Reborn as a Demonic Tree-Novel

Ashlock spread out his spiritual senses and confirmed that the entirety of Red Vine Peak was enshrouded within a large void bubble. However, he could still sense his roots that ran under Darklight City and the wilderness, confirming Ashlock's suspicions regarding his new S grade {Dimensional Overlap} skill. It created a pocket realm in a bubble around him, but foes or his allies could escape at any time by simply walking out of it, so its size mattered, but that drove up the cost drastically.

"Should I teleport Diana and Kaida out of here?" Ashlock wondered as he saw Diana nervously backtrack toward his trunk with Kaida at her side under the petrifying gaze of two giant alien pupilless eyes that floated in the void. One was a dark red, like a dying star, while the other was a misty blue.

"Maple, what did you do?" Ashlock asked the fluffy squirrel, but the menace raised his paw as if asking him to be quiet.

Ashlock then felt a ripple through the void as incomprehensible whispers began between Maple and the two giant eyes belonging to titanic creatures barely visible in the eternal darkness.

Maple then leaped off his branch and floated up to put himself between Ashlock and the Worldwalkers. The whispers calmed down, and under the alien gazes, Maple suddenly exploded outward in a mass of wiggling black tentacles as if an eldritch abomination had broken free from the tiny squirrel's body.

Kaida hissed loudly and moved to protect Diana, who stumbled back and pushed herself against Ashlock's trunk as if hoping he would swallow her up. Which he could technically do, but he would rather just teleport her outside of the pocket dimension as he was confident these Worldwalkers would be unable to affect anything outside the pocket realm's range. However, he wasn't sure how the two Worldwalkers would react to him suddenly mobilizing his Qi to create the portal, so he refrained.

The wiggling mass of tentacles that had been Maple began to condense down and take on a humanoid shape. Ashlock watched in awe as the eldritch thing morphed into a naked, androgynous humanoid body with no defining features other than long white hair that reached his legs, fluffy ears, and a white tail that curled around his entire form. He floated back down and stood on one of Ashlock's more exposed branches.

Unlike Maple, who retained some of his squirrel body features, these two Worldwalkers were androgynous humans who reminded Ashlock of those plastic toys with no defining characteristics of either gender. Although their shoulder-length dark red and icy blue hair that matched their totally black eyes gave them a slightly feminine look?

Ashlock compared the two and now understood why the Worldwalkers had a slightly feminine look, as they used Diana as their basis. However, Maple looked different, and it took a moment for Ashlock to realize that Maple had used Stella as the basis for his humanoid form, as he had a bit of a roguish-looking face.

Ashlock didn't like the sound of that, so he switched topics, "Maple, are these your siblings?" He asked using {Abyssal Whispers}, surprisingly carrying his voice through the void as if he were speaking normally. After using the Mystic Realm for the first time, he remembered Larry mentioning meeting Maple's family, so he assumed these Worldwalkers might be related to Maple.

"You seem more talkative than usual, Maple," Ashlock was surprised at how normal Maple and the Worldwalkers were, "and since when did you have a human form?"

"Interesting, so Maple seems so lazy all the time because he is conserving energy," Ashlock mused to himself, "and is that what he was doing instead of helping us against the Merchants? Off slaughtering some poor monsters for food?"

Ashlock realized Diana had likely been terrified out of her mind being stared down at by two Worldwalkers and hadn't been keeping up with the conversation all that well.

Neither seemed to refute Maple's claim, but they did glare at him, and Ashlock felt the void ripple with power as if an invisible battle was occurring between the trio.

Sibling banter aside, Ashlock found the description of their purpose a little confusing, as hadn't Senior Lee traveled down from a higher realm? "What about Senior Lee?" Ashlock asked Maple, "Didn't he travel down from a higher realm?"

Confused, Ashlock opened his {Demonic Eye} and blue-haired didn't even flinch as their gazes met.

"A true immortal? What's that?" Ashlock asked, but blue-haired was busy humming and staring into his eye.

Ashlock wasn't that surprised that Senior Lee was some godlike being. He had basically paused reality, and Ashlock swore he saw swirling galaxies within the man's eyes once. What did bother Ashlock was that the Worldwalker referred to Maple with the name Stella had given the squirrel when they first met.

"Do you two have names?" Ashlock asked as he looked at both of them with his Demonic eyes and felt confused when he saw literally nothing but blackholes in a humanoid shape.

"I mean, I can, but why do you call Maple... Maple?" Ashlock asked.

"Okay, something fucked up is going on here," Ashlock grumbled to himself, "Their mouth movements definitely didn't match the word Maple, yet that's what I heard. Is it my {Language of the World}skill acting up?"

"Let me test something," Ashlock told the Worldwalkers, "Blue hair, your name can be Neptune, and Red hair can be Mars. Now tell me your Worldwalker names."

"Yep, that's definitely some system bullshit," Ashlock thought, "My language skill is now translating their supposed incomprehensible names into the ones I assigned them in my head."

The void began to tremble as if something from the outside was trying to crush them.

A tense moment passed, and the void eventually returned to its usual calm. Neptune looked around and then pulled Mars's hand down.

"How?"

"Isn't that because of the pact Maple and I agreed on? And what do you mean enslaved by heaven's control? What does it make you do?"

"Is Neptune talking about my system and its daily sign-in credit?" Ashlock pondered as that was the only explanation unless his system took in some of his Qi. But it was very reassuring that Neptune could not actually detect his system.

"Not a clue," Ashlock effortlessly lied. There wasn't a chance in hell he would tell these world devourers about it, even if he had a way to free them.

[Neptune wishes to form a pact]