The Wilds relentlessly reclaim all things. Humanity shelters within their ever-dying cities. Mages create the only path forward.

Tala had to fight tooth and nail in the Magic Academy to forge a path to power that was her own. She knows it’s her duty to use that power to serve humanity, defending them against the creatures of the untamable wilds. However, she skipped a few steps in her education, like apprenticing to someone who actually knows what they’re doing.

Now, Tala has to balance learning as fast as she can with paying off the veritable mountain of debt the Magic Academy dropped on her shoulders for the opportunity; not to mention staying alive.

Even though she should only be a Mageling, the world considers her a Mage. Bless the stars she directed most of her magic toward survival.

Ashlock wakes in the courtyard of a demonic sect... as a tree. A tree that eats people.

An odd start to a new life. Almost as strange as the humans flying through the skies on flaming swords and challenging the heavens. After all, this is a world where one could chase the goal of immortality through the art of cultivation.

But Ashlock is merely a sapling in a desolate courtyard, left alone with his thoughts and unable to speak to those passing him by.

Unless he does something about it...

Every day that passes he grows continuously stronger as he cultivates and uses a suspicious daily sign-in system that grants him powerful skills, mutations, summons, and items, all in exchange for credits earned from devouring flesh and watching the seasons pass.

But his peaceful life and man-eating ways can only go unnoticed for so long and those around will soon grow suspicious. If that isn't bad enough, his Qi-rich bark makes him a target for many young masters, and tensions in the demonic sect are at an all-time high, with the cataclysmic Beast Tide festering on the horizon.

Ashlock's only chance of survival is to grow faster and stronger than any tree has ever done in the history of the nine realms—all while trying to avoid being turned into firewood.