Chapter 1807 - 1807: Unruly Gift Tree (1)

More haunting than Paliothese's death was the fact that Skullius couldn't make the promise to save his son before he (Paliothese) faded.

But the Hybrid had ample reasons and justifications.

He hadn't reassured the Prime Worlder because… he knew next to nothing, really. Paliothese's mind had fallen into cryptic depths. Nothing he'd said after sobbing and bawling had been real.

Skullius still didn't understand anything about the paradise Paliothese hated so much, or why he fled it. Paliothese hadn't told him anything regarding that. In fact, why the Deity had said he'd never gotten the chance to tell his son why he fled boggled Skullius' mind. The Hybrid recalled the Prime Worlder saying, when they first met:

My son can articulate the horrors of paradise infinitely better than I can.

That had been Paliothese's way of roping Skullius in, nudging him towards what he desired.

…Yet it contradicted his words on his deathbed. Heck, it contradicted what Paliothese claimed to be the last words he heard from his son.

'Can I bear a burden I don't fully understand?' Skullius had asked himself shortly after the Deity's death.

The answer had become abundantly clear after he thought of Quillith and Mohrane again.

What use was there in frowning over details when he was already at the center of several cosmic controversies? Unlike some of them, wasn't this one a product of his own choice to indulge Paliothese? Furthermore, the objective was simple, wasn't it? Save the child.

Thus, Skullius had promised Paliothese's corpse:

"I will be fair with your son."

…And then he put the Prime Worlder's body to good use.

***

Present time…

Standing by the sprawling blue branches springing from Paliothese's eye sockets, Skullius allowed the memory of the Deity to soften him and his features. He'd known the Prime Worlder for a very short time, but, to his own surprise, he found himself valuing him.

To say he related to the Deity would have been putting it lightly. It was more than that. Skullius might have feared that if he wasn't careful, he would become like Paliothese in some future where he successfully completed his objective in Deadmaland and returned to Aigas.

Skullius shook his head. 'Is now really the time to be thinking about this?'

He pivoted, turning back to his subordinates, who were looking at the wonder before them in…wonder.

"What is…?" Yuyui said, gaping. Her vision darted to Skullius and back to Deity. She realized at once now, why her master had been… "He's dead?"

"…Yes." Skullius nodded. "But we will continue to reap scores of benefits from him."

Things grew from the tree – many sorts of things; round things, oblong things, twisted things… and also things that Skullius, in that instant, blasted to bits before they re-emerged from some of the branches. The Stars were puzzled by this just as much as they were enthused.

Even more vexing than why Skullius saw the need to destroy some of the things borne from the tree, however, was the faint noise buzzing around Paliothese's head, like something was crying.

Before anyone could ask, though…

"The Warmoth made a poison. Cold Oblivion. It kills anything other than him… me," Skullius said. "Such a thing could only have been made by combining the genetic material from many Null Life species and weaponizing them – turning them into a lethal killing agent."

"Using Inversion via my Maximum Jaqquezjaqqz, however, I managed to invert this poison, which produced this effect: like planting an extremely rich seed that bears many different fruits. Naturally, a rich seed requires rich soil to maximize what it produces. After I discovered that inverting Cold Oblivion would lead to something like this, I thought to use Boron's corpse as the soil, but getting to it was difficult."

(A/N: Refer to 1781.)

"Paliothese here proved to be a better ground for the seed, however. Far better. Far richer."

The Stars were lost in the odd shapes and colors of the so-called fruits. Each of the thousands of branches, save for a few – some of the ones Skullius had blasted with raw Null Life Essence and others where it seemed he had plucked what had grown from there already – grew something.

Veins seemed to be pulsing from within the trunks and branches, carrying a dense blue glow and giving the tree its blue highlight. The glare from it bounced off the fruits.

Some were like stones, elemental ores that twitched as though living – conscious. Some resembled balls of yarn that the branches kept vomiting out and spinning round and round.

"Is that a… lizard?" Magisa asked, squinting.

Sure enough, from one of the branches, a lizard was hanging, tail merged with the bark, wriggling wildly in an effort to escape. It was tinged red, as though fiercely saturated with heat.

"Hey. That apple-looking thing…" said Grim. "Is it just me, or does it have legs?"

And indeed, actual fruits were growing from the branches, like the apples Grim saw, but the long, thin legs wiggling from them were unnerving. Thinking about what Skullius said about inverting the properties of Cold Oblivion, Grim reasoned that what he was looking at here was…

…!

"That can't be right…" he said, looking awfully disgusted.

"I think it might be," said Baddan. He'd reached the same conclusion as his fellow Star.

"Does someone else hear something… like crying? It's very faint, but I'm sure I can hear it." Savast looked among the branches, frowning.

"Oh no…" Yuyui murmured, suddenly turning pale. She had an inkling about what the former Cluster General was hearing.

Again, Skullius broke the chatter with an explanation.

"This tree, which I'll call the Unruly Gift Tree from now on, is the manifestation of a power that rivals my [Unbound] and [Apostle's Liege]," he said before whipping his hand at a large branch pouring from Paliothese's chin. An ugly creature had started sprouting from it, as though molded from its bark. Its eyes, malevolent, had just begun taking shape when the burst of Null Life from Skullius obliterated it.

"That means I need to constantly be on the lookout for random species of monster spawning spontaneously from the branches. Serenity warned against something like this a long time ago, actually," said the Hybrid.

And she had, back when he'd had his second evolution. Skullius had just used [Unbound] on one of the eggs the Cluster General he'd defeated had left behind. A peculiar living creature, a consumable, had been born. As it happened, the Unruly Gift Tree birthed all manner of living and conscious things depending on the branches, and not all would be of use to Skullius.

(A/N: Refer to Ch.489.)

"Are those creatures the source of that crying I keep hearing, master?" asked Savast, growing concerned.

Skullius eyed a nervous-looking Yuyui before answering, a coy smile growing on his face.

"Well, I already plucked some of the fruits from the tree. These took longer than the others to regenerate because their value is greater than that of the others. Fortunately, Paliothese's body is still able to sustain the tree for a while and bear more."

As he explained, he waved his hand and manifested from somewhere hidden, dozens of 'fruits'.

Suddenly, the loud crying noise became more pronounced. It was, after all, coming from the infant-shaped objects floating in front of Skullius, all textured and coloured like consumables.

"I KNEW IT!" screamed Yuyui, horror marking her face. "MASTER! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS AGAIN?"

The other Stars, looking both stupefied and appalled, looked between Yuyui, who pointed accusingly at Skullius, and the Hybrid, who was now grinning.

"This is…" he began.

"MASTER! NO! YOU CAN'T MAKE ME! YOU WON'T!" Yuyui screamed and pulled on Grim's arm. "DON'T LISTEN TO HIM! IT'S UNETHICAL!"

Skullius laughed and tossed Yuyui one of the consumables. Funny enough, she managed to catch it. Her face melted with horror.

"As I was saying," continued Skullius, "this is a rare consumable. The Chubby Remnant Son of Infancy – or something like that."