Nic felt with agonizing clarity the moment his body began to ‘die’ in the illusionary world. It was when the thorned branches of the cherry tree growing within him pushed up through his veins, tearing their way out of his skin, unfolding into the world.
For a moment he was forced to rely on his crystalline vision to remain calm, his eyes allowing him to pierce through and see that the thorned vines were nothing. A creation contained solely within his mind. That knowledge - and that knowledge alone - kept him from desperately eating the second cherry and ending things there, as he felt his body being crushed, squeezed, raked apart by thrashing tendrils of wooden vines, as he felt his flesh groan and rip apart. His meat was peeled from the bone, his eyes bulging in their sockets, his throat filled with a crawling mass of thorn he couldn’t swallow down; every breath, every tremble, only dragged him against the thorns and made his personal hell grow all the crueler.
He was being crucified on a tree that grew from within.
And it all happened slowly.
His mistake had been pushing his Spiritual Clarity right before he ate the cherry. That had induced some trance-like state, some hypnosis, that sharpened his senses to the pain and made time slow to a crawl. Everything was a moment unto itself; every stab of pain an infinity that rolled over him in waves, vast and unending.
His torment was slow…
Years seemed to pass. Each moment held on with an intensity that seemed impossible, his panic and pain rising to a fever pitch, believing without fail that every moment would be the last, that this had to end soon, and yet being disappointed- it never did.
He was slowly covered in thorns, and his flesh was torn apart as the tree tore through his back and grew from his hunched body.
And even then, he still felt everything. Kept alive by the illusion when in life, he would have been long dead and the more peaceful for it.
The pain continued.
But something else began.
Before, the world had turned to ash and gray skies, to desolate landscapes devoid of life. Now, from his body, grass began to grow. It spread across the ashen ground in prickling waves of green. Flowers, dandelions and spring magnolias, grew amongst them. Mosses and simple lichens crawled over his decaying bones and spread outwards, forming a furry thatch of spongy moss-tissue that supported the nascent field of green grass and flowers.
From the flowers came the first wisps of condensation, built as they respired the dry, dead air. That became rain, which fell upon the earth in droplets.
The tree began to bloom.
Flowers opened across the wasteland.
Cherries fell and rotted, their pits sinking into the earth to give rise to new cherry trees - and with each one that was born, Nic felt the agony start anew. He was torn apart again and again, as if the trees could only prosper from his pain.
Ten trees…
A hundred…
Nic escaped not by being a stone, not by being infinite in his capacity to resist, but by feeling the richness of the earth around him. His consciousness could move through the blades of grass as they swayed in the wind and drank up sun, rain, good weather and bad…
His mind could fill the flowers as they blossomed…
And when he cast his mind out of his own body, the pain receded for a moment, allowing him to escape from utter agony into a dull, relentless aching.
And so he allowed time to pass. His mind blended with the earth as new trees rose, a forest, full of oaks and willows and cherry trees…
His mind climbed the parasitic kudzu that climbed ancient trunks and rendered them into pillars of hand-shaped green leaves. His mind drifted in dandelion spores. Pain was his constant companion, as the world drank his agony like rainwater.
But so was wonder.
In this state, he could wander forever. The world was small, no more than miles across, but in that space Nic could occupy every leaf and every bloom. He was able to race ahead of his pain, to outrun it from moment to moment and lose himself in the green splendor of the world.
And time ceased to have any meaning.
Pain ceased to be a thing that ruled his mind, but an ever present fact of life.
Within the illusion all things blurred together. Nic found he could occupy two leaves at once, then three…
His mind spread throughout the world like a singular consciousness.
When he found his pain again, when he found the tree where his twitching, undying body was rooted, he was the one who controlled it. Who held the leash. His mind pressed down and restrained the hurt, the agony, forced it into a singular point of burning hate no larger than a grain of sand.
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He had won.
He had won against himself.
The illusion broke apart.
Nic found himself lying on the pale grass, a bedroll propped under his head. Someone had wiped away the worst of the grime that clung to his flesh. Someone had put a roll of leather between his teeth, keeping him from biting down so hard he cracked and broke his teeth.
Someone had taken care of him.
He straightened up, and looked down at his hand. He had meant to eat the second cherry to break the illusion. That had been the ‘intended’ method of escape, when the pain had become too much to bear. But every time he had been tempted…
He had simply refused. His will over himself had been total, and so he had never crumbled, never allowed himself to flinch away.
The second cherry was still there in the palm of his hand.
But it had turned to a pure white. A single character of black remained imprinted on the flesh.
It read ‘Freedom.’
Purified Obsidian Cherry. E-Class // Medicine. Created when a mind turns pain into beauty, this once-cursed fruit is now a potent medicine, freeing the mind from any illusion it is trapped within.
“Cultivation map…” He croaked.
And his face went nearly white.
Essence 8,733 / 27,046
+ 19.27 per Minute
(3.212 Base)
100% Local Modifier
+ 100% Dominion
+ Devoured an E-Class enemy (200%)
+ Consumed a F-Class treasure (100%)
+ Rested in toxic environment (300%)
Demonic Essence &%##!~
Cultivation Base (Unranked)
XIV Physical Strength (Completed)
III Mental Acuity (1,051/8,000)*
IV Spiritual Clarity (11,283/16,000)*
IV Gift of Life (962/15,000)
IV Mistwater Step (114/15,000)
The Old Speech (117/50,000)
11,000…
He had barely broken through before eating the cherry.
One experience…
A couple of hours at most…
And he’d ascended more than halfway to the new limit. He was maybe a week away from breaking through again, or half that if he continued to knock down Trials.
His power had erupted.
He took a moment to simply breathe, letting the exhilaration wash over him. Three breakthroughs to his core cultivation abilities in a day was just too intoxicating.
And then he opened his eyes again, and surveyed the world around him. It was a garden. Neat rows of dark, well-tilled soil bore strange, thorny plants. Twisted fruits with mottled, discolored surfaces like bruises grew, their scents sulfurous and ugly. Other plants were richly colorful and tempting, with bright blossoms and poisonous nectar wafting enticingly into the air.
There was a small lean-to, a scrawny little shelter against the wind covering a space where someone slept.
Nic knew where he was.
If nothing else, he could smell the demonic aura on the air. Kline had learned to hide in the woods…
But not to restrain his energy.
“You can come out…” He said, shifting onto his feet. “You know I look as weird as you do, so there’s no need to be shy.”
Slowly, Kline emerged from the shadows of the trees. It was hard to see how he’d ever been human. The demonic energy he’d absorbed had warped him, giving him the semblance of a crooked, scaly cat, head and shoulders covered by a mantle of coins, rich golden obols like ancient civilizations had laid on the eyes of the dead. His mouth was split by a cleft lip, exposing small sharp teeth set into his pink gums like razors.
“Sorry. I- I found you… Out in the woods… Twitching…”
“It was MY IDEA.” Inkspur fluttered down, landing on the top of the lean-to. “I instructed the WITLESS LAD to help you.”
“Well, thanks, both of you.” Nic straightened up, sighing. He really felt like he’d been through the ringer lately. “This is a pretty nice garden, Kline.”
“Thanks?” Kline seemed surprise to hear it. He knelt down, plucking a small, thorny fruit from a patch of black leaves shaped like hands. “Most of them are poisonous. Since I- Since I-”
“Since you changed…” Nic supplied.
“Since I changed, everything I grow is… like me…”
“Demonic.” Which only made them more interesting to Nic. “But that’s not a bad thing. Or, it doesn’t have to be. I’m a demon too, after all. Here, toss me that.”
Kline threw the fruit his way. Digging a knife from his bag, Nic cut the thorned rind away, exposing pale fruit surrounding a cluster of four bean-sized black seeds. He sucked the juicy flesh from the bones, spitting out the seed.
A small ember of Demonic Essence drifted through his body as he swallowed.
“See? Not all that poisonous, even.”
Kline watched curiously.
“In fact, this is exactly what I need.” In order to evolve, Nic didn’t just have to complete the usual conditions. He also needed to fulfill the conditions for his demonic side - one of which was raising two skills to Rank X using Demonic Essence.
These fruits Kline had raised weren’t terribly powerful, true…
But they were free Essence, in a form Nic needed badly.
“Come here.” He reached into his bag and took out the herbs and medicines he’d collected from the petrified forest. Setting them out, he gave Kline a broad grin. “Let me tell you what these do and how they want to grow…”