"And with this, Vorathen is conquered!"
Liu Shu looked satisfied as the last spot at the center of the core got entangled in her roots. Right after, a System Message popped in her eyes.
[Congratulations! You've conquered
Liu Shu's gaze sparkled as she glanced at the System window. However, after waiting for a few seconds, nothing else happened. "Um… System, where are my rewards?"
[System Hint: There are no rewards.]
"Huh?"
Our World Tree instantly became pouty. "What do you mean? I thought that some of my titles or something could gain extra strength! You are now saying that there is nothing to gain!? Wisdom, scold the system!"
[Wisdom: Any achievement related to conquest will be recorded for your ongoing
"... Tsk. Can't you give them to me upfront? As always, making things complicated for no reason at all."
[...]
[Wisdom: …]
Ignoring the pair, Liu Shu refocused on Vorathen's situation. "Hm… This world needs a bit more water and also to cool down. How can I do that quickly? Cinderielle is not really able to affect a world as large as Vorathen, not to mention that she has her hands full with the Moon's progress."
Speaking of which, she looked over with curiosity. It has been 11 years since she first touched the Moon, and that realization made her recoil once more. "Wait… 11 years already? How old am I?"
Liu Shu thought to herself and realized something quite incredible. "I am 83 years old! Wait, wait, wait… Doesn't that mean that Cinderielle and the others are 99 years old? Next year will be their first century birthday!"
Thankfully for Liu Shu, the birthdays of her four wives were on the same day. It was a coincidence that amused her every time it came up. Nevertheless, she didn't linger on it too much. "Hm… their bellies are also very big… Next year they will probably have their babies as well."
She couldn't help but feel a bit apprehensive. "So many things will happen next year! Wah! Is there anything else that will happen next year?"
Checking around, she noticed that the Nemesis Fusion of the Death and Life Temples would also be sometime during the following year. "...Wow."
Three significant events were happening next year, making Liu Shu feel pretty excited. "Hm… Let's see, the birthday presents can be a decent weapon. After all, they have that strange dress they can summon at will. The link between them and those dresses is almost as tight as the one between me and my
She noticed that those dresses also Leveled Up together with them, which was quite impressive. "Their
Her mind stopped once more, and her eyes moved toward Tree. "You won't wake up the next year as well, right, Mom? That would make four major events happen simultaneously."
Her biological mother, Tree, had been asleep for a while. Liu Shu didn't really know how this tree mother of hers was able to Level Up so quickly. After all, her Level was behind her own in the past.
She had an inkling that Tree had forgone all her skills since she didn't need to fight often, focusing all of her Experience Points toward Leveling Up. Then, using her deep intelligence and ancient experiences, there would be basically no bottlenecks between
If there was something that worried Liu Shu, it was that Tree was forcing herself to Level Up quickly while making her foundation weak. Meaning, not bothering to perfect each
Even she, with an SSS Rank Skill, could not see through that piece of data.
"Welp. Let's refocus on the problem at hand. Next year's matters will be attended to by next year's Liu Shu!"
So, with a serious look, she began pondering ways to increase the water volume while cooling down the surface of Vorathen. "Hm… What if I heat it up so that I can cool it down quicker later?"
With that idea in her mind, a plan was quickly devised in her head. "Hehe… Let's bombard the planet!"
Her gaze zoomed out, the starry sky entering her gaze as she looked at everything that her roots had taken control of. "I can see countless comets and asteroids made out of pure ice."
The comets were particularly easy to spot due to their massive tails as they streaked through the empty void. "They are moving fast, wow."
She tried stretching one of her roots to catch one, but it quickly zoomed past. It was a situation of "now you see it, now you don't." Her perception range extended back, covering a few hundred kilometers in front of the comet.
"Even with this perspective, you are moving stupidly fast. You are moving at… twenty… no, thirty kilometers per second? That's quite ridiculous, isn't it?"
She didn't know that comets were this quick. "No wonder that they could cause planetary catastrophes when they impact a planet. At this speed, even a town-sized comet would exterminate all low-level life in an entire world."
This information led her to reconsider her initial approach. At first, she wanted to make comets rain, carrying water and accumulating enough to create a worldwide cloud. The temperatures would then cool down quickly, creating a worldwide rain event.
All of these phenomena would form a loop cycle, accelerating the world's process of becoming a livable planet. Scattering the clouds would be a bit difficult, but with the help of Level 100 people, it was just a matter of time.
"Hm… I can't do that now, can I? Unless I slow it down. Wait."
Liu Shu blinked and focused on the fast comet once more. "
The comet slowed down instantly, its speed not changing, but the time around it moving at a slower pace. "This doesn't reduce the impact's strength. However…" Her eyes brightened as she read the descriptions of her skills.
"Hehe… It's worth a try! Come, little comet~, let's visit Vorathen together!"
Redirecting a comet was not easy, but after sacrificing a few roots to aim its trajectory, Liu Shu was satisfied. "Good, good~. Fall into the world! Fall with enough strength to annihilate all life. Only after destruction will new life be able to emerge!"
If anyone heard her, they would mistake her for a villain.
Around two months later, Liu Shu could see that the comet would impact that same afternoon. Not wanting to miss the timing, she strained her senses to calculate everything perfectly.
One hour later, Liu Shu saw the small star in the distance. "Here you are… Ten minutes left."
"Nine…"
"Seven…"
"Three…"
Liu Shu's concentration focused, and when the comet was large enough to be distinguished with the naked eye, she knew that this was her moment. "
The asteroid was enveloped in a profound energy, its time stretching under Liu Shu's control. This didn't have much effect, though. Going from around 30 km/s to 25 km/s was not a significant enough change.
Even then, that slowdown allowed Liu Shu to calculate the rock's trajectory and know the exact spot of impact.
A second before impact, Liu Shu's gaze shone, and her energy moved. "
The time around the place of impact paused, and right a second later, the comet landed.
BOOM!
The impact against the paused ground caused it to explode, but the ripple that would've torn the surface asunder didn't occur. After all, during the stopped time, nothing could happen. The only thing that blew up was the comet's body, scattering its pieces and leveling nearby mountains.
"Now…
If Liu Shu allowed the energy that had gathered against the ground to explode, it would make no difference. Hence, instead of setting it free, she transformed it into a time-crack spiderweb.
BANG!
The land over 100 kilometers from the point of impact shattered as if a gargantuan hammer had struck a mirror. The cracks went deep, reaching the surface magma layer and causing a massive earthquake.
Yet, even with all these catastrophic events, the only explosion was that of the comet. Liu Shu smirked with a satisfied expression, even when many of her roots had broken due to her own attack.
"Hehe… Nice. I've only leveled an area of 100 kilometers in diameter! Compared to world extermination, this is much better."
What Liu Shu used for this was one of the effects from
That meant that all the damage the comet's impact had done was reduced by 85%! Then, using
With a smug smile, she went to tell Flor of her achievements!
Flor listened to everything and took a sip from her favorite teacup. Then, she smiled. "Good job."
What else, as Liu Shu's mom, could she even say? She would just pamper her lovely World Tree daughter and nod along. That way her heart would not suffer.
After the second sip of the tea, a message popped up in front of her.
[Random
Flor calmly moved her hand, writing down the message on a notebook. Liu Shu blinked and read what was written. "Hm… what is this math for? The result says… two years and six months?"
Flor answered, taking another sip of the delicious tea. "That's the lifespan I've gained since I first took a sip of your new tea."
"Huh? You can gain lifespan with my tea?" Liu Shu was baffled. "Why has no one told me about it!? And here I was thinking that all my family liked the tea made from my leaves… You are all drinking it for the effects…"
Flor chuckled. "As I've said many times, it's really delicious. The taste is pleasant and refreshing, with a very light, sweet aftertaste. My mouth feels really nice each time I drink it. Not to mention, it enhances almost everything. I feel that drinking this instead of water is nourishing me more. Just in case, we have a policy in the family to force people to drink at least 1 liter of water daily. Even if tea is made of water, pure water should be easier for the body… Well, no one has ever had adverse effects after drinking your tea, though."
"Huh… So, after that one liter, the rest is tea?"
"Yeah."
"Oh…" Liu Shu recalled something and shifted her gaze to one of the Lignified Trees that had been entirely modified internally by Flor and the others. "Ah… Is that why this baby has a tea factory inside of it?"
Flor chuckled. "Yeah. Don't worry, though. We asked the child if she wanted to be a factory first. She, after all, had no residents inside for a long time. The number of people living in the inner circle of the city is too small to fill all of the Lignified Houses you built for us. So, she accepted at first out of curiosity, and now it seems that she loves it."
Liu Shu glanced at that baby's system page and was stunned. "... I didn't expect that there would be a title called
This
Her gaze swept the city, checking on her thousands of babies, and she was stunned. 'After evolving into Level 100 beings, they've gained so many skills through the Ascension Paths they took! Wow… Some variants have even reached
"Wow… I guess that the System doesn't disregard achievements. If you are good at something, you'll have paths to take."
Flor nodded with a forlorn look. "To think that such a thing was possible… I guess that having the ability to reach Level 100 while doing menial tasks has its benefits. If you read closely, some of those skills would've given them Experience Points if they weren't tied to you."
"It's true…" Liu Shu was surprised and then chuckled. "Well, I see that all of you are doing great and developing quickly. As long as my babies are doing great and having happy lives, I am satisfied."
Flor chuckled. "If we can't accelerate our civilization's progress after receiving the
Liu Shu nodded and returned to her own matters. "Since everything is going smoothly, I'll go grab a few more asteroids and rain them in Vorathen! I guess that it will take around half a century or so for it to become a habitable planet… Perhaps quicker than that. Who knows? It's difficult to give it a time frame when so many factors need to be taken into account."
"Sure. Grab asteroids or comets or whatever to chuck them at a world. Have fun."
Flor took a long sip of the tea with a neutral face, slurping down its contents. Liu Shu strangely felt that this last sip was more aggressive than the previous ones. 'It's probably my imagination…'