Reborn as a Demonic Tree-Novel

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 herself.

The void creature looked curiously at the black marble near Nox's feet and then seemed to deem it a threat as it tried to kill her and destroy the artifact.

"Lucius, kill this fucking thing," Nox shouted as she kicked the marble far out of the creature's reach and rolled to the side. She then sunk into the shadow cast by the table to avoid another swipe that left deep gashes in the stone.

There was no way she wanted to face the creature in combat, as Void Qi was incredibly dangerous because it could ignore life-saving artifacts and cleave straight through a cultivator's flesh with ease.

As the familiar, comforting darkness embraced her and she faded into the background away from those claws, she could spend a moment trying to get the very potent poison spreading throughout her body under control and analyze the situation.

This wasn't the first time Nox had been poisoned. Usually, she could quickly burn a poison with her soul fire before it got a chance to spread, but Hammond had launched his attack before she had gotten a chance to suppress it fully, and it was far stronger than she had expected.

Summoning a few body cleansing pills of her own, as she didn't trust the ones Roselyn had provided, she ate a handful and then focused back on the situation in the room as her body was flooded with a soothing feeling.

Hammond was dead—sliced into five pieces by the void creature's claws. His bloody remains dyed half the room in red where the void creature was now recovering from its missed attack on her and was changing its focus to Lucius, who was charging up an attack.

Her eyes darted between the members of the Ashfallen Trading Company, who were only now making a move. Hammond's sudden attack on Roselyn had clearly dumbfounded Elder Margret and Diana, but now, after recovering from the blinding attack and seeing a fight occurring, Elder Margret was surrounding her fists in crimson flames, and Diana had a dense mist blasting out of her and filling the room.

Nox's gaze drifted to the Silverspire man who had already jumped over the table and was conjuring a spear of silver to impale through the preoccupied Lucius.

"Radiant blast!" Lucius shouted as he raised his glowing hands.

A beam of white light exploded from his palms and hit the void creature square in its chest, carving a burning hole straight through the void flesh and melting through the stone wall behind the monster.

The creature staggered to the side, but before Lucius could finish it off, he had to turn and face Sebastian.

Nox briefly debated lending a helping hand, but Lucius was a tough bastard to kill, so she remained in the shadows with her senses spread far and wide, trying to locate the missing earrings.

"Prism Shield!" Lucius said as he raised one hand, and multiple shields of celestial light materialized between Sebastian and himself.

Nox had always found Lucius's arrogant habit of shouting out his technique names odd, but he claimed it helped him empower them. The conjured shields of light shattered like glass as Sebastian's liquid spear of silver penetrated them with ease.

As the final one shattered and the silver tip was inches from Lucius's face, he ducked down low and planted a glowing fist into Sebastian's side, sending the Silverspire man flying backward and crumpling against the far wall.

It seemed a victory for Lucius, but Nox noticed that the liquid spear had curved downward at the last second and impaled him through his armor.

Lucius cursed as he clutched the gaping wound on his left shoulder. "Healing glow," He said as a warm glow pulsed around the wound, and Nox watched it quickly close.

A moment passed, and the large meeting room had filled with a swirling dense mist that annoyingly interfered with Nox's spiritual sense. Strange phantoms manifested within the mist, and they began to laugh as they encircled Lucius.

"What a cheap trick. All illusions perish before my light," Lucius laughed as his armor began to glow brightly, and a wave of light flashed out, eliminating the phantoms and illuminating the dense mist, which revealed a strange shadow dashing through the fog directly at Lucius.

Nox didn't have a good line of sight on the shadow as she lurked in the darkness under the table, and the mist interfered with her senses. But Lucius seemed to identify it as a threat as he summoned a blade of light to his hand and raised it to meet the rapidly approaching shadow.

The swirling fog parted, and something Nox could only describe as a demoness shot out and lashed at Lucius in a crazed frenzy with claws of shadow.

Lucius tried to shrug off the onslaught with his sword, but the demoness used her giant raven wings thrice her size like extra limbs to pummel him from either side.

"Nox, you bitch, where did you sneak off to," Lucius shouted, "Help me!"

"Stop being a drama queen," Nox snorted from the shadows, her voice echoing through the room.

Lucius chuckled and vanished in a flash of light, leaving the enraged demoness clawing at empty air. He reappeared behind her and pounded her into the ground with an empowered fist.

"Fucking demon whore," Lucius stamped down on the demoness's back, crushing the bones in her wings and causing her to scream in pain while coughing up black blood.

"Get off her!" A fireball of crimson flames parted the swirling mist and harmlessly dissipated on a quickly conjured light shield.

"Who?" Lucius cursed as he turned to look through the parted mist and laid eyes on a very concerned-looking Elder Margret, standing beside Roselyn, who was busy downing what appeared to be healing pills while clutching her ripped-up and bloody ears.

Something was terribly odd about this Ashfallen Trading Company. Not only were they acquainted with one of the most influential families in the wilderness and able to make pills that could permanently improve a person's spirit root, but they also had control over void monsters. And if that wasn't enough, now one of their members was a shapeshifting demon?

Lucius stopped stamping on Diana, leaving her half-dead, and strode toward Elder Margret with a smirk.

"I say we kill them all," Lucius said as he summoned a second sword of light, "No survivors mean no problems."

With the weird void creature out of action, that was a plan Nox could agree with. Everyone else left from the Ashfallen Trading Company had no way to pose a significant threat, and with them all dead, she could take her time finding the other earring.

Nox blinked in confusion as Stella reacted instantly to her emerging from her shadow—her usually crazed pink eyes that made people uncomfortable to be looked at were now tranquil and focused as if seeing through her every move.

Nox rolled to the side, got back onto her feet in a single motion, and faced Stella. The girls hair was floating high above her head as space distorted and crackled around her.

"You dare hurt my friends and steal from me!" Stella cried as she summoned a sword to her hand and charged with unfathomable speed as if space had been compressed.

Stella seemed unfazed, and the two engaged in a flurry of attacks that filled the already chaotic room with clangs. Nox dipped in and out of the room's shadows and tried to Shadow Step a few more times, but Stella always managed to deflect anything she tried.

Much like the mist phantoms that had perished to Lucius's light, shadowy beings emerged from under the crushed table and the room's nooks and crannies. They all bore the same bulky silhouette as Nox as they encircled Stella.

The blonde girl seemed unimpressed by Nox's backup as she just stared at her with a calm expression, as if everything was within her control. Her silver spatial ring then flashed, and a dagger with a black wooden handle appeared in her empty hand. She then opened her palm, and the dagger floated up beside her.

Stella tapped the dagger with her finger, and its blade ignited with purple soul fire. She then closed her tranquil eyes, and Nox saw the dagger's tip rotate in the air to face the incoming shadows like a homing arrow.

Stella clicked her fingers, and the floating dagger whizzed around her, slicing reality in its wake and obliterating the shadows from existence in one fell swoop.

Nox narrowed her eyes and followed the flow of the Qi in the room. It was chaotic and all over the place, with so many Star Core cultivators fighting in one room and trying to suppress each other with their own gravity, but something stood out as odd to Nox.

Nox's eyes flickered through the room to locate the source. Naturally, the first place she checked was the corner where she had kicked the Dimension Locker, which was supposed to restrict outside interference. To her surprise, she saw the demoness had crawled over and held the shattered marble in her hand.

Diana let out a groan of pain as her hand collapsed to the ground, and she passed out.

A sudden presence that matched Nox's own blanketed the whole room, and a giant portal manifested over Diana. From within the distorted rift emerged an enormous black wooden arm that picked up Diana's broken body and carefully took it away.

Upon the rift snapping closed, a new one of similar size manifested over Lucius. The glowing Merchant was busy fighting the Silverspire servant, who had coated his entire body in a suit of liquid silver armor and was wielding a mace while protecting a badly beaten Elder Margret, who was missing an arm and covered in burns.

"Lucius, look out!" Nox shouted as she saw a giant ashen-furred spider crawl out of the newly formed portal. Lucius heeded her warning, looked up, and was greeted by the spirit beast opening its maw. Thousands of tiny ashen spiders poured upon him like a tidal wave.

Lucius waved his sword around to no avail as the living wave of ashen spiders was deadset on devouring his flesh.

"Nox, help me!" Lucius cried out as he shot out random beams of light that melted through stone while trying to throw off the spiders latching onto his arms.

"Your opponent is me," Stella said calmly as she turned on her heel and looked directly at Nox through the darkness with closed eyes and the aflame dagger's tip pointing straight at her, "I will kill you myself for what you've done here today."

"Very well, Roselyn, or should I call you Stella?" Nox said as she emerged from the shadows with a smile and cracked her neck as her Star Core blazed with power. Before, she had been holding back in fear of wasting her cultivation, but now it was time to go all out. She refused to die here today to the mysterious Ashfallen Trading Company.