Reborn as a Demonic Tree

Chapter 631: An Illusionary Feast

All around her, Diana saw the mortals peeling off one another. With bloody mouths and tears streaming down their faces, they walked through the broken doors of nearby homes and sat down at empty tables. Then, as if there were a feast only they could see, they began pretending to eat and cried with joy.

No doubt that's the work of Elaine and her illusions, Diana thought, and shuddered as she caught one man gnawing on a shard of wood with a look of satisfaction as if it were a honey-glazed pastry. That's got to be bad for his teeth, but at least it's not the flesh of his family—

An aether-wreathed sword blurred before her face, cleaving through a hand that had been about to claw at her. Diana's attention had faltered for only a moment, and it was almost enough to lose her head.

"Thanks, Stella," Diana said as she refocused on the battle.

Stella didn't answer.

In all the years Diana had fought at Stella's side, she had never seen her like this. Stella's Crestfallen bloodline and Aetherial Domain were working in harmony to create the perfect killer. Her focus didn't waver, not even for a second. She flickered in and out of the aether faster than Diana could perceive, and where her aether-coated sword passed, patchwork flesh opened in ribbons.

She's untouchable, Diana thought, ducking under a sweep of arms, and yet we are losing.

The Hollowed One didn't care for either of their efforts. The creature met each of their attacks with one of its dozen limbs, sprouting from its shoulders, its spine, its throat. Despite looking malnourished, each of the arms carried enough strength to reduce Diana's fist into mist and shatter Stella's swords.

She was on her tenth one.

There's simply no end to this, Diana thought as Stella successfully cut through one of the Hollowed One's limbs, only for a new one to swell to life out of the stump and go for Stella's throat.

It met her domain an inch from her throat, unable to advance closer. Stella flickered into the aether, seemingly tracked the movement of every limb, and appeared behind the Hollowed One in a small blind spot. In a single slash, she severed three limbs, shattering her sword in the process.

The Hollowed One groaned and lunged sideways, ignoring both of them, and its arms telescoped out with a sound like wet rope uncoiling. They plunged into a collapsed bakery at the plaza's edge and came back clutching three screaming mortals who had been free from the hunger under Elaine's illusions.

"No—" Diana blurred forward to try and grab the limb, but she was a half-second late. The Hollowed One's ribs opened wide, and the mortals went in whole. The creature's mass visibly surged, and two fresh arms bubbled out of its back, already swinging at Stella.

Stella reappeared beside Diana and staggered. "It's not getting any slower or weaker," she rasped.

Diana extended her wing to support her.

Up close, Stella looked almost as bad as the Hollowed One. Her cheeks were sunken to the bone, and her hands trembled around her sword hilt. Clearly, if it wasn't for her bloodline sharpening her focus on defeating the enemy before her, Stella would have been driven utterly mad with hunger.

Diana was only able to resist the Hollowed One's hunger by keeping her clones outside of its range and spreading her soul between them. Since the hunger seemed to target the soul, she relied on her unaffected clones to remind her that she wasn't actually starving.

"Any idea on how we can defeat it?" Diana asked as the Hollowed One ignored them and sent its limbs lurching out to grab more mortals to use as human fuel.

"No. I've cut off forty-one arms, only for it to have more than it started with. It has no organs to target, and its bones are denser than metal." Stella paused to catch her breath. She looked the most haggard Diana had ever seen her. "I... tried to go for the head, but it has too many arms to eat my attacks."

Diana nodded in agreement. Those arms, as thin as they looked, were not to be trifled with.

"I hate to admit it, but I don't think the Hollowed One is an existence we can defeat together, especially when I've been reduced to this," Stella cursed angrily while clutching her stomach with a twisted expression. "I'm so hungry I could die."

"We shouldn't let the Hollowed One keep feeding on mortals, as it's only going to grow in strength while we weaken," Diana said, spreading her wings. "You hang back and look for an opening on its head. I'll handle the Hollowed One for now."

Stella glanced at her with concern. "Can you really handle it alone?"

"Of course," Diana grinned. "I'm an Archdemon."

With the confidence of an empress, Diana stepped forward as strength surged through her body. Her claws and horns elongated as she grew in height, and her gray eyes turned an abyssal black. Mist coiled around her, condensing into two more arms extending from her shoulders. Her spatial rings flashed automatically as a runic circuit within them sensed her transformation and triggered, coating her in heavy runic armor and equipping each of her arms with a mace, a sword, a spear, and a shield, all specially made for her by Elder Mo.

Demonic mist coiled out of her mouth as rage and the hunger for destruction flooded her being. This was the true mindset of an Archdemon, and it scared even Diana. The starving mortals glanced up from their accused meals despite their hunger and fled from Diana as she completed her bloodline awakening.

"Hollowed One!" Diana roared like a feral warlord as she launched herself forward, crashing through three buildings and catching up to the rampaging Hollowed One in an instant.

When they had traded blows before, the Hollowed One had been favored.

That was no longer the case.

Diana swung a mace down upon the Hollowed One's head with the full might of an Archdemon. Sensing the danger, the Hollowed One met the attack by crossing four arms, and while it saved its head, the bones that had felt like metal shattered like glass under the strike and sent the Hollowed One falling to the ground.

Diana grinned. "Got you now—"

Like some man-shaped spider, the Hollowed One used its back limbs to catch itself from being flattened outright and sprang forward to launch an offensive.

Big mistake.

Diana swung her shield-bearing arm and swatted the Hollowed One to the side with enough force to crack the runically enhanced shield and obliterate half of the Hollowed One's limbs.

The creature was sent spiraling into a nearby building, which collapsed upon it in a shower of rubble.

Diana rolled her shoulder and let the fractured shield drop from her grip. Pulling her spear-holding arm all the way back, she launched it like a crossbow bolt and heard it impale the Hollowed One by how the creature shrieked.

So it can feel pain, Diana mused. She was about to dive in and finish it off when she heard a grotesque noise of squirming flesh from within the building. The Hollowed One rose within the dust cloud, and Diana noted its silhouette changing as limbs snapped back into place.

Bastard just won't go down, will it?

"Diana, surround the Hollowed One in your demonic mist," Elaine's voice suddenly whispered through the void. "I've got a plan to make it truly taste flavor for the first time, and for that, I'll need its senses to be dulled."

Diana didn't waste time asking about specifics. Leaping into the air, she spread out her wings and unleashed her domain. Demonic mist billowed out, blanketing the area in a thick fog.

The Hollowed One emerged from the building—its patchwork body was covered in scars from where Stella had stabbed it, and its right side, where Diana had bashed it with the shield, was showing a fading bruise. There was hardly any lasting evidence that it had fought with an Archdemon, and to add insult, it had grown more limbs than before, each one far more muscular.

Diana grimaced. It was almost insulting.

"Elaine, what should I do now?"

"Keep it occupied," Elaine answered. "Stella will handle the rest."

The Hollowed One was already about to walk out of the building to hunt for humans to feed on. Not wanting to allow the monstrosity to recover, Diana dove down and slammed into the Hollowed One.

But this time, it didn't go down.

"Do you know why humans are my favorite beings to imitate?" the Hollowed One taunted as it grabbed her wings with its thickened arms and tore them off. Demonic mist hissed from the wound as Diana did her best to swallow the pain. The Hollowed One grinned with a toothless mouth. "It's because they are the most adaptable."

A fist met Diana's jaw faster than she could register it, knocking her consciousness out of her body and into a nearby clone that was watching from beyond the Hollowed One's domain.

"What the..." Diana blinked and forcefully returned to her body that had been pushed to the floor—just in time to witness Stella charging recklessly at the Hollowed One with her sword over her head like a fool.

"Stella, wait!" Diana yelled. "You can't fight like that. It's gotten stronger—"

Her warning was too late.

The Hollowed One's arms snapped shut around the charging Stella like a dozen jaws, and it swallowed Stella in one motion.

Diana blinked in disbelief as the Hollowed One collapsed to its knees in apparent ecstasy and let out a sound of genuine delight.

"Is this... flavor?!"

Diana was frozen, wondering if what she had seen was real. Did Stella, who had been untouchable in the fight until now, just get eaten?

"I was going to save her for dessert," the Hollowed One licked its lips and rose back to its feet. "But using her to defeat you is far more satisfactory." Its empty gaze settled on Diana and its many hands twitched with anticipation. "You may not taste as sweet as her, but I'm curious..."

Diana shuffled backward, her eyes wide with horror. Had Stella really just died... like that?

Laughter echoed through the demonic mist.

"Diana, you should see the look on your face."

Stella emerged out of the aether between Diana and the Hollowed One and smirked at her. She looked as terrible as before, but stood with the confidence of a Crestfallen with her sword drawn.

"Stella Crestfallen? How are you still standing?" the Hollowed One asked the question on Diana's mind with a faint hint of concern in its voice. "I devoured you."

Stella chuckled. "Even if you did devour me, I should have tasted as bland as everything else in your miserable life. Yet you said it yourself. For the first time, you tasted flavor. Now am I just especially tasty, or did your mind perhaps play a trick on you?"

The Hollowed One slowly looked down at its sealed ribs as realization seemed to dawn on it.

"You should be more careful what you eat, Hollowed One."

The Hollowed One looked up as something within it detonated.

There was no explosion or sound. The Hollowed One simply dented inward from its chest cavity; flesh and arms were pulled in and erased, giving it no chance to heal. It staggered forward, gasping for breath as the void devoured it from within.

Stella collapsed to one knee.

Diana rushed in behind her, ignoring the pain of her missing wings to support her friend.

"Are you all right?" Diana asked, still shaken from thinking she had lost her best friend moments ago.

"My bloodline, it kept the hunger at bay until now, but it also refuses to fall for Elaine's illusions of sating food," Stella rasped, and she turned to meet Diana's gaze. She looked so weak and frail that it made Diana's stomach turn. "Please... end this."

Diana nodded and set Stella down. The Hollowed One was badly damaged by Elaine's void Qi, which must have been hidden inside the illusory Stella it ate, but it was still standing and slowly healing.

I'm going to kill this bastard and enjoy it.

Diana walked forward, strength swelling into every muscle. The Hollowed One noticed her approach and tried to block her with its regrowing limbs. Diana didn't care for them; she smacked them aside and gripped the side of the Hollowed One's skull with her two free hands.

"Let me put an end to your suffering," Diana said, and twisted. There was a bone-chilling crunch as the Hollowed One's spine snapped, and before it could scream, she pulled and tore the head clean off its neck.

She then pulverized it into dust beneath her boot.

The aura of hunger lifted in an instant, and the rest of the Hollowed One's body disintegrated into dust, leaving behind a black gemstone. Stepping back to help Stella back onto her feet, Diana ordered one of her clones to swoop in and secure the black gem.

"Bring that to me," Stella rasped as color slowly returned to her face. Once the black gem was in her hand, she sighed with relief as her favorite dagger fell out of the black gem and clattered to the ground.

"No wonder the Hollowed One never felt sated," Stella muttered, "this black gem is an infinite storage space, and it seems that everything the Hollowed One ever consumed, including food and people, is stored in stasis."

Diana's eyes widened. "Then that means we can solve the famine."

Stella nodded. "The nightmare is finally over... and we got a portal pocket dimension out of it."

Elaine touched down inside the destroyed room behind them.

"Did it work?" she asked with hope-filled eyes.

Diana turned and gave her a reassuring smile. "Not only did it work perfectly, but I also think we couldn't have done it without you."

"Oh, thank the nine realms," Elaine sighed with relief, leaning on what was left of a doorway pillar. "I put all the void Qi I could into that illusion, so if it failed, I wouldn't know what to do..."

"You did great, Elaine," Stella said, giving a thumbs up.

***

What would later be known as the great famine of Floridawn came to an abrupt end with the Hollowed One's defeat. The Ashbound Order worked swiftly to distribute the food found in the black gem to ease the populace's hunger and anger. Those pulled alive from the black gem reported experiencing nothing during their capture but mentioned a loss of taste, which is under investigation.

Once bellies were full and stories of the Slaughter Princess and Archdemon's feats spread, the revolts calmed down and order was restored by Team Phoenix. Mudcloaks moved in to repair the city, and pills from the Ashfallen Trading Company were distributed free of charge to restore public approval.

Douglas, Morrigan, Magnus and Elysia returned from the Eternal Realm in the following months and were escorted to safety by Larry. Morrigan and Douglas reached the Monarch Realm, while Magnus and Elysia made great strides through their stages. After recovering by eating her weight in food, Stella went in with a plan to reach the Sovereign of Realities Realm before either of them.

The Chairman's egos remain at large, and seems to have kept to their word following the Hollowed One's defeat.

"I think that's everything that's happened over the last six months," Diana mused as she closed the notebook and passed it off to a clone. The report would be read to Ashlock once he awoke, which was expected any day now.

Diana looked up at the sky that had torn open by a massive spiraling rift that was wider than the World Tree's canopy, and she could begin to see into the Layer of Creation above.

The Era of Ascension, Diana thought with a sigh. What a headache this is going to be, but I can't pretend I'm not a little excited to see how those on the 8th Layer of Creation will react to Ashlock, because he is far from ordinary.

She spread her healed wings and grinned.

I wonder if they have ever seen an Archdemon before.