Chapter 852. Carter’s Reaction and Petal Dew.

Carter was calmly sitting and watching his large army advance when distress signals rained onto his main control screen.

“Hm?”

Looking over to the screen, he noticed the signals coming from Quara’s army. “What’s wrong?”

He zoomed in and noticed that Quara’s army had approached an area with rather highly condensed roots. They were trying to move around it at first, but suddenly, some of the starships in the starmap lost their signals and disappeared. His brows furrowed.

Instant communication was not effective at their current distance of around one light year, but with their methods, Quara’s messages should arrive in around 15 minutes tops.

In the meantime, he could check the situation of the army with barely any delay. “…There are quite a few strong ternary essence signals. Were they ambushed?”

But as he was pondering, the speed at which the starship signals disappeared seemed to increase, and suddenly, a massive ternary essence fluctuation shook the energy readings. From that fluctuation, Carter could see 121 new signals appearing.

Then, a second later, over two dozen starships near those 121 ternary essence signals disappeared. After those 121 signals appeared, the speed at which the army collapsed skyrocketed.

The fifteen minutes of observing part of his army disappear were somewhat grueling, but finally, Quara’s messages arrived one after another.

At first, the messages were spoken in a calm and composed voice. “The Heavenly Willow has shown its roots and has the intent of attacking; currently, we’ve deployed…”

Quara’s voice became solemn. “The Heavenly Willow is showing incredible defensive capabilities against energy weapons…”

The next message sounded more hurried. “The Heavenly Willow’s roots are moving bizarrely; the strength behind her strikes is…”

The message before the last one carried a trace of tension and fear. “W-Wide area effect attacks are bombarding our army! The losses are vast! Only 60% of the army is left alive and…”

As for the last message… “We are retreating! The enemy has summoned a winged serpent species suspected to be Arboreal Winged Serpents! Their number… HEY! DODGE! DODGE! THE WHITE ONE IS COMING! HURRY AND…Bzzt.”

Carter looked at the starship signals and noticed that only a few managed to scatter. However, even those scattered were currently being hunted down by the 121 high-energy signals.

Taking a deep breath, Carter spoke. “Spread my orders to all border armies. Avoid all contact with root clusters. Even if it makes the travel time twice as long, never come into contact with dense root clusters and maintain a distance of at least 20 million kilometers.”

Looking ahead at the roots being “obediently” destroyed under their bombardment and army, Carter had a sinking feeling. ‘Did the Heavenly Willow use a skill that increases her fighting power for a short while? Also, summons? I’ve never heard of it.’

In his opinion, Liu Shu was a World Tree focused on defense and Aether Mana control. Otherwise, creating those catastrophic elemental attacks would be impossible. Also, Carter considered Liu Shu a dimension-focused World Tree. Otherwise, the attempts to bring her out of her sub-dimension and realm wouldn’t have failed so harshly.

In front of him, Carter noticed that the roots they had unearthed became quite alive and began striking rapidly around. No one panicked. Carter’s army reacted, erected shields, and blocked the brutal attacks with high efficiency. A few died in the process, but no starship was irreparably damaged.

Looking at the starmap, Carter decided to avoid Liu Shu as much as possible without neglecting their escape route.

***

Meanwhile, Liu Shu controlled her roots with her spare ternary essence regeneration, attacking the armies more actively and causing some damage. It wasn’t that hard because, even if she was powerful, Liu Shu was currently fighting on eight fronts. So, she had to divide her resources and control her roots actively.

She was focusing to the point that even her Avatar back at home was somewhat sluggish, as she was unable to spare much of her attention for it.

“The Arboreal Winged Serpents are, like always, a terrifying trump card.”

The combination of the skill and <Sprouts Of Chaos>, increasing the summoning cap, had always allowed Liu Shu to overperform with the <World Tree Calling> skill. If it weren’t because of <Sprouts Of Chaos>, <World Tree Calling> wouldn’t have been able to show even 10% of what it had.

“Alright, the army directed toward Etheria’s Solar System has been scattered. With this, Zaros’s plan can be implemented. From now on, my participation should be 100% focused on acting as a fortress. The fighting will be mostly left to the Golden Sap Empire Army.”

What was one thing Liu Shu had plenty of but had yet to utilize in the army? Surprisingly, it was fertility. Of course, this didn’t refer to soldiers having intercourse with each other, but back in the Golden Sap Empire.

The time Liu Shu needed to train a powerhouse was much, much less than the time other Empires needed. Above that, the increased fertility caused by the side effects of health benefits and other buffs meant that her population was growing exponentially.

So, putting it bluntly, exchanging lives was a very profitable war method for Liu Shu. In a way, with the insectkin, plant species, and several other races which could pop out individuals rapidly, Liu Shu’s true strength was not only the top-tier talents, but the ability to quickly refill the mid-ranks of her army.

“Even if that’s true, though, I don’t plan to use it.”

Liu Shu was ruthless, but that came toward her enemies. She still remembered the first words she heard after awakening as a World Tree, as if imprinted in her very soul.

[Little one, the path ahead is difficult, but I hope you don’t ignore those close and sincere to you in search of greater strength.]

Those words anchored her view and allowed Liu Shu, whose thinking was a mix of humanoid and World Tree, to never lean too much to either side. Liu Shu had never forgotten what existence she was.

A World Tree, a being who covered incomprehensible distances and reigned over vast territories. A being who was not part of the cycle of life and death, but governed over it with an indifferent heart. Death, for a World Tree, was not a sorrowful occurrence, but just part of their natural cycle.

This was ingrained in them because, if a World Tree went berserk when dying, the damage they could cause was truly… despairing. Several worlds, stars, and countless individuals would die if World Trees struggled when they were on the verge of death.

If they struggled, a World Tree would not be a harbinger of life and change, but a bomb waiting to blow up on an interstellar scale.

However, here is what separated Liu Shu from the others. Thanks to that message, Liu Shu grew up and, in a way, failed to mature as a World Tree. While she truly regarded most life with an indifferent heart, Liu Shu’s emotions could still be stirred with a large number of sacrifices or undeserved deaths of those close to her.

If the way of crossing over was like her good friend Wert, then Liu Shu would feel sorrow but not sadness. She could be the one who used her roots to gently close their eyelids and cradle them into their forever rest.

But. If the death was caused by a war, assassination, or something of the like. If someone Liu Shu considered close went through a tragedy, she would not stay still and disregard it.

So, while Liu Shu had the advantage in fertility, growth, and ability to replace soldiers, she had never tried to implement tactics using those qualities, not even for emergency situations. “Once you cross your bottom line even once, crossing it a second time becomes much easier.”

This was a lesson Liu Shu had learned by observing society as their World Tree. She had seen people who fell into gambling and other harmful habits because of one simple… “One more time and I am done.”

That magical sentence that absolved the mind of guilt could, very easily at that, potentially ruin someone’s life.

“…Anyway, enough of that.”

Her gaze refocused. “The frontlines will be in these zones… then, I should sift my roots here and there. After I destroyed Quara’s army, they will now avoid my root clusters more actively. Of course, I must make sure that the path of least resistance guides them toward my armies as Zaros instructed.”

With that in mind, Liu Shu began working, and as she did so, time passed rather quickly. Carter’s army was slowly chipped away, Liu Shu using her attacks from time to time to destroy a few ships and reduce their numbers.

They were over 280 million at first. However, after Liu Shu’s constant harassment over the last three years, Carter’s army was reduced to around 250 million.

A little bit over 10%.

These losses while approaching a World Tree were not unusual, so Carter just chalked everything to unavoidable losses. He did so not without learning what patterns caused the most death, and constantly preventing important army wings from being affected.

In a way, he was using his resources intelligently. Now, the first small side army had arrived at one of the Solar Systems and managed to pierce through the local oort cloud and approach the external worlds.

Liu Shu observed with a touch of intrigue. The Solar System they arrived in was one of the two with local True World Trees.

“Big Sister Petal Dew, are you sure you don’t want any help?”

Petal Dew, the World Tree that had managed to go multiplanetary with her own effort, answered somewhat haughtily. “You are annoying, Liu Shu. I told you that I am not so weak that I can’t protect myself. I am Level 130 already!”

Liu Shu couldn’t help but look at her as if she were the cutest thing alive. “Uggh… I really don’t want Big Sister Petal Dew to be hurt, but I can’t help it.”

She used a few roots to pat some of Petal Dew’s roots, causing the other World Tree to slap them away. “Don’t throw a tantrum and let me pat you~.”

“Annoying! Just see how I smack these Nexus guys you so much care about.”

Liu Shu would not need to sacrifice anything because Petal Dew was a World Tree that managed to conquer the second-to-last world and extend to the furthest world in the Solar System. Her name also came from the fact that, in a frozen world, only her leaves were able to create dewdrops in the morning.

It was a way to symbolize her warmth and her ability to protect life under her canopy. This showed that Petal Dew, while she was a usual World Tree, also took good care of her population. The reason for this good trait was the harshness of the environment and Petal Dew’s innate desire to protect the fragile life from the harsh environment.

So, soon, Petal Dew looked at the army approaching and asked her own people to prepare. The army Petal Dew gathered was not small, around five hundred thousand <First Ascension> individuals. For someone who had gone multiplanetary not too long ago, it was a decent sized army.

Only…

“Huh…?” Petal Dew looked in the distance and asked, confused. “Um… Liu Shu, how many enemies are there?”

Liu Shu, her voice holding back amusement, answered. “This army has around 2,000 starships and 15 million soldiers. Naturally, all of them are <First Ascension> and above.”

Petal Dew blinked, then blinked again, and with an awkward cough, Petal Dew spoke. “Um… Is it too late to ask for help?”

Liu Shu couldn’t hold it anymore, and she began squeezing Petal Dew’s roots into a tight hug. “Big sis! You are so cuteeee…!”