly split apart to reveal a hollowed space inside each one, except for the ninth moon that kissed the horizon, glowing with spatial Qi. The divine shard that Ashlock thought he had used to repair his damaged soul was floating between its two halves, held in place by crackling purple energy.

"So a divine shard gives the moon its affinity?" Ashlock mused as he gazed up at the sky and the other moons. The senergy crackled and fizzed along their surfaces as if trying to reach out for something that wasn't there. "If I slotted a divine shard into one of these moons, would I gain a new affinity?"

Ashlock was unsure if he would be able to outright choose the affinity he got or if it would be a gacha draw with sacrificial credits like his spatial affinity had been when he rejected the chance to get ice affinity after killing the Winterwrath idiot who wanted to kidnap Stella.

"Either way, if I can wield nine different affinities alongside many system abilities, I fail to see how I will not surpass the World Tree from my dreams and manage to avoid suffering a similar fate. Senior Lee toldthere are nine shards, one on each layer of creation, and he gavethe one intended for the World Tree."

Ashlock was glad to finally learn the truth behind the moons. The next layer of creation was still far away as he would first need to ascend through Nascent Soul Realm and Monarch Realm, but knowing there would be an opportunity in the future to unlock another one of his moons made him look forward to the future.

"Wait... assuming I can pick which affinity to unlock, I wonder what I will choose?"

The first that cto mind was lunar or light affinity, as they played to his strength of being a tree and always being outside below one of the celestial objects. There were also options like void or cosmic, which were great for killing stronger opponents.

"Even something like blood affinity would be cool when combined with my cursed sap... the options are endless. I mean, I can pool more Qi with my offspring than a normal cultivator, so the high cost of certain affinities doesn't holdback as much."

Divine energy radiated strongly from the moons overhead which seemed to be quelling the chaos into something more habitable. Is this how the nine layers of creation cinto existence? A random jumble of Qi types woven together into a habitable reality by the divine forces.

His bizarre surroundings aside, he could feel the shifting excuse for a ground beneath him, meaning he was inhabiting a body of skind on the surface of his Inner World.

"It's not a human body, is it?" Ashlock wondered as he slowly looked down. He immensely enjoyed his life as a tree and had long forgotten what walking around as a human was like. Maybe having slegs for once could be fun too...

"Ah, why did I expect anything else?" Ashlock chuckled as he saw black bark instead of human flesh. He was still a demonic tree, identical to the one in the real world. He could even split open his trunk, much like the moons overhead, to reveal his Demonic Eye. The only difference between his true body and this soul-manifested one was that his roots were only a dozen or so meters long and fully exposed on the surface.

"Weird, even my ethereal roots aren't as easy to move as this." Ashlock raised all of his roots in unison and then slammed them down, throwing up clouds of rock and dust that floated off in nonsense directions. No matter how many he raised, he never toppled over. However, the rock he was perched on didn't survive his experiments, as it began to crumble and fall apart.

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"Oh shit," Ashlock flicked out one of his roots like an octopus and latched onto a larger nearby rock that had floated close. He pulled it toward himself, and without really thinking, he crawled onto the new rock.

He watched the crumbled rock he had once stood on disperse into nothingness as it was swept away by the chaotic firestorms. Only once he settled on his new rock did he realize what he had just done.

"Did I just walk? As a tree?" Ashlock was baffled. Such a concept was impossible for his real body as he was firmly rooted to Red Vine Peak. The best he could do was turn Red Vine Peak into a Bastion and float around, not walk like this.

This was incredibly impressive until he remembered it wasn't the real world. He was inside his own soul. "If that's true, shouldn't nearly anything be possible? This Inner World is mine—I am its god."

Raising a root and glaring at the tip, he uttered, "Fireball." A small reddish flburst into life and then quickly died out. It was hardly as impressive as the fireball he had been picturing, but he had just summoned fire at will... an affinity he didn't have. "Mhm, fire is all around me. That could have been luck. What about ice?"

No matter how hard he tried, no ice coated his root. Nothing happened even when he plunged his root into a nearby stream and begged it to turn to ice. "What about water—" a small dribble of water flowed down his root.

"Darn it," Ashlock flicked his root tip to remove the water—the wave of water droplets flew upwards into the sky. "It looks like I can only manipulate the affinities already present here in my Inner World. Is that because I have dao comprehension over them or something?"

He certainly felt like he understood the present affinities to a deeper level than before, absorbing the bounty hunter cores to fulfill his systems requirements.

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Deciding to continue his exploration, he pulled on the moon to wreath himself with telekinesis and float around his forming world. "This place is far too chaotic for anything to thrive... I can see things slowly slotting into place, but I assit will take the full week to complete."

He traveled for stthrough the swirling chaos of fire storms, raging rivers, and howling winds filled with metal shards. Getting sick of the total disorder, he grabbed random rocks with his roots and smashed them together to fuse them into a larger landmass. To his surprise, it kinda worked.

Humming an upbeat tune, he got lost in his work, and before he knew it, he was smoothing out and shaping the island to resemble Red Vine Peak—just on a tiny scale in comparison.

Ashlock was shocked out of his humming and turned his trunk to see Stella stepping through a portal with Larry curiously trailing her. "How did you get in here?!" Ashlock pointed an accusing root at Stella.

"Questionable line of reasoning aside," Ashlock lowered his root and scratched his canopy in confusion, "I wonder what caused that."

"The moon?" Ashlock wondered why, but all he could think of was how the moon had split. "Whatever," he muttered as he returned to looking down at Stella and his beloved pet spider waiting at the base of his trunk, "I guess welcto the chaos of my soul. I know it ain't much, but feel free to make yourselves at home."

Under their confused gazes, he shifted past them with his roots.

"I'm inside my own soul. I can do whatever the hell I want—okay, that's not actually true, or at least not until I acquire dao comprehension in all affinities."

"Hey, who are you calling a human?" Ashlock grumbled as he summoned water at the tip of his root to fill up a little lake he had been making. "I am a spirit tree. We have a different path of cultivation... I think."

Honestly, he wasn't sure what was going on. He just let his system do its thing as he fed it corpses and Star Cores. Either way, he could already see the immense benefits of this Inner World and deem it worth the 10,000 SC and Star Cores he spent. He'd gained a level of dao comprehension with any affinity in his Inner World and could infuse his techniques with these daos, such as Abyssal Whispers with wind Qi.

Daos were far inferior to actually possessing the affinity as he couldn't learn wind-based techniques or passively generate wind Qi. Any the used wind Qi, he had to drain it from his Inner World, just like how Stella couldn't produce lightning, but she was able to absorb it for later use.

"You can thank your mother for paying child support," Ashlock chuckled. He was still drawing untamed Qi from the World Tree and would repay her by saving her in the future.

"I'm not messing around. I am making important discoveries here!" Ashlock snapped back at his adopted daughter. "You act like I have been in here for hours—"

"—Huh... no way." Ashlock brought up his system to check.

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Ashlock did smental maths and realized four days had indeed passed. To be fair, as a tree, months could go by, and it wouldn't bother him too much. He found it easy to lose track of time, especially in here where there's no sun—only the moons that never move from their spot in the sky.

If a whole four days had passed, he was drawing closer to completing his ascension.

"System? What's the progress?"

[Ascension to Nascent Soul Realm at 67%]

Ashlock assumed he would receive the upgrade to his cultivation technique and system once it reached 100%.

Ashlock pulled on his connection to his spatial storage and dragged the many spatial rings into his Inner World. If there was a place he could easily break their seals, it was where he had the most power. Honestly, he had forgotten about the loot as items didn't interest him as much as new cultivation techniques or Dao revelations. What use were clothes or trinkets to a tree anyway? At least his sect members could use them or have Sebastian Silverspire sell them off.

"While I do this, care to tellabout the situation outside?" Ashlock asked as he floated the many rings in the air. With the pressure of his Inner World, he broke their seals in seconds. Items began to pour from them to the ground below, creating large piles of clothes, weapons, spirit stones, pill bottles, and random other junk.

"Valid complaints, but at least I shield them." Ashlock had blanketed everything in his Qi to try and reduce the number of deaths before he retreated to explore his Inner World.

"Wait, if you're here, Stella, doesn't that mean anyone can cand stay?" Ashlock asked. He knew the mortals wouldn't survive the ambient pressure in here, but what if he used this as a place to raise monsters like those Midnight Inkwing eggs.

"Yeah, if there's not much going on outside, then now would be a good tto sort through this loot," Ashlock replied.

"Okay." Stella absentmindedly replied as she strolled back through the portal, leaving Larry behind to engage in a staring contest.

A loud noise drew Ashlock's attention to the shardless moons overhead. "Huh, what now?" They seemed unstable and began to drift back together—the intense moonlight that had been bathing his Inner World subsided back to the levels he was used to when sleeping under them.

The portal Stella had left through vanished.

[Inner World entering final stages...]