Reborn as a Demonic Tree

Chapter 632: Eye of Horus (End of Book 10)

Ashlock had spent the last six months in his dreamscape beneath a desolate sky resembling faded ash, with a black star looming overhead, offering no light or heat.

The black star had begun small beneath the vertical stack of his nine moons, but during his ascension, it had slowly climbed into the sky, absorbing his moons as it went and growing larger in the process.

Now almost matching the size of his ninth and final moon, the sight above him closely resembled an eclipse, with the pale moon's glow reduced to a halo around the black star.

Ashlock knew little about the mysterious black star, other than that it was the focal point of his new domain and had slowly absorbed eight of his nine dreamscape moons. He noted many Daos and Laws contained within its void-blackness, but even he struggled to grasp its true nature.

"Soon it will finish swallowing my final moon," Ashlock mused with rising excitement. For a whole six months, he had suffered in silence as heavenly lightning continued to strike his Inner World from beyond the desolate sky, turning it into a molten hellscape. His desolation Qi lingering across its surface did little to weather the heavens' wrath.

[Remaining time: 5 hours]

"Only hours remain until my hibernation concludes."

Ashlock looked up at the black star.

"Hopefully, all of this will have been worth it, as I'm sure the Ashfallen Empire suffered greatly because of the tribulation."

He assumed the worst, but the desolate sky of his dreamscape shielded him from the happenings beyond his Soul Cosmos, and by extension, his Inner World. It was just him, the black star, and the relentless heavenly lightning blasting his Inner World—each strike feeling like a burning needle thrust into his very soul.

It had been an absolutely grueling 182 days of no sleep, and unlike his Law comprehension dreams, which faded upon awakening, he would remember every painful moment of this dream for the rest of his life.

Ashlock watched in tense silence as the timer continued to tick down and the black star fully engulfed his final moon, devouring the last source of light besides the lightning within his desolate dreamscape.

[Domain formation complete]

Like a clock striking twelve, Ashlock felt something click throughout the space.

The heavenly lightning vanished as if a light switch had been flipped. The thunder that had roared without pause abruptly fell silent. It was as if his dreamscape had been sealed off from the outside world, and Ashlock couldn't help but take a deep breath of relief and mentally close his eyes to enjoy the silence.

Half a year of blinding light, pain, and roaring thunder. Gone in an instant.

When Ashlock finally looked around after a moment of peace, he found himself peering down upon his Inner World suspended above a towering demonic tree with a crown of branches.

A very recognizable demonic tree. It was him. Ashlock scrutinized himself, and despite being hundreds of meters tall, he seemed so small and insignificant from this strange perspective.

"Why am I having this weird out-of-body experience? Is it because my domain finally formed?" He looked around the desolate space, and all he could see was a sea of his offspring stretching from him to the dreamscape's horizons. "Did my Gaze of the Tree God skill upgrade or something? This view makes me feel like a god looking down at a world I've built."

He felt something was off about all this, so he decided to activate his Gaze of the Tree God skill and felt his godly view swap to the more focused one he was familiar with.

"My trunk looks towering from here. Huh, it really is all about perspective. I felt so small before." Ashlock paused. "Hold on, what about the black star?"

Ashlock peered beyond his canopy and wished he hadn't.

The black star he had patiently watched grow over the last six months hung silently in the desolate sky, staring at him with its enormous central lunar pupil.

It was no longer a black star. It was an eye.

Every leaf in his canopy curled inward as he got lost in the star's gaze. It felt sentient and deeply unnatural, similar to the eyes of heaven that swarmed through fissures in reality to smite those it deemed lesser with heavenly lightning, only thousands of times bigger.

"Is this my domain?" Ashlock asked, not out of disappointment but out of concern. This eye's gaze carried an incomprehensible judgment that didn't resemble mortals or even gods. It felt like something that existed beyond the framework of this reality.

[Domain acquired: {Eye of Horus}]

[Birthed from your deep knowledge of many Daos, Laws, and the absorbed conceptual dao of Pride, for a sufficient sacrifice you can summon the Eye of Horus. It begins beneath the nine moons and slowly climbs, escalating in power with every moon passed and gaining their affinities. At the ninth, it eclipses the last moon, opens, and unleashes its authority upon all it sees. You are destined to remake reality as you see fit, and under the Eye of Horus's gaze, all is possible]

"The Eye of Horus, huh? A suitable name given its description, but I have to wonder whether the system pulled it from my memory of Egyptian mythology or if it's just a coincidence my domain is named after the god of the sky, war, and kingship. Never mind, it doesn't matter—I finally have my very own domain!"

Ashlock giddily swapped his view to that of the Eye of Horus and quickly realized the lightning had never stopped. He had simply wished with all his being for the lightning to be gone, and once the Eye of Horus deemed the dreamscape under its authority, the lightning was simply... dismissed.

"But what was sacrificed to grant me the power to simply ignore the heavens' wrath?" Ashlock wondered aloud, as the domain's description had mentioned a sacrifice was needed to summon the Eye of Horus.

Thankfully, his system had the answer.

[Your nine spiritual moons were sacrificed to Horus. It will take time and divine energy to restore them, and while they are gone, the recovery offered by Nocturnal Genesis is severely reduced]

"My nine moons were sacrificed?" Ashlock asked in disbelief. He wasn't the only one who benefited from the nine moons' soul-healing glow. His offspring depended on them too, and if he had to use divine energy to restore them, his divine stock market growth would be reduced. "The domain also took a long time to activate, while other people's domains can be summoned with the click of a finger."

Yet, Ashlock had long learned how this worked. The bigger the drawbacks, the greater the power. This was a domain made from the combination of all his Law and Dao knowledge, which was only possible because of the Eternal Realm and the thousand-year dreams he only remembered as fading echoes.

"I'm destined to remake reality, and the Eye of Horus grants me the authority to do so..." Ashlock repeated what the domain description had said. "In that case, can I fix my Inner World as its top half has been reduced to a molten mess?"

He didn't need the system to answer. He knew he could. Staring down at his Inner World, he willed for a mountain to rise out of the magma. Since this was an act of creation rather than desolation, the Eye of Horus mobilized the divine energy it had absorbed from the moons and the heavenly lightning rather than his desolation Qi.

The Eye of Horus opened, and a beam of divine energy tore into his Inner World and bore down into its center. It trembled, and as Ashlock willed, a mountain range of cooling magma rose from the surface and into the sky.

"This... is a power belonging in the realm above the gods," Ashlock muttered in disbelief. "Harmony Dao accelerates the restoration of things, but it doesn't allow me to alter reality as I see fit like this."

Ashlock could feel how expensive creation was compared to destruction as the beam of divine energy was still pouring into his Inner World from the Eye of Horus, so he didn't plan to waste it. His system had clearly paid the sacrifice to manifest the Eye of Horus so he could repair his Inner World and soul before concluding his tribulation.

"Raising an entire mountain range cost a significant portion of the divine energy reserves," Ashlock mused. However, now that he was controlling the Eye of Horus, he knew it hadn't stopped the heavens' lightning—it was simply absorbing it before it reached his dreamscape.

His divine energy reserves were rapidly refilling.

[Remaining time: 4 hours]

"I have four hours to make use of the heavens' unlimited divine lightning. I'll start by shaping my Inner World to perfection."

He carved out deep basins for an ocean and filled them with water. The magma heated the ocean, causing steam to rise and condense into clouds over the towering mountains. Snow fell on the peaks, rain everywhere else. Soon, rivers snaked through the cooling molten land. Ashlock had the Eye of Horus combine divine energy and Harmony Dao to cover the dull, rocky landscape in rolling fields of lush grass, flora, and trees. On the edge of the oceans, he ground the stone into fine black sand and sculpted the most pristine beaches, looking like something out of an Iceland travel brochure.

That's when Ashlock finally noticed his Heaven-Defying Orchard was still around near the border of the lower half. It hadn't come out unscathed, but the Fleshfruit trees were all fine, with the taller trees having taken the brunt of the damage.

"I suppose it's not called a Heaven-Defying Orchard for nothing," Ashlock chuckled at his own terrible joke and then froze as he saw a house.

Stella's house.

Its ceiling had collapsed, and the surrounding land was charred, but it otherwise stood. Using divine energy stolen from the heavens, Ashlock first healed his orchard, then carefully repaired Stella's house, using a combination of telekinesis to lift the collapsed roof and Harmony Dao to grow thick vines that held it all together, and flowers bloomed, making the house look hilariously cute.

"Sorry, Stella, you might need to ask Douglas or the Mudcloaks to conduct a more proper fix," Ashlock mused, turning his gaze to the ocean in the distance. "Now that I think about it, my Inner World had some primitive lifeforms before the heavens smote them to dust. Let's see... I still have two hours, and restoring my nine moons will take a long time. I should do that too, and then experiment with any time I have left."

Swiveling the Eye of Horus, he picked a spot and willed for his first and most important moon to come back—his desolation moon. His divine energy reserves bottomed out instantly, and he could feel an immense pull on his Qi as the spiritual moon began to reform.

It ended up taking an hour to restore his first moon. The following three took less than twenty minutes each, but the tribulation would end before he finished restoring them all.

[Remaining time: 5 minutes]

"I don't have long enough to repair another moon." Ashlock looked back at his Inner World. "I'd rather spend this time trying to make some life while I have so much divine energy to work with."

The Eye of Horus changed its focus from creating celestial objects to birthing new life forms. Not knowing how long it would take to create a new species, he quickly went through the options.

"Stella might want some animals or fish to hunt for food. She said the squid creatures in the ocean tasted good roasted, but I've never really seen her cook or prepare animals." Ashlock pondered some more as he looked over the blooming flora. "Perhaps an insect would be better? I could make spiders so Larry has some friends, or perhaps ants? No, wait, what about... bees? They were essential insects on Earth for pollination, and they make honey. Stella would definitely love honey."

Ashlock had eaten many monsters, and, unbeknownst to him, his system had stored all their genetic information, which he could now bring forth and manipulate through the Eye of Horus.

"Bees always get picked on in nature because of their size, so I should make them bigger... maybe big enough to carry my fruits if they wished? But now they look quite horrifying. What if I made them fluffier and gave them more colorful wings, like a butterfly's?"

Ashlock got admittedly carried away, and it was only as the timer hit two minutes left that he settled for his creation and got to work. He started by making a queen, which ended up being larger than a human, while the worker bees would be closer to a small dog in size.

The Eye of Horus's divine energy concentrated into a focal point on the ground, and he worked together with his system to weave the genetic information into life. After a long moment, the first queen bee came to life.

[Congratulations, you have created a new species. What do you want to call it?]

"I'll let Stella name them," Ashlock said, and dismissed the prompt. He only had seconds to quickly make a few worker bees so the queen wouldn't be alone. He ended up making five before the divine energy supply abruptly cut off.

[Monarch tribulation has concluded]

The Eye of Horus collapsed on itself as his dreamscape faded away.

[Hibernation ended]

Ashlock looked up at the sky and froze. The sky... was gone. In its place was a massive, swirling hole wider than the World Tree's canopy, seemingly leading to the next Layer of Creation.

It was, no doubt, the Era of Ascension.

[Congratulations, Ashlock. You have ascended to the Monarch Realm]