Reborn as a Demonic Tree-Novel

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 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.

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

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?

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.

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?"

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.

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."