Reborn as a Demonic Tree

Chapter 629: Endless Banquet

After two months of tireless searching, Stella teleported to the alleyway and laid her eyes on the Hollowed One for the first time.

She had pictured this moment countless times. As the Sin of Gluttony, she'd expected some bloated horror—a mountain of flesh gorging itself on the city, or if not that, then something like a more monstrous Bob, a shapeless thing that simply absorbed everything it touched.

The thing in the alleyway was neither.

In the darkness, the Hollowed One hovered over a random drunkard passed out by a doorway. He appeared as a gaunt, near-skeletal human wearing nothing but rags. Despite being the source of the famine, the Hollowed One somehow looked the most starved out of everyone in the city. His sickly skin was pulled so taut over his bones that she could count every rib, and his eyes were sunken pits.

The Hollowed One floated closer to its next victim and caught a nearby torchlight, revealing its skin as patches of human and monster skin fused together without care for aesthetics; one eye was human, while the other looked like a snake, and even its arms were different lengths and ended in hands that couldn't belong to the same human. The Hollowed One was a horrific amalgamation of everything it had devoured, and its appearance made Stella's stomach turn.

That's no man. This thing is a monster in the true sense.

Maple poked his head out from her hood, golden eyes narrowing. "Be careful, Stella."

"Why?" Stella whispered, curious what Maple had figured out, as she couldn't sense any cultivation level from the Hollowed One.

"I thought the Hollowed One was a Void user like me, but it's using something else that's functionally similar but not rejected by reality." Maple leaned closer. "I've never seen anything like it."

"If the Hollowed One is similar to the Crowned One, then he must use a Conceptual Dao, and they are never so simple," Stella frowned. "Do you think you could win in a fight?"

Maple adamantly shook his head without a second of thought. "Our Qi type is similar, but reality works against me. Though, if the fight happened in the void, I'd win."

"I see..."

The two fell silent as the Hollowed One made its move.

"Eh?" The overweight drunkard startled awake as the Hollowed One's gaunt fingers closed around his throat and hauled him up the wall as if he weighed nothing. "Who... the fuck... are you?!" He kicked out wildly, his boot slamming into the Hollowed One's chest again and again with dull thunks.

The Hollowed One didn't react to the attacks as his ribcage slowly creaked open like a maw, and within was... nothing. Like his name suggested, he was utterly hollow inside. More than hollow, his insides were a void.

The drunkard sobered in an instant. "What the—"

He vanished. No scream, no flash of Qi, no struggle. One moment he existed, and the next, the Hollowed One's hand closed around empty air.

What? Stella froze. She had been waiting for the Hollowed One to begin devouring the drunkard to move in and strike, but the man had disappeared as if teleported to another dimension... or into the void.

Was that possible because of the void-like Conceptual Dao he wields? How does it work? Could he do that to me?

The ribcage groaned shut. Patchwork skin fused seamlessly over it as if it had never opened.

"This is all your fault, Stella Crestfallen."

Stella's blood ran cold. The Hollowed One hadn't turned around. It was still facing the wall, hanging in the air like a corpse strung up by the neck, limbs dangling loose at its sides.

How can the Hollowed One sense me? With my aether bubble and Phantom Veil Amulet, I should be invisible to all types of perception.

"If you don't intend to fight me," the Hollowed slowly turned to look directly at her. It was floating like a corpse suspended by a string attached to its neck, with its limbs loose at its sides. Out of all the horrors Stella had witnessed, the Hollowed One's starved appearance unsettled her the most. "Then I'd suggest you flee because I am starving and I'd rather save you for dessert."

Stella clenched her jaw at the obvious taunt and dispersed her aether bubble.

"I've not come to fight you," Stella said, summoning a dagger to her hand. "I've come to exterminate you like the vile infestation you are."

"I'm an infestation? That's rich coming from you. How many cultivators and monsters has that demonic tree you call Father devoured to sate his hunger?"

Stella faltered. "It's not the same—"

"But it is the same, Stella Crestfallen. I feed to grow in power, and your Father is the same. Perhaps it is your Father who is the vile infestation in need of extermination?"

This thing thinks it's comparable to Ash in any way?

"If I don't kill you here and now, this will never end. Your hunger is insatiable."

Stella stepped forward, aether Qi blazing from her body and making her hair weightless. The Hollowed One didn't move. It stayed there, floating and staring at her with its borrowed eyes.

"Your Father's hunger for power is also insatiable? Tell me truthfully. Will there come a day when he sits atop his pile of bones, looks out over all he has taken, and says this is enough?"

Stella considered his words for a moment. No, Ash will never stop chasing power, she concluded, but it doesn't feel the same.

"Your feeding has caused widespread misery and famines. People are dying because of you," she hissed through clenched teeth. This Hollowed One was seriously getting under her skin.

"So?" The Hollowed One replied without a hint of emotion. "Millions of people died when the All-Seeing Eye drowned Floridawn with Desolation and flooded the streets with his immortal army of bloodthirsty monsters. Families were torn apart, and people went hungry. Before you came, they enjoyed abundance and peaceful lives under our rule. Yet that was all torn away to fulfill your own selfish desires."

"Stop twisting everything." Stella's grip tightened on the dagger. "Your 'abundance' was bought with the World Tree in chains. And Ash only invaded because the Crowned One captured me and tried to make me his vessel. If you had released the World Tree and let me go, nobody had to die."

"The Crowned One nurtured the World Tree and created you, Stella Crestfallen. You were his property—"

Stella ignored him and continued ranting. "Shut up. All you do is take, take, and take some more. We actually contribute to the world rather than only draw from it like you. Mortals can now become cultivators, heart demons are an issue of the past, and before you ruined everything, the people had more food than ever before!"

The Hollowed One laughed, but it sounded empty. "Look around, Stella. Even someone with a heart as dark and twisted as yours should understand that such boons do not overshadow the misery you have brought upon the majority."

Stella grimaced. She couldn't deny that even without the famine, Diana had shown her how terrible life had become for mortals in the conquered cities. While the Ashfallen Trading Company pills were miracles provided at a relatively low price, they were still out of reach for most mortals, and just because one gained the ability to cultivate didn't mean they would become cultivators. Techniques remained in the hands of the nobles, and the resources needed to surpass the Soul Core Realm were astronomical to a farmer. Only nobles who exploited the mortals could hope to have the time and resources to raise cultivators.

However, that will change after the Era of Ascension.

Qi from the upper layer was already pouring down into the Ninth Layer, raising the ambient Qi and making cultivation easier for everyone. Even a mortal who spends no effort on cultivation would naturally advance a few stages, extending their lifespan and resistance to disease.

I'll admit we have chased power and a better life rather selfishly until now. But that doesn't mean it has to end that way. We can do better. No—we have to do better.

Stella raised her eyes to the starving thing floating before her with a disgust she had never felt before.

Because if this is what surrendering to your hunger at the cost of everything looks like...

"I'd rather starve than become you," she said aloud.

"Stella—" Maple rushed out of her hood and slashed at the air before her with a hastily conjured claw of void. It didn't seem to meet with anything, yet it disintegrated against the air.

The Hollowed One eerily tilted its head. "You can sense it?"

"Sense what?" Stella asked, teleporting back a few steps with Maple.

"You almost died," Maple snapped while floating in the air beside her. The usually impassive squirrel looked spooked.

Stella's eyes widened. "Died? But I didn't see anything."

"Nor did that drunkard before he vanished," Maple pointed out. "The Hollowed One is surrounded by invisible mouths, and one of them almost got you."

Stella looked at the Hollowed One, and besides its ghastly appearance, she couldn't see any of these mouths. But she believed Maple, as his void claw had hit something.

"How can we fight it then?"

"The mouths likely devour everything," Maple warned, his golden eyes narrowed to slits. "Qi, flesh, techniques. Do not let your attacks touch them, and do not let them touch you."

So it's like fighting the void? I'll need to overwhelm these invisible mouths if I want to land an attack.

"How many are there?"

Maple was quiet for a moment too long.

"...I cannot count them."

Wonderful. Stella exhaled slowly to calm her rage. She had to approach this fight cautiously. The ghost she had been hunting for two months turned out to be standing in the center of an invisible feeding frenzy that could even threaten her and make Maple panic.

"You should listen to the squirrel," the Hollowed One said, drifting forward. The air around him rippled, like the heat-hazed air in Magnus's Domain. Now that she knew to look, Stella could almost feel the presence of the mouths. There were countless orbiting the Hollowed One like flies around a rotten corpse.

I'll make an opening.

With a snap of her fingers, a dozen swords wreathed in aether Qi appeared suspended in the air above the Hollowed One, their gleaming tips pointed at the monster. Like an executioner, Stella commanded them all to strike at the same time.

"Go!" Stella told Maple as she scattered into white light and reappeared above the Hollowed One, dagger already aimed toward the crown of his skull—and vanished again before the blow landed, a feint, reforming behind his exposed back with her real strike aimed between his mismatched shoulder blades.

The dagger ceased to exist like the dozen swords.

There was no impact, no resistance. One moment she held her favorite weapon—a dagger made from the stick Ashlock gave her as a child—and the next her hand was closed around nothing, her fingertips tingling where they had stopped a hair's breadth from an unseen maw.

"Move!"

Maple's claw of void raked the air beside her neck. Something howled like wind through a hole, and Stella hurled herself into the aether on pure instinct, reappearing thirty meters down the alley with her heart hammering.

She clamped her shoulder where she felt a dull pain and confirmed four punctures in the shoulder of her coat.

No blood, thankfully. I think Diana's feathers interwoven into the coat saved me. But that was way too close.

The Hollowed One hadn't moved. He hung there, limp as a hanged man, watching her with his serpent eye while his human one lagged a half-second behind.

Stella's jaw clenched as what had happened caught up to her.

I can't believe that thing ate my favorite dagger!

Her eyes turned pale, and otherworldly light bled through fractal lines lurking beneath her skin as she activated her domain. Reality didn't burn her like before, but the Qi expenditure to activate her domain had increased drastically as her new body wasn't as in tune with the aether.

I don't care how much Qi this costs if I can tear this monster apart and get my dagger back. Stella blinked forward right under the Hollowed One. Its swarm of invisible mouths gnawed at the edge of her domain, but they had a thousand miles of aether to eat through before they reached her.

"What an interesting power," the Hollowed One said. "But how can you harm me if you cower in the aether—"

"Like this," Stella collapsed the domain to zero specifically around her hand for an instant and drove her fist into the Hollowed One's stolen chin with everything she had. It was the single most satisfying punch of her life as the Hollowed One's jaw shattered against her knuckles and his head rolled back. Without missing a beat, she followed up by driving her knee into his ribs, cracking them under his taut patchwork skin and forcing him back.

Ouch, it's like kneeing a stone slab.

A hollow laugh echoed out of the thing pretending to be human. "As expected of the Crowned One's vessel, your level of control over your domain far surpasses your cultivation level," it said with amusement as a new misaligned jaw appeared and its ribs shifted under its skin like maggots as they repaired. "You really will make the perfect dessert."

Stella shuddered as the Hollowed One licked its lips with a tongue that looked like a fat, wet leech, leaving its crackled lips coated in slime.

"Since you're taking the fight seriously, I suppose I should too."

The thing's ribcage creaked open once more. But this time was different.

This time, the ribs did not stop.

They peeled backward past the point where a chest should end, unfolding wider and wider like the petals of some carnivorous flower, and the void within did not sit passively inside as it had when it swallowed the drunkard. It breathed. Stella felt it inhale, and every instinct she possessed, honed through a life of living on a blade's edge, began screaming a single word.

Run.

"Welcome," the Hollowed One said, almost tenderly, "to my Domain."

The exhale that rolled out of the Hollowed One made no sound and carried no Qi, but the world around her reacted. The flaming torches lining the alley dwindled to embers as if starved of air before snuffing out completely.

"Let us enjoy an Endless Banquet."

The Hollowed One's voice no longer came from the gaunt, floating figure. It came from everywhere all at once.

"On the menu, is each other."

Hunger suddenly hit her.

It bloomed in the pit of Stella's stomach without warning as a hollow, gnawing ache, as if she hadn't eaten in days. Then weeks. The feeling deepened by the second, sinking past her stomach into something more fundamental, until it wasn't her body that felt empty but her very soul, and she understood with dawning horror that this wasn't an attack at all.

The Hollowed One was simply sharing his pain.

Stella grimaced and fell to one knee. While clutching her hungering stomach, she looked up at the Hollowed One with darkening vision. She was so starved that a thought she would never have thought possible crossed her mind. A thought so depraved that it made her want to tear out her own eyes.

But she found herself drooling all the same.

I wonder how the Hollowed One would taste...