xkarnation

Author Introspective - Chapter 190 edits

Here we go again...

For Patreons that were here for the original chapter 128, you might know where this is going.

I don't know how it has taken me this long, but the posting of chapter 190 made me realize something. I really suck at making skill gain chapters hype. I always focus on the wrong thing, like the cost or drawbacks, instead of having Ashlock look to the future and see how hype the thing he just got really is.

Did you know chapter 190 is supposed to be ALL powerups...

[Tree] Chapter 190: Expensive Repairs

Ashlock woke up to clear blue skies, the rising sun, and the chirps of birds.

Idletree Daily Sign-In System

Day: 3542

Daily Credit: 15

Sacrifice Credit: 2,694

[Sign in?]

It took a moment for his brain to kick into gear, but when it did, Ashlock dismissed the system message floating in his vision and activated {Eye of the Tree God}. Picking the direction Nox had escaped into...

[Tree] Chapter 189: (Interlude) Twisted Perfection

Dante Voidmind stared in the mirror and despised what glared back. His once-perfect visage was gone and replaced with what could only be described as a beaten-down cripple. His messy black hair, which he used to keep slicked back to draw focus to his perfect jawline, now fell freely over his face like a curtain in a vain attempt to obscure his deformity from prying eyes.

"I can fix this," Dante whispered as he raised his trembling hand and ran his fingers down the half of his face corru...

[Tree] Chapter 188: Gains and Losses

Stella awoke to the night sky and a cold breeze. Her neck felt stiff from the wooden bench's arm she used as a pillow, and her mind felt fuzzy as she let out a long yawn. Sitting up and rubbing the back of her neck, Stella looked down at her body and noticed two things. First, her favorite clothes were ruined with them being singed and torn in places, and secondly, there was a strange white glow wreathing around her form, and she could see in real-time her severe burns receding as if they wer...

[Tree] Chapter 187: Shadow Empress

In the darkness of night, Nox was all-powerful. To her, the shady forest east of the mountains was the perfect place for her to disappear. What little light streaked down from the moon and stars could hardly penetrate the canopy of the strange mixture of evergreen and demonic trees. As a result, she could use techniques like Shadow Melding to blend into shadows and become invisible to the naked eye and Shadow Walk to practically swim through the darkness at insane speed.

Nox's large hoo...

[Tree] Chapter 186: Sol

Ashlock's Star Core pulsed with power as he directed all the ambient spatial Qi on the mountain peak to create a bubble around Lucius's corpse.

"That's not going to be enough," Ashlock muttered as he looked around for a solution. His gaze eventually landed on a badly beaten spider with two broken legs dragging on the ground, and one of his eyes was missing crawling through a portal he had left open to the White Stone Palace, "Larry, sorry to trouble you, but could you engulf this corpse...

[Tree] Chapter 185: Delicious Meal

Ashlock watched in horror as his well-thought-out plan that utilized everything at his disposal to keep Lucius away from the sun was triumphed by nothing other than overwhelming power.

Lucius had turned himself into what could only be described as a walking light bomb, instantly obliterating a large portion of the White Stone Palace and sending everyone still fighting flying out into the demonic tree forest alongside a wave of superheated ash.

Without Larry's ash absorbing much of...

[Tree] Chapter 184: Final Stand

Lucius felt immortal, which wasn't so far from the truth. So long as the radiant glow of the sun empowered his mortal vessel, he could tap into a limitless power source, allowing him to spend light Qi without limit. Healing Glow covered every inch of his body at all times, and his costly attack techniques were now free.

However, it was a power that hadn't come cheap, as he had stunted his cultivation at the peak of the Star Core Realm and pledged his soul to the eternal light. ...

[Tree] Chapter 183: Sun God

Everything happened so fast.

The meeting had been going according to plan. The merchants seemed interested in the pills, and the reactions were positive. However, when Stella presented the poisonous pills alongside the antidote, everything went to shit.

Stella was suddenly screaming—there was a blinding flash of light from Lucius, and once it faded, Ashlock saw via a root snaking through a crack in the floor that Hammond was trying to make a rift to escape. Moving on instinct, a...

[Tree] Chapter 182: Beatdown

Nox bent backward as the void creature's claws blurred past her nose with an eerie silence. If not for her centuries spent honing her reaction time while fighting monsters in rifts, she would have lost her head.

She rolled backward to get back on her feet and away from the monster. Her spatial ring flashed, and an artifact she had used many times in the past appeared in her hand: A Dimension Locker. It was a highly sought-after artifact by most cultivators, especially assassins like her...

TREE WEBCOMIC!

It is with great pleasure to announce that Reborn as a Demonic Tree is going to be adapted into a webcomic and hosted on Webtoon! You can read more about it here: https://aethonbooks.com/2023/09/28/aethon-books-and-laurel-pursuit-announce-major-webcomic-adaptations-partership/

[Tree] 181: Ashfallen Trading Company

While pulling out the middle of the three offered chairs, Nox scanned the large but mostly barren room. Much like the hallways that led to this part of the White Stone Palace, the room lacked any usual displays of wealth.

As a Merchant, Nox had spent many hours sitting in gaudy rooms with artwork, swords, and even relics proudly on display to try and show off the owner's vast wealth and prestige.

Nox had no respect for any of that, so in a way, she could appreciate the lackluster ...

[Tree] Chapter 180: Ulterior Motives

Stella reached down and grabbed the cursed sap pill from the depths of the cauldron fruit. Withdrawing her soul flame from the cauldron, she rigorously checked the pill for any issues under the dim blue hue of the glowing mushrooms and sighed with relief after finding nothing wrong.

"I did it!" Stella yelled triumphantly as she held up the pill, her voice echoing through the cavern, "Thank the nine realms! I've hardly seen the sun all week for this!"

Sadly, there was nobody around...

[Tree] Chapter 179: Fractured Realm

Ashlock watched in interest as Stella led Elder Margret deeper into the cavern and toward the cages that contained the feral demonic chickens that tried to lash out as she approached. To his surprise, one of the cages in the middle had a small demonic tree growing up through the bars.

Stella paused before the cage with the tree, and while ignoring the demonic chickens trying to bite her arm, she presented Elder Margret with a half-eaten yellow fruit.

"Wait, isn't that one of those...

[Tree] Chapter 178: Cultivation Groves

Elder Margret took a deep, satisfying breath of the crisp morning air as she stood in the doorway to the White Stone Palace. It was such a refreshing experience, feeling the sun on her face and smelling the fresh air after spending the entire afternoon and night in the cavern trying to teach the rogue alchemists how to incorporate the Patriarch's fruit into pill recipes.

As it turned out, the rogue alchemists were slower to pick up new things than she had expected, so it had taken many ...

[Tree] Chapter 177: Ashfallen's lie

Elaine gazed and wandered over the sea of raised hands in a vain attempt to single someone out to answer her burning question.

Why are there so many people? What happened to her quiet lecture hall devoid of anyone paying attention?

It was a surreal experience to see such class engagement for once as she often felt ignored—as if her presence brought boredom upon her students rather than intrigue. Which was a shame as she had a deep passion for the subject she was teaching. It jus...

[Tree] Chapter 176: Strange Lecture

Ashlock was somewhat surprised to discover {Abyssal Whispers} was deemed by the system as a tree-specific skill as it morphed into {Mental Anguish} and was added to a sublist in his status screen alongside the other skills that were morphed for his Qi Fruit Production.

"How strange," Ashlock muttered, "Is it because I use my roots to talk to the abyss?"

Going over the information that appeared in his mind, he determined that eating the fruit simply made you go mad from random hall...

[Tree] Chapter 175: Insane Merchants

"Why would you want to poison the Merchants?" Ashlock asked Stella with a hint of confusion.

He practically got whiplash from her answer. It was so outrageous. Did she have some grudge with them?

The Merchants were imperative for the future of the Ashfallen Sect. Until they gained enough strength and connections to manage their own supply chains, they needed the Merchants.

"So if Stella goes around murdering them, that's a problem." Ashlock sighed. He was wi...

[Tree] Chapter 174: Cursed Pill

Stella pressed the dagger's blade against Ash's black root.

"Tree, is this really the only way to extract your cursed sap?" Stella asked, "I don't want to hurt you."

"Stella, you want to make a poisonous pill that slowly turns a person to wood and eventually a tree from the inside. Yet you are worried about hurting my roots? I think your priorities are wrong here..."

"Why wouldn't I be worried? I would hate to cause you pain," Stella replied, confus...

[Tree] Chapter 173: Darkside

[A/N] There was a small change to chapter 172: https://www.patreon.com/posts/small-change-to-88043580

----

Ashlock concluded his conversation with the Redclaw Grand Elder and withdrew his presence from his mind to give the poor man some rest from his {Abyssal Whispers}.

As an A-rank mental attack skill, the first time would always be rough, even wh...

Small change to chap 172

Been a while since I felt the need to do one of these.

Initially, in the recent chapter, Ashlock used {Progeny Dominion [S]} to get close to the Grand Elder's study so he could then cast {Abyssal Whispers} on him. However, it hasn't been a week since the colosseum, so that could result in potential soul damage for Ashlock. In the next chapter (that I have half written), I was writing a whole scene where Ashlock tries to justify why he felt risking soul damage to establish the telepathic...

Break

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/62881/reborn-as-a-demonic-tree/chapter/1315373/announcement 

Read this ^

TLDR:

I am on holiday for the next 6ish weeks. Uploads should remain mostly normal for Patreon (around 4-5 a week) until September assuming the Spanish heat doesn't kill me, or my family distracts me too much x)

However, Patreo...

[Tree] Chapter 172: Getting Down to Business

Stella opened her eyes as her consciousness withdrew from deep meditation and returned to the real world. As the constant buzz of heaven's whispers faded, she heard the early morning chorus of birds, the rustling of leaves, and the autumn wind playing with her unkempt hair.

Huffing the blonde strands of hair out of her face, Stella yawned and then stretched her back in a vain attempt to remove the stiffness from many hours of meditation.

Ugh, I hate meditation. Stella lam...

[Tree] Chapter 171: Dark Humor

Ashlock stirred awake as the sun crested the distant mountain range and bathed his bark in warm sunlight. As his spiritual sight lazily expanded to encompass the courtyard, there was an all too familiar system notification.

Idletree Daily Sign-In System

Day: 3533

Daily Credit: 6

Sacrifice Credit: 339

[Sign in?]

"Over three hundred credits?" Ashlock murmured as he finally wo...

[Tree] Chapter 170: Mount Ashfallen

Stella quickly broke the seal on Kassandra's silver spatial ring while watching a slithering mass of black vines consume the woman's corpse.

There's hardly anything in here, Stella pouted.

The seal was easy enough to break as an entire realm separated them, but the contents left much to be desired. There were naturally a few weapons, a stash of spirit stones, a single beast core, and a pile of dragon crowns. But she had been hoping for a lot more, considering how much Kas...

[Tree] Chapter 169: Satisfying Revenge

Ashlock awoke to a pleasant autumn breeze that rustled his scarlet leaves. There were also the chirps of birds that had recently made the sprawling demonic forest across the mountain range their home.

As always, it took a while for Ashlock's mind to fully awaken from his slumber, but once he did, the all too familiar system message appeared in his vision.

Idletree Daily Sign-In System

Day: 3532

Daily Credit: 5

2023-08-15 04:13:26 +0000 UTC View Post

[Tree] Chapter 168: Ashfallen's rise [Book 2 Epilogue]

Ashlock and the others waited awhile, but Demetrios Skyrend never returned. The violent storm system dominated the distant horizon, and Ashlock suspected that Demetrios was giving a piece of his mind to the Voidmind family.

He would go and look, but his roots didn't extend far enough west to reach Slymere yet, and his {Eye of the Tree God} also didn't reach the city.

The Redclaw Grand Elder, who had his hands behind his back as he looked at the horizon, sighed in relief. His fire ...

[Tree] Chapter 167: A Brewing Storm

Elder Elias Voidmind opened his eyes with a sigh—he stood on the third floor of the colosseum and was gazing out at the chaotic marketplace in the grand square.

"Where are these Redclaw bastards?" Elias grumbled to himself as he reeled in his spiritual sight. He had probed the thousands of mortals desperately fleeing down the streets and couldn't find any traces of fire Qi. It was as if the Redclaws had all evacuated ahead of time.

Elias's fingers drummed on the stone windowsill...

[Tree] Chapter 166: Void Caller

Ashlock was glad to see Stella deeply contemplating her actions. She had a bad habit of acting first and thinking later, which wasn't the type of mentality someone trying to run a sect should have.

It had worked out so far, but there would come a day when Stella murdered someone over a misunderstanding and deeply regretted it. Elaine was already an excellent living example of this, as she had become an accepted member of the Ashfallen sect rather than a cold corpse due to Diana and othe...

[Tree] Chapter 165: Bittersweet Revenge

Stella's eyes widened as a wave of ash so dense it could be confused for a landslide surged down into the arena with such force it made the ground shake.

Luckily Stella had been expecting the incoming ash, so she had time to react and set an anchor point to quickly open a portal. As space tore open to reveal a path to safety, Stella winced as she saw the imminent surge of ash crash on top of Kassandra.

Within a second, half of the arena was consumed by the ash, and before it could...