Author: Spaizzzer
Date: 2024-04-16T18:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy
Description: Aeon and the Valthorns expand their reach to the neighboring worlds. They meet new people, new friends, new enemies, and encounter unusual races and creatures, and along the way, they accumulate more power, and build up their war potential. With their greater strength, it was finally time to slowly push back, and take the battle against the demons to the other realms, and also to the demon worlds. Book 5 of an epic reincarnation/isekai LitRPG story about a man who becomes a tree, growing and progressing throughout the ages in an eternal conflict against a demon incursion. With nearly 15 millio

TREE OF AEONS 5

©2024 SPAIZZZER

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CONTENTS

Also in Series

Summary of Earlier Events

1. Year 202

2. Year 203

3. Year 204

4. Year 204 (Part 2)

5. Year 205

6. Year 206

7. Year 206 (Part 2)

8. Year 206 (Part 3)

9. Year 206 (Part 4)

10. Year 207

11. Year 208

12. Year 208 (Part 2)

13. Year 208 (Part 3)

14. Year 209

15. Year 209 (Part 2)

16. Year 210

17. Year 211

18. Year 211 (Part 2)

19. Year 211 - Edna’s POV

20. Year 211 (Months after the victory)

21. Year 212

22. Year 213

23. Year 214

24. Year 215

25. Year 215 (Part 2)

26. Year 216

27. Year 217

28. Year 218

29. Year 219

30. Year 220

31. Year 221

32. Year 222

33. Year 222 (Part 2)

34. Year 223

35. Year 224

36. Year 225

37. Year 226

38. Year 227

39. Year 227 (Ulara)

40. Year 228

41. Year 229

42. Year 229 (Part 2)

43. Year 230

44. Year 231

45. Year 232

46. Year 233

47. Year 234

48. Year 235

49. Year 236

50. Interlude – Lizardfolk (Part 1)

51. Interlude – Lizardfolk (Part 2)

52. Year 236 (Part 2)

53. Year 237

54. Year 238

55. Year 239

56. Year 240

57. Year 241

58. Year 242

59. Year 243

60. Year 244

Thank you for reading Tree of Aeons 5

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ALSO IN SERIES

Book 1

Book 2

Book 3

Book 4

Book 5

Book 6

Check out the entire series here! (Tap or scan)

SUMMARY OF EARLIER EVENTS

Following the conclusion of the war against the parasitic demon king, Aeon begins his retaliation by expanding into the other worlds…

1

YEAR 202

“I’m going to a demon world,” Alka said, his face absolutely horrified. He wasn’t the only one, of course. A battalion of his research-mages would go with him. Stella, too.

“Yes.”

Thanks to my trees sprouting around the rifts, I noticed that some level of life had returned to the demon world. Very minor, but much better than none. My Giant Attendant Trees also made the place around the rift gates far more hospitable.

“Am I going to die there?” Alka asked.

“No. Certainly not,” I assured him. “If anything happens, I’ll send you back. Some of my forces are there.”

In truth, there was an ongoing, prolonged war on the parasite-demon world, all thanks to my poor main-tree placement. Horns, my beetle commanders, and a small platoon of artificial minds were still helping me run the multiple battles happening at the edges of my territory on the demon’s world. It was also Hytreerion’s longest ongoing combat experience, and it proved that a large mobile forward base actually had offensive value, since it didn’t get much of a chance on our home world, where we were the defenders.

“How did Aeon get to the demon world?” Kei and Ken asked.

“I snuck him through the rift,” Stella said. Kei rolled her eyes at that.

“Seriously!”

“I thought those portals don’t last that long?” Ken asked, but he was not aware of my seeds, and that was fine. Snek seemed particularly interested and wanted to know whether this meant there was a way to help retake his world.

Personally, I thought that sounded plausible. It would help me greatly if there was a native force I could rescue, but the thought of facing airborne demon-dragons on their home world didn’t sound like a good idea. I was horribly outmatched on the aerial front.

Ken and Snek nodded. “It’s smart to take the battle to the demons, but…” It wasn’t the only demon world. We all knew that. So my presence on this demon world was unlikely to affect whether another demon king would invade my world.

Alka mumbled, and they all wore suits of armor meant to protect them from most eventualities. Some druidic and magical equipment, too, just to ensure that they could still breathe, if anything happened.

The void-storms had mostly subsided.

Alka immediately went to Lumoof. “Why not you?”

“You have things to study and the skills needed. Aeon has a presence there. Naturally, it’s you.” Lumoof laughed heartily. “Time to take to the field, Field Scientist.”

Alka seemed somewhat panicked. “I did not imagine I’d be going to a demon world in my job description. This is hazardous!”

“Not any more hazardous than working with bombs,” Lumoof assured him. “It’s fine. Aeon has already said this is in a safe zone.”

“How are there safe zones on a demon world?!” Alka seemed surprised. Stella shrugged as she awaited the use of my inter-tree teleportation ability.

“All right. Move it.” The squad was ready. This would take some mana, but not more than when I sent Hytreerion over. I felt mana drain from my network of trees—

—and they were all sent to my clone on the other side. It wasn’t far from the rift gates.

Alka, Stella, and the group of mages stared at the greenery around my main tree. My clone had already begun terraforming this segment of land into something habitable. This was far easier than the moon, actually, because there was something here a long time ago, and the world’s energy seemed to be recovering once the spires and all that collapsed.

The moon base was growing, but the speed of the terraform was significantly slower than the demon world.

The beetles soon led them to the nearest rift gate. I’d left all of them untouched, as I wanted some of the mages to look at them before I started flooding them with my mana.

“This doesn’t look particularly alien,” Stella said. “There are trees.”

“I’ve been transforming the land for a few months.” They stopped and stared at the structures before them. “This is a rift gate. The demons use this to open gates to our world. There are many others like it throughout the world and a super large one that’s partly destroyed.”

Stella immediately looked at the gate with far more interest.

“I’d like to know how it works, whether we can rebuild it for our own purposes, whether we can use them to amplify the portals of the void mages, and whether there is a star map contained within.”

Alka walked up and used some kind of skill on the rift gate. “Hmmm…it’s not some unique material for sure, but there is some really complicated formation and rune work within the structure itself. Which does raise the question: how did the demons build it?”

“Or they didn’t,” Stella proposed. “This was stolen from somewhere.”

“Or they did, and the demons possess intellectual and crafting abilities higher than what we’ve ever seen,” Alka said. “Are all the others like it?”

“Huh?”

“I’m asking because I want to know whether they are all exactly identical or just similar but not exactly identical. Because the second implies the work of a craftsman, while the first implies the presence of a replicator.”

I suspected it was likely to be a replicator. “So do you want to see the second rift gate?” I asked. There was one nearby, but that site was occasionally attacked by demons, so it was heavily defended by beetles and spiders.

Since I’d started my invasion of this demon world, I’d set up dedicated research labs on creating better beetles, demon-world compatible beetles, in order to better fight battles against the demons.

The second rift gate was not identical. There were subtle variations, but Alka could tell that the inner inscriptions were almost the same. We didn’t stay long, since this location was a little riskier. Of course, the revelation that they were not identically copied suggested that the demons possessed mastery of this level of craftwork.

I thought back to the two demon cores I possessed and tried to check them. I wondered how this knowledge was transmitted across worlds? Were they embedded inside each demon king, such that each demon king was a walking colonization module on top of an invasion force? If so, they must come from that black blob in space and then be inside this core.

“It could be written in flesh, too?” Patreeck naturally challenged my view.

We previously did extensive comparative analysis using the two demon cores to map what was damaged and try to see if we could somehow build a complete one from the incomplete two halves, but we still did not understand what exactly was happening. Now, with the patterns collected from the rift gates, we attempted to see whether there was any relevance, mainly to see whether there were similar patterns we could then extrapolate from the rift gate’s set of patterns.

There were some relevant parts, but as a whole, it didn’t really give any significant breakthroughs.

“Is this part of the Tree of Life’s set of powers?” Alka asked Stella while she did her own analysis of the rift gates and the surrounding daemolite crystal structures. She came accompanied with a small group of her students, other void mages who were amazed, perplexed, and afraid all at the same time.

“Yes,” I answered on her behalf.

“Dayum,” Alka said.

“You all are one of the first few non-demons to ever step on this demon world. You’re all pioneer space tourists.”

There was a loud bang, and they instinctively ducked. Demonic champions at the front lines and some of the stray magical projectiles blasted across the skies.

Stella smirked. “Very funny.”

Alka complained for a while, but he continued to conduct more tests on the structures.

“How frequently can we go back?” Alka asked.

“Once a month.” I could probably send them back every week or two, but that would leave my mana drained.

Alka looked at Stella, and Stella shrugged. “Don’t look at me. My void portals don’t reach this kind of distance.”

“That’s really comforting. So Aeon’s our only ticket out.” Alka complained a little more and then continued to test. My field scientist seemed to be a perpetual grumbler, but I supposed that dissatisfaction with everything came with intellectual prowess.

Of course, Prabu and Colette were very interested to go, but I wasn’t very comfortable with it. I even hesitated on telling them about it, because I knew the gods were listening, one way or another.

But I still told them, because I wasn’t the weak tree I was a few decades ago.

With Tree of Life, I felt a lot more comfortable with being more transparent and open, at least with those whose powers I used and relied on. Even if things went south, I now had my clones in three other places, even if two of those clones were in rather vulnerable locations. With the benefit of hindsight, it was clear that I needed to invest in my team and build trust. Even if that trust could go south.

Since Roon and Johann both gained their domains, I gathered my four domain holders and then brainstormed our revised combat strategies. We needed to figure out how to best exploit our domain powers, especially with future demon kings. Roon and Johann also received the full briefing on what happened with Aiva and my own history as a former outworlder.

In their entire career, they’d lived to serve me, and the domain was their ultimate promotion, the point where they “grew up” and now could stand for themselves. The path was still long, of course. But the forest was strong because there were many trees, and this was a journey for all of us, together.

Their domains gave them additional power and stats so they could continue to play the role of providing cover fire. In terms of pure damage, both of them were just slightly ahead of Edna, who had a higher level and additional domain skills. They could move quickly, detect enemies from afar, and shoot high-powered projectiles.

“Ever wonder who would win if we had a test fight?” Roon looked at Johann.

Edna just shrugged. Edna would be on the receiving end of their attacks in any spar, but her defensive abilities meant she could endure their attacks almost perpetually.

Johann frowned. “Actually, even with our new abilities, we can’t even get past Aeon or Edna’s shields. I think that’s our first goal.”

“Oh, come on, a casual fight will be fun!”

“It would…but…”

“Actually, if you two would like a test fight, why not compare kill counts on the demon world?” Lumoof smiled and proposed. “Make yourselves useful for a change.”

Johann and Roon looked at each other, and Edna laughed. “Oh darn, that’s a good idea.”

< The fabrics increase, > Lilies noticed, naturally. They were very attuned to the powers that threaded through the world. < One of yours? >

> Sort of, < I responded. > It’s been a while. <

< Time has hardly passed. >

Ah. > We’ve reached the demon worlds. <

Lilies was silent as I shared what I’d seen on the demon worlds through our root connection. I shared scenes of the demon king, the portals, the spires.

After a long while, Lilies said, < We have seen, but we do not recognize anything there. >

“All right, we’re ready. Turn it on,” Alka said after two months of studies. Roon and Johann had a swell time hunting demons and keeping them away from our magical researchers and the captured structures. There were also some demon champions that appeared, and they also helped to push some forces closer to the intact spawning pools.

“I have not actually tried. I don’t know how to,” I admitted. I may have “captured” the rift gate, but I certainly did not know how to operate it at all. “Did you manage to figure it out?”

Alka rolled his eyes. “I mean, we’ve been studying its structure for two months without actually turning it on. Stella, if you would do the honors?”

Stella laughed. “Certainly.” She started on a monologue. The rift gate buzzed with activity as it drained void mana from the void crystals, and we watched it open, charge up, and then just as abruptly close.

It was like starting a car engine that just cranked, roared, and went dead. Alka and Stella’s eyes were glued to the gate, and Stella frowned.

“Hmmm. These rift gates piggyback off that central path built by the main gate. They are just links to that same void-space tunnel. There’s only one main highway between this demon world and ours, and these rift gates are like little feeder roads linked to this main highway.”

The main highway collapsed. That explained why the demons stopped coming after the demon king got killed.

But this did mean that if the path didn’t collapse, the demons could perpetually invade. Not just that, if I could recreate these paths, it would mean permanent paths to other worlds. It would essentially enable the worlds to travel to each other, and if I could control them, it effectively functioned as an escape route for the inhabitants of the invaded worlds.

“But these rifts are the first to appear. How does the demon find which world to invade?” Alka wondered and then immediately said, “No. There should be signs. How long does it take? What’s the gestation period for the demon king?”

“I don’t know whether it’s consistent. According to Snek, his world seemed to take about twenty to twenty-five years per demon king. But I would suspect the time spent also depends on the type and design of the demon king, the amount of magical energies available in each world, and perhaps many other unknown factors.”

Alka frowned. “A sample of one or two tells us nothing. But let us assume that on average it takes twenty-five years per demon king, which would mean that there are twice to thrice as many worlds that are linked to us.”

Stella retorted. “If we use the number of worlds linked to us by those faint astral paths and presume that all of them are currently carrying a demon king that would be sent to us once it is ready, which is at least eight to ten of them in the sky, it actually suggests that it takes about seventy to eighty years.”

“That’s a wide range.”

There were no astral paths in this world, not after they collapsed, but there were many paths still from Treehome. Those faint paths grew brighter with each year. If these rift gates were like feeders into existing astral paths, could these rift gates be used to open a rift to their world by exploiting those linked to our home world?

I predicted that the paths would return to this world, but I would really like to know how that was done. How did the demon worlds find their targets? Could we mess with that interplanar worldfinder and add Treehome as some kind of “do-not-disturb” world?

“What if we move these rifts back to our world and try to use these rift gates to tap into those astral paths?”

Stella and Alka thought about it. Alka’s eyes widened, and I could almost see the gears turning in his head. “It’s worth trying. Can we move this rift gate back home?”

“Of course.” I could move objects, too. Naturally, I could move these structures back to Treehome.

Stella then considered. “It does mean that Aeon may invade them, even before the demons open a rift to our world. And it would force the demons into a defensive battle on their world by taking over all their rift gates. We would need to figure out how to activate the astral paths or reinforce them to some degree with the core mana…”

“But it’s possible! This…the possibilities are so interesting.” Alka laughed.

Stella smacked the madly grinning Alka on the shoulder. “You just transformed from being afraid of coming to this world to proposing a pre-emptive invasion on a demon world.”

“Eh, Aeon’s already invading one demon world. What’s a few more?”

“Aeon would have to use a [seed], though, and Aeon doesn’t don’t have many of those. It’s still a good idea in the long run, but I think there’s a lot more to study.”

Alka laughed. “Details, details! Let’s focus on the final outcome first. An offensive battle would be greatly beneficial for us since, well, we have bombs. A lot of them.”

“Are you…”

“I’m proposing we bomb the hell out of the demon worlds before they even invade us. We don’t need some sophisticated targeting. We need an air force, and then we open a portal and just keep sending bombs through it.”

Stella stared at the mad scientist who once lectured me on the morality of bombs. “And I thought you said you wouldn’t go that far.”

“Aeon noticed that there’s a big tower of void mana when the demon king was about to appear.”

“And…?”

“And Aeon’s teleportation ability does not require the use of void mana, so large quantities of star mana can be transported through it without destabilization.”

“Okay…”

“It’s also right next to the demon king.”

“Star mana and void mana goes boom?”

2

YEAR 203

We moved one of the rift gates back to Freeka and located it right in the valley. Alka and the rest of them returned, except Roon and Johann, who continued the fight and expansion.

It was frustrating to expand, because of how magically sparse the environment was, even with the recent gradual improvements. Since the demon king ended, I felt mana slow, very, very slowly, trickle back to the world.

As it was, my expansions essentially relied and drained mana from the Central Continent, in order to support my trees and my forces on the demon world. This was because there was a shortfall in the natural mana and “life” in the soil, so I had to top up that shortfall with my own mana. This was similar to the moon, but as my moon base’s trees grew, they were able to generate more mana passively and a few years ago were mana-neutral on my overall mana-production.

The fact that I had to constantly support and regenerate my beetles and trees at the battlefronts also amplified the mana drain on the Central Continent.

In the long run, though, things were positive. At the rate of natural mana recovery in the world, in a few decades, my trees would turn mana-positive, and I would be able to mount a more coherent and decisive push toward all the major structures of the demons.

There was no reason to expand when doing so only increased the mana use without the capture of any particularly unique structures.

All these were lessons for our next planned invasion for the demon world.

Alka also had other ideas, one of which was to develop a supermassive star mana bomb, something with so much mana that we could throw at the tower of void mana and hopefully disrupt the demon king while it was still gestating.

I was somewhat skeptical of the star mana bomb’s chances of actually destroying the demon king, because I’d seen the demon king’s body gestating really deep in the ground, and I doubted a supermassive explosion would be able to reach deep into the world’s core. Still, destroying the void tower would mean they couldn’t come to our world that fast, since it would take out the fuel that supported the pathway to our world.

It may buy us some time for little to no cost. It may possibly also weaken the demon king, such that we would be able to survive it with better odds.

Of course, Alka also proposed to sink the tower in that deep tunnel and then detonate the bomb. The idea of detonating such a powerful bomb underground probably would be very damaging to the world, but it did mean an explosion closer to the gestating demon king.

Possible, but more moving parts. It was more difficult to send a bomb in the tunnel where my roots or trees couldn’t reach. I could, theoretically, have a tree next to the tower, teleport it right there.

Anyway, Alka was thus focused on developing the bomb. He already had some ideas, gathered from his past research, on how to make a large star-mana bomb.

Ideas that he quickly pitched to Prabu and Colette, and he shared our findings, as well.

“This is Aeon’s idea?” Prabu immediately asked.

“Not really. More like mine, but he consented to the budget for a super star-mana bomb, meant specifically to activate on contact with the void tower.”

The problem was star mana, just like void mana, had corrosive effects on its containers. The objects that held these things could not hold them for very long, unless they were made by the heroes through their special [hero forge], and in those cases, the mana stored evaporated very slowly over time. Even my specialized potatoes eventually decayed, and the stored mana leaked out, though they did last quite long.

Only my own three hundred star mana did not cause any decay, and I suspected that the soul may be the most common object that could hold star mana without these storage problems. That, of course, implied it could be possible to make living star mana batteries.

Could I create artificial souls specifically to store star mana or void mana? I saw Stella was able to accept and handle large quantities of void mana without much issues, even if it did make her soul transform into this pitch-black mass of…thing.

Despite how her soul looked, her body clearly didn’t suffer for it. She was healthy by all measures, and her body, even though drenched with void mana, didn’t seem different. Perhaps the soul had a passive effect of “controlling,” “manipulating,” and “processing” mana, such that it didn’t harm itself.

It was a worthwhile idea, even if one I previously never considered because of how many artificial minds I could support. Nowadays, with a continent’s worth of trees and more, it was really not much of a problem to use artificial minds more freely, even if they were just made to be sentient batteries.

“Worth exploring?” I asked Patreeck.

“It really depends how much mana an artificial mind can store. However, based on what we’ve seen, it’s likely that they won’t be as effective as a fully formed soul.”

I paused as those words sank in. Patreeck clearly had more data than me, even if he was functionally a part of me. If Patreeck’s speculation were true, mana responded more strongly to the inner part of the soul. No matter, I had to try.

I created one of my tuberous storage in an uninhabited part of the Central Continent and created an artificial mind for it. This part went normally.

Then I injected it with star mana. At least, the three hundred star mana I had. I borrowed a little bit more from the heroes and injected a little bit more. Then like a balloon that suddenly had a hole, it just shrank and died.

“One thousand,” Patreeck said.

“That’s too little.”

I did the same, this time with void mana. We had void mana from Stella and those I previously stole from the demon king. They were already in various states of decay; some of them only had less than ten percent of the void mana originally.

I wondered whether this could be some kind of evaporation loss and the vessel only controlled the degree of evaporation loss.

Or was the soul actually producing mana, thus it offset the evaporation loss? But artificial souls could produce mana, too! Patreeck seemed to think it was likely that fully formed souls could produce star mana or void mana, thus their production of these mana types kept their vessel full. Sadly, I had no way of testing whether mana evaporation or mana loss was better when there was a soul, because my artificial minds didn’t produce these mana types.

With normal mana, it didn’t seem to have this issue. Or was it likely that on Treehome, the environment had sufficient mana that there was no mana loss due to differences in mana density?

I knew that I had to support my trees on the demon world or my new expansions on the moon…

I checked my floating tree, floating in the pitch-black darkness of the void, clinging to a massive shard of what was once Cometworld. It didn’t need mana from me because it produced a little bit of mana.

My artificial minds quickly helped me build up some data sets, and then I realized that each of my clones produced a small amount of their own mana, and then, on top of that small passive production, it also absorbed and amplified mana from the environment. In places where there was very little mana, like the demon world or the moon, this part of my natural mana-producing abilities were weak.

In short, my clones were best strategically placed where there was a lot of natural mana, and that would significantly improve my mana amount. It was like finding the correct spot to put a wind turbine.

Once my clones were placed, I couldn’t move them unless I killed my clones. There was also a gestation period for the seeds to reappear, and I would have to contend with losing my connection to that place.

“So Aeon managed to invade the demon world,” Chung repeated on the magical communication device. It was a meeting joined by my senior Valthorns and the otherworlders as well. Well, except Meela and Alexis, who were in the north. But anyway, now that we had something resembling a plan, we needed help.

“Yes, and Alka proposed that we attack the demon world before the demon king invades. I can see merit in the argument, since we can save lives by preventing the invasion in the first place.” There were no official tallies of how many people died during the parasite wars, but my Valthorns observed that even in well-defended towns, the population was down by about twenty percent. So the parasite war was probably one of the higher ones in terms of fatalities because refugees couldn’t escape, and even if they did, they were suspected of harboring the parasites.

It was a grim episode that I was glad ended well. Had they been more intelligent, we would be dealing with a persistent, ongoing issue.

Prabu did most of the explanation, where he went over Stella’s void portal abilities, my ability to resonate with the rift gates and sneak my vines through the gates, and then, lastly, my tree clones.

Deep in my valley, the rift gate, now surrounded by hundreds of mages and researchers, was undergoing reconfiguration.

“So that’s something from a demon world?” Chung and Hafiz were on the magical communicator. “A rift gate?”

“Yes. The demons build these paths across worlds, and these paths gather in the skies above over decades. Alka and Stella think it might be possible to open these paths earlier and invade them before the demons are even ready for us.”

Alka then explained about the void tower, and the giant circular gate, which I suspected, was the primary gate.

“Don’t we need that primary gate, then?” Chung asked.

“Alka and Stella suspect that it may not be necessary since the astral path is already there, just not fully activated. They want to use the world’s core mana to open a small gate and send one of Aeon’s clones there, and well, bomb the shit out of them.”

“It’s interesting.” Chung nodded. Strangely, the god’s inhibitions didn’t attack the heroes, because, after all, this was a conversation about destroying demons. Just not demons in this world. Alka and Stella were both well-educated on the [hero] class mental overrides, so we made no mention of gods. But we reminded Alka and Stella to not speak of the “ending the cycle” part, since that triggered the hero’s mental blocks the last time I touched this subject with Prabu. For now, we were laser focused on defeating the next demon king, and that seemed to avoid triggering the overrides. “What’s our role?”

“The plan is frankly quite simple,” Alka repeated. “We’ll bomb the void tower and try our best to cause massive damage, and if it doesn’t kill the demon king, Aeon will teleport all of you to the demon world, and you can fight all out there. We’ll provide cover fire and clear the grounds.”

Prabu nodded. “I think it makes a lot of sense. We can fight the demon king offensively, likely in a weaker state thanks to the bombs. No need to hold back, no collateral damage because the demon world is uninhabited.”

“Are the demons stronger there? In their world?” Chung asked.

Alka paused. “We… I don't have enough data to say for sure. From the one or two worlds Aeon has visited, it’s possible that the mobs are stronger. We don’t know whether there is any change in the strength of the demon king.”

Chung was surprisingly cooperative. “It’s a decent idea in principle. Once the gate is active, then let’s meet again and go through our plans.”

With their agreement obtained, Alka and Stella now worked on actually getting the rift gates to work in reverse. From our world, to theirs.

Back on the demon world, Roon and Johann fought the horde of demons from the demonic spawning pools. We observed that some of these pools had “regenerated” and were somehow repaired, and the speed of this recovery seemed aligned to the recovery in the natural ambient mana of this world.

This swampy demon world used to be a world with life. And now, in the areas where my trees dominated, I began observing the effects, as some normal creatures spawned for the first time. Only small ones, because they were insects, but the fact that creatures were created by the system meant we were undoing the demon’s hold.

Horns and a small army of beetle commanders complemented Roon and Johann in the battle for the demon world.

This was a long war, and Horns loved it. Horns lived for war, it seemed, and even though he got squashed a few times, he never stopped returning to the front lines. Hytreerion, my massive walker, was also pleased that it was useful for a change, rather than being mostly useless back on Treehome, since it was able to storm through enemy lines with its massive size.

This was a war that would only gain in intensity, since the recovering ambient mana of the world meant both sides would gain strength. I could deploy more trees and more beetles, and for the demons, they could regenerate their spawning pools, spawn more demons, and spawn stronger demons.

Still, the recovering mana also meant the demon forces noticed my trees near the massive hole of the demon king. A location I wanted but was not able to hold due to the sheer distance from my main clone body, as my trees and beetles were overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of demons.

Thankfully, now Roon and Johann both were up for some scouting.

The deep hole of the demon king was now flooded with normal demons, and they saw the collapsed towers and the rubble had somehow vanished. The entire hole had transformed into a massive spawning pool.

But because there were too many demons, they did not attempt to engage. Not with just two of them. It was likely that the demon spawning pool, given its size, was some kind of pre-demon king pool.

Still, after that spying, and all the fighting on the demon world, they were both really emotionally drained, and Roon requested to return to Treehome. There was something about fighting in the lifeless world that was just more emotionally taxing than normal.

Edna called it the “Long-Term Dungeon Syndrome.” Similar to fighters who’d spent too long in the dungeons, they would crave some normalcy.

Oh well, I supposed I would need to start considering some kind of otherworld combat roster. Maybe that was what happened with Prabu and Colette and their snack withdrawals. They needed an emotional base, and fighting long periods away from home drained that “battery.”

There was something else I had to work on, which was core mana. The activation of the astral path seemed to rely on the core mana, though it was possible to wait for the rifts to open, and only then invade. But we wanted the option to invade at our own time.

So I had to figure out core mana.

I intensified my analysis of the Cometworld Shard and concluded that I needed to dig deeper. Much, much deeper. What kind of creature would have core mana?

I already reached my limit on Treehome in terms of depth. I couldn’t get deeper, even with all the intermediate trees in the way. This was the secret at the center of the world.

> Lilies, do you know how to contact the will of the world? <

< No. >

Ah. I got similar replies from Aria, who didn’t even know about the will of the world.

I only had one seed left. Unless I could gain more levels, I’d have to use it strategically.

“Lumoof, when you were on the Threeworlds, were there any really, really deep places? Like chasms or cracks that led all the way into the core?”

Lumoof naturally got what I was trying to get at and shook his head. “Not that I know of, unless the Sandpeople and the Centaurs are hiding it. Do you want me to ask?”

“Then we should aim elsewhere. Let’s go to another world.” I supposed Lumoof’s job scope now expanded to also look for sources of core mana, usually in really, really deep places.

There had to be a world where there was already a natural crack in the world. Such things were common in fantasy, after all, places where the world ended and it led to the great beyond.

Threeworlds, Cometworld, and Treehome had been typical planets, but not all worlds were like that. If I wanted core mana, I needed to find a world where the core…wasn’t in the center of a spherical world.

Lumoof nodded. “Yes, boss.”

Maybe the next world won’t have my answer, but we had to try. Our next best choice was a stray world similar to Cometworld, where its core was exposed in some way.

I then thought about my little trigger-happy Reef friend.

> Reefy. <

< Yes? >

> Do you know any deep, deep place? <

< Ocean not deep? >

> Deeper. Much deeper. < Like, far deeper than the Marianas. Even my own underground trees had gone a lot deeper.

< No. Why? Someone there? >

I contemplated that question for a moment. Was the Will someone? > Well. Yes. Maybe. <

< Want me to find it? >

> If you could, please. <

< Okay. I’ll send my fish. >

I actually had no idea what Reefy had been up to underwater, but it seemed to be pretty stable, so I presumed it to be all right.

3

YEAR 204

Snek proposed that we dig underground, in the demon world, for the same reason as Snek’s home world. In Snek’s world, the snakes migrated underground to avoid the demons. If there were survivors, they’d be hidden underground or in places where the demons could not reach.

That was a decent idea, and from what I knew, digging underground seemed to be the archeological equivalent of traveling back in time. So we started to dig underground.

The first month we found absolutely nothing, at least around where I started to dig. This process of digging drained more mana, too, since underground my trees didn’t produce mana.

My subsidiary trees and normal trees produced more mana when there were ambient sources of mana in the ground, water, or some kind of light source, either sunlight or starlight. Once again, in the mana-starved worlds, like the moon or the demon world, their production was curtailed.

The first few layers we dug through felt no different from the surface. In fact, due to the poor quality of the soil itself, my [root tunnels] were a higher drain on my mana than normal. Alka wasn’t here to help, since he was really laser-focused on developing star-mana superbombs, so he sent some of his assistants instead.

Well, these assistants were still high-leveled mages and [magical researchers], and they explained that they couldn’t tell the difference in the soil, so we had to go deeper.

It may be due to our lack of the right set of skills to properly analyze soil. Which was kinda silly, because I was really good with studying the soil’s nutrition, magical qualities, and mineral content. But looking at it from an archaeological point of view seemed to be a related but different skill set.

I wondered what would happen if a [geologist] reincarnated to this world. Could they find magic-oil? Would we start an era of magic-oil freedom?

“Maybe we’re digging in the wrong place,” the mages suggested. In truth, I just decided to dig right underneath my tree of clones, since that seemed to be the easiest place, and after that, we expanded sideways with horizontal tunnels.

So the researchers requested for [historians] and [cartographers] from our world and attempted to use our own history to make a map of the demon world, at least the part of the demon world that was under my rule. With their aid, we made an estimate of the places where cities were likely to exist.

This was sensible, of course. Earth’s cities liked to be next to rivers, and this world, while swampy, didn’t have oceans. It was just a vast world of shallow lakes, small rivers, marshes, and swamps.

With our new set of estimates, we decided to dig underground, in a few of these places, where the rivers met the lakes. Our initial findings were bad. We found nothing.

There had to be something, and I went to my other advisors for advice. My four domain holder Valthorns didn’t have any ideas; magic research really wasn’t their forte. Stella suggested the use of some shamanic or land-communion power, which seemed to make sense, but I’d have to locate a person with the right skill set that could be trusted with knowledge of the demon world.

So I went and spoke to Lilies. Lilies, having survived the longest of us all, must have seen the changes in the soil over the generations. Perhaps they could give us a clue?

< How to identify dirt or soil? >

> Yes. Calculate their age, uh… < I wanted to say carbon dating, but I hadn’t the slightest clue how that actually worked in practice. It was one of those things that I knew scientists did but I wouldn’t be able to do myself.

< No. Not possible. Unless the core itself leaves imprints on the soil. >

Wait. It should. If the world of the demon king went through periods of growth and death, the soil itself would feel the effects of the rising and fading of the mana density in the land. But this affected the entire world, not just a certain layer of soil.

But if new soil was created by acts of magic and were subject to fewer such wave-like mana patterns, would we be able to tell? Maybe most types of soil were essentially indistinguishable. We would have to locate the right type of soil or stone that could retain the effects of such waves.

< You seem to have an inkling? >

> I do, but I’m not sure if there’s the right type of soil or stone in the world that behaves in that manner. <

< In the other world? >

> Yes. I’d like to see how long it has been and if we could tell whether a planet supports the birth of demon kings indefinitely or at diminishing rates. <

Lilies didn’t answer that, likely because they never experienced that part of the end of the world. From Lilies’ explanation, even if the demon king won, there was still a period of time before it actually “took over” the world, and during that time, the gods could try to challenge the hold.

This suggested that so long as heroes were continuously summoned, demons would never hold the planet. Eventually one hero would break the demon king’s kill streak.

Taking this thought further, it also meant that worlds only truly became demon worlds if the gods lost access to the world and they could no longer defend it.

Essentially, it was the equivalent of taking life support off and the world either finding a way to defend itself or the world died, consumed by the demon king.

In any case, I also asked the Valthorns to speak to [miners] and [stone collectors] whether they were aware of such stones. It would be easier to find something if we knew what they looked like in our world.

“We’re just grasping at straws,” the mages new to the process of research said.

“That’s what it’s like to be at the forefront of magic research. We’re trying to imagine or figure out how things work with whatever clues handed to us.” The researchers laughed. “Many of these clues are misleading! But it is very, very intellectually stimulating. Occasionally. Most of the time is really a lot of boring cataloging and data collection work.”

One of the good points of Stella, Ken’s influence on the magic researchers was the introduction of more robust data collection methodology, mainly using our own world’s logic of statistics and data. I just hoped we didn’t draw the wrong conclusions. I wasn’t very good at statistics, so my own guidance was very high level and could even be wrong.

A layman’s comprehension of statistics and the conclusions they drew from the data may not be correct, even if they seemed logical from a layman’s view. Still, more data was always welcome.

Patreeck and my artificial minds could easily shift through the data. In fact, one of the things Patreeck suggested was a physical “avatar” for Patreeck and the artificial minds, such that they could interact with the reports and data directly.

As it was, my artificial minds could mentally communicate with each other through my roots, thus forming a network. My subordinates, like Horns, were also connected to the network. However, their connection was not through the roots, but through telepathic speech, and telepathic communication was inherently slower and more prone to misunderstandings.

In short, our current data collection method required either someone to read the data and that data get mentally copied by Patreeck or the artificial minds borrowed one of my regular eyes, which were capable of regular vision, to read the data directly. Useful, but could be expanded.

They were able to collect sound data directly, but because my artificial minds viewed the world mostly through my senses—such as my spiritual vision, sound, and also a vibrative sense—reading documents was out of the picture. They were already able to manipulate vines in my [biolab]-focused artificial minds and get readings from them directly.

Again, the demon world itself was more prone to magical disruptions. Demons had been consistently attacking my trees throughout the demon world, sometimes with those demon-spire-walker champions, and these champions had some type of magical interference.

At this point, I estimated the ambient mana in the demon world to be about five percent of Treehome. From Patreeck’s initial estimates, the break-even point where the mana cost of supporting the subsidiary trees was equal to the mana generated by the trees themselves on the demon world was somewhere around twenty-five percent.

“Could the blowback be detected?” Patreeck asked. “The collapse of the astral tunnel through the void. That collapse carpeted the entire world with a single but very noticeable wave of magic energy.”

Ah, so rather than rely on the wave-like pattern of the declining ambient mana in the world, use the collapsed astral tunnel’s energy as a “time marker”? That seemed possible, but I would need to find materials on the demon world that would show the effects of such things.

Again, I would get the guys to pay attention to their surroundings, but if there was nothing, there was nothing.

For my artificial minds, I needed a new kind of mobile-artificial mind that also functioned as a laboratory, for their research functions, with a direct link to the root network through their legs. At least, they would need to stop and connect with the network directly to upload the bulky datasets.

With my evolutionary powers from [Tree of Life], I started looking at creating smaller versions of Hytreerion, crossed with the qualities of the Treefolk.

The Treefolk could connect to the Rootnet. In fact, that was one of their unique selling points, though we blocked them from the network.

This part of the process, modifying existing things in order to fit my need and growing them in my [biolabs], wasn’t exactly hard.

In fact, they were quite cute. Like little Tachikomas made of wood and trees. It would take about a few months to properly form them.

“Threeworld this time?” Stella asked. She’d been working on the rift gate, but it involved huge amounts of reconfiguring the runic patterns. She said she’d get better with time, but for now, she’d need another year or two.

In my experience, there was bound to be hiccups, so if she completed it within three years, it was considered a success.

Lumoof shook his head. “Nope. The other world. Unless there’s something else?”

“Nope. Skies remain unchanged. For now.”

I scanned the skies from my lone tree that floated nowhere, in the remnants of Cometworld. So far, nothing.

Stella paused and looked at her notes. “All right. Just you?”

“No.” I decided not to send Lumoof alone this time, so I got one of the higher-ranked Valthorns to accompany him, one of Edna’s juniors and disciples, a Level 110 [Aeonic Battle Knight] named Ebon. I figured that I would gradually rotate my level 100+ Valthorns on these adventures to other worlds to let them learn from the other worlds.

I suspected the system seemed to recognize and give value to a wider perspective and thus rewarded those who had seen other worlds. It may also be partly why I gained levels faster, too, on top of my heroic fragments. Or maybe just a different perspective just gave a more holistic comprehension of powers, thus recognition by the system?

In any case, I would send Lumoof to the other worlds as part of my many other projects to get Core Mana. I also had [miners] dig into the depth of the world from the already deep depths.

I had mages and others attempting to create a portal into the core itself.

I would have core mana. Then we would take this battle to the demons.

The portal opened, and both Lumoof and Ebon walked out to what appeared to be a massive battlefield with the stench of rotting corpses and blood in the air. Back home, Stella and her team strained a little more than usual. “Weird, felt like I was trying to push through mud.”

The battlefield was littered with corpses, some still looked relatively fresh. This battle wasn’t very long ago. Maybe a week or a month.

“Ooh.” Yet the first thing I wanted to see was the sky. Lumoof then looked up, and we both saw the glowing, bright astral path through our shared astral vision. Lumoof’s expression paled instantly. “The demon king is here.”

“Here?” Ebon asked. Immediately, he started to look around anxiously.

“No, I mean, he’s in this world,” Lumoof clarified.

“Oh.” Ebon relaxed. He started to survey the surroundings.

“If the astral path is open, then the invasion is still ongoing. We should spot some heroes, then.”

The corpses were humanoid. At least, some looked like elves and dwarves. Lizard people and drakes, too.

“Where should we go?” Ebon asked, returning from his short walk around. “I see their equipment’s rust is quite early-stage. This battle must’ve been just about two to three weeks old. Strange no one raided their equipment.”

“Demons don’t need equipment.”

“Ah yes. I forgot since we had the parasites…” Ebon answered.

Lumoof paused, and I briefly entered the avatar-mode. I felt my senses extend through the ground, and the world around us—

There was a loud explosion in a particular direction, carried by the winds, and there was very visible magic flying through the sky. Lumoof and Ebon exchanged glances.

“If there’s fighting, there’s people,” Lumoof answered. Ebon nodded. Lumoof activated his domain skill on Ebon, and Ebon’s body glowed, supercharged. He ran, his speed almost as fast as the heroes through the battlefield.

It was quite far away.

Both Lumoof and I could see through Ebon with Lumoof’s ability, and we saw an army of lizardmen, at least two thousand of them, battling an army of at least ten thousand humanoid demons. These demons were armed with reddish demonic weapons. They were awfully familiar, like the ones that gave me the [Forest Rod].

Was this a rehash of the demon-walker champions? The ones that triggered the huge calamity of the Central Continent?

I felt a little tingle of fear through my senses.

The lizardmen were outnumbered, and we saw the very familiar demonic knights and demonic generals.

“Lumoof, it’s Demon King Sabnoc again.” Lumoof was a baby when the Sabnoc incident happened, but it was mandatory education for the Valthorns on the origins of the Rottedlands.

“Sabnoc, here?”

“Maybe not Sabnoc, but those demons are from that generation of demon kings. There will be Hytreerion-type champions!”

“Ah!” This world was faced with a large-scale invasion of demons.

Lumoof ran as fast as he could, which was really fast, but it still took him longer to arrive in the battlefield. The lizardmen were already fighting the demons, and they were the ones unleashing their magical spells and projectiles.

Ebon smashed into the center of the demon army like a descended god, and his large gladius glowed green from power. Ebon, for the purposes of this battle, received one of the Court of the Deitree slots, which complemented his close-combat battle skills with my own wide-area abilities, like [Rooting Fields].

The lizardmen clearly didn’t expect the assistance, and the sight of Ebon as a single, supercharged individual able to easily defeat tens of these normal demons per swing seemed to raise their morale.

“Aura!” Lumoof mentally spoke to Ebon. “Activate the demon-suppression aura!”

He had a weaker version, but it helped slow down the demons a little bit, such to give the lizardmen army some breathing room.

The demon knights and general-types clearly noticed Ebon, and they charged at him. But if Lausanne at level thirty could fight a demon knight, Ebon at level one hundred ten could kill a few of them in a single swipe. They really were not much now.

Only champions could give Ebon a challenge, so Ebon slaughtered the demons like the worthless things they were. When Lumoof arrived a little bit later, the victory was certain. Once he was in avatar mode, the demons were killed quickly, the full strength of my demonic suppression aura flooded the battlefield, and they were as good as motionless statues.

The lizardpeople then easily cut down the army of demons, and the battle was over.

A group of heavily armored lizardpeople immediately approached Ebon. “We, the army of the Alderri City, thank you for your assistance in the battle with the demons!”

Ebon, who was in heavy armor, nodded in his helmet. Lumoof moved to join Ebon. “This is Lumoof, my superior. I am Ebon, a knight.”

“Greetings!” Lumoof said. “I hope we did not interrupt much?”

One of the lizardpeople laughed awkwardly. Their leader stared at the laughing lizardperson, and he immediately quieted down. “Ah. In fact…we were prepared to fight to the death to hold the demons back. Our reinforcements were delayed by a few days…”

Lumoof nodded. “All right. Would you mind filling us in? I must admit I’m new to the region.”

That made the lizardperson leader’s eyes twitch. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean by that.”

Lumoof smiled. “We teleported here. From a really, really far place. So I need a briefing. Everything, really.”

One of the lizardperson immediately asked, “Are you the heroes?”

That lizardperson was promptly slapped by the one next to him. “Are you stupid?! Heroes are always young teenagers! These two guys look like war veterans.”

The leader stared, and the two bickering lizardpeople immediately quieted down. “I’m afraid I will have to invite you back to our city and uh…let the proper person answer you.”

“Please.” Their city was really a fortress, a huge structure with thick, multi-layered walls meant for siege battles. Magical enchantments covered the walls, and there were magical formations and traps scattered around them. They were clearly geared for war.

In fact, the guards were hugely surprised to see the army returning at all. The doors flew open, and a group of elves and lizardpeople came out to greet them.

“General! How?! You’ve pushed them back?”

One of the elves hugged the lizard-leader. He patted the heavily armed young teenage elf on the head. “Shush. We have honored guests who came to our rescue. I must take them to meet the council now.”

“But…” The elf looked tearful.

The lizard general said firmly, “I live, son, when I was meant to die today. It is already a miracle, so wait. Let me take the guests to the council.” The elf nodded, and the general turned to Lumoof. “Please, Lord Lumoof and Ebon.”

The council was a group of humans, lizardpeople, and elves. About the same as the corpses we saw from the previous battlefield. Everyone was heavily armed.

The general gave the introductions, and the council was blunt with its questions. “Where are you from, exactly? There are no known individuals with your type of combat abilities left.”

Lumoof thought for a moment and decided to go for the truth. “Another world. But we are not heroes. Just a neighboring world.”

There was an audible gasp from the entire council. “How?”

Lumoof smiled. “Classified information. At this point, I can see that all of you need help. But, first, fill us in. What exactly is going on in this world?”

One human leaned forward. “We really do. Are there more individuals like yourself?”

“Maybe,” Lumoof answered.

The human councilor looked at the rest, as if waiting for something. The lizardman councilor nodded and spoke. “At this point, we need everything we can get. If there are no objections, I’ll do the walkthrough.”

We listened as the council-lizardperson explained that the demons arrived sixteen years ago, and the heroes went to defeat the demon king. At first, to the people of this world, it was business as usual. But the heroes that went to defeat the demon king did not do so, and it seemed like all news of the heroes had since vanished.

The demons then resumed their expansion, and the entire world turned into a battlefield.

Their priests attempted to divine the nature of what occurred, and they discovered that the heroes were defeated and almost all of them killed. Except two, who were somehow captured by the demon king. Captured, and not killed, so no new heroes were summoned to the world.

At that point, I suddenly wondered what would happen if Alexis was never killed.

This world was one with many high mountains and mountain passes, so most kingdoms and nations had easily defended chokepoints. Thankfully, the demons did not have many flight-capable creatures, and even their demon generals were only able to fly a short distance.

Thus, for the whole of the last decade and more, it was a continuous and never-ending battle against the demonic armies. The world’s nations stopped fighting, as every combat-talented person was drafted to join and defend the world against the demonic armies.

“What of the demon king?” Lumoof asked.

“The demon king appears to be a large, stationary castle.”

Lumoof cursed. “It’s Sabnoc again.”

“Sabnoc?”

“We had a demon king that created these demonic armies. It was called Sabnoc.”

“Hmm, this demon king is called Akkila.”

“How do you respond to champion-class demons?” Lumoof then asked.

“Our relics. The [hero] items. The joint command of elite forces handle these items and move them to where the champions are sighted.”

“Ah.” There’s a regional joint command that moved these things around to help push the demon champions back. “The hero-items need time to recharge.”

The councilors nodded. “Yes. So over time, we still lose ground. The demons can outnumber us and field champions repeatedly. Our warriors can gain levels, and we do have strong elites from those who survived multiple battles, but it’s a balance that’s not in our favor.”

Lumoof nodded. “So everyone who can fight fights.”

“Yes. Our old luxuries had to cease. There really was no other way. Our people must fight, make items to support the war effort, or produce food and supplies.”

One councilor interjected, “Are you able to bring us to your world?”

“Are you thinking of leaving already?” Another councilor immediately stood up.

Lumoof smirked. “There are demon kings in our world, too.”

That same councilor paled. “Surely with powerful individuals like yourself—”

“All it takes is one demon king with the right skill sets and we’re still doomed.” Lumoof didn’t let him finish.

The entire war council nodded in agreement. The human continued. “We must report your presence to the joint command.”

Lumoof thought about it for a moment. “What if I just decide to go back?”

The human immediately paused, and he prostrated on the ground. “Please. Please help us. Our people have been fighting this war for a decade, and there’s no end to it. We need hope. Something to buy us time.”

“Buying time for what?” Lumoof asked. A miracle, probably.

The councilman did not answer immediately. “Buy time for us to live a bit longer.”

The general, too, immediately knelt. “Please, Lord Lumoof. Your presence and abilities on the battlefield would help us greatly.”

Lumoof sighed, and I could sense the dilemma in his heart. “It is not what I am here for.”

“We’ll give you anything you want.”

“Tell me, is there a place where the planet’s core is exposed?”

The councilors shook their heads at first and then immediately nodded. Lumoof could tell they were lying. Desperation. Exhaustion.

Lumoof looked at Ebon. “Well, let’s leave this for later. I’m tired from that battle, and we need a place to rest.”

One of the councilors immediately ran out to make arrangements, and they were given the finest rooms they could manage. It was clear it had not been used or cleaned for months before this. Walking through the streets, everyone was focused on war, but the exhaustion and sense of despair was clear.

Lumoof sat and asked Ebon, “What do you think?”

“We should help. These people look like they need it. Way more than we do.”

I thought back to the Canari people. I helped them, too, and now that I had the power, maybe I shouldn’t be so selfish. I didn’t have to take the demon king, either.

All we needed to do was find the captured heroes and free them.

Or kill them, if we couldn’t.

4

YEAR 204 (PART 2)

Ebon, as a knight, felt strongly about helping these people. As for me, I didn’t want to take ownership of this conflict and expand my already growing plate. I didn’t want to play the role of another world’s peacekeeper, too.

Still, I did agree that we could have a limited scope of assistance, something more focused. We could either free the heroes or, failing that, kill them, such that the cycle of reincarnating heroes may continue.

As it was, I had at least thirty to fifty individuals like Ebon in the level one hundred category, and this really was another battlefield. Letting them fight another war on another world could help them experience things and prepare them for the coming invasion of the demon world.

Despite my reluctance to assist, Lumoof and some of my Valthorns felt we had the capacity to do more. After the badly handled disaster that was the crystal king, this was our other world left, and Lumoof felt we should try to make allies on this world.

If we help now, we come as saviors. Allies.

These opinions can shift quickly, and I wasn’t sure what was the political, social and religious sentiment on the ground. A wider scope of assistance may also face pushback, and as the crystal king said, we would be occupiers.

Maybe he wasn’t that wrong, after all. If the purpose of allies was as a backup if our world fell, we would retreat here as refugees. Eventually, though, we would also transform into occupiers, demanding some of these lands as our own.

Politics was hard. I’d rather just fight demons.

After a day’s rest, Lumoof and Ebon returned to face the council, and Lumoof immediately asked for information on the heroes and where they were captured.

Lumoof could see their eyes light up, excited at the prospect of our assistance.

In truth, they couldn’t help. This was a border city, a fortress that faced the demon hordes. The information on the heroes and on such grander strategic matters were all deeper in their “protected” hinterlands.

So they proposed to send two messengers, carrying scrolls written by the council, to guide and accompany us to one of their greater cities that still stood. It would be a two-week journey by horse, but Lumoof shook his head at the council.

“Then let’s use teleportation scrolls. Let not waste time.”

The councilors were horrified at the suggestion. “We mean no offense, Lord Lumoof, but we cannot afford to use scrolls. Teleportation scrolls are only for our elite forces to move to places under heavy attack.”

That was a sensible use of teleportation.

Lumoof coughed. “Sorry, I mean, I have greater teleportation scrolls. I just need some of you to come with me and link me with the right person. My scroll can carry five. I just need one of you who has been to that city to update the location.”

Teleportation scrolls from our world relied on the mana-pathways in the sky, the same way [message] spells worked. These teleportation scrolls were a step further and could use direct coordinate input, but it needed some tweaking.

“Oh.” One lizardperson and one human stood. “Then we will go with you.”

One of the councilors was a mage, and he stared at the scroll for a moment. “These are really interesting teleportation runes.”

Lumoof coughed again. “Shall we?”

“Ah yes.”

Lumoof and Ebon landed in a large teleportation platform in their magical capital, and when we arrived, we were greeted by an army, ready for war.

There were three relatively high-level soldiers. One was a naga, and the other two were lizardpeople with quite good equipment, their spears and axes up and ready to strike. “Councilman! Explain this unauthorized use of teleportation!”

“Stand down! We sent a message earlier! We are sending VIPs over!” the councilman said.

The high-leveled naga seemed to be a magic-swordsman, judging from the three magic swords he wielded. The naga immediately shouted through its helmet. “The capital has not agreed to your request! The protocol states any use of teleportation must be centrally approved!”

“These two here possessed their own teleportation scroll! Surely that protocol does not apply!”

Lumoof sighed, and then a wave of his power flooded the entire area. “My name is Lumoof, and this is my guard, Ebon. We are otherworldly visitors, ambassadors of our divine protector, Aeon. We’ve come to speak to your mages and your priests and discover what has interfered with the usual cycle of hero-summons. I do not wish to fight, but I can, if I have to.”

The magic swordsman and the rest of the soldiers buckled, just a little, but the difference of power was clear, and when the naga sheathed his swords, the rest did, too. “…very well.”

Lumoof looked at him briefly, estimated he was probably around level eighty-five, and would give Lausanne a run for her money. These were folks that fought many battles over the decades and had gained levels as a result. Lumoof nodded. “Thank you. Now let us see how we may aid this long conflict.”

The level-eighty-five barrier could be surpassed, by sheer force of will, but most mortals would never get there, even if they reached level eighty-five.

The barrier was a cruel one. I didn’t see why the world had such a silly level limiter. It denied the world of their opportunity to save itself, even when these folks clearly, if they leveled enough, had the chance to do so or at least force the demons to a state of weakness.

Lumoof offered a counterpoint. “In any system that rewards killing to gain levels, those who gain the levels will be those who killed the most. I would think if such powers were not limited in some way, the world would naturally die from its inhabitants killing each other in the pursuit of more power.”

That didn’t explain dragons, of course. Or why dragons were counterbalanced by their need for huge amounts of rest and sleep that they never actually managed to kill that many people.

Lumoof and Ebon were escorted from the teleportation gates and out to the world. Their magical capital was filled with towers, but they were all shaped for war. There were clearly multiple magical defensive artifacts active, and we could feel their magical energies bouncing off Lumoof’s domain.

We looked up and saw at least three layers of magical shields. Each of these shields were quite weak on their own, but with three, they were a reasonably good defense, even if inferior to my wooden shields.

Everyone was armed, except the children, and there were weapons hung and placed all over many parts of the streets. There were also many children. Actually, come to think of it, there were really a lot of children back in the border city, too.

“What’s with all the children?” Lumoof asked, and the councilman that accompanied us immediately answered. “Someone’s got to fight the wars, so we have many children.”

I couldn’t help but feel how insane that was.

“The Council of Kings combined their powers to create a continental edict, which means all our children grow up faster than normal, and everyone also gained more experience. About three to four times faster. It’s one of the few abilities that’s allowed us to hold on in this long battle.”

Ah. That made sense. Lumoof nodded in agreement and commented, “I’m impressed that the nations actually got their act together and responded to this threat coherently.”

Actually, that was really true. I remembered the nations back in Treehome treating the demon king as the heroes’ problem. But then again, these guys got lucky, too, that they got a stationary demon king that pumped out demons instead of the usual wandering, trigger-happy nuclear machine gun.

I liked this aspect of these people already. A sense of ownership for their lives, development of the necessary organizations and focus to defend themselves. It really further solidified my conclusion that I should not assist them excessively and focus on a narrow scope. Like a child learning to walk, I’d be doing them a disservice if I gave them the easy way out. Their bones would not be strong.

If anything, the right thing to do was to help them without them feeling indebted to me, even if I and Lumoof did want allies here.

The two forces of encouraging their independence and self-reliance versus helping them and earning their gratitude battled in my mind. I didn’t want to contribute a data point toward the argument that their problems would be solved by outside help. I’d seen enough of that in my world, and it was irritating.

I knew the knights and priests would generally prefer to provide aid where able. It was how they were trained and raised in the Central Continent.

The lizard councilperson frowned. “Well, it took two continents to fall under complete demonic rule and tens of millions of dead citizens across thousands of fallen kingdoms for us to get our act together. If anything, this war-alliance was written in the blood and bones of the dead.”

Lumoof nodded. “I see.”

The group arrived at a massive temple that was clean, and as we looked around, there seemed to be a lot of students, all in robes. “Junior priests. We need healers on the front lines, and we are mass-training.”

Lumoof was visibly disturbed at how familiar it was. “I must say, I can’t imagine sending such freshly trained junior priests to the front lines.” As I saw through him, I saw him imagine the young students of the School of Treeology on the front lines, dying to the demons.

“They will level and grow.”

“Many won’t survive.”

“But those that do will carry the torch. Such is war.”

“It is horrific, indeed,” Lumoof said. We’d seen our own horrible wars. The recent parasite war had been horrifying.

Three heavily armed priests appeared. They had large shields on their backs and magically enchanted war-maces. “Councilperson. Is this the guest?”

The lizard gave them a nod. “Yes. This is Lord Lumoof, Ambassador of Aeon.”

The war-priests motioned Lumoof to follow them into the temples. “Come. The high priest will see you.”

The temple’s inner grounds were clean and spartan. There were gems and gold once, but most of them had been stripped out. The sound of chants and prayer songs filled the halls, and despite it being to another god, Lumoof found it calming and could not help but ask. “Which god do you pray to?”

“Tharaz. The God of Perseverance.”

Lumoof just nodded and walked behind them and soon arrived at a room on the highest floor. Once more, it was probably once a heavily decorated room, but now it was empty. The shelves were all bare. What was left were a few paintings and some writings.

They got to the point immediately. “High Priest, these two claims to be from another world and ask for information on the heroes.”

The high priest glared at Lumoof but then quickly smiled. “That’s a bold claim.”

Lumoof laughed. “It is, isn’t it?”

“Can you prove it?”

“Yes, of course.” Lumoof’s aura gently filled the room, and the high priest paled.

“…I see.” The high priest and Lumoof sat down. Ebon sat at another chair to the side. “Before that…are there really other worlds?”

“Yes.”

“How’d you get here? Scripture and the gods said only they could do it.”

Lumoof frowned at the words but realized he could twist it. “It’s not exactly wrong. I would say Aeon, my god and my benefactor, is the one who sent me here.”

“Huh, but doesn’t that make you a hero?”

“No. We’re…different. Aeon is a relatively new god. The old gods are those that summon heroes to your world and to mine. We don’t get the hero-type powers.”

“But you feel strong.”

“It’s complicated and not something I can share,” Lumoof said. “Now, tell me about the heroes.”

The high priest sighed. “Very well. Truth is what we have was quite vague. We have this hero-item that can locate the hero, and all we have is a location. We know they are alive because the hero-item still works, but the fact that they didn’t move suggests that they were either captured or unconscious or some degree of both.”

“A location? Was anything done to rescue them?”

“Well, no,” the high priest said with embarrassment.

“Then?”

“Our data is already out of date. The last time we used it was eight years ago. The item ran out of the hero’s mana a while ago, so we don’t even know whether it’s in the right place or whether the hero had moved. We didn’t dare to send anyone to that location with our poor information, and the demon king’s magical structures interfered with all our magical scrying and teleportation abilities.”

Lumoof nodded and realized this part could be relatively easy to solve. “Can we get access to it?”

“It’s considered one of our most prized possessions, even if it’s unpowered. It would need the approval of the Council of Kings and Grand Marshals. But why?”

“Can you get it?”

The high priest stared. “What are you really saying?”

“We may be able to recharge it.”

“How?”

“We have access to the hero’s mana. A small bit, at least.”

The high priest’s eyes widened in shock. “You are not lying?”

“No.”

The high priest paused. “But…wait.”

“You need to gather your strongest men. All those level eighties and above. We will provide assistance and cover, but the rescue will be done by your forces,” Lumoof said. He understood that I preferred that these guys help themselves.

“But that would leave some of our cities unprotected.”

Lumoof looked at Ebon.

The high priest sighed. “I will have to raise this to the council. Once we recharge the item, we can decide on the next course of action…”

“Good.”

We were still working on our star mana bombs, and the fact that the demon king of this was stationary raised some interesting questions.

“If it’s stationary, why don’t we throw a wide range of bombs at it?” Alka had been working on bombs so much that he pretty much joked that his first course of action was to bomb them. It was only half a joke.

That said, the demon king could just “pretend” that it was stationary. All the previous demon kings that resembled actual castles could float, fly, and move like giant walkers. The current stationary appearance may well be a ruse, or maybe it was just waiting for the heroes.

“If we don’t try, we don’t know.”

“Do we really want to trigger an escalation of conflict? Like, this seems to be a rather uncomfortable but stable state for the world,” I said frankly, again. “Attacking the demon king may jolt it out of its current stationary state and cause it to attack the kingdoms directly. Then it becomes our conflict, because we caused it. Worse if we can’t rescue the heroes.”

It was very easy to stray from our goals. As persons in power, we were frequently petitioned to assist with many things, with very convincing arguments.

I looked at my objectives. I wanted core mana, and my adventure to this mountainous world was to find core mana. As a secondary goal, we would try to make some friends and allies, so that we had somewhere to fall back to, like a backup.

Yet, at the same time, I also realized they had a good thing going for them, and that was their scrappy temperament, perseverance, self-reliance, and sense of ownership. I didn’t want to snuff that out by playing the role of the outworld helper, even if I knew this path would probably mean more deaths for their world. Once lost, it was hard to get it back without even more deaths.

At the same time, I recognized that I had some self-interest in protecting this world, because since they were so close to me, that meant if they fell to the demons, we could be invaded by the demons more often. This was just my speculation, because Stella’s view was that it didn’t work like that. The demons seemed to ignore distance when choosing their targets, because their choice of targets seemed random.

Each world led to other worlds, and Stella was keen to visit the Threeworlds and Mountainworld for herself again and see whether there were other worlds within the range of these worlds.

Anyway, another secondary goal was to look for creatures and powers like myself and make allies.

There was a lot we could do with power. Using them correctly was a far more difficult question. Against these goals, I also posed the questions to my allies.

“As a knight, I would help where I am able. But I do see your point, so perhaps we can come in as a defender of last resort,” Edna said. “We should be invisible, such that they do not count on our help.”

“Are you willing to take over this conflict for them?” Roon disagreed. “I think we may be overstretching ourselves. We haven’t even really secured our world, and here we are trying to send forces to the other world. We’re also waging a war on the parasite world and plan to invade a demon world. We should save our forces.”

“With Stella and Aeon’s ability to teleport us back and forth, we’re not really overstretching,” Edna argued. “And stretching isn’t really fair because, well, we gain levels from all of this.”

“The question is simple to me. If there’s a demon on our world and a demon on theirs at the same time, where do we fight? The answer is clearly here, because this is our home. That’s not our home, and it’s not our battle,” Roon countered. “If we accept responsibility for one, are we eventually accepting it for all?”

“I agree that home is where we should protect.” Edna nodded. “But that does make our world’s lives more valuable than theirs, doesn’t it? We have capacity. Many of our level one hundreds are just clearing dungeons.”

“It is a fact that our world is more valuable. They are unfortunate that they do not have an Aeon. So it is even more important that their own people rise to the occasion,” Roon countered. “We’ve seen that a child born in the Central Continent grows up stronger than most in the other continents, and this sort of luck is true across worlds, too.”

“They are level-limited. They can’t, even if they want to,” Edna responded. “But Aeon could…”

“It is a limited resource, but not that limited. I would be willing to give a few if they are worthy,” I responded. I still had a few in stockpile. It wasn’t even an instant win, because I’d seen my guys who’d gotten the soul seed but never actually did much. I also liked that this was in line with helping them help themselves and did not involve putting my people on the line. “But I’ll need Lumoof to get to know them better before giving them such an item. The last thing I’d want is to empower someone who’d go against me.”

Edna smiled. “Even if you give ten of them seeds, they’re a long way from being able to stand against you, Aeon. It took us decades of constant grinding to get both Roon and Johann to the domain-tier. I think that’s not something to be worried about. Not in the next half-century.”

That was true.

Even if they did turn against me, so what? They couldn’t travel worlds. Our home base was safe.

So I could help, with very little losses, all the upside with very few downsides. If it went well, we’d get some friendly parties. If it didn’t, no major harm done.

5

YEAR 205

It took a while, and a lot of discussions over at the so-called Council of Kings, and a few actual meetings with Lumoof, before they even allowed Lumoof to see the item for himself. Stella couldn’t teleport the heroes, because their star-mana opposed the void mana too strongly. Not like me, where the star mana I possessed was relatively tiny, but it didn’t matter.

The object itself was a large, circular, metal disk with many rings. It looked like an ancient feng shui compass, only with a clear glass center. It was created six centuries ago by an archmage hero, and over time, its mana had been exhausted. It was clearly made only to accept star mana, not like the hero-items that were made to accept normal mana.

Lumoof was flanked by ten of their strongest fighters: some mages, some archers, and some knights. It was just security theater, really.

There was nothing they could do if we tried anything.

Lumoof touched the disk, and my avatar descended. All that were present felt my oppressive presence fill the room and the entire building.

I channeled my meager three hundred star mana into the disk, and the disk clearly started to glow. It was thirsty. It was a really greedy disk.

“Hmmm…” Lumoof mused. “It still needs more.”

So I had to borrow. Prabu gladly volunteered. I wrapped my vines around his body, and he sent his star mana into my body. I weaved it through myself and through the avatar into the disk.

The disk glowed, and this time, it was enough. Lumoof felt uncomfortable, though.

The clear glass turned murky and swirled like a witch’s cauldron, and then it revealed a location and a vision to all that was present.

The heroes were possessed, one resembled a giant demon knight, and another was inside a demonic cage. Their location was not far from the demon king, too.

“Well. There you have it. The heroes,” Lumoof answered as my presence faded away. “Are you ready to free them?”

Lumoof sat in their magical archives; there were just a few mages here. These archives used to have hundreds of mages, all pouring over where to push their magic. These days, every single mage was working in the workshops, making weapons, or fighting in the battlefields.

“Not here.” Lumoof sighed. Our quest for core mana in this new world was fruitless. Not here, not Threeworlds. It seemed that we would need Stella here if we wanted to find somewhere else with core mana.

“Is this core so important?” one of the local dwarven mages asked. She had been tasked to attend to Lumoof’s queries.

Lumoof nodded. They had relatively good maps, at least from a decade or two ago, before the demons invaded. I felt like I was missing something.

Why was there a stationary demon king? It wasn’t the first time the demon king had been stationary, but…why?

Sometime later, Lumoof and Ebon met the group gathered for the mission of rescuing the heroes.

They were all level eighties, the highest among them level eighty-seven, a dwarven magical maceman of some kind. He was the stereotypical dwarf, with a grumpy attitude. Because of how extensive and long the war was, there were about fifty of them around level eighty, but only about twenty would join the mission.

The initial concept was a small, dedicated strike team.

“Are you the upstart who called us here?” the dwarf said.

Ebon hid his aura well and shook his head. “That would be my superior, Lord Lumoof. This idea of rescuing the heroes was our benefactor’s suggestion.”

Lumoof smiled at the dwarf, and the dwarf walked closer to Ebon and sniffed. He returned the smile afterward. “Well, at least we’re dealing with guys who can put their lives on the line.” Ebon shrugged as they activated the fully-recharged hero-item. A group of mages explained the location of the possessed heroes.

“We’ll do the rescue?” the group asked. “Against possessed heroes?”

“Yes,” the local archmages said. “Our current situation has been a stalemate for too long.”

“But then our defenses? Who will handle it, then?”

“The rest of us will have to just hold out.”

One of the lizardpeople looked at Ebon and Lumoof. “What if this is just a trap to weaken us? If all of us die, we just lost twenty of our strongest fighters. These guys are from another world, and maybe they are here to invade us.”

The dwarf nodded. “Exactly. Since they are suggesting it, shouldn’t they help us out? Not just that, how are we expected to deal with the possessed heroes? We can’t just kill them, right? We need the heroes alive. Somehow.”

“We certainly have no intention of anyone dying on this mission. We will go with you, though our role will be minimal or only where your team does not have the capability. Are there any strong priests who are good with high-level exorcisms?” Lumoof answered.

There was a collective head-shake. “Our strongest priests are heavy healers and buffers. Exorcism isn’t something we have to deal with.”

“In that case, if there are no further objections, I would like to handle the exorcism of the heroes. I would need the help of everyone present to keep the rest of the demons at bay and weaken the possessed heroes.”

“So we’re bodyguards,” one of them answered.

“Perhaps.” Lumoof smiled. “Ebon will stay back and support the defense, if there are any particularly strong attacks during this period.”

“One person is not sufficient.”

“Across all the theaters of battle, certainly. But if there are any huge threats, he is more than sufficient.”

The plan was relatively simple. A small group would teleport as close as possible, then rush for the possessed heroes. The hero-item confirmed that the heroes were still in the same location, and twenty-two level eighties and an assortment of level fifties from their various armies joined the force, mainly as support.

Level eighties put them in the same category as Lausanne, so twenty-two of them were a very decent fighting force. This group could take down demon champions easily, even without the hero-items.

Some of them had anti-demon abilities, too, thanks to the decade-long endless conflict. The system favored conflict and awarded those who struggled really long against it.

Lumoof had to just tag along and follow the group as they pushed through the demon territory. Not all of it was occupied; after all, these type of army-demons favored ley lines as their bases. Where there were no ley lines, these places were sparsely guarded, even if there were regular demonic patrols.

The only reason the locals hadn’t taken these territories back was because of how vulnerable their location was to the demons from the nearby demon bases.

“You said you were from another world,” the group asked as they made their way to their first rest spot. “How?”

“My patron has a way of opening portals to another world. This world is just in the same neighborhood.”

“How is it there?”

“From what I can see, we’re very similar. We also have regular demonic attacks, but we’ve not had a situation like this,” Lumoof answered.

“I always thought heroes could never be possessed by demons,” one of the mages on the trip said as they discussed the idea of a possessed demon. “Guess what the temples tell us isn’t always true.”

Lumoof laughed. “Honestly, they don’t know any better. The gods don’t exactly communicate much.”

“But yours does.”

“Well…that’s because my patron is a rising native god. Aeon lives on our world, and Aeon gets stronger over time. Have you spoken to your gods?”

All of them shook their heads, and I was secretly impressed by Lumoof’s clever sowing of doubt. “How powerful is Aeon?”

Lumoof grinned at the question. “I’m sure anyone here knows that power isn’t so simple to explain, especially with the way classes work at high levels. In Aeon’s field of mastery, I would say Aeon is unparalleled, just like how I’m very good at what I do in my field. My companions are similarly powerful in their chosen field. Power isn’t a linear scale.”

They nodded in agreement. One of the knights present couldn’t help but ask, “Sir Lumoof, may I ask…what level are you?”

Lumoof smiled as they took the bait. “More than level one hundred.”

There was a collective gasp. “How? We all stagnant in our level eighties.”

The dwarf rolled his eyes. “You don’t really need us to protect you.”

Lumoof didn’t respond to the dwarf and instead looked at the rest. “The system limits most of us to the level eighties, and only a rare few can break through with incredible force of will. But my patron, Aeon, is a Spirit Tree, a master of souls and spirit.”

We had their attention.

“And he has a special fruit that can break through the limitations of our souls so that we can ascend even higher.”

There was a collective silence as they digested the statement. The dwarf asked, “Ebon. That knight of yours. He’s level one hundred, too?”

Lumoof nodded. We would rest in this quiet mountain for an hour.

“Do you still need the heroes?”

“Yes,” Lumoof answered without a doubt. “Even with our levels, the gap between us and the heroes is incredible. Even my patron, Aeon, cannot stand against the demon king alone. We still need the heroes.”

For now.

The group present digested Lumoof’s words, but eventually one of them approached Lumoof during the break. “How do we get that fruit?”

Lumoof shrugged. “It is Aeon’s to give, not my decision.”

“Can we have an audience somehow?” Greed. Lumoof sensed it. A lust for power. Lumoof smiled and shrugged again.

“Perhaps.”

That started a torrent of inquiries as the others all asked for it. They all believed they could go further. Lumoof just nodded, shrugged, and repeated that it was not his to give.

But Lumoof’s abilities as a priest allowed him to measure the weight of each of their personalities, and he concluded that only three persons may be worthy: the dwarf, one of the knights, and one of the rangers.

Rest time was over, and the group continued. We met more demons, but the group was strong enough that they crushed them easily. Only champions would really delay them, especially a small group like this.

In a large-scale war, it was very easy to attack, especially with a small, highly powerful mobile force, but very hard to defend when the attacks could come from anywhere. It was this observation that led to the plan to attack the demon worlds preemptively.

Offense was focused. Defense was spread out. The sheer speed with which the group cut through the demon’s territory and toward the possessed heroes was evidence.

The group arrived at the possessed heroes’ supposed location within two days. There were just one demon champion there, and a horde of the regular mobs. Easy pickings for the group.

Of the two heroes, only one was able to fight, and even so, they couldn’t use the hero’s powers, only a limited range of abilities, derived from demonic mana from the possessing demon. The giant demon knight fought the group, but the group of twenty-two level eighties outnumbered them.

Lumoof stayed back and watched. He did use a blessing or two to help those in trouble, but this was their fight.

The champion was slain, and the demon knight-hero was quickly defeated.

One of the mages blasted the ground, and we soon found the cage. It was a massive demon, and the hero was wrapped in tentacles and demonic organs.

“All right. This is where we step in.” Lumoof nodded, and he moved toward the cage. The living demonic cage wriggled as it attempted to defend itself. Lumoof merely placed both of his palms on the demonic cage itself, and then my Avatar descended.

My presence instantly caused the demons around us to freeze, and their movements slowed to almost a halt. The wriggling cage whimpered, and my mana pumped through the Lumoof’s body.

The demon knight also wriggled and struggled, but with my demonic suppression aura, the mages quickly disabled it in a cage of magic.

It wasn’t hard to flood the demonic cage with my mana; this was easier than the demon king by a mile. My mana pumped through cage, and within ten minutes, I felt the demonic cage itself transform.

The cage wriggled and shrank into a small wooden chest.

[Natural Mana Overwhelming has assimilated the demonic hero-cage mimic. Demonic Hero-Cage Mimic transformed into a Tree-Cage-Mimic.]

The hero trapped within collapsed, pale, unconscious but alive. A shot of healing later, color returned to his face, but he still needed to rest. “Take care of him. Let me deal with the other one.”

The wooden chest jumped onto Lumoof’s back. The group of fighters present stared. “That—”

“Oh, ignore it. It’s part of my patron’s powers.”

Lumoof walked to the weakened demon knight. The effects of my aura essentially meant it was quite weak. I wondered whether I could’ve saved Alexis back then if I had the strength I had now. I probably could.

Funny how things repeated themselves. I supposed when one lived for so long, one couldn’t help but notice the way things repeated, just in different iterations and forms.

Lumoof touched the demon knight at the head. It struggled but was disabled by the power of my aura and the spells of the mages.

Again, we flooded it with my mana, and the giant demon knight shook violently. This one refused to be assimilated, and rather than let my mana overwhelm it, it attempted to kill the hero within. But my mana had already flooded every bit of its body, and I quickly protected the hero.

The demon knight exploded to reveal an unconscious young human girl within. We also healed her, and it was time to get out.

Getting out was easy. A small group was incredibly mobile.

The demons did not launch any large-scale attack during the time, which was rather strange. Ebon didn’t even have to fight during the three days.

The heroes regained consciousness on the second day but remained groggy and were rather zoned out. They were already fully healed physically, but their star mana took some time to restore itself, and their souls were weakened from the prolonged possession.

Everyone gave them space to recover. They were teenagers, thrust into the role of a hero by gods that treated them like disposable tools.

Once we reached the city, the two heroes were in better shape and began to talk about their fight. They were essentially underleveled. Their entire party was only in their level eighties because they didn’t farm enough demon champions. This demon king didn’t produce that many champions in the first place, preferring massive armies. But these individually weak massive armies didn’t help them level.

So when they got to the demon king, the demon king easily overwhelmed them and consumed them. It killed the rest and captured the two of them.

From what the heroes shared, I realized that the demon king may have a certain range of demon-creation abilities, as they could create these demonic cages and the possession demon. That meant the demon king was essentially the tactical mind behind the entire demonic invasion, even if some of it was delegated to the stronger demons.

With the heroes returned, there was a sense of excitement in the councils. The heroes were still compelled by their hero class to defeat the demons, and they seemed eager to return to the field within two weeks of their freedom.

“They really are children,” Lumoof said. “I felt it only a bit with Prabu and the rest, but these two really felt like children to me.”

“Teenagers.”

“Still children.” Lumoof sighed. “Such great responsibilities in the hands of the young, and there’s not a trace of guilt among the kings for letting them do it.”

Defeating the demons didn’t gain levels, sadly.

Thanks to the success of the rescue mission, the Council of Kings had increased trust in Lumoof and Ebon, and we were given access to many parts of the civilized worlds. The heroes, of course, realized their mistake and went about farming demon champions. With the heroes returning to the battle with their heroic powers, they made noticeable gains against the demons within months.

We were given a small escort, and we visited many of their cities and temples and, more importantly, places where we suspected may have things of value.

We found one soon enough, practically hiding in plain sight. In the center of one of the largest cities, there was a massive park with an ancient tree. Thanks to the war, there wasn’t much maintaining it.

The rest of the park was an overgrown mess, but we sensed it the moment we were in the city. We headed there immediately. Lumoof looked at the overgrown park, and we gradually made our way in. We didn’t cut any of the trees or vines, but we felt the pulsing presence of something smaller.

A tree spirit, like myself.

Smaller, and not yet a domain holder, because Lumoof instantly detected it wasn’t very high level. Only about level eighty, despite its extremely old age.

“Greetings,” Lumoof said.

There was no response, and Lumoof got closer and placed his hand on the tree’s trunk. In an instant, I felt a mental connection.

< Greetings, > I said through Lumoof.

I was instantly flooded with images.

> Greetings. < It sounded old, like a very tired grandmother.

< I am Aeon, a tree spirit from another world, and Lumoof is my avatar. >

> Well met, Aeon and Lumoof. I am Tgtherian, a tree spirit. <

< Yes. It is always pleasant to meet another of my kind, > I said. Generally tree spirits had been…nice.

> Ah. Our kind are few. Many trees are cut down before our consciousness can fully form. < I reckoned it took centuries for that to happen. A soul only took root in a tree after a certain size and age.

Tgtherian didn’t know much. She was about eighteen hundred years old, but it spent most of that time in this park, from a small sapling, and she gained consciousness and awareness about fifteen hundred years ago. She leveled slowly, even though she offered familiars to druids, shamans, and rangers. She didn’t have the hero fragments supercharging her experience.

Because she was relatively “young,” she didn’t remember about the Will of the World or any other such things.

A shame, but I supposed I couldn’t expect every spirit I met to be as powerful as me. Many would be below level one hundred.

Now that I met another tree spirit, I wasn’t sure what I was about to do with it. I decided to just leave her alone for now.

Stella continued to experiment with the rift gates with Alka. Alka already made his first prototype star-mana bomb, and he came with a rather interesting idea.

“Aeon, do you think you can fuse a soul with the bomb?”

“You want to make a sentient bomb?”

“Yes. Our theory is that souls can reduce the decay from storing star mana or void mana. But I’m also interested in whether it can function as a regulator of the star mana, if the storage function is handled by the hero-item.”

Prabu made it with the [hero forge], but Alka wanted to see whether there was potential for hero-made items and souls to coexist together. Hero-made items didn’t leak star mana that much, due to some unknown mechanism, so Alka wanted to inject a soul within it to examine how that worked.

It didn’t work. The hero-item rejected my attempts of inserting an artificial mind into it. “Nope.”

“Darn.”

It would be quite overpowered if it could.

On the parasite demon world, we started deployment of my newly developed treechikomas, version one. That was the name I gave for the walking tree-labs that were a hybrid between a demon walker, a beetle, and a lab, invented, or really modified, from a demon walker “base” courtesy of my Tree of Life’s evolutionary powers.

Treechis, for short.

The Treechis, each of them with their own artificial minds, were assigned to scan and examine the demonworld in more detail, with more “active” and “live” testing with their ability to directly perform tests.

The Treechis each had a different type of lab on their back, were each about the size of a small car, and worked in teams of five. They would test the soil, test the mana, and perform examinations in contested territories.

For now, they didn’t produce any spectacularly groundbreaking findings, but all the little bits of new data helped push my knowledge of the demon world and supported our researchers out in the fields.

Along with the Treechis, we also began experimenting with specialization of the Treefolks and Lizardpeople of the Central Continent, through thematic use of my new evolutionary-inherited skill powers.

Our goal was to create natural-born, “skill-engineered” specialists, even if it did feel like I was robbing these guys of “choice.” Like, what if a Treefolk who was born with a natural skillset for healing and defense wanted to be a fighter? Or a lizardperson who inherited a bunch of spear skills wanted to be an archer?

Then again, that was how it was in our world, too. Not everyone had the physique to excel at certain kinds of activity.

Oh well. For now, the treefolks seemed all right with the inserted skill-experimentation. I started with simple skills harvested from some fallen paladins and knights, such as [Demonic Resistance], and skills from some of the rangers, such as [Strength]. I wanted to see the implications of having inherited skills in young babies and how they manifested.

I didn’t want super-powered little babies killing their caretakers.

6

YEAR 206

Lumoof announced their plan to return to the others, and strangely, they asked to watch his return. We consented, since, well, there was no real risk. It wasn’t as if they could replicate it anyway.

Or maybe they could if they had some kind of hero artifact with spell-copying abilities, but I highly doubted it.

In any case, trying to get Stella to open a portal where we wanted her to was actually quite hard. One of the methods we found to help Stella find where to place the portal was to connect her to me and, via [dream academy], share Lumoof’s location to her. It enabled highly accurate portals across worlds, but only around individuals I could sense, like Lumoof and the Valthorns. It was also slow, because the process of sharing the location took a while.

She described that each world was centered around the planet’s core. Not the star or the sun, but the planetary core. So a portal’s position was calculated relative to the core, and the core itself had a bubble that protected it from portals or any spells.

Anyway, the portal of void opened in the chambers. Everyone gasped as they saw a portal materialize out of nowhere. The heroes were busy hunting demons, and they didn’t come.

From what we understood, they were about level one hundred now; it took a while for them to regain their pace. They’d been asleep and weak for so long that even though they wanted to fight the demons as a result of their compulsion, their bodies struggled.

“Will you be back?” one of the dwarven strategists asked.

“With the heroes back in action…maybe not. Unless the heroes need our help to take on the demon king.”

“They did say they would appreciate the help…”

“Then I’ll see what I can do. But for now, duties back home require my urgent attention.” Lumoof gave everyone watching a wave, and they stepped through it.

“Lady Lausanne, free to talk?” Prabu and Ken approached her one day after her class at the Valtrian Academy. Lausanne’s role in the Valthorns had declined significantly, and she had quite fully transitioned to the role of an administrator and trainer, a bit like what Jura did for her.

“Ah. Yes.” They met at one of the many cafes along the streets of Freshka. “Is this confidential?”

“Quite.”

Lausanne nodded and took out one of the standard privacy artifacts given to all Valthorns. It created a small bubble of magic around them that blocked sound. But it didn’t block me. Because a little bit of my roots were inside the bubble.

“We’re thinking of pitching an idea to Aeon and Stella, and we want your thoughts on what you think Aeon will think.”

Lausanne laughed. Lausanne, Laufen, and Yvon were all sought after, even as their roles had changed. They were the go-to persons for the pre-pitch assessment. Essentially, the equivalent of having someone who had a lot of experience looking through their resume. “Yes. That’s what I do in my spare time these days. So. Hit me with it.”

Ken coughed. “We’re thinking that Aeon should start the equivalent of the multiverse League of Heroes.”

Lausanne stared and then coughed. “Sorry, I don’t understand.”

Ken paused as he realized Lausanne may not comprehend references. “So. Each habited, civilized world has their own heroes, and frequently, we are all stuck trying to fight each demon king by ourselves.”

Lausanne caught on immediately. “But Aeon can consolidate all the power, so that you can hit the demons with the power of heroes from multiple worlds.”

Ken smacked the table. “Exactly! That’s what we want to pitch. This combined force can also function as a reclamation force to retake worlds lost to the demons.”

Prabu added, “Each demon king’s powerset is tailored differently, and the heroes’. Each of us have a different power meant to counter our generation’s demon king. So our responses to different types of demon kings are essentially less effective because our matchup sucks. But, if we get other heroes who are meant for different types of demon king, we could cover up for our shortfall.”

“Yes. Stella currently needs void mana for her portals, which means us heroes can’t use her methods. But Aeon’s clone-body teleportation doesn’t need void mana, which means heroes could move through it. Aeon can essentially be the tree that links all the heroes together.”

Lausanne nodded. “I think Aeon would be keen to listen, but it does require friendly heroes. Heroes that can play by Aeon’s rules. There are risks to it. I’m sure you are aware that Aeon’s naturally cautious with you guys due to the powers you all have.”

Prabu nodded.

“Aeon’s actions are also often misunderstood, as his perspective is very broadly zoomed out. Aeon is probably not keen to play coordinator for heroes, so one of you must be willing to step up for that.”

Prabu nodded and looked at Ken. “Actually, I have just the candidate. The guy whose superpower is his knowledge of tropes.”

“Fuck that.” Ken looked back at Prabu.

“Lausanne has a point. It’s your idea. You have to manage it. You can’t just propose ideas and expect others to run it for you,” Prabu responded.

“What if these other heroes try to kill me?” Ken said. “I’m powerless!”

“That could be your advantage, really. It’s because you’re now outside this whole setup that you could be the manager!” Lausanne answered, and Prabu nodded along. “I do think it is a worthwhile setup and could serve to bring all these worlds closer.”

“…I’ll need to think about it.” Ken wasn’t keen on it.

But I quite liked the idea of a combined hero-force, but that essentially meant I had to invest my tree of clones in both Threeworlds and this mountainous world.

I liked that I had one tree on the moon, another on the demon world, and another one on the remnant cometworld drifting through the vast void sea. They felt strange and unique enough to deserve one of my clones.

Back home, the pathway to the next demon world was getting quite clear in our sky, and Stella was a little…excited. I wasn’t sure whether Alka’s research craze was spreading or if she was really thrilled by the prospects of visiting another world with the rift gate instead of her own powers.

The rift gates were tweaked to enable almost anyone to use them. At least, in theory, I should be able to dump an entire army of Valthorns on the demon worlds without the need to deploy my clone.

The army was tense, and we gathered what was nothing less than an invasion force, really. What the demons did to us, we would go full reverse uno and invade them first.

Our first victory condition was simple: capture or destroy the rift gates so that we could stop their ability to send mobs across the stars. It was the military equivalent of destroying their landing ships and aircrafts.

Our second victory condition, which was not so critical, was attempt to defeat the demon king on their home world. This would require deployment of my clone, since only through the clone could I send the heroes. But we had a debate whether to deploy my clone or not. My clone would significantly add combat strength to the demon world, but I wasn’t sure whether I could sustain battle on two demon worlds simultaneously.

Not yet, not until the mana from Parasiteworld recovered.

My team commented that if I was not there, then it made this battle far riskier. They did not have an exit plan. It was only this portal, and what if the demons interrupted it?

For those with my Court of the Deitree familiars, I could even summon them directly. But that was a very small contingent.

A point which I agreed with. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to invest my clone on this other world. I was torn between deploying it on the two worlds or invading this world directly. Honestly, we also didn’t know for sure whether that “deep hole to the core” and the “tower of void mana” was something common across all the demon worlds.

As it was, Alka planned on the assumption that these towers were universal, that the mechanism of creating demon kings and the process of sending them across the stars were largely identical. Even if it didn’t work out, there were ways to abuse a star-mana bomb, and the technological knowledge from developing such weapons was useful.

Anyway, in the end, we decided that my clone would be deployed at the last minute, once we confirmed that it was possible to assault the demon king. We would choose a better location this time. Ideally next to the tower of void and the deep hole.

If all went well, then the heroes would join us for the battle against the demon king. If not, they would stay back on our world and watch the chaos unfurl.

All this knowledge was gradually uploaded to my tree of knowledge, the Registree. It had been growing since I’d gotten it almost sixty years ago.

The hope was that through knowledge accumulation, even if we lose Alka, we didn’t have to start from scratch.

That was the hope.

The good thing was the Registree wasn’t a limited tree, just a special type that I could make more of, so I made some extra copies on the moon. I couldn’t place it in the Cometworld Shard because there was no space.

In any case, deployment of my clone was optional. The team, naturally, had so many questions about an assault, and they raised good questions.

“How do we find the rift gates?” We couldn’t just blindly attack. They could be located all over the world of the demons, and there was no way we could hit all of them without proper intelligence. Especially since we were holding off my clone deployment until much later. That meant my own vision was out of the picture.

“What if it’s not hospitable on the other side and we die immediately when we reach it?” That was also a possibility but should not be difficult to solve. My familiars could create a small bubble of atmosphere with some mana-drain, essentially living astronaut suits.

On the rift gates, Stella thus started work on some kind of item that detected other rift gates by tapping into their void mana signature. Essentially, she made a compass that led to the nearest strongest source of void mana.

That was the best we could do at the moment. I would like to have a global view of the demon world, but that would be impossible without some kind of satellite constellation to map the demon world.

It wasn’t like the habited worlds where there were existing maps to use.

The skepticism and worry among the general forces were quite high, especially since I wasn’t taking the field myself with my trees.

But with all four of my domain holders taking the field, it shouldn’t be a problem. At least Roon and Johann should be able to provide significant intelligence data before a full-fledged assault.

Horns and Hytreerion fought many battles on the demon world. The boundaries of places controlled by my trees and those controlled by the demons fluctuated a lot as beetles and demons met on the battlefield. I controlled an area on the demon world that was slightly larger than the size of the Central Continent, and it was at the edges, where my influence was weak, that we saw all these changing borders.

Horns actually got destroyed a few times, but he was able to eject his artificial soul before destruction, and then I redeployed him in new bodies. It was a modification we made to his physical form, as he was really quite fragile when faced with demon champions that popped out with sufficient regularity.

My new treechikomas were busy, too, gathering more samples throughout the land.

It was a large place, even if most of it was empty, and it would take years to completely build a database of the magical energies and data of the land.

I could, in theory, deploy my lab-trees everywhere, but because such lab trees actually consumed mana, I would just make the mana-problem on Parasiteworld worse, and that would increase how long it took to regenerate my beetles.

I could wait decades for the mana of this world to recover, but I also didn’t want to wait that long.

In theory, if I could gain the mana of the Threeworlds and the Mountainworld, it was possible for it to spend more of that mana here.

Looking at it that way, it sure seemed like my moon base and my Cometworld deployment had a “mana-opportunity cost.” I lost the mana that could be generated by having a clone on these normal worlds in exchange for the novelty and exploratory aspects of the Cometworld, where I could travel to other worlds and see those other places, and for the security of the moon base.

Our treechikomas did find some good hints, though. There were certain rocks with metallic ores that seemed to retain a kind of mana layer, but that didn’t help us much in terms of identification of dates.

Our digs into the underground also didn’t reveal much.

I also started to wonder about the system again. There was a missing piece in the game. Something obvious that I wasn’t seeing or realizing.

So I took some time to do a bit more thinking and tried to understand what was the demon’s win condition. Let’s say the demon king won, the demon king defeated the heroes, and the heroes no longer came to the world.

Was that it and they won? The world would automagically turn into a demon world? Essentially, that question could be explained as what made a demon world…a demon world? Why did a normal world, perfectly able to spawn regular stuff before this, stop creating the normal monsters and stuff and start spawning demons?

The only one who saw a world lose was Snek. Lilies didn’t actually go through the full “loss.”

“I don’t really know?” Snek answered. “We lost our world to the demons, but we were so afraid that we spent our times running and hiding.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Do you know what happened to the demon king?”

“Not really. It was…there?” Snek answered. “But honestly we were just trying to survive in the underground tunnels that no one checked.”

“But do you have any idea whether the demon king left?”

“…maybe? We’re not sure, but I think it probably didn’t, because the world started to produce demons and probably other demon kings, too. But we were too far from such places to actually know.”

“Wait.” I had an epiphany, then.

If the demon king sent to invade other worlds were products of existing demon kings, then didn’t that mean there should, in theory, be at least one demon king still on Parasiteworld somewhere, playing the role of the “queen” or a “hatchery?”

Maybe the demon king was just a massive [forest rod] that captured the core?

This absolutely clicked. No. It explained how such a massive tunnel to the core was created. The demon king that won dug toward the core and captured the core. Through that process, the world’s natural spawning mechanism was “converted” to produce demons.

Each demon king was a massive colonization mothership, too. But…how?

That also meant that somewhere in the core of Parasiteworld was a demon king. Perhaps no longer a demon king because it had been deployed to control the core of the world.

If this was the case, I needed to send the heroes to Parasiteworld and attack the core.

Free the core from the control of the demons and that would greatly change the balance of power of our world. Maybe this would also significantly improve the natural mana recovery and get access to the core’s mana.

Of course, I then submitted this theory to my domain holders and the other senior leaders.

“Doesn’t that just mean the demons that won essentially started digging downward?” Lumoof speculated. “But that doesn’t happen, does it?”

Edna, who was also present, asked, “Are you suggesting an attack on Parasiteworld? Aeon, with all due respect, we have no ability to attack two worlds at the same time.”

“I am aware.”

Actually, this cycled back to the mountain world again.

The demon king was not moving.

Was it digging all this time?

“So we have three ways of checking. One, we send the heroes to the parasite demon world and attack the hole to the core. Two, we go back to the mountain world and figure out what the demon king is doing underground. If your theory is right, it should be attempting to reach the core,” Edna repeated. “Three, we also have the rift gate to this new world. If we do fight the demon king on this new world, and our initial conjectures are proven correct, the heroes and us could mount an assault on the core of this new demon world and see whether there’s one there.”

Three priorities and I had to decide which one to pursue.

I was keen on the rift gates, so that was a clear yes.

But this would mean all my domain holders would be deployed there in order to achieve my intended objective of denying the next attack. My seed would also be there for a while, at least until the battle was over and everyone was safe back home.

Ken’s League of Heroes would have to wait until this was over.

7

YEAR 206 (PART 2)

Lumoof and Edna were the first to go through. With their abilities, they had little to fear whatever may be on the other side.

The rift gate hummed in a strange sound. Stella and her team of void mages were excited to fire up the rift gate. Our hope was that we would eventually be able to manufacture these rift gates, but for now, I was content with salvaging and pillaging the demons for their rift gates.

I found it silly that the civilized world was the backward one, that we had to resort to pillaging the demons for their interplanar technology.

The Valthorns wargamed this entire operation about fifteen times, tapping into Patreeck’s mind-reading ability and my [Dream Academy] as preparations for this special military operation into the demonic lands.

According to the void mages, the rift gate should theoretically be able to send through about one thousand guys before it ran out of void mana, at which point Stella and all would have to recharge them.

Stella could not reach the demon world using her normal void portals, so the rift gate was crucial to ensure that a portal could be opened. Based on what we’d seen, these demonic portals traveled both ways.

It was time to see whether our plans could survive first contact.

I felt a buzz as we traveled through the rift gates. It was similar to that time when I snuck through using my own roots, but this time, it was Lumoof who went first.

The sky was bright, like an extremely sunny day, and the first thing we felt was the incredibly strong sunlight that burned. Literally.

It wasn’t fire, or at least fire immunity didn’t seem to protect against these harsh rays.

Lumoof instantly activated a wooden shield to serve as an umbrella, and even then, the naturally fire-resistant shield still got warm. Items that were not protected quickly caught fire.

It wasn’t just sunlight, too. It was some kind of magical UV that seemed to heat everything up. For Lumoof, it was still tolerable thanks to his wide range of resistances, and Edna, she was protected by a magical shield.

This was not a good development, since it meant the lower leveled, those in the level eighties and nineties, would have to sit out from the invasion. The mana cost of sustaining a perpetual sunshield would mean their ability to fight would be severely impaired. Even my beetles, unmodified, would find themselves weakened by the incredibly strong sunlight.

There was a bright, glowing white sun that burned overhead, and the place, at first, was just a vast desert canyon, sand, dirt, and rocks of all shapes and sizes.

“Hold,” I told the guys back home and shared our first findings. Our plans designed around a habitable environment had to be immediately scrapped. We had some plans designed around inhospitable environments, but that meant the strike force was now a much, much smaller one, composed of my level one hundred twenty–plus elites.

Alka was keen to go through, but instead, I sent one of my Treechikomas over. I hoped to use it to conduct some experiments—

It burned to death.

So back to the drawing board. I had to design something with natural shielding, so I sent my minds out to scour our archives and Registree for such items and technologies. We should have some kind of natural shields or design large walkers for it.

Alternatively, we could immediately start tunneling in the sand to avoid the rays and try to bring the fight below ground. But Lumoof’s initial assessment wasn’t great. The ground was naturally sandy, and our tunnels would cost a lot more mana to maintain.

“Well, spot any demons?” Lumoof looked around, squinting. The large wooden shield acted like a massive umbrella.

Edna looked around, and then we saw them, camouflaged by the sand and the dirt. Giant sand lizards.

“There.” Sand-lizard demons. Their backs looked like rocks, and they blended really well against the canyon. The sand-lizards didn’t move; they were frozen, unmoving. The only thing that truly made them demonic was very faint reddish lines that glowed with demonic energy.

Edna didn’t move, not yet, anyway.

All of a sudden, the sand started to shake, and then wind started to blow. We saw a wall of sand in the distance.

“Sandstorm.” Lumoof walked next to Edna, and a shield went up around them. The sand blasted through the surroundings, and the sand actually dealt damage. This was corrosive sand.

“Well, we’re truly in hostile territory.” Edna smirked.

“Funny,” Lumoof joked as the wooden shields all had sand embedded in them. The sand smashed into the shields repeatedly, and they didn’t do much damage against those powerful shields. “The lizard should be attacking any time now.”

They didn’t.

The sandstorm stopped almost as quickly as it came. The sands, once whipped up by the sudden gusts, now fell back to the ground.

The sand-lizards did not move.

Edna and Lumoof shared a glance, and Lumoof asked, “Should we engage?”

“No. Let’s go find the demon king.”

Lumoof and Edna activated their magical artifacts and started to fly across the terrain. Indeed, moving on foot in this sandy terrain seemed like a huge pain in the ass. Everywhere was sand and rock.

There was no sign of water anywhere but plenty of sand-lizards. As they flew, they spotted other kinds of demonic creatures, too. There were a few sand-serpents and worms—these were more like gigantic wurms with a rocky skin—and then there were these rock-like scorpions and insects, too.

“This entire place is a demonic desert wasteland,” Edna commented and had to stop as the flying artifact ran out of mana. Somehow flying in this place took a lot out of the place, and Edna noticed the magical artifact seemed to drain out quicker than others.

Which, after a little bit of investigation, was due to the sunlight. The sunlight directly damaged magical items and also drained mana out of them. The sun, as strange as it sounded, had a strong magical-ignition quality to it, such that it weakened everything with mana.

“How does a world like this even hold demons?”

We noticed that the demons frequently hid underground, too. Even the massive rockwurms and the serpents all tunneled underground after a while, and they only surfaced momentarily.

I knew that demons were generated by their spawning pools or the spires. But in such a world, where were they?

Edna took out Stella’s void-mana detector, and it went ’round and ’round like a compass faced with magnetic interference.

“This is strange.”

Was there void mana in the air itself? Or was the sun emitting some kind of void energy? I wasn’t sure.

The demons were strangely quiet and mostly didn’t move.

“Are they…only active at night?” Edna speculated. If the sun was so oppressive during the day, it was entirely possible that these demons would only move at night.

Demons were not exactly the type that adapted to their environment. Lumoof similarly agreed with that premise, but then he added, “Then again, this world does seem exceptionally inhospitable that some level of adaptation is necessary.”

It was an interesting idea, of course, to kill demons using a solar death ray. If only it didn’t kill everything else in the process. In a way, this was like killing cancer with chemotherapy. It also killed the host and was used when there was nothing else that could be done. Even then, demons adapted!

“What kind of demons are these?”

The wind whipped up again, and Edna activated another layer of shields. The sandstorm was not as strong as the first one. No, more importantly, how did they even have rift gates in a world that seemed so hostile? Maybe there were places where there were no sandstorms.

“We wait?” Edna looked at Lumoof. “Or do we keep going?”

Lumoof used a few [Inspection] on the demons, but it didn’t reveal anything useful. “If the fact that these demons are nocturnals is true, then it may be a good idea to keep going.”

They kept moving. Edna and Lumoof both had to constantly reinforce their shields. The air was hostile, and I began to suspect that the sun was both anti-magic and some kind of radiation.

Lumoof, while moving, also picked up some of the sand and dirt, which was immediately sent back to our world for testing.

Somehow, it was quite hard to test them, and with stronger prodding, we soon discovered that the sand and dirt of this world had mild anti-magic qualities, and they generally drained and destroyed mana from their environment.

This entire world was an anti-mage world.

I had Lumoof enter Avatar mode and then, though Lumoof, created some trees in the surroundings.

I felt noticeably higher levels of mana loss from each tree, like each of them sucked my mana. This was also a demon world, so the ambient mana generated was low anyway. That meant each tree took more out of me than I put in. The sun’s strong anti-mana rays also meant my trees were not producing much mana, either, unless we adapted our trees to absorb those rays.

That would need a lot of research.

I was really intrigued.

“The invasion’s gotta be scrapped.” Lumoof realized that the sheer amount of anti-magical things in the environment meant even maintaining or sustaining a beetle army that also consumed a bit of mana was going to be difficult. “I think our scope of attack should strictly be to destroy the rift gates…if we can find them.”

Not just that, the idea of sending both Prabu and Colette, two archmages to this world probably had to be scrapped. This was essentially sending them to the place where they were least suited to fight. I didn’t like those kinds of odds, so I wouldn’t risk them.

If my gut feelings were right, we needed some kind of skill-empowered physical strength to defeat these demons. Taking it further, if the demon king was essentially an anti-magic or super-resistant type of demon king, it meant magic as a whole would be largely useless.

If so, did we need barbarian/gladiator-type heroes?

Anyway, we tested the anti-magic properties against void and star mana and noticed it also dispersed them but at slower rates. That was good news, since, all right, the heroes probably wouldn’t be entirely useless, just fighting with a handicap. They were slightly more effective on star mana than void mana, but only by a little bit.

The sun was getting dark. There were no moons in this anti-magic demon world, just stars. The skies were incredibly clear, cloudless as far as we could see.

Then we felt the rumbling of the sands. The demons emerged from the sands as darkness fell on the desert. The first thing we saw was their faintly glowing red eyes.

Edna sighed. “Let’s see how strong they are.”

Lumoof shrugged. “Aeon, why not convert some of them?”

It was a good idea. We had to use some skills in order to see them in the darkness, but these sand-demons didn’t move very fast. Lumoof, in avatar mode, extended our roots everywhere, and with each extension I felt a bit more mana drain on me. Still, I had the mana production of an entire continent, so it wasn’t that bad.

Then the lizards spat out acid, and I felt that acid pull mana from the air.

The acid smashed into our wooden shields, and though the acidic qualities didn’t get past the shields, the acid itself seemed to absorb magic from whatever it contacted. It was bizarre to see a shield crumble because its magical energies were siphoned out of it.

Luckily, we had multiple layers of shields, and this time, we channeled a bit more mana into them. The acids didn’t get through them now, but fighting in this world was going to be very taxing magically.

My roots immediately caught one of the lizard-demons, and I noticed that it was exceptionally tough on the top half but quite soft at the bottom. It would be difficult for a conventional fighter to get to the soft part.

I pumped mana into the lizard continuously. The lizard’s hard scales started to glow, then it exploded. It ate up a lot more mana than I expected.

My first attempt to capture failed.

Edna noticed something strange as she rotated through her different kinds of shields. “Magical shields suck, but skill-reinforced shields work just fine. The more mana goes into the shield, their acids seem to react against it. A simple steel shield enhanced with non-mana skill would be able to block it just fine.”

That was weird. In truth, the lines between what a “skill” was and what a “spell” was was really…well, non-existent. There were spells that were also skills and vice versa. There were skills that created spell-like effects, like there were [Fireballs] generated purely out of skill and [Fireballs] out of mana.

There were skills that used mana and spells that didn’t use mana and instead used ambient mana. It was a contentious topic.

“As long as we didn’t use mana, then its natural qualities didn’t react to it,” Edna said as she deftly cut through the lizard-demon. She had to fight like a close-combat brawler and used spears to lift the lizards upward in order to expose their soft, vulnerable bottoms.

It wasn’t the worst matchup for us, since Edna was more skill-based, and we had the ability to make more non-mana items. The heroes’ hero-items, though, were essentially made with mana and would experience weaker performance.

I wrapped my vines around another of the sand-lizards and once more pumped mana through it, this time not as much, and I pierced my roots into its soft belly and attempted to look for its core or heart, if it had one.

The sand and earth trembled. The skies seemed to shift abruptly.

My vines snuck into the body. There was something like a demon’s core, a stone, really, and it was made of the same rocks of the world. My roots snuck and caught it. Then I pumped mana through my roots and attempted to take over the lizard. The lizard struggled, and it was physically very strong. The stone’s demonic mana resisted my mana, and I felt like half of my mana was wasted by the mana-absorbing substances that made up most of its body.

For all its strength, it was no champion. It put up a fight, but my mana still overwhelmed it.

This time, I knew when to stop and stopped when I felt like it was going to blow. I slowed down the rate at which my mana entered the demon and instead circulated my mana within the demon and began to “take control” of the body.

It tingled, honestly. It was as if there was a demonic pianist playing a tune, and I was trying to kick the demonic pianist off while not destroying the piano in the process. It took a bit of holding back, but not everything needed to be hammered by my overwhelming mana.

[Natural Mana Overwhelming has assimilated the demonic sand-lizard. Mana-absorbing demonic sand-lizard has transformed into Mana-absorbing sand-lizard.]

The lizard whimpered as its reddish glow was replaced by a greenish one. The other sand lizards struggled, and Edna killed them easily once she got used to their movement patterns. These were demons, and they all had a style.

The earth shook, and we looked around. “Well?” Edna asked as she stood in the midst of thirty demonic corpses. “Hmm…they don’t decay as quickly as the other demons.”

Lumoof nodded, and the whimpering sand lizard crouched. “Strange. Demonic bodies should begin to fade within minutes.”

There was a reason why it was difficult to harvest or recover demonic parts. From what we’d seen, some demon champions left their bodies behind, but all began decaying and reverting to demonic mana within minutes, even if that process took a while.

“Do you think it’s the anti-mana qualities?” Edna speculated. “That it’s interfering with their natural process of returning to demonic mana?”

Lumoof shrugged. “No idea. Maybe these demons are made of real materials, and the decaying parts are only—” Lumoof flipped one of the bodies over and noticed some of the softer underbelly decaying as normal. “Yeah. Only parts sustained by demonic mana?”

Edna was quiet as she stared. “Mountain-eater demons? I recall something similar in the really old archives.” She immediately began to close her eyes and expanded her senses. In the darkness of the night, we felt the ground and the sand tremble and shake. I stretched out my senses and realized something had just gone underneath us during the fight, and it was moving. It was as if the entire desert moved.

The anti-magical qualities interfered with our senses, and we didn’t sense its movement beneath us. It was deep, but the ground moved. At its size, it was probably a demon champion, but it lumbered slowly. I wasn’t sure because of all the natural dirt and rock really messed with my senses, and I wasn’t sure whether it was pure rock or part-demon.

Still, I believed it was like a supermassive lizard that took a step every half an hour. It was almost a stationary target.

“Oh great. Mountain-size anti-magical rock demons.” Edna cursed. “We’ll need miners and magical pickaxes.”

Lumoof squinted his eyes to look in the distance. “I say it’s a good opportunity for Alka to test out his bombs. He always lamented that the demons are too small or move too quickly. I say one of his bigger ones would take this one out. A bomb’s a good way to level a mountain, especially one that probably seems to be a moving mountain range.”

“It’ll take a lot of mana to get it to work— Wait. There’s more?” Edna turned and focused her senses even further. This world didn’t have moons, so it was really, really dark. But she could still feel it, the seemingly synchronized movements.

Lumoof laughed. “Eh, he’s just gotta wrap up the bomb in one of Aeon’s massive anti-demon spears. Or just get our two new domain holders to pop the bomb right under its belly.”

I wondered inwardly whether this was a good time for strategic banter between my two domain holders.

Edna clapped her hands together. “That’s a good idea! I suppose it’s time for Roon and Johann to display their new domain skills anyway!”

I had to interrupt. “Guys, where’s the rift gate?”

More importantly, how were these things going to get through the rift gates? They were way larger than the largest demon champions I’d seen so far, unless the rift gate had some kind of temporary shrinkage ability?

Lumoof took out the device again, and it was similarly jammed. “Nope. Not working. Maybe we need Stella here, but that’s a risk.”

A small one since Stella also had my Court of the Deitree ability, so I could pull her back if needed.

“Stella?”

Stella paused. “Are these creatures…captured and converted zaratans?”

Huh?

“There’s an uncanny similarity in their nature as moving mountains and zaratans as moving islands.”

“Are you saying these monsters don’t need rift gates because they can tap into the astral pathways directly?”

“That’s a good point, but no. I’m saying these guys may be former zaratans. Maybe this world was a zaratan world.”

“I don’t see the similarity, honestly. Other than their size.” I honestly didn’t see it. Maybe that they may be reptile-inspired creatures?

“Anti-magical demons. Is that a first?” Chung asked through the magical device. He was somewhere else; we were not sure where. Probably somewhere in the Southern Continent.

“Apparently no,” Colette said as she read the dossier my Valthorns had compiled. “There was something similar many, many years ago. About…twelve hundred years ago. But those were regular-size creatures. Apparently these ones are massive stuff.”

“The demons are out to get us. How’d they know we have two archmages on the team?”

Colette and Prabu collectively shrugged. “Random chance, I suppose, or perhaps through the arrangement of demon-king types? I mean, if you know what kind of demon kings you will introduce in a series and what kind powers work against earlier demon kings, you could, without knowing what exactly is deployed, arrange subsequent demon kings to be counters of what countered the earlier demon kings.”

“So you’re saying this is purely from the demon’s end and that this arrangement, or sequence of demon kings, is pre-set. They predicted that the previous king would be countered and thus set subsequent demon kings to be counters of the hero counters.”

“Yeah. Like Pokemon. If you’re going to play a Grass type, and you predict the enemy will make a counter, perhaps Fire type, then you could, without knowing whether it’s actually a Fire type, set that the Pokemon that follows is a Water type.”

“…that makes sense.”

At which point, Prabu added, “This makes Ken’s idea of a League of Heroes even more compelling, honestly. We could essentially theorize what’s a counter for the counter of the current generation.”

Chung paused and thought about it for a moment. “But how are parasites our counters?”

“Maybe there’s a sequential pattern, or paired patterns, that only three successive sets of demon kings follow this counter-of-counter pattern. The ones in between are all randomized.”

Chung sighed. “Are we attributing actual intelligence and predictive ability to the demons now?”

“They are intelligent. They can talk. And they can think. They have strategic ability,” Prabu responded. “Even if it’s just concentrated on each demon king. From what we’ve seen, they are not purely stupid.”

Colette smiled and just stretched. “Maybe the demons are just some kind of ancient, self-replicating war program.”

Chung actually laughed. “That’s my theory, too!”

“Did I tell you Ken thought the demons sounded like some kind of multiverse-wide life-harvesting system?”

Chung’s face straightened. “Don’t tell me you believe that.”

“It’s possible, I think. Even though we don’t see any evidence of harvesting…”

“Maybe we lack the tools to see what exactly they are harvesting?”

“What, they’re harvesting war energy like Ares?”

“Possible!”

8

YEAR 206 (PART 3)

Iwondered whether the demons essentially acquired their unique skills as a result of adaptations to their current worlds. If so, what kind of world created demons like Sabnoc and their army and encampment style? One of those “quirky” worlds where everything was linked to some capture-the-flag system?

Meanwhile, Lumoof went down and around, and these giant demons created canyons out of their footsteps. Well, not in a single step, but the texture of the sands and rocks seemed to suggest that the entire canyon was formerly just a flat desert, but the weight of these massive demons had essentially carved a path where there was none.

“These demons moved the same path all the time,” Lumoof observed. The night was long. Really, really long. The day-night cycle in this demon world was essentially two full days long.

It strangely repulsed me. A primal part of me rejected such an unusual day-night cycle, and it was uncomfortable, quite like the feeling I got from my clone on the Cometworld Shard.

“But why?”

Magic was really, really faint here. The sands and everything absorbed mana, but yet the demon’s heart clearly had some demonic mana. Did the rocks release the mana eventually?

The labs back home studied it intensely, and then they tested a small spot by overloading it with mana. The sand exploded, and that explosion released mana. My researchers and Treechikomas quickly suggested that the demons’ rocks absorbed mana, and through a series of “controlled” overloading of mana released the absorbed mana through these explosions.

But it was a net loss. The very nature of the sand drained mana from its surroundings and accelerated the decay of magical things.

Then we had the very obvious answer. Crushing the sand released small amounts of mana. Essentially, the demons ate the anti-mana rocks for the little bits of mana within them. So they became the anti-mana demons.

There was no vegetation whatsoever, and I wondered if it would’ve been really easy for the demons to conquer this world, since there was no resistance.

The demons continued to walk and walk, and when the sun began to peek out of the horizon, they all stopped. They shook their bodies and then sat down. They hid their legs, their heads underneath their massive body of the anti-mana rock and sand.

At that moment, they were very animal-like, and I felt a sense of wonder. These massive creatures were wonders in their own way, even if they were demons. Massive lumbering, moving mountains. It was a sight to behold when it wasn’t attacking us.

The demons, as they were now, were just ravenous locusts with extra steps, meant to consume and extract each of their captured worlds to produce more of themselves. Could their nature be altered?

I remembered that Aiva said they had attempted to destroy the demons, but they still came back. So maybe destroying them was really rather futile. It was like attempting to exterminate cockroaches. Perhaps, was there a way to change their behavior at their source, if it wasn’t something that could be destroyed?

Was there a way to, like, with mosquitos, introduce less hostile variants into their genetic code?

We looked at these hidden giants, and the vast deserts around us, only mildly accentuated by some rocky outcrops.

“Lumoof, let’s capture one of these massive demons.”

He gulped. He didn’t really enjoy mana sickness, and he guessed this one would be almost as bad as the demon king.

“Later. Let’s find one of the rift gates.” I could sate my curiosity later.

During the long day, we noticed that most of the demons just hid in the sand or the dirt. There were some rumblings and shakes here and there, implying that there was some subterranean movement, but for the most part, the hostile, mana-draining sun seemed to be so overwhelming that the demons entered this low-energy mode.

With the sun above us, the demons frankly didn’t bother us, and it was entirely possible for us to walk everywhere uninterrupted. If this was a demon world, it sure wasn’t what any of us would have expected.

Roon and Johann both joined Edna and Lumoof on the sand-demon world, and they moved quickly, too. They had more scouting and exploration skills due to their heritage as rangers and archers.

Johann’s bird companion literally caught fire as it flew in the sky and then exploded. Lumoof also transformed into the full avatar mode, and I attempted to perform more tests on the solar light that seemed to cover the entire world.

It took a while, but after a bit more detection and sensing, we noticed that the anti-mana rays of light carried a special kind of particle. It wasn’t mana, and it was highly unstable. But it was these particles that gave the rays their anti-mana qualities.

It was the magical equivalent of super-strong UV rays that significantly increased magical decay.

Our converted sand-lizard lost mana when it walked, and I felt it dry out as it moved. For my domain holders, their souls generated far higher quantities of mana than they lost, so it wasn’t that bad. But weaker creatures would find themselves drained from exposure, so they hid in the soil and sand instead.

I couldn’t quite capture this strange particle; it refused to be confined by my attempts to lock it and slipped through me easily.

It was like cosmic rays passing through my body, igniting mana in the process. It got weakened by obstacles or objects in its path.

This was extremely fascinating, because I immediately realized there was tremendous weaponization potential for this sort of particle.

Could we essentially “disable” heroes and demon kings with very high quantities of such particles? Or at least weaken them to a state where we could then capture them and bind them?

I would love to conduct long studies on the qualities of this particle, especially how it reacted to various types of materials. But experiments were a long process, and I would need to have a semi-permanent placement here.

“Lumoof.” Roon spoke through our familiars, routing it through the system. In this world, [message] spells were unusable. It was like trying to send mail through the ocean, without protecting it in glass. The water disintegrated the paper over time. “Spotted something. A strange valley.”

There was a valley that was more like a rift in the earth itself. The opening was small, but it went really, really deep.

The top part of the opening had been battered by the anti-mana rays and transformed into the same kind of material and sand we see everywhere else. But the lower half actually looked normal. Like…rock?

No. Water? Like, really deep down?

Lumoof’s body was surrounded by vines, and the vines acted as anchors. The vines and roots emerging from Lumoof’s body pierced the cliff walls, and like a massive, multi-legged spider, we gradually went downward.

“The sand layer’s really quite deep,” Roon observed as my four domain holders regrouped. They stood on wooden platforms created from the wooden roots. We were about fifteen stories deep when we began to see soil and rock that resembled our own. “There’s…nothing here.”

“It’s likely they just appear at night,” Edna said.

“But I don’t detect anything,” Roon commented. I couldn’t sense them, either, so it was probably nothing.

We found the floor or the bottom of the chasm about eighty stories down. There was water, just a bit, gradually trickling out of the rock. The rock felt wet. Lumoof touched it, and I attempted to extend my senses into the ground.

Nothing.

Parasiteworld felt dry before the demon king left. This was similar.

Even in the depths, there was a sense of emptiness, a world parched of what once was.

“Not here.”

We spread out again and continued our search. There had to be a rift gate somewhere. What was a demon world without rift gates, and how would they invade us then?

There had to be a rift gate, because something was creating this pathway through the stars, and why was this pathway not destroyed by their hostile sun? I mean, void mana seemed somewhat resistant to the mana-destroying effects of the sun, but it still decayed faster. Unless the core mana had somehow offset the effects of the particle…

“What if the rift gates are hidden underground and they only appear at night?” Edna asked the clearly obvious idea.

Everyone, of course, clearly looked at Edna with that “of course it does” look. It made sense, and naturally we all felt a little like idiots. Especially Johann, who looked like he’d been absolutely disappointed that he didn’t think of nocturnal behaviors.

“But the one with the demon king may not be? Surely it has to be visible.” Then again, Stella could open her portals even when she was indoors. Not as if a roof actually made a difference.

Edna, of course, furrowed her brows. “Maybe what we are looking for…is a huge mountain that blocks out the sun, and the demon king’s rift gate is hidden under that mountain.”

“It’s also possible that the demon king just hollowed out the ground and it’s beneath us.”

“If so, it’s only visible to us at night. If at all.”

The long night came once more, and the demons emerged from the sands and the dirt. It wasn’t hard to defeat them, especially once we realized they were vulnerable to [skills], just resistant to [mana]. It was the equivalent of magic-resistant blobs that took damage from physical attacks.

We didn’t capture any of the demons and instead tried to look for the rifts.

At night, [message] was usable once more. Magical interruptions were essentially driven by the sun. We were looking for the demon king or the rifts, and at night, Johann’s bird could unleash its full strength.

In fact, it was a lot easier to find than anticipated. All we had to do was follow the line that the gigantic mountain demons took and follow it to its end.

It was a long journey that took one full day, amplified by their movement skills, and we found a large hole in the ground, so massive that it was easily four times bigger than the one on the Poisonworld.

There were no towers here. Instead, it was just this massive hole that looked like someone mined all the way into the core. There was also no water, unlike Parasiteworld. It was just a pit that seemed to lead down.

“Where’s the rift gate? Oh, there.” Roon pointed at the edges of the hole, and we noticed that the rift gate was also supersized and built into the hole, like the rims of a bottle.

“A giant demon king,” Lumoof commented. “There was literature like this.”

“A very physical demon king with high levels of magic resistance.” Roon stared at the surroundings. There were demons on the other sides that threw more rock and sand into the pit. These massive demons were like dump trucks, dumping their load of sand, soil, and rock into the massive pit.

“Is it feeding the demon king?”

A part of me felt like animal observers, trying to discern demonic behavior from what we saw.

“I have no idea,” Lumoof said. Roon’s bird continued to search the lands for smaller rift gates, and there were none. Or at least, none that we could see.

“Do you think we should go down there?” It was a massive pit, but the edges were still rock, and we could move down there slowly.

“Yes,” I said. If we wanted to see what the hell was happening, this had to be our best chance.

The rest of them gulped, and we slowly made our way down into the biggest pit ever. It was dark, and here, there were no demons. We just had to avoid the sand and rocks that the demons dumped overhead.

If we fell, magic wouldn’t save us. We felt a strong anti-magic drain in the entire pit, and as we went further and further down, the team noticed their magical items starte to fizzle and make strange sounds.

Thankfully, my four Valthorns were domain holders, and their domains protected most of their mana from the mana-draining effects of the surroundings.

As we went down, we noticed a ray of light starting to emerge overhead. It had been almost three days.

“The sun is rising.”

The earth rumbled, and we saw something cover the entrance of the pit. It looked like a massive demon, or perhaps a few massive demons.

“Oh fuck,” Roon said, and here, strangely, our voices did not echo. Roon made an actual fire to brighten up the darkness.

We kept going down. My roots and vines were like the feet of an insect, crawling along the walls of this pit. There was nothing for another one day, and then we saw a horizontal tunnel along the vertical pit.

It was filled with demons.

“There. Let’s go in there.” Johann pointed, and my roots pierced through the demons in that horizontal tunnel. It was like we’d taken a lift down, and then we went sideways.

There were similar demons; these were smaller lizards, just like the ones on the surface. But how did they get so deep?

It didn’t matter. They died easily to my roots. Thank goodness my roots were technically skill and physical effect. Once we were in that tunnel, we found that it led to more tunnels, and it was a labyrinth. Tunnels and tunnels, and we followed them. Here, in the depths, the rocks did not drain mana. The only thing that did were the demons, and here, they were active all day long.

In these tunnels, far away from that vertical pit, my guys rested. Here, their mana could regenerate normally, and it seemed mana attracted demons.

The demons were drawn to mana, like ants drawn to sugar. They were ravenous.

Hungry.

And we killed them.

We explored these horizontal tunnels some more and soon found a large cavern with something we’d always been wondering about. Rift gate. A normal-size rift gate, exactly the same model.

“Subterranean rift gates. Interesting.” Should’ve seen it coming when my own rift gates were in the Valley of the Unrotten, hidden from view.

We moved to capture it and cleared the place of demons. Those guarding the rift gates didn’t pose much of a challenge, and my aura meant they were mostly frozen in place. Lumoof briefly entered avatar state and created a few subsidiary trees around the rift gates. Then I activated the star mana variant of my [Vine Ropeway Network] and shoved the rift gates back home.

“All right, that’s one. Bet there’s more,” Roon commented.

The group explored the tunnels for days and found one more. We also captured the rift gates and the nearby daemolite and then sent them back home. This part of the tunnel now fully explored, the team went back down the pits.

We went deeper, and the journey down took even more days. It was also getting really hot as we approached the core, and the magical forces in our surroundings got even wilder. It wasn’t difficult to deal with the heat, since I had the ability to adapt to all kinds of environments, so I protected the domain holders in a sphere of wood as these woods were linked to me via Lumoof, like a small, enclosed space.

Essentially, they rode a wooden pumpkin wagon going down a deep hole. Sadly, it wasn’t Alice in Wonderland or Cinderella, because down there was probably a monster. There was magic here, but it struggled and fought an extremely strong, draining force.

About fifteen days in, the core was not molten lava and instead was a dried lattice of what appeared to be volcanic rock, and the heat had mostly stabilized. In fact, that strong draining force seemed to be keeping things cool.

The walls had now transformed into what was probably a really intricate latticework of rocks, and as my vines touched these rocks, I could tell there was once a really strong magic in these rocks.

They were a little like the core shard I got from Cometworld.

We kept going. This deep, there were no demons. Nothing.

And we began to feel a really strong pulse.

The anti-mana energies pulsed periodically, and it flared outward in a rhythm.

“We didn’t see the sand or rock that was poured overhead,” Roon commented.

“Maybe the anti-mana draining effects transformed them into something else.”

Indeed. So deep down, everything was just these “dried,” lattice-like black rocks. There was once a flowing thing here, maybe centuries ago.

It took a total of almost a month, and it actually became really cold. All heat was sucked out of the air, and it would be impossible to breathe outside. There was no ice and no water as we reached the massive core cavity.

The entire core of the planet had been largely hollowed out. There were still some massive rock pillars similar to the dried, lattice-like rocks. Filling up the gaps was this structure resembling a really complicated web of flesh and demonic, spire-like structures.

They all radiated a small, faint pulse.

The structure was demonic for sure, filled with streaks of demonic energy that was familiar. Yet, at this point, we both sensed it. There were two forces here, both similar to a demon king and yet different.

One of the structures itself, here, up close, it radiated a really strong, corrupting energy, quite like the effects of the Rottedlands and a [Forest Rod]. The structure was like a network and web that spread out.

“The structure around that cocoon is something…” We began to look around, and then we saw an area where there was a very large mass of demonic flesh. It was a large, lizard-like creature, but many parts had been hollowed out. That part of its body was wrapped around a large, rocky structure that had an extremely faint energy.

It was a demon king. The first source of the demon energy and this demonic energy was throughout the structure that covered this hollowed-out core. It wasn’t hard to put our observations together and conclude that our earlier theory was mostly correct.

“Damn to think there really is a demon king in the core,” Edna vented. “It’s ‘possessing’ the world?”

“It is.” Lumoof nodded. “The structure that was now intertwined with the demonic cocoon should be the core of this world. Or what’s left of it.”

The demon king itself was just a massive [Forest Rod], meant to capture worlds and control it, such that it transformed into a demon world. The win condition for the demon kings wasn’t just defeating the heroes. It was also to reach the core and then possess it.

With the core, I suspected they would gain system rights to the world, and that allowed them to spawn demons instead of the usual monsters. There should be something similar that lived within the core of Parasiteworld, and we should reach it.

It was the equivalent of a hacker getting access to the mainframe and then reconfiguring it for its own purpose. Or capturing a mine and using its resources to support its own war effort.

That second source of demonic energy was a large cocoon. A nascent demon king. It was coiled up, and it was a gigantic lizard or wurm of some kind.

It was massive, the single largest object I’d ever seen. It was the size of an entire mountain and would blot out entire cities with any single one of its legs.

My first suspicion was mostly confirmed. Demon kings were made out of the energies gathered from the core of the world. If so, that explained the “drained” feeling and why that recovered slightly post–demon king. But if there was a demon king still in the core, continuing to possess it, it also meant Parasiteworld would never fully recover. Once it reached a certain threshold, it would start producing another demon king.

“How the fuck were the heroes supposed to fight this?” Roon said. “Without magic!”

“Hack it repeatedly,” Edna answered. “There should be a core somewhere.”

Lumoof looked at the rest. “Aeon?”

A demon king, still in its earthly womb, without its will. If it was a machine, was this a mecha without its pilot? A body without a soul? Could I hijack it? I felt all sorts of torment, but would I ever have an opportunity like this ever again? What could I lose, and what could I learn from this?

Frankly, a lot.

But what did I do with the demon king around the core? Should I attempt to destroy that and free the core?

Or should I attempt to control the growing demon king and use it to destroy the structure?

“Lumoof, take my seed out, and throw it into the cocoon.”

In any case, all I was sacrificing was just a seed.

9

YEAR 206 (PART 4)

Ihad questions. If the demon king possessed the core, then why did Parasiteworld spawn normal monsters and animals once we reclaimed some of the land and populated them with trees? How did this system mechanic work? Did the demon king’s hold on the world fluctuate?

“Aeon, what’s our plan?” Lumoof asked. “I mean…what if that thing attacks us? Wait. Let me clarify that. I’m actually quite sure it will attack us.”

“Teleport out if it gets really bad. I’ll get you guys out if anything goes south.”

At the same time, I got Patreeck to make the necessary preparations, and the entire Central Continent hummed with activity. We added additional artificial minds and made sure that all the mana batteries were fully charged. I remembered that time when the demon king attempted to possess me, and I somehow used that kind of soul blast, and I wanted to see if I could repeat it.

I wanted to see if I could weaponize that sort of defensive mechanism with my clone seed by using it against the demon king’s body and then forcing the gestating demon king to a battle of wills. The odds were low, generally speaking, and I had very little to lose. Not with this kind of encounter.

If I lose the close seed, I lost time. If I succeeded, I would definitely level. If it was somewhere in the middle, that was still a success.

Looking at the clock, we didn’t have much time left, as in a few years this demon king would be headed to our world. If I intercepted it before that happened, I also wanted to know if I could mess up the entire sequence of events by triggering an event before it was meant to happen. In a way, I essentially wanted to cause the process behind the demonic invasions to either “fail” or encounter some kind of “jam.”

Best-case scenario, we successfully stopped the demon king from invading our world forever. Worst, well, the demon king somehow took over my clone, and also somehow, through that system, it could take over my body.

I thought that was unlikely. I could also cut off my connection with my clones if needed. It was also possible that handling a demon king could somehow send me into a coma. But I felt it wouldn’t actually happen. With my domain now, it was very unlikely I would get sent into a coma.

“Aeon, I think we’re more concerned with what happens if you go through a long sleep,” Lumoof answered frankly. “We believe you would survive, but if you were to be weakened for long periods, the Central Continent would suffer from it.”

“There are the four of you and the entirety of the Valtrian Order. If the Valtrian Order cannot survive without me sleeping for certain periods of time, then I’ve clearly not done enough to nurture the strength of the order.”

There was never a “good” time to cut the umbilical cord, and I supposed I would have to watch the institutions weather their test. In history, that first transition of power from a founder to its successor institutions was critical. Would it be good enough?

I looked at the demon king—it grew slowly—and the unstable energies of the world.

There were some interrupted voices in the energies in the air. Whispers, broken and shredded by the harsh powers of the demons.

“Let’s just freaking do it,” I declared, and everyone braced. Lumoof entered full avatar mode, and I felt the violent magic of the depths batter our body. It was a sensation quite similar to opening the windows when moving at high speed.

I wrapped my seed in a multilayered massive wooden spear and attached it to a vine just as thick for control. Then I thrust the spear toward the demon king, through the demon’s tendrils, and the gaps in the shell.

Through the vines and the spear, I could feel the biting cold outside and the environment draining mana from the spear.

The layers of wood crumbled and withered away, like the peel of an onion, swept away by the strong magical current of the core and the demons.

We pushed on. The strength of that magical wave was manageable; this was inferior to a demon king, a sign that it was not fully formed. Perhaps the true “will” of the demon king lay within that black mass we saw earlier.

No matter, I would investigate this layer. If I could capture the shell of a demon king, that was sufficient.

The unfocused wave of energy from the demons suddenly tried to concentrate on my wooden spear. It gathered clumsily and attempted to resist and push back against my spear. Yet it was clearly not designed to do so. My focused strike pierced through the layers of demonic energy, even if each step forward seemed to just eat away at the layers of my spear.

Eventually, the spear smashed into the cocoon of the incomplete demon king. It was a relatively “slow” smash, like trying to punch underwater, but the spear still rattled the cocoon momentarily, and then I was hit with a wave of demonic energy again, rousing from within the cocoon. We persisted, and the entire cocoon rumbled.

Awoken by the sudden rumbling, the mass of demonic flesh, spires, and tentacles that surrounded the cocoon started to move.

“Aeon?” Lumoof asked, shaken by the kind of power flowing through his flesh.

The core continued to shake violently, and some of the magical energies in the core became even more pronounced. Some of the dried lattice of rocks started to glow. The demonic flesh, or the host/mother demon, moved toward us.

“We have been spotted,” Edna commented as everyone quickly equipped themselves for combat.

This felt like one of those battles in games, in a glowing cavern in the depths of the planet, facing off against the demon king to decide the fate of the world.

The lattice of dried, crystalized rocks around us glowed and pulsed in a rhythm that seemed somehow linked to the energies released by my spear of wood. The spear pushed further into the cocoon of the incomplete demon king, and each movement seemed to release magical energies into our surroundings.

The flesh that formed the tentacles and spires around the cocoon moved, crawled, and agglomerated, like a mass of nanomachines reforming into a greater, larger whole. This mass of demonic flesh now began to look more like a giant lizard, and once it largely took shape, it immediately spat acid.

The acid smashed into one of Edna’s hastily conjured magical shields. The acid vaporized the shield almost instantly.

“No magic!” Roon reminded as he switched to a loadout of anti-demonic spears. Hundreds of spears appeared from his pocket. Those spears all flew and stabbed the mother demon lizard through its body. But this creature was large, and it was like trying to kill a land whale with harpoons. It moved toward us as Roon activated some kind of charged spear ability. One of the spears glowed, not with magic, but with his skill. The small spear smashed into the sides of the giant mother lizard.

It visibly caused the giant mother-lizard demon king to stagger.

At that moment, the entire world around us shook.

Yet it didn’t do much damage.

“Aeon, can we teleport the star-mana bomb here?” Johann suggested.

“Wait.” That was a good idea, too, but I wanted to try using my seed and reaching the demon king. Star mana was a bad thing to expose the demons to. If the core was in this incomplete demon king, then this could be the best time to get it.

I felt more of the incomplete energies of the demon king through the spear that now was halfway into the cocoon. It was an odd mix of core mana and demonic mana. It was on top of the strange powers that twisted this entire area, almost like a skill. It even felt like it was a clash of wills, as I felt something like a soul attempting to exert its way on the world and my seed pushing my own will into this space.

The mother-lizard roared, and the core shook violently. The rocks started to fall toward us, and we weren’t sure why. The gravity here was unusual, almost entirely driven by some kind of unknown magic. The chamber shook violently, and some parts around us started to collapse.

We were pulled toward the cocoon, essentially, and yet these rocks flew toward us. Lumoof attempted to support the cavern from collapsing as we extended my vines and roots against the collapsing walls of the cavern.

“Is it trying to crush us?” Lumoof mentally said. “But wouldn’t that destroy the demon king, too?”

“It probably has a way not to get crushed.” I injected the incomplete demon king with my mana, and it felt like I was throwing mana into the void.

Yet that very action triggered the giant mother-lizard. The mother demon king charged at us, somehow walking quickly on the surface of the giant cocoon of the incomplete demon king. It looked like it wanted to smash us into the walls of the chamber. My vines and roots expanded outward from Lumoof, and I attempted to use my vines to hold it back by forming a large web and wall of roots and vines. It wasn’t of much use, since it was so large.

It was the equivalent of trying to hold back a raging bull with cloth. It merely slowed it down and made it even angrier. It smashed through the wall of roots and vines.

It bought enough time for us to reposition ourselves as the massive lizard smashed into the walls of the chamber, creating a new open area.

My clone seed was already inside the cocoon, but it had not reached the body of the incomplete demon king. A bit further.

Large columns of rock fell down. Again, they felt like they were pulled and manipulated by the mother-demon’s abilities. Did that mother-demon have gravity power of some sort, as it once again bulldozed through Edna’s shields? Roon and Johann attempted to dodge where they could, but they were clearly not suited to fighting in this environment, even if it was possible to manipulate the giant lizard demon to destroy and widen the area for us.

This was the kind of battlefield that demanded the tank and barbarian types—big, raw, Hercules-type physical force—and invulnerability.

In any case, Edna and Lumoof tried to hold back the mother lizard, while a part of me pushed toward the incomplete demon king. I kept pumping mana into the cocoon and at the same time attempted to push my will into it.

In short, I was trying to first change and “convert” the area where my mana first touched, maybe capture the cocoon itself if I couldn’t get to the body.

As this happened, I felt things smash into my mind.

Or, more accurately, smash into the helmet around my mind. It still shook me a little, but it didn’t get through.

Raw anger and hunger.

A craving. To consume and to create more, for further consumption. It came from the cocoon; it came from the incomplete demon king.

Feed.

Through my spear of wood, I had attempted to overwhelm the demon king with my mana.

Now, after I’d pumped so much mana into the demon king, I realized that—

I was a fool.

I had overestimated myself, and now I realized how hungry the demon king was. I was pouring salt into an Olympic-size swimming pool. Not the ocean, because it wasn’t that vast, but it was bigger than me. It desired mana, a whole lot more than I had to give.

A demon king was formed from the mana of a world, formed from anti-mana and mana-draining materials, and I was deluded enough to try overwhelming it myself.

It was a bad matchup, and I was outmatched. This thing could eat all of my mana and then some. I knew that even my clone seed would not do much, and now I suddenly didn’t have much confidence against the residual. So I pulled my clone seed back to Treehome.

The rocks around us glowed, and it began to get warmer. I sent Edna back next through the teleport ability of the [Court of the Deitree].

It was just Lumoof left, and we looked around. I detonated my spear within the cocoon, and as expected, it didn’t do much damage.

“The bomb,” Lumoof reminded me, and I had it ready. But then I saw the core of the world; it had shrunk much smaller than it was once. It was probably a lot larger a long, long time ago.

“No. The core.” I couldn’t capture the demon king, but the core was there. It was still a very large thing, but maybe I could just take a chunk. Or maybe this was just a portion. I wasn’t sure, so rather than attempt to fight the demon king and failing, getting a core or a sufficiently large chunk was still helpful for my purposes.

Lumoof moved toward the core as the mother demon chased after us. That was fine, because once Lumoof crash-landed next to what looked to be the core, my vines exploded outward and wrapped the core. What I could, at least.

Lumoof entered Avatar once more, and I sent a fragment of the core home. I couldn’t send all of it. It was too large, and I didn’t have that much mana left.

The mother demon charged toward us, and a wall of vines merely delayed it briefly. I knew this was a pointless fight and so pulled Lumoof home through my [Court of the Deitree], just as I did with Edna, Roon, and Johann.

Lumoof landed back in the valley, surrounded by a battalion of aids and helpers. “That didn’t go well.”

But we had a core. Or a fragment of it. We took a chunk the size of a small house out of that entire thing, and I learned how high the mountain was. In many ways, I gained from that exchange.

Lumoof collapsed as his body finally gave in to the exhaustion. Edna, Roon, and Johann were already back in a biolab pod for immediate treatment. They were just mildly injured, but the magical exhaustion really kicked them. The constant state of alertness since we went into that pit was exhausting mentally, even if we rotated rest times.

First, I sent the core into a lab. It was so large that I needed to get one of the bigger labs to look at it, and I immediately felt two presences within. There was also a strong demonic presence within the fragment, one that I felt fighting with the small, tiny presence within.

I decided to quickly drain the demonic energies out, and this was relatively easier, because it was no longer connected to the demon king. Once the chunk was cleaned of demonic energies, I could feel the other presence within stabilize.

It was rousing, and I felt a bit of something gathering within, something that felt like fragments of a will. It was scattered, and then, I began sensing a small buildup of core mana within the house-size fragment.

Perhaps I only got a chunk of it, so that presence was only a fragment?

Still, the core mana was clearly, clearly there. It wasn’t much, but better something than nothing.

What had we learned? The visit to the depths hadn’t been entirely fruitless. We now knew that there was a demon king in every core, and that was their win condition. They must capture the core in some way or form, perfectly or imperfectly.

That explained the gap of time where they defeated the “defenders,” but yet the world didn’t immediately collapse. Heroes were, as the gods put it, medicine to stop the viruses. But in the absence of the medicine, the virus didn’t immediately win. They had to control the body in order to win.

With this knowledge, could we prevent a world from ever losing?

Not by defeating the demon king, but by making a world uncapturable. For example, what if the core of the planet was suddenly moved elsewhere or perhaps located behind some kind of magical portal such that the demon king could not reach it?

Thinking back to my Will of the World, essentially if I was one with the planet, did that mean the world could not be captured as long as I lived?

On a larger scale, if we could somehow protect each core from falling to the demon kings, could we, by building a wall of uncapturable worlds, eventually block off the demons?

A kind of “moat” strategy on a larger scale.

Because if they could not capture worlds, they would not be able to continue producing demon kings, and the demon kings on that planet would be stuck there. We could eventually drive them to extinction by cutting off the demon king’s ability to reproduce.

“That’s a very lofty strategy when we didn’t even know how to do it…” Roon commented when he recovered.

I knew from Will of the World’s narration that I could fuse with a world meant it must be possible to protect a world from the demon kings. At least it wasn’t a question whether it was a possibility, more of a question of technical capability.

“Aeon’s plans really seem to get more and more wild with each visit to the demon worlds,” my ranger commented.

“I suppose when you travel worlds, it is quite an eye-opening and mind-broadening experience.”

I thought back to the nature of the demon king, being made of demonic mana, void mana, and core mana.

What if there was a way to fuse star mana and core mana or inject the core with vast quantities of star mana? Essentially exploit the reaction of void mana to star mana during the capturing process. This would essentially create a stored defensive mechanism within the core? At least, sufficient to prevent one capture?

How did core mana and star mana interact?

“I don’t think we should experiment on our world with that. What if we blow up the planet?”

“Also! It’s like saying the core has a mind that could store star mana and use it as a defensive item.”

“The core does have a will.” The shard of Cometworld told me that. Of course, I would ask the core of the world before actually conducting such experiments. It was only logical.

Alka was amused by the idea, naturally. Storing a star mana bomb in the core was his immediate suggestion. Nuke the demon king from within. No, more appropriately, make the core of the world a minefield of star-mana bombs that would trigger once the demon king came. Stella was fairly horrified at the thought of experimenting on planetary cores, commenting that such things rarely went well.

I was actually fascinated by the idea. It made sense. Making the core a minefield of star mana bombs was a pragmatic solution, because only the demon king would come here. There was no risk of accidental triggers since no one went there but the demon, and if the demon king reached the core, it meant the surface was mostly lost anyway, so letting the core have bombs as a failsafe was a good one.

10

YEAR 207

The heroes were strangely relieved that they didn’t need to go to another world. I supposed the idea of fighting the demon king in the core of the planet really felt like a scene right from a Japanese RPG game.

It was ironic that this world really took so much from the games that we loved so much. It really made me wonder whether I was just in a coma somewhere and this was me lucid dreaming.

Or maybe it was the reverse, that all our creativity was residual memories, creations from what we’d seen in some reincarnated past life. That was also a rather strange turn of events.

Anyway, we briefed the heroes on the expected nature of the upcoming demon king, and everyone quickly started making preparations. If it was an anti-magic demon king, both Colette and Prabu had to prepare for it.

Everyone expected a counter of some kind. They just didn’t think it was going to be a massive, anti-magic lizard, essentially a strong counter to both Colette and Prabu, and the whole host of star-mana weapons.

They decided to forge new weapons, of course, imbued with heroic abilities and skills, instead of magic or spells. Items with some level of protection from the effects of mana drain, again, tested against the sand that we collected.

It was hard to make it work, and it took them months of testing. The hero forges were literally creations of star mana, though they could use actual materials to give more substance and permanence to the output. Yet real materials meant the products were not as strong as those made of star mana. After all, how could mundane items hope to rival the power of the stars?

But as they tinkered more and more, they soon gained a deeper understanding of the hero forges and soon came with a request.

“We need more of those anti-mana sands,” Colette said as she showed us a small glassy weapon made of the sand. “We managed to use the [hero forge] to make a weapon out of their anti-mana sand, and it’s significantly more resistant to the effects of mana drain since, well, the sand itself is so good at ‘draining’ mana. It is also good at stopping mana from leaking out. We could make weapons out of these anti-mana sands, and this would hold up.”

The pathway through the stars was still there, though we noticed the pathway itself seemed…wobbly and uncertain.

We didn’t bring that much sand back, but it certainly was possible to make glass out of that sand if there were sufficient quantities of it. We didn’t know how much sand we needed, but the idea of mining this sandy planet for the anti-mana sands was really appealing. There could be a lot of uses for such a weapon, and if sufficiently widespread, it could equalize the inherent advantages of magic.

Actually, with sufficient quantities of this sand, it may even be possible to somewhat mimic earth-like, magicless situations.

In fact, once this demon king was over, I would probably lose access to all this anti-mana sand, unless I placed my clone on this world.

Lumoof, of course, had to be sent back to Sandworld. For sand. I wondered whether this was the first actual instance of dimensional mining operations.

“Well, at least it still looks the same.” Lumoof went alone as Stella attempted to keep the rift gates open. It didn’t work that well with the battering of Sandworld’s harsh anti-magic rays.

Lumoof activated a few storage bags, and then…they exploded. They couldn’t store the anti-magic sand that interfered with the storage bags itself.

“Oops.” Lumoof laughed. “Looks like we’ll have to send it back the teleportation way.”

Which meant Lumoof actually took large bags made of hemp and cloth and filled them with sand. In avatar mode, Lumoof functioned as the conduit for teleportation to my main tree, through my [tree of life]. Essentially, he was another “clone” in avatar mode.

Sand. It drained more mana than usual to send the anti-mana sand back, but we needed more. We took advantage of the day to eventually send back a small hill of anti-mana sand, piled up in one corner of the valley.

As I noticed the presence of this anti-mana sand, I also wondered whether it had potential anti-demon uses, since it was also effective against demonic mana.

Could we use the anti-mana sand to clear corrupted places and remove the demonic energies from Rottedlands-type terrain?

If so, these anti-mana sand could be immensely valuable to restore terrain and clean the land from demonic corruption.

Ken, my resident armchair critic, was quick to point out that I’d had the Space-Grand-Strategy equivalent of a unique resource that gave the faction access to unique units or research. That, of course, tickled my funny-branch. That made sense.

Who would’ve thought anti-mana sand was a strategic resource, anyway?

“Lumoof, you’ll be doing mining. A whole lot of it.”

“I’m a priest, Aeon. Not a sand collector,” Lumoof protested, mostly as a joke. “I have sand in every part of my body!”

“Then you’re doing it right! You’ll have to be my sand-collecting priest for this month.”

The anti-mana sand, strangely enough, did not cause any unusual reactions with my [secret hideout]. My spatial skill, which didn’t use mana—or, at least, didn’t use it directly—could store this anti-mana sand without much risk, and after all my levels, my [secret hideout] could be expanded quite a bit.

The heroes took their share, a small truckload, to begin experimenting with larger weapons. At the same time, I also gave a small batch to my blacksmiths, jewelers, and crafters to attempt their own experiments.

Alka, too, used the anti-mana sand for his own experiments, mainly to figure out how to make the bombs react exactly the way he wanted. Within weeks, he made some very good discoveries. With the anti-magic qualities, the sand essentially functioned as “negative” gates, and in small quantities, it could be used to create more compact runic patterns and prevent unnecessary magical interference between unrelated but nearby formations. In short, the sand could be molded into magical walls between spells.

“Given the value of these sands, I’m thinking Aeon should totally deploy a clone tree on this world,” Alka stated. “This sand could herald a new era of super-compact magical weaponry! We may even attempt the computers that the heroes speak of!”

Valid, but I had my reservations.

“Parasiteworld’s useless. We should abandon it for this,” Alka stated.

Again, I also had reservations. Surely there were resources there, just like the sand, that we had only not discovered.

If I had to, I would probably abandon either Cometworld or the moon base. Most probably the moon because of how easy it was to get to it again.

Still, this was something I had to think about, so for now, we mined sand. A lot of it.

The heroes made anti-magic staff and weapons, and Chung made arrows out of them. Chung and Hafiz both had a balance of spells and skills, as archer and knight-type heroes respectively, so transitioning from glass weaponry wasn’t too much of a challenge. The weapons were strong; after all, they were made through [hero forge], and so were just naturally overpowered weapons.

They made a set for me and a few extra sets for the future heroes. Just in case.

On this front, I thought of Ken’s League of Heroes idea. Perhaps we could start with trade, trade of hero-items between heroes of different worlds.

I gave some to Lilies, just mainly to share the anti-magic sand. They were fascinated with it and immediately wondered whether it could be used with that anti-divine material we had.

Blackstar Gems. The coal-like material that exploded when exposed to star mana, in a way, quite like void mana. When we placed the two types of materials together, nothing happened. From what I recalled, the Blackstar Gems itself didn’t do much other than resist the effects of the gods, which remained untested even till today.

Our attempts to work with the two together didn’t get anywhere, but perhaps it was just a matter of discovering the right process.

They were not so amused when I shared what we saw on Sandworld. In fact, Lilies responded with a revulsion. Something about a world filled with so much sand that was so lifeless throughout that seemed to really disgust them.

Or maybe these lake plants just didn’t like waterless deserts.

Reefy’s search for the deepest trenches were filled with fights, and Reefy didn’t say much. All he said was he needed more time, since the trenches were filled with monsters. He seemed fairly amused by the anti-magic sand but didn’t think much into it.

The images Reefy shared were quite brutal, mostly of heavy fighting and slaughter. The depths were home to violent eels and weird fish-creatures, and they fought Reefy’s attempts to explore them. He didn’t seem disturbed by it; instead, Reefy merely remarked that he just needed more time.

Reefy also showed me some special coral weapons that he made, inspired by what I’d made on the surface.

He had control and ability to directly breed fish and fish-creatures, quite similar to how I created my beetles, and these fish could travel long distances.

I was really curious how he maintained control and vision of them even at such distances, but Reefy didn’t have an explanation. It was just what it was, and Reefy didn’t think much of it.

“We should probably warn the Mountainworld heroes about the Sabnoc-type demon king. It might blow up and flood the world with demonic corruption again,” Lumoof pointed out one day during one of the monthly council meetings. It didn’t feel very good that I was pointing out the problems and also giving the solutions. I felt like one of those business consultants that pointed out a future issue and told their prospective customers to pay up.

“You do know we look like swindlers when we tell them stuff like that and we offer the solution, too?” I mean, we did have a pile of anti-mana sand, and conveniently, there was a future demonic corruption crisis to solve. It really looked like I was hacking or even masterminding this shit. “It would be even worse if the explosion didn’t happen.”

Stella, of course, sat and then mused, “Maybe they’ve already fought the demon king and the explosion already happened.”

“Oh shit. Then they’ll need our help,” Lumoof said. “I mean, Aeon’s help.”

“It’s a good chance to test out the anti-magic sand, whether it worked as hypothesized,” Alka responded.

“But what can they do if a Sabnoc-style explosion created another Rottedlands? There’s practically no defense against such a weapon. Not on a continental scale anyway, unless they somehow managed to ‘lock’ the bomb or ‘confine’ the bomb in a limited area.”

I thought back to the earlier fight against the demon king and recalled that it was possible to defuse or weaken the demonic corruption bomb by draining its mana. But that was something I’d have to do.

“We have an invasion on our hands?” Roon diverted the topic. “I think we’re all still busy making weapons.”

Lumoof looked at Stella. “I think we can manage a short visit?”

Also, we began to have some data from the first generation of the “augmented” supersoldiers. The first generational children of the Treefolks and Lizardfolks were reaching the age that they began to have some shape to their souls, and the results were mixed.

Different types of inherited skills caused the first generation’s children to display some odd qualities. Like enhanced strength meant they spent less time in their spawning pods because their strengths caused them to tear through the pods.

I supposed even with generational skills, the host or breeding facility must be able to endure the super-kids. The kids generally inherited the skills, but they were in a weakened form, which I suspected was due to their age. Once they matured, the skill would become its full form.

There were a bunch of treefolks and lizards that inherited one of the harvested [void mage] skills to naturally have [void mana], and those didn’t work well. It caused the baby lizards and treefolks to look weak and fragile, and they had to be on life support.

So it wasn’t as if every skill could be injected. Skills needed to be compatible with the child or it would cause problems.

The researchers and caretakers also squabbled frequently over the conditions they faced. The caretakers were selected from those who used to support the Valthorns and their children. The unusual abilities these children had all needed special care and attention, but the researchers also wanted data, so the two frequently bickered. Right now, there were already third- and even fourth-generation Valthorns, since it’d been almost one hundred years since I’d re-emerged from the Rottedlands.

The mountain world was still the same, and when Lumoof returned, we were not greeted with fighting. That was a good sign. The first village we met looked relatively normal, still quite militarized, but everyone looked relaxed.

A bit of casual, alcohol-fueled conversation later, the heroes had been busy fighting demon champions. After they were captured by the demon king, the rumors seemed to say they were afraid of the demon king, so they didn’t dare to make the final assault. Not something they said out loud, but it wasn’t difficult to coax it out of drunkards.

It was quite obvious in hindsight that being possessed and captured for so long would be a traumatic thing for the heroes, but I would’ve thought the gods’ mind control would circumvent those fears and drive them toward the demon king.

Or maybe as long as the heroes were still fighting demons and not actively avoiding demons altogether…

“I remember Kei saying that they hear voices in their head,” Lumoof said. Then again, I wasn’t sure whether these gods applied the same kind of mind control or mental suggestions as those of our world. It wasn’t exactly the same set of gods, even if there could be some overlap.

Still, the presence of the heroes significantly tipped the scales, as the heroes could take on demon champions easily as they leveled.

It didn’t take particularly long for us to eventually return to the seat of the Council of Kings and find them in a significantly better mood. There was a return of the arts and entertainment, and the shops looked like they’d had a renaissance of sorts.

“Welcome back, Your Excellency.” Lumoof’s presence was initially undetected, but eventually someone saw him and ratted him out. One of the lizardpeople councilors came to greet him. “On behalf of the Council of Kings, we once again welcome the savior of our heroes.”

It was almost public knowledge that there was some otherworldly help by now. Our presence in this world was not a secret, and since the kings knew about it, almost everyone else soon learned of the other worlds.

Some formalities later, a meeting was arranged with the kings, the heroes, and a large group of advisors, where Lumoof then shared our experience with Sabnoc and the post-Sabnoc destruction.

There were only a few differences so far, so it was likely that this demon king was a similar variant as Sabnoc.

The two heroes, now in better shape, even if they were still affected by their trauma, quickly asked whether we would be able to send heroes here. We rejected it using the void mana as an excuse.

Still, there were some things that could be done with the knowledge.

One: there may be heroes where their souls had been captured by the demons.

Two: they started evacuation of the area near to the demon king, based on an estimate of how much area was lost to the demonic corruption. They, of course, didn’t say the knowledge came from another world but from the gods themselves. The temples didn’t like it, but thanks to the decade-long war, the kings were more powerful than the temples and so used their powers to make those who lived too near move away. There wasn’t much to evacuate, either, since thanks to the long war, vast areas were already a mini-Rottedlands.

Three: the heroes also made preparations, equipped with the knowledge of the tricks Sabnoc used. It was like playing with a walkthrough and after discussing how someone else had already cleared the game.

As it was, they’d reached a somewhat comfortable status quo where they were just hunting the champions for levels.

We didn’t say it out loud. I didn’t want to trigger the gods’ mental controls.

There was something we wanted to know. What triggered the demon kings’ win condition? When did they go for the core? Why was the demon king still stationary when the heroes were already free?

“We can hear it. It’s calling us to it,” the two heroes said. “We’re pretty sure it even sees us.”

We knew.

“But I’m afraid.” The two heroes were visibly shaking as the boy started to share his fears. “After that first time, I’m not sure if I could face it again. I know I have to. But…”

I thought I felt divine energies in the air as the heroes let out their worries in a meeting room.

“We have to.” Darn. Triggered it anyway. “Can you help us?”

We had a demon king of our own to fight. We had four years left, and the next demon king, now that I’d seen it, worried me immensely.

After the meeting, Lumoof suggested that perhaps we could help. The levels would help us against the demon king, since we could get new skills.

It was something worth thinking about.

11

YEAR 208

After watching the heroes show off their new weapons, we tried to make our own glass weapons, and we found the best way was to actually make them the non-magical way. Magical fires interfered with the anti-magical qualities, and conventional fires didn’t. Or at least mana-powered fires were weakened by the anti-magic sand and just made it harder to actually work with them. That didn’t stop my craftsmen from trying, and the end result from our first few “successful” attempts were quite similar to obsidian; these glass weapons felt very much like glass cannons and shattered after a few uses.

Our own tests suggested that they were extremely effective against creatures with high amounts of mana, thanks to the mana drain effects, and they also seemed to trigger some kind of nausea if one wasn’t able to handle the effects of the drain on the body and senses when we tested them lightly on our own folks.

The spears also caused the mana with a person or creature to become more unstable. Anyone with levels should be able to suppress and control their mana, but if not controlled, it could cause the mana to combust.

I suspected this “mana-ignition” quality to these anti-magic sand and the anti-magic solar rays was the cause of my treechikomas combusting into flames. They had little mana regulation or suppression ability, and as such, once the mana in them went crazy, they couldn’t stop it.

These weapons also didn’t like magical storage, so they worked against things like bags of holding. Still, Roon’s super range meant he could still exploit it, and I could still move these things with my portals. They even interfered with certain kinds of teleportation, though not portals. Magic could be applied around them but not through them without significant force.

It really was fascinating to work with these kinds of unique resources, and I wondered what was unique to each of these worlds. Surely, even a world like Treehome must have something unique that wasn’t found on the other worlds?

So far, I didn’t have much idea of what truly was unique between my world versus the mountain world or the Threeworld. Not without significant trade and knowledge exchange.

I also commanded my assistants and artificial minds to search Parasiteworld, though we didn’t find anything so far, and we even tested the waters, too.

I wondered whether it was something like tier or epoch unlocks. Like how in Civilizations, we’d have to acquire the necessary research and technology knowledge before we were able to locate natural resources like oil or uranium.

If so, maybe I was just too low on the tech-tree. I couldn’t see what was really unique to our worlds until I got the right skills.

We had about three years left before the demon king would come to our world, and our preparations to face the anti-magic demon king were in full swing.

Lumoof brought up the topic of the otherworldly heroes and shared their trauma and also their appeal for help.

“We should help them.” The heroes themselves volunteered for it. Prabu and Colette were keen to assist once we shared the circumstances of the other world. Ken, of course, realized this tied into his idea for a League of Heroes.

“That involves a deployment of Aeon’s seed on that world. Something we’re still considering as it’s Aeon’s last one.” Unless I gained more seeds in the future, but with levels so scarce, it was something to be considered a bit more strategically.

But honestly, there really were really just two types of choices: one against the demon king and the second here on Mountainworld or Threeworlds. After my failed attempt on the demon king on the anti-magic world, I was quite open to the idea of a clone here.

“From what we know so far, each world gets invaded by one demon world at a time, correct? So each world in itself represents an opportunity to explore one more demon world, more demon kings to fight, which is the only good source of high-level experience as it is,” Ken spoke up for the idea.

“But we have three years left before this world gets invaded—”

“Which shouldn’t matter. Reality is we need to be stronger if the demon king from this anti-magic world is as strong as Aeon described. We need to participate in the fight against this demon king, which we can fight on our own terms because it’s there, stagnant and waiting. Its abilities are also largely known, due to Aeon’s own past experience with a similar demon king. On top of that, it is stationary, which means there’s a whole list of abilities that Aeon and the rest of us can abuse.”

I thought back to Harris and gang, and even before that, of Meela and Alexis. I remembered they had long-range weaponry and spells.

Edna thought over it and concurred with Ken. “In truth, we’re only risking the heroes. The domain holders will survive this, and we will gain levels. If we can minimize the risk to our four heroes, that would make this exercise a net gain.” This was simply because they could not be added to my pantheon, and they also could not receive my Court of the Deitree. They could only get normal familiars.

“If we make sufficient emergency teleportation devices, we could avoid most of the risk from a sudden detonation.”

The main cause of death for past heroes was actually the post-death detonation, and that was something they needed to prepare for, so with a few redundant countermeasures, Roon and Johann eventually relented. They were not keen on assisting at first, but Ken’s focus on gaining levels did outweigh the risks, especially with the right countermeasures.

After I heard both sides, I too eventually accepted that supporting the heroes was a good idea. The levels we could gain would help, and there was no reason to stop it.

We also had to consider the risks of defeating the demon king, because Sabnoc did nuke almost a quarter to a third of a continent to death. “Aeon, you are much stronger now compared to the time when you faced Sabnoc. Do you think a wall of your trees could block off the demonic corruption if it happens?”

I wasn’t sure. Maybe? I remembered the energy from such a detonation was exponentially stronger at the core than at the edges. I remembered the wave of demonic energies crushing the trees further away from me. I was pretty sure my clone could survive the wave; it was just whether my wall of subsidiary trees and normal trees could withstand the demonic corruption.

We could use the anti-magic glass weapons to weaken the demonic energies, too, so I started experimenting on anti-magic trees. Trees that were made from the sands of the demon world.

It resisted assimilation into a tree, but the anti-magic weapon could help. For now, they made large, anti-magic glass barriers. These glass barriers would serve as an additional protection for the heroes and my domain holders.

Roon was enthusiastic as we worked out the offensive plan. A stationary target was the perfect target for him to exploit his “shot from the stars,” especially with the anti-magic ammunition and Alka’s wide repertoire of star-mana bombs.

As everyone worked out their part of the plan, I felt nervous and even felt privately quite suspicious. Was this anti-magic glass weapon really that much of a super-material? Was everything really going to work so well?

I wondered whether this was going to overstretch us before our own demon king. I had doubts, even if I knew it didn’t make sense. Logically fighting every battle and gaining levels was the best path forward.

We just had to stack the deck and make sure we attacked every demon king with sufficient overwhelming force.

“Aeon, our patron, agreed to assist with the battle against the demon king, but there are conditions, and it will be our plan.” Lumoof spoke to the Council of Kings, the heroes and the gallery of their high-level individuals. “And in return, the two heroes would help us with our demon king.”

The two heroes agreed. Then Lumoof outlined our battle plan for the benefit of those present.

Six heroes in total, four from our world, would face the demon king, and they would be supported by my domain holders. Edna would be present to tank, Roon for ranged weaponry and bombardment, and Lumoof for field healing and to suppress the demonic bomb.

I would have to deploy my clone somewhere close to the demon king and when the time was right teleport the heroes over. The plan also involved walling off the demon king’s post-death corruption, just in case it detonated.

We outlined a possibility that the demon king would wake up and attack us once the four heroes from our world arrived or when my main tree was deployed. If that was the case, it’d be a simple mad scramble to fight the demon king.

If there was some time before we fought the demon king, I would start to gather more of those forest rods. At the same time, we’d use the time to stockpile star-mana ammunition and bombs. Of course, this would be our ideal outcome.

At the same time, this strategy involved deployment of my clone, and I would like to have a permanent place once I deployed my clone. So Lumoof also negotiated for one of the demonic lands as the spoils for my assistance.

This was contentious, and some of them said it was like we were annexing a plot of land. Which we were, I guessed. Still, it was no one’s territory as it was because of the decade-long war. Once my tree was deployed, that location would be the staging point for the assault. The kings haggled a bit but eventually agreed in principle.

I could sense that they grew weary of the long wars, and I even sensed some underlying frustration with their heroes. There were some murmurs in the crowd that this was some sort of land grab and invasion, and the priests looked uncomfortable with letting another force claim their world.

But they couldn’t deny it in the end. Even in their world, heroes who survived frequently went on to start their own kingdoms, sometimes by force. This was similar.

Lumoof and the councils went over the maps of the world and eventually settled on a spot that was once a forest. Once.

A group of elites escorted Lumoof to the target site, mainly just to ensure that we didn’t put the seed anywhere else. It wasn’t hard to blaze a path through demon territory, though we encountered a few demonic champions along the way.

It was located about two to three days away from the immobile demon king, and already we could feel its pulsing presence in the air. It was like an ambient pressure that could be felt in the mana, and even the ground itself was filled with demonic mana.

There was a very clear possibility that the demon king may immediately attack us once I deployed my clone, so everyone was ready for a jump.

Once we arrived, Lumoof immediately entered avatar mode, and my mana cleared the land around us. The clone deployed.

I felt something in the ground once my roots started spreading in the ground. There was once a ley line that flowed underneath that was now streaked with demonic energy, and that line of demonic energy headed to the core. It was subtle, mixed with the energies of the ley line, but I could sense it because I was very familiar with demonic energy now.

It was there, slowly pushing into the ground, and I could feel some kind of resistance.

“The demon king has already started tunneling to the core, but it does so through a magical ley line.”

The demon king tapped into the ley line. I wondered whether this was another piece of the puzzle.

As my own clone grew, I wondered whether the demon king would immediately move, but the demon king did not react.

I was relieved, and my clone took just two days to fully form. The benefits of a world that still had reasonable quantities of ambient mana.

Once I was ready, I began to flood the area with beetles, spawning trees constantly and pushing back against the demonic corruption in the area. Roon, Johann, and Edna arrived soon after.

All the while, the elites stayed put, and the elites of the mountain world were frankly horrified when they faced my gigantic clone tree and my three domain holders. Their reports to their masters back home were filled with similarly colorful words.

At the same time, once my presence stabilized, I felt something different in the air, and I knew something was up. I wasn’t sure why it didn’t happen instantly—

[You’ve connected to the energies of another world.]

[Soul Forge: Green Unlocked]

[Artificial Souls Level Cap increased to Level 80.]

[All artificial souls now have Green option unlocked.]

[Soul Spiritualization unlocked: Souls empowered with Soul Spiritualization no longer need a physical body to appear outside of the Soul Realm. They will take the form of ghosts and spirits. Ghosts and spirits can gain levels like normal. You may create artificial souls as ghosts or wraiths.]

[Mountainworld Soul synchronized. You may now collect souls from the mountain world.]

[Tree-Bounded Souls unlocked: You may now stop any chosen soul from reincarnating. You may stop no more than ten souls simultaneously with this ability.]

“Something happened?” Lumoof asked.

“I just got a new Soul Forge Color.” I had forgotten that the soul forge needed a “permanent” connection, not just a temporary one through my Avatar mode. But I didn’t get this back in Cometworld? Was it because it was a dying world?

And why was there such a long time lag? Because the demon king was fighting or in the process of capturing the core?

“Huh.” It’d been a really long time since that happened, and I didn’t even know what to do. And now was not a good time.

No matter, I focused on the plan. Since the demon king didn’t react to us, did not seem bothered by my presence, my beetles fanned out in all directors. We hunted for the demonic rods. I only had one left, and I wanted more. My subsidiary trees pushed outward, and we attempted to encircle the demon king. These trees would form a containment ring and at the same time spawn beetles that helped me capture the rods.

It was actually really difficult to find the rods before they were deployed, but this was a matter of time.

We eventually collected about seven more rods, and I sent these rods back to the valley. Meanwhile, Lumoof returned to the cities to coordinate the heroes’ movement.

He was greeted differently this time around. The reports of the elite had already gone to the council, and I could tell they all felt like they bit off more than they could chew.

Previously, he was treated respectfully, and the kings conducted themselves cordially. This time, Lumoof picked up a sense of fear that was not there before. My priest had a calming presence, and his aura, on its own, was gentle, like the lapping waves of the sea, the gentle but present breeze of the beach.

Mine was different. It was the thick, overwhelming presence of the jungle, and even for just a moment, the elites remembered it. It was imprinted in their minds, just as how my own Valthorns remembered me.

“The heroes are not here yet?” The two heroes of Mountainworld were very eager to meet their otherworld counterparts. I learned their names this time, Adrian and Kelly, and they were in a bus with their friends when a truck came for them. It was always a damned truck.

“They will.” Lumoof smiled. “But not yet. We will try to arrange a session for all of you to meet before the battle. They are also eager to meet some people from their home world.”

I soon learned that Kelly was also a dark knight of some kind, but unlike Edna, she was more of the offensive type and had a mixed skillset between a barbarian and a knight. Adrian, on the other hand, was actually a food-monk-hero and excelled in physical abilities. He had to consume food before battle to release them as power.

Why did the gods think this was a good combination against a Sabnoc-type? Did the gods make a mistake with this demon king?

My trees spread quickly, and some soon covered the cities. With that came information. The kings and elites were visibly disturbed by the beetles that flooded the entire theater of war, and that fear manifested through their conduct. Already there were private discussions of what to do after the war.

How to “deal” with me.

Fear and suspicion. This was the nature of people. Lumoof had to quickly intervene before this got out of hand, and he met the kings and priests.

“Our patron has no intention of invading your world. Once the war is over, we would return the lands back to you, except for the agreed plot, since that is a part of my god.” The agreed plot was still pretty large, comparable to a medium-size kingdom. Sufficient for a presence. “This wall of trees is merely to contain the demon kings.”

What could they do but accept Lumoof’s explanation at face value? The armies of beetles were each in the tens of thousands, and the sight of beetles duking it out against demons was truly gruesome.

We were still not yet ready to hit out at Sabnoc, and about three to four months after my clone was deployed, the demon king seemed to detect my presence and began to attack. We endured multiple attacks from the demon king’s subordinates. Champions came for us, and the battlefields were covered in craters from all the demonic champions’ bombardments.

Still, it refused to move, and I felt the energies of the core fluctuate. As I also began to notice the ley lines were also “taking” from me during the ebbs.

I felt time was slowly, slowly running out and called the four heroes to prepare for teleportation.

12

YEAR 208 (PART 2)

The heroes exchanged greetings, and their arrival was greeted with bombardments from demon champions. Six heroes. Those were relatively good odds, and both Adrian and Kelly were in the low level one hundreds after their long periods of hunting demons.

It actually cost me quite a bit of mana to send heroes through my clones, and it drained about one-third of my mana-storage potatoes.

The heroes were ready, and the demon king continued to pump out demon champions and sent them our way. Magical projectiles from their champions were now a regular occurrence.

There was an air of tension in the air. Expectations.

“We’ve killed a few demon kings. We’ve seen something like this in the hero journals, so we’ll do it again. I know you are afraid, but this is our job, and we’re good at it. You two will be, too.” Chung was the one that spoke and tried to calm both Adrian and Kelly. “All we need you guys to do is hang in there and don’t get killed.”

After a bit of pep talk, the heroes briefed Adrian and Kelly, again, on what we’d seen in our own exchange with a similar demon king. A castle demon, perhaps?

“When you come to our world, you should have a look at the journals,” Prabu added. “And snacks. Trust me. You’ll feel better with snacks.” Colette promptly gave Prabu an elbow.

“Don’t diminish their trauma like that.”

“I mean, I know. The snacks are just the equivalent of putting flowers on poop. It’s still poop,” Prabu responded. “But between the two, I know I prefer flowers on poop.”

Adrian and Kelly just sniggered. “It’s all right.”

“It’s not.” Colette stared at Prabu. “We’ve all lost our friends in our own fights against the demons, and all of us will learn to cope in a different way. It’s not helpful to make it sound so simple.”

Prabu probably realized this was a dangerous conversation and decided to back off. “Yeah. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Colette took a deep breath and, after an awkward silence, sighed. “I know you don’t mean any harm.”

Adrian and Kelly, the two heroes of Mountainworld, just stared. Colette, of course, realized how awkward the conversation had become and decided to switch topics.

“We’ll be fighting together for some time. So let’s get to know each other,” the female archmage answered. She looked not much older than when she first came, courtesy of the immense magic she held.

They shared a pot of tea, and the two looked visibly calmer after a cup. They once again went through why their first assault failed and how that led to their capture. The four heroes of Treehome also shared their own battles with their demon king, and they too shared the failures they faced.

How their friends died the first time. There was something about sharing their own losses that seemed to really relieve both Adrian and Kelly’s hearts. Even if it didn’t fix it. Even if it didn’t even heal all that much.

“We should get Kei and Stella here,” Prabu added. “They are former heroes. Well, Kei was, but both of them saw as much shit as we all did. But I guess we can meet them.”

“If we live through this, we will,” Adrian said.

Based on what the two heroes shared, there were some differences compared to Sabnoc. For one, this hero didn’t jam our communication system, so they were not forced to build communication towers. In many ways, what they suggested even seemed to say that this demon king was a weaker variant of Sabnoc.

That wasn’t confirmed, of course. It was likely that the demon king didn’t even bring out its best skills, since the heroes were so weak. It still didn’t make sense why it did this, of course. Why did the demon king “capture” some heroes?

Why keep them alive?

The heroes went through something similar to Alexis. They saw the fields of demonic spires, the vast lands. The demons read their minds, for sure. What was the purpose? Did they use the heroes’ mana to help their capture of the world?

Or use their minds to help improve or feed their own? Or were they looking for something in the heroes’ minds? Or was it just a kind of parasitic or herding behavior, that the captured heroes were “farmed” for something?

I felt like I wasn’t truly understanding all the pieces that were now available to me. My trees also searched the mountain world for daemolite, and we found it everywhere. I was fairly sure I would find it in the Threeworlds, too.

The demons had rift gates, and these rift gates were the way to open paths across worlds. We also knew, at least from a simple guess, that these daemolite were meant to mark their presence to the demons.

Back home we had accumulated daemolite over the years, since our discovery of their purpose, but we had yet to destroy them. Not until we figured out how to manipulate it or at least mislead it.

I had one of the wild ideas to plant the daemolite on the moon and lure the demon king there instead. The fight against the demon king would happen somewhere away from population centers, and we could, if we needed to, blow up the moon. Or use the daemolite to subtly control the rift gates.

Or they could be two entirely independent things. Daemolites were just nothing more than location markers, and once sufficient worlds “locked” onto a world, the daemolites served no other function. If rift gates didn’t rely on daemolites for any sort of specific targeting beyond locating it as a world, then destroying daemolites may be futile.

It was all speculation at this point.

We took full advantage of the demon king not attacking us to fully prepare ourselves for the fight. Roon was especially keen on unleashing hell on the demon king for a distance. The heroes themselves made plans for failures, and Ken walked through quite a few gimmicks that he thought would be commonly seen in such immobile bosses.

It was surprisingly insightful, and in hindsight, it was actually quite common to see immobile bosses in earlier games, especially side scrollers.

“Ready?” I asked everyone present, spread throughout the theater of war. They would all launch attacks from their respective positions and then all head toward the demon king.

Everyone gave their signal. We were all going to hit it together with long-range weapons. An all-out attack, from everyone, and then we’d see what happened. Edna and the close-range heroes would move in then. Lumoof would move to support them with healing.

Everyone unleashed their skills as the entire world was momentarily flooded with side effects of using so much magic in a short period of time. The mages launched a massive volley of long-range fireballs, magical missiles, and other kinds of energy blasts. Chung shipped fifty large hero-items through my abilities and used them to shoot a barrage of hero-powered ballista bolts.

Momentarily, there was enough magic flying through the skies that everyone, even those without magic, could feel a pulse in the air. Men and women from villages an entire continent away could feel the vibrations caused by so much magic.

The close-range heroes Hafiz and Kelly both had to stay back.

Roon also used his domain ability to fire star-mana bombs at the demon king. The attacks landed within a span of an hour, and for a moment, the world was greeted with an earthquake that could be felt throughout the entire world. This explosion was bigger than the minefield we had for the previous demon king. There were more heroes attacking, coupled with Alka’s star-mana bombs.

The explosion was so intense that it would scar that plot of land with magical residue for decades and cause tremendous magical instability for at least months, but in time, it would heal.

As it always did.

I could sense that the attacks landed, because there was a momentary weakness in the demonic energies, and I felt it ebb in the ground beneath and around us.

Then a pulse and another strong shake. The dust had not settled, but the heroes continued to attack.

They were not going to wait for it to transform. A rookie mistake, and Ken strictly reminded them to double-tap, even if it seemed dead. Roon waited, however, since we didn’t have that many star-mana bombs.

As the magical attacks provided cover fire, Edna was the first to approach, confident that she could survive anything the demon king threw at it.

The attacks kept on going, and for a moment, we felt the world suddenly tear. A rift opened right around where the demon king once was, and then we sensed demon champions from throughout the world vanish before they reappeared around the demon king.

From those rifts, the demons counterattacked with magical explosions.

“It’s still transforming!” Chung said, his eyes glowed with some kind of sight-ability. “Don’t let it finish.” He recharged his array of magic ballistas, and another volley was unleashed.

The second volley mostly smashed into the demon champions. They took the hit on behalf of their king and were vaporized by the star-mana-charged bolts.

The land around the demon king had transformed into a huge crater, a result of all the weapons we deployed, and there was a thick layer of fire, plasma, dust, and dirt whipped up by all the explosions.

Through my spiritual sight, my view of the demon king was not obscured by dust, only interrupted by the sparks of magic in the air. I saw it transforming and splitting apart and then, for a brief second, a surge in magical energy from within the demon king. Immediately, energy beams fired outward, aimed at the heroes and also our array of weapons.

The heroes dodged, and some of the weapons were destroyed. Our shields couldn’t fully block the beam. It was still strong enough to destroy my shields and some. Only Edna’s ability allowed it to take the hit head-on.

At the same time, the demon champions that survived Chung’s volley of ballista bolts started to fuse, and a few turned into the supercannon-type demons. This transformation happened incredibly quickly, far faster than what I’d seen or heard, and once completed, they added cover fire and fired a constant ray of demonic energy.

The rift sent more demon champions through. The heroes weaved through the magical beams and moved closer. Ranged attacks needed longer charge times and just were not as powerful as their mid- or close-range attacks or skills.

Meanwhile, I kept my focus locked on the demon king. My artificial minds supported the wider battle, and we spawned trees as fast as we could. Beetles from these trees supported the larger battlefield as the attack on the demon king seemed to rouse the regular demons out of their routine and caused them to attack their nearby kingdoms.

My trees also tried to close in on the demon king.

“Let’s shift to close combat.” Hafiz dodged a massive beam of energy overhead, his magical shield battered from all the attacks. The supercannon-type demon champion also blanketed the battlefield with its rays and projectiles.

The earth rumbled again, and this time, I felt a presence inject itself into the ground. It moved toward us.

My roots spread to intercept it, and then something blew up from beneath my subsidiary trees. Or tried to. My roots managed to hold the rocks in place. Another demon champion type surged out of the ground, and it looked like a spiky hedgehog.

I didn’t hesitate, and in those moments, my roots pierced it quite easily. For a moment, I seemed to have gotten it. It should’ve disintegrated.

But the demon king wouldn’t let its army of demons die.

Then a pulse of demonic energy spread outward as I thought I saw the demon king’s energy splinter into a thousand pieces.

The spiky demonic hedgehog, skewered by my roots, glowed and, empowered by demonic energy from the king itself, revived. Multiple champions throughout the battlefield, some killed earlier, were instantly revived by that demonic energy.

“It revives destroyed champions. That’s a new trick,” Chung commented, partly in bewilderment. I was amazed that it had an Edna-like skill. Essentially an army of undying.

The champions themselves were still quite weak, even with the slightly enhanced power, so it didn’t take much effort to crush them, not with my current levels, but they kept reviving. I skewered the demonic hedgehog again and then wrapped my roots around it. I crushed it, but I didn’t move fast enough.

And yes, even as I thought it was dead, it wriggled and revived once there was another pulse from the demon king.

“Focus on the demon king!” Edna had already closed in on the main body, a large blob of demonic energy that started to swirl… And then suddenly, it released something strange.

Souls. Spirits.

Three dead heroes and then demonic flesh gathered around those souls.

Kelly and Adrian recognized them and screamed. Kelly immediately charged in her star-mana armor.

The flesh shaped into surprisingly lifelike versions of the dead heroes.

“Kelly! It’s us! Don’t you recognize us?” one of the demonic-fleshed heroes said in an alien but incredibly lifelike voice, but I saw an intense gathering of demonic energy. “What are you doing?”

“Edna! Intercept! It’s a trap!” I commanded as my roots immediately surged out and attempted to attack the “dead heroes.” “Kelly, retreat!”

But Kelly didn’t listen, my roots didn’t do enough damage, and once she got close enough, an intense beam of demonic energy blasted outward from the “demonic hero.” Edna couldn’t get there in time. My wooden shields and Colette’s magic barrier appeared, and we blocked a large bit of the blast, but that attack was no weaker than the demon king’s deathrays, so the heroine still took a bad hit.

The demon hero disintegrated, its energy spent, and there were two of the demonic flesh heroes left.

Lumoof quickly moved aside to assist, and we saw her soul fluctuate and weaken. Her skin was charred, like she had just walked through an intense fire. Had we not blocked it, I was sure that would’ve instantly killed her. “She’s out.” Lumoof lifted her and immediately retreated as fast as he could. She would need intense healing, and the demon’s energies were so strong it even injected itself into her body.

I vaguely sensed the presence of a demonic curse.

“That’s fucking low,” Chung cursed, and they kept up their volleys at the main blob. It was irritating, though, because the demon champions kept reviving, and even when defeated, they would only remain dead for fifteen minutes or so. The pulses would revive them, and once revived, they would force all the heroes to be on the defense.

It was so irritating that both Johann and Roon directed their attention on the demon champions and concentrated their attacks on the champions to redirect some of the “aggro” and open up some attack windows. The heroes could not attack and defend at the same time, and I could instantly see why this demon king won the first round.

This was one pain in the ass.

Prabu and Colette naturally focused on the other two demonic heroes, and the other two demonic hero-lookalikes just looked at the remaining Mountainworld hero and smiled creepily. “Adrian!”

Adrian cursed. “Don’t speak to me! You’re not them. Don’t fucking pretend to be them.” He retaliated with magical attacks, and the demon heroes blocked it with magic of their own.

“But we are! Come. Join us! Join our rebellion against the Puppeteers!” they said with a smile. “Why do we serve the Puppeteers, anyway?”

They moved incredibly quickly, with speeds that did not seem weaker than the heroes.

How? How did the demon king animate these lookalikes that even had some almost-hero-tier abilities? I was very curious what kind of world this demon king came from. What kind of environment created this demon king?

Colette, Prabu, and Chung, the three heroes in “middle-range,” all shared a glance. “He needs help.”

I surveyed the battlefield then. Roon and Johann kept destroying the demon champions, but this took all their time. Edna and Hafiz were both in close range, and they hacked away at the massive demon king blob. They seemed to be doing damage, but they didn’t have much window to assist others, since the blob itself had close-range offensive magics and also detonated small explosions around its main body.

They were occupied, and in fact, Edna and Hafiz needed support, too.

Lumoof withdrew all the way to the rear, a good distance away from the battlefield. He was still focused on stabilizing Kelly. An army of healers was on standby, mostly from the kingdom but some from the Valthorns. They quickly got to work and suppressed the demonic curse within Kelly’s body while keeping her alive.

Lumoof’s magical energies were exceptional at healing, and she got better, but it’d be at least half a day before she could return to combat.

I needed to free up Roon and Johann to support the others. I helped to kill the demon champions with my roots, but they weren’t dying permanently. I believed there must be a way to kill them permanently. I remembered how it was possible to interrupt the demon king’s reincarnation mechanic, so it must be possible with these lesser creatures. Even if they wouldn’t die, I’d just take over these champions or at least drain that piece of demon king away, since that seemed to be the key to their revival mechanic.

Prabu decided to help, so he teleported next to Adrian and created a magical shield. It blocked one of the demon’s magical blasts. “Don’t fall for it. They’re goading you.”

“I know,” Adrian said, angry. “But I can’t help it.”

The heroes traded attacks with the demons, but I concentrated on the demon champions nearby and attacked them with my roots.

But this time, my roots pierced the body and hunted for the demon king’s energy. I found it nestled within a slightly harder part of its body.

My root snaked through the innards of the demon champion and touched it. And I absorbed it.

Strangely easy.

The demon champion crumbled, as if all the damage it took from the past suddenly took hold once more.

I immediately set out to repeat it with every demon champion. It was fairly slow as the demons traded attacks.

Edna and Hafiz both cut away at the demon king, but they couldn’t land that many hits. Not with the demon king detonating explosions. They would retreat, close in to land a cut or three, and then retreat again. Colette and Chung would then attack during the times Edna and Hafiz couldn’t land a hit.

The gaps between their attacks were also fairly long, since the demon king seemed to constantly shapeshift and would regularly release beams of intense demonic energy that they had to evade.

It was kind of a shit realization, but I realized “defensive” heroes did not perform that well. Not against this demon king where our shields just vaporized so easily, and sometimes even taking a hit behind shields still dealt too much damage. The demon king was in its own class, and the meta at that level of combat was offense and evasive abilities. Defense was useless unless they had something like Edna.

“Roon, Johann, are you able to see the demon king’s energies within the demon champion? If you can take it out, it would immediately make it crumble.” They nodded, and both switched their weapons to the mana-draining weapons and went for close-range attacks instead.

They both had some kind of mana-sight ability, and it was quite hard to spot the demon king’s energy, but the anti-mana glass worked incredibly well, and the champions’ revival was interrupted once they managed to hack through the demon champions and get to where that demon energy was stored. They crumbled when that energy was drained.

We cleared the champions quickly, and the battlefield’s bullet-hell of magical projectiles gradually became less dense. It would lessen the strain on the heroes to deal damage. With all three of us taking out the champions, it still took about two hours to eliminate all of them from the battlefield.

We were left with the shadow of heroes, and we shifted our focus to help with Adrian and Prabu. I was very curious what these two creatures were.

They weaved and dodged quickly. These demonic flesh heroes were very high quality and had the speed and power to back it up. Still, I noticed that they were still susceptible to my aura, even if just a little bit, and that slowed them a bit.

Eventually, working together with Roon and Johann, I finally stabbed my roots into one of them, and I began draining its mana.

The demonic hero screamed and shouted and then detonated itself. Or tried to. I detected its mana gathering, and my roots immediately intercepted it and interfered with its mana gathering.

Instead, it just disintegrated.

The last remaining demonic hero sensed its doom and before anything decided to detonate itself.

That very act, however, meant its magical defenses were down. Prabu immediately wrapped his magic around the demon, then flung the demonic hero high up into the sky where it detonated midair harmlessly.

Adrian was exhausted. He wasn’t as high level as the rest, and this battle weakened him. The trauma of facing his deceased friends drained him out.

“Retreat. We’ll handle it.” We were left with the main body. Kelly had stabilized, but she remained at the rear to recover under the care of the other healers.

“The demon king is hurt for sure.”

The heroes moved to attack; this time it was a clean fight. Four heroes, Edna, and the demon king. The rifts occasionally spawned demon champions, but I took care of that.

I mostly spectated this phase of the battle, occasionally helping with a shield or a root strike. My attacks still didn’t do much damage. Roon and Johann also retreated, but they also helped with cover fire. The repeated attacks from the heroes eventually weakened it, and we sensed the reduced intensity of its demonic energy, dropping over time. “Let’s end this.”

With all of its gimmicks removed, the concentrated attacks eventually destroyed the blob, and then a spire-like thing was revealed within.

I saw an immaterial energy-beam that reached for the core of the world.

The spire-like thing started to glow as it floated midair, and I detected a huge surge in corruption-type energies. Very, very familiar stuff.

This was the Rottedlands bomb all over again, and this time, I wouldn’t let it happen. Lumoof charged forward at my command, as the spire created a magical barrier around itself. The magical barrier blocked the attacks from the heroes but did not stop Lumoof, Edna, or Hafiz from going through it.

I felt my domain push through the barrier, and Lumoof touched the spire itself. At that moment, it attempted to attack us mentally.

‘Natives. Submit to us.’

[Domain has blocked attempted mental attack.]

Lumoof recoiled at the attack, but he too had a domain, and my energies flooded the spire. The spire smashed into the ground beneath us, and its energies attempted to infect the land.

But by now, my trees were everywhere in the battlefield, and my mana was ready to resist. “Destroy the spire!” I shouted, and the heroes came and unleashed hell on the spire. The spire cracked and then disintegrated into nothingness.

Not even the demon core remained. At that moment, the flesh of the demon king, much of it separated and cut off, started to transform into daemolite.

[You’ve defeated an otherworld demon king!]

[Title obtained: Multiverse Demonhunter]

[You’ve gained seven levels! You are now level 221.]

The heroes slew the demon king of the mountain world. Many others gained levels, too. More importantly, Alka leveled from his constant supply of the weapons of war and ascended to be my fifth domain-holder.

13

YEAR 208 (PART 3)

[Vine- and root-related abilities are all significantly upgraded. Your root distance has been significantly increased and the depth and range expanded.]

[Demonic Mana Resistance significantly enhanced.]

[New Domain Skill - Guardian Treants]

[You are able to spawn guardian treants near your clones or your main body. Guardian treants can act independently and fight but may not move too far from your main body or clones.]

“Eh.” I found that ability quite weak. It just added more of the same type of ability to my skill set. I already had strong support skills, and guardians…well, that didn’t add much.

I needed more offensive ability or, failing that, more movement- and mana-related abilities. Adding more flesh to the battlefield generally, well, didn’t do much.

Yet I also wondered whether that was a wise choice. I was a tree. Even with clones and more trees, I was still a tree. Was I trying to fit a round peg into a square hole?

It was tempting to believe, as one gained levels, that I would become more “all-rounded,” more “able” to do what I was not able to do before. But I was increasingly noticing that the system also forced a type on me, and doing something outside what the system considered “normal” for me generally required extensive preparation. Even then, I would still be outcompeted by those who had the right classes and optimal builds for those things.

The domain choices were really one of the rare times when the system actually allowed us to actively “steer” the direction of our powers.

This was not so for humanoids who, through their actions, could choose what class they acquired.

Monsters, on the other hand, were what they were designed to be, and evolutionary choices still had to remain linked to their core form. Therefore, now that I could somewhat modify living beings to some degree, could I therefore guide this path elsewhere? Just as I attempted to steer the development of my treefolks and my lizardpeople, I was starting to realize perhaps I missed monsters.

The creation of true anti-demon monsters would be a great start. Just as nature was often an arms race between different species, why couldn’t nature have their own counter for demons? The demons evolved indirectly, adapting the qualities of their captured world into their own, each time expanding the variety of demons, one world at a time.

I would also speculate that each demon king was also slightly different, thus adding another form of evolution to their force. My evidence was that Sabnoc was slightly different compared to the demon king of the mountain world; perhaps the ratio of “demon” and “core” was mixed slightly differently with each new spawn.

So nature had to evolve. The natural world most likely had two main ways of evolution. The first one, unique to this magical world, was the subtle evolution through the spawning process, in which the system created life out of thin air, perhaps using a blend of the existing creations. This was most apparent in the Rottedlands’ edges, where we had hybrid creatures and plants. Second was of course the supposed earth-way of accumulated surviving adaptations.

I was inclined to believe the first was the “main” evolutionary tool in this world, simply because magic and demon kings just killed everyone so quickly that the system repopulated the world with slightly better-adapted individuals.

But why let the system be the only one doing it? If I could make Treechis, why not make demon-eating hounds and beetles? Giant, demon-eating worms?

Training and equipping Valthorns with the right skills was fine and all, but evolution must consider all choices, a point I had clearly neglected, even when it was what I started with. I had trained beetles, and my artificial minds continued to make incremental improvements to better adapt them to our ongoing war on Parasiteworld. Things that artificial minds were good at.

Faster. Stronger. Bigger.

But I could do more. Especially more “radical” recreations. Different. Reconstruction from the ground up to make them more focused demon-killing machines.

Artificial minds could take one or two steps back, but they were not designed for ground-up remakes.

I could redesign them from bottom up, create stronger versions of their original form. Not just that, I could attempt to fuse the anti-mana glass or any other kinds of material into their structure to create something alien.

Weaker but different, and then incrementally improve that “weaker” type to make it more powerful.

Not just that, looking at it, could I also recreate artificial minds and improve them? I had responded to the growing need for oversight and for routine automation by adding more and more artificial minds to the problem. Patreeck assigned and allocated tasks to them.

Could we make better artificial minds and improve their hardware such that each level they gained did more?

The heroes celebrated the death of the demon king. Kelly recovered after two days of intense care.

“So…now we need to help you with your demon king,” Adrian said. “But how do you already know what’s coming?”

“Complicated story, one I’ll let you have more details of once you visit our world. But the gist of it is that Aeon can see the demon king coming. Sort of.”

“Whoa.” The two heroes were impressed. “You guys have counters for most demon kings, then?”

Prabu shook his head. “Not for the one that’s coming. Aeon said the next demon king will be a massive, heavily physical, super-magic resistance, anti-magic type. Something we have no counter for. Not directly. We don’t have a physical hero in our lineup, and sadly, the two of you are not pure physical types, either. So we’ll have to make do with larger numbers and, hopefully, better equipment.”

The heroes gained some levels, but strangely, it wasn’t very high. The four heroes and many of those who joined the battle also gained the same title as I did. A useless trinket. Even those who assisted indirectly obtained the title. The four heroes from our world gained four to five levels each, though Adrian and Kelly, being lower leveled, gained about ten.

A big party was held throughout the kingdoms, though the atmosphere was somewhat tense among the elites. My presence partly dampened the euphoria. The kings were fearful, and the worries had many aspects.

Would we leave? What did the heroes want now? Who would do the cleanup of the demonic corruption that covered so much of the world? How did they maintain their power above the temples, or would the kings’ power and influence be usurped by the temples again?

The heroes were mostly oblivious. They were just happy to have the weight off their shoulders. The commoners partied like it truly was the end of the world.

“Have you guys attended parties like this?” Adrian asked. “Like, back home.”

“Yes. Smaller ones, nothing like this. This truly is something else.” Decades of constant warfare finally brought to an end, and the kings spared no expense to commemorate this momentous victory. Every kingdom contributed a small sum to the party, but combined, it was a truly lavish thing.

A moment of bliss for the common folk. A moment for the heroes to forget the sacrifices and losses along the way.

A moment to drown in the seemingly endless barrels of alcohol. A revenge party for a decade-long war. Because these moments may be all they had until the next demon king came along.

The nobles made the effort to approach the heroes, and their questions were meant to get a sense of how we were back home. An attempt to understand where the kingdoms stood in my world. Of course, I didn’t expect Prabu to know what to answer.

“The Central Continent’s ruled by Aeon. Directly,” Prabu said to a noble of Mountainworld

“What about the temples?”

“They rule the other continents, well, indirectly via their influence on the actual rulers, but the Central Continent is pretty much de facto controlled by Aeon and his organization.”

The nobles all naturally poked and attempted to drive a wedge between myself and the heroes. “Why do heroes accept such an arrangement?”

Prabu stared at the noble curiously. “Why not? Not all heroes seek to rule, and Aeon established a competent military dictatorship to support his realm. His realm is not perfect but largely decently managed.”

“Don’t heroes want to create their own vision of the world?”

Prabu laughed at that. “I think that only applies if the locals don’t even know what we want. Then we have no choice but to create it.”

“How is life in the Central Continent? What do kings and nobles do?”

Prabu frowned. “Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t see them much. All of my dealings with the world are handled by the Valthorns.”

“Why do you let them treat you like that?” a noble said. “Surely a hero can handle his own affairs.”

It amused me that they goaded the wrong person. They would’ve had better success with the other heroes, who mostly remained with Adrian and Kelly. Maybe they would try it with them later. Prabu just laughed at that. “Eh, I’m quite happy to have a small army of assistants.”

“Do you not feel like you’re some menagerie animal?”

“Why would I? My needs are met, and Aeon may be my best chance to find a way home.”

“Maybe Aeon already has a way and has been withholding it from you in order to use you to fight his wars.”

“The only wars I’m fighting are against demons and my hunger. But maybe you guys should pay Aeon’s clone body a visit and book a tour to our world.” It wasn’t exactly a secret by now that I sent heroes to their world. “After all, now that Aeon’s clone body is here, he won’t be going anywhere.”

The nobles winced.

“Eh. It’s quite a pleasant trip!” Prabu went on a promotional spree. “It’s safe, and as long as any of the Valtrian Order’s guys accompany you, you can be assured of your safety. Food’s good, and the accommodations are great! There is some really interesting scenery to see, too. I was told the valleys and the Freshkan colleges are super popular with the younger nobility.”

I somewhat cringed, so I focused on the other group of heroes. Some of the nobles approached them, but they were adept at dodging, and eventually, they left the actual party.

“I’ve got a word of advice,” Chung immediately said to Adrian. “If you’re gonna start your own kingdom, don’t stick your thing in too many places, and don’t have too many kids.”

“You have kids?” Adrian looked at Chung like he said something funny.

“No. But I’ve seen what my predecessors went through, and dealing with the mess isn’t fun. They’ll fight, and it broke my predecessor’s heart when his wives and children fought with each other.”

Adrian shrugged and nodded.

Chung held his hand. “I’m serious. One of the things we heroes lack, surprisingly, is self-control. With all this power in our hands, we can get our way easily. But there are consequences, especially with people and with organizations. If you build a kingdom, remember that the kingdom exists because you exist. Once you die, your kingdom collapses with you.”

“Is that why you guys have not made your own kingdoms?” Kelly asked. “When we came to this world, that’s what they promised us. We’d be kings and queens, heroes, we’d have the man of our dreams…”

Chung nodded. “It’s a lie. The beautiful cake they sold us is filled with worms. Mostly. You gotta realize which parts are not filled with worms.”

“Then…” Kelly looked sad. “Why are we here? What should we do?”

“Survive. Until we all meet our eventual doom at the hand of some future demon king.”

“That’s sad. It makes me feel like what we’ve struggled through so far is pointless.”

“It’s not. Even in our world, we eventually die. We are doomed, either disease or old age, or many other reasons. Yet our lives back home didn’t feel meaningless.”

“I thought going to class all the time was pretty meaningless,” Adrian quipped.

“Meaning is something you can create. Our predecessors tried different things. One went on a hunt for good wines; another dabbled in fashion and arts. They took what they liked and dived deeper into it. For me, I quite like killing demons, so I’m trying to be even better at it,” Chung answered frankly. “Or you can be a snack addict like Prabu.”

The two other heroes heard him but did not respond.

Around the same time, I also sent my trees to explore the area underneath the demon king. My trees spawned in where that demon king once camped, and I detected strands of daemolite that went really deep into the ground. The ley lines were tainted by demonic energy, though they would fade in time.

I sensed the taint weakening each day, and eventually the ley lines would flush out all the demonic energy.

The demon king had somehow pulled the ley lines of the entire region to this single spot, and now that the demon king was gone, these ley lines were slowly drifting apart. This would be a good time to pin the ley line together to form a dungeon, but then I wanted to see how a world recovered.

Defeating the demon king did not answer the question I had.

What was the demon’s win condition? How did they win, and what determined how long the world held up?

From what Lilies said, I knew that a demon king could remain undefeated for decades, almost centuries, but still the world did not fall. Yet, from Snek’s world, their world clearly collapsed quickly.

This was comparable to a doctor trying to diagnose a novel disease, and now we were trying to figure out the mechanics of the disease. A mutating virus.

Concurrently, I started to clean up the corruption in the areas designated to be under my rule.

It didn’t take more than a week to clear my marked lands of the demonic corruption, my energies easily overwhelming the demon’s presence.

“What’s the plan with this location?” My domain holders didn’t stay long; Edna, Roon, and Johann returned home. There was also the topic of names for this new nation, and I decided to call it Branchhold.

I would like to first increase the tree population and increase my total mana output. Later on, I would relocate some of the void archmages to this world and begin surveying the skies for other worlds.

My astral sight was enhanced now that my clone body was here, and already I could see that this world could access Threeworlds and Treehome and also some other further worlds. It was the interstellar equivalent of expansion.

I decided to open my land to refugees and got some of my experienced Valtrian Order administrators and mid-level Valthorns to come over to Mountainworld to set up the new nation of Branchhold.

In time, I would like to introduce the Canari to this world and also implement offshoots of existing institutions.

As for the lands outside, I also cleared a few “safe” paths to the rest of the inhabited worlds in order to kickstart the migration and resettlement, but for now, the rest of the demonic corruption remained.

The locals of Mountainworld called it the demon-touched lands, and they spawned hybrids and demons quite similar to the Rottedlands but still different in their own way. This was useful research, and I wanted to take another opportunity to examine them. It would be good to study them and compare them to the specimens we had back home.

Alka actually gained his domain while bunkered somewhere far from the battlefield, though he was actively supporting the battle by giving the bombs some extra “power-ups.” As a field scientist, he could amplify the strength of certain equipment, and that included the bombs, and I figured through those contributions, he gained the experience needed to get through to the domain.

He naturally joined my pantheon for “life insurance.”

He got the domain of [Explosions], and the first extremely unusual ability of his domain, [Always a Bomb], was his ability to be a Living Bomb. Essentially, he could detonate a bomb around himself without actually needing a bomb of varying strength and up to the strongest bomb he had ever made. The number of bombs he could release was pretty much scaled to the strength of the bomb.

At the same time, the [Field Scientist] class returned to me, since, once he had his domain, his class no longer existed. It was merged into the [Explosions] domain, along with all the skills.

In a way, that sort of made Alka very dangerous. He could theoretically nuke himself next to me if he wanted to, and I was really thankful that I had other bodies as my own personal insurance.

Then again, that was the same class any offensive-geared domain holder would reach. A hero, or a mage-with-a-domain, would probably be similarly dangerous, so there really was no need for excessive paranoia.

I would need Stella to get her domain, and we should largely have the pieces needed to really jam up the demons’ process.

“Too bad we missed a chance to send some roots through that rift,” Stella said to me privately. “I would love to see what kind of world that demon king came from.”

In the heat of battle, that was not an easy thing to do. The rifts were not common, either. Since this set of demons spawned their own demons by manipulating existing ley lines, they did not require much reinforcements from their home world, except during that final battle with the demon king.

With the festivities mostly over, we had a demon king to prepare for, and this time, I wanted to attempt to jam the demon king’s teleportation process.

14

YEAR 209

Lumoof returned to Sandworld alone. The place had not changed, but this time, we were not here for the sand or to study the solar radiation.

We wanted to mess with the mechanisms used to send the demon king through the worlds and see whether we could essentially shoot down an intercontinental ballistic missile while it was ascending from its silo or mess with the delivery vehicle such that the ICBM could not even hit its intended target.

My plan was simple. We’d seen the mechanisms used to create the portal, and the goal was to simply smash them before the demon king could use it. After all, the demon king itself may not be able to stop me, since it had to teleport to another world. If it did interrupt and attacked me, that was a success.

If it lured the demon in the core out of the core, that was also a success.

If that failed, I’d attempt to mess with the mana balance of the portal and see whether I could stop the demon king from teleporting.

Any delay was a success, even if they still eventually made the trip.

“I don’t think it’s ready yet,” Lumoof said as we stood above where the hole once was. I could sense the massive pit to the core beneath us. There was no structure here, no tower of void energy. Not yet.

Just the rift gates built into the walls of the pit. We could destroy it, of course. So we did, but I reckoned the demons would be able to regenerate these gates fairly easily. These rift gates, built into the walls of the pits, looked flimsier than the normal gates.

During the day, the pit was covered. We took advantage of the daytime to enter avatar mode, and my roots pierced through the ground beneath us. It was a demon champion that functioned as a mobile cover, and it wasn’t hard to kill it once I found where its core was.

The path between the two worlds was solid, and now, from this side, I sensed tremendous amounts of core-void blend that had been injected into it.

But I couldn’t interact with the path. Only Stella could, which made me wonder. I knew it was possible for a normal person to gain void mana, and I myself already had small quantities of star mana. But could we train a regular person to possess star mana or to possess any other kinds of mana?

Anyway, I digressed. I focused back on the pit and its immediate surroundings. How did the demon king “create” those structures, and could we destroy them, copy them, or change them?

There was currently nothing around us. Except for the structure at the edges of the pit, which we had destroyed. Yet I had a feeling it wouldn’t be so easy.

The next likely candidate was the demon within the world. Maybe it coordinated the transportation and the opening of the rift. It must have had a mechanism to “create” the structures needed to open the gates to the worlds beyond.

If so, I’d try to intercept it.

“We have two years left,” Lumoof repeated. “It’s not here yet.”

“But the rifts will open soon. Let’s head further underground and try to reach those rift gates and observe from this end.”

Lumoof gulped. “Some days, I think this avatar ability is cursed.”

Back home, war preparations continued, and I used the expanded range of my roots to continue my expansions into the sea and also underground.

There was nothing much to find in the sea, not with my now-increased range. Even underground, it was more of the same thing.

Still, with the expanded range, I could reach even further out of the sea and even deeper, and for once, I began to connect to a string of smaller islands further out to sea from the Central Continent mainland.

They were places I could never reach before, and with it, there was more mana. I realized the folly of my earlier attempt at the womb of the demon king. I was still underpowered, and if I sought to unmake the demons with mana, I would need a lot more than the mana of just one continent.

I needed the mana of at least an entire world. Maybe two or three.

So I shifted my attention to Parasiteworld, now in a state of flux. Did I still need this world?

I needed a world where mana was plentiful, a world that could fuel the war that was to come, and this wasn’t it.

Actually, as I reviewed all my clones, I concluded both the moon and Parasiteworld should be on the chopping block. Cometworld, too, but since it had the value of traveling through the void-space, I decided it was worth keeping despite the mana shortfall.

My moon seed was now a waste, even if it was the first experiment we did. It had no mana production, and Stella’s attempt to mess with the void paths into our world did not work. Not even when she tried to block the astral paths on the moon.

It was the equivalent of trying to stop an out-of-control truck with a piece of paper. A really thick black piece of paper. Naturally, it didn’t work, so I decided I would recall my moon-clone. It was the “easiest” to recall, since it was so close to me that Stella could open a portal to the moon. Thus, the opportunity cost to redeploy was the lowest, if someday I were to find some other use case for a moon base.

I felt my close tree shrivel, shrink, and then…vanish.

[Clone Seed recalled. Ten years of cooldown before it can be redeployed.]

Ah fuck.

At least I knew it took ten years. A blink of an eye, actually.

My immediate thought was to deploy it on Threeworlds. If I could use it to unlock the new soul forge color, I would be willing to make enemies for it.

With the enhanced mana from Mountainworld, we renewed our offensive against the demons on the demonic parasite world. Parasiteworld was also linked or near its own set of worlds, though I couldn’t see them clearly.

The sky was littered with the effects of the collapsed void path that acted like clouds.

With more mana at my disposal, I could maintain and support more trees and more beetles, and so we expanded the controlled areas to cover slightly more places.

Over the years, I realized that it was better to claim territory that led to a demon structure I wanted or a place I wanted my Treechikomas to investigate than to just claim the land for the sake of it.

Like a blob, we gave up our land where we found nothing and used the saved mana to push elsewhere. We captured a few demonic spawning pools, and these ones just generated more of these parasites.

It improved my understanding of these parasites but not much else.

At the same time, as my tree looked up to the cloudy astral skies, I made a note to send Lumoof into the demon’s pit once the skies began to clear. Maybe there was something we could learn about how the demon found new worlds to target.

That said, I thought I may have to wait decades for it to target another world.

Still, I could discover another world this way, by hitchhiking on the demon’s targeting system. I could front-run its invasion by sending Lumoof to the other side.

A future plan.

The demons did not take any precautionary measures even after our invasion into the core. That was, of course, strange. If they were intelligent, they should’ve done something.

But they didn’t. Or maybe this wasn’t something they normally reacted to, so they didn’t know how to react.

In any case, it took about the same time to reach the horizontal tunnels again, and we found the lesser demons massing.

There were more spawning pools, and as we explored the tunnels, we realized that these tunnels were everywhere. In a world so large, there was no way I could find all the tunnels without a thorough magical scan of the world.

The demons resembled the creatures we fought on the surface. Hardy, physical, and tremendous magical resistance, and had a soft underbelly, and some known weak points.

My domain holders had already made sketches and gave briefings on how to fight these monsters, training for the Valthorns and mock-demons made from stone elementals.

I also used my [dream academy] to simulate battle against these demons. Because of the physical nature of these demons, it took quite a bit of effort for my Valthorns to learn mana-less combat methods. We also distributed skill seeds to help my Valthorns augment their arsenal of skills, so that they could have some mana-less skills.

Honestly, the skill-spell issue was still confusing to me. They both felt like they should be one and the same, and yet they were not. It remained one of the puzzles of the system that I didn’t really understand.

Now that there was only two years left, the energies of the rift began to gather, and it was now possible to get a general sense of where the rifts would appear.

It was going to be in the Eastern Continent again. Naturally, the Aivan Triumvirs were not pleased to learn they would once again face a demon king on their land. It felt like they just had one a few decades ago.

The energies from the rift were still unstable, and because of that, I couldn’t properly pin down the location of the demon king.

Not yet, anyway. Maybe next year I would get a location, and then we could start planning an ambush.

For now, it was time for the smaller rifts to appear, for the lesser demons and champions to grace our world.

The first rifts opened almost at the end of the year, and the lizards walked out. We didn’t intervene immediately; my deployed forces mostly just monitored their movements. We knew from Parasiteworld that there were some differences in the demons’ abilities and behaviors between the demon world and our world, but we were not sure how significant this gap was and whether that was a common thing across all types of demons.

We watched as the Aivan forces tried to fight these physical demons to relatively decent success and eventually concluded that they were actually weaker here.

Their bodies were so used to the dry, mana-less environment that when they came to our world, their bodies hungrily soaked up the ambient mana, and it changed their tough bodies.

We did notice that when sufficient numbers of these demons were around, the ambient mana decreased significantly and made spelling more laborious.

As a whole, though, the regular mobs were weaker, but the demon king wouldn’t be subject to the same restrictions. It was likely, from extrapolating our initial findings, that the demon king would have some kind of anti-magic ability.

“Maybe we’ll get some global anti-magic?” Edna speculated. “We haven’t seen global-effect demon kings for some time.”

“You sound like you’re looking forward to it,” Roon said. “Those were unpleasant times, from what I heard from the survivors.”

“No. I mean, that’s just what it is. Trends repeat themselves, and the demons eventually rehash the same ability types. A global magic interruption is likely.”

But how did we circumvent a global anti-magic ability anyway? We would once again see the collapse of the global [message] system, but if it was anti-magic, it could do more than that. I recalled that they could even interrupt my communication with beetles.

The previous heroes made “transmission towers,” something I was only able to replicate to a much lesser degree. Again, we would need to work around the magic with skill and system.

I made a note to train a physical-only Valthorn and relayed the message to elites.

“This is a bit too late, isn’t it?” I heard one of the Valthorns naturally grumble about my request. “If the coming demon king is a physical-type, how are we going to get anyone ready?”

I knew, of course. But if the demon kings eventually repeated themselves, a physical-type domain holder would eventually have value. Maybe fifty years, maybe two hundred years, but eventually, we would encounter this type of demon king again.

I acknowledged my failure to consider this anti-magic, physical-only type of demon king, so the right thing to do was to prepare for it.

Essentially, as we reevaluated why we failed to prepare for this type of demon king, we began to realize that we were guessing what kind of demon king was coming, but that was actually unacceptable. For us, as an institution, I had to predict at least fifty to one hundred years ahead in order to prepare someone for that eventual outcome. Fifty years was the estimated amount of time it took to train a domain holder.

I wasn’t thinking far enough. We needed to brainstorm and start to prepare for the demon kings after this one. Not just the coming one.

I needed to look at where we failed and what kinds of powers we could have. I needed to be Batman and prepare for every eventuality.

In fact, this was where the heroes’ pop culture and media knowledge became useful. Ken and the rest of the heroes were more than happy to brainstorm, during the lulls and rest periods, the kinds of creatures that may exist on other worlds.

The ideas were wild. Vampires, werewolves, slimes, spiders, eldritch horrors, human-like creatures, machines, supervillains, goblins and ogres, golems, oversize snakes. They essentially recited all kinds of monsters they could remember and tried to imagine demon-king versions of those creatures.

It was a fun exercise, and I found it strangely calming. It was great to be reminded of stories from our world, and it also reawakened my memories of the games I played, the books I used to read, and the stories I’d heard.

My domain holders, except Lumoof, who was still in the sand world spying on the demons, were naturally horrified by the kind of creatures they imagined.

There were also some really good ones that made me think, such as the possibilities for one of the captured heroes to be somehow turned into a demon king, perhaps through the demonic parasites, or something that was non-physical like a ghost, or a water-based demon king. Or a weapon-demon king. Ken, as a joke, suggested a beaver-demon king.

I personally suspected a water-based demon king was the least likely of them all.

That said, even though they were speculations, it made sense to make some preparations and start training individuals to be able to counter or mitigate some of the threats. I wouldn’t see the payoff now, but fifty years down the road, who knew what could make a difference?

In this entire world, I was probably one of the best placed to make this kind of moonshot investment. So I must.

We didn’t face much difficulty with the demonic mobs, so the heroes could breathe easy. Prabu suggested that Adrian and Kelly take a visit to our world. A point I agreed with, since they would fight here, so I had my agents in Mountainworld make the necessary arrangements.

The nobles were not very pleased, but what could they do?

Adrian and Kelly made the trip to my clone, and I sent them here, right to Freshka.

The transportation went well, and there were no system prompts.

Personally, I was pleasantly surprised that there were no punishments or system problems from sending gods summoned to another world. My personal gut feeling was that they didn’t think it was sufficiently likely, so they didn’t create any security measures.

Maybe they might, for a future batch, if they realized that heroes were fighting in places they were not “supposed” to. Oh well.

The two heroes were most fascinated by the assortment of snacks and the relative modernity of Freshka.

Their first stop?

The hero logs. I supposed it was like a guestbook that the heroes had to sign every time they came here.

15

YEAR 209 (PART 2)

The heroes arrived in our world for their first trip. They looked quite afraid to approach my clone, but when they arrived, they didn’t look back or turn around. Instead, they were quickly whisked through the tunnels and out to Freshka where the rest of the Valthorns attended to them.

Snacks and food followed, and a health check, just to make sure they didn’t suffer any weird symptoms from moving worlds.

Even here, under the biolab’s inspection, these otherworld heroes largely used the same underlying template. No significant variation in their soul spring or natures, unless…it wasn’t something I was able to see. Maybe there was another layer to the soul or an ability to look further into the soul that I’d not seen so far.

The heroes, on the other hand, quickly asked to visit the Hero Logs.

“This is it?” They stared at the strange book, and then Kelly touched it first. I sensed a surge in star mana, and she went into in a trance. Her body glowed, faintly, and I sensed her own star mana enter the book.

The book remained a black box to me, even now, and as more and more heroes used it, I felt the magical energies within the book seem to change slightly. It was a blend of all their mana and yet different.

Kelly eventually snapped out of the trance, and she immediately sat down. Prabu offered her snacks and some tea, said a few words, and then walked away. “Take your time. I thought about what I saw and learned for weeks. It’s all right if you want to cry or want to just go somewhere quiet and shout for a while.”

She looked a bit teary eyed and then nodded. “…I’ll be fine. Yeah. I’ll be okay.”

Prabu nodded and walked to rejoin Adrian. “Let’s give her some space.” Adrian looked at Kelly, and Kelly just nodded.

It was his turn. He went into an hour-long trance, then he immediately fell to the floor. Adrian froze and then sat on a sofa right next to Kelly. He rubbed his head and then asked, “Can I sleep here? I think I need to sleep on it.”

“Yeah. It’s fine. No one comes here except us. Maybe except Stella, Kei, and Ken, but they can’t use the book. Food and water is in that cabinet over there, Aeon’s powers preserve them so they’ll last. I’m going to go get something to eat, and we’ll come back after that. Do not run anywhere. This valley is normally off-limits. If you need anything, the Valtrian guys are outside.”

Adrian nodded and settled himself on the sofa. “Yeah. I’ll be all right, I think.”

Prabu and Colette left, and it was just Adrian and Kelly in the chamber of the heroes’ journals.

“You’re gonna sleep?” Kelly asked.

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” Kelly sat and leaned back onto the sofa. “Maybe I should, too.”

“I’m not sleeping with you,” Adrian responded.

“Of course not.” Kelly laughed. “I’ll be here.”

They both took a nap. Prabu and Colette returned about three hours later and found both of them still sleeping.

“Huh. That really knocked them out. Aeon, can you let me know when they are awake?”

“Sure.”

“Is the entire continent like this?”

“No, not really. This level of development was only present here,” Prabu said. “But some of the other cities are becoming more modern, and more…Earthlike. It’ll take a few decades, though, before they get anywhere near this.” They walked the streets of Freshka. Freshka’s city core had become denser, and some of the buildings began to tower into the skies, built into or integrated with the Giant Attendant Trees that covered it.

My massive Giant Attendant Trees served as the skyscraper-equivalent of their central support structures, and craftsmen built rooms and floors anchored to my trees. For now, beetles remained the primary source of fast transport between places, especially for voluminous and bulky goods, but due to demand, there was also a basic teleportation network in place. “It feels like home, in a different way.”

“Yeah. It’s crowded. At the street level, it feels like any of the big cities.” Prabu nodded. They walked on elevated paths, separated from the common folk. A network of paths and ropeways crisscrossed Freshka, linking buildings to each other. The Valtrians built a network of dedicated paths for their own use so that it was easier for them to mobilize and transport goods around Freshka, away from general public traffic. We also had tunnels for that purpose, but the Valtrians advised that visibility had a value of its own. It was also good practice for my spies.

“Smells like it, too.” Adrian nodded. “I wasn’t expecting to smell coffee. It’s not present in Mountainworld.”

Prabu smiled. “I’ll stop you there. Coffee was not invented by heroes. They already have it natively as a supplement, and it’s popular with mages and priests as a study aid.”

“Huh.” Adrian nodded. “Does coffee do anything?”

“Yeah. There are magically enhanced and skill-enhanced versions. Some of them can essentially function like drugs back home. I’ve seen some Southerner soldiers have them to help them keep watch through the night.”

“Shit, that’s really wild. We could’ve used something like that on Mountainworld to help with the demons,” Adrian said. “So many alarms missed because someone dozed off.”

Kelly popped in. “Sounds like something to trade. Maybe we can be coffee importers and connoisseurs back in Mountainworld. I’ve always liked cafe culture.”

“Tea culture is stronger here, and honestly, I don’t even know what good coffee tastes like.” Prabu laughed. “Did your parents ever let you try coffee? They always told me it’s an adult drink and I had to turn eighteen before I could try it.”

“You have strict parents,” Adrian said. “I always get coffee when I have to cram for an exam. But it’s homemade stuff, and my mom’s not very good with the coffee machine, so it isn’t that great.”

Kelly coughed. “Privileged. All I get is premixed stuff.”

Adrian rolled his eyes at the lady. Prabu just grinned. “It’s all right. There are some good ones, though their tastes would probably not match what we have back home. Honestly, the only one who could judge is Stella.”

“Oh, speaking of which, when are we meeting her?”

“Now.” They entered the building through the elevated path and into a large, airy chamber. This was normally the top floor of one of the city’s many eateries and tea houses. Stella was already there. A Valtrian nodded and then left through the stairs. “Stella, meet Adrian and Kelly, the heroes of Mountainworld.”

Stella smiled. “Well met. It’s nice to meet someone from home without having to get a notification that someone died.”

Adrian didn’t get it. “Sorry, what does that mean?”

“It means the earlier batch must die before I meet someone new.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, that was my bad. It was a morbid thing to say. Come, have some tea. Have they given these to you before?”

“I’ve had tea,” Kelly said. “But these are different?”

“Ah yes. Then you must try it.” Stella smiled. “Come. Sit.”

Separately, Alka, now with a domain, got the full briefing—a briefing that made his eyes widen and made him shake in excitement.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t know or guess, but it was a strong hunch. He had suspected I had intended to stop the demons somehow, but now it was clear that I intended to somehow hack the system, and he naturally understood why I sent Lumoof to do all those otherworldly missions.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t tell you all this before,” Edna said.

“No. It makes perfect sense now.” The part on the Aiva’s warning of the eventual end of the heroes’ summon and the full extent of the discussion was also revealed. He naturally had far more questions than I did.

Things he would take some time to figure out on his own.

“More importantly, now that you have a domain and the protection of my pantheon, I can now send you to the other worlds, too. If you can figure out something, that’ll be great.”

The next one for the domain would be Stella.

16

YEAR 210

The Aivan forces didn’t have much problem with the weakened anti-mana demons, but they struggled really badly against the demon champions.

The demon champions that came through were the supersize demons, larger than walkers, and it was their sheer size that made them difficult to kill. They were vulnerable, but it was really hard to reach that vulnerable spot without using magic.

Ballista and bows worked, but they needed to pack sufficient punch to actually deal damage without getting crushed or killed by the anti-mana sludge they released.

Grandmaster Engka, naturally, appealed for help, and we continued to supply them with both weapons and manpower to deal with the anti-mana champions.

The heroes came, too. Chung and Hafiz were eager to try out and see where they stood. They struggled just a little bit; their natural combat instinct was to use their strongest abilities, and these star mana–powered abilities were weakened by the champions’ magical resistance.

Once they switched to their mana-less abilities, though, that made a huge difference.

They noticed that using star mana to boost their own “stats” did not suffer drawbacks, though the length of that boost seemed to be shorter, especially if they took a hit from the demons due to mana burn.

In short, these anti-manas demons could “dispel” magical buffs.

It was possible to stack stat-boosting buffs to hit harder, but not buffs that had a magical element.

Ken’s personal preference was to just somehow invent some kind of “bunker-buster” bomb or “TNT,” since this was a mountain-turned-demon, so he wanted to just blow up the mountain, the old-school way. Alka’s alchemists and researchers were able to find some substances that created small explosions but were orders of magnitude weaker than TNT.

It’d be a long time before our technology caught up to Earth, especially on such non-magical matters. It was quite ironic to think it may be easier to kill this demon king conventionally by a nuclear bomb or tsar-bomba than with magic bombs. Even if I understood the broad principles of such bombs, the actual fact was making such a bomb still required technology I did not have. Technology was often built upon many little incremental steps, and even if I knew what I wanted, it’d still take a long crawl to get there.

On the other side, we looked at stat-boosting drugs and potions. Alchemists, witches, and shamans could make potions and draughts that temporarily granted boosts. The heroes themselves had magical boosts, but because these magical stat-boosts could be dispelled whenever they took a hit from the demons, it made sense to now consider non-magical boosts.

We had these kinds of stat-boosting potions and equipment for a while, owing to my long research into [ginseng roots]. My ginseng roots provided permanent boosts, but their relative strength was nothing like these temporary powerups.

One alternative was something like Lumoof’s domain ability, but [Empowered Faithful] did not boost heroes or my other domain holders. In fact, from my own prior research, only about half of all types of boosting abilities worked on domain holders, but their effectiveness was average.

But better average than none.

Anyway, we gathered all these potions and elixirs and tested them out on the heroes and also my domain holders. We prioritized non-magical ones and then tested them against the demon champions on the Eastern Continent.

Those that were dispelled were sent back for further studies, and those that didn’t would be chosen for use.

“Looks like we need a [domain]-level alchemist and shaman, too.” On top of the barbarian/physical combatant, this was also an area we needed support. We already had the knight, the archer, and the priest.

“You are supposed to be our alchemist.”

“I specialize in magical explosive bombs, not potions. I can make lesser ones, but they are not that great.” Alka was right, and generally, I could make a lot of kinds of saps, and these were the extended versions of stuff you could find in nature. Healing saps, hallucinogens, relaxants, stimulants, poisons, and in these types of stuff, I outclassed him significantly.

His stuff was also more magical in nature, because his research was extensive in the areas of magical bombs, runes, and formations.

Oh well, at least we knew there was another gap to fill in our [domain] party.

“Huh. This continent feels like how it is back in our world,” Kelly and Adrian commented as they visited the Eastern Continent for the first time, the magical-medieval nations and cities, the temples and priests. It was almost as if this was a template copied and pasted over the multiverse.

They were nobodies in this world, nobody knew they were heroes, so it wasn’t hard to smuggle them to that part of the world.

They were quickly guided to the location of the anti-magic demons, where they fought them for the first time. It wasn’t a hard fight, since the demons were ironically weakened by the ambient mana, but the mana-dispelling abilities were annoying, and they had to adapt. The demon champions were harder, but less so for Adrian, who had a monk-build.

His heroic, chi-based abilities were only minimally weakened.

Monks. I needed my own version of Aeonic monks. I totally needed monks and physical combat masters. I’d need to start with a monastery on the mountains somewhere, or an island with peach blossoms.

Maybe they should be called the Seedlin Temple.

I needed physical barbarian types, monks, and alchemists. Only then I would have a balanced team able to weather the demonic storm and perhaps brave the storm and search for the eye. I’d probably also need vampire hunters, exorcists, witches, doctors. In short, I needed every major RPG archetype out there.

My forest on Mountainworld expanded quickly, and within months we saturated the area under my rule with trees, turning what was once a demonic wasteland into a verdant, monster-filled land. There were some familiar accidents, of course. Exploding demonic trees were also present in this world, but thankfully there was no major damage.

With the land “reclaimed,” creatures spawned, and the native fauna reemerged. They were slightly different, as with all worlds. The dogs were slightly different; the lizardpeople of this world were different from the lizardpeople of Treehome.

Miniscule problems appeared everywhere. There were linguistic problems, and the small group of Valthorns sent to administer this land on my behalf was quick to discover that the language had a lot of minor differences, each carrying different emotional weight. Even if we understood what each other said because of system shenanigans, there were meanings and context that were missing.

That led to diplomats and young graduates of FTC taking their first trip to Mountainworld in an attempt to truly understand this strange new world. I wondered whether I had facilitated the first true alien civilization encounter, even if they were more similar than not.

This land was a blank slate, and knowing what I knew now, there were a few things that I had my new settlers work on. Mistakes to avoid back with Freshka.

One: a clear constitution for this new land, with clearly set-out delegations of authority. The central continent of Treehome was a troublesome, cobbled-together hodgepodge of nations, many subservient to different degrees, each with their own set of rights and laws. It worked on Treehome essentially through the brute force of my artificial minds, providing the much-needed oversight. I could crush those who opposed it, but I didn’t think it was necessary to force such a change when it worked so far. Again, since this was entirely new, I hoped to avoid that by having a simpler constitution, a leaner organization, and clearer laws.

Two: clear boundaries and standardized currency. Back home, the currency system was frankly a mess, and I wanted to avoid that. Even boundaries between internal disputing nations gave rise to unnecessary wars.

Three: better-planned cities and nations. When Freshka was built, it was planned, but there were flaws. Mistakes due to lack of foresight. Every time I had a new addition, like the Treeology colleges or FTC, I had to earmark additional land outside of existing city boundaries. It made for a city that sprawled outward, that worked only because of a constant network of beetles that transported people from one part of the city to another. Defensive structures were added sometimes proactively, sometimes reactively, as and when we needed them. I had indirectly built a version of suburbia.

So, before any major construction was done, my settlers would first do up a structural plan for the entire land, together with a defensive plan for both demon kings and other enemies. Mountainworld would face its own demon kings, and naturally, any new nation or city must be designed with that in mind. We’d also try to consider how we could accommodate future needs.

One of which was my domain transportation ability. Right now, anyone who wanted to visit Mountainworld would have to make a visit to the Valley of the Unrotten, because the teleportation ability only worked between my main body and clones. So they had to at least touch my roots in order to work. With this place acting as a center for trade between the two worlds, I needed to design the cities to enable that to be a seamless process.

A city around my clone body, instead of Freshka’s design where I was located far away from the valley. Freshka was essentially traveling two hours to an airport far from the city center. If possible, I wanted this new nation to have what was the equivalent of a city airport.

It made sense back then because I wanted to protect the valley; the valley had things I wanted kept away from others. Again, historical baggage that I could change with this new piece of land.

Four: it was likely that the diplomatic relationship with the other nations would deteriorate over time. Our contribution to their security and victory would be forgotten in decades, and what was a friendly relationship would eventually turn to war. I hoped to avoid that, so to do that, I wanted to significantly reach out to all the temples and find ways to stop it.

I had nothing to fear, since I was confident I would win, but another crusade was a waste of resources and an unnecessary sacrifice of the high-leveled individuals of Mountainworld, who would be inescapably summoned to fight against me.

So my expansion in this world must be accompanied by a significant spy-arm to intercept negative intelligence and take out unfriendly parties and a significant propaganda arm in order to build a positive public impression, such that the nobles were dissuaded from war.

Five: if Treehome fell to some demon king, this world would serve as our backup plan. The land must be designed such that it could accommodate Treehome refugees for a reasonably long period of time.

17

YEAR 211

These days, I felt like I’d been moving from one demon king battle to another demon king battle. After the parasite demon king, we moved on to the demon king of Mountainworld, Akkila, or Sabnoc-lite. Now, we were waiting for the demon king to come to our world.

All the preparations had been made, and there was not much I could do beyond what we’d done. Not in that short a time.

Now, we had to hope that what we did was enough. I hoped it was, but reality had a tendency of surprising us, just as how I was surprised by their anti-mana nature. This was essentially the grind. We kept fighting demons and hoping that it gave us an edge for the next one.

It even felt…boring to me.

Strangely, the heroes and my domain holders didn’t feel that way. Their normal sense of time meant there really was a long gap between the demon kings, and those ten years were filled with normal life stuff.

Ah, well.

We already had our conventional weapons prepared, and Stella got better at sensing the rift gates. As a result, she was roughly able to estimate the location of the demon king’s movement.

With that, we quickly worked with the Aivan temples to evacuate the location and prepare for war.

It wasn’t easy, because Aiva’s hold on the continent was weak. The warnings were quickly dismissed, and the political ruling parties that had valuable establishments in that area were quick to suspect a greater ploy at play. They suspected that the Aiva wanted the place evacuated in order to claim it for themselves.

Honestly, from my own assessment of the Aivan temples, I was not surprised. Corruption and power-grabbing behavior permeated their structure to a far greater degree than ours. Two-thirds of all priests of the Aivan temples were in someone’s pockets, and the Triumvirs themselves were compromised to some degree.

They had their biases, each favoring their home nation or their own original backers. So when the Aivan temples made decrees, which they did often, resistance was naturally much higher.

A riot broke out, clearly instigated by the nobles. The heroes were away fighting, trying to level against the demon champions and also trying out their anti-mana glass weapons against the demon champions.

So, for now, we watched as the Aivan temple’s guys tried to quell the riot.

“This is stupid.” Stella smacked her head. “Aeon should just march the Valthorns here and they’ll just shut up.”

They were safe, away from the riots in the cities around them. Edna shrugged. “To some extent, this is an internal matter for the Aivan temples.”

“What good is Aeon’s forces if they are not projected at this time? The Aivans clearly need our help, and they can’t get them to agree. We need to put our foot down and force them to. This is one of the times where a forced evacuation makes all the sense in the world.”

“The heroes should be here to evacuate them. That’s what the Aivan temples prefer. Declaring our presence so overtly would make it difficult for the Aivan temple to maintain cordial relations with the other three temples.”

Our relationship with the other temples had mostly calmed down, with them tolerating our presence and my Valthorns trying their best not to mount an invasion. It was a common line of thought among the nobles and Valthorns, who believed the Central Continent was significantly better than the unruly nations of the other four continents.

The worst kinds were those who truly believed how good we had it, and they took the quality-of-life differences as the reason for us to invade them. As if it was our “duty” to uplift these other folks.

My believers would definitely prefer to impose Central Continent–style federal rule on the others, and while I understood why, it was something I didn’t really want to do.

I disliked that sort of thought, as hypocritical as it sounded. Yes, I’d secured the security of Freshka through a massive military and economic expansion, defeating and killing my way to power. But I thought at some point one must acknowledge that further expansion of the Valthorns was just pure greed.

The Central Continent produced enough, and why did I want to impose my way on the others? There was space for coexistence. For diversity. Dominance did not have to equal annihilation for the other side.

It was tempting, when in positions of power, to always apply force to get our way. That worked, but ultimately, if the general masses perceived the ruling party as one that only got things done by force, it also restricted the ruling party to a path of only using force.

In short, if the other parties thought you had a hammer and would only use a hammer to hammer down everything, they would act and prepare themselves in response. A ruling party must be able to do all things in order to maximize its policy choices, because the hammer was not always the best choice.

An olive branch or a stern warning may sometimes be all that was needed.

Anyway, I had the privilege of being distanced from these issues, because I had other lands where I didn’t have to deal with such things.

“A mob listens to no one. Even the nobles that started it.” The Aivan temples tried their best to suppress the riots.

One of my undercover priests nodded. “They seem to be exceptionally angry.”

The spies sent to support my small Valthorn delegations agreed. “There must be some spies or instigators working for the nobles. With some [leadership] and [rebel] type abilities, it’s not hard to convince regular villages to take up arms.”

“Come on. We can’t be waiting for the heroes to get things done.”

The heroes were busy. They fought a few demon champions for practice throughout the continents.

In the sand world, Lumoof waited in the tunnels. We had already destroyed the rift gate structures back at the entrance to the pits, and we were pretty sure those things regenerated after a while, because it was the fourth time we destroyed them.

We made regular trips down into the pits to check on the status of the dormant demon king, and each time, we took in the magical changes down below.

We noticed the strength of the mana drain from the depths below increased over time, but it wasn’t getting bigger. Perhaps this was already the maximum size of the demon king.

For now, we only made a few probing attacks and mostly remained outside its senses; the demon mother formed a strong demonic bubble that acted as its means to sense intruders.

The demon seemed to be particularly sensitive to my roots, and every one of my roots triggered the demon mother to respond with a huge blast of acid. The acid wasn’t explosive, but it was heavily corrosive and seemed to suck mana out of everything.

I had wanted to gather some of that acid for my own research, but it was really hard to collect samples since it was heavily corrosive and seemed to eat through my vines and roots rather easily.

As we monitored, we began noticing the rate of mana drain began to plateau. Was the demon king finally mature? “Is it happening?”

“I think so.” The ground shook, and Lumoof sprang into action. My roots surged out from our tiny cave and smashed into the demon king’s bubble, but this time, I pushed harder.

The demon mother roared in defiance and attacked with its corrosive acid blast. A wall of wood temporarily redirected the acid blast, buying time for Lumoof to move out of the way. More roots, and this time, we attacked both the demon mother and the dormant demon king.

The earth shook some more, and the weird bubble around the dormant demon started to show wavy lines that seemed a bit like symbols. They were similar to the ones we saw on the rift gates but different.

“Remember what we see.” My artificial minds tried their best to record the signages and lines, but we were moving quickly, and my wooden shields blocked our sights. In any case, we were not getting a good view of the whole thing.

The lines began to glow, and then that bubble of magic around the demon king started to wobble and swirl, like a blob of water floating in space. It wobbled, swirled, and then started to move upward.

At that moment, I felt a strong void mana presence above us.

The dormant demon king twisted and turned. It began to unfurl its body, and now I saw it for what it seemed to be.

A gigantic stony lizard with two heads, one on each side. It looked deformed. There were streaks of glowing green in parts of its sand-colored body, and those glowing green parts emitted a strangely familiar energy.

But we had no time to dwell on it. We moved upward, and my roots blasted out like a machine gun. I caused the walls of the pit to collapse and hoped that the rocks would slow down the demon king.

The rocks that collapsed just melted into that blob. It was some kind of liquid-mana mixture, and some of my vines drained some of its energy. It was demonic mana and core mana, plus something I wasn’t sure about. Like the remnants of the physical components of the demon king that it didn’t need.

Thankfully, it was relatively slow, and Lumoof was able to shoot up the pits faster than the demon king. We needed to get to the void tower before the demon king did and hopefully hack it.

“Now’s the time to send more people over—”

“I can’t,” Stella said. “There’s something that’s over the demon’s world, and it’s interfering with it.”

“What?”

I couldn’t see it, but Stella could, and she said that the demon world at this moment was covered in a cloud of void mana.

Was it the doorway to that black sun I saw on Parasiteworld?

In any case, as we approached the exit of the pits, I saw the previously destroyed rift gates had been somehow magically reconstructed. No matter, my roots smashed into them, and this time, they were charged with so much void mana that they blocked my roots.

Initially.

I tried again with more force, more power, and borrowed some star mana. I took out a few of the towers, and they exploded, releasing the void mana with it.

“Aeon, the astral path is wobbling.”

We looked up. The sky was dark, and Lumoof shot out of the pit like a fighter jet, and at that moment, there were a ring around the pit, filled with void mana. It kept pulling void mana from that black sun, and I felt its void mana grow.

Patreeck had to step in once again, as I felt a strong mental attack coming from the black sun. But I was stronger now, and we stared at the black void. It wasn’t a voice, just a really irritating background hum. It would turn anyone else insane, and Lumoof looked very uncomfortable even with my mind’s shielding.

The black sun filled the world with void mana.

So I pulled star mana from the heroes and charged my anti-demon magical spears.

And I threw them at the oversize ring around the pit. It exploded violently, and some of the void mana leaked out.

“Aeon, what’s happening? The astral path is wobbling a lot.”

Mana surged out of the pit, and then the destroyed rift gate towers magically reappeared. I pulled out more of my spears and threw them at the rift gates. They regenerated even after my attacks, but I sensed their energy levels dipped slightly. “What causes it to wobble more?”

“Uh…it’s not wobbling as much now.”

I charged another spear with star mana and flung it at the ring again. There was another huge explosion as the void mana reacted violently to the star mana.

At that point, the black sun pulsed, and the sky was suddenly flooded with void mana. I attempted to charge one more spear, and the spear exploded immediately, even before I threw the spear.

“Smart.” I cursed as Lumoof emerged from a shell of charred wood. I used normal mana to charge up the spears, but they didn’t do as much damage.

The rift gates were charged, in a similar alternating pattern of void mana and core mana. The two-headed lizard emerged from the depths.

“If I can’t hit the gates, why not the demon king?” Lumoof smashed into the demon king and landed on top of it. Immediately, my roots pierced the demon king’s sandy top.

I wasn’t sure whether this demon king awakened or not, but there was no harm trying. Lumoof mentally agreed. “Well, to hell with it. Let’s hit it.” My mana surged through Lumoof, and I knew it wouldn’t work.

But I wanted to weaken it and see whether I could mess with it. If star mana reacted badly with void mana, injecting star mana into a demon king should cause it to fail to travel through the astral path, or at least disrupt it.

I injected the demon king with star mana again. This time, I wanted the void mana in the ambient surroundings to trigger an explosion.

“Aeon, what the flying fuck is happening?” Stella cursed as she watched the astral path wobble like someone was shaking a string from the other end.

“Lumoof’s trying to attack the demon king.”

“What?!”

“We planned for this. We’ll see how it goes.”

Stella couldn’t send someone over, but I could constantly pull things through the vine ropeway. More spears smashed into the demon king as a large rift cracked open in the skies above us, revealing a massive, multicolored blob.

Another black droplet emerged from the blob, and it flew toward the demon king at incredibly high speed. “Stop that thing!”

My roots surged outward and smashed into the black droplet. It was incredibly tough, and I barely chipped a bit off.

But I did.

So I tried again. I managed to land two hits and then placed multiple wooden shields along its path. It smashed through them easily.

I wrapped vines around it, but it burned through my vines like I was a level-one tree.

I smashed it repeatedly, each time a little chip off. I attempted to trigger it with star mana, and the explosions didn’t hurt it at all.

The black droplet touched the demon king, and it merged seamlessly. The demon king, previously without a will, now opened all of its eyes. It shook its body midair, then both the black sun and the formless blob vanished abruptly.

I felt magic around us shift and concentrate itself around the demon king. At that very moment, Lumoof could even taste it in the air and feel it on his skin. Even in my avatar form, the void and core mana were thick in the air.

How? The whole place was meant to be an anti-mana world, and the demon king itself was meant to be an anti-magic demon king. The mana was drawn into the demon king at that moment, and then the same runic swirls appeared around us.

“Aeon, it’s wobbling,” Stella said back on Treehome. “And the rift’s moving! It’s going somewhere else.”

The gate to our world opened, and the demon king was immediately wrapped in a huge bubble of magic. It was going to warp to our world, with Lumoof still on the demon king’s back.

My roots pierced the demon king’s outer shells and strapped in for the ride.

18

YEAR 211 (PART 2)

“How do they get more insane with every generation of demon king?” Ken said as he mused about the implication of interrupting the demon king. He was safe in Freshka, far from the sight of the conflict, and he had tea.

Prabu, who was on one of his snack runs and one teleport away from the Eastern Continent, shrugged. “Actually, I think the gods are the insane ones. They are just doing the same thing repeatedly and somehow hoping that it won’t get a bad result. That’s insanity, too.” He seemed to momentarily experience a mental attack then and quickly downed a cup of tea made from my leaves.

Ken laughed and turned to see Kei. Kei sometimes joined them for their tea outings. “Actually, us heroes are pretty boring. It says a lot that a magical tree has better ideas than us. We really should have our own ideas.”

“The League of Heroes is a good one.” Prabu sipped his tea. “Combining forces is still a great idea.”

“It is.” Ken nodded and then sighed. “Ideally, we should reach more worlds and recruit more heroes. If we could hit ten to twenty heroes at max levels, we could essentially attempt to engage demon kings the moment they spawn.”

Kei chipped in, then she shrugged. “Yes, but honestly, I’m not too convinced. Local history suggests that heroes were summoned in high quantities many, many decades ago. Twenty isn’t much.”

“Then a hundred. A super squad of heroes.”

“We’d have to somehow reach at least ten civilized worlds if each world summons ten. On average, we’re looking at smaller and smaller numbers, which does align with Snek’s own experience.”

Ken shrugged. “Ten worlds is doable, just a matter of time. If you think about it, the demon king is no longer an existential threat to this world. With Aeon’s ability to access multiple worlds, he could effectively evacuate people from one world to another, thus preventing a total extinction. All we need is Aeon or Stella to somehow reach more worlds.”

“I don’t see how it’s not an existential threat. Annihilation of ninety to ninety-five percent of the population is still pretty much an existential threat.”

“Let me clarify. As it stands, it means Aeon has achieved a kind of stalemate. Stalemate in the sense that Aeon has effectively prevented total loss since, with Aeon’s ability to reach worlds, he could easily mount a counterattack on any demon king. The demon’s world is never truly safe as long as Aeon can reach it,” Ken answered as the little Snek coiled around his shoulder. “That’s something very few worlds can claim to do.”

“I don’t get that leap of logic. If a demon king wrecks this world, how is that a stalemate?”

“Think about it. In normal cases, like Snek’s world, there’s no return or chance to retake the world. Not without some otherworldly aid. Aeon’s link to this world means there is a chance, just as how he already partially reclaimed the surface of Parasiteworld. This world will never truly fall to the demon world. Not with Aeon around. It’s like having a retry after every game.”

“That’s nothing.” Prabu shrugged. “I’m sure the gods’ own home worlds or home-systems have achieved the same result, and even better, since the demons most likely can’t beat these gods in their home turf. The kind of stalemate is just more of the status quo, really. Another one or two very safe worlds.”

Ken nodded. “Fair, but think about it. With levels, Aeon could have more clones. More safe worlds. There’s no real limit as long as Aeon keeps gaining levels.”

“What makes you think there’s no upper limit to the levels? What if the gods are all maxed-out characters that can’t do more because the system no longer gives them more power? What if they cap out at level five hundred?”

Ken paused. “Wait. That would suck. What level is Aeon?”

Prabu laughed. “I don’t know. I can’t scan his level. I can’t scan any of the domain holders, really.”

“If there is a level cap, then the focus should shift toward getting more individuals to that level rather than just one.”

“Which is already happening.”

“You mean Aeon knows there is a level cap?” Ken paused. I had no idea about the existence of a higher level cap, but I enjoyed eavesdropping. Their predictions could be really wild.

“I don’t. I’m just speculating. This behavior of training up others to gain levels seems consistent with preparing for a level cap up ahead. Aeon’s trying to hit it with a strong party.”

“Which brings us back to your idea. More heroes. Numbers game.” Prabu nodded. “League of Heroes. Totally a good idea.”

Ken choked on his tea. “Fuck. I didn’t say all that to get you to give me praise. I didn’t need your validation that my idea was a good one.”

Prabu grinned. “Well, it looked to me like a long-winded way of getting compliments.”

“No!” Ken rolled his eyes.

“If there is a level cap, then it totally becomes a game of numbers. We would discount the benefits of snowballing the heroes’ individual strength by gaining levels. The League of Heroes must continuously get more heroes.”

“Which is a flaw, since we don’t know whether we can reach more worlds, and the hero-summoning clearly has a timer,” Kei answered. “If the league loses more heroes than it can recruit, it’ll die eventually.”

“Now you’re saying my League of Heroes is a dead end, aren’t you?” Ken laughed. “I’ll still continue it, though.”

“No. Not at all.” Prabu laughed.

“I wasn’t expecting this,” Lumoof mentally spoke to me as we dug in. I sensed his thoughts were mixed with pain, and I could feel his suffering, so I tried my best to take it off him.

It wasn’t hard to dig into such a massive creature; my roots spread out of Lumoof and easily found loose pieces of flesh and rock that I could wrap around as an anchor. The rift gates in the ground had regenerated and the skies above twisted, as if a piece of cloth was cut up.

I felt an energy pulse from within the demon king, and it flowed outward. That energy created a bubble around us. It didn’t seem disturbed by our presence, not that much anyway.

The skies turned bright and sunny as the two massive structures vanished. Instead, in the vast bright skies, there was a surreal patch of darkness, as if someone just copy-pasted a part of the starry sky here. That magical energy from within the demon king swirled everywhere in this bubble, and my sensors rapidly attempted to make sense of what was happening.

Lumoof coughed in pain, as the magical energies were quite overwhelming. The magical distortion smashed and cut his body. It felt like he was stuck in extremely fast-moving water.

I tried my best to shield him, but even those decayed quickly when faced with this onslaught of weird blend of demonic magic.

Then, in a sudden burst of movement, the entire bubble of the demon king was pulled through that patch of darkness.

I saw a flash and then darkness. There was a surge of mental attacks, and Lumoof yelped in pain.

Then the pain receded a little, the mental assaults on our presence weakening. Only momentarily.

We were now in this…starry sky, and around us we saw so many other astral lines. Paths to other worlds. There were thousands of them, each their own line, glowing in their own way. They were not connected; these glowing astral paths seemed to float and move in a big sea of darkness, covered in little specks of dust.

There seemed to be an epicenter to the lines, a blot of darkness in the middle of everything.

They were far away, and at that moment, another incredible headache. The attacks were back, and they were stronger.

[Domain has blocked attempted intrusion.]

The warning repeated, and Lumoof had it, too. He had it worse, even in avatar mode; he had to endure both the violent magic of this land between worlds and the mental attacks.

But unlike before, I could feel a direction to this attack, and it came from somewhere, a spot of darkness in the void sea.

It kept attacking, and like waves at the beach, it was possible to see the direction of the waves.

My domain blocked more intrusion.

The violent magic of this space seemed to tear us apart fundamentally, and I had to constantly try to pull it together, like trying to piece together pictures that had been cut up. Reality itself seemed to be breaking apart, even if I knew it wasn’t.

It just felt that way. Strange and unnerving. My vines and my abilities seemed helpless, and I tried my best to use my mana.

But then, in this space between worlds, I looked around, and in this huge sea of darkness, I zoomed in on the specks of dust that seemed everywhere.

Then I saw little flickers of something I knew very well, deep within all those motes of dust.

Souls.

From a distance, they were wrapped in this dust, drifting.

Drifting, moving between the space taken by the path between worlds.

They were like tiny plankton and algae, on a sea of darkness, bobbing along the waves and ripples from the demon’s magic. They came out of one world, and then, pushed by these “void-waves” in the “void-sea,” went to other worlds. Some vanished when they got too close, but on closer look, they seemed to have just “warped” out of existence altogether.

Where were we, exactly?

Yet the fact that there were souls here made me call upon my [soul forge] and attempt to channel its powers through Lumoof. He was in poor shape, so I’d try everything.

My soul forge was most effective around my main body, so my [soul forge]’s abilities could only affect a small area around Lumoof.

Yet it was what we needed. It worked incredibly well; the tearing energies around us suddenly didn’t hurt us anymore. The tearing forces that we experienced was a bit like the reconstructive energies in the soul forge when I tried to piece souls back together. Here, it was used offensively to tear us apart.

Was the void sea also some kind of interplanar soul soup? Was this where the souls went after they were ready to be reincarnated? The space where they would eventually find their new worlds?

It was frustrating to find myself asking more questions than getting answers. Why couldn’t I access it through the rift gate? Why didn’t Stella’s void portal bring us to this space between worlds?

I focused my sensors on the magical bubble around us and the demon king’s pulsing energy. I was certain it created this bubble, and this bubble accessed this space.

[Domain has blocked attempted magical intrusion.]

The warnings did not stop, but as I kept studying this space around us, I began to suspect that the souls were always there, but I lacked the means to see it.

Souls were everywhere. I’d been absorbing souls without seeing them most of the time, only when they were close to me. But I absorbed souls and their remnants from the entire continent, and after my automatic soul processing, these inner souls left my body somehow.

This was most probably where they went.

It was fascinating, and the demon king’s core must have something that allowed this to happen, so I would revisit the core after this incident.

Souls, like clouds of little tiny dusts swept around by the waves of this violent sea, wobbled.

I didn’t know why, but I liked this place. I stretched my roots outward, even though Lumoof was in immense pain, and then felt the bubble push back.

I couldn’t get out of the demon king’s bubble. My roots extended outward, attempting to reach into the outside. I felt like a kid letting my hand hang out of a moving car’s open windows and felt it push back harder.

If I could just put my seed here. In this vast sea—

I felt the demon king’s bubble of energy swirl intensely as more of that energy tried to keep my vines from touching the walls of the bubble.

Lumoof looked barely conscious. Although we no longer faced the tearing effects, we still experienced the demon king’s energy intensely, and now it felt like all of it was focused on us.

I tried to support him and send more of my mana through him. I pushed back against the demon’s energies.

“Aeon! The rift’s moving violently!” Stella screamed at me, back on Treehome.

“We’ll be there soon.”

“What’s happening?!” The location where the demon king was projected to land kept changing. It was like a gunman whose aim was getting interrupted by someone nearby. “It almost felt like it’s not going to be in the Eastern Continent anymore. I’m trying to track it, but it’s moving very violently!”

“I seem to be interrupting the demon king by my presence.”

“You need to stop or it’s going somewhere we are not prepared to defend!”

The Aivan temples were immediately appalled to find out that the demon king wouldn’t land in the scheduled location. They protested and complained how we’d just made them use up their reputation and political capital for something that would not happen, but I ignored them. I had bigger shit to fry.

The heroes, likewise, were just slightly surprised that the demon king would no longer be at the initial scheduled location. The two heroes of Mountainworld weren’t even fazed. They didn’t know it was possible to predict the demon king’s location in the first place, so this wasn’t unusual to them.

“We’re still trying to track it,” Stella said as her group of void mages, scattered throughout the Eastern Continent, reported on their observations. The higher-level void mages were improving, and quite a few were able to detect the energies of the rift.

Lumoof struggled, and we felt the world twist around us again, as if everything was suddenly stretched.

I pushed back strongly and did not hesitate to try to interfere with the demon king’s energies. My avatar screamed as my energies swirled and fought, and it visibly caused reality around us to bend and twist in unnatural ways.

The demon king roared, and I briefly thought it was in pain or uncomfortable, because the bubble around us twisted. I kept doing it, and it bent a bit more.

Then that oppressive energy vanished.

It was unmistakable as the environment became one we were very familiar with.

The rift had somehow opened somewhere high up in the sky.

[Demon King Busihir has arrived.]

The world around us suddenly turned to flames as we started to fall. Really quickly.

Lumoof had barely any consciousness now, holding onto the demon king by sheer willpower. I briefly saw a vast sea, and I immediately pulled Lumoof back to my main body. He would need some extensive healing from what he’d been through.

“The demon king’s right over the Northern Peninsulas!” Stella screamed as everyone quickly made preparations to move there. I wasn’t sure how long we were trapped in that collapsing fireball.

Lumoof was quickly back in Freshka, and my healing pods started their work.

I felt the demon king burn through the starry sky, and then the demon king landed like a massive meteorite, and it crashed into the area that was once a shallow sea.

The impact momentarily pushed away all the sea and turned it into land. The impact was so strong that it became the epicenter of a tsunami that propagated outward, and my roots picked up both the vibrations and shockwave of the impact.

It was time to fight once more. Stella and the void mages were quick to pinpoint the location, then the heroes and my domain holders activated teleportation abilities.

My domain holders and other folks arrived on the site and were greeted by a strange sight.

The demon king’s other head had been partially severed, half of its head damaged by the twisted rifts. Throughout the demon king’s body were strange cuts, like parts of its body had been torn apart.

“Aeon, the demon king looks like it’s been through something,” Edna said as the image we provided earlier didn’t match what landed.

At this point, I felt a bit drunk and dizzy, like I’d gotten a migraine and also had too much to drink. The magical energies of the demon king’s astral path were so unnerving that I momentarily couldn’t quite think clearly. So those words didn’t quite get through to me.

The demon king was sluggish, and with Lumoof disabled, all I could see was what Stella and my mages could show me through magical scrying. It roared, and then, momentarily, I felt a force attempting to pull magic toward it.

I couldn’t focus; my mind seemed hazy from all I’d seen in that trip through the worlds.

I could briefly feel the demon king activate something, but it wasn’t that strong. Throughout the world, magic seemed to momentarily fade.

“Magic’s being suppressed but still manageable,” they reported as the heroes and my domain holders quickly moved to engage. “We are engaging.”

“Okay.” My mind gradually cleared up, but I lacked the means to view the battle or participate. I felt the ripples of their battle from afar.

19

YEAR 211 - EDNA’S POV

Lumoof was in bad shape. Edna knew when Aeon said it would take him a few days to recover. The patriarch of the Treeologies was almost never out for a few days, so what transpired didn’t seem good.

Yet she had a feeling it wasn’t all that bad.

“Edna, get ready. Stella’s giving us the location now.” The sky told them the general direction. The rift gate opened so high up in the sky, and what followed was a streak of light that burned through the sky.

The demon king had somehow opened its rift way up in the sky and was on track to—

A sudden shockwave of magic rippled through the air.

Everyone felt the explosion, especially those on the northern parts of the Eastern Continent. It landed so strongly that a huge burst of wind temporarily destabilized the regular weather patterns.

Edna’s skin felt a little tickled at the sensation of the unstable magic within the swirling winds, and she waited briefly for it to settle. She tapped the teleportation scroll and chanted the coordinates. “All right. Let’s go.”

She wondered whether it world work, but then she smiled when the stored magic from within the scroll activated. She felt it tug, and they were teleported about half a day’s distance away from the impact site, on what was once a beautiful natural beach.

Instead, her eyes saw a vast, charred crater and at the center a demon king that looked burned and glowed. Its magical energies felt unsure, and that was when Edna knew something was wrong.

“Aeon, the demon king looks like it’s been through something.” Magical communications still worked, and Edna quickly went through her preparations.

The massive demon king was visibly injured from the impact, its outer shell charred and twisted, and Edna felt unusual magical energies radiating from many parts, as if some of its magic from traveling through the land between worlds had not been completely removed.

There were smaller explosions, and the demon king seemed to reel from the impact.

“What the hell is happening?” Roon asked, but he was getting ready.

“I don’t know, but we should attack. Hit it while it’s weak.”

The heroes clearly thought the same. They arrived no later than Edna and began their attack after a short minute. This was an advantage, and they were not going to waste it.

Edna took out javelins made of anti-mana glass, loaded with as many non-magical enchantments the Central Continent’s blacksmiths and weavers could fit. Then she popped a few elixirs and felt her strength surge through her blood and muscles.

There were better magical equivalents, but this was what they had to work with.

The heroes’ first wave of attacks landed with a loud explosion and a smaller shockwave. Every explosion was physical; they felt it in the air as the shockwave passed through their body.

She sometimes had dreams of these shockwaves. Or maybe nightmares. Moments when she thought about fighting demon kings. She took a breath, and those thoughts faded.

She focused on the giant before them.

The demon king was huge, and the heroes’ attacks only took out chunks of its massive outer shell. From afar, the heroes were explosive fire ants, trying to kill an injured giant tortoise.

The heroes tried magic, and magic seemed to work.

Then the demon king opened one of its undamaged eyes. For a brief moment, Edna felt magic around them attempt to drain away, but then just as suddenly, it was interrupted. The demon king jerked and seemed to cough, if such a thing was possible for the demon king.

Instead, they saw green streaks appearing throughout the demon king’s body, and it felt strange, familiar. It pulsed in resistance, and for a moment, Edna felt like it was fighting the demon king.

What was Lumoof and Aeon doing back on the sand world? Had Aeon’s attempts to inject it with his seed actually succeeded?

“Aeon, is that you?” Edna asked. There was no reply.

“What are we seeing, exactly?” Roon asked through their shared magical network, which thankfully wasn’t drained away. “It wasn’t like this when we saw it down there.”

“I have no idea,” Edna said as she approached the massive body and hacked at it. It didn’t do anything, but their attacks hardly hurt.

The magical suppression aura from the demon king seemed weak and unstable. There were sudden periods when magic was suppressed and then periods when it wasn’t.

The heroes clearly figured it out as Edna watched them time their magical attacks during the gaps.

Those magical attacks exploded on its massive shell, and more of it was blown off. Edna, realizing that her attacks were still not that useful, decided to retreat and provide defense for her peers.

Most of the attacks from the demon king seemed to be physical, as it launched rocks and massive boulders at extremely high speeds. With magic not fully suppressed, it wasn’t a problem for her magical shields to block, and when magic was suppressed, she could easily manifest skill-based shields to divert the attacks.

For a moment, it all seemed to be going well.

Roon and Johann clearly looked uncomfortable, but they didn’t say a word. Edna knew something was wrong, and her peers knew it, too.

She noticed it when they fired their attacks a little slower and kept their eyes looking. Johann’s companion beasts also stopped attacking and focused on watching.

Edna sighed and decided to ask. “Aeon, do you feel anything?” She inwardly cursed and felt Lumoof’s absence from the battle.

“My magical sensors are detecting ripples from the battle. Is everything all right?”

“I don’t know. It looks like it’s going according to plan.” Edna got in position and felt one of the large rocks smash into her shield.

Roon was the first to notice it when they saw the crumbled chunks turn to sand. Dark, dirt-like, but very clearly sand. Black sand.

The demon king’s residual energies were still uncertain, and one magical explosion ripped the shell in half. It cracked open, and then smaller demons emerged. In the hundreds and thousands, they were the lizards they’d fought.

“Ah darn. Mobs.” Roon cursed, but somehow it relieved their tension. Fighting the demon king was always stressful, and they could really use Lumoof’s calming presence. The mobs died easily, their anti-magic energies weakened.

Alka wasn’t in the plan for the battle, since his focus had been magical bombs. So the initial plan mostly assumed magical bombs would be useless, but from the heroes’ attack, that wasn’t true. They still packed a punch.

Then the air around the demon king started to swirl, and the black sands started to form a barrier around the demon king.

Giant wurms made of rock and sand surged out of the ground.

“Is it me, or is this a little easy?” Roon cursed as his anti-magic glass arrow punched through the giant wurm’s body.

At the same time, the demon king roared.

Johann rolled his eyes. “You had to fucking say it.”

“I couldn’t keep it in forever,” Roon quipped as he took cover behind Edna’s shield. “The tension was getting to me.”

Acid began to pour out of the demon king’s body, and this time, the anti-magical energies in the land really surged. They felt like they were back on the sand world once more. The thick acid flooded the crater.

The heroes lost their ability to fly as the anti-magical energies jammed their magical movement. “Oh dear.” Prabu and Colette cursed as they felt some of their magical attacks drain away.

Their fireballs got smaller as it traveled above the acid-filled crater, their lightning bolts seeming to shrink and weaken.

The demon king essentially made a moat, a crater-lake of anti-magic acid around its main body.

“This is all your fault,” Johann said, but his attacks increased in frequency. He fired more of the glass arrows, but they seemed to do nothing.

Roon just rolled his eyes. “It’s a fucking coincidence. We all knew this was going to happen one way or another.”

Edna just smirked as they retreated up the crater to the rim. “Well, boys, there’s a lake between us and the demon king. Ideas?”

“We need to drain this acid away. We can just knock a hole in the crater’s rim, and acid should be able to flow out,” Roon said.

Edna nodded. “Agreed.”

The heroes stood on the rim and launched their ranged skills, but with their arsenal of skills restricted by the anti-magic lake and the large distance to its large body, the rate of damage was easily halved.

“All right.” Roon nodded and pinged Alka. “Alka, we need earth-busting bombs here.”

“Got it.”

The skies suddenly flashed as multiple projectiles flew their way. The bombs detonated on the rim of the crater, and even though some of its effectiveness was drained away, it achieved its goal. The crater-lake started to leak, and the acid started to flow out into the city.

“Stella! We need a portal! We need some platforms.”

A black void portal emerged a distance away. Stella couldn’t activate it close to the crater, but Aeon’s roots began to shift the earth around them. A few platforms of rocks emerged throughout the crater, but before any larger space could be created, the demon king’s mouth opened.

The very presence of Aeon’s roots seemed to cause the demon king to roar, and then it blasted acid in the direction of Stella’s portal.

“How’d it know?” Stella asked. The portal forcefully closed when acid smashed into it.

Roon shook his head. “I think Aeon’s been bugging it so much on its home world that it remembered Aeon’s presence.”

Edna smirked. “You’re saying Aeon irritated the demon king.”

“Is that not what Aeon did?” The acid flowed slowly out of the crater, and the heroes moved closer to attack on the platform.

The heroes closed in and attacked with all their might. Then the demon king’s body cracked apart, and then…it split.

“Uh.” They pointed as they saw the demon king crack apart and transform into five smaller demon kings. “I hate split-body demon kings.”

It roared and attempted to open a rift. But then one of the split-bodies was covered with green streaks, and it glowed. The rift collapsed before it could open. Edna once again felt that familiar presence and wondered…

Had Aeon somehow corrupted the demon king?

The heroes engaged the split bodies, and honestly, they were not exceptional. They were tough, but relative to Sabnoc or Akkila, this was probably a whole grade weaker.

It almost seemed like it was under the effect of some kind of weakening effect, so when they successfully destroyed two of the split bodies, they eventually focused on the third one.

The crater-lake was half-drained, and that meant their spells’ effectiveness had recovered somewhat. It was odd that the anti-magical properties were contained within the liquid instead of its main body.

The third and fourth split body was destroyed a while later, again without any particularly unique gimmicks. It seemed to rely on its high strength and toughness, but beyond that, the heroes took them down.

Down to its fifth body, it roared, and then the acid started to float. The heroes attacked it relentlessly, and they hoped to interrupt the transformation.

And they did.

It cracked, and then, just as its outer shell vanished, it revealed a round, black-green crystal.

The heroes knew what it was and immediately teleported away. Everyone else warped away, except for Edna.

Edna felt a pulse from the crystal filled with dense, anti-magical qualities. It was good that the heroes warped out at first sight. If they got caught in the pulse, they wouldn’t be able to leave or defend themselves from the explosion.

Edna activated her [Duty Beyond Life and Death]. She sped ahead and went as close as possible to the black-green crystal. She had a javelin made of anti-mana glass and stabbed it. It cracked the crystal, and then she felt the crystal pulse.

The glass crystal glowed as it absorbed mana, then it cracked.

She took out a few more and stabbed it in again. Each of the anti-magic glass javelins sucked mana out of the crystal and interfered with whatever reaction that happened within it. It was amazing how these glass weapons seemed to work better than Aeon’s vines in some way.

The green-black crystal pulsed weakly.

And then, with a whimper, stopped.

[Demon King Busihir was defeated.]

Edna smiled and gave the all-clear once there was no explosion for ten minutes.

“Stella. Portal, please.”

A void portal swirled open right next to the black-green crystal, and Aeon’s roots surged out. It wrapped itself around the crystal like a hungry octopus consuming its prey and, once it had a good grip, pulled it through the portal.

The air was still filled with the anti-magic qualities. Edna began to check the other destroyed bodies and noticed it had begun its transformation into daemolite.

Yet her eyes were drawn to the remains of the body with black-and-green streaks. It wasn’t transforming into daemolite. As she got close and investigated, it really felt like Aeon’s energies, and her mind began to speculate whether Aeon’s constant magical harassment during its gestation period interfered with its development.

“Aeon, we should look at this, too.”

A void portal appeared next to her, and again, roots and vines pulled the remains through.

A demon king was slain once more. Honestly, it felt like a chore, and Edna wondered whether this was how Aeon felt. It had seen so many generations of demon kings and participated in so many of its conflicts.

This was a tiring, tiring chore.

20

YEAR 211 (MONTHS AFTER THE VICTORY)

“How are you feeling?” Edna came and checked on Lumoof. There were lingering side effects from the exposure to that twisted space.

“Better. It’ll take some time before I’m fully in shape, though. The strange energies of the demon king and that void space are far more persistent than Aeon expected.”

The tearing forces of the void forests were mild, but they lingered and manifested quite a bit like demonic curses. I could remove curses quite easily, but these were not exactly curses, either. They felt a bit more like reality being in conflict with itself, which was really hard to explain. I also noticed they seemed to mark Lumoof like a sign, though eventually it went away.

Lumoof gained about ten levels from the trip through space, and he unlocked a new skill, [Forest Sanctuary]. It wasn’t a combat skill, but it created some kind of pocket dimension, as long as there were a few trees in the area. The Forest Sanctuary essentially functioned as a super-safe campsite, since, well, it was in its own pocket dimension.

Around the same time, I got the briefing on the battle with the demon king from the team, though I saw most of it through magical scrying and the moments when my trees were through to the other side. The anti-magical energies of the acid interfered with the scrying, and Edna’s mention of the weird greenish glow made me suspicious.

The flesh we harvested that didn’t rot or disappear or the demon king’s core both had greenish glows.

They had never glowed in that manner.

The core of the demon king was safe in the valley, and they looked strange and out of place. Like someone tainted the demon king’s core.

I vaguely recalled the pulse to be quite weak, at least initially, but now they pulsed with a far stronger glow and with much more fixed intervals. It felt a bit like two incompatible songs mashed together.

On top of that, the battle with the heroes meant their star mana already damaged the core, so it wasn’t fully usable.

Still, we now had multiple specimens of the core, sufficient for my researchers and scientists to perform comparative analysis. They also began to construct a smaller model based off the various undamaged components across all the cores.

It was the equivalent of stripping multiple crashed airplanes to get sufficient parts for a usable whole, and it was Alka’s little pet project.

While they worked on that, I focused on the tainted energies of the demon king’s core, the green streaks.

They were mine. We made them.

It wasn’t hard to figure out that these were created from my mana; the cumulative effects of our attacks on the demon king during its gestation clearly left a long-lasting impact on their formation. Coupled with what the heroes reported, I suspected that my mana had somehow lingered or was absorbed by the demon king.

The fact that this could happen validated parts of our offensive strategy.

What if I could taint all the demon kings? Could the taint stop the demon kings from behaving the way it currently did? Did the taint carry over to the next demon king? Could I render the planet’s cores “infertile” such that demon kings could not spawn from them, even if they won? Extrapolating my earlier “conversion” of the demon walkers, would it be possible to “convert” the demon king?

The next step was naturally to scale this up by an entire order of magnitude. What we needed to do was effectively deliver such a high quantity of mana to the demon king that I corrupted it when it was still in its infancy.

The quantity of mana I needed was more than what I had now, but it was not impossible.

I’d also need to improve Lumoof’s ability to deliver mana and cope with my power. Though he could project my power and my abilities, he also suffered from the side effects of that projection.

Therefore, he began mana practice. He was a priest, but he had to train and get used to large quantities of mana. We did this training before, but our goal post had shifted. The goal was to prepare Lumoof for mana at least ten times more than what I had now.

With that amount of mana, we’d then attempt to “poison” the demon king once more and see whether we could essentially stop the demon king before it even happened.

It was painful to subject Lumoof to the large amounts of mana, but like Stella, only through exposure to excessive amounts of mana could he hope to gain the immunity to it. With higher mana tolerance, Lumoof would last longer in the demon worlds.

He cursed, of course. He understood, but he cursed. The path to end the cycle required sacrifice. Pain.

My avatar understood the purpose.

But the pain was real, and it hurt like hell.

The astral pathways collapsed instantly after the demon king’s death, and though I was a little sad that I would lose access to the anti-magic sand, I was also curious of what came after. What would the next demon world be like?

Stella was quiet as she watched the astral paths collapse, the revelations of the starways being this space that was not really empty. There were souls, and maybe even other things we may not even think of.

Maybe the gods truly resided in this void space?

The dust had settled, and it seemed I gained a few levels. I wasn’t there for the bulk of the battle, so I was still pleasantly surprised by the additional levels.

[You gained 5 levels. You are now Level 226.]

[Astral Sight improved. You may now see further between the realms.]

[Natural Mana overwhelming upgraded.]

[Mana storage upgraded.]

It was nice that the system rewarded my mana poisoning with more mana-related skills. These upgrades were incremental improvements, little bits of extra efficiency and effectiveness from every point of mana.

We had a post-battle review with the heroes, too, and strangely, they actually said the battle was comparatively easy. There were very few truly threatening moments, and their problem was just dealing damage to the demon king.

They had a small panic moment when the bomb appeared at the end, of course, but that was something we all saw coming.

Based on the data from the domain holders, the heroes were generally right. It wasn’t that bad for a demon king. Unlike Sabnoc or Akkila, the number of strange gimmicks were few, just that acid lake defense.

I wondered whether that was because our mild mana poisoning had somehow interfered with the full breadth of the demon king’s powers. They had easy mode because we locked some skills.

“Aeon and Lumoof should invade the demon world more often.”

Lumoof choked. Edna just grinned. “Now, now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It just so happens that the demon world was an anti-magic world. For the next demon king, we should consider a more thorough invasion. One led by the heroes.”

The heroes squirmed at Edna’s response. The initial plan a few years ago was a hero-invasion, one that had to be modified because of the unique qualities of the anti-magic sand world. Now, it was time to revert back to our original plan.

“There’s nothing to worry about. We would do the initial scouting and reconnaissance, but the plan should not change.”

Both Alvin and Kelly of Mountainworld were just too stunned to respond. They couldn’t wrap their heads around a pre-emptive invasion, or at least struggled to. Even after they’ve seen Lumoof do it, it still baffled their minds.

I wondered whether their mental controls were slightly different from that of Chung, Prabu, and gang, but when they dipped into my biolabs, I didn’t see anything different.

At least, not from the outer appearances.

Chung just sighed. “Can’t delay it forever.”

“It’s likely we will get something more ‘normal’ for the next demon king,” Edna speculated. “If the next world is anything like Parasiteworld, the plan will proceed. We’ll see which world comes first, either this or Mountainworld’s demon king.”

“The frequency of our demon kings isn’t that high, I think,” Kelly said. “I think…I can’t remember.”

“Fifteen, if I’m not mistaken,” Lumoof answered. “Their records are just as choppy as ours.”

“Darn it. Why is ours so frequent?”

“Daemolite,” Edna answered. “We have more daemolite than them.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Chung answered. “The demon kings create daemolite. Why would more daemolite result in more frequent demon kings?”

Edna shrugged. “I don’t know, but the daemolite’s linked to the frequency.”

“Wait. Have you guys known this for a long time?” Prabu asked.

Edna paused, and she momentarily wondered whether this was revealed before. “Yes. To some extent, it’s something we’ve been speculating, but we were not sure. We saw it in ancient dreams. Or more like Aeon saw it.”

The heroes murmured as the statement stewed in the air.

“The locals won’t like that,” Chung said. “All the native rulers use daemolite to varying degrees for stuff.”

Edna nodded. “Indeed. Even Stella’s void portals and the rift gate relies on daemolite to store the void mana. It is currently the best available source of void-mana storage. Other alternatives just don’t work as well.”

“So if we destroy it, we may or may not reduce the frequency, but we lose our best known way to store void mana.”

“Yes. That’s right,” Edna answered. “It’s why we did not say much, until we have more certainty.”

Branchhold’s growth was good, and I was quite fascinated by the idea of starting a city from scratch.

My spymaster seemed excited to have a new assignment, and I thought he grew bored of the challenges back home. He denied it, of course.

Branchhold itself was designed to be significantly more compact, with my clone tree at its core. One of the things we took advantage of was creating vertical structures using my Giant Attendant Trees as the anchor and support.

This allowed greater density and more efficient use of space. Normally, with increased densities, there needed to have sufficient food and water to support it, but a city composed of trees had its advantages. Food and water was not a problem, since we could produce fruits and pull water from beneath the ground.

In other cities, they had to go an extra step of having magical food equivalents.

Thus, Branchhold was designed to be significantly more vertical than Freshka that sprawled outward.

This resulted in some redesigns for my beetles. Beetles naturally had the ability to climb up trees and slopes, but their packages and cargo had to be properly supported since gravity still applied.

I liked the idea of a city that was dense, and strangely, it appealed to the beetles, too. It seemed that humans, Canari, and elves didn’t quite like it, but dwarves found it quite similar to the mines, so density wasn’t a problem.

The treefolk also didn’t like dense places; they got comfort from their link to the earth, so dense cities didn’t appeal to them.

The local folks were neutral to the idea of density. They seemed more interested in the safety aspect of any institution, most likely the residual impact from the long period of war. Those who faced long periods of uncertainty due to war valued security far more than those who didn’t. Generally, of course. There were those that embraced the nihilism and meaninglessness of life in the face of war.

What I learned from the locals through Branchhold’s extensive surveillance was rather telling.

The drive to survive created a hardened society and nobles who were far more warlike. A decade of constant war created nobles who were now eager to expand their power, and that power turned on each other.

I had expected that my presence would deter them from actually fighting each other. After all, in our world, the presence of a strong superpower pretty much resulted in an era of peace.

That did not happen.

The system, which indirectly encouraged conflict, since everyone gained levels from fighting, essentially was stuck in this hostile loop. War was inevitable, not just because of demons, but because war rewarded those who survived them. The system granted levels, which then equated to strength.

Strength to impose one’s will on others and, thus, war.

Therefore, how could a world that granted power through warfare have a state of peace?

It could, if somehow everyone turned away from the system. But that left a world defenseless against the demons. With no outside interference, either divine or demonic, those who possessed power would fight for more power.

Of course, this was a very pessimistic assessment of the nature of people. Not all people sought out power, but those who became nobility and the rulers tended to be those who were more likely to seek out power and cause conflict.

It was just the necessity of their role. Even if one originally did not covet power, those who coveted their power would rise up and attempt to overthrow those who could not defend their position.

Thus, by sheer elimination of more peaceful rulers, as they failed to defend their throne, the world should naturally veer toward violence.

On the Central Continent, we mitigated this through our extensive education program, the FTC, and also the presence of our priests.

But I knew that wars could not be entirely avoided. In fact, small wars were like controlled fires, a thought that sometimes horrified a part of me. It kept the military on their toes instead of decaying into a state of complacency, especially since the threat of demons had dwindled significantly over the past few decades.

I’d tried to mitigate that with more dungeons and more dream-wars, but a lifestyle of war? An entire society engineered toward winning a war? That was something else, and that was what Mountainworld had.

That kind of focus was admirable, and I admired how well they handled it. I wondered whether that was how Lilies felt as they grappled with the constant shifting forces of the world.

Competition and conflict created true strength. This was true back home, because it forced everyone to be on their toes. On a macro level, if I wanted a strong army, it must be allowed to experience war and battle.

Back on Branchhold, they had yet to have all these cumulative systemic changes, and thus a state of warfare was the default. The peace created by the two heroes did not last very long.

A rather pessimistic state of affairs, but so be it.

Their weakness meant I had gaps to exploit, and I freely expanded my trees on Mountainworld to increase my total mana capacity.

It didn’t matter if I didn’t formally own the land; in a way, that was just a feint.

As I thought about it, the crystal dude was right. I was an invader, and right now I was spreading my trees to invade this world and steal its mana.

My actions were justified, because I couldn’t defeat the demons and end this stupid cycle without some invasions to gain more mana. At this juncture, it was a good and timely reminder for that age-old phrase: “He who fights with demons should take care that he does not become a demon.”

I supposed with all the demon hybrid experimentations, I wasn’t far off from being one.

On the topic of experiments, Alka approached me to explore “bomb-beetles,” essentially massive suicide beetles or a swarm of tiny ones, using my biological evolutionary engineering to craft or grow a bomb-compatible beetle with flight or movement for the explicit purpose of blowing itself up at the target.

Smaller experiments were successful, and now we wanted to take it to the extreme with supersize bombs and superfast swarms of them. Speed, stealth, and power were the primary issues.

The idea was to create a literal flying swarm of explosive beetles and then, with a large enough portal, send enough through to the demon world.

Why not just normal bombs?

Simple. Alka wanted to exploit system shenanigans to overcome “manufacturing” constraints.

My subsidiary trees could spawn beetles by pure system effect and mana. If I could create suicide beetles and the subsidiary trees, of which I had an absurdly large number of, I essentially had the ability to bypast resource restrictions and just bomb the demon world with just an army of banelings or exploding zerglings.

We could then bomb Parasiteworld to hell and break the status quo. The war on Parasiteworld had reached another status quo.

We were beginning to question the value of this world. I wasn’t learning much on Parasiteworld. The fringes of my expanded territory had to endure more demonic attacks, and I noticed some changes in the demon types used to attack my lands, but it really felt like it was going nowhere.

If anything, I should ask the six heroes to mount our first “liberation” mission on Parasiteworld.

“Liberate a world from the control of the demons?” Prabu wrapped his head around the idea of a counter invasion. “I thought we wanted to invade the demon world to attack the demon king before it attacked us.”

“Yes, but Aeon proposed something more ‘radical’ as a test bed.” Edna was the one to deliver the message. Lumoof’s recovery meant he wasn’t in his best shape, but it was time. “Aeon’s incursions into the demon world highly suggested the existence of a demon king that metamorphosed into a ‘mother’ in the core of the world. We believe that if we defeat it, it may free the core from the demon’s control, and the planet then ‘reverts’ back to a normal world.”

Ken and Snek were excited at the idea. If this worked, it meant Snek had a chance to save his home world. It was proof that it could be done.

“Aeon has been expanding on Parasiteworld, right?”

“Yes. Aeon has a large force present currently fighting a long-drawn out war of attrition. It reached a stalemate recently, due to mana limitations.” The heroes glanced at each other uncomfortably.

“We know what we are hitting?”

“No. Aeon’s unable to see what’s in the core as the pit that leads to the core is flooded.”

“I’m not doing it without Lumoof doing recon,” Prabu said. “Or at least, can the flooded pit be drained? If we know what we are hitting, then maybe.”

“Possible. With enough trees, Aeon could drain some of the water out. But if it goes all the way to the magical core of the world, it would take some time. The roots would need to reach that deep in the first place. The demon mother’s also likely to be weaker than a full demon king. At least, that’s the sense I got from the demon I saw in the core of the anti-magic world.”

“Another free world,” Prabu answered. “Could we get heroes there?”

Edna shook her head. “I don’t know. That’s entirely up to the gods.”

“They only summon heroes in response to a demon king.”

“Is…Parasiteworld linked to any other worlds?”

“Yes, but they are too far with our current abilities. Anyway, let’s have that conversation later and get back on topic. The battle, if any, will happen in the core of the world, because it’s highly unlikely we’ll be able to get the demon mother away from the core.”

The heroes looked at each other. Strangely, it was Chung that asked, “Ken, what do you think?”

“Fighting a demon in the core of the planet feels very endgame boss to me.”

Chung rolled his eyes. “Eh, now’s not the time for a gaming reference!”

“It’s a risk,” Ken said. “Snek would definitely like to see it happen, but if Aeon could stack the battlefield in our favor, and with the full recovery of their team, it may work.”

“Can’t we just drop a bomb into the core?”

“You mean like Star Wars?”

“Yeah. Death Star and all that.”

“We could, but that may blow up the planet. And that’s not what we want.”

“Aeon would prefer to keep the planet in shape in order to have another ‘hospitable’ world to our stable of ‘safe’ worlds.” Well, if I could free Parasiteworld from the demons, theoretically the mana recovery should improve significantly. Not being in a mana-deficit would support my goal of increasing my mana output.

Adrian and Kelly were both too flabbergasted to digest the idea. Aiding the defense of another world was one thing, but an invasive liberation of a demon world never quite crossed their mind.

“You have time to decide,” Edna said. “We’re waiting for the full recovery of the entire team before we attempt this.”

“What do you think of the idea?” The heroes had their own session.

“Yes,” Prabu said. “I say go for it. We have the necessary skills, and as heroes, this is what we do: defeat demons.”

“You sure that’s not your mental overrides hitting you?” Chung asked.

“I know, but it’s the right thing to do. If it resets that world, it may mean more hero summons in the future. More candidates for the League of Heroes.”

“It’s insane,” Kelly just said frankly. “So yes.”

“You’re insane,” Chung said. “Why are we taking this risk? We’re risking our lives here, going down to the demon world’s pit to fight this thing in there. I’m against this. We don’t need this fight.”

Colette shrugged. “I don’t know. I want more information before I decide.”

Hafiz and Adrian both nodded. “Yeah, I’m with Colette. I need to know more. If it’s an easy fight we should go for it. Ken’s right. If Aeon could stack the odds in our favor, then we have nothing to lose.”

Chung sighed. “All right, then I’ll let Edna know that we want more info. We’re not going in there blind.”

Prabu laughed. “That’s a privilege, Chung. Our predecessors all had to face their demon kings with no data.”

“But this isn’t a necessary fight.”

“Maybe not, but it is our duty.”

“That’s the gods’ speaking.”

“Maybe.”

21

YEAR 212

Lumoof had finally recovered from the effects of the trip, and he noticed his sensitivity to the soul realm had increased. There were moments when he saw specks of things flying in the air and briefly wondered whether his vision was bugged.

Then it was clear it was actually the souls’ movement in the world. He could seem, faintly, and if he was in a zone.

“Is it because of all the mana practice we are doing?” Lumoof asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“I didn’t get a skill, though.”

I thought it was a matter of time.

“I thought we get the skill first, then we see the results, not the other way round.” Lumoof chuckled. We both knew the system could be irregular and inconsistent, even if it broadly tried to stick to a set pattern. Broadly.

Level-specific things had been followed quite strictly, but when did people actually learn or acquire a skill had been one of the weirder aspects of the system. Perhaps a system had to have hard and soft aspects, both RNG and checkpoints in order for it to work?

Mana practice and soul-sight practice took up most of Lumoof’s time. His mana control wasn’t poor, but now, his mana tolerance had improved.

It made him sick, and he actually got skills to cope with more mana. Just that the quantities we needed to poison the demon king were too high.

He would have to reach even higher levels.

For me, Alka’s team of scientists finally gave me one demon king core model. It was a replica constructed from the data gathered from all the demon cores we had so far.

It did not contain all the elements of the demon, just the parts of the runic carvings that we somewhat understood. They said it seemed to open up some kind of network, but it fizzled out before they could get further. The amount of power needed by the model was quite high, and Alka said he saw what appeared to be a very, very large three-dimensional map in his mind.

But it hurt his head so much he had to stop. His speculation was that it was not designed for mortal minds, or at least designed such that it suited how the demon’s mind worked. Therefore they brought it to me.

My vines wrapped around the object made of some of the toughest crystals we had, and my mana flooded it. The runes within it flared, and then I briefly saw the entire core glow.

I felt it and saw the magic of the replica core seemed to tap into something. Something that existed in an entirely different place.

It was a mini-portal within it. No, metaphorically, it was the equivalent of an interdimensional wireless modem that was now making a call to this…space in another part of the world.

I felt a connection, and instantly my mind was assaulted. My artificial minds stepped in to protect me. It wasn’t a domain-type attack, but more like a “DDOS” or a “Ping” bombardment.

[Mental firewall activating…filtering…]

This felt like a nostalgic return to the days of Rootnet.

Then I felt a strange, uncomfortable sensation, like something attempting to pull me from the other side of that connection.

It pulled, and then—

—snapped.

At that moment, I saw the stars that Alka claimed to see. It was vast, and then they disappeared. And reappeared again.

The map seemed to twist in unusual ways, and I realized it wasn’t actually three dimensional. I wasn’t even sure it was a map.

That uncomfortable sensation returned, and then I felt something push back against my presence very, very strongly. It was so strong that the energy somehow spilled through the replica, and the replica cracked.

The connection was lost, then.

Alka just looked at the cracked replica with a look of bewilderment. “What just happened?”

“I saw the stars, and then something kicked me out. I’m not sure what.” Alka strapped in as I shared what I saw with him through our dream academy.

“There’s a guardian on the other side of that. It might be possible to kick it out or at least stop it from kicking you out.” My bomb-domain holder touched the cracked demon-core replica. “We’ll have to make a few more of these out of different materials to see what’ll work well.”

“What do you think we saw?”

“A star map. An invasion plan. A path. Or just a history of worlds invaded.”

If there was a centralized controller that told demons where to go, it had to be on the other side of the demon core.

I wondered whether every demon king essentially called home and asked, “Where do I go?” and somebody or something on the other side told it where to go.

The key point was, if I figure this out, I could fuck with it. If I stopped all the demons from being able to essentially dial home, could I take out the momentum behind the demon king’s constant invasions? Essentially, cause them to turn on themselves, or invade worlds that were already invaded, and so slow their expansion across the multiverse?

This strategy was an expansion of my earlier demonic IFF-interference strategy.

Of course, I eventually shared our findings with the other domain holders, the heroes, and my other senior members.

“It sounds like the demon king’s actually a remote-controlled drone, and the mind behind the demon king is safe somewhere else.” Ken quickly made the connection and gave a wild speculation. “We have been fighting clones all this while. The core of each planet’s just a clone factory to manufacture more drones.”

Lumoof, naturally, understood what that meant. “Are you saying each demon king is an ‘avatar’ of some controlling entity?”

“Well, close. Actually, yes. It’s like how Aeon speaks through you. Absolutely.”

“Then we just have to take out the demon king’s controller and all of this should end?”

Actually, if the demon king was really some kind of entity like myself, that was actually a lot harder. It meant the entity behind the demon kings, if there was such a thing, could have many, many clone bodies and were manufacturing these self-replicating motherships.

I pondered the thought for a while and realized that countering the demon kings as a whole fell into two large long-term angles.

One: destruction and extinction. If it was possible to destroy its power source or if there was some kind of central will at the heart of all the demons, then destroying it should end this demonic plague once and for all. Part of this strategy required heavily levelling my domain holders so that they could fight battles on the demon world. There were lesser outcomes under this angle, such as just destruction of its ability to travel worlds or destruction of whatever was assisting its wayfinding.

Two: confusion and redirection, messing with the demon’s “world-finding” abilities and, under this umbrella, messing with its friend-foe identification. Under this set of strategies, if it was not possible to destroy the demons as a whole, maybe because there wasn’t actually a center or a node, then we would essentially confuse the shit out of it and mess with its ability to find habited worlds. We could create curtains, such that they couldn’t find us, or jam the teleportation portals such that the demons couldn’t invade us.

There were lesser angles or ones I considered unlikely, such as assimilation. From an evolutionary standpoint, if the demons at the center were some kind of code or virus, could I alter them such that they became benign?

If the demons were some kind of rogue program or magical gray goo that ran out of control, could someone reassert control over them?

The evolution of beetles with more specialized materials continued, even beyond Alka’s suicide beetles. Since the creation of specialized Treechikomas, we’d expanded the evolutionary development to a wider range of creatures.

My domain powers over evolutionary meddling extended beyond beetles, so it’d be a waste to restrict myself to them. Horns would be upset, but he’d understand. And he was too busy fighting demons in Parasiteworld to nag me about it.

We experimented on anti-magic-infused beetles, but creating them consumed the anti-magic glass, which was now a finite resource. The first few designs were crap, and the regular beetle-mind struggled, so I made artificial-mind variants.

These performed better with the custom-designed bodies, but they also struggled. Actual performance in the battlefield didn’t seem to match up with how they were designed, so we had to make multiple revisions.

It wasn’t as if they were not working, but when compared to a regular beetle at the same level, their performance was lacking at first.

The later versions finally managed to perform just as good, but it did take about sixty different variations. The artificial minds too had to adapt to their new bodies, and that was also another lagging aspect.

These minds were able to seamlessly work with regular monsters because it seemed their movement and attitudes were already in them somehow. It was like there was a blueprint of how to move a spider or how to move a beetle already available, while this modified anti-mana beetle was different, so even basic things had to be learned from the ground up.

Honestly, some of the earlier designs were embarrassing. It reminded me of my younger days when I played with Spore, and I just placed all the horns and spikes I could and made what looked like a nerubian or a porcupine-beetle.

Yeah. More spikes was better…not really.

Over time, the refinements made by my artificial minds made them more functional, and they began to look more like something more functional.

In terms of experiments, I also relooked at my artificial minds and tried to create more powerful, fully formed souls.

With my higher number of soul forge colors, it was theoretically possible. It took some time, but eventually I managed to increase the artificial mind’s overall performance and mana production.

It still wasn’t much, not when compared to the Titans. But twice as fast or twice as much mana was still a significant improvement and helped the artificial minds cope with the huge amount of background administrative work to keep everything running.

Branchhold had its own set of artificial minds to run the wooden lifts and coordinate the carrier-beetles.

I also sent Ally over to Mountainworld, and she—or it, really—took the form of a lizardperson, salvaged and repaired from the corpse of a dead lizardperson. Ally, as the parasite, received an artificial mind at the core, essentially giving it sufficient power to function, but not enough to truly exhibit the full range of its abilities.

A converted demon-champion parasite was something even my own Valthorns viewed with an uncomfortable suspicion. There was just something uncanny about a shapeshifter that could possess another that made normal people uncomfortable.

Something that I didn’t get. Maybe it was the assurance that it was almost impossible to possess me that made it discount that threat.

In any case, Ally would assist my spymasters in my plan to bend the opinions of Mountainworld in my favor.

Within the immigrants to Branchhold, we swiftly detected agents of the various kingdoms eager to find out more about us. At this point, I merely informed my spymasters of their presence but did not do more than that.

I didn’t want the natives to realize I could monitor them, so I decided to let the agents work as they please and only allowed capture in places where it was probable that someone could have noticed them.

In short, my spymasters had to hunt for spies without relying on my tree’s surveillance. This was good practice for him, of course, and it also hid the full extent of my abilities from the natives.

Working in other worlds would be a common occurrence as this went on, as I foresaw my gradual expansion over time.

Eventually, as I got in touch and had a presence in more inhabited worlds, I’d see myself become some kind of centralized transportation network, the warp network between the worlds.

I’d probably make a lot of money just by charging for transport, and with very few alternatives, well, except the void mages, I’d essentially be a monopoly.

Of course, as it was, I’d already have tremendous economic advantage because I could easily arbitrage any pricing differences between Treehome and Mountainworld, and the Central Continent, by extension, had access to two economic markets.

The merchant lords easily saw the economic opportunity to exploit the pricing difference, but all these depended on me agreeing to teleport the goods.

I decided against it, as it would not be good for me to crash the prices by flooding the market with essentially imported goods from another world.

There were some ideas that came out before our supposed invasion of Parasiteworld.

What if we shifted daemolite from our world to Mountainworld?

“No. What if it triggers a permanent increase in demonic invasions to our world? That would not be good.” Kelly and Adrian refused, and frankly, I could see their point. I wasn’t sure how the demonic surveillance and targeting mechanism worked, and if I shifted it there, could I essentially trigger more demons without reducing ours?

So I considered some more alternatives. One was to shift the daemolite to Parasiteworld or to Cometworld.

I didn’t want to shift it to Cometworld, because, if the demons could somehow see the daemolite, essentially the daemolite were surveillance bugs. I didn’t want the demons to target a hyper-mobile void explorer.

Thus we settled on sending more of these daemolites to Parasiteworld and see whether it affected the frequency of the demon king’s invasion to Treehome.

We shifted almost all of our daemolite to my clone on Parasiteworld.

“No change to the existing astral paths,” Stella said. “But the further ones are wobbling and fading. It seems removing daemolite only reduces the frequency of demon kings multiple decades down the road.”

Stella later theorized those that had already locked onto our world were coming as scheduled, but those further away had not properly locked on, thus removing the daemolite made targeting more difficult. Essentially, that meant daemolite was some kind of aiming aid. Without it, the demon could still find us, but it was just a bit harder.

We kept the daemolite in Parasiteworld.

Lumoof kept practicing with mana and trained hard. He needed to be ready for the shit I was gonna throw his way, and after the shit I put him through, he clearly understood he would be seeing things way out of his league.

Even the invasion to liberate Parasiteworld essentially depended on Lumoof to provide support, since the heroes demanded his presence as a condition to the invasion.

My trees were busy draining the waters from Parasiteworld to create patches of drier land. Strangely, now that my trees covered a large part of Parasiteworld, some normal weather had returned.

There was a return of seasonal rainstorms and small snows during the colder period. Parasiteworld had always felt a little hot and humid, a bit like being in a tropical swampland, but my large patches of trees had gradually repaired some of the weather. I found it weird, because this wasn’t a conscious thing.

I didn’t actually attempt to change the weather, but the changes on Parasiteworld over time had been rather dramatic, and some parts absolutely no longer resembled what was still a demon-controlled world.

With more mana coming from Mountainworld, I gradually inched closer and closer to the pit of Parasiteworld.

Each piece of territory was won through a constant war of attrition against the hordes of the demons. They spawned more creatures, newer variants, but we had improved beetles to counter them.

The demons clearly had some ability to learn and adapt, especially on the demon-controlled worlds, since they were able to spawn new variants. The fact that demons in the invaded worlds did not adapt that strongly when compared to the demons on their controlled worlds made me wonder whether demon kings and demon mothers had some control over the development of demons.

Or perhaps, because the system considered demons to be native in this world, the system spawned adapted demons? Or was there some kind of automated learning or just through recombining known traits in different ratios, in the same way nature adapted to changes in the environment through reproductive processes?

The only way I’d know was if I controlled a core.

My trees encroached on the areas around the pit to the core, and we began the process of draining the pit of water. Moving water wasn’t difficult, and I eventually released the water throughout my controlled areas, essentially creating rivers out of these once-shallow lands.

There was a lot of landscaping to do.

The water from the pit had to be cleaned and filtered, too, as I noticed it contained far higher quantities of demonic presence within it.

I didn’t know how long it took for the core to spawn another demon king, but from what I could detect on the surface, there was hardly any progress, and it seemed like an exceptionally long spawn time.

New lakes appeared, too, as more water was shifted out of the flooded pits. The fact that it was an exposed pit made it significantly easier for me to remove the water because I could spawn trees all the way to the edge, and those roots at the edge functioned like pumps. Water was then gradually sucked out of the pit and then channeled through the root network.

At the rate we were draining the pit, I estimated it would take about two years to drain the water and reach the core.

Good enough. By then, Lumoof and the heroes should be ready for another fight in the depth.

22

YEAR 213

“Isee the transportation went smoothly. Glad to see you, Master Johann.” I rotated domain holders between the two worlds. One of my newer treefolk lords, Baron Threid, and a delegation of administrators were present to greet him when I sent him over.

I could send him over unannounced, but the Valthorns had a huge operating procedure built up for fixed deployments, so I went along with the bureaucracy. Baron Threid’s kind was a rarity on Mountainworld, but he was one of those willing to take a relocation package over the Branchhold. At level fifty, he was relatively lower level, but that was normal for those with noble classes. Noble classes and ruler classes leveled slower, just like those with the higher tier or upgraded classes, but they made up for it by their aura and other state-level abilities.

This act of greeting domain holders and receiving visitors was one I felt a bit iffy about. There was an element of brown nosing that I didn’t quite like, but Lumoof and my senior leaders claimed that it was nothing more than a good practice of hospitality. Eventually, I settled and agreed to let the practice continue but forbade lavish and large receiving parties.

“Well, I’m here for my assignment. How’s everything?” It was his first visit to Branchhold this year.

Baron Threid shook his head. “We caught another four spies. I’m fairly sure Branchhold is infested with spies at this point. Our spies are trying to weed out the rest, but with so many immigrants, it’s quite hard. Some of them essentially do nothing but feed info back to their minders back in the kingdoms.”

Johann laughed. “Well, I’m sure Aeon saw it coming, so good luck there.”

Baron Threid paused at the statement. “Would you be assisting the counter-espionage efforts?”

Johann looked at the treefolk lord’s misaligned eyes for a moment and shook his head. Treefolks were not what people would consider pretty. They were more tree than people, so their body structure was unusual. “No. That’s not what I’m here for. Counter-espionage remains the task of Branchhold’s designated council. I believe Aeon’s intention is for the council to level, so it wouldn’t be right for me to interfere.”

“Ah. I see.” I would step in if things really got out of hand, but it was important to let the people make mistakes and learn from them, as long as it wasn’t a lethal one.

That said, I did find my tolerance of lethality increasing over time.

“Instead, I want a briefing on the latest wars of the foreign nations.”

Baron Threid nodded. “Right this way.”

There were days when I thought war was inevitable. The system facilitated and encouraged the act of combat.

Not just that. There were days when I thought war was good. The system was part of this world’s nature. It was how this world worked, and war was how the system and people of this world ensured the survival of the fittest.

The survival of those who could gain the levels and skills needed to survive. War accelerated that process, as conflict ensured and required each and every one to strive harder to protect what they had and to survive.

War was coming, because the system encouraged it.

War was coming, because those who survived were better equipped to face the future.

It was a morbid, cruel assessment of the world. Or was it me becoming numb to this constant state of war?

Despite the benefits of war, it came at the expense of generational learning, because war encouraged destruction of infrastructure and knowledge. War was the equivalent of stepping on others to go higher and destroying others’ ladders.

There had to be a balance somewhere between the two, and I wasn’t sure whether the Central Continent’s model was the best one, even if it worked very well so far.

I also didn’t think it was right to transplant a governance model that worked for the Central Continent to Branchhold and the wider Mountainworld as a whole, because both worlds and people had different histories.

Johann sat and contemplated the briefing. My spymasters had built a basic information-gathering network throughout the other kingdoms of Mountainworld. This complemented the information I gained through my trees, which also expanded outward.

The mountain world people fought a lot. In fact, the wars of this era seemed more violent than ever.

The level eighties of Mountainworld fought each other, and their levels meant the destruction they wrought was more extensive. Conflicts seemed to arise from the smallest things, the rulers eager to shake the status quo with the military power accumulated over the decade of war.

This was partly why there was a surge in immigration to Branchhold, once it became clear to the population of the world that no one actually attempted to invade us. Branchhold’s military power remained a huge unknown to the people of this world.

“We should arrange a visit to the Central Continent of Treehome and establish the sheer gap in power between our two worlds. Once they realize the kind of military power we have, it would greatly ease our efforts on Branchhold.”

What was the point in that, really? Show that we had a bigger stick? Was there a point to scaring the people? Was it not the same as what the heroes did? Their presence frightened the other nations into compliance and gave them the “right” to have their own kingdoms.

“It’s useful to get some of the nobles to work with us. There are those who feel that they can oppose us if they combine their might.”

Fear. I’d prefer if we were liked, but then again, being liked never stopped them from fighting against us. If anything, I’d like my spymasters to bribe, blackmail, preach, and twist these other nations to get out of my way.

After all, why kill when you could convert them or bribe them? It was unnecessary bloodshed. Money was not an object for me anymore.

Over the decades and centuries, I watched the value of money fluctuate, and now I was at the point where money was kind of a secondary result of my will. After all, money was useful to convince others to mobilize and do what you want. Now, though, with the resources of a continent and my power, should I choose to wield it, absolute, money was just an intermediary.

After all, money was just a means of exchange and also a way for the state to exercise its power to govern. A nation could pay its employees with food, lodging, or any other kind of benefit in order to compel them to do what the nation required them to do.

At the core of it, what was a nation? A nation was a means to create an overarching structure to enable the provision of services not possible at a smaller scale. Back home, democratic systems generally tried to ensure that the government had a mandate, so to speak, from the people that it governed.

This, partly, was to ensure stability, to align the will of the people and that of the rulers.

In a world with magic and skills, how did this mandate play out?

Frankly, in a world where skills, levels, and magic existed with monsters of varying strength, the value of the common man was not much.

It was more of an oligarchy of the powerful.

Too frequently, it became a “mandate of the system.” Not unlike the mandate of heaven. The system bestowed a select few with the power to rule, and thus they created their kingdoms. Levels created power, and that power was exercised to rule over others. Those who had power and gained power used it to oppress and to demand those beneath them to obey.

I was aware that was essentially what I did. My overwhelming levels ensured I could execute my will and bend Treehome to the direction I wanted it to go.

It was a form of tyranny, even if I’d generally tried to have a light touch. Lumoof once said the presence of level caps was to ensure that no one got too powerful, but clearly, the system wasn’t expecting a creature like myself.

Occasionally, I wondered whether this was all planned. Did the system know this was what I would do? Did the system have a desire? Did it have a goal?

Why? It was a question many people around the world asked. During prayers, many asked why level systems were created and lamented how unfair it was how some nobles had inherited skills and some had none.

What was the purpose of it all, anyway? I noticed a rise in these types of existential questions from the inhabitants of the Central Continent, which I suspected was a result of rising affluence and education levels. Was there even a purpose to it, to create a system where the system granted so much power to those who jumped through its hoops? The system encouraged slaughter and achievements.

This, of course, tied back to development. Rightly or not, I’d significantly uplifted the development of the Central Continent and invested significant resources on magical research and weapons. Tools of war to wage more dangerous wars.

This was known to all on Treehome and had functioned as a deterrent from the other nations. Alka’s crystalline bombs were well known for its incredible destruction. Their magical ripples could be detected an entire continent away.

Yet my goal was to end the cycle, and there was a worry, just like back home, that further research and overuse of bombs may eventually lead to some kind of magical nuclear winter. We didn’t know how much magic was too much magic, even if I was currently quite certain it was nothing to worry about.

On Branchhold, the issue of a constitution was a bit harder than I initially expected. Mainly the refugees and immigrants to Branchhold had very different expectations, norms, and requirements compared to the administrators from Treehome.

Those from Treehome had lived a generation or two under my rule, and their social, cultural, and administrative norms had deviated quite a bit.

Form filling was a struggle with the immigrants who didn’t even know what a form was. Things like waste disposal, sanitation, and food processing all had gaps. Even on Treehome there was some gaps, especially between continents, but the other continents had learned from us by exposure. Many nobles, influenced by my spymasters, adopted some of our norms and policies. Even the Triumvirs of Aiva adopted more regimented training processes, supported by my Valthorns indirectly.

All that happened over a long period of time, so the gap never felt so big.

But here, these people never had that exposure. The worse thing was it further solidified my delegation’s impression that the people of Branchhold were uncultured barbarians.

This was something I wanted to avoid, because it was a formula for resentment and worked against my intention to build a good, positive impression among the nobles, warrior classes, and general peasantry of the world.

“The gap’s too big,” Johann admitted in a personal conversation with me. “I’m not sure it’s possible to educate them and get them to change their practices so quickly.”

I wasn’t sure why, but that statement made me churn a little. I sensed disdain and a little bit of patronizing in those words. I got that he had a point, but I wasn’t too comfortable with that feeling, so I decided to clear it up. “Perhaps there is no need to.”

“Oh?” Johann was one of my soldiers, and he respected the warrior ethos of the people. But that was about his only positive impression. There was an immediacy to their life; the focus was on winning the next battle, not stepping back and thinking about how to win the war.

This difference in time horizon was probably something that would need a generation or two to change. The immigrants didn’t understand or comprehend the security we could provide.

Why think about what was going to happen a year down the road when the demons could invade and kill everyone next month? In a way, the decade-long war was a big setback to their overall society, and frankly, he understood that we could have easily been the same.

Yet it made day-to-day interactions frustrating. It was an experience quite like the Canari, who also seemed to live their lives day by day.

“These people lived life day to day, and rather than try to change them, is there a way to make a better or more productive version of this mindset?”

“That sounds rather strange.” Johann laughed. “Isn’t foresight one of the better qualities of civilization? To create a structure from nothing.”

“It is, but I am beginning to wonder whether I’ve been looking at civilization with a far too narrow perspective.”

“To me, that just sounds like chaos.”

“Maybe.”

The strength of planning and foresight allowed the accumulation of our efforts toward a larger goal, something that could not be achieved through instant reaction and living day by day. There had to be a guiding path or a focus.

It was the equivalent of a corporate ethos and culture toward some kind of goal.

An organization this large, by sheer number of actors and players, would generate many contradictory forces. A noble in one part of Treehome would and could take the exact opposite direction as another noble. It was impossible to force everyone to be perfectly aligned. It was too much effort and meant turning everyone into robots.

Ultimately, it boiled down to the question of what kind of world I wanted Mountainworld to be.

Did it even matter if its main function was to serve as a massive mana generator to complement my future mana requirement?

Why was I doing this?

“How do the immigrants take the rule of the council?” Johann asked one of the relocated administrators.

“Not well. Language differences are getting better, but they are still unused to the way many things are done. There’s also no respect for the Valtrian Order, which makes it harder for the Order personnel to carry out their work. The priests are having a slightly easier time, but it’s not smooth sailing, either.”

Johann spotted many small aggressions and conflicts as the relocated administrators and guards tried to impose their version of order onto the refugees.

Most accepted it, even if they didn’t understand. After all, they came as refugees to avoid the threat of war, but there clearly was some expectation gap. They expected life to be similar back to where they came from, not this accelerated uplift society where they had to adjust to how I wanted this city to be.

This was a result of my will being in conflict with those of the refugees, and frankly, many made the journey with incomplete information.

I could solve this problem by allowing mass migration from the Central Continent to Branchhold, but I wanted to see how receptive the local folk were before I did that.

I also had some concerns about facilitating such a large movement of people between worlds, and I wanted rules and proper processes before such things were permitted. The artificial minds could be granted authority to operate the inter-world transportation, and the necessary mana budget, so that freed up one part of my mental load.

There was a strange problem that emerged for those who came from the Central Continent. I didn’t notice it immediately because of the presence of my healing aura in Branchhold, but my spymaster noticed it in their field operators.

Diseases of another world.

Those with my familiars or those close to my clone trees were spared thanks to the influence of my [healing aura], but the spies that strayed further, some without the protection of my familiars, got sick. A lot.

Most diseases were mild, but it was another aspect that I did not foresee. Stella swiftly reminded me of the diseases brought by colonizers during the Age of Exploration.

The inverse did not occur, simply because my people were generally healthy thanks to the effect of my [healing aura], so they didn’t carry that many diseases. My [Biolabs] quickly collected some of these disease samples.

Then we realized these diseases of the mountain world were made of magic.

I eventually agreed to a learning visit for the refugees and the nobles. I thought about it and realized maybe intimidation wasn’t a bad thing.

It was the whole idea of a nuclear deterrence. I had the impression that my domain holders already qualified to be my nuclear deterrence. I also wanted the refugee representative to see for themselves what kind of culture and society we had back on Treehome.

Many refugees had their own de facto community leaders, which we selected for the trip. In total, about one hundred refugees would take their first trip to Treehome.

Their arrival on Treehome was a quiet one. I had not fully declared their presence here, so they were shuffled like tourists on tour buses, always escorted by security personnel.

They were frankly awed, the equivalent of jungle bumpkins entering the city for the first time.

23

YEAR 214

Lumoof’s mana practice continued, while my other domain holders made regular trips to Parasiteworld to set up the stage for an invasion.

He had managed, over a period of two to three years, to increase his mana tolerance by about twice of what it was, but lately his progress had plateaued. It still wasn’t good enough, but Lumoof said he would just gain more levels, and hopefully those higher levels gave him extra stats and new skills that helped with his mana tolerance.

I agreed; I did not want to subject him to pain if there was not much progress.

Since we had a roadblock in this particular direction, Lumoof went to Parasiteworld to see what he could do there.

My attempts to drain the pit of the demon king went quite successfully, and the amount of water was then redirected to make actual lakes and ponds in the areas we controlled.

I’d reached about three-quarters of the way to the core of Parasiteworld, and now the walls of the pit were filled with vines and crawler-type plants. Down here, there were few demons but nothing much of a threat.

The demons continued to attack us throughout the world, but so far, we managed to hold on. They mounted multiple assaults to flush us out and fully retake the area around the pit, with champions and all that, but with Edna, Roon, or Johann around to provide additional support and offset my “distance penalty,” it wasn’t hard.

A champion was no king, and if they could not field kings, my domain holders had nothing to fear. Hytreerion, my converted walker, served as my champion and fortified the area around the pit.

Despite all this, there was no sign or signal that suggested this world was attempting to grow another demon king. Not yet, anyway.

The magical energy of this world was still low, despite all the recovery in the past few years. The path in the stars appeared to be faint.

I wondered what kind of world it would invade, but for now we kept digging. It would be another year or two before we reached the core.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Kei said as she walked up one of Branchhold’s highest trees, where there was an observation tower that looked out. Stella nodded at the crystal-golem when she walked in.

I was told it was a gorgeous view of the vast demon lands, still not reclaimed by the heroes. The two heroes, Adrian and Kelly, did use their powers to retake some of the demon lands, but they didn’t seem particularly enthused.

“I’d say the same for you,” Stella responded as she worked with her tools. Over the decades, she had made some tools and equipment to help her with her task of observing the skies, and the mountain world’s skies were filled with entirely new stars and worlds. “Did Aeon send you here to give me a hand?”

“Nothing like that. I just asked for permission to visit another world and got it. I just have to be escorted outside Branchhold.”

“Ah, that does sound like something you would do. See anything you like so far?”

“Not yet. The rangers told me the food choices are quite interesting, but my taste buds aren’t exactly the best.”

Stella smirked at the golem. “Taste buds.”

“Yeah. Eat. As if I needed that.” Kei shrugged and then perched herself at the balcony. She took a moment to take in the view. “But this place does have a really good view. This city doesn’t sprawl, not like Freshka.”

“Not yet.”

“Eh, blasphemy!” Kei teased. “Aeon already has an anti-sprawl plan!”

Stella didn’t reply and continued to work. She collected readings of various magical energy signatures, and she continued her work on her theory. She thought that each different world had a magical key that identified that world, so if she could figure out what the alphabets were, she could then figure out how to match the alphabets to the rift gates and then use it to call places that we currently had no access to.

Magic was a lot of hard work.

“How many void mages did you bring with you?” Kei asked.

Stella paused. “Two of them are helping me with the research.”

“Do you find portals different here?”

“Not really. About the same. The only worlds where I felt my portals were nigh-unusable were that comet world and the anti-magic world.”

“That was a waste. Aeon should’ve kept that world,” Kei said. “Now our supply of anti-magic sand is cut off.”

Stella just smiled.

“Wait. What’s that look?”

“We have the magical coordinates for that world. With a sufficiently high-powered amount of void mana, and if we can replicate a smaller version of that core-mana-void mana tunnel…”

“How far are we?”

“Honestly, the biggest roadblock we have right now is Aeon’s lack of core mana. Between what I’ve seen and what we’ve gathered from the demon king’s core replica, we’re halfway there with the tunnel.”

“Shit. We are just one mana source away from being able to go wherever we want?”

“Let’s not jinx it and make it sound so easy. Core mana isn’t the easiest thing to find, but if the parasite-world invasion goes well…” Stella smiled. “There are still mountains to climb after this one. And this is still a really, really tall mountain.”

“How long have you known?” Kei asked once Stella took a break.

“Known what?”

“That we’re going to be able to essentially connect all the worlds we’ve been to.”

“Oh. It was always there. Each world has a signature, a ‘phone number.’ Each rift gate Aeon steals comes with its own coordinates, mostly intact. I’ve known how to lock a rift gate to a past world, especially if we’ve stolen the gate from that world. It’s just we lack the power to make that connection. Void mana doesn’t survive very well in the void forest. It gets swept away and disrupted by the smallest eddies.”

“Is Aeon planning to do that with this world, too?” Kei looked up at the sky. The mountain world would have its own demon king, too, but its cycle was a little longer, ranging from fifteen to twenty years.

“Yes. I’ve discussed it before. We have to grab as many rift gates from as many worlds as far as possible. It’s one of the easier ways to collect all the astral alphabets or numbers. Next was to map that number to our observations of their location in space and see whether we could make some sense of the numbers. I believe there is a logic or pattern inbuilt in the language of the rift gates, which brings me to my next task.”

“Which is?”

“I need to get my domain. Within the demon king’s core-replica, Aeon spoke of star-paths and a massive map, but he said there is a ‘guardian’ within that map. He’d only let me use it once I have a domain. I’ve seen images, though, through the [dream academy], but I’d really like to see it for myself and feel what that thing is.”

“Do you think that’s a creature of the void? Do you think there are things living in the void forest?” Kei asked randomly. “Like…you know, hunters within the void forest that look for certain things?”

“I wouldn’t say it’s impossible. But I’ve not seen any.” My void archmage relaxed and took a sip of water.

A Valthorn dropped in to just check in and then left once they noticed both Kei and Stella were in there. Branchhold’s security condition wasn’t as robust as Freshka, but with my artificial minds constantly monitoring everything, I had the ability to react almost instantly.

Still, I had the Valthorns patrol all the key installations. I didn’t trust my detection abilities to get everything.

Stella’s levels were mostly through research, but in her earlier days, she did some power-leveling with the domain holders. As she reached her level one hundred forties, her levels had slowed, so she would also need to get some combat experience in, even if it was indirect.

It was really quite irritating that the path to a domain seemed to require combat experience. Was this world so battle crazy?

Stella’s time had to be split between her astral-alphabet and rift gate research, crafting and combat, and also her teaching duties at her void academy. Thankfully, these days she wasn’t the only void archmage.

We had a few promoted to [void archmage] over the years, and for risk mitigation, we rotated them to other roles. One moved on to crafting and creation of void-mana sensitive artifacts that Stella used and also taught the next generation of crafter-void mages.

Sadly, the process of getting acclimated to void mana was still horrible, and it was something I worked on.

One of which was my breeding program. I had the ability to inject an inheritable skill, and I intended to stack the inheritable skills to create a naturally attuned [void mage]. The very first young treefolks just enrolled at the void academy last year since the breeding program started.

Patreeck went a bit further and suggested that I acclimate young lizardpeople eggs and treefolk seedlings to void mana, but the potential of killing these babies made me squirm.

I wasn’t willing to go that far. Maybe…not yet.

< How is the search underwater? > I spoke to Reefy after a while. I spoke to him, or it, every few months, but our conversation was usually brief. Usually nothing of particular interest, though Reefy often brought trinkets and showed all the strange fish that were found in the depths.

Then, this time, he brought something else to my attention. > Dead giant found. Know? <

Reefy shared, through our root-link, an image of a giant creature submerged in the depths. It looked like it had died many, many years ago. From the depths, all I could see was a shadow-like image, but it was something similar.

The shell was filled with scars, but I could tell what it was. A dead zaratan.

< Yes. A zaratan. Can you bring it up to the shore? >

> Too big. Need help. Minions too small. Can send help? < Reefy’s mental image shared a location of the dead giant, and I immediately had the Valthorns deploy ships and mages to the location.

I also pinged Lilies, my old friend, to get in touch with Vallasira, the zaratan, once more. If there was a dead zaratan, I thought I should let them know.

Stella and Lumoof both returned from the other worlds, and they were joined by Edna, Alka, and a large contingent of mages. They boarded the largest vessels we had.

The location was right in the middle of the ocean between the Central Continent and the Western Isles between two oceanic valleys. Over the years, some layers of ocean sand had covered most of it.

“It’s down there, right at the bottom,” Alka said. His magical abilities and past experience as an occasional archeologist meant he had some skills for this kind of event. “We could use a portal and teleport it up, but we’ll need to encase it in a bubble of magic to preserve it from further harm.”

Bones. I could learn of its last memories from its bones, but I would do so after I got the zaratan’s views, if they allowed me to do so.

“But let’s wait and let me see what else I can learn through magic.”

I recalled these zaratans loved water, and I wasn’t sure if digging up zaratan bones from the ocean was potentially an offensive thing. If they loved water so much, an oceanic burial could be what they’d always wanted.

Stella shrugged. “I’m sadly unaware of their funeral rites or customs, despite being their apprentice. As far as I know, they don’t have such customs, even though they do feel the loss of their fellow zaratans very, very strongly.”

“In that case, let us just do magical research for now and wait for the zaratans to emerge.”

As it turned out, we didn’t need to wait long, as a thick mist soon emerged in the area, and two massive zaratans emerged, one younger one that I’d met before. Their presence was thick and rippled outward, comparable to any domain holder.

> The tree’s compatriots have gained much strength. < The largest of the zaratans spoke.

Everyone just looked at Lumoof, and he entered avatar mode. I spoke through him then. < Greetings. We meet again, Vallasira. >

The younger zaratan’s still-massive turtle head nodded. > Indeed, Aeon. Your actions have rippled through the worlds. We thank you for the safety you’ve provided us. <

< It is what I must do. Let us get to the point. Reefy, my reef-friend, has found the bones of a large zaratan in the depths. >

> Indeed. < The largest one spoke. > Vallasira, as you have met them, you can host them in your shell. <

At that moment, one of Vallasira’s shell-hexagons opened up to reveal a small box. > Hop on. We will dive to the depths together and see our departed brother. <

Stella was the first to go. A portal opened between her and the box in Vallasira’s shell. The rest of us followed, and all in, about twenty of us dived into the depths of the ocean.

I had to admit, as a tree, I felt really, really uncomfortable being so deep underwater, and it took a lot of my willpower not to scream or shake. It was so bad that Lumoof had to use his calming powers on me.

Yet the depths of the ocean was wonderful, as Vallasira’s shell was incredibly magical. It was like a flexible screen that could turn transparent and allowed us to see the ocean outside. It was like we were in a glass box in the depths of the ocean.

The dive into the depths took just a moment, as all three zaratan landed around the giant bones.

> Our fallen brother. < The giant zaratan opened its mouth, and a jet of pressure blew all the sand away, revealing the rest of the shell and the bones. Massive scars ran along the side of the creature. > Another one for the demons. <

The other giant zaratan touched the scars in the shell with its nose and seemed to sniff. > It’s been five centuries. <

> Long it has been, but no longer. < The giant zaratan blew all the sand again, and this time, it swirled around the shell. The giant zaratan then bit at the skull of the dead zaratan, and at that moment, the giant zaratan seemed to glow.

The other giant zaratan and Vallasira also bit the bones of the zaratan, and I felt a sudden surge in magic around us. And then just as quickly, it was gone.

> Do as you please with the bones. We have done what must be done. For providing this information, Vallasira shall provide the reward, < the giant said, and then, just as quickly, the two giant zaratans swam away, and then…vanished.

> You may take the bones, < Vallasira said.

The small box we were in was then separated into two compartments, one with only Lumoof and another with everyone else. Stella then opened a portal in front of Lumoof, and water immediately rushed in through the portal.

But he was encased in an armor of wood, and he breathed through a vine. My roots surged outward and through the portal, and then my roots wrapped around the bones of the ancient zaratan.

Then I moved everything to another part of my [secret hideout], where my preservation abilities would keep it safe for our later studies.

> It is safer for our bones to be in your hands than anyone else’s. <

< Thanks for the vote of confidence. >

> All of us could see and feel your energies rippling through the multiverse. We hope our bones can push you a bit closer to your goal. But beware, they can sense it, too. They’ve begun to suspect something’s gone wrong in this part of the world, and they would not react well to a nascent god. A new “puppeteer” will only earn their ire. <

< Do I seem like a puppeteer? >

> They can’t tell the difference, < Vallasira said.

24

YEAR 215

Iwas now in possession of two sets of bones from legendary creatures—the dragon bones, which I recovered from the moon before I withdrew the clone, and now the bones of the zaratan—both of which were now safely stored in my [secret hideout] in their own little section. Thanks to the effect of my preservation abilities, they were untouched, almost the same as if they were on the moon and in the depth of the sea.

Since I wanted to now see what happened to the zaratan, I figured I might as well check the dragon’s bones as well.

I moved a large piece of the zaratan’s skull from one part of my secret hideout, right to the biolab located within my body. The skull itself was large enough to be a truck, but this broken piece was about the size of a large door.

It pulsed momentarily as my biolab began its work. Ethereal vines from my soul forge biolab entered the bones, and I began to see images and little bursts of thoughts. Emotions.

A lake and then a sensation of moving. A black sun, then abruptly snapping. Forced off the path! Another lake but then it was dried out. How? Then demons, large demons. Champions.

Running. Flee and conjured water around itself. The champions latched on, and then the sensation of moving again. It was unstable, demons on its back.

Ocean. A struggle. Pain. Sinking—

The memories ended there, and I realized this zaratan had probably been yanked out of its path across the stars. The demons could do that, or at least that black sun could.

I felt that black sun was the key to everything, and I proposed the idea of destroying or capturing the black sun to the domain holders. They generally concurred that it may work, if it was the only one.

I wanted to speak to Aiva again, ask them whether they’d ever tried assaulting the black sun. If that would work?

I tried a few more zaratan bones, but the memories of its last moments were similar. So I used the bones of the dragon from the moon that I’d kept for so long.

It was a bad habit. I would keep things and only check on them when I remembered them. Patreeck gave me regular reminders, but I found it hard to focus until it really drew me. Anyway, I focused on the dragon’s bones now.

Its memories were far hazier than the zaratan. The images I saw were faded, but I saw—

Flight. Run! Fear!

The sky, the stars, and then a really intense sensation of emptiness. Then the moon. The dragon looked back and saw a world aflame. A roar, and then a long period of waiting. Hope. Hoping for others to join it.

No one came. No one was strong enough.

I needed some time to process my thoughts. These were the last moments of these great creatures.

Both bones had power, and as I studied them, I felt I gained a better understanding of their nature. The study of their bones led to additional titan options.

[Titan option unlocked: Dragon Replicant. A creature with the flight, combat, and magical prowess of a lesser dragon.]

[Titan option unlocked: Zaratan Replicant. A creature created based on the zaratans of the void sea. Possesses ability to move between worlds, if there is an existing path. Comes with void mana as default and can use some void magic.]

I had one titan soul left, but I looked at the six heroes allied to me and realized I wasn’t in a rush. Not if this arrangement worked.

I would get more fragments. Sure, I was so close to one hundred fragments, but that was really a consolation prize if I could direct the hero’s actions.

These dragons and zaratans were so powerful, surely they would have achieved a domain. What stopped them from stopping the demons? Or that was the wrong question. The dragons stopped the demons many times, as seen from the memories in some of the ancient tree, but they were eventually overwhelmed. If so, what could we do to avoid their mistakes?

If two or three demon kings invaded us at the same time, we would fall, just like the dragons. Even today, we didn’t really know whether that was a rule or just a convenience of the demons. It was entirely possible that they assigned one-to-one worlds just to maximize the number of invaded worlds but could easily focus on a single world.

We needed to test this. Was there a physical or magical barrier that prevented simultaneous invasions? It was possible that a demon king’s presence emitted something that interfered with the astral paths, thus preventing multiple invasions.

Since we now had a demon king’s core replica, we also needed to figure out how to confuse their targeting system.

We had seen the astral paths wobble when daemolite was removed from Treehome, and so we’d seen that the creation of stable astral paths required core mana.

Thus I directed my attention to one of my potential sources of core mana. The core fragment of the anti-mana world.

Unlike the shard of the comet world, the rousing presence from a few years ago was still dormant. It was as if it slept. When I touched it again, this time, the presence was quite similar to the sensation from the comet world.

The presence was still collecting itself, and its core mana, however few it was, seemed to resist me. Without actually convincing that presence within the core to give me its mana, the core mana was far more bound to its presence.

Stella was back on Mountainworld after the zaratan incident and back to her magical research. She seemed to quite enjoy Branchhold, and with our enhanced abilities, we noticed that Mountainworld was linked to two other worlds. One of those two worlds was a little further away, and we would likely need to redeploy some daemolite to reach it.

It was strange how each world’s astral path was different and how each world saw the void forest differently.

This made me think that even the demon’s star maps may not be all that reliable, since they probably had their own frame of reference or these maps were collected from their jumps.

Even the souls, on their path to reincarnation, traveled to this void forest, where they would move and wobble their way to other worlds.

I attempted to access that view again, even with my soul forge, but I’d yet to succeed. Maybe I needed the right levels, but I also consulted my fellow domain holders on whether they’d seen such things.

Lilies, for one, had no clue. This was way beyond their experience.

Over time, I realized the process of learning was very often just repeatedly throwing something at a problem and seeing what stuck.

I wondered whether the gods got to their current solution through the same process.

“Counting down to the invasion?” Ken asked the heroes when they met. They didn’t meet that often, but they still made it a point to meet every other month. Everyone had their own things to do; some of the heroes had their own projects, like Chung and Hafiz, and the Mountainworld heroes, Adrian and Kelly, also found their own passions and hobbies.

They did say they felt lost after the defeat of the demon king, but eventually they found something to do and occupied their time.

Prabu nodded. “Kinda, but not really. We’re just working on our own thing for now while waiting for the cue.”

Snek, the little snake spirit, was the most eager of them all, which meant Ken had a little more stake in this project than the heroes. Snek wanted this invasion to succeed, for all the obvious reasons.

After the zaratan’s warning, I wondered whether this invasion may be the wrong move. What if I drew their attention and became marked by the demons?

What if we invited greater scrutiny? These were my worries, and so, for now, the best I could do was over-prepare. If necessary, I’d cover them and pull the rest of them back to Treehome.

We’d finally drained the waters of the pit, and I got a glimpse of what was within those pits. It was similar to what we saw in the anti-mana world, the demon mother, around a core. Parasiteworld’s core was smaller and filled with holes, quite a bit like a ball-shaped Swiss cheese.

The area around the core itself had been hollowed out, and instead, there was this giant octopus creature with multiple tentacles. Those tentacles weaved through the holes of the core and tied itself to it.

[Inspection] didn’t work, but I reckoned it was the same type of creature.

From what I could tell, it even had approximately the same level of strength as the demon mother, and I quickly shared my observations with the planned assault force.

We did have a clear path that led all the way to the core. We could guide a lot of bombs to the core and flush out the demon mother, but that came at the risk of destroying the core, which was so tied up with the demon mother. So we needed a surgical approach.

“Send Lumoof. Capture the demon mother,” Edna said, and Lumoof gave Edna the stink-eye.

“Oh, come on, don’t kick me into the pits.”

“I’m not kicking you in. I’m asking you to go in with the heroes. Heroes weaken that creature, and then Aeon captures it.”

“Pause for a moment,” Chung said. “Can you clarify what that was?”

“Aeon captures demons by flooding them with mana. Don’t you know that already?” Prabu said. “They’ve attempted to capture the demon king, too.”

“I know, but can it work on the demon mother?”

Edna shrugged. “It should. We’ve been prepping Lumoof for that possibility.”

“Can we supply you with star mana to do so?” Chung wondered. “Could star mana do the same thing?”

Actually, I never thought of it. That star mana was so toxic to demons that they died from exposure, but that was when we tested it against regular-type demons. We’d never attempted to infect a demon king with star mana, though I didn’t think it’d be a good idea, since they did have void mana within them and that was normally an explosive reaction.

But it was worth trying. If one of the heroes functioned as a battery, I could channel the star mana through Lumoof and inject it into the demon.

“So do we want to try it out with this demon within the core?”

“No.” I wasn’t sure why, but I felt that using star mana to capture the demon mother in the core would not go well, especially if it interacted with the void mana within the demon mother. “Just a normal attack will do. Our goal is to free the core and gain access to the core mana. Not crack the planet in the process.”

I wasn’t sure “scorched planet” even worked as a defense policy. Destroyed worlds did not form a wall that prevented travel. If it did, it may be worthwhile to look into destroying uninhabited planets to form interstellar barriers.

As part of the preparations for the invasion, we significantly increased the number of trees on Branchhold and soon made connections to more magical ley lines. I spread my trees, discreetly where I could, and ramped up my total mana output.

Back on Treehome, we did the same. I added more trees and extended my trees further out to the various islands closer to the Central Continent.

Thanks to the skills earned before this, I was able to tunnel to some of the islands, and this meant I now had some influence over the seas around the Central Continent. My minds suggested creating artificial islands, a point which I eventually came to agree to. The Valthorns quietly arranged for druids, earth mages, and builders to commence the construction of these artificial islands.

This was an incredibly lengthy process, as lifting sand and rock into a stable structure was actually quite difficult, and we honestly had to look for locations where the deep-sea monsters didn’t appear too much.

Publicly, these artificial islands were to serve as my military ports, of course, with all that excuse of reducing piracy and facilitating trade. It was just a cover for my real intention to spread my roots across the ocean and expand my total mana output.

My expansion on Mountainworld went relatively easier. Mountainworld as a whole only had one single ocean that was rather deep, fed by hundreds and thousands of rivers. That meant there were very little physical barriers to my expanding trees, and it was possible to go around any large habited areas.

The cold peaks of Mountainworld didn’t do much to stop roots that could tunnel through mountains, though in the process, I discovered that Mountainworld had very interesting subterranean life and culture. There were entire parts of the world that resembled parts of the Eastern Continent, where cities and entire nations lived within mountains, and within many mountains, there were massive caverns that contained things from an older era.

Many of these were in territories far from Branchhold, so I’d probably need to cook up a plausible excuse to send my Valthorns to investigate or probably just have them fake it as adventurers.

Yeah. That’d be something to do. I could have an initiative to set up Branchhold-sponsored adventurers and send them in that direction. But I could indirectly stir up a gold rush if that leak came from me, since these guys would suspect I knew something.

Anyway, as a result of my expansion on both my home world and Mountainworld, my total mana output increased by approximately half and my total mana storage by that same amount. This was a massive increase, though most of that increase came from “greenfield” expansion on the mountain world.

This wasn’t enough, obviously, but then again, the demon mother might be weaker.

Time to set it in motion, whatever the consequences may be.

“We’ve been working on this plan for years,” Stella said at the edge of my clone tree on Parasiteworld. She set up multiple observation posts, and a few more of her students, other void mages, joined her. They would monitor the stars for any signs that something was wrong or reinforcements were on their way.

Lumoof, my domain holders, and the heroes stood at the edge of the pit. Lumoof made a repeat of the mission statement. “Down there is the demon mother. Our goal is to capture it or defeat it, and free the core of Parasiteworld. The reason to capture this is simple. We want to test whether it is possible to recapture a world from the demons and gain access to core mana.

“If it’s possible to free the world, it may mean we can have a new population base and more future heroes to rely on. With core mana, Stella and the void mages can start to establish ‘stable’ astral paths through the void forest and mount a counter-invasion.”

The heroes gulped at the term “counter-invasion.” Getting core mana was the equivalent of having the fuel needed to make the journey. The counter-invasion was a deep-strike meant to target the real command center of the demons.

“Any questions?” Lumoof asked out of habit. It was just a procedure; they had discussed the issue at length over the years.

Everyone shook their heads. The pit had been heavily reinforced over the past year. I had four seeds: one on Branchhold, one on Cometworld, one here in Parasiteworld, and one more in store, still serving its cooldown.

There was four more years to go. They thought of waiting, but then, I didn’t feel like we needed to.

We had made extensive preparations, and they all had a variety of weapons: the ice blades of Aria, the death-staff of Lilies, Stella’s void-weapons, and their own hero-items.

“Check equipment?” Everyone took a minute to recheck their list and nodded.

Lumoof nodded and entered avatar mode. Vines branched out, and around him, the vines turned into a massive walking vine-creature. He looked at the pit and thought of the many times he made a journey into the core.

The pit itself was already filled with vines, and my beetles already patrolled the entire pit. The only area we’d yet to claim was the large cavern around the core.

Lumoof made a prayer, and the heroes nodded.

Time to claim the parasite’s core and free this planet.

25

YEAR 215 (PART 2)

“The entire pit was captured?” Chung asked as my vines had captured the trees. We’d figured out how to make some bioluminescent plants, which lit up the path and made it easier for us to defend the pits from the demonic assaults.

“Only the core chamber is unclaimed.” Beetles, with adapted legs meant for walking up and down vertical trees, also served as my defenders here.

“Damn. If only Ken could see this. This is hella beautiful if it wasn’t a journey to the death.” Then Chung slapped himself. “Choi! Shouldn’t have said that.”

Prabu smirked. “It shouldn’t be that hard.”

“Initial data suggests it’s slightly weaker than a demon king but still significantly stronger than a champion. Seems to be the leftover husk of a demon king, or at least a part of it was the demon king.”

I could technically teleport them down to the edge of my vines, but I didn’t want to reveal that part of my abilities, so they made the journey riding on Lumoof’s carriage of vines.

As the heroes approached the core, Stella and my sensors began to detect some movement.

“Something’s happening to the astral paths, and I’m detecting some magical pulse from the demon.”

It was a momentary magical surge that quickly subsided. Then the demon repeated it again. And then it got stronger and stronger.

“What’s that?” Stella asked, her eyes glued to the stars above.

“I’ve got no idea.” It felt like a warning beacon. Or an alert beacon, meant to alert the demons that it was under attack. “But it sounds like we may have company.”

There was still nothing in the astral paths. No movement.

Lumoof and the heroes approached the core and found the demon mother coiled up with the core.

“Well, that is our opponent,” Lumoof introduced, and the heroes quickly got ready. The demon mother, at that moment, abruptly shrank its size and hid within the core.

“Uh, where is it going—”

“I think it can see your star mana and is hiding from you,” Edna responded. “It knows that you won’t destroy the core, so it’s using the core as a shield.”

“Oh, I think you can leave this hide-and-seek to me.” Lumoof jumped to the core, and then my roots surged out. My roots and vines spread out, and the demon mother, no larger than a small cow, attacked my vines. It was strong, for sure, but destroying my vines revealed its location.

The demon was indiscriminate and happily attacked the core, but this close, I felt a rough, hazy presence touching on my avatar’s will, calling to us. It was groggy, as if it’d been long asleep or unconscious.

Something pulled it back.

“Follow the colored vines, and it’ll lead to the demon.”

The heroes approached the core. Meanwhile, through Lumoof, my vines flooded the holes of the core and attempted to slow down the demon mother’s movement. It could easily cut through my vines.

After a few minutes of hiding, it soon realized its initial plan to escape or hide within the core wasn’t going to work because the heroes eventually caught up and attacked it.

The demon fought the heroes within the core for a short few minutes and found itself outmatched. The heroes landed a few hits, but frankly, they held back because they didn’t want to damage the core. Yet it was clear that the heroes would win if it remained within the core.

So rather than remain in the core, the demon flared its magic, burned through my vines, then rushed out of the core. I tried my best to delay it, but it still managed to blast through them after a few hits.

“Chase after it!”

That flaring of energy seemed to mark something else as well, as Stella immediately noticed something unusual was happening.

“Aeon, something’s coming! I’ll do my best to delay it. I need you to send more void mages over to me right now.” She immediately barked orders as a group of void mages on standby immediately jumped to action, and I sent them through my clone.

The demon rushed up the pits, and I tried my best to block it and covered the pits with thick walls of wood and trees. It heated up like a shining, burning missile and blasted through my attempts to delay it.

The heroes and everyone else gave chase and fired attacks. “Just attack it. Don’t worry if you land a hit on the walls or anything. I can always fix the trees later!”

Each attack weakened the demon mother, but it moved with speed equal to the demon king and dodged most of the heroes’ and my domain holders’ attacks.

At that moment, Lumoof immediately asked, “Should I stay in to secure the core or go after it?”

“Go after it. My vines and roots can reach here. Let me deal with it for now. I don’t think I’ll need my full strength here.”

“Got it.” Lumoof immediately darted after the heroes and my three domain holders. My domain holders were slower than the heroes, but Prabu had used a magical acceleration ability to pull them up so that they could keep up.

Chung launched volley after volley of homing magical arrows at the demon mother, and this was when I saw it phase out and vanish momentarily before appearing a short distance ahead.

“Great. Just great.” Chung charged another shot while he flew up the pit after the demon mother.

“There was an invisible demon before this,” Prabu quipped while he charged a star mana–powered homing fireball. At the hero’s level, the fireball resembled an actual neutron star rather than a ball of fire.

The demon mother took a few hits, and then it flared a magical energy.

Up on the surface, Stella immediately deployed a wide array of void-mana equipment and started to channel it. I felt her void mana spread through the skies above; it seemed to be pushing against something.

There was something coming that only she and her void mages could see. “Aeon, void mana batteries, I need more!” she yelled, and my vines wrapped around her and her void mages. This linked her to the void batteries back home.

My clones and my roots essentially functioned as cables, linking them to the stored mana batteries back home. I felt huge quantities of void mana travel through our linked bodies.

The skies darkened, and I saw strange explosions in the skies above. Then I saw a flickering astral path. It flickered momentarily, and a burst of light traveled through the path. It vanished just as quickly.

“Ugh.” Stella winced, and I felt her magical energy destabilize. “We’ll have company. I couldn’t stop some of them.”

Stella had been working on interfering with rifts for the longest time, and even then, it wasn’t perfect. Rifts opened in the skies, and then strange black demons emerged from them. I could tell these were mini-demon kings, stronger than champions. They charged at Stella and my void mages.

[Guardian Treants] and an army of beetles emerged around my clone tree. My artificial minds quickly got to work. “Protect the void mages. It’s trying to undo their interference.”

Horns and my other artificial mind–powered beetles led the defense while I created a wall around my void mages. I couldn’t block them from the sky, as that would prevent them from doing their part of battling the rift.

A few of my higher-leveled Valthorns also joined the fight on the surface. These were my level one hundred twenties to one hundred forties, those who aimed for the domain.

A battle raged on the surface as the defenders destroyed the black-demons.

“Oh dear. Something big is coming,” Stella said as I felt her and all her void mages expend all of their energy. Their battle was one I couldn’t see, but it was something called a “void shield” that attempted to use void mana to shield a world from rifts.

Still, she did her best and pushed. I was very surprised by how much void mana she had within her, even without the void batteries.

Then the skies cracked, like a glass shattered, and I saw that same black blob from before. The glass attempted to return and fix the shattered sky—

And the demon mother surged out of the pits and bathed in the strange glow of the black blob.

A black droplet fell from the blob.

Stella winced. “Not gonna let that happen.” To me, it looked like a piece of glass sheared through the drop, and a bit of it disintegrated. Yet that very same strike sent a huge jolt of pain through Stella. She bit her lips and then pushed again. “More.”

She pulled more void mana through the roots, and I saw that droplet shear in half in an invisible strike.

Yet that strike knocked her out. The rest of the void mages did their best to hold out without her. “Aeon, we need another void archmage here!”

More rifts began to open in the skies above, and this time I could see it.

The demon mother merged with what was left of the black droplet and then transformed. It regained power, and at that moment, the temperature in the world began to increase.

Thankfully, its reign would be short lived. The heroes shot out of the pits, and they didn’t hesitate. They’d fought many demons before, and their heroic battle sense was impeccable.

They unleashed a torrent of attacks at the transformed demon. Roon and Johann also unleashed their own version of hell, mostly with bolts of anti-mana glass and anti-demonic wood.

In a single combined strike, the transformed demon mother cracked, and its outer shell shattered, leaving a large, egg-shaped black droplet that crashed into the ground below.

At this moment, I noticed the rifts all immediately closed, and the crack to that black blob had vanished. The void mages had sealed the rift once it retreated.

The egg-shaped black droplet released a similar, familiar pulse. It attempted to detonate itself.

“Fucking hell, it’s got a bomb, too.” The heroes cursed, but we also predicted this eventuality. It was, after all, a former demon king. It must have had that crystal core.

My vines approached it, and Edna, once again, withdrew our valuable anti-mana glass weapons and stabbed the egg. It wobbled from the strike, and the anti-mana glass did its work.

Unlike the demon king, this egg didn’t pose that much of a challenge. It wasn’t as strong as a full demon king, and that made a world of difference. Lumoof immediately closed in, and in avatar mode, my vines wrapped around the egg.

Lumoof winced slightly as my vines drained it of mana. I then inserted my own mana into it. Through Lumoof, my mana flooded it, but instead of converting it, it began to disintegrate.

The egg somehow stopped its attempts to detonate itself and instead struggled in its dying breath. It pulsed, attempting to fight off whatever nearby, but its weakened attacks barely hurt Lumoof.

We had defeated it, and the egg melted away to reveal a ball-shaped metal shell within. My vines quickly wrapped it and sent it back home for further investigation.

The rifts had closed, and my defenders crushed the remaining demons.

We freed Parasiteworld from the demon mother, and elsewhere, we noticed the tide of demons attacking us began to dwindle.

Down in the core, my vines had wrapped around the core and started to drain it of its demonic energy. It was like an engine covered in old grease and gunk, and it took a while to clear it.

Then the much-needed announcement came. If anything, a title seemed like a worthy prize.

[Title Obtained: Liberator of a Fallen World]

“Huh.” The heroes were rather amused. “A title.”

As I began to drain more demonic energy out of the core, the core began to glow. It was as if it was restarting after a long time.

“Uh…”

My vines from the entrance of the pits entered the core chamber and grew on the walls of the core. Here, in the depths, gravity was a little wonky.

The will of Parasiteworld began to rouse from a long, long coma. It would take some time before it could communicate; I sensed that its will was fragmented, and there was still a lot of demonic mana residue to clear.

“Is everything all right up there?” Edna asked as she looked up at the still-dark skies. The energies still felt unstable, even if none of the rifts were active.

“Seems normal for now,” the void mages answered. “It’s now quiet in the path. We’re just dealing with waves from the sudden closure of rifts.”

The heroes loosened up after hearing that all clear, and some of them stretched. “So, what now? We’re done?”

“Yes. Let’s get all of you back to safety and let this planet recover slowly. It’ll be some time, I think,” Lumoof answered. “The fact that we got the title is a sign we achieved what we came to do. Aeon will need some time to figure out how to access the core mana.”

Chung looked at Lumoof. “Can we be here when that happens? I’d like to see what Aeon does to the core. I’m not paranoid or anything, but y’know, letting Aeon have the core is a big…uh…responsibility, and I just want to see what’s happening.”

Lumoof nodded. “We’ll keep you informed.”

Prabu ribbed Chung in the elbow, and Chung just said, “Ever heard the phrase ‘trust, but verify’? Letting anyone control a planet’s a big deal, even if it’s an empty one.”

The heroes returned to Treehome and Mountainworld, and my domain holders also withdrew. I watched Parasiteworld’s core carefully, but there were positive signs. The recovery rate of natural mana of the world seemed to start to tick up.

This was a very, very slow recovery, and Patreeck’s quick calculations suggested it would still take fifteen decades for the mana to fully recover to Treehome’s level. Of course, this was a straight-line increase, not an exponential recovery, and it was possible that the recovery of Parasiteworld worked exponentially.

With everyone back in their respective homes, I focused on retaking the entirety of Parasiteworld from the demons.

Stella woke up about half a day later on Parasiteworld. She rested and underwent treatment in a healing pod. I didn’t want to move her, not until I had a bit more certainty on the damage she experienced.

As my avatar, I always had direct insight into Lumoof’s health, so I knew exactly how he was. With everyone else, I needed to do more checking and tests.

Stella smiled when she woke up, and I immediately felt it. The density of void mana around her began to swell, and her condition suddenly improved, as if something just clicked.

The void mage had finally gained her domain.

The domain of [Void].

With both the core and her ascension, the great plan could now take another leap forward.

26

YEAR 216

“[Void Explorer].” At that moment, I felt Stella do something. I waited for it to happen and then…detected nothing.

“What happened?”

“A single split body of mine is in the void forest, and it’s traveling there. With this, I can go and see a lot further than just relying on our astral sight. Best part, I can establish a void portal to anywhere my void explorer is. But only one world at a time.”

Oh. I couldn’t see it. “Is it similar to what Snek did?”

“A bit. But he couldn’t travel very far. I’ve got so such restriction, and I don’t need to kill myself to do it.”

“But using void portals does mean that heroes can’t travel to whatever you find.”

“Yes, but you can, and as long as your seed gets through, it also means the heroes can.”

“This also seems like a duplication of your efforts with the rift gates’ language.”

“Well, in a way, yes and no. We hoped to learn the rift gates’ language to enable us to travel to faraway worlds, but it’s like randomly dialing numbers without knowing what the numbers are. With this, I could actually arrive at a world and figure out what the ‘number’ is to call through my void explorer, since I know its location in the void forest. Of course, I need to get the number and lock the number while it’s there before I move on, because the numbers change as the void forest moves.”

I frankly struggled to understand this concept. The very fact that we locked the number even as it wobbled. But if we never locked on to the world’s number, that number kept changing.

Stella called it like a slot machine or a Schrodinger’s cat, because a world’s calling number was not fixed until it was observed and locked in a rift gate. Perhaps the very act of locking it in a rift gates released a signal to the void sea or void forest that identified that world as this particular number as linked to it.

Outside of complicated void magic logic, which I still struggle to understand, Stella was now a member of the pantheon, and that meant she could now venture out into the other worlds with an insurance policy.

It’d still hurt as hell, and I was not sure if there were side effects, but we would try not to find out. Nothing so powerful didn’t have side effects.

“What else? Any particular benefits from gaining your domain?”

She shrugged. “It took forever, but frankly, I feel a lot stronger, and my mana pool feels like it just tripled. Not just that, it even feels like my void mana’s a little bit more dense and stronger. Most importantly, I’ve got a far better view of the void forest, and that, I think, will be the most helpful ability.”

“I see.”

“But now, we can move on to the next phase.” I briefed Stella on the full details on what my goal was and whether she was willing to assist me on it. She said she wouldn’t take the battle itself, but she would be more than happy to play the role of the logistics and transportation person. “And can we do something about all these things attempting to read my mind? Why’s my [domain] constantly blocking attempted interference?”

Edna chuckled when she heard it. “It comes with the level. Now you know how many things are constantly attempting to read your mind.”

“Shit,” Stella cursed. “But where are they from, and how do they do it from this far away?”

Edna just shook her head and then walked to the wooden window overlooking the entirety of Branchhold. “Well, what’s next?”

“What’s next is we figure out what to do with the next demon king while helping Parasiteworld get back to its feet.”

Our victory on Parasiteworld was unknown to the general public; it was an invasion known only to the senior leaders of the Valtrian Order and the select group of people around the heroes.

For now, no one was clamoring for anything, but now that I pretty much had an entire world to repopulate, it was something I needed to think about more seriously.

“What do you guys think about a planetary migration program to Parasiteworld?” I asked them. Parasiteworld had no native population to immigrate and build a city. I’d need to invite a pioneer generation to move to the world and live there.

The first group I approached were naturally the Canari and many other similar, less populated groups.

“Aeon has gained access to an unpopulated world, and it is my honor to extend an invitation to the Canari to make a move to this world.”

“It’s unpopulated? Does that mean Aeon is giving us the entire world?” My diplomat flinched at the sheer greed of the Canari prince’s statement. The Canari had lived on Treehome for two decades now, and there was a group of lost generation, those born on Treehome, but who found themselves with an identity crisis.

“No. You do need to negotiate which parcel of land you want from the senior Valthorns. The allocation of land currently sits with Patriarch Lumoof. The Canari is just one of the first groups invited for this move. He hoped that this new world would be a permanent home for the Canari.”

“If we’re sharing, we are not interested—”

One of the other Canari leaders quickly interrupted the prince. “Let us take this back and discuss.”

For the Canari that lived as the sole race on what was Cometworld, a life of coexistence with the other races was a huge, huge problem. The fact that they hadn’t waged any large wars was merely because they were extremely intimidated by the sheer power we had. They didn’t have any single person who could match any of my level one hundred fighters, what more my domain holders.

In a world where the Valthorns did not exist, they would’ve fought wars for dominance with the others.

The new generation was slightly better, but even the new generation had two groups: one group that was fine with coexistence, because that was all they’d known, and another group that wanted to somehow reclaim that supremacy, either by figuring out how to travel to other worlds or gain power and annihilate the rest.

Some attempted to summon their own heroes, hoping to have something equal to the heroes of Treehome. It didn’t work, of course, because they didn’t have access to divine power, nor did they understand what created the heroes. I didn’t even understand it, despite all the research I’d done.

It really made me wonder whether the process of creating heroes wasn’t actually something the gods had control at all but instead was a system-process, meaning it was a function already built within the system, which the gods then tapped and made tweaks. It certainly explained why there were other administrators like Mozart. If so, I may be able to gain access to that process someday.

Anyway, I generally tolerated the Canari. After all, after centuries of thinking they were the sole sentient race and then losing their world, they’d been to a lot of pain and loss that their society still needed time to cope with.

Their loss of societal power and prominence also significantly damaged their pride and psyche. Their rulers used to control everything in their world; now they had to obey my Valthorn and find that what was left of their society was left at another’s mercy.

Perhaps this anger and this desire to return to how it was was a societal coping mechanism.

I’d seen this generation gap emerge between those who moved from Cometworld and the new generation who struggled to understand that line of thinking or those who took that thinking to the extreme.

Best I could do was encourage the individuals that accepted it, help them integrate to this new world order, and have my army of artificial minds consistently watch their every move for any potential activities.

We’d recruited some of the Canari as members of the Valtrian Order, but because of their relative youth with us, even their strongest was only about level eighty to eighty-five. I’d also yet to grant any single Canari member one of my soul-strengthening seeds to exceed their limits.

The Canari had fairly strong pack instincts, a bit like werewolves, and as such, I’d found that it was difficult for me to deploy a Canari against one of their own, as their own internal bonds were stronger than their loyalty to me.

Eventually, though, I believed there would be a lone-wolf Canari that I could ensnare into the Valtrian Order.

Or, at least, establish a Canari group that was wholly part of Valtrian structure such that their loyalty and pack instincts were with us.

< A world, freed? > Lilies asked as the statement sank in. I shared the images of the battle, and I was rewarded with complete silence for two days.

I knew it was thinking and internally debating it. I could sense the ripples of something through the shared roots. It wasn’t the first time Lilies responded to me in this manner; back when I successfully invaded the core and attacked the demon king, it had pretty much the same reaction.

Two days later, Lilies asked a question of utmost uncertainty, which was unlike them. A set of events they have not encountered. < Will they retaliate? >

> Maybe. I have my void mages watching the stars for it. I believe they must have noticed it. My void mages claimed it emitted a warning of some kind. <

< This is a dangerous path, and we know not of what powers the demons truly have beyond the demon king. >

> Indeed, but we will figure it out. On happier things, my void mage, Stella, has gained a domain. I must thank you for introducing her to the zaratans. <

< A lifetime of suffering and more, all for the powers of the system. >

I naturally found that statement hilarious. > All life is filled with suffering. <

< And that is true. One can only choose the type of suffering. You’ve selected the path of suffering a lifetime of struggle against the demons. >

> It is the way of the tree, to fight those who seek to snuff life out and convert entire living worlds into destruction factories. It is our suffering that enables others to have the fortune to suffer their lives. < I wasn’t that conceited to think I was a god or something. But surely, a world full of life was better than a world with none. From my point of view, this was not debatable, because life was better.

Stella attempted to use the replica of the demon king core once more and accessed that map within it. This time, protected by her own domain, she investigated and channeled her enhanced powers through the demon king’s core.

She pushed, and I felt that round object glow, and then, in a sudden burst, I felt something crack from within the core, and then the core shattered into many small fragments.

“The core is clearly linked to some kind of void-net,” Stella said, and then she smiled. “I didn’t manage to push as far as I liked, but I have some good news. But let me try it again and confirm my findings.”

She attempted to use another replica, but instead, she found the core unable to be used. Nothing was wrong with the core, but whatever it was linked to had managed to block the core from accessing it.

“Ah darn. Oh well, let me announce it anyway.”

The domain holders and heroes gathered, and Stella made the horrible, horrible announcement.

“I’ve managed to decrypt some of the demon king’s core, and I have three main things to say.”

Roon leaned forward. “Oh, this gonna be good.”

“One: the demons have some kind of control node or command center. Each demon king is linked, through a certain particular frequency on the void-forest, to these command centers. It was through this particular frequency that the demon’s coordinated their attacks and also asked for help. It matched with the frequency used by the demon mother when it summoned that core. The void mages will start work and construct a sufficiently large daemolite artifact to replicate this effect and start jamming this coordination process. It’s likely that the crystal artifact will get attacked.”

“So we need to play defense?”

“Yes.” Ginseng tree on a far greater scale. I thought life seemed to love fractals, and it was just the same things scaled up.

“Or we could keep it as a reserve weapon until we have a wider array of tools to deploy. I’m personally of the view that we don’t want to alert the demons too much. We’re uncertain of their intellectual ability and what sort of retaliation if they start viewing us as a threat.” They would start paying attention to us, and the longer we could pull the wool over their eyes, the stronger we could be.

“That, too.” Stella nodded. “Secondly, the bad news. The demons have a set of core suns. These are the black suns we saw, and I saw at least five or six of them, each located in a different segment of space. These things, from what I briefly saw through the core, provide the fuel and the demonic mana, and also there’s a black blob that gives the intelligence behind the core. If the endgame is to defeat the demons permanently, we will need to take out these suns somehow. So unfortunately, there’s no real single target at the center of it all, unless that black blob happens to be the core of it all.”

I suddenly realized that maybe it was a variant of my own clone ability. Were the demons, at their heart, created by some kind of demon-life type of god?

Or should I treat the term “slavers” literally, that there was a parasitic virus that sought to assimilate all races into its fold, enslaving those that resisted?

“The third item is that I should be able to locate Snek’s home world within the next ten to fifteen years and establish a connection to that world. The question, therefore, is Snek’s world important enough for us to do so? I ask this, because my void explorer’s ability to survey worlds is quite limited.”

“We’re constrained by Aeon’s clone,” Edna responded.

Ken immediately interjected and supported Snek’s case. “Yes. Snek’s world is valuable. His world has demonic dragons, and their people are familiar with blood magic and spiritual magic to an incredible degree. Snek’s own abilities are good, but there’s more of that on their home world. Saving it or rescuing whoever is left is an overall increase in combat power.”

“You do realise we need to agree, too, right?” Chung added in a rare rebuke of Ken’s position.

Ken glared at his friend but quickly saved it. “Yes, I am aware, but at the very least, we could arrange an escape for those still living on that world if a full invasion can’t be done. We’ve seen what the demons do when their worlds get invaded.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, but then Prabu cut in. “What if we use Stella’s void explorer to look for more worlds, more living worlds specifically? There should be their own heroes, and with that, we could grow the League of Heroes. It’ll make it a lot easier to defeat any demonic scourge with a bigger League of Heroes.”

“That, too,” Stella said. “There’s two real directions at the moment: I either send my void explorer toward the demonic core and find what’s there, or we go the other direction where Snek’s world is and see what else we can find along the way. From what I can see, my void explorer takes a really long time to get anywhere, because the space between worlds is so freaking large, and there are some other strange creatures in the void that I would like to avoid.”

“There are things in the void forest?”

“Things quite difficult to describe. If you’re familiar with the wilder, cosmic horror stuff…yeah. They are there, and well, what we do is we avoid them.”

“Can they fight demons?”

Stella just shrugged. I’d like to be in the void forest. I believed it to be the way forward, and if needed, I’d like to meet these creatures.

“Should we vote on the last one?” Stella asked, and Lumoof nodded.

Edna shrugged. “A League of Heroes would definitely buy us time, I guess, and we should save what’s left of Snek’s world. For.”

Eventually the majority voted “for,” except for Chung, Roon, and Johann. It was cute that it was the three archer-heroes and domain holders that voted against. They were focused on their targets.

It’d been one year since we’d liberated Parasiteworld, and the world’s energy level continued to increase. We spotted the appearance of more natural monsters and animals, including more variants of regular animals such as cats and dogs. Even the vegetation seemed to have started to sprout.

From the core, which now glowed, we noticed the holes in the core started to fill in. It would take some time, but eventually, I believed the world would recover.

For now, that consciousness from within the core remained dormant.

I’d thought of taking the core before, but I didn’t want to be like the demons. I also wanted to see if I could cooperate with it.

27

YEAR 217

“It’s emerging!” One of the treefolks’ lords could not control his excitement as a treefolk grew out of its little shell from the specially fertilized ground. From the ground, a charcoal-colored treefolk emerged with a natural magical presence.

The treefolk was small, the size of a small pot, but the fact that it survived was great. The Valthorn researchers watched in admiration and then got their gear. “It’s amazing.”

A void mage made the first contact as he approached the young baby treefolk. It yawned and stretched its super tiny dark-wooden limbs. The treefolk lord immediately reminded him to be super gentle. It looked so frail, so tiny like just a finger could easily snap the twig.

They touched him with the most gentle of touches, and it looked, its eyes hazy and blurry. Then it followed.

The baby treefolk could walk from birth, but it was uncertain and wobbly. The void mage nodded to the treefolk lord. “I think it’s safe.”

The treefolk lord immediately approached and extended a finger to the youngling. Decades of experimentation with life led to the birth of the first void-sensitive treefolk. The goal, eventually, was to engineer a void mage stronger than Stella, so this first young void-treefolk would not be the strongest, because we would get better at it.

But the fact that we could made me really happy. I’d mostly devoted the application of my evolutionary powers to the races that I found most malleable, like treefolks, lizardfolks, and to some extent the humans. Elves, Centaurs, dwarves, and Canari were a little more difficult to work with on an evolutionary standpoint, mainly because their life cycles were naturally much longer, so it had an impact on the experimentation cycle of birth-growth-maturity-death.

The treefolks were also naturally long lived, but they could easily crossbreed, a hereditary feature of their plant origins, which made them my researchers’ first choice to attempt an infusion of magical powers and create super mages.

In fact, I sometimes wondered why treefolks were not more common throughout the multiverse, given how adaptable and malleable they were magi-genetically.

My researchers were delighted, of course, and many would want to plan more detailed variants, like water element–focused treefolks or specific skillset types.

Along this, we continued our efforts to train more specific class types as part of our effort to counter the demons, in particular the physical combatant such as wrestlers and other barbarian class types, and even had a very good mix of racial talents, from Centaurs, dwarves, lizardfolks, and treefolks, too.

We had relatively good success; we’d gotten some of the barbarian or brawler type candidates up to level seventy-five to eighty, but it’d take a decade or two before we started to see the first level one hundred fortiers that we would then push toward getting their domains.

A relatively short time, all things considered.

For the exorcist, alchemist, and witch class types, we struggled a lot more. There were very, very few witches in this world. So few that there were probably less than ten, and they seemed to be a class in decline. For exorcists, well, they didn’t exist. These were roles normally performed by priests, so exorcism as a specialization was unnecessary. For alchemist, the difficulty was getting levels and helping the alchemist level in the relevant classes.

We tried our best to provide various types of exotic materials, but progress was slow. This experience replicated itself across to the blacksmith or crafter classes as well. We managed to get a few to level one hundreds, but then they plateaued significantly. They took on bigger projects and more ambitious creations, but somehow the levels moved really slowly.

Like Alka’s case, he seemed to gain most of his levels from his weapons manufacturing, and its subsequent use in battle. It was almost as if the system told us to fight, and I hated that the system encouraged conflict.

It sucked, but I kept providing them with more exotic materials.

Sand and soil from the moon. Soil and minerals from the other worlds. Remains of beasts from the high-tier dungeons.

I didn’t know how long I’d take, but I really didn’t want to believe that the systems forced crafters to make tools of war as the way to gain level.

But the evidence was undeniable. Lilies did it with their death-weapons, Aira and Aispeng with their ice-weapons, Alka with his bombs. I did it indirectly, through my familiars. I gained experience when my familiars served those who gained levels, and they gained it through combat.

Parasiteworld’s astral paths vanished when the demon mother was slain, and in its place was a black cloud that engulfed the entirety of the world. Stella projected that it would clear up in a few years, that this was essentially void-debris, left from the collapsed structure of the world’s astral paths.

That was both good and bad, since it meant we couldn’t see if anything cut through that cloud and invaded Parasiteworld.

Despite that, my beetles soon swept Parasiteworld of demons, and we captured more and more of those spawning pools.

Then I got an upgrade to my existing skills.

[Biolabs upgraded: Living Sacs and Chrysalis added. You may now create or grow certain types of creatures through your trees. These creatures will grow in sacs over a certain period of time. You may also insert living beings into these sacs to grow or alter their biological makeup. Alterations may cause loss of levels, classes, and monsterfication.]

[Demonic spawning pools will be converted to biolabs.]

The spawning pools changed overnight as they were replaced with frankly grotesque trees filled with liquid-filled sacs and massive fruits. The demons were converted into beetle-ish variants.

Parasiteworld was eventually purged of its demons, and the terrain began to change. As the energies returned to the world’s core, the tectonic movements underground began to restart. Energies began to spread out from the core, and ley lines began to reemerge.

In the latter half of the year, we observed slightly more tectonic movements; some of these were frankly massive earthquakes where huge continents were shunted upward. Some of my trees were suddenly cut off as the once-flattish terrain started to reshape itself into something else.

It thus seemed to me that the will of the world had significant influence on the terrain of the world, and now, it began to reassert its control on the world.

Also, the Canari eventually decided to send a small delegation to Parasiteworld, along with the treefolks, lizardpeople, and dwarves.

The terrain was still rather unstable, though the area around my clone tree had been very safe so far. The core had not tried to kick me out yet, even if I sensed its will slowly, very slowly, waking up.

It was almost like it was in a dream.

“How long will it take for you to reach Snek’s world?”

“Another ten years,” Stella answered. “For now, we should be focused on our other issues, such as the demon king of Mountainworld or perhaps…Threeworlds.”

“Oh,” Lumoof said. “I almost forgot about those guys. We should visit them. I wonder how they are doing.”

“We?”

“Yes. Or at least try to visit the other two guys. The humans are hostile once they learn we are of foreign origins. You can help me move around with your portals, then we can avoid those that seek to attack us. I’d like to avoid using our powers to kill when it’s pointless.”

Stella shrugged. “People can be such a pain for no good reason.”

“Are you speaking from experience?” Lumoof smirked.

“Well, maybe.”

“Do you really believe there’s an end?” My priest asked Stella for her view of the void forest.

“I’m not sure. Even if there isn’t an end, I very much don’t like the alternative.” Stella then suddenly laughed. “I just realized that question would normally be asked by the non-clergy to the clergymen. You’re the priest, Lumoof. That kind of metaphysical, philosophical question should be your area of expertise.”

“True that.” Lumoof smiled as he, too, realized the irony. They were both walking in Branchhold, their presence meant to reinforce our power. “Do you think we are expanding too fast?”

“Fast?” Stella laughed. “I don’t consider a few years to be fast.”

“Well, Aeon thinks we are expanding a little too fast and wants to spend some time consolidating our strength. He’s exhausted from the constant demon king battles and is even thinking of sitting out of the next fight.”

The [void] domain holder stared at the priest. “Aeon wants to sit out?”

“Yes. He thinks I’ve been suffering quite a bit and wants to pick his battles. Let the others gain more experience, because he seems to think he’s hoarding the bulk of the experience. He thinks that with the pantheon’s protection, it’s best for the rest of the domain holders to get stronger and play a bigger role in the main battle.”

“That’s strange. But what Aeon did with the anti-magic demon was pretty effective.”

Lumoof made a long, long sigh. “That’s exactly the problem. I’m going to try and repeat what I did with the next demon king. So…in two years, I’ll need to go to the next world.”

The next demon king for Treehome should be around Year 221 to 222. For Mountainworld, they had a longer, fifteen- to twenty-year cycle, so we were looking at Year 223 to Year 228.

“We need to go to the next world.” Stella smirked. “I’m coming, too.”

“Trust me, nothing’s good there. Every demon world I’ve been in is just full of fighting.”

“I know,” Stella said. “But I really want to see it for myself. It’s one of those things that really sounds like it’s worth seeing.”

“I hope you don’t regret it.”

“Don’t see how I would.” Stella smirked. In some ways, Stella’s void domain made her very different from the rest. Her presence in the world was coated in this dark haze, a sheen of mind-bending black oil that disrupted any attempts to look closer.

Even in the biolab, her soul spring of void mana was located within a temple of onyx and black marble, built on a black-marble foundation that looked like stars in a night sky. The stones that formed her soul’s temple were just different, even if structurally we all had the similar presentation.

“I’ve seen the things of the void and that creature on the other side of the demon’s core. What else could be worse?”

Lumoof paused and nodded. “That is a good point.”

“Are there accidental summons in your world, too?” Ken sat and asked Kelly and Adrian one day.

“Maybe. Not surprised if there are. I wish we could locate them. They sound like they’ll all die within the first few days.”

“Consider Stella, who was accidentally summoned, and apparently, so was Aeon.”

“Aeon’s from Earth?”

“Yes. Or at least one of them.” No one was quite sure whether they all came from the same world, because each of them seemed to have a slightly different version of Earth. It didn’t help that everyone had a different memory of Earth, so it wasn’t entirely impossible it was the same Earth, just that their own memories were flawed.

They were children, after all.

It was a good point, so I pulled Ken aside one day. I waited at least a month before I spoke to him.

“Ken, I want you to be in charge of something else. I will give you a set of funds and a small crew, but aside from the League of Heroes, I want you to run an accidental summon rescue group. Stella will support you to get you teleports if needed, and some void mages will be under your command. Use them to scan the skies for those who came accidentally.”

The Valthorns and my spies were always on the lookout for accidental summons, but I felt that having a different group running it in parallel, led by someone else, could be a better way of getting these accidentally summoned guys to accept them.

Like it or not, the Valthorns had “big government” plastered all over them. They were seen by the citizens of the world as the “men in black suits,” even if they dressed super normally and conducted themselves well.

One of the realizations I had, governing the Central Continent, was it was impossible for a single organization to do everything while maintaining any semblance of coherence. There was no way to do everything, because the circumstances on the ground were so varied, and ultimately, it was highly dependent on the quality and training of those on the field.

Thus, as “wasteful” as it seemed, running parallel, competing organizations was actually a better approach. It was even better if they were seen as independent. It reminded me of a book I read when I was an indie designer about self-cannibalization in the tech industry.

Each of the organizations were, in reality, a slightly different tool with different finesse and precision.

They all had a niche.

If they achieved their stated goals, the cost on a societal level was essentially negligible, since labor unused was wasted, and the Central Continent was flush with most types of resources.

On Mountainworld, I’d arranged for some of my experienced Valthorns to take the role as adventurers. I had to be discreet about it, so I smuggled them there through secret tunnels and Stella’s void portals.

I knew there were some hidden chambers in the many mountainous valleys of this world, secrets that even those locals couldn’t find because of my exceptional senses of the ground underneath them.

My roots, as they spread through the ground, were sensitive to the presence of magic and unusual structures, and my artificial minds would then compare this data to our growing knowledge of Mountainworld’s geography.

From this, we would notice inconsistencies. Most of these inconsistencies were minor, like small shifts of terrain due to movement of the earth; after all, maps were made at a snapshot in time, and for magical worlds such as Mountainworld, they didn’t have satellite mapping. There were also mortal errors arising from measurement differences, weather, and the use of imprecise tools.

What we really wanted to look for were entire omissions, areas where entire ancient segments were not recorded altogether or where the recorded history didn’t really make sense.

For this, I sent guys in the level one hundreds. Low level one hundreds, but they were pretty much mini-demigods when compared to the creatures of Mountainworld.

I wondered what it’d be like to go to a world where levels were high. There had to be some worlds where ancient civilizations still existed.

I refused to believe that the entire multiverse was a waning world.

My artificial islands finally made it close enough to the Northern Islands and also the Southern Continent back on Treehome that my roots could finally reach these two continents without the need of using portals.

Naturally, this was a huge game changer for my efforts to protect Treehome. I was now able to project power there and have direct insight into their activities without them realizing it.

Politically, these man-made military port-islands were greeted with outright suspicion and a whole lot of denouncements and accusations, but we were rightfully the world’s superpower, and that was all they could do.

It didn’t help that they didn’t even detect all of it, especially some of these island bases where essentially cloaked in a perpetual mist thanks to my earlier powers.

The Northern Islands were frankly familiar territory, and this was where the two former heroes made their base.

Alexis and Meela continued to do what they did, and they did maintained some semblance of communication with us. Lausanne, as the one who did meet Meela in her earlier stint back in New Freeka, served as my liaison with the two. It gave her a chance to have regular trips up north with her now-adult son.

Of course, with my trees spreading through these two newly connected lands, I took the chance to spy on the temples and hunt for more information. I wasn’t sure whether my spies missed, or even the temples themselves didn’t know about the existence of methods to summon the gods. I still had questions for the old gods.

28

YEAR 218

From Mountainworld, there were other worlds that we could visit. Like how each planet had a field of vision.

Every new place we went widened our field of view and pulled back the fog of war.

Stella thus proposed a visit, since her research to decipher the alphabets of the rift gates relied on her expanding her knowledge of the many worlds beyond. Essentially, based on the current star structure, Treehome was linked to Mountainworld and Threeworld through the void forest, and Treehome was further linked to Cometworld and Parasiteworld through my clone. Mountainworld was linked to two other worlds and was not linked to Threeworlds.

My void [domain holder]’s travels through the void space took a really long time, which she described as, “Space is actually really freaking huge.”

She even asked Snek how they managed to hitch a ride on heroes, because that sounded like trying to catch a bullet while it was flying to its target. A point that Snek described as “hitchhiking.”

Snek explained that in spiritual form, they could create these tiny threads that formed a kind of web in the void forest, which allowed them to attach themselves to heroes as they appeared. It was really difficult, of course, and most of the time they’d fail. In fact, Snek was equally surprised by his own success with Ken.

“It really sounds too convenient, Snek.” I knew he wasn’t lying.

“I don’t deny it. My success was the result of an exceptional combination of circumstances that I am not sure can be replicated successfully,” Snek answered. “Just as how it took an exceptional set of circumstances to create a void [domain].”

Stella nodded. “Well, I suppose the fact that we are even all here together is an exceptional set of circumstances.”

Snek had adopted a wooden sculpture of a snake as its body, but even then, I found Snek’s soul structure to be extremely similar to my relatively new ability to give souls an ethereal form. Or actually, it was the other way round, my ability to give souls some kind of ethereal-ghost type form that was very similar to Snek’s soul structure.

That implied Snek’s society had significant development along the spiritual-soul magics, which allowed them to do all the things they’d done so far. This, of course, supported why we wanted to learn from them.

We only hoped that we were not too late. We didn’t know how long had passed, and as Snek described it, time spent in the void forest was like being trapped in a bubble. There was no real perception of time, no reference frame.

Lumoof decided to go with Stella to these other worlds.

“Well, what can we detect from afar?”

Stella frowned and agreed that was a good thing to try. “Hmmm…nothing from one world, and the other…I feel the presence of people.”

Her senses when it comes to the void space was far sharper than mine, so I could only trust her.

“Nothing is strange,” Stella repeated. “Let’s go there.”

“I agree.”

When we arrived, it was a massive purple world, with hugely strong winds. It wasn’t anti-magic at least, but it was very, very dim and dark and cold. No ice, but it was really, really cold. It didn’t take very long for both of them to cough. A bubble of air immediately protected them, and they realized there was no oxygen in the air. Just dust and sand.

“Strange. Do you detect any magic?” Lumoof said, once they regained their breath. It wasn’t magical.

“No. It’s…like it’s the moon,” Stella said as she felt the unusually quiet presence. Lumoof activated my avatar, and then I felt great…emptiness in this world.

Lifeless. Lumoof touched the ground, and through his fingers, I felt the strange purple soil. This world was what they called a barren world. It was a common thing in space-based 4X games to have barren worlds. I guessed I just didn’t expect this to be one.

It was so barren there were no demons here.

“This seems like the perfect place for a starbase,” Stella quipped. “The kind of world where the resistance builds a secret base.”

“I didn’t know you were a fan of space opera.” In a strange twist of curiosity, fantasy fiction was a rising field on the Central Continent, and with it, the heroes did some writing of their own. It was a little strange, for me who came from a world without magic, to see these people with magic do their own fantasy fiction. At first, more fantasies were mostly about their world, but some were a lot more interesting.

Like attempts to create an origin story of myself or the origins of the Systems.

“Eh. I know enough,” my void mage answered as I took some of the soil samples and sent them back for investigation. The constant winds and the purple sandstorms were a huge irritant, but why was the world dead?

Lumoof spread vines and used them to push himself all the way to the top, because I wanted to see the sun and the stars of this world.

Stella came, too, and as we slowly got closer to the sky, I saw what was an extremely small sun. It was…very faintly blue?

It was so small that it was probably just a really, really bright star. The skies were a deep purplish hue, between black and purple.

There was a small, light blue sun, and I felt strange about its rays. Not anti-mana like the burning sun of the anti-magic world, but this one felt corrosive in a different way. Stella frowned, her layer of void mana encasing her in a shell.

“Feels exceptionally small for a sun.”

Lumoof took out a magical telescope and pointed it at the sun. When we looked at it, we noticed that the small sun wobbled. It spun quickly.

“Is this all?” Stella asked as she looked at the rest of the world from high above. Lumoof encased her in a bubble of vines, protecting her from the rays. From here, it was just all purple sandstorms. “This is a lifeless world. We should go.”

“I think you might be right.” Lumoof kept staring at the sun, and I realized it might be a white dwarf or a neutron star. The rays of this sun were weak, unenergetic, so the world didn’t have energy from its star, thus it remained a barren world.

This was the slow-mo equivalent of Cometworld’s death. Stella smiled. “I feel like we’re space tourists, traveling the multiverse in search of unusual star systems. I wonder how many other worlds are like this.”

It was frustrating that I kept stumbling into new issues, new questions to be answered, but very, very few answers. Was this what scientists had to deal with? New issues, new questions, but their datasets didn’t tell them much? Constant dead ends?

I remembered when Cometworld collapsed; it said its world’s sun died. But then what was the link between the star and the planet’s core? Did this world have a planetary core, too?

Actually, what were stars in this world? Had I been assuming the stars of this world to be the same as the ones back home, when I should clearly investigate whether they were something else entirely, since the core of worlds was also different?

Not just that, I thought back to the anti-mana world and then the black suns and wondered.

“Are demons some kind of race that were able to control their suns, or are they natives created by some unusual sun?” The first one implied they were up there on the Kardashev scale, which fit their abilities so far. Then again, it wasn’t right to apply science-fiction concepts to this world.

Stella shrugged. “Thinking along those lines, if we can destroy stars, we can destroy the demons, since that would mean we have the means to destroy those black suns.”

“To destroy the demons, be the destroyer of suns,” Lumoof quipped. “Turn off the ‘lights’ of darkness.”

“That’s one way to put it.” Stella looked back at the dim, bluish star above the barren world. “Well, let’s go visit the other one.”

My labs back home analyzed the soil samples from Barrenworld and found that its chemical composition was mostly normal. The purple color came from some kind of purple-quartz they had, but in itself, it did nothing.

I made a note to send some miners to that world and see whether they could get to the core. If the core was dead, what did that look like?

The other world, thankfully, was a lot more normal. In fact, the first thing we saw were goats and a really large lake.

“Wow,” Stella said as we arrived at the shore of the massive lake. “Looks like it’s an inhabited world.”

We both looked up, and from the sky, we saw only one astral path to the demon world. It was really dim. “This world hardly gets invaded. Only a single one—”

[Domain prevented attempted intrusion.]

“Lumoof. Did you get that?” Stella said as she lifted her void staff.

“Yes.” We looked around, and I spread my senses. The land was a field of grass, and my roots, through Lumoof, connected to them. Through the grass, I sensed a group of people far away, a party of sorts.

Then an angel. An actual angel with a halo and wings flew through the sky and landed nearby. The angel itself had very human-like features. “Greetings. We received reports of unidentified individuals. This is the natural wildland preserve of Gallama. Please display your entry permits to utilize the dungeons in this area.”

Stella and Lumoof looked at each other, and then my priest smiled. “Greetings, we’re lost. Our teleportation spell did not work properly, and we have landed here. Please, could you get us out of here?”

Stella could teleport both of them out instantly but waited to see the angel’s response. The Gallama angel waited for a while. “So you do not have a permit?”

“No, we do not,” Lumoof added.

“Under subsection one hundred forty-four, paragraph ninety-two of the Gallama Wildlands Preservation Act, you will be subjected to a fine and a hearing before the high magistrate. The minimum fine is four hundred General Coins, and the maximum fine is forty thousand General Coins.”

Lumoof looked at Stella. “Oh lord.”

Stella smirked. “We’re in Lawyerland.” She had also used [inspect] on the angel and discovered that it was probably around level fifty.

Lumoof looked back at the angel. “Any room for appeal or negotiation?”

“You may plead your case before the high magistrate.” The angel took out a fiery staff, the tip of it glowing with a golden flame. “I will now place the two of you under arrest. [Firechains].”

Chains of fire attempted to get close, but then, the moment they attempted to latch onto Lumoof, they just withered away. It did work on Stella, but just as quickly, her [domain] also protected her, and the chains of flame just snuffed themselves out.

The angel wasn’t fazed, and Lumoof answered, “Are there any exemptions for otherworldly visitors to laws? We would like to visit your…leaders.”

That, however, did faze the angel. It had a look of shock and then began to recite, “Under the Foreign Visitors Act, engaging with Foreign Visitors shall be restricted to the Grand Magistrates and in the specified containment areas.”

Its firestaff glowed, and it shot a flare into the sky. Within minutes, Lumoof felt the presence of other things approaching at high speed.

“This world also seems to have its act in order,” Lumoof quipped. “Think we’re not needed here.”

Stella nodded as we waited. “I agree.”

The first to arrive was a human lady. Lumoof could tell, because the wings were clearly an attachment, and she didn’t have a halo. Instead, she had a burning trident.

“Gallama Patrol Angel. You have activated the High-Tier Emergency Beacon. State the emergency,” the lady stated with a stern voice. The angel immediately pointed the staff at the two visitors.

“These two claim to be otherworldly visitors.”

The lady turned to face Lumoof and Stella.

[Domain had blocked attempted [inspect].]

“I see.” The lady took three steps back once the error popped up. She looked at the angel. “Full update.” The two stood a distance away and protected themselves in a bubble, and it seemed like the angel briefed the lady.

“You think we should just bail right now?” Stella asked. My roots were all the way in the ground, and they soon spread further and further.

This preserve was actually quite massive, and there was a city half a day away by foot. “There’s a city in that direction. We could teleport there, but looking at it, we’ll stick out like sore thumbs. Everyone seems to be an angel or human.”

“It’s a good thing you didn’t send Alka, Roon, or Johann, then.” Stella smiled. “Humans really do seem to dominate the multiverse.”

“If Aeon’s to be believed, that’s not a good thing.” Lumoof shrugged. “There’s another city in that direction, and it’s also part human and part angel.”

“In Earth’s religion, angels are creations of gods. Are they creations of a god, or are they just some kind of winged humans? Like harpies,” Stella asked as she used her magical [inspection] abilities on the two. From what we could identify, the human was higher level and seemed to be part of an organization of law enforcers.

The cities of this world were entirely devoid of vegetation, and their buildings were made of marble. That made it a little harder for me to spy, but I noticed multiple angels all over the area, and they also had smaller tower-keeps that functioned as the bases of these angels.

The angel and the human lady finished their conversation, and then the lady came to greet them. “Greetings, again, visitors. I am Layal, a senior law enforcer of Legatia operating under the Legatia Law Enforcement License. As required under the Foreign Visitors Act, I shall now escort you to the nearest grand magistrate for your hearing. I’ve instructed for your earlier misdemeanor to be expunged from your records.”

Stella couldn’t help but chuckle. “Sure.”

“Are you two familiar with flight?” Layal spread her magically attached wings.

“Yes. Both of us—” Stella answered, but she was interrupted.

“No?” Stella looked at Lumoof, and Lumoof shook his head. “I can propel myself forward with vines and roots but not fly. I don’t consider throwing myself through the air at high speeds to be a form of flight.”

“Fair enough,” Stella said as she punched Lumoof on the arm lightly. “I’ll carry you. Magically.”

Stella floated. Flight was a small matter for mages at her level of power.

“Lead the way, Enforcer Layal.”

The lady led the two through the air, and I felt a little sick. I didn’t like flight very much, but even despite my sickness, I had to admit this was a beautiful world. The terrain seemed perfectly manicured, like every tree and flower was exactly where it should be.

The land we were headed to was a tower of ivory and marble; it shone in the bright light of the sun, and as we approached, we noticed a lot more flying angels everywhere.

“I think our visit here will be short-lived,” Stella said. “If they’ve got their act together, then we’ve got nothing to give them.”

“That’s fine, actually,” Lumoof said. “Let’s not poke our heads where we are not needed.”

We landed on a large white circular platform at the side of the towers. If there was a Disney-ish castle, or city, this seemed to be it. The city was built upward, filled with spires and balconies for fliers to land.

Enforcer Layal landed, and more angels came to meet her. She immediately walked to them to brief them and then escorted the two to another room. We noticed how most rooms had two doors, one on top for fliers and one at the bottom for those who walked. It naturally meant every room had really high ceilings.

A short wait later, we eventually met someone who was a grand magistrate. He was an angel with four wings and a large, burning halo.

“Enforcer Layal states you two claim to be foreign visitors, but I don’t sense the energies of a hero within you. It also certainly is a few decades too early for a hero to arrive.” I mentally flinched at “a few decades.” Goddammit, some worlds had it so lucky. “That means there are two possibilities left: one, some of the otherworlders have learned how to use portals, or two, you two are accidental summons.”

Stella smiled, and she saw no reason to lie. “We learned how to use portals.”

The grand magistrate stared at Stella and sighed. “I must admit I am a little annoyed that my [sense lie] does not work. So I must ask you the old fashioned way. Are you telling the truth?”

Lumoof couldn’t help but chuckle, and Stella nodded. “Do you wish for a demonstration?”

“That…can wait for the greater councils. If you speak the truth, what is it that you’ve come here for?”

“Honestly, we came to visit,” Lumoof said. “We are seeking out more worlds to ally ourselves with. More allies in our war against the demons, which we fear will soon escalate to a greater level.”

“Demons? We have that mostly under control here. Mostly, because we still get them every few decades. How bad is it over…over in your world?” The grand magistrate seemed curious.

“Every ten years, give or take,” Lumoof answered. “In hindsight, it’s a miracle the world survived for so long.”

“The Power of Light is not so easily vanquished,” the grand magistrate answered. “Ten years is…intense.”

Stella smirked at how mildly he put it.

“Indeed.” Lumoof seemed perfectly in sync with the magistrate. “So we are looking for allies. Ten years is difficult for us to absorb on our own.”

The grand magistrate paused and nodded. “I shall take your request to the higher council, but I foresee some visits will be necessary.”

“That can be arranged.”

29

YEAR 219

Assimilating by force was easy for an institution like me. It was easy to use my way, the way that worked so far, and apply it elsewhere. That was a set of actions with no room for negotiation, and the reason why I disliked that was because I wasn’t sure whether my way was the “right” way.

My main goal of expanding was mainly to grow my mana pool and gain valuable talent. Thinking from this angle, whether the Central Continent or Branchhold had similar or different culture didn’t have much significance. In fact, the only reason to really mold culture was to grow a culture that fed into the talent pipeline.

Which, thus, led to the issue of assimilation via force.

Force, as pleasant as it sounded, made it a lot harder to get genuine cooperation and true loyalty among those who had the talent or capability. Any relationship with my new “followers” would start from a defensive position instead of one where we met in the middle.

All these assimilation hiccups needed to be weighed against the future loyalty and value of any high-leveled individuals such a system would produce.

The system encouraged conflict. I’d thought about this at length many, many times. As a consequence of that, I was also viewing that cultural uniformity was a weakness. Genetically identical plants, for example, all had the same vulnerability to a virus, and I applied that same concept to cultures and societies when faced with demon kings.

They also encouraged different sorts of talent, and even if it was hard to see, this culture managed to create multiple level eighty-fives through constant war.

In a way, the Mountainworld culture could be summarized to a war and survival culture. I wanted a stronger, better version of that war or survival culture, as the culture of Treehome had now changed over time to take an industrial, specialization and technological-superiority focus.

These two types of culture had different focus. Treehome spent a lot of time on crafting, on development, on education. This was a consequence of my multi-decade education program and the various research and manufacturing initiatives.

I believed that the war and survival would be a lot easier to transfer to newly settled worlds or restore old worlds. Worlds where things were lacking and the people of Mountainworld were thus tougher, even if the Treehome folks had more levels and far better equipment. They had a scrappy, can-do attitude and sought out how to get things to work with nothing.

In my own Valthorns, they also had that self-sufficiency, but we had an entire training system that focused on creating that sort of ability.

I saw these cultural differences in how a normal Treehome citizen behaved when they faced a problem they were unfamiliar with. The first thing they would do was to talk to a Valtrian official. For the Mountainworld citizens, they had very little dependence on the government, and they would think for themselves, throw solutions at a problem, and see which stuck, or live with it if it wasn’t too painful or difficult.

Like it or not, on Treehome, we created a competent governmental structure, and this led to reliance on that structure, as was sensible to do.

There were merits to outsourcing certain decisions to the government. It took the mental load away from them so they could focus on other areas. A person’s ability to gain levels in a chosen field was ultimately a constraint.

Level eighty-fives to one hundreds were scattered over multiple classes, and level eighty-fives in a single class had very different combat outcomes. The Mountainworld folks were more generalists, because they had to be self-sufficient. Treehome encouraged specialization, and that meant outsourcing segments they were not good at to others.

I remembered my dear friend Jura, who kept his villager classes until quite late, until a sheer fluke merged the villager’s classes with his warlord class.

It was quite common for the people of Mountainworld to have many classes, and when added up, it was usually slightly more than level eighty-five. This was because the soul-energy requirement of multiple low-level classes was not that high.

The way I thought about this was that the soul was this huge power supply, and it could power many small appliances or one large machine, and higher-tier machines were significantly more power hungry than smaller, “weak” machines.

My adventurers on Mountainworld trawled through multiple cave chambers over the past two to three years, and they found various trinkets and artifacts dating to just a slightly earlier time of Mountainworld.

Not that old, just a few centuries or so. Weapons of war and fortifications. The cave chambers were home to hideaways and secret military stashes forgotten to time. They hadn’t been touched for ages.

Or, perhaps, they were not meant to be touched for ages.

My adventurers found tomes of magic, hero-items, and generally just weapons. I was personally quite disappointed by the haul, since these things were relatively mundane, but my adventurers were happy, and the mages were more than delighted to study old tomes of lost magics.

I found the protectors hidden in these caves to be a lot more interesting. They pulled out giant snakes, robot-like golems, and strange tree creatures that I eagerly studied.

We had golems on our world; the hero Hafiz and Chung took significant attempts to recreate robots from Earth, but they had not seen widespread adoption due to the relatively poor quality of the golem makers.

On the Central Continent, we did attempt to train our own golem masters, but progress in this front was fairly slow. The strongest golem maker we had was level seventies, and he could control ten elephant-size golems simultaneously.

Strong, for sure, but we struggled on the autonomous aspects.

I could insert my artificial minds into them, but that felt like cheating, because the whole goal of having golem masters was for them to develop self-aware golems.

Training other types of units or subordinates was naturally where I spent most of my idle time.

We sent them on various missions to let them gain experience and build knowledge. Some of them spent time as adventurers, and some of them spent a lot of time in the dungeons.

Others rotated between Branchhold and Treehome. Our academies throughout the continent was filled with students, as we expanded new training systems to train all the other kinds of units.

Even blood magic underwent some secret developments, known to only my domain holders and a select group.

A while ago, it was clear to me that blood magic was a foul, blunt attempt at soul magic. Snek’s past experience in blood magic meant he could guide us in the direction he was familiar with, and we tried to experiment on using healers, shamans, witch doctors, and spiritualists to create some kind of “soul-focused” versions of their class.

Ken paraphrased Snek slightly when he said the soul had the best power-to-size ratio. It was such a small thing but contained such vast potential for incredible power and could pull even more power from the system.

On Snek’s world, they embraced blood magic and guided it toward better uses, which, in their terms, used “willing sacrifices,” which reduced the foul side effects of hex. Through my magical knowledge of souls, that was just a salve.

It could be better handled.

A long time ago, we built a massive structure as a panic button, to detonate the lives of my citizens as a last resort. Now, with my growing strength, my clones, and my domain holders, I saw that was not really necessary and modified it.

The real strength of the hex bombs came from the unusual stitching of souls. Souls, each containing their mana, their skills, their power, were essentially weaponized. The hexbomb burned all the future potential and past strength to create what it really was.

A magical radioactive nuclear projectile made from souls.

I could alter souls directly, and so, since that discovery a few decades ago, I had been experimenting on using soul fragments to create a hexbomb. It was a natural extension of what I’d been doing with soul fragments. I collected them naturally through death, stitched them together, and created artificial minds.

This set of alterations essentially cobbled up the fragments into a pattern similar to the hex bombs.

[You’ve learned a skill: Minor Soulbomb]

My initial demonstrations of the minor soulbomb, which could be fired from my main body or any of my clones, revealed a very small and weak hexbomb but with none of the side effects.

This was a good development, even if it was still useless in its current form. With further enhancement and research, we would be able to develop stronger versions.

Alka wanted to create portable versions of the soulbombs, combining his crystal containers with the soulbomb’s components. It failed, but it was a matter of time before he found the right combination and design.

As for some of the shamans, healers, and spiritualists that participated heavily in the blood magic–related experiments, they eventually experienced a class modification: a [Shaman] became a [Soul Shaman]. The [healer] became [Healer of the Soul], and the priests and spiritualists became [Soul-powered Spiritualist].

As Parasiteworld recovered from the demon’s hold, I suddenly experienced a connection from the Core of the World.

Then I saw images. It was a trend I noticed, that creatures of incredible power spoke in images.

A world invaded, the rifts opened, and the demons dug a hole down to the center of the world. They latched on to it, the core, and injected it with something so painful that all I felt was its shared pain. Then it felt itself forced to carve out a little bit of itself each time and give it to every spawn of those demons.

Every bit, it remembered itself getting smaller, weaker, less.

Its mind, if such a thing could be ascribed to a core, felt more fragmented, more…scattered.

Then it felt itself shatter, split into many parts. At this point, I had to pull in some additional minds to help cope with all the fragmented visions.

A black sun once more.

A world in pain. It felt its power used, and the world changed. It had fragments of memory of a world before the demons, a vast swampland, a perpetually humid central band around its planet, filled with bloodsuckers and animals.

Parasites. Leeches.

Worms.

It was once a bug heaven.

The world had few defenders, just gigantic animals and beasts. There was a small civilization of another kind of walking lizards.

Primitive.

Then it was all gone.

Core mana. A glowing yellow thing. Energy. Core’s essence.

It spoke in images again, but I felt it. A little bit of gratitude.

[The Will of Parasiteworld has granted you access to its excess Core Mana. You’ve gained access to a small quantity of Core Mana.]

[Adapting potato mana storages to core mana… High-Density Potato Cores unlocked.]

[Adapting potato storages to core mana… Potato Cores unlocked.]

[Warning: Core Mana in its raw form cannot be used by mobile creatures as it will decay to normal mana once it leaves contact with the soil of the planet.]

That was a step forward, and I informed Stella of the issue.

Angelworld was a land of incredible wealth. It was fragmented, ruled by various Angel-lords and Arch-angels, but war in the Angelworld was mainly through tournaments. The concept of total wars were only relevant against demons or monsters, but outside of these things, the angels didn’t fight amongst themselves.

Instead, they selected champions and wagered territory in their tournaments. Territories were exchanged through such tournaments, and everything else followed. Tournaments happened daily, and the tournaments were large affairs.

Groups of hundreds fought against other groups of hundreds. The angels themselves encouraged it, and it was soon clear that the gods they followed had rather similar views.

The god they believed in seemed to believe in Peace through War, and Order through Conflict.

Constructive conflict they saw as “structured warfare.” These angels, while resembling the angels commonly seen on Earth, were more of the combative kind.

The Angel-lords of the world formed a council of some kind as a discussion channel. That, of course, didn’t conflict with the battles they constantly waged in the coliseums.

It was also strange that the battles were always fought by humans, not angels themselves. The angels were more than happy to sit it out; so-called enemies could enjoy a cup of nectar together, even making merry and laugh while their champions fought to near-death.

As Stella described, “These angel guys are like some kind of lawyers and behave like two-faced snakes. They mean what they say, but only in the specific context that they said it. They have absolutely no qualms contradicting themselves in different contexts.”

“So any alliances must be super-tightly worded.”

“Which could bite both ways. They seem more than willing to maneuver themselves into situations where they can bend those agreements.”

I found it ironic that these angels were like snakes, but then again, I wasn’t better.

“So what is the news?” Stella asked as she rested in one of the Angelworld’s cities. Their cities were large, gleaming places, towers of ivory and marble.

“I have core mana.”

Stella paused and purred. “Oooooooooooh. That’s good. Y’know what? I think we can revisit this world at a later date. Let’s work on the core mana. I can’t wait to hack the next demon king that should be headed our way.”

Lumoof groaned as he remembered what it meant.

They arranged a meeting with the angels and soon returned to Treehome.

Stella observed the path through the void forest, and we saw one bright, glowing path to this other world. Treehome. Treehome would see its demon king next year and Mountainworld just two to five years later.

“Two demon kings are so close together.” I mentally groaned. To me, it felt like just last month we fought a demon king, and now we had to fight another one. It was so darn tiring, though my domain holders clearly didn’t think that way.

I needed to space them out, but my people said it was the best way forward. The levels gained from each of the demon kings were the building blocks, and we would construct a path out of this stupid cycle.

“The goal is to get more people to that level and round out our abilities, so we’ll field more level one hundred twenty-fives to one hundred forty-nines, just so that they can get the experience needed.”

Roon and Johann met them regularly, those who are on the development ‘path’. .

“Lumoof will lead the charge as usual. We’ll attempt to infiltrate this world and look for the demon king’s pit. And we’ll repeat what happened in the anti-magic world. Approach and support Lumoof as he floods the demon king with mana,” Johann explained.

The heroes were interested to see how Lumoof did it, since they missed it the previous time.

Once everyone was ready, Stella hacked into the demon’s astral path and opened a portal with our rift gate. She gently tapped a little of the core mana, and the link to the astral path stabilized.

“All right. Let’s give the demons a taste of their own freaking medicine.”

“Didn’t we do that already?” Edna sighed.

“I know, but I still love saying it,” Stella said.

30

YEAR 220

“We need to talk about our strategy.” Roon and Johann gathered the team before the invasion and brought up the issue. “We’re currently limited, bottlenecked by Aeon’s low supply of clone seeds.”

Everyone listened intently.

“Aeon intends that we eventually find our way to strike at the Black Suns, as Stella described it. From the sheer size of those things, the amount of mana required to have an even battle is huge, and yet Aeon currently only has, what, four clones?”

Stella nodded. “Yes, we need a lot of firepower for that.”

“But we have a force projection issue on a multiverse scale. We are dependent on Aeon to deliver our main damage dealers, the heroes. Void portals don’t work, because of the magical instability caused by star mana–void mana interactions.”

“Go on.”

“Aeon needs to level up quickly and find a way to scale up that number of clones. The battle with the demons, and the black sun, feels like essentially a numbers game. Aeon needs to control a large number of high-mana generation worlds in order to even compete with the amount of demonic energy those black suns seem to possess.”

Edna nodded. “All right, so Lumoof needs to participate in every battle.” Roon then raised the main point.

“My opinion is we should not be investing so much in recovering demon-worlds, which have very long gestation periods. The parasite world, as per Aeon’s own models, claim at least fifty to one hundred years before its mana output could even hope to match our home world. This is because the demon’s world had eaten away at those worlds, and those worlds are less, diminished, weak. Instead, Aeon should be focused on spreading his clones on regular worlds that are facing their own demonic invasions.”

Ken and Snek didn’t quite like that angle.

“We can still free Snek’s world, but we need not plant a seed there. That’s essentially my point. Travel to Snek’s world will then rely on Stella’s rift gates.”

“But we need the clones to send the heroes over,” Ken responded.

“Which Aeon can withdraw after the deed is done.”

“Fair.” Ken nodded, but Snek looked quite upset by the idea.

“I reiterate. Aeon’s focus should be reaching the mana levels needed to effectively ‘drown’ a demon king, and to do so, it needs multiple regular worlds. At least ten. Aeon should abandon non-productive worlds and replace them with Stella’s rift gates.”

“That’s reliance on the whims of the void,” Stella quickly clarified. “Aeon’s clones are an output of the system, its connection secure. Rift gates can be hijacked, and the pathways can be destroyed. It is not a worthwhile comparison, especially if it’s a world key to the plan.”

Roon agreed. “Indeed, which is back to our bottleneck. Aeon needs to take a much more aggressive stance, and level, because Aeon’s foundation is what supports the plan.”

“Could someone else play that same role?” Ken asked. “I’m just saying that. Could there be a clone-focused domain holder who could ‘lock’ or leave a clone in those worlds? Train another spiritual tree into another Aeon? It doesn’t even have to be a tree. We just need someone at the [domain] level to play Aeon’s linkage role.”

The room was silent, and I myself was rather taken aback by the suggestion. It…could work, but it needed a cooperative partner. My mind immediately thought about the first two non-mobile “friends” I had. “Lilies? Or…Reefy?”

I could imagine a Reefy or Lilies clone across worlds. Lilies especially, with their natural multi-minded structure, seemed easily able to gain some kind of clone-like ability. Or maybe Aria and Aispeng.

Reefy… I wasn’t sure I wanted to unleash Reefy out to the multiverse. I feared Reefy, badly controlled, could easily warp into another demonic swarm.

I would have to check with Lilies and Aria. At that point, Edna suggested someone else. “There are two former heroes, Alexis and Meela. Meela’s Hotels has branches. Do you think she can be trained to have hotels across multiverses?”

My priest had an a-ha moment, then. “That’s a good point. I totally forgot about those two.”

Roon then elaborated. “Ideally, Aeon gets more clones, because they are all locked to the same teleportation network. At the rate we are going, we will discover new worlds quickly, and with the amount of demonic worlds out there, we pretty much need to add clones at an exponential rate.”

“But gaining levels gets harder the higher we go.”

“Which then leads to Ken’s very good point. If we can’t have Aeon gain many levels, could we ‘train’ multiple Aeons?”

Lumoof nodded. “In theory, that’s a solution, but I would like to immediately add that Aeon’s unique mindset is due to his current mix of knowledge from before he was a tree. Training a native tree into an Aeon-tier domain holder frankly sounds horrifying and could go really, really bad. I’ve seen Aeon’s thoughts, and their perception of things can be very different from our own. With humanoids and other mortals, we can get aligned quite easily. It’s not so easy with trees. Druids can tell you of strange behaviors from their spirit trees from centuries ago.”

The archer-ranger looked pensive as he contemplated the issue. Ken, eventually, also nodded. “I realize I did not give enough thought to my suggestion, and thus I’d like to retract my suggestion. Raising a potential Lovecraftian deity is not a good idea.”

“That idea with Meela is worth considering. Meela’s hotel, at the [domain] level, could be a reasonable alternative,” Edna added. “Not ideal, as her hotel lacks the defensive abilities of Aeon’s clones, but…doable. Her past life as a hero would also mean she would be more amenable to our objectives.”

“What if she never develops those abilities?”

“Then too bad. It’s a risk we take with these developments.”

The rift gates opened, and Lumoof led the way.

It was humid and hot, and glowing spawning pools littered the landscape. The demons spotted Lumoof appearing and roared.

We knew that this was one of the stereotypical “hellworlds.” There were fountains of flaming lava and jets of fire around us, along with demonic spires and structures similar to the dreams I once had.

If some of the worlds were sandy and dry, this one was hot and lava.

The demons were medium-sized, about the size of a large cow, and had two horns and two wings. They were similar to what we referred to as the old-school demons.

My vines and roots spread out around Lumoof, crushing each and every demon in our way.

“Normal demon world. Really hot.” Lumoof described it.

“Normal in what way?” those back on Treehome asked. There was really no baseline for normal. Each demon world seemed different, and there was no “repeat” yet.

Yet.

“Correction: traditional hellfire and brimstone demon world. I believe the type the heroes were expecting.”

“Oh. Shit. We finally found ‘hell.’” Ken cursed. “I didn’t know why I wasn’t expecting this.”

We’d made a loop, and I remembered that flaming demon king from the earlier days, [Demon King Baal], and now, after two hundred twenty years, I was bringing the pain back to their world. This was probably just one of the many such worlds, but it felt symbolic to me. I was once burned by the flames of this type of demon king, and now I’d disrupt it in its infancy.

Lumoof had a good time and naturally enjoyed my shared fire immunity. As a priest, there was something extremely satisfying about crushing these really traditional demons with divine vines and roots.

“You guys better get here before Lumoof wipes the place clean.” Stella and a band of the level one hundred twenty-fives to one hundred forty-nines joined the fray. The demons clearly weren’t expecting company, and my mages made short work of the many exposed spawning pools.

“Really?” Edna was amused. “Why?”

Lumoof shrugged. “I don’t know, weird system shenanigans. I seem to really get a kick out of destroying these earthly inspired traditional demons.”

“Ever feel like an inquisitor?” Stella smirked as her own void magic skewered the demons apart. Now that she had a domain and had the insurance of my revival ability, she was willing to take more combat risk.

“Is this the point where I tell these demons—”

Stella knew the phrase that came next and already pre-emptively rolled her eyes.

“No one expects the Aeonic Inquisition!” I wished I could groan, because that was terrible.

My forces fanned out as they crushed the demons in their path. Like a tide, the demons tried to cobble together a resistance, but nothing much could stand up to high-level individuals. They had greater demons, like those with wings and massive claws that were the size of houses, but even these champions died easily now.

Nothing was going to stop us from getting to the pits.

All we needed to do was find it in this hellhole.

The Valthorns ravaged through the lands and cut through the demons’ defenses like paper. Even without the heroes, there wasn’t much that could stand against the might of so many high-leveled individuals, and eventually we found a pit.

It was a big boiling chasm of lava, surrounded by the tell-tale rift gate towers.

“The demon king’s in that, right?” Roon looked at Lumoof.

“It has to be. It’s underneath all this lava or magma.”

“Well, this at least means it’s fire resistant, or fire-earth-immune. We’re dealing with the pits-of-hell type of demon king?”

“It’s probably a magma beast.” Edna looked at the bubbling lava in the huge pit. It was likely this chamber of lava led all the way into the core. Ken, naturally, thought about Lord of the Rings.

“How do we get down there?”

My roots were incredibly fire resistant, but the lava still got to them eventually, and it drained my mana to keep healing my roots against the might of endless lava.

“Our attempt to invade the demon world, curtailed by a sea of molten lava. How appropriate.” Roon smirked. “This calls for a really strong earth mage.”

“We could freeze the surface and turn it into hardened rock. That way the demon king can’t get out.”

“You know it’ll just blast through it.”

“This is unfair, though. How does anyone expect to retake such a world from the demons?” Roon added. “Getting through lava would need a really strong mage to work at it for years, just to get to the core.”

“Not really. A good lava mage could easily manipulate the lava out of the way and give us a path through to the depths,” Edna responded.

“Our strongest fire-earth element mage is, what, level one hundred twenty?” Roon said. “No offense, but this is the demon king we’re talking about. Even us domain holders are still inadequate.”

“All right, what’s our alternative plan? Similar to the anti-magic world?”

“What do you mean, similar to the anti-magic world? We can’t even access the core. I say we cover the surface with bombs and nuke the demon king once it tries to leave for our world,” Roon said. “We know it has a fixed path up that chamber of lava and through this pit.”

Alka was fairly amused. “I like how you think, Roon. I really do.”

Stella paused as she stood above the tunnel. She opened a portal somewhere else, and then lava shot out like a high-pressure water cannon.

Edna looked and asked, “A portal in the core chambers?”

“Close. There’s a magical ‘eddy’ of some kind preventing my portal from getting too near, but this is about three quarters of the way to the core.”

The lava jet was constant, but nothing changed. After a while, Stella shrugged. “Doesn’t work. The entire core and the surroundings of this world are magma.”

“Look. How the fuck did the demon king even conquer such a world?”

“Magic.” Stella smirked. “Roon’s idea has merit. With sufficient bombs, and I’ll add my own void ones, it may be possible to send the demon king off course entirely. What I’d like to achieve, this time, is to knock the demon king out of its teleportation path, so Alka needs to invent some kind of snare-bomb.”

“What the fuck is that?”

“We don’t want the bomb to detonate immediately. We want bombs that will latch onto the demon king, blow up while it’s floating through the void space, and knock it out.”

“Anyone tell you that’s insane?” Roon said. “I mean, I like it, but it’s insane.”

“We know that the demon king doesn’t get summoned if there’s a surviving demon king. I want to test whether that is location-dependent and requires the demon king to actually be there. If the demon king is in another world, what happens?”

“…all right, go on,” Roon admitted.

“On a super-large scale, I want to know whether we can teleport a demon king elsewhere.”

“You want to build a rift gate here?” Edna asked.

“We’re not ready for that. But someday, I’d like to try it. For now, though, let’s just start with snare bombs.”

“Snare bombs.” Alka nodded. “No issue. We can easily repurpose Aeon’s beetles to be suicide-bomb beetles and latch onto the demon king. I think we can try giant harpoons, too, whether we can anchor the demon king to this world and force it off its teleportation process.”

Roon whistled.

The Valthorns quickly cleared out an area around the pit and started constructing fortifications based on the volcanic materials available. An army of druids were deployed to support the installation.

Most of the domain holders returned to Treehome to start construction of their planned materials: multiple giant nets, harpoons with magical chains, and bombs with hooks.

It would take some time to accumulate the necessary equipment and ordinances, but based on the magical sensors we had on this hell-world, the demon king wasn’t ready yet. In fact, none of the rift gates had opened.

The Valthorns regularly swept through this lava world, clearing the land of demons, and captured any rift gates that we found. Stella then sent them back to Treehome, where she would study it with the other rift gates.

It also helped that we now had three other void archmages; they took the role of maintaining the interplanar rift gates and transporting the materials to the demon world.

We sent specialized builders and craftsmen to the demon world to study the rift structures and also build the “traps.”

Honestly, it may not work, but if it did, we were sure as hell going to replicate it every single time.

“Ken, you all right?” Chung asked as Ken sat in a corner of a city café in Freshka. He looked tired and sipped a big mug of herbal tea. Ken, who was so young so many decades ago, now looked like a man in his late forties, unlike Chung, who looked to be in his mid-thirties.

“Age, friend. Age.” Reality meant Ken, who was no longer a hero, did not benefit from the aging reduction effects of the [hero] class. He did have fragments, of course, from his friends who perished during the war, but outside of the fragments, he had high levels in [Thinker] and [Beast Tamer].

Those levels slowed down aging, but not as much. Even my own domain holders experienced a burst of de-aging once they gained the [domain]. Stella, for example, felt younger, stronger once she gained her domain.

Theoretically, I could keep anyone alive forever. With my incredible healing powers and evolutionary powers, I was able to modify a person’s body such that the effects of aging were almost entirely eliminated, but they would become not exactly the same.

A human that was made immortal, became…different, and because this was an imposed process, unlike an earned process through gaining levels or unlocking their domain, the body became in conflict with the soul, and it created issues. I should be able to get past this, in time; after all, calming or unifying the soul and the body was part of my repertoire.

But for now, it was something I rarely experimented on. And so, back to Ken.

“I’m aging.” Ken laughed, and the herbal tea removed the pain.

“I can tell,” Chung said.

“A price for freedom of mind. The freedom for me to think un-heroic things.”

Chung smirked. “You can fix it if you gain levels, like them.”

“I don’t need to,” Ken said. “There’s a point where one lives too long. I think this, a lifespan of two hundred to two hundred fifty years, is ideal. Too much, and we become unable to care for anything, because everything fades away, and we’ll just be burdened with endless ennui.”

“I’d still rather live forever.”

“You only feel that way, because the gods impose a purpose in your life,” Ken insisted. “Which, as I sometimes think, it’s not a bad thing. Many of us require purpose. Purpose gives us direction, gives us…focus. It allows us to forget, to forgive, to let go of things that do not matter when viewed against our central purpose.”

“You’ve lost me.” Chung laughed.

31

YEAR 221

“Is this normal?” A section of Branchhold was cordoned off for work. Construction of the weapons meant for the lava-demon world required the combined efforts of many skilled workers across the entire empire.

“I’ve never seen something like it.” The citizens of Branchhold stared. Most migrants to Branchhold had not seen our large-scale directed plans, and they could not fathom a civilization able to deploy the resources across an entire empire and now across worlds. All they saw was a mobilization for a war.

Those on Branchhold were tasked with the manufacture of spears, hooks, and chains.

It alarmed the spies scattered in Branchhold, and they reported the findings to their masters in their own capital cities. “Branchhold geared for war” was splattered across intelligence communiques all over the world. The nearest nations to Branchhold immediately received a huge influx of more spies and more scouts.

Fools, really. If we really wanted to invade, we didn’t need such mobilization.

On the lava demon world, the area around the pit became one of the largest magic formations we’d devised.

Multiple redundant, large-scale magical snares, thousands of stationary weapons, more bombs and explosives than I bothered to count littered the area, and more were made every day. We built larger ballistas, equipped with chained harpoons.

The place was geared for war, and frankly, the mood in the air was optimistic.

“Man, the demons will regret invading our world after this,” Roon said as he admired the temporary war city on the lava demon world. There were hundreds of level eighty to one hundred druids and mages deployed to conduct minor terraforms.

“They could just melt everything in a volcano.”

“They could, but with the number of mages we have, we’d still survive.”

On top of those plans, there was a quasi-suicidal plan with Lumoof at the center. The idea was simply to freeze or solidify the entire surface of the lava pit, have Lumoof enter avatar mode in the center, and have my avatar form latch on to the demon king as it attempted to teleport to the other world.

Stella’s void mages also made their own set of preparations. Large quantities of void crystals and multiple void-magical formations were created.

The target was the black sun that appeared as part of the demon king’s ascension, and this time, they planned to attack and interrupt it directly, in the same manner as how Stella disrupted the demon mother of the parasite world.

All of this was only possible because of our efforts across the decades. If it wasn’t enough, we’d go back and work harder.

Our sensors were on overdrive, and these days, Stella, the void mages, and the elemental archmages had their own sets of magical sensors. I had a feeling we’d see the demon king this year, and I rushed the team to work faster.

Back home, Stella had largely triangulated the direction of the accumulating astral energies, though so far not a single rift had opened.

This was simply because my Valthorns regularly scoured the landscape for any rift and captured them or destroyed them. That meant no rift for the demons.

It was very effective, and this time, the demon king was projected to land somewhere in the Southern Continent.

Unlike before, I didn’t give any advance warning, since the demon king was going to land in one of the wide deserts of the south.

Back on the lava-demon world, we realized we had a real simple problem.

If we failed, the demon king would leave for our world. That was normal, and all was status quo.

But what if we succeeded in detaining the demon king? If we succeeded, we’d have to fight the demon king without the heroes.

“Or we could just leave, since we technically achieved our mission of detaining the demon king. I’m sure Stella would be fascinated to see what happens next. Does the demon king attempt to open the portal again?”

“I think it would, since the path through the void forest is still there. It only collapses when the demon king dies.” This was also a project for Stella and her team, where they would attempt to collapse an astral path before it was used.

In fact, the void mage academy had to be expanded quickly, due to the scale and requirements we needed in the far future. So much depended on having enough void mana and enough magical talent to run all we needed to do.

“So if we succeed, we…uh…just watch?”

“We weaken it, I guess?”

“It sounds like the real success case is to tear it apart while it’s in the astral path.”

“Yes.”

“Our role is just backup this time.” Chung grinned, amused that they didn’t have to travel to the other side. “Or if the interruption fails and the demon king comes here.”

They were still happily resting in the Central Continent, in one of the seaside towns facing the ocean. On the other side of that vast ocean was the Southern Continent.

The core pulsed. We felt it, a cracking in the movement. The core of this world was probably just really hot, molten iron and other minerals.

“Well, ready?” Everyone got in position, and we expected this. The heroes were somewhere near the Southern Continent, assisted by a small group of Valthorns and void mages.

The lava-swepted world cracked, and we felt a powerful presence move from the core, up into the surface.

“All right! Let’s get the party started!” Alka laughed maniacally. “Freezing bombs!”

The mage and his assistants detonated hundreds of ice-element magical crystals, and the sudden surge of large quantities of ice magic caused the huge pit of lava to temporarily freeze over. It wouldn’t last for long, as the heat from the core would eventually melt it again, but it would work for now.

Lumoof jumped into the middle of the hardened lake and activated avatar mode. My roots pierced through the hardened lava and expanded as fast as they could. The roots covered every part of the pit.

A living barrier.

Roon and Johann led the thousands of ballistas at the side, all armed with hooked harpoons, each equipped with bombs. There were at least a hundred different types of bombs. My sensors felt the force from within the core surged upward, and the ripples of that force pushed against my roots. It was trying to uproot Lumoof and my roots from down below, but I resisted.

My roots held onto the igneous rock and earth as the pressure built up beneath us.

“Are we going to trigger an explosion if this keeps up?” Stella looked as the pit began to bulge upward. My roots resisted the magma and lava displaced from the demon king’s escape, and the demon king approached at high speed. “It’s coming up the chamber really quickly.”

The pressure from lava beneath us strengthened, and this time, I felt the effects of heightened demonic magic. It attempted to tear at my roots, but we held our ground. Literally.

Towers began to emerge out of the walls of the pit, the gate mechanism. It was a point of great interest to see how the demons created these rift gates out of thin air. For now, that was something my builders, mages, and crafters studied intently while a battle broke out around us.

The demons emerged from all around us and attempted to retake the pit.

They failed.

From beneath, the demon king shot up the lava chambers like a missile. The demon king was going to smash right into me, and it clearly didn’t care.

“Lumoof, brace for impact.” The ground beneath us was filled with my roots. It’d have to destroy my roots to get out.

On the surface, the rift towers began to channel their abilities, and the void mages studied it intently. This was the second time it was happening but the first time such a large group of void mages was deployed to study it.

“All right, we’re going to have to start interfering with the black sun once it emerged!” Stella shouted to her team of void mages. Their magical formations were ready and charged up.

The demon king smashed into my roots from below, and I felt a strong, burning sensation. My roots were incredibly resistant to heat and fire, so I wasn’t disturbed by that aspect.

Yet, its ensuing impact shook the entire pit, and then it pushed the entire chunk of hardened magma upward, like a superhero lifting an entire city from down below.

“FIRE!” Roon and Johann commanded as we got line-of-sight on the demon king. It was a demon king of tradition, a massive horned beast with eight wings and four arms, each with a weapon-made of lava. It was huge, the same size as the anti-mana demon-turtle.

The hooked harpoons fired from all around the pit, all aimed at the demon king’s body. The demon king pushed, and the hooks and harpoons slammed into the demon king. Our projectiles attached itself to its skin like a pesky parasitic seed.

Up above, the skies twisted.

Stella and her void mages swung to action, and their magical formations activated. A dome of void mana emerged above us, and at the same time, they had their own set of void-energy ballistas, all aimed upward.

The sky tore apart as the black sun emerged in view. The ballistas shot out, some with the anti-magic projectiles, some with void mana projectiles.

It flew at it…and burned in a black flame.

The rift towers glowed as core mana and void mana pooled in them at the same alternating pattern. The Valthorns attempted to smash them.

The demon king itself began to emit some kind of energy, as it flung the chunk of rock filled with my roots aside.

Then the multicolored blackish blob emerged in the sky, like it teleported out of nowhere. A fragment of it, a droplet, descended from it.

“Now!” Stella yelled, and all their magical projectiles and abilities activated.

A full year and some, her void mages prepared magical projectiles, meant for this moment. It worked on the demon mother, and now they tried it on the king.

I felt a strong pulse of energy strike that black droplet. Its outer shell crumpled like a Prince Rupert’s Drop shattering.

And it detonated.

“Shit. Shields!” I activated shields where I could.

“Teleport out, now!” Stella and her crew all escaped as soon as they could, and my domain holders warped back, all except Lumoof and Edna. We watched a huge explosion happen in the skies of the demon world.

We were too near.

It destroyed all the structures and weapons that we made, but some of my Valthorns didn’t make it.

Not everyone could teleport out in time, even with their fastest scrolls.

About thirty percent of my thousands of Valthorns deployed perished, because our shields were not strong enough to block a demon king–tier explosion. As they say, safety measures were written in blood, and the next time, we would have significantly higher shielding.

From our world, we saw the demon’s path wobble, wobble, and wobble and shrink.

Stella, now safely back on Treehome, slammed the nearest table and cursed.

A huge ball of charred wood protected Lumoof, and in the aftermath, we saw a half-burned demon body. All the harpoons and hooks had been burned away in the explosion.

The two merged and struggled.

It felt…incomplete. Like a car with an engine that was far too small.

It didn’t fly off immediately, and the path continued to wobble.

Edna stood, unharmed by the scarring. She grinned and approached the giant, smoldering demon king, her weapons flaring with magic and power.

“A battle to avenge the fallen. Come, King, only one of us will remain standing.” Edna laughed and attacked the injured demon king. Lumoof observed the massive crater around us and also charged at the demon king.

The demon king was weak. It did not have the strength I expected of demon kings, but perhaps, this was a sacrifice of those who fought it. My vines stabbed it, and each time, I tried to drain a bit more of its mana away.

“We need to get back there,” Roon and Johann said.

Stella immediately tried to check the rift gates. “I can’t. The explosion temporarily weakened the astral path. It’ll be months before it’s ready.”

“Aeon! We need your seed there!”

A seed on a lava world? It’d cost me ten years. I thought about it briefly, but as the battle between the demon king and Edna raged on, I agreed.

This may be an opportunity I wouldn’t see in a while.

Lumoof fought the demon king, too, and the battle stretched across the battlefield. Then he landed somewhere and embedded my refreshed Seed into the ground. My tree sprung up instantly in a sudden burst of magic.

I sent Roon and Johann immediately to the other side, and they joined the battle.

“I think we can win this,” Edna said as her anti-magic sword slashed. My roots, now empowered by my actual clone body, pulled the demon king closer. My vines stabbed its large, demonic wings, and I called on the powers of my two, no, three worlds, and flooded the demon king with my mana.

A giant demon was, in some ways, just a really big target.

It roared, and I felt its massive demonic axe chop off one of my branches. It hurt like hell as the demon king’s lava axe landed on my wooden shields. Roon and Johann deployed all their magical weapons.

It was a battle of attrition, as Edna and my tree traded blows with the demon king.

Yet I felt we had a chance.

Stella and the void mages’ detonation of the black droplet was key. That black droplet contained a significant chunk of the demon king’s power, and with this, we now had an idea how to weaken the demon king.

My domain holders unleashed their fury. It wasn’t in the same tier as the heroes, but we were not fighting a full-powered demon king.

Just a pale, weakened version.

I struck it repeatedly with my roots and noticed its movement was sluggish.

My roots kept up the pressure and drained the demon king of its energy. By my own measures, that explosion left the demon king with only twenty to thirty percent of its strength.

The king’s movement was slower; its massive body seemed too heavy for the power it had inside. It struggled and eventually realized it couldn’t keep up.

Then it decided to shed its larger outer shell, revealing a smaller, human-size demon.

Lumoof, Edna, Roon, and Johann kept fighting, but this smaller one was faster and almost landed a hit on Roon, if not for my shields.

“I think you two need to back off,” Edna said as she kept up with the faster, smaller demon king. This demon’s form was better suited to its power, but the demon king struggled.

The king’s power weakened some more, each hit from my roots chipping a little more of its energy.

My guardian treant emerged to fight it, battling it, and eventually, my roots got a good hold of its smaller body. I drained its still-large quantities of mana, and realized…

We were winning.

I actually struggled to believe it.

Edna landed a few more hits, and my two archers attacked with their anti-magic arrows. The demon king was…immobilized. My treant guardians punched and held the demon king.

And it was battered.

I felt the king’s magical energies drop as Edna’s cut began to remove demonic matter from the demon king. Its healing stopped.

Another strong punch from my treant.

The king’s body crumbled and revealed what I always, always wanted.

An undamaged demon core.

It didn’t detonate. Not with what little magical energies it had. It felt like an eternity as my vines wrapped around the core, just to be sure. I drained it, but there was nothing left inside to be drained.

It was an empty, purely undamaged demon king’s core.

I was left speechless for a moment as the madness of battle suddenly gave way to exhaustion. Edna looked pensive.

Holy freaking shit.

Did we just win?

Lumoof, Roon, Edna, and Johann all stared at each other, waiting for something to pop up. They looked up to the sky, wondering whether the sky would split apart to reveal some gimmick.

It had taken so much to get here.

But I looked at those who fought and felt genuine joy burst out from my soul.

“We won!”

Everyone felt like a huge weight lifted off their shoulders, and they looked at my giant tree-clone and grinned.

“WE WON!”

In a strange twist of fate, we had somehow managed to defeat a demon king without the heroes. It took extensive preparation, attacks from everyone, and a bit of luck that the blob at the end detonated, but whatever it was, we got through the finish line.

My domain holders glowed, and I felt their strength increase.

Power. We would need a lot more of it in the coming days.

“Holy shit, I gained like fifteen levels!” Edna shouted and punched the sky.

“Me too!” Roon, Johann, and Lumoof all gained levels.

[You’ve gained 12 levels.]

[You are now level 238.]

[Tree of Life — You’ve gained two extra clone seeds.]

[Natural mana overwhelming upgraded.]

[Root strikes upgraded.]

[Demonic resistance upgraded.]

[Domain ability unlocked: Greater Titans.]

[Your titans will now change into their greater forms, with wider range and abilities. Patreeck’s mind-reading and protection range will now expand to include all your clone trees, and its range is increased significantly. Hytreerion will now be able to temporarily shrink to travel through the Void and can shapeshift into other battle forms.]

[The Demon King ???? has been defeated.]

The announcement of its defeat was greeted with a strange feeling.

I lost thirty percent of those who failed to avoid the explosion, but those who survived gained powers. The star paths linked to Treehome all abruptly vanished. Including those subsequent to this demon king.

That was not a good sign. It meant the demons discovered that we could counter-invade their world and thus dropped the invasion paths.

It was also a sign that they were preparing for something bigger.

But there was no use worrying.

We consolidated our gains, celebrated our wins, and prayed for those who fell. The souls we collected, some would move on, and some wanted to stay back. I tried, where I could, to give all of them a chance to at least say goodbye to their loved ones.

“All right, we need a roll call. Who gained what powers?” My domain holders came together, and it seemed among the survivors, quite a few gained a lot of levels.

Stella smirked. “I gained [Void Weapons and Projectiles]. I can’t wait to try it out on the other demon kings.”

“Are we trivializing demon kings already?” Roon cursed. “And you sound too excited for that.”

“They would adapt to our changes,” Stella said. “They are not stupid. The fact that they dropped the star paths shows they are learning, and we probably shouldn’t repeat it for Mountainworld unless, well, unless that’s what we want.”

“Do you think they’ll throw something stronger our way?”

“What else could it be? That black sun or blob is probably figuring out what to do.” I had a tree still in the lava world, and I also needed to figure out what I should do with that tree. “What did you get, anyway?”

“Just some super-strong, unavoidable null-element arrow-attack,” Roon said with a sigh.

“A domain-tier arrow attack can’t be that bad.” Stella laughed.

Edna jumped from level one hundred sixties to level one hundred eighties and so gained two domain-tier abilities. First was the strangely named ability [A Knight’s Myth], and I felt her power spread throughout Treehome and strangely only Treehome.

Just like my [Aeonic classes], Edna’s power had changed Treehome. Edna’s new domain ability enhanced all knights on Treehome and allowed them to take up a special class [Knights of Treehome]. In addition, when defending Treehome, all knights were empowered against outside invaders.

It also had sub abilities. A part of the [myth], it opened up a unique set of quests for Edna alone, the [Mythical Knight’s Quest], which summoned level one hundred thirty to one hundred fifty creatures that existed in a pocket dimension that only Edna and a few companions could battle. Each victory awarded skills and stats.

For the ordinary [Knights of Treehome], they could attempt lesser variants of the [Knight’s Quest], awarded and unlocked through the system.

“Seems like a knight’s gotta do what a knight’s gotta do.” Stella grinned. “You’re becoming like the knights of fairy tales.”

“I can’t really say I hate it.” Edna laughed. “It’s…amusing.”

Edna’s second ability was the [Three Strikes of Honor]. It unlocked a battlefield-wide enchantment that protected everyone, from three instances of an undetected, unreactable attack that would have killed them. An enchantment with additional rules befitting a knight, such that an attack that was known and but could not be responded to was still covered, but it essentially meant death had to come from known sources and from known attacks. Instead, heavy but non-lethal damage would apply.

If someone were to be killed by a sword that he saw coming but didn’t react or incorrectly reacted, the protection would not apply.

Essentially, it prevented instant kills. As always, the system had a tendency of awarding preventions after the disaster. The precautions we had were all essentially earned and paid for in blood and souls.

Lumoof’s skill was probably pretty good, too, [Projected Presence], which, strangely, allowed him to project himself in another location and essentially be at two places at once. Alka’s new ability was [Crystalline Supercomputer], which allowed him to transform crystals into magical computers.

Johann, in my opinion, got the best new domain skill, [Reconstructed Mythical Companion]. He essentially has the titan-equivalent skill of using bones to rebuild a mythical companion. Obviously, he asked and received the moon-dragon bones. He didn’t even need all of it; just one large piece was sufficient for the ability to start regrowing a dragonling in his [domain-space].

“A victory is a victory,” Stella said. “We should throw a party.”

Lumoof agreed. “A party to remember the sacrifices of those who fell and those who survived.”

“Then let’s do it.”

32

YEAR 222

“It’s surreal.”

We both looked into the skies, and even my void mages could see it, too: an emptiness unlike before, not a single astral path headed our way.

How did that work? Why did the astral paths disappear? I realized, at that moment when we finally destroyed the demon king for the first time, that the collapse of the rifts was also some kind of warning. The demons, or something at the top, could sense demon kings being defeated before their time was due, and we would soon invite greater retaliation from the demons.

This wasn’t the end, even if we’d won a reprieve.

No.

A part of me even suspected that it may have been a mistake to go all the way with the demon king. I should’ve pulled them back, dragged this arrangement for a bit more.

We could have gotten more experience and a bit more levels.

“What’s done is done.” Lumoof assuaged my worries. “We still have links to the other world, and we will have to hunt for demon king’s through those worlds instead. Stella’s [Void Explorer], in particular, should get us to more habited worlds. If this gives us time, we’ll need to prepare for whatever they throw our way. I believe we can do it.”

I knew Lumoof wasn’t that convinced, either. I felt it in our connection, but it was done. We now also had two more clone seeds, which essentially meant I didn’t have to recall the lava world.

I remembered Roon’s strategy, which focused on living worlds, and that meant these two seeds should go to Threeworlds and the new Lawyerworld, if they’d let me put my trees there. Or else, I’d have to keep looking for other, friendly worlds.

Or maybe, Stella could find a super world.

It had to be there, somewhere out there.

“They fucking won.” The heroes couldn’t believe it. The fact that we’d destroyed the demon king on the lava world invited a lot of chatter.

“The key seems to be that droplet from the blob. That explosion burned through a lot of the demon king’s body.” Chung observed the battle through our dream academy. With the [dream academy], I could record and replay scenes, which I could then share to them as a dream.

“Actually, Stella needs to target that blog directly.”

“She tried, but it’s too large and protected by too much magic.”

“What if that blob is the real heart of the demons, and the black suns are just nothing more than power generators? They only seem to supply void mana, after all.”

“That does sound plausible. What needs to be made, I think, is some kind of interplanar nuclear missile. A black-hole missile, kinda. Blow that shit out of space.”

“You’re talking about a missile to destroy something that’s way too big. That blob looked to be the size of an entire sun! We don’t even know what that thing is,” Prabu countered. “We may be heroes, and our powers are incredible for sure, but we’re probably not at the planet-buster tier.”

“No matter, it does mean that Aeon’s discovered a few weak points to the demon king. One, that droplet is a very big weakness. It explodes and deals enough damage that the demon king is severely weakened. If that fails, corrupting and flooding it with mana seemed to poison the demon king and block a large amount of its powers.”

“More importantly, this world now doesn’t have new demon kings.”

Ken laughed. “You don’t believe that, right? It looks to me like it’s going back to lick its wounds and come back with something more powerful.”

“What, a demon emperor?”

“Probably!” Ken said. “But based on what Aeon knows…it may be a meteor.”

The heroes stared at each other. “What, we’ve got Armageddon and we have to knock a comet out of its path?”

“Yeah. Probably.”

Chung just stared at Ken like he said something insane. “If you’re right, I’ll hate you so much.”

“You already do, bruh.” Ken lightly punched Chung on the shoulder.

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s not the first time you said it, so I assume you’ve already hated me.”

“Oh. Wait. Now that you reminded me, I do.” Chung laughed.

We had a large funeral for the Valthorns who died, the priests were quick to twist their deaths into a kind of martyrdom, and some of these Valthorns wanted to live on. My priests soon claimed that their death was a noble sacrifice to defeat the demon king before it arrived, much to the annoyance of the four temples.

Despite that, they were unable to actually mount any actual countermeasure beyond a war of sermons, as they denounced our claims. Most kingdoms didn’t care all that much about waging a war with us; they were all power crazy, but none of them were suicidal.

The large funerals throughout the continent did draw some curious spies from the other kingdoms as they wondered what caused such a large loss of Valthorns in the level one hundreds.

But it was not all lost, as my powers of the soul allowed me to retain those who wanted to remain and place them into new vessels, with no [soul contracts]. For those that wanted to remain, I took their souls, or what was left of it, and made them into training trees or beetles, according to their own personal choice.

For those who wanted to move on, for whatever reason, they were given a chance to say their goodbyes to those who they loved. Using my [dream academy] and other such abilities, I was even able to store some of their thoughts, their words as something that their family could revisit again.

The common folk were oblivious. News about demon kings, especially faraway demon kings, were irrelevant. The people were mainly concerned with their day-to-day affairs. A demon king was killed on the planet or somewhere else, or what their name, or lack thereof, was useless information.

As for the four temples, there was immense confusion on the ground. I detected multiple secret conversations on this matter, but it was all idle speculation.

Most of them had no clue that we did it, though they would suspect something once they noticed the deaths among my senior Valthorns.

What was quite clear was the four temples were mostly stagnant, their leaders trying to hold on to vestiges of their past glory, but their strength was too weak to even try and challenge us. For now, our home world had now settled to a somewhat comfortable status quo.

Wars were still fought regularly between nations, but the idea of a crusade had long faded as the foolish arrogance of their earlier priesthoods. Those that still wanted to do a crusade, my spies would identify them and remove them.

It was actually quite easy to get priests removed. In feudal societies like the kingdoms, priests existed as advisors to the throne or played ceremonial and social roles in their respective cities, and everyone had secrets.

Once we got hold of the secrets, the priests often got into quite a bit of trouble when their nasty activities were revealed for all to see.

My spymasters’ training had improved, and some of them had gotten quite high leveled, thanks to their stint on Mountainworld. We’d trained honey traps and handsome males to seduce our targets and kidnapped priests on multiple occasions to get them to confess their plots.

The world of espionage wasn’t a nice one, but it had to be done. Our sense of peace required regular maintenance, and maintenance meant removing bad actors.

My next target for spies was to send them to Threehome, but to do so, we’d need a small base of operations. I intended to establish a base in the chaos of the demonic invasions and so sent Roon and Johann there to spy on them.

Back on Mountainworld, the rifts of the demons opened. “Do we invade?” Edna asked during her tour of Branchhold, and this time, I wasn’t so sure.

I didn’t know the long-term consequences of destroying the demon king on the demon world, and without knowing what came after this, I couldn’t decide with utmost confidence whether what we did was the right thing.

I did not want to face escalated responses on two worlds, and so to maintain the status quo, it was ideal to just weaken the demon king, such that those on Mountainworld had an easier fight on their hands.

Adrian and Kelly didn’t really have any strong views on the matter, especially after the concerns of stronger retaliation. To these two, the demon king was always their duty, and the four heroes of our world had agreed to assist them anyway.

The demons that came through so far were variants of ice-type monsters, which suggested that the heroes faced an ice-demon king. Elemental-type demons were not exactly that much of a threat.

My void archmages transported Roon and Johann to the demon world, and they arrived in what was a seemingly endless boreal forest.

“There are trees here, Aeon.”

“How?!” I wasn’t expecting to see trees on a demon world, but it seemed that they’d found one. A boreal forest, filled with ice-type demons. The trees, strangely, were not destroyed and thus continued to live on in the demon world even post-conquest.

“No clue. I think you’ll need to send Lumoof here once he’s done with whatever on the other world.”

The world was filled with ice, and they eventually did find a pit. But they didn’t engage, and I decided we needed to take it slow. They captured a few rift gates, so Stella would be able to reopen access to this world at a later date.

They were not comfortable heading into the pits without Lumoof’s presence, so they decided to back out. Instead, we prepared Mountainworld for the impending invasion.

“We’re not going down there without Lumoof, so we’re backing out.”

Lumoof didn’t particularly enjoy returning to the world of angels, but after a long absence due to the invasion of the demon world, it was time to actually make our pitch. Lumoof and Stella faced a large council of angels and humans of at least twenty members.

It felt like we were in a courtroom before a panel of judges.

“We’d like to seek cooperation with those with capabilities to fight demons,” Lumoof explained. “The core issue we want to solve is that demons are able to tap on the resources of multiple worlds, but we don’t. Each world faces the demon alone or is assisted by their respective gods, but we feel this process is not optimal. It often leads to too much destruction and too much death.”

“First, explain what you mean by the resources of multiple worlds. How did you discover the demons’ ability to tap multiple worlds?”

Lumoof looked at Stella and replied, “We visited them. We’ve seen the demon worlds.”

“Explain. How did you visit them?”

“We went through the rift gates—”

“Objection! That’s not possible. Rift gates cannot be traversed by the living—”

“It can,” Lumoof answered. “Each rift gate has a unique mana resonance, and it is possible to reverse it—”

“This will require a demonstration—”

Lumoof looked at Stella again and realized this was going to be hell. These angels required supporting evidence for every single statement we made, and they cross-examined our observations against their own.

But we did learn something in the process. The nature of this society required that all daemolite be destroyed, and they thoroughly destroyed the demon king’s remains after every single battle. Their angels and enforcers also regularly nknot the world to destroy daemolite or any demonic remains, as they viewed the remains as unholy.

Their logic was simple. If a man that carried plague died, they burned the body to prevent it from continuing to spread more plague. Thus, any remains of the demons had to be removed as well. In short, they’d managed to do what we’d always theorized: they’d significantly reduced the demon’s targeting ability and reduced the frequency of the invasions.

All remnants of the demons had to be purged.

As the pitch became more of a grilling session, I realized I personally didn’t want to deal with them at all. I didn’t want to be shackled with terms, and after all the questionable things I’d done and I was willing to do, I didn’t think these people would be able to understand it.

Even if we were allied, I was bound to break the terms somewhere along the way. Our opponent could adapt, and what we had to do may change.

A legal document specifying the terms of alliance wasn’t worth it. If things worked for them, and it has worked well so far, then I didn’t need to pursue a civilization-to-civilization type of alliance.

Maybe it would be better to just open an embassy and recruit interested parties instead, which, I supposed, would also require a messy list of agreements.

At that point, Stella proposed something else, since the grilling really wasn’t productive and there was a lot of arguing over nitty-gritty details, all because they had no understanding of what happened. Stella, especially, found the entire ordeal exhausting and so spoke out. “Let’s just stop this farce of a grill. I propose that a delegation from this world visit us. We will take you on a tour of the demon worlds. We have access to the demon worlds, and you can see it for yourself. Arguing over details is fascinating, but I don’t have much time. There are more worlds to visit, more preparations to be made. No more than five persons are allowed.”

Lumoof nodded, and the session was adjourned. The council of the angel-lords had a lot to discuss, especially the idea of a tour-group. You could talk at length about the beauty of the mountain, but it’d still pale to actually walking and standing on it.

“That’s a good idea, taking them on tour,” Lumoof complimented Stella’s idea.

“It worked for the lizardfolks. Hopefully it’ll open their eyes to what they are dealing with.”

“They’ll definitely recommend we destroy all the daemolite,” Lumoof said with a chuckle.

“Which actually works on a longer timescale,” Stella said. “It allows the ‘cycle’ to be somewhat sustainable, since eighty years to a century per invasion is actually quite a long time, enough for any world to recover from the aftermath.”

“A stable status quo, but it feels a little like cutting off one’s leg to save ourselves,” Lumoof conceded. “We would no longer be able to gain strength as quickly without the experience from the demon kings.”

“It is a good form of peace and a dilemma. A stable status quo or a constant grinding treadmill upward.”

“After what we did, that is no longer a choice for Treehome. But it is for Mountainworld and Threeworlds.”

“Should we decide for them?” Stella smirked.

Did we cut off the path to ascension, in exchange for century-long peace? We would be ill prepared for what came after such a long period.

Lumoof didn’t have the answer.

I didn’t, either.

Eventually, the angels and humans decided to send three individuals, and we were introduced to one of the oldest angels we’d ever seen in their world. He had eight wings and was actually old with white hair and an aged appearance.

From what we gathered, the wings actually had an impact on the powers of these angels. Those with two wings had lower potential than those with four, and so on. Someone with more wings had no inbuilt level limits, so their path to a [domain] was unhindered.

“This is Raph, a former high-arbiter, who was once known as the One Closest to the Gods.” The angels introduced Raph and his two assistants, who would visit our worlds. The two assistants were fairly distinguished people in their society but were frankly deferential when next to Raph.

“It’s not every day I am offered to visit another world.” He chuckled like an old grandfather. “They must really distrust you to demand I come out of retirement.”

Lumoof shrugged. “It seems they find offense in every statement we make.”

“They are either too young or newly old.” Raph grinned, and he walked slowly. Yet we could tell it was an act. He radiated a power similar to those in the level one hundred twenties and was clearly seen as one. “It is also such a rare thing to meet two people stronger than me.”

My priest grinned. “Your attempt to [inspect] us was duly noted.”

“Old habits die hard,” Raph said. Everyone inspected everyone in this world, and as [domain] holders, it all just got blocked. “Does it offend you?”

“It doesn’t, it is but a minor…disturbance,” Lumoof responded.

“That is good. They spoke of an intent to form an alliance of some sort. Tell me you are not so foolish to think an alliance with these people would be worth it.” Lumoof was fairly stunned at how harshly he criticized his own council.

“It’s in an exploratory stage. The war with demons is something we face across many worlds, and we could use some additional forces.”

“You’ll get nothing of value from the Council of the Tower Lords. They are bureaucrats, concerned with the administration of their lands to the letter, and war is fought in coliseums and gladiatorial arenas. Many of them haven’t even lived through a bad demon king. If you want allies, they are not the ones you should approach.”

Lumoof couldn’t reply to that. Not immediately, anyway.

“But I suppose you wouldn’t know.”

Stella and Lumoof just shrugged.

“How old are you, milady?”

Stella paused and looked at the old archangel. “I…lost count, frankly. Maybe eighties?”

“Ah, still very young and already so powerful. I wonder what kind of hell they put you through.”

Stella chuckled. “Oh, you wouldn’t want to know.”

“I will, actually. It would at least be a fascinating story for the younglings. They said there are more of you.”

“Yes.”

Raph nodded and frowned. “Have we holed up in our ivory towers for so long?”

Stella and Lumoof just looked at each other for a while.

“Never mind. So where are we going?”

33

YEAR 222 (PART 2)

“Arbiter Raph, we’re here. Welcome to Treehome.” His companion seemed unsure as they stepped through the portal and onto the world of Treehome.

He emerged in a special platform in the tower of the void mages, with Stella and Lumoof leading the way. Stella nodded briefly and then vanished in the poof of blackness. Lumoof smiled at Raph and guided the guests out of the tower.

“Welcome to Freshka, the Root of the Central Continent.” Lumoof nodded. “Some would say the Heart, of course.” Freshka’s sprawling towers of trees seemed to stretch till the horizon, and the three angels didn’t know what to say. “It is here that our Guardian, Aeon, made his stand. The earth is his, and he is the earth.”

Raph nodded and instead looked above, past the leaves and canopies. “Your skies are empty.”

Lumoof wasn’t sure what he was talking about and looked up to see stars and skies. It was, without the paths of the demons.

“The demons. What have you done to their path?”

Lumoof paused, suddenly understanding what he meant. “You could see the starpaths?”

“Every angel can. It has been our ability since birth,” Raph answered. “With practice, the humans can, too. Those born with many wings, like me, can see it easily.”

“Is that not an astral or void power?” Lumoof asked.

“It is. But we are linked to the heavens, and the heavens grant us the ability to observe the skies.” Raph laughed, and I was so tempted to capture one of these angels and put them in the biolab for analysis. Perhaps some other time.

“I see.” Lumoof nodded as they were led to a gigantic beetle with a carriage, stairs, and really comfy seats. A tour bus, essentially, with protective screens.

“Actually, before that, I would like to fly up to the sky and see the city for myself,” Raph suggested. “May I?”

Lumoof paused and shrugged. “You will attract a lot of attention.”

“Ah. Nothing an illusion can’t hide.” He activated some kind of illusion ability that turned him almost invisible, but we could still sense his presence. The illusion glowed brightly to my spiritual eyes. In fact, all the angels glowed brightly in my spiritual eyes. They had robust souls, and Raph’s glow was very much like a creature attuned to the spiritual realm.

He took to the skies, invisible to almost all regular folks, except those skilled enough to see him. Lumoof immediately issued a warning to the Valthorns, to notify that there was a friendly flier in the air. It wouldn’t be nice to shoot down our guest.

My roots lifted Lumoof up to the skies, where he stood next to Raph.

“Interesting way of coming with me,” Raph said.

“I couldn’t leave my guest alone, could I?” Lumoof said. The two other angels were on the ground, surrounded by other Valthorn members.

“Very interesting city you have, but are all cities like this?”

“No. This city is unique due to its founder’s presence,” Lumoof said. “You wish to see the cities beyond?”

“I feel a very strong presence coming from there.” Raph pointed in the general direction of the Valley. “What is—”

“Aeon.”

“Ah. Then I’d like to see him, for the horror that he is.”

“Oh?” Lumoof smirked.

Raph landed back down. “I’d like to meet your…guardian.”

“You can meet him through me,” Lumoof said.

“That’s not the real—” My avatar activated, and my presence was felt through Lumoof. “…I misspoke.”

“Greetings, Raph. Welcome to Treehome,” I said through Lumoof. His eyes glowed, and the air rippled as my presence washed through Freshka. I could control it quite well, but even then, each level I gained, I had to work harder to hide my domain. “I shall not stay long. My presence…is not for the faint of heart.”

The world bent around me.

“My apologies for assuming incorrectly,” Raph said. He wasn’t pale, but I could feel his nerves tensing, his body straining to bear the weight of being in the same space. “I shall speak to Lumoof instead.”

“Thank you for your understanding.” Lumoof’s eyes returned to normal, and he grinned.

“I am Aeon’s avatar,” my priest repeated.

Raph relaxed and nodded. “Did your kind once believe in gods?”

Lumoof paused as they sat on the giant beetle. The beetle would carry them throughout the city and then to the outskirts. “Yes, and many still do. The other continents are home to those who believe in the four gods, Aiva, Hawa, Gaya, and Neira.”

“And your kind don’t,” Raph remarked as they took in the view.

“Many once did, but now we are Aeon’s faithful. He is, in many ways, a growing god. Unlike the other four who are further, much further away. There is nothing quite like standing in front of a real god, even with my own power.”

Raph thought about it for a moment and then laughed. “It is an incredibly tragic thought that we, the angels without a god to serve, are here, visiting a world where a god lives with them.”

“…they said you were the closest to god.”

“Bah. Closest to a god that mostly ignores us and sends us ‘heroes,’” Raph answered. “What is angelic fervor without a goal? Our god neither gives us commandments nor guidance, our existence and structure an illusion constructed by our predecessors to delude the lesser angels and mortals. Our wings of faith cannot bear the thought that our god cares not for us. In its place, we built a society of rules and imposed our version of order on the world, because we cannot exist without it.”

“I see we are not that different.” Lumoof smirked. “In the chaos of this world, we find our own ways to survive with what we have. We do what we must to live.”

“And dispense with what we don’t.”

The beetle led them through the outer areas, farmlands, and smaller villages. Not unlike the outskirts of Angelworld.

“It is strangely…orderly.” Raph was fairly impressed.

“If you wish to see something less manicured, we shall take you to the places where Aeon does not exert his rule.”

Raph was puzzled. “There are places spared of Aeon’s rule? Why?”

“Why not?”

“That is dereliction of divine duty. In the presence of a god, what choices do mortals have other than to submit?”

“It is a choice a mortal makes, whether he serves or not. Aeon does not require submission, and our focus lies in the long arc of life and civilization.”

Raph didn’t seem quite satisfied with the answer. “Then let me see the world without the touch of proper guidance.”

A void archmage teleported in, and a portal opened in front of them. The group was sent to the Eastern Continent. They toured what was a small village, their presence masked by illusions or, in Lumoof’s case, a skill.

Raph was not pleased with what he saw. We saw the villages of the Eastern Continent, where there were people who starved. We saw the cities in various stages of war; even here, where Aiva’s rule was quite strong, blood was shed almost every week.

Death and war was the natural state, and seeing it for himself seemed to affect Raph quite strongly. “Are all the other worlds you visited like this?”

“Most, yes. This is the natural state without the presence of an overwhelming will. The nature of mortals and the system is to compete, and from competition it escalates into conflict. Those who win gain levels and gain control, and those who lose have nothing. Even in Aeon’s land, conflict is part and parcel of our society.”

“It is something we resist strongly,” Raph said. The archangel stared at the sights of death and suffering, and Lumoof felt a strong, swirling presence in him. A deep dissatisfaction.

“For them, their reprieve usually comes when a strong hero emerges and establishes a nation. But heroes die to the demon kings, and after some time, that order fails to keep things together, and the nation disintegrates and reverts back to this state.”

“So this is what a world without the presence of true order. I see there is a case that my kind has been too complacent,” Raph said.

“Complacent?” Lumoof paused as I, too, digested the implication of that statement.

Raph looked. “I’ve seen enough of this part of the world. The others are like this? Can I see more?”

The void mage teleported them to a large port on the eastern coast, the seat of the Aivan temple.

“This feels very much like us. I never realized how…disturbing it is, now that I am sitting here listening to the same words used to praise another god,” Raph said as he observed the temples. He walked in one of the largest temples disguised and listened to a talk by the Aivan priest glorifying Aiva. He watched the priests praise a god that was rarely present, even if Aiva granted his priests powers through the system. “Are all the temples similar?”

Lumoof shrugged. “It is not right for the man of one faith to disparage another. All I can do is take you to visit the rest.”

And they did. They visited all the three other temples and the other continents.

More villages, more places. Large cities, but not necessarily good cities. Each time, Raph seemed angrier, more frustrated.

“Your god leaves them be?” Raph asked Lumoof. “Your cities are clearly better, and yet you do not seek to apply your rule and improve their situation?”

“Aeon strongly believes that those who want a better life are given fair opportunity and chance and then allowed to work for it. Once Aeon secured the Central Continent, it was no longer necessary to invade the other continents.”

“Then this suffering is allowed to happen?”

“Aeon does not attempt to save everyone,” Lumoof said. “As a creature of the world, Aeon strongly believes in letting nature find its own level. It is this competition that creates excellence.”

Raph’s face darkened. “You see worlds like this everywhere and make no attempt to improve their lives because of competition and because of creating winners?”

“We do not profess to be saviors or uplifters, Arbiter Raph,” my priest clarified. “Our goal, Aeon’s goal, is the existential threat of life, the demons. The steps we take with our developments and improvements are all meant to achieve the means to protect ourselves and eventually defeat that existential threat. Mortals will fight each other, as is normal in nature. A lion will prey on the gazelle; it is not our goal to uplift the lion or empower the gazelle. Our goal is to protect the lion and the gazelle from the outside forces that disrupt this arrangement.”

“But your actions change the balance of power by your sheer presence.”

“Yes, it does, and it is unfortunate. Where we can, we try to have a light touch, a small footprint. We aspire to be wardens, not nannies.”

Raph had a look on his face that could kill. The other two angels weren’t sure why, either.

“I have seen enough of this intentional disorderliness. May I see…the demon worlds?”

They teleported back to Treehome, and then Lumoof guided them to a wooden platform close to the valley. A place connected to my roots. I sent them to Lavaworld, still swarming with demons, but with its astral paths destroyed.

Raph and the angels stared at them in the area around my clone. He looked at my clone, an island of peace in the chaos of the demonic lavaworld. Most of my Valthorns retreated from Lavaworld, so the demons had naturally reclaimed the land.

I maintained a small area of control, around my clone tree, where my Valthorns could come here regularly for demon-killing practice and gain levels.

The archangel stared at them and looked at Lumoof briefly. Then back at the demons. He flew and glowed brightly, and two burning tridents of fire emerged in his two hands. His eight wings flickered and combusted in a golden flame. “If you don’t mind, I have some frustrations to work through.”

Lumoof shrugged. “Oh, go ahead. I’ve killed more than enough.”

The eight-winged angel zoomed right into the center of the flood of demons.

“Fools!” he shouted as he flung his golden flaming trident at the demons. It detonated in an explosion, vaporizing the demons. He surged into the masses of demons and slaughtered them like a furious archangel.

Lumoof just shrugged and turned to the other two angels. “Is Raph normally like that?”

The two angels were starstruck and ignored his question. “We have never seen him unleash his fury in centuries!”

Lumoof sighed. These two angels were just groupies, but after a while, as Raph indulged himself in a feast of slaughter, one of them turned to Lumoof. “He is normally more reserved. It has been said that the fire in him had died, but it seems that it is back now.”

He had a burning halo on his head when there was once just a golden ring.

Raph was having a good time fighting the hell world demons. Maybe stupid system shenanigans even meant these two factions were natural enemies, and the demon champions emerged, trying to hold Raph back.

My level one hundred twenty-five to one hundred forty-nines could defeat Raph. We didn’t have much problems with the hell world’s mobs, after all.

He fought for two days, and as he returned, he was covered in gunk and residue. Dust covered his eight wings.

“My apologies, Patriarch Lumoof. That was something I sorely needed,” Raph said. “They say that people often gain clarity in the intense moments of combat.”

Lumoof nodded. The battle was over, and they retreated to the clone tree to rest. Raph initiated the conversation.

“Your people consider choice and life as the core tenets that guide your decision. Mine considers law and order as the only single tenet. Yours are content to let men be, so long as they live, correct?”

“Fair. We do intervene occasionally.”

“But the law must be consistent,” Raph said. “I admire your world and your civilization for achieving what it did, but more than that, it reminded me of our failings.”

“How so?”

Raph walked to the two angels and then declared to his two countrymen, “I once believed that our world displayed the flaws of overextended orderliness. But here, in these other worlds, there is none. Given a choice between order and chaos, order should be the default. Law must hold as far as we can.”

The two angels listened.

“Once we return, we must expand and join this crusade against the demons and uplift the mortals from their suffering. We will bring order to the worlds beyond ours.”

My priest listened. The two angels immediately stepped in. “Arbiter Raph, that is a decision of the—”

“I will not be denied. Our society has lived in those ivory towers for too long. We, angels created by gods long past and abandoned, were meant to wage war and bring progress! They may have forgotten us, but I now realize what our purpose is as a people. Our wings and spears were meant to send us across the stars! Instead, we turn it on ourselves. It is time for our obsession with Order to be directed outward. To uplift the faithless, to guide the faithful, to impose a structure in the chaos, and to smite the unholy.”

The two angels cowered as his passion leaked.

“Patriarch Lumoof, I must thank you for this incredible trip. It has been enlightening to see the suffering that goes unfettered throughout the worlds beyond our own. It is great to be reminded how much rot and failure is in the natural state without guidance of their betters. Order shall spread!”

Lumoof just shrugged. “A mortal’s struggle is what leads to levels. Would you be keen to carry out that under our auspices?”

Raph shook his head. “Your world and your people hardly need one more, but my world, my beloved Angelworld, more than ever, would require my perspective. My kind had slept through our purpose, and when I return, there will be revolution.”

I wasn’t sure why I didn’t feel that excited to hear that. It felt like I had just awakened a more zealous, more…extreme version of our own expansion. Uplifting worlds and orderliness had colonialist vibes written all over it.

“If there are many worlds just like this, then it is our failure. We had been complacent, confident in our success to prevent the demons from coming to our world. If there are worlds that suffer regular demonic attacks, it is our duty to assist them. We are giants in our little pond, but now we discover that there is an ocean out there for us to liberate. The people of the multiple worlds are misguided, and they need to be improved. It is our duty, as angels, to do so. Why else are we granted a connection to the stars, if not to go there?”

Lumoof felt my concern. “I highly recommend caution and a light touch. What you do is very much what an invader does.”

Raph nodded. “Your concern is noted, Patriarch Lumoof, but we are angels, and we will do better.”

I felt like I would regret our collective decision to introduce the demon worlds to the angels. Those who sought to impose their will, for the benefit of others, were not much better.

“Our first task, once we return, is to discover a method to channel our own connection to the heavens and open these gates,” Raph declared with fervor. The two angels didn’t dare oppose him.

Lumoof looked at the other Valthorns accompanying him and sighed. We occasionally saw zealots, but they were always our own.

Raph was not.

He might be a force for good. There were worlds that might accept him. No, I could easily see worlds that would accept the angels as the messengers of their gods. His kind, if spread throughout the stars, would help many worlds from the fury of the demons, but I could also see the great destruction and the dictatorial order that they would inflict on worlds.

The perfectly manicured version of their home world, copy-pasted across many others.

He would be the burning fury of ancient angels, imposing their laws.

A part of me wondered, Do I let him go, or do I stop him here?

Was he that different from me? I imposed my will on the worlds I touched, for all I claimed to have a light touch. was he all that different? Was he better for the greater world in the long run? Or would they, some day in the far future, be something else entirely?

Raph looked at the two angels. “I had seen enough. Let us return to our world and call for a great council. Action, and then revolution.”

“If it is something you want to achieve, then let us work together,” Lumoof proposed, trying to see whether Raph could be absorbed into our structure.

Raph shook his head. “Once again, I thank you for the offer. What I have in mind must be done through the angels. Our kind finally has a worthy purpose, and I must return to them to deliver it. But we shall be friends. I shall see to it.”

Lumoof sighed as he sensed my discomfort. “Maybe this idea of a multiverse alliance may not be a great idea. I sometimes forget creatures of other worlds have different core values.”

Raph had done us no harm, and his goals aligned with mine in the long run, even if we had slightly different visions of that end.

He could set up a concurrent entity, a force that supported us where we couldn’t. We wanted to defeat the demons. The demons were the true enemy. They wanted to impose order, and the demons’ destruction was tangentially related.

They were not the enemy, even if I saw the seeds of disagreement. Just as I left the crystal king be, I would leave them alone, for now.

“We have to steer this rabid dog in a direction that would not harm us,” Lumoof spoke via our mental link. “Engagement is the only way to manage them. They are passionate but perhaps misguided.”

“Killing him would end the problem here and now,” a part of me wondered. It would make him a martyr, an enemy of their world. Yet, until the deed was done, I strongly did not want to pass preemptive judgment.

I knew from experience that arguments with zealots did not go well. Those who sought to expand would expand constantly. It was a need, a craving. A desire for more power, more land. This was, in a way, a demon-like behavior. I wasn’t sure Raph would be that sort of zealot.

As Stella stood at the edge, Raph bowed politely to her. “This has been an enlightening experience, Lady Stella. I now see that my kind’s failing. Once I return, I will guide my people to step out.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. Your kind has done great things for your world,” Stella said, oblivious to the exchange between my priest and Raph.

Stella opened the void portal and sent him back.

He stepped through, and I felt like roots tangled in my soul. We may have an ally in the war against the demons, after all. We had given them perspective.

I just hoped I didn’t regret it.

34

YEAR 223

“No void mages in the angel world,” Stella agreed after my discussion. “They seemed so reasonable, though.”

“The most frightening folks usually sound reasonable. That’s how they get their foot through the door and win over followers. It is an art of guiding the blind to achieve more perverse goals.”

“Is it really that bad?” Edna said. “If we need to, we can fight them. They lack the means and ways to compete with us.”

“Four-winged, six-winged angels, or higher have no level restrictions, so don’t exactly count them out,” Lumoof answered. “They are in the same class as dragons and that kind. They may gain their own domain holders in due course. Given that they even can innately see the astral paths, they may gain access to other worlds sooner than we think.”

“…fuh.” Edna nodded.

“We should kidnap some and study them,” Roon suggested. “They are fascinating.”

“Roon!” Stella said. “You cannot be serious! You’re suggesting kidnapping innocent angels for studies! Aeon hasn’t gone that far!”

“Then bribe them! Entice them with money, knowledge. Trade small, useless information for it. The more we learn about them, the more we can prepare for them,” Roon proposed.

“That’s…unethical,” Stella said.

“But it works,” Roon said, and Edna nodded along. “Keep our demons close, and in this case, angels closer.”

“I agree. If these angels have innate astral-knowledge, that could be a welcome addition to our lineup. We may not need angels directly, but there are humans who developed similar abilities. Surely some arrangement can be made.”

Stella frowned. “I feel like that’s cheating.”

“It’s called preparation.”

“…fine.” Stella wasn’t pleased.

“If they get there, I think that’s not a bad thing,” Edna admitted. “Someone that could help fight the demons is still a net positive.”

A point that I agreed with and was why I let Raph go. “We don’t need much ties, beyond being there for the final battle, I guess.”

“If we want them there for the final battle, we will need ties.”

Of course, if there was such a thing as a final battle. There was a possibility this conflict was like pest removal. Just a constant, never-ending war against a multiversal cockroach infestation.

The second revelation, of course, was about my two new seeds. “Just two seeds…?” Roon and Johann immediately realized that this wasn’t going to go that well. “If, let’s say, there’s another two more seeds further down the road, after what…three decades, we’d just have a grand total of nine worlds?”

It wasn’t great, and it meant that the total stable war potential was spread over nine worlds, more if we could add Stella and the void mages’ portal abilities.

The future we foresaw was a war of attrition against the demons, and I could see the shifting battlelines in the stars. The war would be fought over many worlds, with the heroes, and nine worlds was not enough.

“What if we did what we did in the lava world and attacked all the demons’ blobs?”

“They could take countermeasures,” Stella said. “The black blob wasn’t adequately protected, and what makes you think these demons won’t realize it? They have some battlefield intelligence and can adapt to us.”

“So you’re saying what we did was a fluke.”

Stella paused. “Not exactly. In specific circumstances, we could repeat it. I do not mean to reduce our achievements down to something less. It’s just that…it’s a changing battlefield, and the demons can and will adapt.”

The ranger laughed. “All right, all right. We gotta hop to Mountainworld. They’ll have a demon king, too.”

Unlike our little stint in Lavaworld, I took a step back for Mountainworld. A cursory scouting mission to the demon’s world returned us to the boreal demon world filled with ice and trees.

“Sure you guys don’t want to do more?”

Lumoof shrugged. “We’ll take a step back and support you guys this time.”

We did identify the location of the teleportation and rigged the place with bombs. I didn’t want to destroy the astral paths so quickly, not without knowing what was coming for us.

It wasn’t fair to put Mountainworld through that risk, so we hedged and decided to engage the demon king when it arrived instead. The giant ice-giant-like demon king that arrived was nuked quite heavily the moment it arrived, which removed its outer shell.

The heroes did most of the fighting. My domain holders provided support and cover fire. Many kingdoms and empires of Mountainworld sent their spies and scouts to observe the fight from afar, but six strong, well-leveled heroes supported by a good team of domain holders meant the battle went smoothly.

They prepped. No, everyone was prepared to teleport if there was any sign of the detonating bomb. It did, but relatively speaking, it was a weak bomb.

The demon king of Mountainworld, [Demon King Myrgizan], was defeated on the same day as it arrived, and Mountainworld could see another fifteen or so years of peace.

My domain holders gained a level or three, but they’d reached a point where it was starting to slow down, and Edna suggested rotating the soon-to-be domain holders to play a much larger role.

From our victory on Lavaworld, I now possessed a full demon king’s core undamaged by any star mana, and this was something we placed into my biolabs for studies. Like the copy or replica we made from the assembled copy, it immediately opened up to a far larger map of the multiverse.

It was a field of stars, with lines. Paths. There was just one blob at the heart of it, and I prodded it for more information.

[The Slaver’s Prison]

“Huh.” Stella saw it, too, as she experimented on the core of the demon king. Unlike before, there was nothing blocking our attempt to intrude on this network. Stella played with it, and her eyes began to bleed. “Shit. Sorry.”

A bit of healing later, her eyes were restored, but it did make her feel a little uncomfortable.

“The demons have a collective memory. Each of these demon worlds actually transmits information back to the black suns and the blob.” Stella used her magic to make a pale copy of the star map. “Their view of the void forest is fixed to this perspective, but mapping it, it doesn’t quite line up.”

As Stella once said, the void forest appeared differently to everyone else. What was near for me could be incredibly far away to someone else, and that perception of the void forest could get very distorted. Astral neighbors, like Mountainworld and Threeworlds, actually were quite far apart on the demon’s map.

This was odd to me, but to Stella, a space that was dependent on one’s frame of reference was normal.

No matter, my concerns led back to the blob. “That blob is our target, isn’t it?” I asked her. She earlier said there was no single target. Yet, here it was.

A single blob at the very center. A prison of…gods? Or heroes? Or cores?

“That blob ‘directs’ the will, and I’m not certain if that’s the only blob. It looks, according to this map, to be only one blob, yet it’s referred to as [The Slaver’s Prison]. It might not be the real thing, and we are just taking out the means by which the demons command a particular ‘segment’ of its forces.”

Stella poked at the core for a bit more. “I highly, highly doubt it is the only one.”

The gods once said that they fought a war with the demons across thousands of worlds, and from this map, there were thousands of worlds.

“Are you able to use this map and exploit this demon king’s core? I want to know whether we can visit our neighbor in the demon’s frame of reference.”

Stella nodded. “It should be possible. The rifts should be able to line up to the commands of the core. I’ll need a year or two, but I should be able to rig this to one of the rifts. But I’ll need you to supply us with the core mana, and we can start experimenting on its abilities.”

“Got it. What about your [void explorer]? How far is it from Snek’s world?”

“It’s…almost there, another three to five years, I think,” Stella explained as one of the other void archmages came in with some more schematics and notes. “A short time to rescue Snek’s kind.”

Snek and Ken made preparations, of course. Ken, in the past few years, had learned Snek’s language and taught a small group of Valthorns to speak it.

We just hoped that there was still someone there.

35

YEAR 224

Stella was getting better at manipulating the demon king’s core, though she had to be healed after using it. The unusual magical architecture of the king’s core strained her mind, and she asked, “Aeon, are you able to augment my mind? Through that dream academy?”

“What?” The heroes themselves were unnerved by the statement. “You’re asking Aeon to—”

“I know what I am asking, but the demon king’s core needs more mental power, and every time I use it, I feel my mental capacities are insufficient, even if I have the right mana type for it.” She made progress, and her team of void mages, supported by a group of dedicated [void enchanters] and [crafters of the void], created a huge contraption around the demon king’s core. “You must remember that this thing is essentially designed for the demon king and not meant for mere mortals.”

The demon king’s core was pretty much a nuclear reactor, linked to multiple arrays of crystals and potatoes filled with void mana and core mana. At the end of it was a rift gate and a control panel, which Stella would use.

“You do realize you are sharing your mind—” Chung started, being the natural voice of skepticism among the heroes.

“Lumoof does it, and he’s all right,” Stella said. “Look, I know the risks, but we have this core, and we have to crack it. We can’t fight this war against the demons blind. We’re currently essentially reacting to every single invasion.”

“We’re doing a lot!”

“I know, but we can do better. Fight wars without having to fight them, you know? All it takes is more brain power, and in this world of magic, I really don’t see why you’re feeling queasy about it,” Stella said. “Can you build something, a structure or a thing to do so?”

I checked and realized I could. Essentially, I would have to grow an attachment that would tap into her mind, something like a living helmet, which would then be linked to an artificial mind. “Yes. We’ll start small.”

Within a month, I had a prototype, forged out of [wood magic] and my evolutionary powers, to create a wooden suit that essentially linked itself to her scalp. It would tap into her mind, if she granted access, to be augmented by artificial minds.

“Holy shit, I feel like Iron Man,” Stella said as she was wrapped in a wooden suit that was linked to artificial minds nearby. The limitation was that the transmission of the mind-waves meant the artificial minds couldn’t be very far. “Is this how you see the world?”

Also, because she’s a [domain] holder, she has to explicitly grant access to the artificial minds to her mind. That, in a way, was a weakness. Essentially, a domain was a firewall, and allowing artificial minds was a vulnerability in her mental defenses. Unlike Lumoof, who benefited from avatar mode, which meant he could get the mental support directly without having to open up to that sort of vulnerability. My priest just shrugged. “Yup. It takes a bit of getting used to.”

“You should totally roll this out to everyone. It’s freaking amazing,” Stella said. “It’s like what modern soldiers wanted to have. A dedicated AI for every single one.”

Roon and Johann were both intrigued. “Seriously?”

Alka observed it and nodded. “It’s that amazing? I already have these lab assistants in my lab.”

“I know, but these things help so much. If they can be specifically configured—” Stella asked. “Aeon, can they be magic focused?”

“They are designed to do specific functions. It would need some prototyping and training before they can do what you want them to.”

“Ah. Never mind. Let’s see how this does against the core’s void-map.” She then tested out her contraption and tapped into the demon king’s core. I felt the supporting artificial minds glow and then…

They splattered in a small explosion, as the demands of the demon king’s core overwhelmed them. I immediately cut off the connection.

“Oof. Not ready yet.” Stella cursed.

I could use a titan soul to make an artificial mind. That kind of mind support might be sufficient for Stella’s intentions. But I still didn’t have the option. I needed more void mind–related experiments before the system granted me the option to create a void-variant supermind.

Despite the failure, I liked the idea enough.

With a combination of familiars, artificial minds, and special wood-mind suits to support high-leveled Valthorns, I could give them support in terms of mental load, coordination, and strategy.

It felt like a natural evolution of the Valthornian supersoldier, so I immediately got Patreeck to start work on designing new supersoldier suits. In line with its superhero inspiration, I decided the first version would be named the Timberman Mark I.

“How’d it go?” I asked Edna, who reappeared from the pocket realm.

“It went well. It wasn’t even that hard a fight,” the knight answered. “Just punching some monsters really hard, and I get this.”

She showed off her new haul, a shining sword, [Sword of the Demon Slayer].

“It’s got buffs quite comparable to your demon hunter special class, but it’s an object instead of a class.”

It was interesting that the system permitted multiple iterations to achieve the same goals, and the return of the mythical era of knights was really appealing to me. My own extrapolation suggested that Edna could even some day obtain some kind of Excalibur equivalent. At the domain level, the system seemed to encourage the creation of new myths or legends.

“Interestingly, I’m permitted to undertake quests to obtain specific anti-swords.”

“Oh?”

“If I chose ‘demons’ as my chosen enemy for the quest, I’d get swords for that purpose. The only condition it needs to fulfill is some kind of ‘evil’ or ‘injustice’ or ‘destruction’ criteria, and I could choose them as a target. That means, should a hero commit evil, I could undertake a set of quests under this ability that would grant me some kind of anti-hero sword.”

“That’s really overpowered.”

“It is,” Edna said. “Lesser knights can obtain lesser variants, of course, but it is still an incredible force multiplier.”

It meant knights, under this mechanism, would function as a check-and-balance since any act of tremendous evil could result in creation of anti-evil quests.

36

YEAR 225

Roon, Johann, and Lumoof both arrived in Threeworlds and found it the same as it once was. At least, at first glance. Their mission was simple: to just have a check on what had changed in the years since we last visited.

“It’s been a while since the three of us traveled together for something unrelated to the demon king.” Johann shrugged.

Roon shrugged, too. “It’s usually Stella and Lumoof. And this is still tangentially related.”

Three domain holders was quite overkill, but they’d all split up and headed in their own directions. Both Roon and Johann were rangers, and they had, in their arsenal of skills, a wide variety of camouflage, scouting, and movement abilities that made them perfect for checking on these folks from afar. Lumoof’s [projected presence] also helped play the same role.

“How long till we get to see your dragon?” Roon asked.

“It’s a dragon.” Johann sighed. “And guess what? Dragons take forever to grow. It’s just an egg now.”

“Hah!” Roon laughed. “Should’ve started with something more ordinary. Like a zaratan.”

“I’m pretty sure zaratans also take forever to mature.”

“At least with a zaratan, you’d have your own interstellar ride.”

“That’s…a good point. I should’ve thought of that.” Johann realized a personal zaratan “pet” was probably the ideal interplanetary transportation vehicle. “I wouldn’t need Stella or the archmages to send me anywhere.”

Roon just gave him a gentle punch on the shoulder. “But I guess dragons just have that cool legendary factor. Anyway, we should split up and start searching.”

“Yup. Got it.” Johann’s body faded and blended into the background. He was off, and Lumoof also activated his own [camouflage]. It didn’t take long for them to each check on the three factions of Threeworlds.

“Everything’s normal here,” Roon said through our shared communication ability as he observed the massive city of the Sandpeople. They were a blend of desert creatures and humans, ruled by the scarab-men. Their warriors were the scorpion-oids, and their lesser folk everyone else. “Doesn’t even seem like the demons came this way.”

“Some minor damage to the main city and a bit more on the outskirts, otherwise it’s normal.” Lumoof returned to the outskirts of the Crystal Mountain and found it the same. The city looked far more heavily fortified than before, with large crystal golems on the walls. Those were new. There seemed to be some battle scars, but otherwise it was all normal.

The demons had come for the land of man, and they damaged them only slightly.

“The Centaurs’ camps looked heavily damaged, and their population seemed to have shrunk quite a bit. Their main city holds, but I see the scars of heavy battle in this place. There’s a large segment of their vast steppes that’s now filled with demonic corruption, and there’s a large crater in the center that looks to be the remains of the demon king.”

Roon and Lumoof activated their own teleportation scrolls and arrived next to Johann in the vast, now-corrupted steppes of the Centaurs.

“They survived,” Roon said. “I suppose that’ll have to be good enough.”

“With at least a third of their grazing lands gone—” Johann naturally was sympathetic.

“They don’t need us here,” Roon said. “They chased Lumoof out the last time we’re here. They survived. If we approach them now, they’ll view us with even more suspicion.”

Lumoof nodded along. “Roon is right. This isn’t an urgent problem, even if the pain of the land is palpable.” I felt it, of course. Even with my domain, I could shut it out, but it was there, like someone shouting outside the window. The call of the trees, the grass, and the land, for aid, to resist the interlopers.

Corrupters.

Undo the damage.

I’d done so on Branchhold. I’d aided the heroes to clear the demonic corruption, and there it was now almost all gone. I felt that same voice here to clean it up.

“We should destroy the daemolite,” Johann said. “Or shift it to one of the other worlds. Parasiteworld’s a good place to start, since it’s a blank slate.”

“What if they want it?” Roon retorted.

“Then they’ll get more demons.”

“It’s their choice, isn’t it? Actions have consequences.”

In the end, Lumoof cut in. “Let’s just go. We’re here to check on them, not take action or intervene on their behalf. We’ll only step in if the demon king’s running unhindered.”

Treehome was likely to be safe from the demons for a while, with the astral paths all gone. This was something known to my void mages and my domain holders, but the temples were, naturally, unaware. They had no means of seeing the astral paths, unless they happened to have angels.

Lavaworld was now our primary farming location, other than our dungeon, while I began resettling Parasiteworld with migrants from both Treehome and a selected few from Branchhold.

Even Parasiteworld was changing, and I attempted to speak to the will on its name. It shared images of what it once was. Jungles and swamps, insects and parasites. It was a tropical world, and thus I resolved Parasiteworld should be renamed Tropicworld.

The interstellar migrants were immediately annoyed by the presence of an overwhelming number of naturally spawning mosquitos, and magical flaming barriers were erected to prevent the bugs from getting close. My healing effects and aura meant the migrants never got sick from it, but it was a massive irritation.

The fact that the terrain was still changing, as the core’s power returned, meant it was also quite difficult to build anything permanent, since the shifting terrain triggered earthquakes, flash floods, and avalanches.

No one died, since Valthorns and druids stepped in to protect them, but it was part of the challenge of settling in this new world.

Despite this, the migrants were mostly hopeful. They were drawn to the scale of the land, where only my Valthorns had once walked. The vast forests I created, the new animals that spawned were different from those back home.

It took a certain type of personality, an explorer and adventurer at heart, not for money, but for novelty, to be willing to make this journey. To build civilization where there was none, to impose order in the natural chaos of this world.

A delegation of lords similarly made the journey here; they were to be its new rulers. A small group of friendly Canari made the journey, too, just as there were Treefolks, Lizardpeople, and Gnolls who made the move.

The swampy natural terrain was unappealing to the Centaurs or elves, so they were a minority in the first batch of settlers. The system didn’t entirely leave these to fend for themselves, and these pioneers were rewarded with an upgrade, a rather powerful set of classes—[Pioneer Settlers], [Pioneer Builders] or [Pioneer Crafters] and other such—that helped them adapt to life in their new world.

Their children grew quickly, and with the protection of my trees, I foresaw them growing quickly. Here, there were very few resource limitations. With such a small population, the system spawned magnitudes more animals and monsters than they could ever hunt, and it would take at least a few decades before the population growth would start to run into resource issues.

Just like Treehome, I worked with the new [Settler-Lords] to set up nature reserves and areas that would be protected, areas where the natural state of this new world was preserved and my artificial minds supported them with beetle guardians and beetle trucks.

They could get certain necessities shipped over from Treehome, if needed, but as far as they could, they had to make do with what was available, solving their adversity and working with what they had was a path to gaining levels, since it was the ethos behind their [pioneer]-series of classes.

My tree on Cometworld barreled through the void space at high speeds, and occasionally, I saw other worlds come into view. Yet these other worlds were too brief and too hard to “lock on.”

I started to wonder whether we could control our movement through the void space; after all, this world had shrunk quite dramatically, and Cometworld was like a mail in a bottle floating on the wider ocean.

Cometworld had somehow barreled far away from where we were, like a comet now in the far-flung areas.

On the map of the demon king’s core, we were not even on the map. But it was hard to confirm this; after all, this map had a weird perspective and projection of the void sea.

Stella and Alka worked on multiple contingency plans of potential retaliations from the demons. One possibility, from what we’d seen, in the Margmarian Dwarves, and also the dragons, was the “comet.”

This was common in these two’s memories, and the comet led to large-scale destruction. Our mitigating solution was twofold. First, Stella and the void mages prepared a set of portals as an escape plan. Alka’s team of bomb-researchers prepared for the possibility of blowing up the comet.

Unlike humans, we had the ability to create portals, so reaching any comet or super projectile headed our way was a small problem. We just needed a nuke large enough to blow up any comet.

There was a possibility, as Ken suggested based on his past knowledge of tropes, that the comet may well be a super-demon king. Or at least, a larger fragment of that blob from the demon. I felt this possibility was unlikely, because if it was, then the god’s solution of summoning heroes likely would not work.

Also, if such a thing was possible, Treehome would’ve been a demonic wasteland, so it was unlikely. Ken’s counter argument was that the demon king may just give up on its corruption ability and instead make a combat-focused demon king, since every demon king had two roles: one, to both defeat the heroes, and two, to have a set of abilities designed to capture the core of the world. A focused demon king meant to erase the targeted world to a blank slate could give us trouble.

Again, unlikely.

I personally had a third idea. The demons may just wait us out. If I were to put myself in the demon’s shoes as the demon’s chief strategist and tactician, and I saw a world that was giving me trouble, my first instinct may not be to throw stronger units at it, but just wait and see.

This was because I was an immortal, while these habited worlds were usually humanoids, and humanoids didn’t live very long. If I just left the world alone, the defenders would’ve aged and died, and when I send a demon king after a hundred or two hundred years, those who stood against me might have been long gone or descended to infighting.

A strategy like this required some knowledge of the nature and thought process of mortals, but the demons could read minds, and they had acquired that knowledge by capturing heroes in the past.

If this was the demon’s chosen strategy, it required eternal vigilance and heavy preparation over decades and centuries, and that was a very hard thing for a society of mortals to do effectively.

“Well, good thing we have an immortal on our side, then.” Alka laughed.

“You’re all immortals. The issue is making sure our mortal friends share our concerns. If we warn them too much and too consistently but nothing actually happens, they’ll think, after a decade or two, it’s just scaremongering and we are just being naggy old creatures.”

I had no issues with those longer lived, because they knew. For someone who lived through one-in-a-hundred-year disasters, those things were very real, but to those who didn’t, or grew up after those disasters, they just didn’t feel it personally and would take things lightly. I would mitigate this in my Valthorns with my [dream academies] and other such abilities and send them to the other worlds.

I realize this contradicted a thought I had previously with Branchhold. That different societies had different future time horizons. Some cultures prepared. Some cultures reacted.

“Aeon, your concerns are overstated. There’s actually no reason to warn them at all,” Alka interjected. “What could the kingdoms do with their levels and their resources? Nothing truly substantial. Nothing compared to what we have access to. If anything, the duty to prepare falls on us, those with [domains]. We do not expect a regular man on the street to know how to guide a ship through a hurricane, and likewise, we do not expect a village chief to know what to do against a god.”

“Is that from a book somewhere?” Stella quipped.

“No. But our eyes can see, our minds can foresee, and we shall guide our fellow men through these dark woods.”

Stella actually clapped. “You’ve been reading.”

“Yes, I have.” Alka laughed.

I supposed it was true, there was not much these societies could do against such an existential threat.

Kraviek, my Treefolk [Aeonic Lord of Growth], approached me with the latest of void-attuned treefolks. The youngest one could now speak and grew up well. By now, we had close to fifteen such treefolks, but our process of breeding more of them was slow because we checked everything.

Our concerns of their weak physique were overstated, as it soon became clear that the soul adapted to the body, and the body adapted to the soul. Their soul springs became an unusual mixture of both void and normal mana, and their soul springs had a two-layered structure, one normal mana, one void.

Still too young to learn magic, the first void-attuned Treefolk was named Kaala. Curious, and uncertain of his place in the world, we spoke a lot, and the void child reminded me very much of a once-young Lausanne.

They still had their naïve innocence, a clear, wide-eyed wonder of the world around them. They did not know to be intimidated; the very act of speaking to me did not strike them with fear.

Every time I looked at the children I trained and designed, all for the future of waging war, I felt conflicted.

They were necessary. The skills, the adaptations they had, all, in my mind, necessary.

Reality nknot cruel, and with the demons all over the multiverse, my recruitment of talented children never stopped. The continuous process of building a pipeline of talent, for our war to end this cycle never ended.

I hoped there was a world some day in the future, where children could be children and not have to fight wars on my behalf.

When we destroyed and defeated the demon king, I wondered for a moment whether I’d achieved my goals. I asked my domain holders once whether this was it.

That this was where we should stop, since we’d stopped the cycle for Treehome.

But everyone knew it wasn’t.

All we did was buy time and force them to rethink their strategy.

They would return. They were still there.

I looked at my future young soldiers all over Treehome and Branchhold and prepared them for a war that I wished I never had to fight.

But it must.

One day it would end. One day we would have our victory. But until then, I would keep adding more to our war potential.

37

YEAR 226

“I’m there. I’ve reached Snek’s world.” Stella said the words that they’d all waited for.

“Really? Seriously?” Ken jumped from his chair as the message propagated to all the senior leaders and the hero-related groups. We knew she was getting close, but the uncertain nature of the void and its erratic patterns made predicting the specific time and date difficult.

The void was simultaneously a stormy sea, a folding space, and a thick, dark, and confusing forest.

Snek immediately asked, “What did she see?!”

“My void body just arrived…and I can’t see anything. The void body’s just a void-portal probe. I’ll have to open a portal—”

“Wait!” Snek yelled, and Ken just shook his head.

“What now?” Ken said. “We’ve finally reached your world, the goal you’ve always wanted, and now you’re saying wait?”

“I’m not ready!”

“You’re a spiritual snake ready to sacrifice your life to somehow bring heroes back to your world, and now you are not ready? Come on!” Snek felt a range of emotions I’d rarely seen in the spirit-snake: confusion, uncertainty, fear, hope.

To return after so long. How much time had passed?

He didn’t know. We didn’t, either.

“The gates are open,” Stella said, and it was Lumoof, once again, who stepped through. We were greeted by mountains and canyons so high that they felt unreal. Instantly, we felt the presence of the demons.

A world of dragon-demons, the ones we saw from an earlier time. The ones that Lausanne fought. They zoomed overhead, so far above the canyons that they couldn’t see us. “They don’t have very good eyesight,” Lumoof quipped as the demons seemed to ignore us.

Snek and Ken ran through the city and rushed to the Valthorn’s keep and ran to the room where the portal floated midair.

Stella nodded in the room. “Well, the gate’s there. Lumoof is already on the other side.”

Snek’s little snake form seemed nervous, and I felt it. “Is it safe?” Ken asked. He hadn’t actually stepped through to a demon world.

“Yes. The weather seems a little dry, but for now still breathable. The demons did not do much to the air.”

“Well, is this your home?” Lumoof asked. Snek sat on his shoulder.

“Yes. Yes, it is!” he said. “It’s the same sun and moon!” The terrain had changed, and their world had become even more mountainous. There were huge cliffs, deep valleys, and mountains that were filled with caves, all inhabited by the demon-dragons.

The dragon-demons flew overhead, and in truth, they were a pale imitation of real dragons. They lacked the overwhelming power that I felt in the ancient dragon bones, the energy and magic that could survive the batterings of time.

“Where are your…family? Or friends?” Lumoof asked as we walked through the valleys. The valleys all had small streams of running water; grass and foliage still grew on the banks of the stream. It seemed that certain demons didn’t outright destroy their worlds and instead merely leeched off the core like some kind of planetary parasite.

“I’m not sure,” Snek answered. “The terrain has changed so much, but my people live underground.”

A strange coexistence, one I considered, and Lumoof felt the world through his feet. “The good news is your world looks like it has hardly aged.”

There was still a strong, pulsing presence in the core, deeply entangled with the demons’ presence. The demon king in this world was still growing, and it’d be years before it was ready for an invasion. Stella popped up right next to them.

The first thing she did was look up, and we saw the growing but still weak astral path that led somewhere.

“So how do we find your kind? Do they have any magic or markers?”

“…no. We hid everything. But things may have changed.”

Stella closed her eyes, and I felt her energy pulse outward, like a wave that swept out. Lumoof activated my avatar mode, and my magical labs spawned at the edges of the stream. These magical labs then activated my array of magical sensors.

We had to first offset the magical energies of the core and the demons, but once that was out of the way, we were left with a smaller pool of possible locations, about five hundred places.

“Do you think we can hide from the dragons?” Lumoof asked Stella, and she shrugged like it was a stupid question.

“Do we even need to?”

“True. They may look like dragons but lack their power.” If Lausanne could take them on, Lumoof and Stella certainly could steamroll their way through them.

“Actually, now may be a good time to get the next generation of Valthorns up to speed,” Lumoof realized.

“That’s more like it.” Stella grinned.

Stella and Lumoof were at the center of about two hundred fifty Valthorns, all level one hundred and above.

“These are the possible locations of Snek’s people, based on our magical sensors, and they refer to themselves as the Ularans.”

Ulara.

“After the demonic invasion, their [message] infrastructure collapsed, so there may be multiple surviving Ularans in this world, scattered all over the world. Snek claims he came from the Utara Ularans, and there’s the Selatan Ularans.”

The Valthorns separated into groups of five, and they fanned out. “Simply put, make a spectacle, lots of noise, and crush the demons, and see whether the Ularans will come out and talk to us.”

Everyone nodded.

Lumoof and Stella just followed their trail of destruction. The demon-dragons themselves were strong, relative to the other demon types, but their low quantities were a drag.

The Valthorns tore through the flights of demons; here, the ranger-archer Valthorns had extensive advantage. Their piercing arrows and crystal-bomb-tipped arrows were very effective against their heavy scales.

Our sound-and-fury agenda was successful.

“Patriarch Lumoof, we spotted some natives,” Aderan, a Valthorn-Treeology Monk-warrior, reported through our message system. “One of them was spying on us, and we tracked him back to a network of tunnels in the nearby valleys.”

I felt Snek breathe a huge sigh of relief. He had feared for his fellow snakefolk.

“We spotted some Ularans.”

All in, we spotted three separate groups of Ularans as we fanned out, and Stella and Lumoof teleported us to the nearest one. They lived in what appeared to be a really complicated network of deep tunnels and chambers and built secret irrigation tunnels and light-collecting structures that funneled light into underground farms.

Snek was nervous, but he knew how the tunnels worked. The tunnels were small and not meant for normal-size humanoids.

Instead, Snek, in his strange form, went to the door and searched for something—

There was a metal plate, no larger than a small teacup, and he hit it five times. He held it up, and it vibrated midair.

And waited.

Soon, an Ularan emerged, a snake with two hands and no legs that resembled a really small naga. The Ularans were all small sized, no larger than a small table, but what was interesting was that they all had a large, cobra-like head.

He had a dagger in small hand.

“Who is it?”

“I am Sawabesarulars.” Snek did the introduction. “I was once one of the High-Blood Ritualists meant to find heroes for Ulara. I have returned and wish to speak to the present Ularan Lord of the Dens.”

The Ularan looked unsure. “I know not of this name or the ritual you speak of. Begone, you are not welcome.”

“Wait. We acted on the orders of the Ularan Lord Rajatedungular and Lord Kapakular. Are those names familiar to you?”

“They are long dead and their den long destroyed.”

“How many years has it been?” Snek asked.

“I do not know. Do not enter, as you are not welcome.”

“Are they welcome?” Snek pointed to Lumoof and Stella. “They can defeat the demons of this world and may even bring us to a world without demons.”

There was no response from the Ularan, and instead he just hissed.

“That didn’t go as planned.” Snek sighed. “Let us try the other dens, but it is a good sign that my people survived after all.”

The second attempt was a lot better. “Oh. You are one of the ancient ritualists, and these are the leaders of the creatures aboveground?”

“Yes.”

“They do not look like the humans that the gods used to send. They look…so old.” Stella frowned.

“Times have changed,” Snek responded. “And they are not the heroes.”

“Unfortunately, we cannot let you into our den. We can meet outside.”

“The demons, do they not come for you?”

“Most dens have settled to a comfortable status quo with the demons. We leave them alone, and they hardly bother us. Those that venture too far get eaten. That is the way,” the Ularan of the second den said.

“Are you in contact with the other dens?”

“No.”

The rest of my Valthorns continued to fan out and scout out more of the locations. There were surprisingly more dens than we expected, as the dragon-demons really didn’t like going down to the valleys and were happy to remain in the peaks and surface.

It was an unusual coexistence, and I was getting the sense that the Ularans didn’t really want to rock the boat, either.

Snek’s mood soured as we encountered more and more dens, almost all of them turning us away.

“I don’t get it. I even obtained a [hero] class, and they don’t even seem convinced.”

“Too much time has passed,” Lumoof said, “and they’ve changed their minds in that period of time. Or maybe it’s just a form of Stockholm syndrome. Don’t rock the boat.”

As Snek’s frustrations with the dens grew, I’d decided to go on a small detour.

“Lumoof, if there’s a dragon-demon champion, let me know. I want to capture one.”

“Ah!” Lumoof nodded, quickly passed the message to the teams, and I got a target soon after.

“Patriarch Lumoof, there is a dragon-demon champion in this location. We’ve backed off.” Lumoof charged to the location at high speed and then landed before a dragon-demon. These dragon-demon champions were one of the strongest types of demon-champions we’d seen, just slightly weaker than the combined demon walker-super cannons.

Lumoof leaped on the dragon-demon champion. It flailed and struggled, but my vines wrapped around the giant dragon-demon and flooded it with my mana.

It’d gotten easy.

My vines pulled the dragon down to the ground and continued to flood it with mana.

[Natural mana overwhelming has converted the Demon Drake Champion to a Giant Tree Drake.]

[Giant Tree Drake requires a Titan Soul to operate at full power.]

The Tree Drake lumbered helplessly, unable to move much, so I had Stella send it back to Treehome for further investigation. Destroying the demon-dragons, or demon-drakes, since the system didn’t consider them to be real dragons, was quite entertaining for my Valthorns.

Every wannabe hero had been sold the idea of slaying dragons, so this was the fulfillment of that dream.

“All right, what should we do?” Lumoof gathered the senior leaders and Snek while the rest of the Valthorns had fun slaying demons. “Snek is clearly not having much success with his kind, though some of them are willing to at least talk.”

“My humble and utmost apologies, Patriarch Lumoof,” Snek offered and seemed extremely embarrassed by what had happened. “I did not expect my people to be so…difficult. But at least I now know that about three hundred forty years have passed since I shed my physical form and entered the void.”

“What is the root cause of their resistance? You have the hero class. Surely they should welcome you as a savior of some kind.” Stella was fairly curious as well.

“Generations have grown up under these dragon-demons, and only the really old would remember life before them. As weird as it sounds, my fellow Ularans adapted and accepted life as it is and adopted some insular behaviors. I will need some time to address their concerns.”

Lumoof said, “Do we have time?”

“Plenty,” Stella said. “The starpaths are weak, and the core of this world is still holding one of the ‘baby’ demon kings.”

“There you go. You have time. You may offer them a chance to move to our world. We will have somewhere safe for them. Perhaps the bugworld.”

Snek nodded. “I fear my fellow people may get aggressive, if I badger them too often, but I will try to undo this.”

“The Valthorns will be stationed here to support you. They could use the experience. Snek, you have…three years to make a difference. If nothing happens after three years, we’re bailing. We can leave you here if that’s what you want.”

The little snake-creature bobbed his head and looked back at the insular little Ularans all hidden in their dens.

With Stella’s [void explorer] locked on Snekworld, we were able to open portals to the world as needed. For now, Stella and Lumoof returned to Treehome.

“All right, what’s next?” Stella said.

Lumoof shrugged. “I’m taking a break. I’m going to go get some tea, a nice hearty meal, and then get a shower. I’m all dusty.”

“Hah.”

Without the demonic invasions to regularly pulse and space out our time, even though I did feel it was a little too frequent, it helped structure my time and allow me to aim for the next goal. Now, I needed to figure out that goal for myself. I had to prepare for what came through the astral ways next, especially from that blob.

Stella and my void mages regularly checked the stars, and for Stella herself, she spent a lot of time working and training her mind-assistants to support her with the map within the demon king’s core.

Some of the distances were still too far, even with rift gates and how the demons created those astral paths, which was subsequently reinforced by a combination of void and core mana, was still a puzzle.

At least my other Valthorns seemed to be growing.

38

YEAR 227

There were times when nothing seemed to happen, and I generally enjoyed these periods of time. It wasn’t to say nothing happened, but it was more that the events that happened were largely small to me.

On Treehome, my roots and vines finally crossed all the necessary oceans, and we’d reached all the continents. I was now able to spy on everyone in the world.

But there was nothing worth spying on.

The temples did not hold secrets of communicating with the ancient gods, or if they did, it was lost to time. The kingdoms were embroiled in endless politicking and jostling for power, what little power they had. The common folk, well, there was really not much to gain from spying on them.

Again, it came back to my two main objectives. The first main objective for expansion was the gathering mana and resources, which did not require my direct control of the land. My subsidiary trees were able to hide and camouflage such that most people didn’t notice them, and they, connected to the rest of the trees, generated mana.

The second was talent. There was a valid argument for the expansion of my cities into the other continents, to have a wider pool to gather talent. It was also true, just as Raph correctly noted, that my reluctance to control these other lands meant they were lawless, and many of these young, potentially talented children would encounter a demise before their time.

On this aspect, my spy networks in the other continents helped serve as my talent hunters.

Talent was an ephemeral quality. It emerged in some and didn’t in others. I’d known this through my decades, almost century-old training program. Some people bloomed early, some people bloomed late, and some never bloomed at all.

Some thrived in a structured, safe environment of the Central Continent; some thrived in the lawlessness of the kingdom’s fringes. I tried to recreate similar chaos by letting go of the kingdoms of the Central Continent. I allowed them to fight each other.

Chaos. Conflict. It was all natural. Order was stifling, and worse still, the frustration created by order eventually caused the general populace to turn on the force that applied that order. Every few years, my Valthorns had to step in and quell some smaller actual rebellions, some small pockets of dissatisfaction that somehow turned on us.

We caught most of them before they turned into larger rebellions. My minds kept tabs of their general mood and tried to ensure that their frustrations were aimed at each other rather than us. Sometimes, my spymasters accelerated the collapse of certain incompetent kingdoms, just to ensure that the frustrations were focused on them rather than us. We stepped in when they did something.

It was a slippery, slippery slope.

Lumoof said to Raph that we were wardens. That was my goal. But in practice, there were flaws to this ideal as well.

If the lion was to hunt the last surviving gazelle, would we not intervene? We would, because in the interest of diversity, I should retain these rare species. Yet the natural way was to let it collapse. The strong survived; that was nature.

When were we wardens, and when were we zookeepers and conservationists?

Nature’s diversity was hinged upon every species finding their niche. A species that did not find their niche thus died.

was that how we did things? was that how I wanted to do things?

The cities of Treehome had grown larger, the sheer concentration of our power meant resources, infrastructure, and facilities had made the Six Ports, Freshka, and the many directly administered cities of the Valthorns into large, sprawling city-monstrosities.

The decades of peace had created a huge accumulation of people in these large centers of economic activity. It also made it easier to find talent, because there was bound to be talent in a larger pool of people.

Like it or not, the Central Continent’s incredible prosperity was an outcome of decades of order. By my artificial mind’s measures, the Central Continent’s population had increased by a factor of ten since a century ago, all because of significantly higher food availability and significantly lower death rates.

The resurgence of the lizardfolk, Centaur, and treefolk populations was also a big factor, and it was all possible because of our presence, to create order, and to protect those I saw as worth protecting.

But it was not fair. The nknot shaved our inbuilt biases.

If the lizardfolks or treefolks were inferior, by the order of things they should be extinguished. So, though we claimed to be wardens, we were not very good wardens. We stepped in.

We made changes. We elevated some lizardfolks and treefolks beyond their natural state and made them into wardens. But the very fact that we made it possible informed the others of the height that they could achieve.

We protected some and encouraged certain populations to grow faster.

Honestly, we were hypocrites.

We applied order and intentionally created chaos. We imposed our rules. Our rules were drafted with a significant bias for choice, for self-determination.

It was hypocritical, because if we really wanted to be wardens, the nature of Treehome should be a state of anarchy. The kingdoms should be able to fight each other to the death if they wanted.

But we didn’t allow them to in the interest of saving the innocent and sparing the continent from the fallout.

The philosophical difference between myself and Raph was actually really just on the spectrum of our intervention. We advocated a light touch, yet we occasionally intervened, sometimes heavily, thus we suffered the consequences.

Raph would, by the sheer nature of his philosophy, need to consistently intervene. That, to me, was an untenable position. I did not like that.

Initially, my framework for intervention generally considered whether there was an extinction event (such as the last gazelle example), large-scale unnecessary death, a unique or special resource, or if the intervention could significantly alter the direction of the world for the better.

It occurred to me that the framework was structured so wide that it was effectively useless as a framework. What was significant? If one subscribed to Chaos Theory, that small events had large ripples, everything was accordingly significant, and thus, like Raph, I must always intervene.

That was not where I wanted to be.

I wanted to end the cycle, and these days, any intervention was filtered through whether it could lead us further along that path.

Again, still very vague, and not exactly useful. How would you know that a person could someday be the future savior of the world?

It was something that still stumped me, and so, for now, I was going with my gut. Which was mostly my roots.

“Managed to get the crystal computers to work?” Kei looked at the flashing crystals with great interest.

“They work, but all this computational power is not very useful.” Alka was frustrated. We now had the equivalent of computer chips, and Alka was now literally a walking chip foundry. The issue was making that computational power do something useful. What was the world’s greatest supercomputer if there was nothing that required that sort of computational power?

Creating a language and operating system for the supercomputer was a challenge in itself, though they were not entirely working from scratch.

It was fairly easy to adapt runes and runic carvings into supercomputers, and that was their first instinct. There was a “language” already native to crystals: runes.

However, it was soon clear that runes were not appropriate. The human-heroes, of course, had some ideas of their own thanks to their earthly origins, but Alka wasn’t convinced. The crystals had the ability to comprehend certain queries or statements without having to resolve them through a series of yes-no questions.

If the crystals could inherently maintain and process statements directly, Alka’s first idea was that they were essentially artificial minds, but in crystal form. So we combined them with my suit of living wooden armor to augment our Valthorns in combat.

This was actually the first useful application, since the supercomputer-crystals could function as the home of the artificial minds. We then combined the artificial minds, the supercomputer-crystals, and the demon king’s core. Stella referred to it as the Void Chamber, and it was our first full-scale attempt at supporting Stella’s attempt to look further and deeper into the demon’s map.

It worked better than expected. She didn’t have a nosebleed or her eyes didn’t hurt, and she could begin to manipulate the map and convert them into something useful.

Coordinates. Directions.

Stella needed the Void Chamber, because the demon king’s core was not designed for the regular mind. The chamber helped to interpret and convert the signals and signs and inputs into something more usable and allowed her to take it all in.

“I need a bit of demonic mana,” Stella said after a few days of experimenting with the demon king’s core. “There are some segments locked behind a key of demonic mana, certain carved paths within the core that need to be powered by demonic energy.”

“Got it.”

A small army of void mages watched as a demonic-hybrid tree appeared nearby, and a small trickle of demonic energy pierced the demon king’s core.

It hummed strangely, and Stella manipulated the demonic energy into the path.

She froze as she felt the presence of an unusual blend of divine energy leaking that then transformed, decaying into something else.

“Aeon, I’m not sure if I’m reading this right, but from what I’m seeing…there’s a dead thing in the prison. It leaks divine energy, similar to that ancient log, but it’s very faint, and I think— I think it’s getting twisted into some kind of demonic energy.”

“A…god?”

“Yes. That blob is like a prison or an extraction device of some kind, and each demon king is a piece of that fallen thing, which perhaps is a god That has been corrupted.”

“We’re actually going to fight a god.” I cursed. This was going to be a lot more traditional than I expected. Oh great.

“There’s also— Shit,” Stella cursed. “Heroes. The spirits of captured heroes in that prison. That thing contains both heroes and a dead divine creature. The demon king is essentially a fusion of three parts: the body of the planets, the will and spirit of this…fallen god, and the blood and energy of the demons. That blob contains the will, and the blood is passed on with each demon king.”

“Okay.”

“So. When you corrupt the anti-magic demon king’s body, it messes with the ‘blood and energy’ of the demon, as well as the body of the world, which was why it didn’t work as well when it landed.”

Stella paused.

“But this doesn’t help. It doesn’t tell us how to get to it. The distance between us and the blob is huge. I’d have to gain at least a hundred levels just to get enough void mana to get close.”

“Can we hop there?”

The Void Chamber hummed as I felt the demon king’s core light up. “Yes. We’ll have to capture at least forty worlds along the way. But here’s the thing. The closer we are to the blob, the more demon kings they can throw at us.”

“Wait. Why?”

“They technically have no limit on how many demon kings they can aim at one world. It is just its default setting to aim one world at a time to maximize growth. It’s… It’s transmitting a command.”

Stella had already started to read the command.

“It can essentially be summarized as a matrix between the nearest world, highest daemolite concentration and special weightage, which is normally zero. So it pretty much tries to invade the world with the highest weighted score, the nearest world on its star map. It’s also receiving a pulse from the other demon worlds, every unknown number of years, which helps update that star map. If a world was already targeted by another demon king, there’s a negative modifier applied.”

“Wait. Can you tamper with that pulse?”

“I will, but we have to play listening mode for a bit to see what that pulse is like. If I know what’s being transmitted, I’ll try to modify and mimic it. I’ll need your help to construct a listening facility of some kind on Lavaworld and the other demonic worlds.”

“And you know what we are looking for?”

“Yes.” Stella grinned. “I just figured out exactly what we need to look for.”

Stella and her void mages soon spent months constructing hundreds of little daemolite-gems filled with a special inscription meant to mimic the exact energy-receiving formation within the demon king’s core.

These devices were then scattered on all the worlds, particularly places like Lavaworld and Snek’s world. They would function as recording devices to see what was transmitted and communicated by the demon mothers, demon kings, and the blob.

Now, we would wait.

We didn’t bother Raph and the rest of Angelworld, nor was it in our interest to keep interacting with them. We had other things to focus on.

We needed to train new domain holders, and the more my domain holders played a role in the battle, the harder it was for the rest of them to gain a level. It was just a fact that there was limited contribution to go around.

That was pretty much the rule of thumb.

The easier the battle, the smaller their role, the less experience they got.

On Threeworlds, it was time we made contact with the Sandpeople and the Centaurs, despite the crystal king’s earlier reservations.

For this purpose, we had our own Centaurs on the Central Continent and trained a group of them to function as spies.

Lumoof would play a more observatory role.

The lead Centaur spymaster, Eudoxus, initiated the contact after months of surveillance. A lesson from Angelworld, or Lawyerworld, was that we clearly could not presume good faith in our contact, and like aliens dealing with other aliens, we must first understand who we were dealing with before attempting to make any contact.

We also needed to infiltrate our targets and know more about them before any proper engagement with the authority figures. I also needed to do it more discreetly, unlike Lumoof’s rather high-profile buying spree in the Crystal Mountain.

It was common sense, in hindsight.

But clearly I lacked it, as I’d suffered for it over the years. Something about trees lacking common sense.

The Centaurs of Threeworlds had a communal hierarchy organized around their large special land. A special relic controlled their Great Vanishing Country, which protected their kind for centuries. Those who gained control of the relic were ultimately the joint leaders of their land.

But what had happened?

Arjan, one of my long-serving Centaurs, was soon able to coax the story from a few of the Centaur locals.

The locals of Threeworlds, like Angelworld, did not presume the presence of alien Centaurs or Centaurs outside of their immediate control.

“The great patriarch and matriarch couldn’t fully control the relics of Gayaar! Could you believe that?” The local Centaur chief of the pack cursed over some heavily spiked alcohol. “In our centuries of history, the relic has never failed us. It is their incompetence!”

“The story of the Whisperers claims that the relic had lost power, that our ancestors had overused it! Even with the Centaur-hero’s energies, the relic is incomplete!” Another Centaur chief of the outskirts was quick to share the tales from the grapevine. The Centaurs were strangely very, very gossipy, though we did eventually realize there was quite a bit of horse shit.

Arjan and Eudoxus, both playing the role of traveling Centaurs from a faraway village, nodded. “I hear there is demonic corruption in the vast steppes.”

The spy-group consisted of six Centaurs, all from Treehome, and they melded seamlessly with the Centaurs of the fringe.

“Yes!” The Centaur chief looked upset. “That has never happened in our history! The great patriarch and matriarch must let go of their position for their failure!”

Arjan prodded. “Is that something that would be offensive to say?”

“Eh. If that’s offensive, the patriarch will not be able to hold his place,” the villagers responded, half drunk on some kind of fermented milk-alcohol.

“Soon, the great vote will be upon us,” the Centaur chief said. “And the patriarch will be challenged to defend his position.”

“And would you challenge him?” Arjan asked.

“No. But I hear of those who will.” The local chiefs shared names of at least six who had thrown themselves into the ring. It all sounded foreign.

Back home, we had a discussion on what we’d discovered.

“There are lands not owned by any faction,” Roon said. These lands were located in the far south, near the edges of the deserts of the Sandpeople, and the edges of the land held by the humans and the crystal king.

The only reason they were not owned by anyone was because these were unproductive lands. They were a littering of overly cold, barren deserts and a smidge of uninhabited canyons. There was no food, and the weather was too darn cold.

There were also no animals, and the place had atrocious weather.

“We could take this, if just to claim territory.” Lumoof had surveyed the land earlier and didn’t like it. Ideally, getting somewhere with a magical ley line was best. But given my ability to spread trees anywhere, it didn’t actually matter.

“Or we could come in at the invitation of the other factions.”

“Or just place our trees and spread invisibly?” Roon countered. “With Aeon’s [camouflage] abilities, how hard is it to hide?”

It was a strange thing to even consider, whether a tree had the right to place itself and grow anywhere it wanted. Having rights to land in itself was a great advantage, since it meant no one could take it away from us, but in reality, they couldn’t enforce the claim.

In fact, once I had my seed planted on this world, I would be spreading my trees everywhere without any care for legal rules. I didn’t care for legal rules back on Treehome. Why should I care here?

Maybe I shouldn’t care all that much and just look for someone far away from the three, just to avoid conflict and spread my trees anyway.

But at least one of them had a domain, which meant they might be able to sense my presence.

It was a risk. Was it worth it?

In my mind, yes. But I’d do so after contacting the other two factions. There had to be one faction willing or at least was a bit more cooperative than the rest.

Arjan and Eudoxus arrived at one of the largest Centaur gatherings, in their largest city, Hoofhall. They had somehow convinced some Centaur merchants to take them along, and the group of six Centaur spies had established themselves as merchant bodyguards.

Centaurs raided each other, and raiding was a fairly common affair in their society. As a result, they’d developed some norms in order to prevent loss of life. Centaur raiding leaders would often battle it out with the head of the bodyguards or the local militia, and if the bodyguard or militia lost, they would surrender their wares, but usually, no one was killed. If they won, the raiders would leave.

Towns and cities even had their own raiding parties who did the same to the other cities. Brutality was generally frowned upon, despite the sheer machismo that Centaur war leaders had to display in combat.

Arjan was a level one hundred thirty-six [Spear Saint], and so in combat, there really was no contest. So usually it was Eudoxus who took the role of the head, as Eudoxus was a level eighty-seven [Spymaster] and level fifty or so [Hardened Warrior]. It was easy for him to fake his strength as a spymaster.

As they rode through Hoofhall’s gates, they immediately noticed the strange markings on the land, and Lumoof, hidden and camouflaged in the wagon, saw the lines of magic immediately.

The entire city was overflowing with a kind of magic not unlike the shamans or the lizardfolk’s magics. A blend of runic power and Centaurs’ folk magic.

Folk magic was a milder blend of soul energy and their own energy. Like how shamans and witch doctors could somehow use a limited array of soul-linked magics, like how the rituals of priests could also touch the soul. The folk-magicians and spiritualists of the Centaurs were developed in such similar concepts.

The Centaur-guards shuffled them in after reviewing some documentation. It was fairly easy to forge, but they didn’t need to. The Centaur chiefs of the outskirt villages were more than happy to issue them new papers.

The guards instinctively stepped away from Arjan; he was the strongest of the Centaurs present, and his presence still rippled through the system, even if he tried his best to hide it.

“The challenges will begin soon.” Eudoxus quickly shuffled away to get information of what was next.

“Challenge?” Arjan asked.

“The challengers challenge the patriarch for the title?” Eudoxus explained.

“Should we?” Arjan would defeat the patriarch if it was a straight combat.

“We don’t know anyone. It’s best we lay low and build our network.” I’d given them a decade or two to build a realistic faction within the Centaurs, with the goal of lobbying the Centaurs for friendly terms. With our power, it wasn’t impossible.

We were the equivalent of an extraterrestrial power funding and influencing a faction and meddling with Centaur politics. When I put it that way, what I was planning to do really sounded distasteful.

I needed the mana, because I didn’t know what the future held. If I could get it on favorable terms, which mostly just involved non-interference, that would be sufficient.

Eh.

I wondered why I cared.

I should just plant my tree clone and be done with it. Fuck whatever these people said. Roon clearly agreed with that approach.

But legitimacy would smooth a lot of issues. Argh. I was just reminded that I despised politics.

“It would be easier that way in the short run. But all it’ll do is sow the seeds of conflict over the long run. If any of these domain-tier or relic holders can be swayed our way, that will save us a lot of bloodshed in the future.”

We were aiming for the demon’s heart, and we’d best have our foundations safe. It would not do to face nibbles from unfriendly natives at our roots.

39

YEAR 227 (ULARA)

“The way of our people has changed, Sawabesarulars,” the Ularan answered as they met in a quiet cave in the canyons of Ulara. Snakeworld, or Ulara, as Snek called it, eventually opened up to his presence. Snek wanted to meet in the open, to show that the Valthorns could give them safety.

“Why? We can undo all of this. I have a hero class. All we need is a young child who has not received her class to accept it.”

“Centuries of living in the shadow of the demons,” the Ularan den lord answered. “We are not the race we once were. We have accepted our fate.”

“Fate? Where was my kind that was proud and willing to stand up to the demons? My fellow Ularans who were willing to sacrifice themselves and partake in the soul arts? To send me and many others like me to seek help?” Snek was furious. “We hid away because we couldn’t fight then, but now there’s an army strong enough to defeat almost every single demon above us and heroes to retake our world.”

“Centuries, Sawabesarulars.” The den lord was pensive. “Will your army be here forever? Will we be able to resist the demons forever?”

“If the other worlds could do it, why couldn’t we? We resisted them for a long time, too.”

“We had heroes.”

“I have a hero class here.”

“And what? A single hero. When that hero passes, we’re doomed once more. Perhaps we will face a type of demon that doesn’t let us survive in the caves and canyons.”

It was a conversation he had with many others. Snek couldn’t believe it. “I feared that my people were dead. I came to find that my people live but are dead at heart.”

He refused to believe that the young were like that.

“If you refuse, at least let me speak to the young Ularans. Surely some would wish to live in a world not in the shadow of the demons, where we can step into the light with pride.”

The Ularan den lord sighed and then nodded. “Very well, I’ve seen enough that I can trust our young to you.”

Sawabesarulars smiled in relief. “At least some wisdom in the others who remain.”

After his stint on Ulara, Snek eventually settled on two goals: collect as many young Ularans and send them to Tropicworld as possible, and also regain access to the clean blood magic and various rituals.

“Lord Sawabesarulars, is it true that you went to another world?” The young Ularans were extremely curious, and Snek nodded. “That you could defeat the demons?”

Snek, who lost his physical Ularan body form, nodded to the young Ularans. Right now, the Ularans had lost their faith in themselves that they, these small, snake-like creatures, had no ability to fight against the demons. “Yes. I could not, but these people have.”

Snek pointed to the Valthorns. Almost all regular Valthorns were tall, healthy, and strong as the elite soldiers of my force. The Ularans were half their height, and they found us intimidating. Over the years, the idea that Ularans could not win against the demons—what more the giant, dragon-like demons—was carved into their psyche.

If Snek wanted to retake the world, we could do so with our Valthorns. But that would not restore the confidence of the Ularans or destroy the belief that their people were meant to exist in the shadows of these demons.

The snake spirit asked for my assistance to train the young Ularans so that they could show their fellow Ularans that they had the strength to fight the demons, even the champions.

I spoke to my council, and I felt it was worth it, even if there was a risk of creating another “Raph-type” event with the Ularans’ knowledge of clean blood magic and the existence of the multiverse.

It was a long, hard journey. But they had the time.

“At the rate this world is going, it’s unlikely to die in the next hundred years.” Snek had spoken to my mages, and the mages had performed a wide range of data collection and magical studies. Their world still possessed a fairly robust core, and though we found the pits to the demon mother, it wasn’t time for us to go in.

Snek, ideally, would like his own people to be the ones to free his world, a hero made from an Ularan, but he was not yet ready to gift the hero class stored in his soul to a young child.

In fact, he soon confided with me that he would require my assistance to assess the suitability of the young children.

I wondered, personally, whether a [hero] class like that, taken away from Ken and then later granted to another, would still have the same mental compulsions and controls. My question was the mental compulsion a part of the [hero] class, or was it something that came together with the application of the [hero] class?

No matter, the new Ularan hero would be a fascinating case study.

As part of the talks to convince the young Ularans and also inspire them to achieve something, Snek told them stories of the Valthorns and our conquests through the stars. It was quite effective, and eventually a few of the older Ularans agreed to join a small, exploratory batch of five hundred young Ularans to be trained by the Valthorn academy in the ways of combat and offensive magic.

These young Ularans were brought through the rifts produced by the void archmages and to Treehome. They had an experience that was far more exaggerated than the lizardfolks of Mountainworld.

It was expected, since these young Ularans grew up in the relative modesty of their dens in the caves, and they have not seen life out in the open or the vast sprawling cities. Their dens, some which were fairly luxurious for them, were all built in their underground labyrinth, and therefore the sight of a large city out in the open was absolutely alien.

I believe they would have a similar reaction if they’d seen the cities of Mountainworld, too. Still, the spectacle helped to convince the young Ularans and their minders to get started on the training program to create the next generation of Ularan warriors.

The Ularans were very amused to see the lizardfolks. Ularans, unlike lizardfolks, were egg layers and did not have the practice of communal spawning pools or private spawning pools. Ularans did generally keep their eggs within their dens, and Snek explained that in the pre-demon days, their dens were pretty much regular buildings.

Their current practice of tunneling labyrinths, which had grown far more extensive since Snek’s time, was an evolution of their adaptation. The Ularans had developed and trained good tunnelers and abandoned some of the classes and roles that they no longer needed underground.

In other words, the current Ularan, despite their meekness, were quite the ideal doomsday preppers because they could build entirely self-sustaining environments entirely underground.

The Ularans’ fighting style needed to take advantage of their natural size, and a brief assessment of their physique soon leaned toward a more magical approach. Despite their size, their magical prowess was comparable to the others, and they were also naturally more in tune to the spiritual side of magic.

They were quite fascinating subjects to study, quite like the angels.

Ken and the rest of the heroes, when faced with the Ularans, found them quite cute, and they were even slightly smaller than the Canari.

Like little pet snakes, but they knew better than to say it out loud. Snek said references to snakes would’ve offended them.

They would be specced into mages, druids, or agility rogue-types in order to take advantage of their small size. They were naturally mages and also transformation-type druids, where they would take on giant snake forms to do battle, but their mages never got very far due to limited research on spells and abilities. The system awarded and awakened new spells for a leveling mage, but without centralized teaching for mages, the resources of the land, and the loss of many older records, newer mages didn’t have the level of competence of even their predecessors.

They were pretty much sent back a few centuries, if not millennia, in terms of magical development.

Within months, the young Ularans displayed promise. Their weakest one was in single digits, simply because the Ularans couldn’t take on a large dragon-demon on their own, but without low-level mobs for them to gain experience, they couldn’t progress very far even with spars and practice battles amongst themselves.

Their levels were around twenty to thirty at first, but once they were introduced to the dungeons of the appropriate levels, this quickly shot up to level thirty and forty.

I could use my ability to let one of them instantly reach level sixty, but from my own experience, this wasn’t a good idea.

I foresaw their progress would slow down significantly, since they lacked the experience-boosting abilities commonly seen in my Valthorns. So I doubted I’d see a level one hundred Ularan mage or fighter within the next few years, but getting some of them to level eighty should be possible within the next five years.

Snek believed that Ularans taking down a dragon-demon on their own would be a significant psyche change and help break the mental shackles that weighed down their now insular society.

Our forces captured a few rift gates, and Stella immediately worked to set them up. Once they were properly set up, it freed up Stella’s [void explorer] to keep on exploring the void sea or void forest.

She also had an epiphany one day, looking at the map contained within the demon king’s core.

The alphabets used in the rift gates were in a sequence centered around the void gate. But only if viewed from the demon’s perspective.

From our perspective, there was no order or sequence.

It made sense since the rift gates were constructed in their language, but it also meant that the rift gates themselves had a way to understand the demon’s perspective.

How? Why?

If the perspective of the void sea was relative to the viewer, what made the rift gate view the stars as what the demons saw it?

How?

Did all races see the void sea differently?

“You’re suggesting that because you and I have human origins, we see the void sea in a certain manner?” Stella proposed.

“What else could it be?”

“Yet it is not the same with mine. What you see and what I see has subtle differences. We’ve known that.”

Was that because of my mixed origins as a tree with what was once a human soul? “If that is true, our treefolks and other race void mages would’ve seen it differently,” I countered. “They don’t. They see the way you see it.”

“Because I handed them the flame, and their view is forever colored by mine,” Stella mused. “Yours was gained through the system.”

“We should find a way to exploit this different perspective, since it essentially widens our reach.”

“Heh. We already have access to two sets of void-perspectives. Ours, and the demons.” We didn’t count the subtle differences between mine and Stella.

40

YEAR 228

Threeworld.

Eudoxus, Arjan, and my four other Centaurs had established a network of friends and allies within the Centaurs. Arjan, privately, relayed that as a Centaur, he admired their society. A society where Centaurs were a majority and not a minority.

On Treehome, we had certain areas where Centaurs were the majority, and they were the local ruling government. But in Freshka, Centaurs were definitely a minority, and as strange as it sounded, Eudoxus, my spymaster, soon commented that some of the Centaurs were getting very attached to their newfound friends.

“Are they compromised?” I asked. It wasn’t entirely unheard of, but it was fairly rare that my agents became compromised, simply because of the sheer superiority of our culture and our extensive training before deployment.

“Not yet. But it is something I’m concerned with,” Eudoxus commented.

At some point, there was a degree of freedom of association. I didn’t hold my people to be loyal to me forever, and I generally allowed them to leave service when they wanted to.

Thing was they were entirely remote in another world, where my trees could not see them. I had to trust that they knew what they were doing.

Trust.

That was something I struggled with, but here I had no choice. If these agents ran off, I could catch them, but it would require me to expend significant effort.

Lumoof offered to speak to the Centaurs, as part of a regular briefing session, and so snuck through some portals. My priest’s assessment was simply that the Centaurs truly considered their new “friends” as friends.

They were still loyal.

But that was a form of compromise, wasn’t it?

“I suggest we let it go,” Lumoof said.

The Centaur society was honestly one that was nursing its wounds. Their hero, the Centaur hero, and the human hero, died in the final battle against the demon king.

The demon king was the only time when the three heroes of the three sides came together and fought. But that didn’t mean it was a sign of unity of politics. All three factions clearly disliked each other, and my spies soon revealed that due to the extensive damage suffered by the Centaurs, the humans, and the Sandpeople had begun encroaching on their land.

Only the Sandpeople’s hero was left, but no one actually deployed their hero against the others due to the bad precedent it set. The heroes themselves, from what the Centaurs gathered, were mostly content with their own kingdoms, all nestled in the security of their respective lands.

I was really curious what a Sandpeople hero would be like, and I quickly made a request to both Roon and Johann, whether they’d be keen to do some deep spying into the heart of the Sandpeople’s territory.

Roon returned to the land of the Sandpeople and this time tried to look for the hero. With his significantly higher levels, and high-quality equipment, he was able to sneak into the Sandpeople’s cities with no problems.

The Great Pyramid of the Sandpeople was a fortress, and from afar, it appeared entirely made of stone. But closer up, it was actually made of a kind of sand-colored steel and was actually an armor for the large magical construct within.

That magisteel pyramid was humongous, the size of a city and some, and could be seen a mile away. It was pretty much a crystal mountain but made of this magical steel.

We didn’t detect the presence of the domain, but the pyramid itself radiated energies that felt more like hero-items.

Roon passed through their greatest city, aptly named the Pyramid, and headed for the kingdom of the Sandpeople’s hero.

Back on Treehome, my focus remained on training more people and preparing for the upcoming retaliation. For most of the world, they still expected to see a demon king in a few more years.

It was when it didn’t happen that I expected to see some shift in the mindsets of the general population.

The challenge of the Valthorns was to keep our swords sharp, our equipment polished, even when there was no demon invading our world. As the angel rightly pointed out, one of the ways I could keep my warriors in fighting form was to constantly send them to other worlds to fight the demons.

There was a shift in mindset, though. What a warrior had in his mind, when he was defending his home from the demons, versus an expeditionary, invasive force wasn’t the same.

It didn’t matter much at the senior level, because my experienced Valthorns all understood our long-term goals of ending the cycle. They could see the purpose of the fights, to eventually reach the demons’ heartland, if there was such a thing.

How it would affect me, of course, was future recruitment of young talents. “Defend your home from demons,” was a lot more effective than, “Invade the demon worlds” or “Protect the multiverse.”

Okay, maybe protecting the multiverse would work for those with a hero complex. My Valthorns and priests would have to adapt to hiring, but in a world without demon kings, it was likely that there would be higher discontent toward our militarization.

41

YEAR 229

The kingdom, or more appropriately the queendom, of the heroine wasn’t exceptional, and Roon discovered the hero took the form of a part-scorpion part-woman that resembled an Arachna. She referred to herself as Khefri and her kingdom Khefria.

She won concessions from the Sandpeople to claim the lands located not far from the heart of the Great Pyramids, and it had been said that she possessed a harem of servant men. Not entirely unusual, as many heroines went down similar paths, just like their male counterparts.

She built a great palace of painted sand and stone, with a great oasis with flowers and decorative plants, and she traded her hero-items to fund her lavish life. Food and goods seemed plentiful, though it was soon clear that this queen had no way of sustaining her country beyond her hero-items. It was her hero-items, sold and traded to the rest of the nations of sand, that nknot a semblance of a nation to exist.

All the industries that existed in her city only to support her palace and supply the food, goods, and all the items needed for her harem. Slaves and servants came in droves, enticed by the pay she offered.

If there was a queendom designed to collapse immediately after her death, this was exactly it, and it was soon clear that her hired administrators had other masters.

We had seen this in effect to some degree but never quite so obvious.

Roon approached the palace carefully and deftly avoided the presence of certain magical traps meant to deter assassins. Yet, as he got closer, he began to feel a magical presence that seemed to loom over the entire palace. It came from the hero.

“I’m not sure whether I should approach,” Roon asked through our familiar link. “It felt like she’s coating the inner palace with her presence. We should retreat.”

I agreed. Roon checked the perimeter and felt the hero’s presence pushing and wobbling—

Then she appeared in the same room.

“So you’re the one poking at my detection field?”

She appeared almost undetected, and Roon turned to face her. Crap.

“A human assassin? No. You don’t look human.” The heroine’s eyes glowed purple, and she immediately pierced through the illusion. “An elf? There are no elves in this world.”

Roon smirked, and he felt an [inspect] bounce off his domain.

“And I can’t see your status.”

The heroine seemed more careful and took out her weapons. She was frankly majestic, a half-scorpion creature with a dark-silver carapace. Her body came with a natural chitin armor, though there was clearly some mark of demonic injury scattered over her dark-silver body.

“Who are you?” the heroine asked.

Roon bowed and decided to engage politely. “Roon, an elven ranger from another world. Pleased to meet you. Can we talk, Queen Khefri?”

The words “from another world” immediately made the hero cautious. She looked around and then nodded. “With me, this way.”

They snaked through the palace, and now her detection field was strong, but it swirled around Roon, as Roon’s own domain disrupted the magical field. He was led to her throne room, but now, late at night, there was no one there.

The room was adorned with her magical equipment, and Roon felt vulnerable. If a conflict happened, Khefri had a significant advantage.

“It is not polite to approach a woman at night,” the scorpion-lady said as she sat. Her throne was more of a large, plush bed than a chair. “One thinks you either intend to kill me or take me to bed.”

Roon had to admit that was rather funny. “Are there other options? I am here merely to speak to you. Without the presence of your fellow Sandpeople present.”

The lady sat, not amused. “Well, you have my ears for the next ten minutes. Speak wisely.”

The ranger found Khefri’s aura to be quite different from the other heroes and wondered whether the heroes of this world were different. We didn’t see any large variance between the heroes of Mountainworld and our own, so this gap with Kherfri was curious. Was it a product of her training?

“Well?”

“I am Roon, a ranger from another world called Treehome, and I’ve been sent here, by our patron, to speak to you. If you are suitable, we would like to consider the possibility for a heroic alliance. We are in contact with heroes of our world—”

“You have heroes on the other worlds? Are they human?”

“Yes,” Roon answered.

“Cursed gods.” Khefri spat. Her face resembled a chitin helmet. “Humans.”

At that moment, she glowed, and she transformed into a human-like person. Yet she wasn’t. Her hair was dark purple and seemed to be more like a scorpion’s tail, and her skin was pale gray with the same glowing purple eyes.

“They look better than this, I hope?”

Roon shook his head. “They are humans.”

“Then do you find this form beautiful, elf?”

The ranger was stunned, but he had enough experience to answer her. “It is a unique appearance, Queen Khefri.”

“Bah. Answer it cleanly. Yes or no.”

“Yes.” Roon smirked.

“Good. You answered correctly. So what sort of alliance do you speak of? Some kind of interstellar league of heroes?”

Roon laughed. “That’s exactly what the heroes have in mind.”

“Can I meet them?”

“Yes, if you let our patron plant his tree here.”

“Eh. Just a tree, sure, what could go wrong?” Khefri answered too casually, but then she stopped. “Wait. Why a tree?”

“Our patron is a tree, Queen Khefri. His tree allows us to travel worlds, and with it, he can send you through to the other worlds.”

“And I thought I got fucked to be reincarnated as a scorpionoid.” Khefri laughed. “Your patron is a tree of worlds, then? How did you get here without your patron?”

“We have access to portals, but those portals are incompatible with the heroes’ star mana.”

Khefri nodded. “I see you are familiar with star mana. That at least supports your statement. How many heroes signed up for your arrangement?”

“Six.”

“Six?! Six in one world? They summon just one! Three of us in total, scattered one each to the one segment of the world, and they restrict us! And there’s six on the other worlds?”

“There were more.”

Khefri fumed, and she became pensive. “What do you need to make it happen?”

“Do you have permanent rights to your land, and are you able to surrender a segment to our patron unconditionally?”

“Yes, I could. Well, sort of.” Khefri asked, but Roon could sense she was unsure. “But why?” The scorpion queen adjusted her position, and the way she rested on her plush throne was rather seductive.

“It is better to come invited than to appear out of nowhere,” Roon answered. “Our patron’s presence can be overwhelming to the less prepared. Our patron is an undying, immortal presence, and he would prefer to own its territory through proper means rather than fight the natives for it.”

“You speak as if the natives will lose.”

“They will,” Roon said. “Unless they deploy heroes like yourself.”

Queen Khefri laughed. “You look down on the natives too much. The Great Pyramid has the power to suppress even a hero like me, the Great Vanishing Kingdom of the Centaurs could imprison a hero in the immaterium, and the crystal king has slain stray heroes with its hero-slaying formation. Why would I just remain here, if not for those relics? What gives you that confidence that you can stand against the three great powers of this world?”

“We defeated a demon king on its home world,” Roon said, but we now had a better idea of what the relics of the world could do. “But what you just said is fascinating.”

Khefri frowned, and her glowing eyes brightened. “You’re not a hero, but now I realize your powers are not insignificant, either. What are you?”

“Not unlike the crystal king.”

“You do not like to give straight answers, do you?”

“I’m not a diplomat, but unfortunately, those suited to deal with heroes are few and far between.”

“Are you the strongest, then?”

“Hah. No!”

“Is there a way for me to meet your patron? I must admit that I am intrigued, but I must know which devil I am making deals with.”

Roon nodded. “Are you able to leave your kingdom?”

“No. The Great Pyramid sealed this entire country, such that I am bound to this land. It is why my land is so close to it.”

“And you are not able to fight it?”

“I could if I try, but I will be vulnerable and then killed. Do you not feel the presence of those designed to kill me? The three powers hoard weapons meant to destroy us heroes, if only to blackmail us to do their bidding.”

“No,” Roon admitted. He had honestly missed them, or probably they were well hidden. “But I could get my patron to visit you indirectly.”

“Then bring him.” I was somewhat annoyed with her tone, but I wondered how much of it was an outcome of her circumstances.

Lumoof and Edna both arrived with Roon a few weeks later. There were some scheduling conflicts that made visiting her difficult. “Meeting a scorpion queen is not something I have on my checklist,” Lumoof quipped. “But I suppose there are weirder things out there.”

“She wants to meet Aeon.”

“I know. I’m just the vessel.” Lumoof laughed as they snuck into her queendom at night. Roon had visited her earlier to inform her of the timing, and she had naturally cleared her palace.

She rested on her throne as usual, in her scorpion form when the trio arrived, and we felt her energies meet with our own.

“I see you were not lying, Roon.”

“I wouldn’t bother lying, Queen Khefri. May I introduce my compatriots, Patreearch Lumoof and Knight Commander Edna? Patreearch Lumoof is the avatar of our patron, Aeon.”

“Well, let’s cut to it. Who am I really dealing with?”

Lumoof stepped forth, and my avatar descended. As my presence flooded the palace and the world beyond, it instantly triggered some of the hero-item’s defensive abilities. Queen Khefri panicked. “Wait, I forgot to turn that off! That’s not supposed to activate!”

It triggered arrows and magical blasts that smashed into Edna’s protective shields, and a small barrage later, Khefri looked apologetic.

“My apologies, I had not expected them to trigger. The conditions are usually much more.”

I felt my reach expand from the palace and then to the region beyond. I felt the ripples of my energy radiate outward and then met an energy from within the relic that resisted my own.

It was weaker.

[Domain has blocked scrying.]

[Domain has blocked attempted inspect.]

“I see your grand pyramid has started to spy on us.” I spoke through Lumoof. He floated in the air with his eyes glowing. “Greetings, Khefri. I am Aeon, a magical tree from Treehome.”

If the Grand Pyramid could sense my presence, it was time we met it and found out what it stood for.

Khefri laughed as my own presence washed over her. I felt from a quick sense of my energies brushing against hers that she was around level one hundred twenty as a hero, but the way her power radiated was different due to her nature and race. “Are my eyes deceiving me? You really are a tree?”

“Why lie?” I answered. “I can break you out of your palace, if you want to, though I would prefer to come to an arrangement with the pyramid.”

“The Grand Pyramid will consider you an enemy if you do. This prison is meant to keep me in.”

“I would prefer not to make enemies when our real foe are the demons,” I answered. “But why does the Grand Pyramid lock you here?”

“Why else? So I could do no harm to the rest of its realm. Is it not obvious that we are just troublesome to them?”

“What is the Grand Pyramid?” I asked.

“It is an ancient pharaoh-scorpion, rumored to be the first hero. The ancient stories say he didn’t want to die, and the god agreed so long as he served to protect the world and so turned his body into the pyramid.”

“Then let us meet this pharaoh-scorpion. Perhaps a deal can be struck. Would you come with us?”

There was a moment of silence as Khefri stared at me, waiting for me to continue.

“You’re not joking.” She looked at us like it was the most ridiculous idea.

“Why would we? Do we need more domain holders present to sell the idea?” I responded, and I felt more of that detection ability fail. “Let us meet the pharaoh-scorpion. He already knows we are here.”

We walked out of the palace and headed toward the Grand Pyramid. Queen Khefri looked at the three of us, a little suspicious. “The Grand Pyramid has just as many anti-hero items in its pyramid. I won’t be able to protect you.”

“I think it’s clear we do not need protecting.” Lumoof smiled. We could just disappear if we were attacked. With my shields and Edna’s abilities, we had enough time for me to activate my teleportation.

The Grand Pyramid was quiet at night, the area around the pyramid an incredible silence. We felt it again, a formation quite like the Centaurs that engulfed the city around the Grand Pyramid.

When Khefri approached, the guards bowed politely. “Greetings, Queen Khefri. A late-night meeting with the Grand Pyramid?”

“Yes,” Khefri answered. “I have guests that the great one would find interesting.”

The Grand Pyramid’s magisteel plates shifted like a magical puzzle and reshuffled themselves to reveal a door.

Khefri led the way, and eventually we went into the inner chambers. It was dark and dim, and Lumoof felt the presence of a domain all around us, but my own bubble pushed back. This was when I realized it was weaker than me in terms of absolute levels.

It had centuries if not millennia to stockpile equipment, but it was not stronger. Maybe this was because it didn’t have to fight much. Maybe it didn’t have fragments that supercharged my leveling.

Further in, the path kept reshuffling, and eventually, a straight path emerged that led us directly into the deepest catacombs of the pyramid.

Where the pharaoh-scorpion, in all of his golden glory, waited for us.

“Greetings. It is unusual for Khefri to come at this time, but the circumstances explain themselves. I am Zhaanpu, the Master of the Grand Pyramid.”

Lumoof stood first. “I am Lumoof, a priest and an avatar of our patron, Aeon. These are my compatriots-at-arms, Edna and Roon. We greet Zhaanpu, the Master of the Grand Pyramid. May we get directly to the matter?”

“Proceed.”

“We wish to form an alliance of heroes across the many worlds invaded by the demons, and also an alliance of powerful entities like yourself, to assist us in the great battle with the demons.”

“You intend for Khefri to go with you to the other worlds?”

“Yes. Join forces, and fight the demon kings.”

Zhaanpu was a golden-scorpion, though its face was more of a dried skeleton than a steel-helmet. Its eyes had a golden glow. Zhaanpu looked at Khefri, then back at Lumoof.

It pulsed briefly, and then it opened its arms. “If she goes with you and returns when it is time, I agree.”

“Agree?”

“Yes. I shall aid you in the battle against our old ancient foes, and Khefri shall do so as well. It is her task, as the gods commanded her. I am tasked in the same manner, though I also have the task to ensure the safety and prosperity of my fellow people, the children of the sands. You have the power to send people through the stars, do you not?”

“Yes.”

“Then there must be worlds filled with more sand than my people can imagine. These are my two conditions: first, Khefri and any subsequent hero must return when the demon king is here, and second, I want a world of sand for my people. I am tired of this tripartite stalemate.”

Lumoof paused. “We are not invaders. We do not invade other living worlds. But if there are such demon worlds that we reclaim, we shall deliver them to you.”

Zhaanpu considered the statement. “Fair. That is acceptable. Are you able to move something of my size?”

Queen Khefri had not expected the question, and honestly, neither did we. Unlike before, we had done some research, but the Grand Pyramid remained an elusive, unknown thing. It acted to protect its people, but there was nothing substantive about its beliefs and personality.

This was ultimately a risk of dealing with fellow immortals. No one truly knew what was an act of duty and what it really believed in.

Lumoof considered it. “Possible, but it would need some workarounds. It would likely not happen so quickly. We would also like to negotiate on the placement of our patron, Aeon.”

“There are uninhabited deserts in our realm. You may select any you deem fit.” Zhaanpu retrieved a golden plaque from a magical pocketspace and threw it at Lumoof. “This sign shall signify my approval of your claim.”

The golden-pharaoh stared at Khefri.

“I shall organize an army of one thousand sandwarriors to be deployed in your service. Use them well.”

Khefri did not expect that and lashed out. This conversation did not go how she imagined it to go. “Why?! Why do you treat them so differently?! You didn’t give me an army when we fought the demons.”

“Why not? They are not immature children chosen by faraway gods. I see and feel the weight of their actions, and the experience on their souls has substance. They are immortals like me. It is accordingly expected that our conduct would be different.”

“I’m a child?!” Khefri’s mana and aura radiated outward. It was unstable and hostile.

“Yes. You still are, young Khefri. I believe some time on the other worlds would help you mature.”

“You didn’t let me visit the other nations and even travel out of my land!”

“The Pact of the Three binds the three forces of the land. But now you will.”

“This is stupid.” The heroine’s arm-claws glowed, but just as abruptly, the glow vanished. We felt the Grand Pyramid somehow drain away at her power.

“The Pact of the Three binds you, too, young Khefri.”

“ARGHHHHHH!” She stomped and protested with her six scorpion legs and turned to walk out. “This is so damned stupid! This shit is all a scam!”

As she ran out, Zhaanpu just sighed. “Forgive the young child. Her life is still too short to realize the weight of her actions. I had hoped keeping her in her palace would give her time to think once she grew tired of her harem, but I thought wrong.”

Lumoof just rubbed his forehead. “It seems we have signed up to be nannies.”

“We are all caretakers of children once.” Zhaanpu chuckled. “Please, take this child off my hands.”

42

YEAR 229 (PART 2)

We selected a large, mostly deserted desert on the furthest north of the Sandpeople’s domain. My goal was more mana, and to do so I needed trees. I could spawn desert adapted trees and convert some of these deserts into ordinary land where normal, more productive trees could form.

So a largely deserted desert was fairly ideal for me. The Sandpeople loved sandy deserts, but only if they were not too far from bodies of water.

They also preferred warmer climates, and the cold deserts further north were also not ideal. The only reason it was their territory was because it was at the far end of their territory, too far from both the Centaurs or the humans.

The administrators of the Sandpeople handled the transfer quickly; the golden plaque from the Great Pyramid itself was indisputable. We had our papers within days; the administrators worked hard and pretty much dropped everything else to give us the necessary documents.

All because the Great Pyramid’s will was absolute.

“Their behavior is very much normal!” Lumoof laughed. “You should observe the Valthorns when you grant them an order personally. Their reaction is entirely, entirely normal.”

Once all that was sorted out, Lumoof traveled personally to the location to place the seed.

The cold in the fringe territories of the Sandpeople was actually quite comfortable. My immunity to weather effects and terraforming abilities meant I could easily alter the temperature and makeup of the place.

I recalled when I placed my seed on Mountainworld and set up Branchhold, I got access to another color of my Soul Forge. I wondered whether the same would happen now.

Did each full will of the world have the ability to grant access to Soul Forge?

“Well, let’s see.”

My seed emerged from Lumoof’s palms like magic. I felt the seed touch the cold sand, and then my seed drilled into the ground. I felt a sudden but not overwhelming surge of mana as the seed created new roots.

Roots immediately soaked in the mana of the new world, of Threeworld. After being in multiple worlds, I could largely feel slight differences in the nature of mana. It was not a significant one such that it changed the type or quality, but in a way, it was like how water somehow tasted slightly different in different places.

It was still water, perfectly drinkable.

Normal mana that was produced by almost everything could be said to be a blended form of mana. It was the potpourri of everything, the neutral element in the world.

Star mana, demonic mana, void mana, blood mana, and normal mana.

I had learned of the existence of a type of blood mana recently, as some of the Ularans visited and salvaged old, destroyed dens. With the Valthorns providing protection and support, they had nothing to fear of the demons, so they could freely travel to where their old Ularan dens were and look for ancient documents and text.

Some were lost forever. But burying magical books in this canyon-like, water-scarce world was a surprisingly good way to preserve them.

The truth was even normal mana could be separated into elemental types of mana, which all fell under the greater normal mana pool.

It was an imperfect mental image, but I imagined elemental mana as the equivalent of flavored drinking water. Water with certain flavors accentuated.

Star mana, in this concept, was a little like carbonated, condensed, high-pressure water: powerful, but dangerous in the hands of those not able to cope with it.

Demonic mana was dirty, sludge-like water, like wastewater.

Void mana was kinda like oil or grease. Or maybe a kind of alcohol. I hadn’t quite truly understood what void mana should be.

So, in this image, each world’s drinking water had a slightly different flavor; the ratio of elements and other components differed in minute amounts.

“Nothing yet.” The ground and the sand shook, and a tree sprouted out. I felt my mind connect to my new clone, and now I saw through it. I had a decision now.

What did I want to do on Threeworld?

I spawned trees all around my new clone and soon realized they produced decent quantities of mana, despite how terrible the land was.

I had thought there was some correlation between the health of a tree and how much natural resources it had to the mana it produced. This did seem true on Treehome, though the gap wasn’t that big. A cactus produced mana. A shrub in the steppes produced mana.

“Master, trees produce mana best when the species or form of the tree is the form that is optimally adapted to its environment. An alpine tree in an alpine world would produce more mana than an alpine tree in the desert. A desert tree would produce more mana in the desert world than in the tropics,” my artificial minds stepped in to correct. They handled all the nitty-gritty aspects for me.

“But we also influence the natural state at the same time?” I had some environmental tweaking powers, after all.

“Yes, so over time it’s possible to cause trees to be less optimized to their environment through our modification of the land.” That was a little strange and meant terraforming this land was usually unnecessary if the goal was only to gain mana.

So, did I intend to build a city here, like how I did on Mountainworld?

Or would this solely be a mana-producing facility?

My council advised that as it was, they already had their hands full. We were expanding on Tropicworld (formerly known as Parasiteworld), managing Branchhold, and managing the Central Continent itself.

A full town was unnecessary, and I didn’t really want to upset the balance of power between the three factions, either.

Therefore I decided to go low key and start modifying the terrain underground. It was partly inspired by the Ularans, and it reminded me of the century when I had New Freeka dig up underground bunkers.

It was fairly easy to create a perpetual mist that obscured the presence of the trees, and the entrance to the underground chambers was through my [subsidiary trees]. With my [Root Tunnels], and the help of earth mages and builders, we created underground homes, offices, and stores.

In time, this would be a bit like a secret military base, where my operatives in the Centaur and Sandpeople lands could return to recharge.

But…

Still nothing on the soul forge front.

Then again…

[Clone deployed on Threeworlds: You are now able to receive the souls of those from Threeworlds and also the soul fragments of the Threeworlds’ heroes.]

Freshka was now at least a hundred years old. This city was named a good hundred and seventeen years ago, and so much had changed since then. Patreeck also began serving me a hundred years ago. It honestly didn’t feel that long. Thinking back, it felt like just remembering something that happened a year or two ago.

The Six Ports fell to my rule slightly over a hundred years ago too, and that was the beginning of the empire. I’d seen my vision expand from a little village, to a region, then a continent, and now the entire world.

My trees landed on every large significant piece of land of Treehome, and it truly now deserved to be called Treehome.

The world felt more vibrant, more…alive.

And as I covered more and more of the world, my trees now extended to all major areas of the other continents.

Ngeh.

In hindsight, the speed from the rebirth of Freshka to what was my trees’ spread to the entire world was exceptionally fast. If I had to fight to conquer the other lands, I thought it would take a long time, but the thing about trees was we were always perceived as invisible. We were always a background element.

Except when there were evil trees, but that had been quite rare even in stories.

Now that my trees reached everywhere, I had a title.

[New Title Unlocked: One Who Covers the Surface World]

In an instant, I felt something extremely powerful reach out and pull on my will.

Greetings, Tree.

The voice was in my mind, just as sudden as the voices of others. It was a little like Lilies, but more gentle, more motherly.

I was roused by a notification, and I awoke to find a tree had claimed my surface world. You have the faint whiff of my fellow sisters and brothers. How strange.

“Hello.” This was a sensation familiar to me. It was when the Will of the Tropicworld reached out to touch me and when the Will of the shattered Cometworld touched me. “I am speaking to the Will of the World?”

Yes, but I am no will, but a relic of the creation of worlds, the residual thoughts and structured processes, a system left behind to operate each world.

I felt a tugging sensation, and at that moment, I could feel that tugging sensation reached out to touch many others throughout the world. It touched normal trees, people, everyone.

> The will of the world awakens. < Lilies quickly pinged me. > We felt your presence close to it. <

< I am speaking to it. >

> Fascinating. We would love to speak to it again. <

How strange indeed. You have seen the demise of my sisters and brothers and restored the structure of my consumed brothers.

“Are you reading my mind?”

No. Merely reading the minds of those around you.

From what it answered, it seemed the Will was merely an AI. It didn’t actively resist intrusion by the demons, and that was why the demons could consume the core. The world was a bio-magical, life-creating machine, and the Core of the world was but the vessel and controller of the machine.

You’ve gained powers quite like mine, and you had a chance to consume my will, make me a part of you. But you did not.

“I did not.”

Strange, but the Great System must have offered something else.

Now that I was speaking to the Will of the World, I wasn’t sure what I wanted it to do. “Are you able to control your movements in the void sea?”

Void sea?

A long pause, and I felt its tendrils touch unprotected minds.

Ah. The primordial soup. I could, but I am not allowed to.

“Not allowed?”

Your understanding of us is not flawed. We are bound, controlled by rules. Those rules dictate what we do and what we cannot do. It binds our actions, our decisions. Perhaps, if you one day claim one of my sisters or myself as a part of you, you may instruct us accordingly, but now, I cannot do so.

“What happens if I do?”

An enemy of the other worlds. Your presence will be forever marked by our curse, just as these “demons” are forever marked by the collective curses of my brothers and sisters.

Interesting. The more I discovered, there clearly seemed to be some thought put into the design of these wills of the worlds. was that why the demons became enemies everywhere they went? That everyone felt them? That the worlds rejected their presence because of that taint or marker?

“Then I want knowledge. Tell me what you know of the demons.”

We know nothing, except that they carry the markers of destroying my siblings. Those are clear for us to see, and so we resist. Their presence stinks. It is foul. We know not of their history. We know not of their origins. We only know they are an enemy, and we tell the system to reward those who slay them.

“You can tell the system things?”

We submit a notification, and the system decides what it decides.

That wasn’t helpful. “What happened in the past? To the Margmarian Dwarves? To the Dragons?”

My children come and go. They died or changed. That is the way.

“If I merged with you, would I get marked?” I may not be able to get the Will of the World, but then again, could Lilies or Reefy or Aria get it?

If the Great System grants you the option, the choice, no. What comes from the System is law.

“Then what are gods?”

Every system must have those who create the rules, modify the rules, those who punish the rulebreakers, those who maintain the systems as they are and operate them. Every system must react to the forces acting on it, lest it perish.

Gods are those who create and modify the rules and those who punish the rulebreakers.

Those who reach the point where the System judges them worthy are offered a choice, and—

Wait.

Oh. You have not had the choice.

“The choice?”

To be bound by the System’s Pact, in exchange for the Powers of the System.

The implication was clear. At some point in our levels, we would face a choice with the system, and I wondered whether the Pact was the same pact that restricted the gods, like Aiva, from doing what it wanted. If so, were Aiva’s words a warning to me? To be wary of the system’s pact?

But…why?

Merchant guilds had always existed since I first came to this world, but it was in the great era of peace that merchant guilds gained strength and accumulated wealth to rival kingdoms.

With the enhanced rule of law on the Central Continent, that, as it was on Earth, empowered guilds, and these guilds eventually formed alliances.

As a military-educational-magical organization, we did business with guilds, and as our demands grew, the guilds grew with us. Over time, guilds amassed wealth, hoarded and stored in various places where they could not be stolen easily. First they gained wealth, then they purchased power.

They hired the best adventurers money could buy. They attempted to sway the trained Valthorns, to some degree of success, with money and rewards to work for them.

The structure put in place for the Valthorns was massive.

Dedicated healing, defensive outputs, focused training and equipment, and guided opportunities. For those who aspired to reach the one hundreds, money was not that useful. Influence or money didn’t buy access to the level one hundred to one hundred forty dungeons. Influence or money also wouldn’t buy access to the kinds of unique weapons we made.

In a way, the Valthorns were stuck in the system, and unless a large quantity of them left, it was hard to replicate it outside on their own.

Even if they could, they didn’t have access to the other worlds, or the unique materials, or the higher-grade classes, or the various experience boosting abilities I had.

I didn’t realize it.

It was this system that made it very hard for them to quit, even if they were not loyal.

That didn’t stop the merchant-guilds from trying, because a single level eighty-five to ninety Valthorn was a huge powerhouse, even if it didn’t seem that way. They did have some luck in recruiting retired Valthorns, though all of them were smart enough to ensure that none of their assignments would directly put them in conflict with us.

After all, they’d seen the monsters we had to fight; they knew what we had at our disposal and our willingness to deploy it. Many Valthorns were also familiar with our spying division. Their role had increased of late, as Treehome settled into a new status quo.

Still, it was interesting to bear witness to the first large-scale guild wars, where a merchant guild actually attempted to overthrow a kingdom that blocked its shipments. Right up to the last moments, I watched the merchant’s leaders wonder whether we, the Valthorns, would intervene. We didn’t, so long as they played by the rules.

It was well in the news and a hot topic for discussion.

The rise of the merchant-nations, as they called it.

Our non-interference in that one incident, unfortunately, set off a race.

It set off a wave of merchant-guilds, many prosperous and very wealthy through decades of trade on the Central Continent, to plan to use their financial might to overthrow kingdoms and nations on the other four continents.

The kingdoms of the Central Continent were generally wealthy, safe, and also able to hire mercenaries, which made them relatively tougher opponents for the guilds. The nations of the other continents were relatively weaker and didn’t have easy access to the high-quality weapons produced by the Central Continent’s many industrial cities.

It naturally led to some concerns from my higher council, who wondered whether this would jeopardize our status quo.

The four temples, mainly Gaya and Hawa, were quick to spin this as some kind of proxy invasion.

We thoroughly denounced it and claimed that the Central Continent’s merchant guilds were also open targets. The other nations were free to attack the merchant guilds, so long as they obeyed the rules of engagement on the Central Continent.

This was controversial, of course.

The guilds were able to do what they did, because their finances were secure, safe in the various Valthorn-controlled cities of the Six Ports or Freshka.

No one attacked a bank in Freshka or the Six Ports.

Rather than being seen as protecting the guilds’ finances from retaliation, I therefore ordered that the property of any merchant guilds that waged wars on other kingdoms, not to be subjected to our protection, and any funds held with our Valtrian Order’s trade departments be returned to the respective guild’s own banks and vaults.

But it was still a lopsided arrangement.

The Central Continent was safer, stronger, and the merchant guilds of the Central Continent were able to work out a temporary understanding not to attack each other while they focused on their target nations on the other continents.

The age of guild-invasions and expansion had begun.

A part of me wanted to just let it happen, to witness the consequences.

43

YEAR 230

In many ways, many Centaur habits or traditions were persistent even though they were of different worlds. It certainly made it easy for Centaurs to adapt to their new life in Hoofhall, and they were quite slow to form their own sub-clan within the Centaurs.

The news of the land transfer to “the Temple of Aeon,” however, spread quickly and reached the Centaurs. It spurred a surge of magic as they attempted to find out who and what this particular Temple of Aeon did.

The human-faction didn’t outright declare war, but within weeks, there were spies in the new area.

All they found was an empty, barren land. A ruse, they called it.

My clone was hidden behind huge layers of illusions and spells that it was almost impossible for any lesser person to find. They did try.

Yet they didn’t ask the Grand Pyramid directly. Communication between the factions was scarce in the best of times.

Zhaanpu also wouldn’t say too much. The three factions didn’t trust each other, even if they worked together under a pact. They had a status quo that none of them liked but didn’t and couldn’t break free of it, either.

Arjan and Eudoxus, thus, came with a fascinating proposal.

“As the Sandpeople are now aware of our presence, we would like to propose that we open up and declare our affiliation to Treehome. The Centaurs deserve to know of the other worlds, and open communication would permit us to do so.”

“Wouldn’t we be seen as lying to them all these years? Our papers were forged. If anything, it should be another Centaur that leads the conversation, and we remain as the hidden hand behind the scenes.”

Declaring our presence after being hidden was a scumbag move, so I believe that wasn’t a good idea. Our goal was to find a nice place to plant my tree, and now that we’d achieved it through Zhaanpu and the Sandpeople, I no longer needed a spot in the Centaur Lands.

So, after some consideration, I decided that they should remain hidden and changed the scope of engagement.

I wanted Eudoxus and the Centaurs to just keep tabs on them and make sure they didn’t engage in overtly harmful activities.

Arjan, however, requested to return to Treehome. Unlike Eudoxus, he wasn’t a spy, so maintaining this double life was more taxing than to the spymaster who flipped through personas as easily as changing profile pictures.

My [spear saint] just couldn’t take it anymore.

“I’m torn from keeping lies and hiding our origins,” Arjan admitted to me as he made the journey back. Of the original six Centaurs sent to infiltrate the Centaurlands, Arjan and one other decided to return. “I’d rather fight ten years in the dungeons than this. I’ve no idea how Eudoxus does it, but I can’t. These centaurs that I know, that I meet and befriended, they are nice people, good folks. Friendly, but I have to be on guard, and I can’t tell them stuff that reveals our own exceptional upbringing.”

They didn’t manage to prevent all of it. Eudoxus did say that the non-spy Centaurs did leak a few words or statements that pretty much indicated their foreign origins, but so far their new friends had not picked up.

Arjan thought he was ready for it before he started this mission. But this long campaign in the Centaur-ruled lands proved him wrong. It wasn’t easy to lead a double life at all.

That was expected, and it was entirely why [spies] and [spymasters] were needed. They had the ability, the instinct to know what to do, and could manage the double lives easily without feeling their own minds tearing apart. It required amounts of mental strength and intellectual prowess that not everyone had.

In fact, once he returned to Treehome, the two went back to their real family, and I witnessed both of them have a small emotional breakdown. It wasn’t that bad, as Freshka was pretty much saturated with my [tree of prayers], which generally improved their moods. [Tree of prayers] became less effective on those of higher levels, however, simply because of the mental protections of a stronger soul.

Eudoxus understood. He had seen this too many times, and as the main handler, he was familiar with the emotional turmoil. He assured me that it could be managed.

Ularans adapted well on Treehome, and Snek was pleased. Stella had withdrawn the portals, but because we already raided a few of the rift gates and obtained their rift coordinates, we were able to access their world.

The young Ularans joined the Valtrian Order’s academies, and they leveled. Meanwhile, Snek was able to share his new blood magic.

The heroes, and Ken specifically, watched with great interest. Ken still wondered about my intentions for Snek’s blood magic and so wanted to see what Snek collected.

Most of them were benign, but the Ularans used [blood magic] extensively prior to the era of the demons to [augment] their souls and gain spiritual powers.

“How do you insert a [hero] class?” I asked, wondering whether the Ularans had a mechanism different from how I inserted a [class] seed into a fruit and the Valthorns then ate the fruit. Maybe it worked out the same way, maybe it didn’t.

I knew for a fact not all classes were created equal, and it was possible for the body to reject a class. A [Hero] class was probably the most powerful class I’d ever seen, so I wanted to know Snek’s plan for it.

“In truth, it’s likely we’ll need more blood magic to tie the [hero] class with a new soul,” Snek admitted, much to Ken’s horror.

“What?! More sacrifice?” Ken said, but as far as I recalled, removing Ken’s hero class didn’t require living sacrifices beyond snakes. The others just fainted.

“Great power requires great sacrifice, but if it goes well, no one has to die,” Snek said. “They’ll just lose their blood. It’s called blood magic, not sacrifice magic, even if it does get used interchangeably.”

As we reviewed the old blood magic tomes collected from the various old buried sites in Ulara, it occurred to me most of them were spying, buff, transformation, and summon type spells. They summoned various serpents and snakes to do their bidding.

Of them all, I found the buff and summon type spells to be particularly fascinating. The buff-type blood magics temporarily enhanced the soul and unlocked a higher level of power by temporarily stitching itself to the soul. We immediately wondered whether it was possible to forge this into something more permanent, in the same way that the [ginseng] was crucial to breaking the level limits.

As I reviewed the blood magic’s summons, I also had a council of mages pull together some information on summon magic in our worlds.

The concept of a summon was particularly important to identify, because were we borrowing power from another world or from the system or from somewhere else altogether? Where were these summons when they were not summoned?

Eventually, I concluded that summons pulled power from the system itself. That these summons were functionally creations of the system and not really another realm. The blood magic, and some of the faux-demonic magic, worked the same way.

The concept of hell was a system-creation, a part of the system presets.

Still, the soul-augmentation through blood magic, essentially taking pieces of souls and adding them to existing souls to strengthen them, was worth exploring further.

We already augmented the body and mind with my artificial minds and the wooden-crystal suits, and now we wanted to augment the soul.

It would make them different.

At some point, would Valthorns still be the races they came from?

Khefri made the journey to the far north, escorted by Roon and Lumoof. Though she stomped off, since our last meeting, in truth she didn’t go far. All she did was let out her anger on some empty piece of land and blew shit up. Eventually, she calmed down and returned to her own queendom.

With the barriers down, she was free to travel.

“You two seem too used to this.” The scorpion-heroine was quite chatty.

Roon shrugged. “We’ve been visiting worlds all the time. Once you get used to it, you will.”

“Why can’t we use the way you guys came?”

“Oh. I thought we told you about the star mana–void mana interaction?” Roon scratched his head. He swore he had that conversation.

“You did? I must’ve forgotten. What are we heading to, anyway?”

“Aeon.” Roon smiled.

“What’s stopping me from going crazy once I get to the other side?” Khefri asked.

“Us.” Roon laughed. In truth, we didn’t really know how well we’d fare if a hero decides to go rogue and started bombing the shit out of our world. But I was fairly certain at our levels of power we could pacify one hero. At the cost of tremendous destruction.

Khefri paused and then nodded. “Fair. And…what…”

As the mist lifted and the terrain itself shifted, they arrived at the sight of my clone tree that stretched to the skies above.

“Nice.” She looked impressed.

“We’ll walk close, and Aeon will send us to Treehome. The other heroes are waiting to meet you.”

“Really?”

They approached the tree, surrounded by shrubs, and arrived at a platform, a flat part of my exposed roots.

“Hi.” Khefri looked awkwardly at the six heroes. They nodded back.

“This is Khefri. She’s one of the three heroes of the Threeworlds. The other two died in battle, so she’s the last one left. She used to be human.”

Khefri sighed. “I got the short end of the stick when they made me this scorpion-thing.”

Chung whistled. “On the contrary, milady. I think monster girls are exactly my—” Prabu and Colette smacked Chung on the head.

Roon and Lumoof laughed. “Well, you guys get to know each other, all right? We’ll give you heroes some privacy. You can have a visit to the hero’s journal if you’re ready.”

As they stepped out, the heroes began to chat. We served them tea, hopefully for some clarity and honesty of thought.

They all shared what they’d been through, and I listened through my tree, where they had their little meetup. The heroes’ journal was in the tree right next door.

“Man. I didn’t know some worlds have additional rules on the heroes.” Adrian, the Mountainworld hero, cursed. “I thought we had it bad when we were imprisoned by the demons.”

“That’s pretty bad, actually. I wouldn’t want to be captured,” Khefri countered, and it almost felt like I detected a softening of her tone.

Then a dam broke.

“It sucked that I had no one to turn to, no one to talk to, and all these Sandpeople just suck up to me. I had followers but no one I could confide in. That stupid pyramid corpse thinks I’m a child. Like, did he even know I wanted this? I didn’t!”

“No one did,” Adrian countered.

“I had a family. I had friends. I was happy.” Khefri crumbled, and I thought this was the effect of the tea. The hero class imbued her with a sense of duty to defeat the demons, and here, all her suppressed emotions erupted. “Then that stupid accident, and three of us flung into another world. And we can’t even talk to each other for long. All we could manage was a word or two! It’s—”

The other he—es didn’t understand, of course. When they arrived, they had each other.

It took a while for her to settle down, and eventually, she too went and read the [heroes’ journal].

Over time, the heroes’ journal had gained quite a bit of power. I sensed the stored star mana and other energies within it grow and get stronger over time, but I couldn’t look into it. Strange.

She too shared her memories and thoughts with the journal, the combined effort of so many heroes before her. Her reaction was very similar to the other heroes.

“Now the sappy part’s over,” Ken said. “Let’s take you out on a tour of Freshka and the nice places. I think it’ll feel quite nostalgic.”

“I’m not sure if I’m ready for nostalgia,” Khefri admitted.

“You need it to move on. Come, we’ll be there with you. Like it or not, the seven of us are unique in this multiverse.”

Kei was very, very interested in Alka’s supercomputer crystals. As a bio-crystalline golem, she was a natural fit to using the crystals, though we were a bit leery of directly experimenting on people.

But over the past two to three years, Alka had gotten more comfortable with the inner workings of the supercomputer crystals and began testing out versions with Kei.

Simply put, Kei wanted to know whether it was possible to augment her body by replacing it or converting her entire body into a supercomputer, essentially transforming her into a living supercomputer.

We were all intrigued by the idea.

Kei, as she was today, was fairly weak. At level one hundred twenty or so, even with the extensive power-leveling in the dungeons, she was still really far away from even getting back her previous strength as a hero.

In a way, she was stagnant. Many Valthorns plateaued at this stage; the level one hundred twenty to one hundred forty-nine was where each level felt like it took forever to climb. Roon and Johann vividly remembered the long struggle of this particular stage.

In hindsight, I really, really lucked out with all the fragments I hoarded.

The first small-scale experiment started with converting a bit of her shoulder into the supercomputer and then somehow wiring it to connect to her mind.

At first, she didn’t feel any different.

But within a month, she claimed it was nothing short of exceptional.

“This is what sci-fi wants to show us but always fails. It’s like certain regimented thoughts, like calculations can be made instantly, instead of manually going through the numbers in my head. It’s just amazing. Memory also seems far more fresh, more vivid, and I just store way more detail. I know exactly what’s the fastest way to go from here to there. I know the time it takes to do certain things, what and who said stuff.”

“So you’ve become better at crunching numbers, storing information, and retrieving itm” Alka repeated. “Sounds like an artificial mind-assistant.”

“Yes, and I’m not selling it short here. Even with the [hero] class’s intelligence augmentation, I don’t feel like this. The [hero] class’s effects feel more like a really strong gut feeling of what to do. This is… I know exactly the calculation that was made. It’s like seeing the options available instead of having a gut feeling of what is the right path.”

Kei’s newfound computational power did improve her ability to make computations, but it was still all about asking the right questions, and the crystals themselves didn’t understand complex or vague questions.

Garbage in, garbage out.

It would take some time for standardized process and computations to form. We had some ideas of what would be useful in battle against the demons, but I’d like to see them tested.

On Threeworlds, I expanded my trees as quickly as I could. Though most of it was barren, I could still, via roots, spawn other types of trees that fit the terrain. Cactuses and certain types of shrubs were naturally adapted to such lands.

I spread them quickly, and eventually, the trees also reached the city of Pyramid, home of Zhaanpu and the Great Pyramid.

“Your presence is interesting,” Zhaanpu said. He spoke to a palm tree in his city’s courtyard. “No wonder the crystal king claims you are an invader.”

“I see you can sense me.”

“We are inanimate objects. I am a corpse bound to the pyramid, my life sustained through this connection. This connection extends throughout the city and into the land beyond. I know when trees appear out of nowhere. Still, it is nice to finally speak without the presence of children.”

“It isn’t so bad.”

“There must be some things you want to ask.”

“The pact with the gods. Does that allow you to communicate with them?”

“Rarely. When the stars align, and the wobbles of the sun happen to be in the right place, we could.”

“How?”

“We pray and sacrifice two of my priests. Their blood and my magic unlocks a key, which allows us to speak to that faraway god once more.”

I chuckled. “It seems that the gods have a poor reputation.”

“Well deserved, for a distant god. What could we say except he is not here when we need him?” Zhaanpu sighed.

“You could get there, gain the levels. You do gain levels, right?”

“Me? In the last hundred years, I gained four levels. Four.” Strangely, at that moment, Zhaanpu didn’t look like the powerful pharaoh of the Sandpeople; instead, he was just a sagging, tired corpse.

“The system benefits combat.”

“And I failed as a ruler, if I had to take the field and the battle reached my city. Failed. How contradictory, don’t you think?”

“Couldn’t you nominate those to fight on your behalf?”

“I did. They die too quickly.”

There was nothing much to say beyond that.

44

YEAR 231

Iwatched the children play. The void-attuned children.

Perhaps it was sentimental value, but I had requested for the children who spoke to me to call me TreeTree.

My priests quickly spun it into two aspects of my divinity. Aeon, the guardian of the continent, and TreeTree, the tree of youth and children. It was a little cringe to hear the sermon in person, but I supposed if propaganda worked, it nknot.

It was normal in myths and legends for gods to have different aspects of themselves. Just like how Lilies had different faces, different views, because they were a combination cobbled together from the spirits of the dead.

That was a small matter, really, though I did wonder whether this was how those multi-faceted or multi-headed gods started.

No matter, I focused on the small group of children, playing and wrestling. Kaala and the rest of the void treefolks grew up well, and we witnessed the first of the void-attuned lizardfolks. She had a black olive skin, her scales shining in a way that was different.

Small, but no less dangerous in potential.

This play-based training was not really combat training. Not yet. Kaala would speak to me, about their friends, about their lives.

They were special, and they sensed it. By now, we had specialist caretakers, matrons and caregivers that had skills to ensure their children grew up healthy and strong. Some even had the ability to improve stats permanently by sheer exposure, though the amount of absolute increase in stats wasn’t that great. Yet, at that age, it was a relative advantage.

On Treehome and Branchhold, we’d observed improvements in the children’s health. A regular child of the Central Continent or Branchhold now had health and physical conditions comparable to the wealthy, powerful nobles of the past.

That said, being sick did sometimes lead to levels. Every kind of setback was measured against their condition, their struggles, the process of healing.

One of the issues that occurred, really, was that as my [healing aura] got stronger, the speed at which my [healers] gained levels slowed. Priests also unlocked less healing spells and more buff-type abilities.

This was a consequence of the challenge-based experience system.

As a mitigation, to ensure my healers still kept pace, they spent more time in dungeons to heal those injured or poisoned by the creatures of the dungeons, so dungeons and the city around them transformed into centers where healers congregated.

“How many heroes is enough?” Khefri asked the question that pretty much was on everyone’s mind.

“We don’t know,” I answered. The scorpionoid hero wanted details on what exactly she signed up for.

“We are trying to get better reads and sensors on the relative power levels of the black sun and all the other defensive structures that we can see, but that’s really more of a range and does not truly convert into power. Power levels are a really fuzzy thing,” Stella explained.

“You don’t know,” Khefri repeated with emphasis. “So this thing that we are preparing for?”

“Wait. There’s some misunderstanding here,” Lumoof immediately clarified. “As I understood it, the League of Heroes is largely a defensive pact. The problem, in short, is that the heroes will eventually stop. The god’s ability to turn the tap and churn out new heroes is either limited by quantity or limited by some kind of magical distance. The League of Heroes aims to prolong the survival of the living worlds by pooling together the heroes and so effectively nullifying the demon king’s inherent design advantages against the heroes.”

Khefri understood the gist of it from the Book of Heroes.

“So you don’t plan to attack that black sun?”

“Wait. Let me clarify. We, as in Aeon and the domain holders, do,” Lumoof answered. “With or without the heroes. If we can destroy the black sun, we will try to do so. We want to see what happens and whether there is an end to this stupid wave of attacks.”

“And if there are other black suns out there?”

“Then we’re screwed.” Everyone looked horrified, and Lumoof laughed. “Well, not really. We’ll just have to constantly play this game of whack-a-mole and stomp out the demon kings as they appear or take the battle to the demon-lands, free the core, and over time create a buffer zone between the living cities and the demon world.”

“So this League of Heroes. We hope from world to world and defend it from demons. Like a bunch of superheroes,” Ken explained. “What I do want to know, of course, is how the presence of other heroes interacts with the pact of the gods that your world has.”

Khefri shrugged. “Do I look like I know such things? All I do is play with my pretty boys.”

The heroes rolled their eyes, but in my mind, it was likely this was not unique. There must be worlds where some local powers made arrangements with these faraway gods.

“The plan is to play defense while we find ways to go on the offense. The demons can see the heroes, we know this, but we don’t really know whether this is true on a planar scale,” Ken explained. “This is why it’s best for Aeon’s domain holders to do the scouting.”

“All right, but let’s play a number,” Khefri insisted. “Twenty? I mean, to attack that black sun thing.”

“No,” Stella answered. “At least a hundred.”

“Shit. We’re nowhere near if each world only has one or two like me.”

“Unless we find a way to drift closer to where the gods are summoning heroes,” Stella said. “The issue, from our point of view, is that distance has an impact on how many heroes the gods can summon. It’s also likely each god has a specific range, and some places are just too far from any god to get summons.”

Ken nodded. “That’s one merit for going in the other direction, instead of toward the demon sun. It’s likely that we get closer to the gods, and in doing so, we access worlds with more heroes. That should bring us up to the number we need.”

The Mountainworld hero nodded. “If we ever encounter the gods again, I’m going to give them a piece of my mind. Like, fuck ’em so hard.”

The scorpionoid heroine rolled her eyes. “I should be first in line. I’m not even human!”

“You have a point. What’s up with this humanoid supremacy for heroes?” Ken agreed. “It’s almost as if all the heroes are derived from humans with just minor cosmetic changes.”

“Maybe the first gods are human?”

“Or maybe the source worlds are human?” If all the “source” of heroes were from these earth-clones, it was only natural that this got propagated over the multiverse. Especially with how frequently heroes set up harems and mate with the locals.

“You do realize that means every human in these worlds are descendants of some horny hero somewhere?” Chung interjected.

The girls had a horrified look. “Ewww.”

“So you’re saying the constant introduction of heroes, which are majority human, function as ‘super-breeders’ into the population, which helps lead to a humanoid-majority population.” Ken nodded thoughtfully. “That’s a very interesting theory.”

“That’s like Genghis Khan’s lineage.”

The girls shook their heads. “Guys, let’s not take this conversation there.”

“We’re all adults here. Why can’t we have this conversation?” Chung responded. “It’s fascinating to consider the implications of heroes on the long-term trends of the human population. Our extended aging also means we could have more children.”

“Goodness, that makes heroes sound like super-breeders, like hypersexual individuals, and that’s really uncomfortable to think about.”

“Harems have effects.”

Khefri paused uncomfortably. She had a harem, and as it nknot out, Hafiz and Adrian also possessed a harem. A small one, but a harem nonetheless, so they kept quiet during the conversation.

“Shouldn’t this apply to all long-lived creatures? Even high-level individuals.”

Ken coughed. “You do realize heroes have many cards stacked in their favor?”

On Branchhold, it was an era of relative quiet, and my attempts to build a vertical, denser city encountered some obstacles.

On one hand, there was a clear increase in overall quality of life; on the other, the density, noise, and hectic environment, even when suppressed by [tree of prayers], did turn off some of the inhabitants, which led to emigrations to the surroundings.

Sprawl, essentially. Lifestyle.

Some people just preferred a quieter environment but still desired the safety that we provided.

No one tried to attack us so far, but based on my spies and trees, it was an inevitability. Jealousy, fear, all these factors still popped up, though some were wise enough, or their system gave them enough warning that they’d lose, that they decided against it.

Lilies finally created an avatar. An inferior one, well, I supposed everything would be inferior when compared to Lumoof, but an avatar nonetheless.

The avatar was essentially a soul fragment of that greater hivemind, possessing a wooden puppet. It was created from a combination of a permanent [scry] spell and some kind of projection ability.

That said, it had zero combat power, and the range of the wooden puppet was still fairly limited. For now, it could only travel a small region around Lilies.

With more levels, it would gain extended range, something they really looked forward to, because they really wanted to experience and see the other worlds for themselves.

Aria and Aispeng also tried to do something similar, because being repeatedly shown what I’d seen on the other worlds was strangely tempting. They tried to create an ice-avatar, since that was where their shaping and sculpting abilities were best, and Aria insisted that they wanted to look good.

I privately felt like they were spending too much time on appearances, but it was inconsequential. That was how they chose to spend their efforts.

As fellow members of the pantheon, I tried my best to communicate with them, so Patreeck helped schedule me to talk to them at least once every three years, and ad hoc if there were any big developments.

Three years felt quite regular for my two fellow immortals. It almost felt like we were meeting every other week. I wondered whether as my age increased even more, it’d feel too frequent. But for now, the conversations with the two were mostly about showing what we’d seen, and they would give commentary and ideas.

On Treehome, the Continental Guild Wars—some called them the Vassal Wars or Puppet Wars—were quite messy. For now, the fighting was mostly smaller-scale skirmishes and targeted attacks. Due to the guilds’ history and exposure to combat on the Central Continent, their first instinct was to conduct surgical strikes, attacks to remove the leaders of the respective kingdoms and replace them with their own puppets. Essentially a replica of how they fought on the Central Continent against each other due to our rules of engagement.

But over time, this morphed into conventional warfare, and this was where the guilds noticed their first flaw.

They lacked the high-level commanders needed to lead large-scale conventional invasions and maintain invasion-period logistics, again, due to their lack of experience on the Central Continent.

If they hired generals from the regular kingdoms, they didn’t have a level advantage against the kingdoms of their respective continents; in fact, they were frequently out-leveled by the generals of those kingdoms who had more conventional war experience due to the constant kingdom wars.

The last large-scale conventional wars on the Central Continent were during the Sabnoc era, and most of the great generals of that time died during the final explosion, and many more were killed during my subsequent expansion to the rest of the Central Continent.

As I remembered it, my expansion to the Central Continent was primarily led by the elite force, supplemented by a near-infinite army of beetles, and against the tide, the kingdoms folded.

The guilds didn’t have such an advantage, so the local kingdoms of the other continents adapted and hired significantly more security.

As the Guild War raged, the guilds themselves found that superior equipment and technology was incredibly helpful during the first strike, but the advantage it provided diminished over time as survivors counter-leveled and managed to steal the equipment from the dead.

Survivors adapted, gained skill-counters, and began to fight back.

My Valthorn strategists and leaders collected data on the various wars fought by the guilds and used them to create learning experiences and case studies on what the leaders should’ve done. Patreeck and my artificial minds also used the data to build simulations, where my strategists and leaders could try out different tactics and attacks.

I quickly learned that the simulation was incredibly taxing, because it was impossible to account for the use of skill and level gains by the troops on the field.

The system’s pattern of awarding levels was also something that we didn’t have much data on. Most reporting of the levels, at least by my Valthorns, was done after the fact. That meant we couldn’t specifically tie level gains to specific events, even if we understood the patterns.

We deployed Alka’s crystal supercomputers to supplement and speed up the simulations, and I really, really found it sad that all this computational power was used to fight wars.

My first observation from this conflict was wars of attrition had to be done quickly, and more overwhelmingly, with no combat survivors. It essentially encouraged slaughter, since survivors had the highest chance of gaining counters.

So if I were to, hypothetically, invade these kingdoms, it had to be swift, and I had to strike with overwhelming force. Once the conflict dragged on, the winning percentage would shrink and casualties would increase. I was still confident of victory due to the massive level gap, but more people would die.

The second observation was that the temples were rallying the other kingdoms in defense. Aiva and the other three temples came to support the defenders and fought against the guilds. For this reason, the Eastern Continent was the least attacked by the guilds, due to the Aivan temples’ higher levels and constant shared training with the Valthorns.

The other kingdoms and temples tried to retaliate by cutting off the guild’s finances on the Central Continent, attacking caravans and trade shipments.

On this front, I was forced into a rather annoying situation: whether I should continue to protect trade shipments from such attacks. After all, the incredible prosperity on the Central Continent was due to an active internal trading between nations, and allowing attacks on the trade routes fundamentally attacked our economy and our overall prosperity.

In any case, I decided to stick with the principle of non-interference and instead marked all the expeditionary guilds as war participants and therefore not subject to our protection. This extended to subcontractors and shipment partners. That meant trade shipments were separated, by convoys, into “protected” and “unprotected” convoys. Even trading posts had to be separated into protected and unprotected. The markets had to be reorganized as well to prevent collateral damage.

I wondered whether the guilds were trying to force my hand, but from Patreeck and my tree’s observations, they stumbled into it. Isolating the war participants led to an outroar from the guilds, because non-war participants could undercut them for waging war, since their shipments were protected.

Yet this process added complexity into trade, because everyone traded with each other at some level, so where did the line stop? Who was subject to the protections, and who was not? Was the baker who sold bread to the warring guilds a supporter of the war? Where was the line where one was complicit?

I wondered whether this was similar to money-laundering issues, because protecting these warring guilds was essentially subsidizing their war effort.

It was also interesting to observe the new [Merchant Kings] and [Guild Lords] in action as they consolidated their powers and responded to the challenges both in their new vassal kingdoms. Communication and oversight at such distances was a problem. [Message], [Scry], and all that helped but didn’t compare to the full-time surveillance state that I employed.

They couldn’t match our speed of reaction or how quickly news of an attack spread. They were always a few days behind, and things changed.

All of this dictated deployment of high-level individuals, dependable ones on the ground to take over but left them exposed.

Some of the defending nations had [hero-items] and heirloom artifacts that gave them an edge. The guilds, despite their immense wealth, could buy some from the other kingdoms, but most of the time, these items were not for sale.

The deterioration and stress placed on the guilds due to the war also invited attacks from non-war participant guilds, who used the chance to muscle in on their poorly defended territories.

It was very much a criminal gang war, and I really wondered whether stepping in was the right choice.

For now, the Central Continent remained largely unscathed. The Valthorns continued to protect unrelated parties from these gang wars, but the embers of war were spreading.

45

YEAR 232

Based on the notifications I received when I placed my clone on both Threeworlds and Mountainworld, it seemed that I could only collect hero fragments and souls from the worlds where I placed my clone.

This naturally raised a practical issue with the League of Heroes. My clone should only be placed where there were a lot of heroes.

I had one left, and I didn’t know how many I could claim to get over the next few battles. If let’s say I got an extra five seeds in the next fifty levels, and each world only added perhaps two heroes, then that was just an extra ten heroes to the existing pool. It was clearly a limitation, because the only way heroes could travel and visit each other was via my clones. Without the clones, there was no League of Heroes.

My senior leaders also knew this, which was why Roon’s idea of targeting only living worlds made sense. Reclaiming demon worlds didn’t add to our hero strength.

Ideally, if domain holders could gain a full hero-tier strength, that would remove the dependency on my clones, since Stella’s portals and the rift-gate network were quite robust and domain holders could freely travel. It was also less risky, since domain holders in my pantheon effectively couldn’t die.

In a way, it totally made sense to throw my domain holders at the grinder, since they’d be able to take risks heroes couldn’t. They understood it, of course, but they still didn’t feel too keen on dying. They may revive, but death must leave a mark.

Someone who revived repeatedly would probably feel the strain of death in some way or form. Very few abilities were without some kind of flaw.

“What if there’s some abilities that are only unlocked after multiple repeated deaths?” Lumoof asked. “After all, one gains resistance to certain events after repeating them. What if it’s the same for death?”

Death was a fairly unique element of the world, since it was the process of separating the inner soul from the body. A person was dead when the soul left, even if the body was alive.

We studied the blood magic tomes Snek collected, and I found the aspect of willing sacrifices to be worth pursuing further.

My problem was really a matter of test subjects.

I harvested my “sacrifices” from the scum of society. These were criminals who broke the law, and not just any law, but the serious ones like rape or murder. These were very rarely willing sacrifices. They all had strong needs, strong cravings.

Snek’s society, at least in the early days, maintained a large cult of the blood, where people truly were devoted to the goals of that blood cult, and at the side were people who’d seen the positive effects of that cult.

Unlike our mortals, somehow the Ularans managed to avoid the negative, bloodthirsty natures of the blood magic. Their focus on augmentation of the soul revealed something that I soon saw in the Ularans themselves.

Their souls were robust and could repair themselves from damage far faster than our regular souls. These Ularans essentially had inbuilt soul-regeneration. In their day-to-day life, I noticed that the Ularans did not face permanent limb loss. Their souls, even when a limb was lost, could maintain the soul-schema of the limb without any phantom limb pains.

Strangely, it was this self-regeneration that allowed the users of said blood magic to resist the corruptive effects of using blood magics. The hex generated from blood magic was corruptive.

When looking at Snek, I couldn’t really notice it, because his soul was already warped in order to survive the void forest.

The young Ularans, despite their tiny size, could recover from most kinds of non-lethal damage with absolutely no drawback physically. This, compared to the other humanoids, was where healing or limb reconnection had to be done within a short day or two timeframe or it was gone for good. But this wasn’t very useful when faced with the giant demon dragons who could kill them in a single strike.

If the Ularans faced a goblin-type demon king, or something more zerg-like, they’d have far, far better outcomes.

Anyway, back to the blood magic. My issue was I didn’t have a way to volunteer individuals for blood magic sacrifices, and I didn’t think using Valthorns was a good idea. They were an investment.

I also found the idea of getting people to volunteer to die for the sake of science a little iffy. But as it turned out, I shouldn’t feel that way.

“Aeon, the Valthorns are willing to die for various causes. We battle great wars, and in doing so we risk our lives. Many will die in the line of battle. That is expected,” Lumoof advised.

Initially, I thought of approaching those who were about to die due to various medical conditions anyway to volunteer for such experiments. It was uncommon even back in our world, but for science, many had put their lives on the line.

But, because of my medical and healing abilities, the general health of the populace was very high, so this was an incredibly small group of people, nowhere enough to actually do experiments.

Next, I tried looking for those who were emotionally unstable or wanted to die. Yet, as I spoke to a few such individuals, I wasn’t particularly comfortable using them for such blood magic. There was the issue of contamination, because their emotional states also affected the condition of their souls, so their souls were not high quality.

In the tomes gathered from Ulara, they went at length to clarify the conditions to create clean sacrifices. From what they explained, it was likely that if I used those who were mentally not at a good place, I may still end up having hex because their mental states were not clean.

So this clean blood magic was a really wonky situation where you needed to be emotionally stable, mentally sound, and able to commit to killing yourself for a cause.

Absolutely ridiculous conditions, in my opinion, but the Ularans’ method of augmentation of the recipient soul was without much of the downsides associated with blood magic.

On another hand, I also knew and very much preferred my own method of stitching soul fragments together into the soul bomb, since these required no sacrifices. Now, I just needed to find ways to link the two together. They clearly were meant to be linked, since they were both soul-type abilities, but I just needed to figure out the relationship between these two concepts.

It was a bit like a blind man touching an elephant’s trunk and an elephant’s tail and now had to figure out what the whole thing was supposed to look like.

“It’s quite rare you’ve paid attention to us again,” Yvon said as I observed the children in their care. Both Eriz and Yvon were in their somewhat humanoid forms, connected to their respective trees.

“I hope you do not feel neglected. My minds tells me you are all doing well.” Well, I was aware of them through my artificial minds, but my attention was on the children.

“I still feel it. A little,” Eriz answered as one of the focused caregiving trees of Freshka naturally interacted heavily with the children in our care.

Children like Kaala, or the void-attuned lizardfolks and treefolks, needed our best nursing and care, and so it naturally fell on people like Eriz to look after them. Once they were ready for any kind of training, it was also my training trees, like Yvon, that trained them in the basics.

“They are well, if that’s what you are wondering,” Eriz answered. She was in the level seventies as some blend of caregiver. “Some of the new caregivers have gained specialized skills dealing with them.”

The health of children throughout the Central Continent was good, though there were areas with spotty coverage, where the Valtrian Order’s childcare services were less robust or the persons handling the task of lower levels.

One of the bigger issues that we faced, that people like Eriz and Yvon helped with tremendously, was staffing and resourcing. These sort of administrative and domestic work leveled slowly, and training young women and men for these roles was a challenge.

It wasn’t perceived as a sexy or glamorous role, even with the high salaries the Valtrian Order gave for these roles. To me, caring for children was part of my talent management program, part of the pipeline, so it was only natural that they were paid a good salary.

But after decades of stability on the Central Continent, the general population’s mindsets shifted and now began to resemble earth-like societies where young men became pickier with their roles and [classes].

My own obsession with giving the people choice essentially led to these folks choosing certain careers and leaving certain careers understaffed, even with higher pay.

The young also wanted to move to the bigger cities, where everything was. For full-time mothers, we did notice that younger children tended to be healthier than the older children as a result of mothers’ themselves gaining more skills related to caring for their children.

In the Central Continent, the cities with strong Valtrian Order presence had good birthrates, mainly due to the nearly free end-to-end childcare services provided to those who wanted to have children. So, with the mental load of caring for children taken off most parents, they were free to fornicate as they pleased, and that kept birth rates decently high.

I did this, not for altruistic means, but merely to make sure that the modern society didn’t face a population crunch, which would lead to a talent and resource crunch. The cost of providing such services was essentially my talent cost.

As the society progressed and individuals had more choice, I would have to add more incentives in order for the society to produce what I wanted it to produce. For caregivers like Eriz, this was a role I’d need more.

I noticed that certain races had aspects that made them excellent at certain parts of giving care. For example, treefolks and dwarves were persistent and encouraged a great connection to the ground. Treefolks and elves were both very good at looking at the effects of actions after longer periods of time.

They could visualize how hard work today would payoff decades down the road and didn’t perceive it as a pointless exercise. So that made them great guides and counselors, because of their long-term views. Humans and the shorter-lived races were better at quickly emotionally bonding with the flock, establishing passionate relationships and rapport. But these also came and went quickly, unlike the longer, more respectful, and mutual trust that elves and treefolks usually tended to have.

Usually.

For longer-lived creatures, I noticed how Laufen and Lausanne’s relationship evolved over time. To Laufen, it was expected that her daughter would be an adult, and that was the same for their children, Arlisa and the boy, Lauda.

As full adults, they lived normal lives, though Arlisa did go through what essentially amounted to a two-decade-long rebellious phase. Her mother had to bail her out of trouble a few times, though frankly, everyone gave Lausanne a lot of leeway.

We rarely spoke these days, though she did make regular trips to the Northern Continent to meet up with Meela and Alexis.

Old friends, she said, and Meela’s hospitality was impeccable.

Speaking of Meela, my domain holders approached her on the idea of a multiverse arrangement, whether her [branch hotels] could be used as a replacement for my clone trees. She seemed agreeable, but her branch hotels did not have teleportation ability, and without the teleportation ability, what use was it?

The heroes were curious on the next step. “All right. What’s next? What’s next? We can’t be waiting here!”

My people explained that it was a slow process. We were, after all, trying to plot against something that had the corpse of the dead god or something to that effect. If it could destroy gods, it certainly could destroy us.

“But what are we doing offensively? Surely there is something that can be done,” the heroes said, and I wondered whether this was an effect of their mind control.

Since we’d disclosed the presence of the black sun, I’d been curious whether the gods would take action. I long suspected that the gods had some way of seeing the world through the heroes, though nothing had truly been confirmed.

But they had a point.

Perhaps I was moving too slowly.

How did I get closer to the black sun?

I wanted to avoid a situation where I sent people after the black sun only to die catastrophically. There was no way to test it out; the best I could do was a simulation.

The void mages came with an interesting idea.

“The will of Treehome said that they could move through the void sea, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Therefore, it is likely that any will, or any world, could move through the void sea, sensible?”

Yes, that sounded right.

“So we have Cometworld, barreling through the void sea. It’s moving too fast, but it is a small world. Tiny, in fact, and we believe it’s almost invisible to the demons.”

Oh.

Ooooooooooooooooh.

“It would be interesting to attempt to control or manipulate its movements,” one of the void archmages suggested. “I don’t know what it’ll take, and if you can ask the Will of Treehome for details, that would help. If we can control and direct Cometworld—”

We could turn it around and aim it toward the black sun. We could, essentially, have something that could deliver a strike team right at the enemy’s heart.

If the demons sent a comet at Treehome many, many centuries ago, why couldn’t we do the same?

It was just poetic justice.

46

YEAR 233

The void mages were the busiest group these days. They had so many moving parts, but there was only so few of them.

Stella had about fifteen hundred void mages under her and her four other archmages. There only used to be three, but even one more wasn’t enough. Not with what we wanted to achieve.

One group focused on deciphering the map within the demon king’s core and developing ways to make the most of the map.

There was another group that designed the listening devices and the potential interference devices. They looked out for demonic transmissions to figure out how the demons communicated with each other through vast distances, coordinated their attacks, and selected their targets.

One group worked on expanding the rift gates and trying to combine the language of the rift gates to the maps. They also tried to find ways to work around the limitations of the star mana, which was our main stumbling block for a proper interdimensional League of Heroes, and empire.

Now, we had the group working on moving Cometworld through the void sea. On one hand, I realized that the will of the world was able to move through the void sea without void mana, thus I suspected that void mana may not be necessary for that purpose, but core mana would be the more likely material or resource. Yet void mages were the ones most familiar with the void sea, and so it was them who committed to the task.

There were smaller groups, like those focused on weaponizing the void mana and developing better ways to destroy the demon king and that demonic glass droplet.

Mages, as a whole, were relatively rare. Void mages even more so, and even till this day I felt the lack of high-level mages acutely. We had level one hundred twenty mages, but so far, only Stella reached the domain.

I didn’t know what a domain-tier archmage or wizard could achieve, but having someone at that level should greatly help our cause.

We saw this with Lavaworld, where we lacked the means to securely access the core.

Magic, despite its perceived ubiquity, was still quite hard to train even if we had made incremental improvement over the last century. There was a certain level of genius that I felt the system expected from a mage and the mage would not progress far without it.

Even with decades and centuries of magic training, it was surprisingly hard to reliably get someone to a master, even if we did have a large amount of competently trained mages.

Madeus, my first resident wizard, many decades ago, once said that it was quite easy to learn the basics; after all, the first spells were not much more complicated than skills.

Now we had an army of mages at his level. But our attempts to grow stronger [archmages] were just slightly successful.

We only had about a hundred to two hundred mages that were above level one hundred. The highest of those were in the level one hundred thirties.

Magic was extremely hard to excel in, because there was a component that was not dependent on experience but comprehension of some kind of vague magical concepts.

Our statistics indicated that, although almost one in two individuals gained some type of magical ability and spellcasting, such that they could use simple and intermediate spells, only one in forty had the talent to walk the path of a mage.

Of this small fraction, most just plateau at the level forty to sixty. In our Valthorns, the number seemed to suggest that only one in twenty mages made it to level sixty, even with magical experience boosts from the dungeon.

Of the almost half a million mages we trained over the last century, we only had less than two hundred level one hundred mages.

Attempts to brute-force the levels didn’t contribute to magic classes gaining levels; instead our attempts to force them to level caused their classes to reflect a combat focus.

The system essentially started funneling levels to combat-type mages instead of pure magic classes. This meant [mages] evolved into [Battle Mages] and [Great Warmages], or similar sort, and they gained more combat-spells skills instead of pure magic skills.

This was useful in its own way, but what I wanted was the out-of-the-world, hail-Mary type of magical solutions that eccentric mages could provide.

So, over the last century, the way we trained mages also changed. Instead, we rotated mages to various roles on the Central Continent. They would perform research, perform exploration of the underground chambers and ruins, conduct classes in the FTC, and provide basic concepts on magic to the administrator classes, and maintain various magical artifacts and formations throughout the continent.

Combat was still needed, which meant mages would still participate in dungeons, but only after a reasonably good and long stint in non-combat roles.

This was how we discovered the way to somewhat reliably level a mage into proper [wizard] and [archmages] instead of relying on brute-forcing and dumb luck.

It reminded me of the time, during the early years of Freshka, and the FFA, I tried creating [archmages] and [wizards] through class seed fusion. That didn’t work back then, and it still didn’t work now. My large stockpile of high-tier [archmage] class seeds instead came from the small army of archmages that died over the last century. My artificial minds claimed the archmages all had their own quirks, and reading their minds often involved great leaps and thoughts that seemed rather disjointed.

Training mages was still a problem we hadn’t truly cracked.

We could teach them skills. Teach them spells from our massive library of spells. Let them have the resources needed to experiment.

But it all got stuck somewhere.

Maybe in that way, it was the same with everyone else. I had knights that never made it as far as Edna, even if Edna’s path was clear for them to see. Most Valthorns plateaued before level one hundred, even with the level-breaking gift.

Only those who breached a level one hundred could even try to challenge the monsters we faced.

Right now, we had about two thousand level one hundred individuals, and so far, all of them were sucked into the system, a part of the structure we created.

Reality was, if they all turned against me, I’d have a big problem on my hands. But they wouldn’t, simply because they’d all seen what was beyond and realized we were all still just small fish in a very big pond, and together, we were stronger.

More importantly, I began to think the reason the guilds failed to entice the true powerhouses to their camp was because of the level one hundreds’ increasingly long perception of time.

Capitalism was meaningless when one got better at visualizing the changes after some passage of time. The powers that the guilds tried to claim and control was nothing more than holding on to a candle.

It was bright and warm but momentary. It would fade and was not something that would last.

They knew, as weird as it sounded, that whatever they created outside would collapse in decades, and they would return to our fold anyway. They didn’t have to look far. Even on our Central Continent, guilds came and went, kingdoms as well.

Even creations of heroes could collapse once their heroes fell. Whatever the guilds were doing, it would be just a fling.

A summer’s dream.

A project made for profit.

Gone, once they got bored of it. Canceled, once it wasn’t profitable.

I wondered whether I’d trained my Valthorns too deeply in my own ideals that they failed to relish in the beauty of momentary flings.

My artificial minds, the thousands of them that now crowded around the valley and also near to all my various clone trees, essentially sustained and operated the entire continent. Without my artificial minds, I would be immediately overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things that required my attention.

I’d pretty much attribute the modernity of the Central Continent, down to the artificial minds organizing, maintaining, and monitoring the various aspects of our continent. Without artificial minds, I would not be able to achieve any kind of omnipresence in the Central Continent.

I would be stuck to just the area around the valley, and even then, I’d be able to focus on just a few things at a time.

The topic of artificial minds came up fairly recently as Alka tried to do some resilience tests to see how we would fare in various types of events.

We had a massive vulnerability because the entire beetle network, the application of growth boosts, the monitoring of crime and trade, monster attacks, all essentially relied on my artificial minds. They did the heavy lifting, supported by a smaller army of administrators and druids.

If by some event a magical virus or disease were to sweep through my artificial minds or a demon king with an EMP-pulse ability that could disrupt communication with my artificial minds and the trees went off, we could face a huge setback.

They would need to design some backup systems and processes for such an unlikely event. All of this was additional cost and manpower.

“I have envoys from the crystal king, and the message clearly requests your presence,” Zhaanpu said with a chuckle. “Your attempts to stay hidden didn’t work, and it seems to have figured that we made contact.”

“I figured as much,” I said through a tree located in the Pyramid City’s parklands. My trees, cactuses, and shrubs covered vast areas of the Sandpeople’s land and also segments of the Centaur lands. “Domain holders are not so foolish.”

More mana. That was what I wanted, and I was getting it. Zhaanpu merely grinned. “Then have your priest be present.”

Lumoof smiled as he saw a familiar face. The envoy was the lady he met, Fourth Archpriest of Maelas, Yaddah. “Ah, Lady Yaddah, it’s nice to see you after thirty years.”

She had aged quite a bit, but as someone at level eighty, she clearly had at least a few more decades in her. She froze for a moment, as if a memory she long suppressed reawakened. “It is you.”

She didn’t say a word to him after that.

Zhaanpu did not appear in person. Instead, he had one of his own senior ritualists attend the meeting, dressed in the most gaudy and overwhelming attire ever.

“Speak, envoy of the crystal king.”

Yaddah didn’t dare point fingers. Instead, she unfurled a scroll and said, “The crystal king demands, as per the pact, to know the deal with this Aeon. Outsiders are not a party to the pact, and the Pact of the Three dictates that the land is shared by the three parties and not to be yielded to third parties.”

Zhaanpu’s priest was quiet for a moment and then responded. “The Great Pyramid merely leased the land to the Temple of Aeon to conduct some farming activities. They are just customers of the State of Sand.”

Lumoof didn’t respond to the lie.

“Is there an agreement?”

“We can provide the documents in due time.” They would have to create a fictitious set of agreements, but Lumoof didn’t intervene. This was Zhaanpu’s territory, and he should handle it as he saw fit.

“Now,” Yaddah insisted.

“The crystal king is intimately familiar with the concept of patience. We highly suggest he apply it. Retrieving documents takes time,” Zhaanpu’s ritualist responded.

“Fine. We will wait three days.” Lumoof could feel there was some kind of communication happening, a set of encrypted magical messaging. But she looked away every time Lumoof glanced at her.

Zhaanpu’s priests quickly gave some land transaction records, and it was clear this was a fake set of records for some kind of large-scale forestry and farming project.

“It is less troublesome that way,” Zhaanpu admitted later. “I dislike dealing with my peers, even if I do respect them for what they are.”

“What exactly is the Centaur’s uh…guardian?”

“You’ve not seen it? Last I recall it was a possession-linked formation where the two joint patriarchs of the Centaurs would meld with the formation, thus granting the Centaur leaders access to the ancient wisdom and also the means to control the formation over Hoofhall and its surrounding lands.”

Just like the Pyramid, the truth was also shrouded in mystery. Even until today, my Centaur spies were still trying to piece together the identity and abilities of the Centaur’s guardian.

To some extent, I wondered whether I could force them to react to me. My trees had also begun to spread to the lands owned by the crystal king and the Centaurs, and though I kept it low profile, I was sure they’d realize it eventually.

Would the crystal king wage war because I had trees in their land?

My bet was no.

It was just posturing.

One thing became clear once the guilds controlled kingdoms and nations: capitalism didn’t inspire loyalty in the same way as a monarch or a religion.

The loyalty a guild leader had was just not to the same degree that a king or a priest had. Hired mercenaries bailed when the risk-reward ratio no longer made sense, but a loyal knight or fanatical zealot would keep fighting until their last breath.

The guilds, after decades of prospering as a business and treating its lower-ranking people callously, now needed to find ways to brainwash their men to fight with their lives on the line. A guild leader cared about the bottom line, cared about the salaries of its people and operations, but now it had to think further, of winning loyalty, of winning over hearts and minds.

This lack of loyalty meant the guilds often had to deploy larger forces, stronger forces with bigger, better equipment, just to convince the mercenaries they had good odds of winning, or it was quite likely that there was a sudden collapse in morale, where mercenaries, particularly multiple different groups, all quit in succession.

The guilds also discovered that they needed to “insource” military might to have internal competence and ability. Guilds that built up a stronger internal military arm or had adventurer-guild subsidiaries or partners performed better than those that had to hire all their military strength from mercenary guilds.

Various mercenary and assassins guilds, many of which merged with the merchant guilds over the decades, began taking on larger roles and used their growing importance in the war for new territories to take over their own conglomerates. When the merchant guilds concentrated on just trading alone and focused on Central Continent businesses, the leaders of such guilds tended to be pure administrator/merchant and assassin types. But with their newfound colonial ambitions, the military and combat leaders had more visibility, so they moved up the ranks.

There was no space for weaklings when the assassins began to target the leaders on the Central Continent.

There was also a growing schism, when some of the leaders sent to rule their newly conquered territories began to amass wealth in their new territories and used it to defy the Central Continent guilds’ leaders.

After all, the heaven was high, and the emperor was far, far away.

Even with magic, the Central Continent guilds needed the means to enforce its rule, needed ways to ensure loyalty of its farflung representatives. Some guilds relied solely on the loyalty of its invasion leaders, which, as they soon discovered, wasn’t very loyal.

Some realized they didn’t need the Central Continent and convinced the entire invasion army to rebel and set up independent nations.

It was such a clusterfuck across the world that my leaders began to discuss intervention methods.

Even the kings and representatives who met regularly at Freshka for their own quarterly updates and discussions were very worried about the chaos created by the guild wars.

We’d tried our best to sequester the conflict to specified zones and ensure innocents harmed were minimized.

There was death.

Death could not be avoided in a conflict.

< You’ve become very much like us. >

Lilies spoke; they too were aware of the guild’s chaos.

< There was a time where you would put a stop to this nonsense. Like when you unified the continent under your single rule. >

> I am afraid so. < I realized that Lilies was right.

< Time does this to all of us immortals. We cannot help but see the big picture and realize what is necessary is often full of death and destruction. We cannot help but watch them make mistakes. >

I thought about the past decade and realized I was beginning to drown in the big picture. I wished I could sigh. > I am torn between choice and life, and I am often reminded that I prefer choice over life. This is an extension of that decision, the consequences. Mortals must be given choice, and they must suffer from the consequences. <

< But it is necessary. The consequences of these organizations they’ve made and their pursuit of wealth and power, they must remember this. They must feel it. You know very well that for most creatures, their mind remembers only pain. Only pain delivers permanent, lasting memory. >

> Then I must engineer them away from such mental frailties. It is a flaw to be corrected. <

< And you walk ever closer to the gods. Who is right to say it is a flaw? >

I realized my earlier sentence was dangerous. If I began considering mortals as flawed, and as such began engineering them away from such flaws, how was it their choice?

But I had been doing it. My void treefolks, the void lizardpeople. The augmented children.

I had been engineering with their forms, trying to fix their flaws. Their weaknesses. Give them skills, give them advantages.

I veered so close to the edge of darkness.

And I felt Lilies’ minds.

< The road you walk takes you to where few have tread. It may be wise to seek wiser counsel. Perhaps those gods in their safe abodes can advise in their experience. >

I mentally sighed. It was an incredibly hard challenge to balance the two opposing poles.

To focus on the big picture yet not lose sight of the small things in life.

To focus on the arc of civilization over the decades and still live in the minutes and hours of the people.

47

YEAR 234

The kingdoms ramped up their counter for the guilds’ financial strength: religion. As they were quickly reminded, zealots and fanatics were not easily tempted by money, and the Hawa, Gaya, Aiva, and Neira faiths all had fairly deep pockets of their own. Worse, some zealots took their money and went to the other side anyway.

Secretly, the triumvirs were quite concerned about the conflict, and through our private channels, they relayed their feedback. Our line of thinking remained; this was a private affair undertaken by the new corporates of the Central Continent, and accordingly, we would not interfere, and we would not protect them. If the Aivan faith wished to retaliate, they were free to do so.

If I didn’t intervene in conflicts between kingdoms of the Central Continent, it certainly didn’t make sense for me to intervene in conflicts between a kingdom and a kingdom of another continent.

I reiterated my commitment to the overarching framework of non-interference, to the disagreement of quite a significant portion of my ruling class. As long as the rules of engagements were obeyed, I would uphold my part.

Royals rose and fell over time. Was corporatized royalty any different? If they had imperialist ambitions, they were free to test it and see whether they succeeded or failed. If they failed, they died. It came as a package with their position.

The rise of higher-level zealots, in the range of level fifty among the defending nations and templars, spurred the counterattack against the merchant kings, their superior equipment, financial wealth, and higher-level employees.

The defenders had some success, but the merchants’ wealth seemed limitless to the defenders.

The guild territories expanded some more.

Based on my artificial mind’s data collection, of the fifty or so guild-groups that set out on their imperialist ambitions, all managed to conquer at least one city on another continent. About half managed to fully take over an entire kingdom or nation, but all of them encountered fierce resistance, guerilla warfare, and rebellion throughout the past few years. They deployed mercenaries liberally to crush the resistance to varying degrees of success.

Of the half of the guilds that conquered entire kingdoms, about a third managed to suppress the resistance, mostly at great cost that the financial returns from the lower labor costs and resources collected barely compensated for the sums expended to wage the war. But of the third that managed to control the resistance, half of them should be able to make a profit within another two to three years, as the costs of managing the resistance began to dwindle, and the population adjusted to the new regime.

A few luckier guilds actually generated a profit already, but all of them faced the prospect of more prolonged wars as the temples ramped up on their propaganda against these capitalist entities.

My spies soon discovered that a few of the guilds seriously debated pulling out of their vassal kingdoms.

For some, the profits from their vassal kingdoms were impressive. Some managed to get hold of large gem or gold mines that meant they were able to recoup the cost of maintaining their far larger defensive force, especially when these gems and precious minerals were sold back on the Central Continent, where prices and demand was naturally higher and more sophisticated.

But fanatics were one of the factors they were not able to fully mitigate. The guild’s rulers became the target of the religious propaganda from the temples, and this led to fanatics and covert assassinations.

Even if the guilds still had the advantage, this was frightening to the guilds, because of how ruthless they were.

The guilds needed a counter, so some of the guilds began to form alliances to attempt to develop counters.

But ultimately, they realized loyalty, a problem they always had, could only be resolved with fanatics of their own. They could hire mercenaries and soon realized mercenaries would change sides if the other side offered more.

Fanatics were different.

Inspiring loyalty to the point of death wasn’t something guilds excelled at. They’d always known that, but it wasn’t as if they lacked references. There were some kings among them, those who got the title through their conquest of the kingdoms on the Central Continent, and they leveraged their position to create—

“A Royal Cult.” Lumoof rubbed his head when the spies gave the briefing. Back on Earth, kings used to wrap their position with pseudo-divine references, as if they were anointed by some god or descendants of some legendary hero, to enhance their position in society.

“Yes, Patreearch. We’re very concerned that these cults, whose existences entirely serve to reinforce the throne of these merchant kings, may threaten our faith.”

The gospel of prosperity, with a merchant king at the top. A cult of money.

An act of desperation, simply because I refused to support their outbound conquests, while the defenders had the support of the defending faiths.

Lumoof paused for a moment and thought. “We are no stranger to cults. We were a cult once. I suggest we leave them be.”

“But we’re different, Patreearch! Surely you see the difference!”

“Eh. From my vantage point, it is just system levels that differentiate a cult and a religion,” Lumoof answered. “If they can ascend to the level of a religion, that is a good thing.”

“But we’ll be displaced?”

“Are we that inferior as a faith,” Lumoof challenged, “that we cannot tolerate cults? Aeon is not a god that cannot deal with challengers! If anything, we will emerge stronger from their attempts to usurp our position. These pretenders are but polishing stones in our path for ever more greatness. If they are strong, we will crush them and emerge ever stronger.”

The spies nodded, and indeed, if I wanted choice, I had to allow it. “But let them know this. If they try to attack us, we will crush them. If they leave us alone, obey the rules of engagement, and leave innocents alone, we will leave them alone, too.”

It was only fair to let these nascent little cults have their chance. In the way of nature, if I couldn’t compete, I surely didn’t deserve my position at the apex of this world. How did I even claim legitimacy to push outward to other worlds?

When you broke it down, every cult was just a form of association between a group of people with stronger bonds, with a set of shared beliefs. A fan club could easily be a cult. A group that madly chased after money was a money cult.

The issues with a cult were not the cult itself, which could easily be benign. It was often the negative activities undertaken by the cult, in the sense that they had their own set of laws and acted beyond the scope of what they could.

There was a separate discussion among my clergy.

My patreearchs and matreearchs had their own set of views.

“But who is innocent? A child brainwashed from young by a cult is innocent, but because he embodies the beliefs of said cult, he doesn’t know it.”

“Let’s think of this in extremes. What if there is a cult that seeks to destroy us? Is Aeon going to tolerate that?”

“No,” Lumoof said after I expressed my feelings through him. “We will crush those that go past the boundaries that we set. We were more than willing to coexist with the other temples, but it was their attacks, their crusades that forced our hand. Likewise, we’ll set certain terms. Terms to ensure reasonable conduct.”

“I do feel this still cuts too closely to our faith.” Matreearch Hoyia was also present. “All religious cults we’ve seen have been fairly hostile to our rules.”

We’d seen cults—blood cults, secret cults—but again, all of them did crazy things, so we clamped down and crushed them. But these corporate cults and royal cults were different. They were not that different but merely existed to support their kings.

In fact, I considered them to be a return to the olden days, when the kings maintained a huge myth around themselves. They were not just men, but more.

The guilds merely adopted them to instill loyalty. It was extra pomp and pageantry meant to inspire those serving them into believing they were part of something greater. More rituals, more little ceremonies.

And it worked to some effect.

The system acknowledged rituals. Symbols. Those who went through the process usually got a modified version of their class to acknowledge their rituals, and this only reinforced the necessity of the process.

[Knights] and [soldiers] became [Blessed Knights] or [Ritual Soldiers].

Some corporate guild employees, from regular [royal merchants] transformed into [Royal Cult Merchants]. They used their new skills to convert the people of their new territories.

All to secure their position.

A natural evolution, and just looking at it, eventually these cults would grow.

Again, I felt it was right to let them grow. If they didn’t turn against me, I could co-opt them into our structure. If and when they turned against me, I would crush them, and my people would gain levels that way.

Or did I have to?

Discontent toward my hegemony would rise over time; that was expected and normal. No empire lasted forever.

I called on Lumoof and my patreearchs for an idea to consider.

“Vanish,” I suggested. I’d seen enough superhero and spy movies to realize that all villainous organizations were invisible but somehow everywhere.

Could we achieve this using the cloak of the vassal wars? Could I use these cults to my advantage?

“But why?”

“It’s just something to think about, whether we could switch away from the pervasive super-state and become the Illuminatree, with our agents at every major institution and players. Our Valthorns then transform into folk champions and heroes, crushing injustice wherever they go. It would allow us a far wider latitude of action.” I was not sure whether invisible was the best way to achieve my goals, but it was something to consider.

“We already have that latitude of action,” my leaders responded. “If we want to, we can do it. There is no institution, perhaps except the heroes, that can stop us. And they certainly don’t have our breadth and reach.”

There was also the possibility of just having Freshka disappear from view, but that didn’t seem particularly useful, since our threats mostly came from demons who somehow could see through illusions. Even if locals attempted to hexbomb Freshka, we had ample defensive measures.

For now, the thought of existing entirely as the hidden hand of the world was shelved.

Even though the vassal wars pretty much swept through all the continents, there were still some concerns on the delayed demon king. We defeated the demon king thirteen years ago, and it was already late.

Aivan Triumvirs naturally asked for updates.

“We defeated the demon kings.” That was all we said.

“But there was no notification,” the triumvirs challenged. Their knowledge of our affairs on the other side was extremely limited, and till now, we hadn’t shared what we were truly capable of.

The local rulers themselves had a worry or two, but for them, it wasn’t a problem until it became a problem.

“Their reaction to not having demon kings is more muted than expected,” Edna commented.

“What, you expect them to be grateful?” Roon responded. “We’ve seen how our people generally think.”

“True.”

There was extensive thought analysis for my Valtrian order and Valthorns. At each step, they were mentally evaluated by my artificial minds before they took the next step.

Loyalty. Compatibility with my beliefs. The evaluation only stopped truly incompatible or potentially dangerous individuals from getting further benefits, but otherwise, I allowed disagreements. But that meant bickering happened a lot, mostly friendly. It occasionally escalated into rivalries between factions. Ultimately, the goal of defeating the demons trumped them all.

We still didn’t know what sort of countermeasures the demons had, despite the void mages’ best efforts.

On Threehome, now that we had our own little corner of the world, I sent my void mages here to spy on the skies above and see whether there was somewhere we could visit.

“I still don’t get how there’s trees in this demon world. Never seen it,” Edna said, but then she stopped. “But then again, Ularans managed to have some underground farms. I suppose being a demon world doesn’t totally exclude the presence of trees.”

Borealworld, or Iceworld. I hadn’t quite settled on the name.

Roon, Edna, and a continent of level one hundred Valthorns were sent to this demon world to scout out the location. Their last invasion was Mountainworld.

The rift gates still worked, since our void mages were already locked to their rift gate’s locational codes. We’d largely cracked the planar element of the code, but we were stuck on the last few digits. It appeared to be some kind of checksum character, but we were not exactly sure.

The Valthorns were a party of druids, mages, and some other researchers. Here, they collected samples and performed studies.

There was a smaller team that came earlier to deploy the listening devices, and we noticed it was still untouched.

Data collection was a really long affair, and even when we knew what we were looking for, the somehow low frequency of transmissions meant that Stella’s endeavor was pretty much looking for aliens with super-large radio dishes.

There was a lot of waiting, and there was a lot of nothing.

Meanwhile, the druids harvested and collected the plants of Borealworld. These were unique species to the world, not found on any of the three worlds we were at, but not entirely alien. There were similar plants.

They were surprisingly tolerant of ice, and I wondered whether Aria and Aispeng would love this ice world. It seemed like the perfect place for them to make use of their talents.

Once we could reclaim it from the demon mother of this world.

I decided to bring the idea to Aria and Aispeng, whether they would be keen on moving to this world.

“I’m immobile,” Aria and Aispeng said. “I’d be relying on the summoned creatures and the ice monsters to fight for me.”

“That’s like me,” I responded. “All the combat could help your levels.”

“Hmmm…”

“It won’t be immediate. We’re still working on creating the larger rift gates, and that’s taking a lot more time than expected—”

“Why do you need a large rift gate?”

“You’re big?”

Aria chuckled. “It seems you forget that I can shrink. I’m an ice crystal with a soul. All these are just excess appendages that I can shed and regenerate.”

“Huh.” I paused and considered the implication. She technically could be deployed anywhere, though icy environments were most advantageous to her. Just like how Zhaanpu would probably excel in a desert, sandy environment.

“Again, let me think about this. I should be able to provide an answer within a few years,” Aria said.

They had specialized skills that worked in such environments. As for myself, I considered myself mostly a generalist, but I exceled in forested or grassy environments that were more temperate or tropical in nature. This was partly because my beetles performed best in these environments. In colder and sandier environments, they needed specific adaptations, which took up some space for other types of skills.

Domain holders like Edna, Roon, and so on had tremendous advantages in combat. They were mobile. They could hit really hard.

But that was also part of the problem. They did not excel in building safe spaces for lower-leveled folks to live.

Lavaworld relied massively on my tree’s presence to suppress the demons and act as a safe anchor for my forces to retreat to.

For domain holders, it was not an issue. But it was a critical one for those in the level one hundred to one hundred forty-nines, and this was the group of people I really wanted to get to the next level.

We needed forward bases backed by domain holders.

“You’re suggesting that we become an invasion force?” Zhaanpu sat and stewed on the question.

“Yes,” I responded. “Let me be clear: this is an idea that we are considering, given our limitations. I’ve stretched myself as far as I can, and we have clones on a few worlds, and one active demon world. But realistically, if we want to strike back at the demons, we need more.”

“It’s certainly an interesting proposal. If we succeed, we essentially have the entire world to ourselves, and many of my servants would gain levels,” Zhaanpu said. “But given my size, that would be—”

“It’s something we can solve. The demon kings can move their large bodies through space. We should be able to do it, too.”

Zhaanpu stretched and cracked his mummified fingers. “There are some lingering concerns, especially how it affects my pact with the old gods. I would have to revisit the terms and study them.”

I agreed. “There is no urgency. Not yet, anyway. It is an idea I’m floating with other immortals.”

“It is something that needs much more deliberation. I must contemplate this suggestion a little longer.”

Lilies mulled the idea, though I sensed it was fairly lukewarm. If there was another lake or parasite-type world, Lilies, as a being that could spread roots across the entire lake, could be a candidate. Any swampy environment would do.

That said, the chances were low. They’d never left, and they survived so well in their current state. Why would they change?

But in any case, they didn’t reject me outright. Just like both Aria and Zhaanpu, they needed time. Relocating to another world, a demon world, just to wage a war wasn’t a simple decision. It was a commitment.

I remembered I didn’t like moving. I hated it. My fellow domain holders would agree that moving sucked. Our presence was all about permanence. We existed, and the world warped around us.

If they rejected the offer, that was fine. We were already developing countermeasures and bases that did not depend on my presence.

I’d probably consider Reefy as well, if there was some water world out there. I believed there should be some water world, though I wasn’t too sure whether Reefy would even let me move him. Reefy was very, very touchy about his core.

That said, Reefy was probably too low-leveled to reach that stage. The Valthorns worked on smaller, more compact, and self-sustaining bases. Little independent outposts on these demon worlds.

We’d find a way.

48

YEAR 235

The vassal wars raged on, and the long war drained both the many defending kingdoms and also the merchant guilds.

The larger merchant guilds, even with their greater risks on the Central Continent, still commanded respectable market power and thus were able to continue to fund the war.

It helped that the Central Continent was far more prosperous and with higher populations. The prospects of achieving greatness conquering other continents led to some uncomfortable propaganda, which I asked my spies to quietly suppress.

The smaller merchant guilds were feeling the strain on their finances and thus began to sought out some financial assistance from the larger guilds, and that led to a string of takeovers by the larger merchant guilds.

It felt like I was witnessing the start of the conglomerates, as smaller entities began cobbling together into a larger whole.

A [Guildmaster]’s [Skills] and [Abilities] interacted in guilds and corporations in the same way as a [King’s] skill, but it clearly strained with the massive number of members. We spied a few instances where certain skills ran into limits.

Most times, hitting those limits triggered class evolutions. The [merchant kings] and [Guild Kings] emerged as an upgrade to reflect the growing power of the guildmasters over their members.

Their powers were stronger on the weaker members but less so on stronger, higher-leveled members. This matched my own control over my Valthorns.

With souls, what mattered was the gap in levels. The higher the level, the stronger the soul’s ability to withstand outside influence. So it was fair to say, I had fairly little actual ability to force anyone above level one hundred to do what I say, though I did have the weight of the entire institution behind me, which often compelled them to obey.

As the guilds expanded, we also observed the guilds had upgrades of the typical [administrator] classes to [executive] and [manager] classes.

To be fair, the massive Valtrian Order as an institution already had [manager] and [executive] classes for quite some time, so these weren’t totally new, but it was just interesting to note that the guilds finally got them, too.

The powers of [contracts] were heavily invoked, and [Guild Contracts] served as the foundation of alliances in their outward war.

Kings and nations had the ability to form alliances and sign contracts with each other for a while, but the nature of kings meant, under the system, they existed above petty [contracts]. The [King] class, due to the feudal nature of being above mere men, refused to bow to a [contract].

So normal [contracts] died when they reached a [king]. Thus alliances of kings, based on trusts and relationships, were frail, brittle, and prone to abrupt dissolutions.

That was not the case for a [guildmaster]. A well-written normal [contract] was a chain that a guildmaster could not easily shed, unless his class changed.

A guild, by constitution, existed because the law permitted it to exist. A guildmaster could never be above laws and contracts. Thus, each guild was bound by [contracts], even if their members could leave the guild. Leaving a [guild] usually imposed penalties, even if temporary.

So the ascension of their members to kings led to some interesting shenanigans and vulnerabilities.

A [merchant king] and a [guild king] did not have the ability to shrug off the law or the contract as easily as normal kings. In short, they were inferior.

Our observations of their abilities also soon revealed they were weaker than the typical king at the same level of power.

Last year, we noticed some guilds experimenting on cults as an attempt to shore up loyalties, especially when faced with fanatics from the other continents.

The need to increase loyalties was magnified by the increasingly united defenses of the four temples. The four temples selected high-leveled kings and queens and backed them strongly. They engineered mergers of the smaller kingdoms into the larger kingdoms.

It surprised me that the temples were willing to do so. They’d never mounted a coherent response against the demon kings but were strangely united when invaded.

Still, the merger of the kingdoms and the quasi-holy state of these now-larger kingdoms created class upgrades for the defenders.

It was my first encounter with the [Holy Emperor] and [Holy Empress] classes.

I’d never managed to actually create [Emperor] classes, despite collecting multiple [King] classes over the decades. Just like mages, there were some strange things about these royal and noble classes.

The first [Holy Emperor] of the Southern Continent rose to the throne of the empire as the first of kings, cobbled together from twenty-two separate kingdoms. A union forged by the church of Gaya and the church of Hawa, they initiated a grand ceremony to invoke the greater blessings of Gaya and Hawa.

They merely hoped to upgrade the chosen king’s class to that of a [blessed king], but I suspected because of the scale of the land and followers involved, and perhaps a bit of desperation, they somehow created a [holy emperor].

I watched and felt the moment when the king’s presence warped and changed from a set of trees within the palace’s compound. The first [Holy Emperor].

“On this great day, we, the archpriests of Gaya and Hawa, grant and bestow all of the blessings we could muster upon King Erranuel, for the great Erranuel shall be a king above kings and lead our combined empire against the foul advances of the greedy guilds.” The archpriests of the two temples declared, and I felt a great power emerge from within that Erranuel.

His voice changed, as if he had the force of the gods behind him. I knew it wasn’t, but to any lesser man, it would certainly feel as if one was standing before a god. His body suddenly radiated an incredible oppressive aura.

He was silent for a moment as that strange twisting presence settled.

“I am [Holy Emperor] Erranuel, and I evoke the [Emperor’s Edict]. We wage a holy [crusade] against the guilds and the foul enemies that lead them from the shadow.”

His followers throughout the continent experienced a sudden surge of power, which we estimated to be close to a ten-level boost. A blessing, the [Fury of the Crusaders]. At the same time, an [Emperor]’s blessing was stronger than a [King], and I witnessed the empire’s financial and economic might seem to improve out of nowhere.

The new Holy Empire of Erranuel retaliated, as the ten-level boost seemed to compensate for the technology and level drawbacks they faced against the guilds.

The weaponization of faith forced the guilds and the [merchant kings] to adapt and try to develop their own.

I thoroughly disallowed the use of my faith in the conquest. Anyone who did was promptly punished, and thus, the guilds had to seek out other faiths or, in their case, invent their own.

The guilds then found a fundamental issue with faith, especially one that sought to elevate a single person into some kind of reincarnation or blessed by the gods.

A guild was a union of various merchants, working together, thus each merchant had a stake, a shareholder. Due to the fractured ownership, these merchant guilds had structured ways of decision making; almost every guild often resolved and made decisions through committees and councils, and a guildmaster was often elected from the merchants themselves, even if he was the leader.

But a king was different. A king was not elected from a selection of merchants. It was not the nature of the [class]. Not in this world.

Mix in the feudal structure of a king with the enterprising, raucous nature of the guilds, then add the worship and idolatry present in cults, and that made things complicated.

One of those elements would prevail in the end. For better or for worse.

Some guilds tried to make things into a two-tier system, where the cultish behaviors and messaging was applied only at the lower levels. This seemed to be the smartest solution from some of the guilds.

In some guilds, the feudal elements they introduced proved too strong, and these guilds then faced strong factionalism between those who wanted to hold onto the guild’s more democratic roots, and those who converted into a master-servant relationships with the kings.

In others, the cults did bring in loyalty but again gnawed at the corporate structure. The ordinary methods of guild decision making were abandoned, and the cult leaders became those who could do no wrong. It was a slippery slope that many merchants didn’t even see coming. After all, even in ordinary guilds, there were always dominant figures.

As a result of the fraying internal forces of the guilds, and the stronger, united response from the defenders, the vassal wars that were fairly one sided all this while began to seem more balanced. For now, the guilds still had advantage. Tremendous financial advantages, seemingly limitless manpower due to the central continent’s stability and prosperity, and better quality equipment meant many guilds still held onto their conquered territories.

The four temples rushed to replicate the creation of the [holy emperor] in the Northern Islands, the Eastern Continent, and the Western Continents respectively. They succeeded in creating two more.

With the Valtrian Order, there were a lot of discussions about the latest developments. For my senior Valthorns, most understood my position that the conflicts of the world were irrelevant.

People fought wars all the time. It wasn’t for me to step in, unless they crossed the red lines. For most part, wars remained feudal wars where two armies met on some battlefield. My Valthorns, as far as I could tell, understood that these empires would fade in time, and they all recognized the progress being made on defending the world from the demons.

But the question of “When is Aeon going to do something about this?” just got ever so loud, and my priests had to go on overdrive to explain my inaction to the general populace and the increasingly unhappy nobility.

The heroes were not unaffected by the war, either.

Some of them maintained small kingdoms and harems. For now, the guilds were smart enough to avoid attacking them, since that was suicide. A hero could level a kingdom overnight.

Instead, the guilds approached the heroes for tech. They offered to pay them for hero-items, superweapons to deploy against the other side.

I had to step in and stop the transaction and reminded the heroes that they shouldn’t get involved.

The heroes didn’t quite like it at first, since it meant they didn’t get big amounts of money, but they understood that hero-items would be tools of mass slaughter. That wasn’t the reason why hero-items were made. They were designed to be emergency tools, not super weapons meant for conventional warfare. Even defensive hero-items meant the defenders could have a solid base for expansions and counterattacks. So the only winning move was to not sell hero-items.

The heroes also got tremendous pressure from the four temples, demanding that they support the defenders with hero-items. The temples argued that their powers, their presence in the world, was all because of the gods, so they should support the [holy emperor] in their crusade.

Again, the only possible move was to abstain.

At this point, it was increasingly clear that if the defenders won decisively, a retaliation and a crusade against the Central Continent was almost a certainty.

Buoyed by the high of winning, they would try to reassert their strength as vengeance.

I asked my domain holders privately what they would do if placed in the current situation. Edna sighed. “I’ve been actually getting that question from my knights’ order. Many are itching for a fight.”

“An unnecessary fight,” Lumoof said. “But this war seemed to have helped create more high-level individuals on both sides of the conflict.”

“That’s a horrible thing to say when people die.” Stella cursed. “Aeon, you should stop it. Wars are bad.”

Stella, as an earthling, naturally didn’t think wars were a good thing. People died, even if the death wasn’t as crazy. This was simply because of the conventional nature of these feudal-type wars.

Killing citizens that produced goods, operated the mines, and generated resources the conquerors needed didn’t seem like a good idea. Too much death in a certain area tended to generate death energy, which triggered the spawn of undead and ghosts and created cursed lands.

This still wasn’t the world of bombs and missiles, even if there were some equivalent-tier weapons. Mages, even if they seemed like they were everywhere, were not so many that they could use their abilities without restraint.

Alka shrugged. “It’s appropriate to remind everyone that our goal is stopping the demons for good. If this leads to that goal, indirectly, by leveling everyone, I say that it’s fine to leave with it.”

“Surely there are better ways to level people up than wars!” Stella protested.

“On a large scale, without a large institution that we have to control?” Alka responded. “Wars are the best way. Second best are demonic incursions into our worlds.”

“Maintaining an institution of that size would be better than this,” Stella said, and then eventually, she had a long sigh. “It just sucks that the sheer presence of levels and magic meant the playing field would never be equal, so the concept of equality frankly is laughable. It’s like trying to say a fish is equal to a man.”

“Exactly. On some scale, this is just the natural order of conflict. Your world may have the concept of equality, but it exists only within humans. Can a human ever be equal to an alien with far superior strengths and intellect? Can a human ever be equal with a dolphin or a lion? There must be some kind of shared understanding in order for equality to exist, and to some extent, a narrow range of abilities. With such great ability differences, it is only normal that kingdoms value the level one hundred general way more than the level ten soldier. Because they are not the same.”

“So large power gaps create feudal societies.” Stella cursed. “But I suppose you are right. A chicken farm, even in the millions, cannot prevent man from chopping them off. A higher being with far greater intellect than ours would consider our intelligence no more than that of a farm-raised chicken and thus would slaughter us for food if they find us tasty.”

“Thus it is not beyond Aeon to consider Aeon’s decision as the equivalent of a human watching two large armies of ants slaughtering each other. Does a human stop ants from fighting?”

“But these ants could one day grow into something on Aeon’s level.”

“And only then will Aeon treat them as another of them.”

Stella scratched her hair, and Edna sighed. “I don’t quite like that.”

“Choices have consequences, Stella. The choices of the guilds, and the choices of the kingdoms,” Lumoof intervened. “Our goal is to enforce the scope of engagement to limit the damage. Let the children duke it out in the sandpit.”

The knight commander nodded in agreement. “That we will do.”

Stella, of course, was soon distracted by other pursuits. She and a group of void archmages were now on Cometworld, hoping to figure out how to manipulate Cometworld’s trajectory through the void sea.

It was not an easy task. It certainly didn’t have any clues.

My attempts to quiz and communicate with the Will of Treehome was greeted with nothing. It had returned to sleep. The other domain holders had no clue, either.

So we had to experiment.

The void mages tried injecting void mana into the world or into the void sea. They suspected that manipulating the void sea was probably how worlds drifted on them, so they tried using techniques similar to the astral tunnels created by the demons and use the tunnels as some kind of oar.

Then a group of void mages observing Cometworld would then monitor for any shifts against expected trajectory.

Nothing.

They tried different shapes of those void tunnels or more power.

They weren’t sure what they needed, even if we knew what the end goal was. For now, they had to keep on experimenting.

It was possible that we may not be able to control a world without the Will of the World, perhaps via a system. If that was the case, we would need to create a new domain holder who was able to merge with the Will of the World and then send that world on a suicide mission.

That seemed like a far more daunting and horrifying prospect.

The void mages didn’t give up, though.

49

YEAR 236

“All right, the goal is to push into the ridges,” Edna declared to the group of eight level one hundred Valthorns, and the eight nodded. “We’ll be here.”

Lavaworld was now our main training ground, other than the dungeons. For most high-leveled Valthorns, their life involved tours through the worlds, visiting places like the Borealworld where they took month-long missions to explore the location and attempt to piece together the history of that world, or a tour on Lavaworld where they’d fight through large swarms of demons, arrive at a certain location, set up a temporary base, and defend against the hordes.

With a small team.

We tried our best to push them, to try stranger, harder things. The level one hundreds also suggested missions and challenges for each other. After all, everyone needed to have a mind of their own.

Two of the level one hundreds in the group of eight were members of Edna’s order of Valthorn knights. It was an unofficial group, and as it wasn’t official, they named themselves, partly as a joke, the Order of the Pointy Stick.

Knights were trained to be proficient in a wide variety of weapons, but jousting spears and pikes were favorites of these knights.

It was a practical consideration. When demons were such massive creatures, it made more sense to use spears, especially throwing spears charged with magic and designed to release huge bursts of energy.

The range was just more useful with large magical creatures, and safer.

“How’s this group?” Stella sat next to her, taking a break from her own tour through the worlds. She offloaded many of the initiatives to the archmages, since she couldn’t feasibly attempt so many projects at the same time. The other archmages even took on leadership roles, as Stella and one other void archmage focused on the training aspects of new void mages.

There was a gap in education for void mages, despite my best attempts to copy and record her experiences through my dream academy.

The training outcomes of void mages were always a little bit better when Stella was the instructor, as she had firsthand experience from the zaratans. The pain she went through during the multiple attempts to develop void mana gave her a sense of perspective that younger void mages, with more focused processes, didn’t have.

The zaratans were not warriors, and Lilies told me that any attempts to get the zaratans to participate in any war effort would fail. The most they would do was teach.

This year was also the first year since the founding of Branchhold that a recruit from Mountainworld was admitted to the elite Valthorns.

It’d been slightly less than thirty years since that day, so a single individual from Branchhold, a human [swordsman] named Farsan, reached level one hundred.

There was nothing quite like the shock of visiting the demon worlds for the first time. To feel the presence of nothingness in a world conquered by the end.

It made it easy to see what would become of their home, should the demons succeed.

A common flaw in people was that many struggled to visualize the future if they didn’t see it for themselves. You could tell them a thousand tales, but until they were there, to feel it on their skin, to see in with their eyes, that future just seemed ever so remote.

For my Valthorns, especially those who visited the demon worlds for the first time, it was usually an experience.

A reality, a version of the future if their homes fell to the demon.

This usually evoked a visceral reaction in some first-timers, and for Farsan of Mountainworld, it did. Some, even though these were level one hundred folks making their first trip, had a minor panic attack.

For those less than level one hundred, I mostly sent them to fight in dungeons within Treehome or the few dungeons in the underground areas of Branchhold. Once they crossed level one hundred, they would be sent the other worlds to hunt demon champions.

This meant some of them visited places like Lavaworld, or Borealworld, or Ulara.

For Farsan, we delayed his exposure to these other places until level one hundred. The Valtrian Order spoke of the existence of these worlds for a while, but as the first of Branchhold to see what it was like, he returned feeling somber, as if he now had a burden on his shoulders.

“I can’t be the only one who knows,” he said to the Valthorns, who came from Treehome.

“They know.”

“No, they don’t.” The Mountainworlder looked at the desolation of Lavaworld, the sense of emptiness and lifelessness. “They don’t know it at all.”

The Valthorns gave the Mountainworlder a knowing tap on the shoulder. “Once you’ve seen it, you really just can’t go back and pretend everything’s fine.”

I had to give credit to Lumoof and the priests. They were really quite good at selecting fanatics to join my military cult.

From what I knew, a part of it was skills. Over the decades, Lumoof and my senior priests gained skills like [Eye for Talent] or [Recruit Scanner]. On top of that, there was also a whole load of education and perspective.

It was probably brainwashing to some degree, though my priests would argue that presenting a set of facts didn’t constitute brainwashing.

By this point, it felt academic.

Tropicworld’s reconstruction effort was beginning to speed up, as more migrants and pioneers moved to the new world.

It’d been ten years since this initiative started. At this point, about seventy thousand from Treehome had moved over to visit a world unlike any other. A world that had all traces of civilization erased and now was ready to be repopulated.

I wondered whether the will of the world resisted it, and it responded with a mere sensation of acknowledgment. I prodded it more, but it responded with a feeling. Acceptance.

Not agreement, but acceptance.

Over the time since we’d reclaimed this world, Tropicsworld’s natural environment significantly improved. Trees, animals, and monsters now covered most of the world, though the magical energies barely recovered above twenty-five percent of the living worlds.

Three to four small towns emerged, the frontier towns of each of the races.

The Canari were quick to set up their own little place, just for themselves, as did the Treefolks and Lizardfolks.

The air of Tropicworld was different to that of Treehome, and the [pioneers] who moved to Tropicworld had skills that made settling in easier.

The Treefolks and Lizardfolks had feet better adapted to the muddy terrain, and the Canari gained skills that made them better able to regulate their heat and deal with the generally dirty waters of Tropicworld.

The water system of Tropicworld was still unstable, even if it was carved through the powers of the Core. River banks could easily shift, and rain patterns were still irregular. Some part of this was due to the Core itself; the Core’s power ebbed and flowed, and that affected the strength of rains, the speed and growth of monsters, the strength of the winds, and the heat from the ground.

So even rivers and lakes were not permanent as the subtle shifts in the ground due to those fluctuations moved water around.

Some [pioneers] remarked that the weather only got more erratic as the Core of the Tropicworld regained its energy.

The void mages’ attempts to manipulate Cometworld’s trajectory through the void sea went nowhere. They were essentially flailing at the unknown.

They tried a wide array of items and techniques, but ultimately nothing seemed to work. Or at least they were not sure whether they made any impact because it was quite hard to measure how it worked.

Meanwhile, the void mages pursued their other tasks, until one day…

“Stella, you’ve got to look at this.” She felt one of her archmages’ magical energies as the void warped in the area around her office, and her archmage appeared through a small portal.

She stared at the contraption in the void archmage’s hand. A crystal record linked to the various listening devices. Another void archmage popped up right behind him with the exact same item.

“Oh, you’re here already,” the second one quipped and laughed.

“Hah. You got the same signal from your side?”

“Yeah.”

Stella checked both of the crystal records and looked at the two archmages. She had her suspicions but then waited for the archmages to give their views. “What are we looking at?”

“Likely some kind of transmission. If all the other planes are getting it, it’s not a routine one. I was studying it while on the way here, and here.” The void archmage pointed to a part of the transmission. “This was the only part I recognized. A locational coordinate.”

“Treehome,” Stella said as her mind scanned through the transmission again. As of now, we’d not yet decoded the language of their transmissions, but with our growing lexicon of demonic characters, we could try to guess. “What does it—?”

“It may be one of the countermeasures,” the void archmage speculated. “I’ve asked the mages to scan the skies but for now…”

“Nothing.”

Stella paused and looked at the transmission again.

“Stella, you could use the demon king’s core to check.” The archmage suggested something Stella already planned on doing, but she was pleased that he brought it up anyway. She nodded.

“Come with me,” Stella said, and then she called out to me. “Aeon, I’ll need some mind backup.”

The artificial minds were ready, and Alka teleported in. “I was summoned.”

Stella tapped the bomb-maker on the shoulders. “Got a weird transmission from the demons.”

Alka whistled. “Predictions?”

“Our long-awaited countermeasures,” Stella said as she walked into the special chamber now crawling with roots and vines. There was a station right next to the demon core, surrounded by more vines and roots, with some crystals. Mixed among the mass of regular vines and roots were some black ones, those that produced demonic mana harvested from the few unrestored Rottedlands and the demonic hybrid trees.

A few mages shuffled about, preparing the place and documents.

Stella strapped in, and I felt the artificial minds buzzing with activity. I kept track of her physical state and noticed her heartbeat was elevated. She pulled large quantities of mana at certain moments, and about six hours later, she emerged all sweaty and exhausted.

The third void archmage joined the earlier two. “Lady Stella?”

“Nothing conclusive. My [Void Explorer] is too far, but I suspect there’s something. This transmission came from the demon sun itself. What’s the progress with our attempts to develop extended void-sea detection?”

The three archmages glanced at each other. “We’ll need to spy on them?” One of them stopped.

“Progress is middling. We’re still attempting to test it out on our junior void mages—”

“Don’t think this can wait. Run the side effects and observations, and if it’s plausible we need to scale it up as soon as possible. The earlier we can see what the hell the demons are throwing our way, the more time we have to prepare for it.”

The three glanced at each other. “At once, milady.”

“Something concerning I should know about?” I asked Stella at a private session.

“The demons have sent something, but the star paths don’t indicate anything. No star paths yet—”

“It could be something that doesn’t travel on a star path.”

“I know what you’re thinking. We’ve been predicting it for so long that I know it’s the damned demon comet.” Stella cursed. “But I want to be sure, so I’m planning to hop my way as far as I can go. I’ll need some bodyguards. Looking at the demon’s star map, Borealworld’s probably the starting point.”

Stella wanted to hop to Borealworld and travel to the nearby worlds and figure out a way to get closer to the demon sun.

Due to the weird nature of the void sea, this could be a decade-long journey or super short, because traveling the void by hopping to nearby worlds didn’t actually mean getting closer to the core in the demon’s map.

“Can I take Lumoof and Edna with me?”

I could pull all three of them back instantly through my ability. “All right.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“What if we’re wrong?” I thought. “It’s not a comet, and it’s multiple demon kings invading at once. The fact that our coordinates, our location is transmitted seems to suggest some kind of coordinated strike.”

“Why not both?” Stella laughed uncomfortably. “In either case, we need to go and see, get some visibility. If it’s multiple demon kings, we’d have a chain of astral pathways over our skies. Those things take a while to build, unless…”

Unless the demons had a way to open up such portals instantly.

As it was, the rift gates we had could open portals to other places, even if there were no astral paths, but the void mana cost was significantly higher without the path. That essentially placed a cap in the range of the stolen and repurposed rift gates.

Like, yeah, we had the numbers to call, but it was like not having enough money to call an international number.

“There’s nothing to worry about but to take our next steps,” Stella said. “We need information, and we’ll only get it if we get nearer or can see further.”

With the support and powers of the [Holy Emperor] at the heart of the new empires, the guilds had to form alliances of their own. [Merchant Kings] allied with each other and tried to use their combined weight to push back.

Adversity rewarded those who made it through them, and it was horrifying to the kings that the emperor was gaining on them in terms of levels.

A new skill from the emperor or just a few extra levels meant his blessing was stronger, and his empire produced more weapons or some other effect that began to push back. The guilds began to encounter more draws and losses, and the assassin-guilds, previously eager to take the Central Continent guild’s businesses, began to shift.

The Central Continent guilds decided to double down on the financial and technological prowess to counter the faith powers and the emperor’s abilities. They invested more on even better equipment and leveraged on their industrial bases to build stronger, more powerful weapons.

Of this came the largest, privately owned warships ever seen on Treehome, equipped with long-range bombardment equipment.

These weapons resembled railguns but were magical. These came about after my craftsmen and Alka all worked on large quantities of long-range weapons against the demon kings. Some of these designs were inadvertently leaked to the general public, and independent craftsmen began designing copies.

The magical railguns, equipped with a crystal-core projectile, were one of those that was copied. It was similar enough to ballistas that the private sector could begin making modified versions, and now they had these weapons that could shoot a location almost a hundred miles away.

At the same time, my Valthorns had to be extra careful with their state-of-the-art weapons and even older generation weapons. My spies and counter-espionage agencies detected large quantities of attempted spying and theft of Valthorn-issue equipment. Any advantage, any exposure would lead to attempts to study, replicate, and then mass produce to use against the other continents.

So far, they’d not outright attempted to attack the Valthorns, but my agents and people were increasingly edgy. My artificial minds picked up multiple thefts and spies, some of which were then caught by my own agents.

It felt like the guilds were in a “cold war” with the Valthorns, even if we were publicly cordial and professional.

Even the nobility were fracturing, those who supported the guilds secretly and some publicly. The nobility of the Central Continent all had respectable wealth.

These nobles benefited as they were at the top of their realm, taxing a percentage of all trade going through their nation. Then they could store that wealth in highly safe places, such as with the Valtrian Order’s banks, but that was limited. In order to prevent excessive “robbing,” we placed deposit limits on the accounts itself, and the limit was usually about the price of a single reasonably sized mansion. This forced the nobles to have other investments.

These banks were usually safe from attacks and riots from their peasants, so they had a lower risk of losing their money in a political upheaval. It was a deal many nobles took, even with the high storage or custodian fees charged.

Next, they placed their monies in assets and in investments, such as these guilds. It was fairly well known that many guilds were essentially bankrolled by the nobility, even if their management was independent and profited off the nobility’s money.

But the increasingly costly wars meant the guilds were now forced to spend a larger share of their monies. It triggered the wealthy nobility watching their money pool shrink.

The response was fairly varied. Some began to publicly campaign for outright annexation of the empire, claiming that these empire-folks were essentially primitive cavemen that deserve to be liberated from the ancient chokehold of their primitive religions.

I found it hilarious, of course. As if the very presence of a [Lord] was not a primitive thing. As if the Central Continent wouldn’t begin a devolution if my army of artificial minds was removed.

Intip, one of my oldest spymasters, had to hire and train more counterspies.

He had no choice, because the guilds were fanning the flames of war.

“Aeon, like it or not, you will have to step in eventually,” the heroes, Kei and Ken, all remarked. It was a sentiment that my domain holders also increasingly shared.

“This is a challenge to your authority over the Central Continent. The Valtrian Order sits at the top of the continent’s political pyramid, but right now, by taking actions of waging war and fanning the public opinion, they are trying to drive you toward an outcome.”

Increasingly, Intip and the spies caught a few instigators who tried to paint my non-interference as wrong. Worse, it was an opinion that a growing number of my own Valtrians shared.

“We were superior,” they said. “If Aeon stepped in, this war would be a slaughter.”

But what was the point?

To the lesser Valtrians, who were not privy to the greater conflict in the background, they felt a lot could be done to improve the condition of the other continents.

I wanted mana. I wanted resources. I wanted talent.

These three things supported the war effort against the demons.

I didn’t need all the land. I didn’t need to rule everything. Others could do it.

But it was so, so easy for the nobles and guilds to easily twist it into a narrative. It didn’t help that the temples and the Holy Empires used those same talking points to amplify the hate.

“Aeon’s long attempts to train administrators and lords through the FTC and the educational institutes was a long-term plan to improve the quality of the world’s rulers and nobles. The seed of this conflict began when Aeon began brainwashing the nobles. The Central Continent views itself as superior to the rest of us.”

The Holy Empires’ new crusade against the guilds also attacked us indirectly.

They fanned hatred toward the Central Continent, concocted propaganda against us. It undid all the goodwill and assistance we had and caused a return of the old wars.

Once more, we all felt the beginnings of another crusade, one brought about by my inaction and refusal to stop the guilds’ expansion.

I could tell that the nobles and merchants were indirectly leading the situation toward an outcome where we could only choose the guilds.

For now, public opinion within the Central Continent itself remained fairly ignorant of the war.

My agents on the four continents also found it harder to defuse the situation.

The propaganda that emerged was full of hate and essentially painted the entire Central Continent as an enemy. The fanatics and the holy believers that now formed the inner circles of the new Holy Empires were harder to crack.

All because I didn’t stop this war.

A war I wanted no part of.

Yet it’d been years, and I was getting more and more intertwined with this conflict.

Even as I commanded non-interference.

I wanted to abstain.

My spies sounded the alarm that another crusade was not far away. We had a few years before the anger would boil over and we’d be faced with a total war.

What a waste of resources.

I stared at the prospect of a demonic counter-invasion. I would need to prepare for it.

But my house was not in order.

So I brought my council, Valthorns greatest spies and agents, together and suggested an idea entirely impossible for anyone but us.

It tormented me to even contemplate whether to use my force in such a manner.

Matreearch Hoyia spoke on my behalf as she stood to the crowd.

“Aeon’s question to everyone is this: if we capture all the rulers of the guilds and all the rulers of the target kingdoms, can we control the vassal war and prevent it from spiraling further out of control?”

All the spymasters and agents, senior Valtrians, and Valthorns present were quiet. The rest of my domain holders were elsewhere, busy with the bigger things.

“What?”

“Let me rephrase. Aeon wants to know whether, if he were to order the capture of all the kings, rulers, merchant kings, priests, lords, and generals and essentially force everyone to sit down and talk, would it stop the nonsense and prevent it from escalating to a total war?”

The crowd stared, as if waiting for the matriarch to continue. She did.

“Aeon’s intention is not to stop the war altogether, but increasingly, we are getting caught in the crossfire. The fanning flames will grow into a crusade and a world war. It is unnecessary, so we intend to have this session to remind the participants of this conflict to keep to their designated scope. As parents often say to their fighting children, we want them to ‘play nice.’ Or ‘play in the agreed sandpit.’”

“What if they don’t?”

“Aeon proposed sending the leaders to Lavaworld for a year as punishment for excessive warfare. Nobles supporting the war will spend some time on Lavaworld, too, depending on the extent of their involvement in this war.”

I could tell all the members present were seriously contemplating it, and some looked at each other, wondering whether it was even possible.

But they knew it was. They’d seen my void mages, and it was entirely possible for mages with teleportation spells to swiftly capture any nobility or general, especially with our Valthorns’ huge level gap and superior equipment.

No one was safe. Not when we could reach anywhere in the world instantly.

The heroes stared at each other before Prabu laughed and everyone else followed. It was a good thing they were in their own soundproof chamber so no one else could hear them.

“Oh lord. Aeon’s going to catch all the naughty boys and send them to the naughty corner.”

“Does that work? I’m sure people are greedy and—”

“It might.” Ken nodded. “Fear does great things to people. What’s happening now is that all these people waging this war are increasingly arrogant and belligerent, confident in their own strength.”

“You know that doesn’t work. It’ll just return eventually,” Colette said. “Naughty kids don’t get better from going to jail or detention.”

“There is no one better suited to break the souls of warmongers.”

Back in the larger hall, one of the spymasters, Varida, stood. “I’m in agreement. I believe it will work. If anything, it is about damned time Aeon asserts our strength and reminds the world that things must be done in moderation.”

The crowd stared in horror at the spymaster. One lord looked back at Matreearch Hoyia. “Matreearch, do you believe in this?”

Matreearch Hoyia shrugged. “Those who live in fortunate times do not know how fortunate they are. It would be helpful to remind these ignorant ants gnawing at Aeon’s roots and give them a small dose of Aeon’s Perspective.”

The same spymaster smirked at Hoyia’s wordplay. “I propose that the phrase ‘Aeon’s Perspective’ be the official name of this operation. The similarities to ‘Aeon’s Mercy’ must be intentional.”

The matreearch nodded. “Thank you, Spymaster Varida. I see the concerned looks of those present, and I recognize some of you need time to process Aeon’s thoughts. Please, go back and think about it. Discuss and return. We’ll meet again in two months.”

I did not intend to carry out the order just yet.

I wanted to see how much mileage I could get out of the threat.

Aeon’s Perspective.

A little embarrassing, but if it struck credible fear into the hearts of any ruler, so be it.

50

INTERLUDE – LIZARDFOLK (PART 1)

Chief Jaan was a lizardperson who’d seen too much war in his life, and he had seen too many of their village’s spawn and younglings die in the wars. Wars against the other kingdoms, wars against demons. It was just war in perpetuity, and he had always thought this was how life was.

He watched as the matron, the eldest of the females, tended to the spawning pools. Life was cheap.

The spawning pools gave their village hundreds of young broods every year, but everyone knew it was a tradeoff. Spawning pools, in which lizardfolks donated their eggs and seeds into a pool, were a communal affair. The females of the village, when they came to maturity, could all produce a special liquid known as spawnfeed. This would be brewed with other foods and components into a broth, which was poured into said pools. This nurtured the eggs and seeds from their infancy.

Naturally, quantity and quality was a trade-off. Spawnfeed came from the females, and it was a drain on their physique, and its quality determined by how much was produced and how much they had to make. The quality of the other foods and components also mattered in the strength of the spawn.

The first years of a spawnling were their years of haze. Lizardfolks did not gain full sentience and mind until the second year, when they finally stepped out of their spawning pools, but the quality of the food and spawnfeed had a huge impact on how long this took and the level of intellect the spawns had.

Yet, in order to ensure some spawn survived the wars, quality was always sacrificed for quantity. So much so that it was almost a sacrilege to go for quality.

Then he saw the visitors for the first time. The knight, Ebon, seemed like a demigod from the ancient tales passed down from lizard-chief to lizard-chief. His presence far outstripped even the strongest that he had met, and as chief, he had seen many.

Then, a few years later, the visitors came.

With a lizardfolk. A lizard person from the other world, dressed in the bright green insignia of that other world.

Valthorn.

Unlike the lizardfolks of the village, who were generally smaller and had skinny muscles, this lizardfolk stood tall, as tall as the biggest of the other races, with muscles that radiated power. His scales glimmered when the sun’s rays reflected on it, a reflection of good health. His eyes were bright yellow instead of the dull brown commonly seen in the other lizardfolks.

Everyone fawned, Chief Jaan included. It was fair to say every single lizardfolk stared at Kafa.

The knights chuckled at their reaction. “Kafa, everyone’s staring at you again.” Chief Jaan immediately imprinted the name in their mind.

Kafa shrugged. He had been through this too many times; this reaction was absolutely normal. Even back on Treehome, healthy lizardfolks were rare, and lizardfolks like Kafa, who were specially bred for pure power and strength? Every tour of the outer continents was met with fawning looks.

The result of the Valtrian lizardfolk repopulation program over the decades, and Aeon’s dedicated development program, Kafa’s natural abilities far outstripped the malnourished lizardfolks of Mountainworld.

To Chief Jaan, Kafa was living proof that something else was possible. Something other than their endless grind of sending young, malnourished spawnlings to the meat grinder of war.

The village of lizardfolks did nothing. Life in the village was stable, even if it wasn’t ideal.

The heroes were freed. They broke the demons, defeated the demon king, and the war against the demonic armies came to an end. “A new nation in the lands cursed by the demon.” Jaan heard the news in the cities during the chief’s regular tax payment visits to the capital.

This was nothing more than background noise to the village.

Yet that stability was short, because the inter-kingdom wars, long dormant, resurfaced. Old grudges returned, and the kingdoms fought over the right to rule in this new era of “peace.”

He was upset when sixty of his strongest lizard warriors were drafted for the war and never returned. Upset, but they did nothing.

It was when flames of war came for their village that they finally were spurred into action. A skirmish that led more of their people dead and rumors of more attacks.

They thought of moving, even if that meant abandoning the spawning pools. Unlike the rest of the civilized worlds, lizardfolks had no attachment to their spawnlings, a byproduct of their reptilian origin.

Eventually, the discussions on migration led back to Kafa. He thought of the new nation in the cursed land and wondered what kind of kingdom they would be.

Could their spawn be like that warrior?

Branchhold, they called it. It was visible from miles away, the trees of Branchhold seeming to reach so very high into the sky. The largest of them seemed to touch the clouds themselves, and Chief Jaan wondered whether it was just some kind of magic.

Even the air felt different. They felt the ripples of aura on their skins and their bodies.

“Was this city always here?” one of his lizard mates asked.

Jaan never visited this area, even before the wars, but as far as he knew, no. This place shouldn’t have existed, unless some great magic hid them from the world. “I am not certain.”

The leaves of the forests were vibrant; the grasslands had a life in them that they’d not seen elsewhere. There were still fallen leaves and dried grass, but it seemed like new grass had already sprung up to take their place.

The group was greeted by three full layers of walls covered with vines and roots that looked taller than the highest of demons they’d seen. Beetles crawled on those vines and roots, patrolling.

The gates were manned by a group of soldiers in bright green uniform. The same uniform of the lizardperson, Kafa.

“Are you here for the resettlement arrangement?” One of them approached them. “Sorry. I mean, are you refugees looking to move to Branchhold?”

Jaan paused at the words and realized that they were, in fact, refugees. He nodded. “Yes. Yes we are.”

The dwellings they received were strange, located at the roots of the trees. They were organized to different sections based on the race of the refugees, and Jaan’s villagers received strangely high-quality dwellings made out of roots. The roots themselves curved to form these roundish dwellings, and there were pools of water for younglings.

What was rather unusual was that each dwelling had their own spawning pools instead of a communal spawning pool. He made a note to locate a spot suitable for communal spawning pools within the area.

“Greetings, Chief Jaan.” One of Branchhold’s representatives came to greet them, another lizardfolk.

“Ah, greetings, you are?”

“Foorang, I’m an administrator of Fresh—Branchhold,” the lizardperson said. “How are they taking to their new dwellings?”

“It’s very comfortable. We do find some features a little strange, but may I just check, is this our temporary dwelling?”

“Oh. These dwellings are yours unless you find them unsatisfactory. Will you continue to be the chief of these lizardfolks?” Foorang asked.

Chief Jaan paused for a moment. “I see. What will it cost us?”

“Sorry?”

“What will the nobility require of us lizardfolk to pay for such accommodation? A hundred lizardfolk warriors per year?”

Foorang struggled for a moment as he racked his brain for a response. “Ah. Uh…I think that’s a conversation with the central governing body. There will be reproduction quotas, like how it is organized back on the Central Continent.”

“…sorry, can you repeat that again?” Chief Jaan wasn’t sure what he had just heard.

“I think it’s best that we explain this in a dedicated environment.” Foorang quickly redirected the conversation as he realized there was a cultural gap to bridge. “For now, will you be the chief of these lizardfolks?”

“Why?”

The administrator wondered momentarily. “Every new refugee group needs an appointed representative to the Council of Branchhold.”

“Ah. Yes. I will be, for the time being.”

“Great. There will be a briefing for the new migrants, and you can take two others with you. The council will explain the rules of our city and answer your questions, should you have them,” Foorang said. “There will be a lizardfolk-specific session as well, which we will first run through with the leaders and matrons.”

The issue of taxation and drafting was easy to get through. Lizardfolk villages normally paid their taxes by way of manpower. They supplied expendable lizardfolk warriors by the hundreds, and this was their “tax” to the kingdom.

A shift toward “work” and payment by way of production wasn’t hard to understand, and Chief Jaan was aware of some lizardfolk villages that paid their taxes by way of swampland herbs and potions.

What they struggled with was the change to the policy of spawning pools. It was a concept that they understood but found hard to internalize. Lizardpeople were expendable. They bred by the hundreds and died by the hundreds. A malnourished lizard warrior was half as strong as others at level ten, but they covered that up with sheer numbers.

Each lizardfolk community would be given a communal spawning pool, but it would be located near the giant tree in the center of the city. There were visiting hours, and each matron would be trained. Each communal spawning pool was also limited to only fifty spawnlings at a time, unlike the multiple hundreds that they were used to.

They were briefed on the objective to breed stronger lizardfolks with higher quality of spawnfeed and additional nutrients, and the city would supply specialized saps that would be fed to the communal pools.

A normal spawnling would take two to three years to mature in the communal spawning pool, so after the first year in the communal spawning pool, each family of lizardfolks would be allowed to move a small group of spawnlings to their personal spawning pools if they desired to raise the spawnlings in their own ways. Otherwise, they would remain in the main communal spawning pool.

The matrons had to work with the herbalists and the druids of Branchhold; coupled with sharing the feed with non-lizardfolks and the spawning limits, Jaan could already see the defensiveness brewing in their brown eyes.

Some of them were already muttering some unpleasant words under their breath, and Jaan got the full uncensored version once they got back.

51

INTERLUDE – LIZARDFOLK (PART 2)

Life for the migrated lizardpeople was comfortable but different. The migrants enjoyed the comforts and the outward safety, but in private, they argued and bickered over the tradeoff. Jaan suffered their pleas and whines, for he was chief.

It was him they blamed for their situation. After all, he suggested this particular location.

“This place is not the way of the lizardpeople.”

Tradition, as it was, resisted change.

Jaan felt tradition was helpful; it helped them make good decisions. But he was not beholden to them. They were not a rule. Tradition was not always the answer.

Thus lay the first schism with the matrons, as that was not how matrons saw it. The matrons believed that tradition was the only way for young lizardfolks to be lizardfolks.

Veer away from that, and the lizardfolks were something else entirely. It was as if a lizardfolk and the culture around being a lizardfolk was inseparable.

That schism was at the heart of their dispute. Was tradition law or just a recommendation?

His ears, if he was human, would’ve fallen off, and he could now recite their arguments by heart, the words imprinted into his mind.

But he didn’t believe it.

Their culture was part of the problem.

Even in their small clan of lizardfolks, there were the traditionalists and the modernists who embraced the new way.

He had hoped there was a bridge somewhere. Something to bring the two sides of the clan together. It existed somewhere, but as of now, he did not see the way to it.

“Aeon intends for the lizardfolk leaders to see what life is on Treehome. Ten of your most senior representatives are invited for a trip to the Treehome. This trip will take about three to four weeks.”

“A trip to Treehome? Where is that?” the matrons asked.

“Aeon’s home world.” Jaan gasped. In his day-to-day life, he had heard whispers and rumors that these people were otherworlders, but it was another thing to travel there.

Naturally, they couldn’t miss the opportunity. Jaan and nine others came, and there were many others. Lizardfolks, elves, and the other migrants had all selected their own representatives for the trip. Jaan recognized a few familiar faces, faces he met during the monthly migrant integration meetings.

They gathered for the trip at the floor of the gigantic tree of Branchhold.

They didn’t like being here. Just approaching it filled them with a sense of such overwhelming dread, and he could see the same pale-faced expression on his other clan members. They weren’t exactly sure why.

They brought some luggage along, stored in standardized bags provided by the Branchhold’s officials. On the ground, there was clearly some differentiation between the officials of Branchhold, and those of this Treehome.

They had a slightly different badge that pulsed and had a strange scent.

“Please stand here. The transportation process will begin shortly.”

Jaan saw the first of the other groups vanish suddenly, and one of the matrons shouted in surprise. The officials quickly calmed her down, explaining that it was a teleportation spell of some kind. The matrons shouted back, at first, claiming that it lacked the mana presence for a spell.

“Chief Jaan, you’re next.” The officers guided them to the location. He stood, and just as suddenly, he felt a vine touch him. It sent something through him.

[You will be sent to another world. Do you agree?]

He could refuse, but he felt that the spell could send him through anyway. He knew by instinct it was powerful enough to overpower him. Jaan nodded, and it was instantaneous.

All of a sudden, he was elsewhere. The rest of the representatives from his clan joined him moments later. The eldest matron was amazed. She hadn’t known of a skill that could send one through worlds.

The air immediately felt different, the stench of the demonic presence gone, replaced by the overwhelming presence in the air, a kind of natural magic. Branchhold was still surrounded by quite a lot of corrupted demon lands, territories unclaimed, and that stench still drifted to Branchhold occasionally.

Here? Nothing.

“Welcome.” Everyone was here, and there were a hundred of them. They were located in a deep valley, though with all the bright lighting, it was hard to tell. “Please, this way.” They were guided to a convoy of tour beetles.

The wide-eyed lizardfolks were led into protected beetles, where they witnessed the vast, sprawling metropolis of Freshka. Freshka’s various districts were visible as the beetles crossed the little crest of a hill.

Jaan’s slitted lizard eyes scanned the metropolis from their vantage point. The segments of the academic district with the towers of the FTC, the military-magic district where the Valtrian Order and the mages trained, and the sprawling economic and residential segments that took up all the spaces in between.

He had seen large cities, but never so large.

“I’ve never seen a city so large,” one of the female matrons said, and the eldest matron was just silent. Jaan knew she had a lot to take in. Silence was how she processed information.

After a short moment, the beetles ferried them through the streets on the dedicated branchways that crisscrossed the city. Traffic was hardly ideal in Freshka, even the dedicated branchways had to share traffic with many other beetles, among the other dedicated paths made from branches, and underground root paths that moved people from place to place.

“And so messy,” another human, one of the leaders of the human-faction of Branchhold, commented.

“Some refer to that as being alive. A city that lives.”

Jaan began to tour the districts. Their first stop was the education district, and they were greeted by four young lords of the Central Continent: a treefolk, a human, a Centaur, and a lizardfolk.

He froze when he saw one of the lords and ladies was a lizardfolk, covered in all kinds of badges and dressed in a beautiful set of armor. Whoever planned this trip was clever, and he noticed the matrons themselves glared enviously at the young lady.

“Greetings, I am Lady Ghairen,” the lizardfolk lady spoke to them. “It is my honor to greet our esteemed visitors from Branchhold. It is indeed a shock to me to know that lizardfolks exist on other worlds, too, and also a great honor, that I am tasked with introducing the ways of my fellow lizardfolks to the representatives of Branchhold. Greetings.”

The matrons’ glares were a mix of both envy and pride. She was tall, and her body strength did not pale to any male. There was a deep sheen to her scales, a clarity to her eyes, a glint to her teeth. Jaan himself was fairly flabbergasted to beauty. It was an admiration not unlike seeing a goddess. He had to dig deep and pull himself to react.

“Now, I’ll be your guide during this process. For the lizardfolks, we will be touring some of the lizardfolk enclaves in Freshka and also a dedicated tour of the lizardfolk villages in the outskirts. We will also be meeting a few elite lizardfolk Valthorns, the valiant warriors who protect us from the demons.”

Everyone nodded. The lady had some kind of skill that seemed to just hold their attention, even if what she said was boring.

A matron immediately ribbed Jaan. “Why don’t you speak like that?”

Jaan snarled. “Wrong class.”

The college of the nobility and the commoners wasn’t of much interest to the lizardfolks. The elves and humans, however, found it thoroughly fascinating, as they had some kind of schooling and academy system back home and so could compare notes.

Then they went on to the military academy, and that was when the matrons truly, truly revealed a thirst he had rarely seen in them.

The Valthorns had an area where the lizardfolk Valthorns trained, and all of them were strong, powerful individuals. Their stares and glances were greedy, filled with desire, even the eldest matron.

Lady Ghairen nodded, as if she expected the reaction. She was used to the scene so she didn’t react to the sight of these powerful lizardfolks. “The Valthorns will perform a demonstration of their levels of strength. The group here is part of the junior batch, at around level sixty to eighty. The military of Treehome is organized around the Valtrian Order, which has the mass military forces, the Valthorns, which comprises the elite forces of Treehome. Within the Valthorns itself, there are further segregations into specialized units, with the junior batch of level sixty to one hundred, the senior batch of level one hundred and above, and the elites, the best of the senior batch.”

“Level sixty to eighty is the junior batch?” One of the matrons wanted to faint.

“Of course.” Lady Ghairen smiled. “The bar to enter the true Valthorn ranks is level one hundred.”

“Level one hundred!”

“To be able to challenge the demon champions singlehandedly, level eighty is the minimum. You will meet a few level one hundred lizardfolks later on.”

“How do they train till such levels?” Jaan was curious about the specifics.

“That’s classified. I do not know the full details of what the Valthorns go through. There are some guesses and rumors, of course, that Aeon has some secret dungeons for the Valthorns, but no one has ever found them.”

“I see.” Jaan admired the incredible build and strength of the lizardfolks and felt proud that they could stand toe to toe with the best of them.

The humans and elves were less impressed with the high-leveled elves, because they too had seen level eighty elves and humans, but rather, they were taken aback that lizardfolks, that they normally considered to be generally weaklings, even at the same levels, displayed such exceptional strength.

“I don’t want to paint the wrong picture here,” Lady Ghairen clarified. “The Valthorns, even the lizardfolks, are trained from young. These lizardfolks are designed and educated for the long war against the demons. They are selected for their exceptional combat talents, and not all lizardfolks live such lives.”

“How many lizardfolks are there?” a matron asked. “How many serve as tools of war?”

“From the publicly available data revealed by the Valthorns, less than three thousand lizardfolks serve in the Valthorns, though about hundred and seventy thousand serve in the Valtrian Order throughout the Central Continent. Our total population, based on the estimates collected by the FFA, puts our lizardfolks at somewhere around eighty million.”

“Eighty million?!”

“Yes, one-third of that number lives in the area of Wetport Lapule, which is the lizardfolks’ de facto capital. The rest are scattered all over the continent, in smaller towns, swamp and marshland cities, or in the various villages.”

The matrons looked at each other, curious what a great lizardfolk city was like. “Will we be able to visit that city?”

Lady Ghairen wasn’t sure and looked at a Valthorn assistant. “I’ll get back to you on that.”

The tour took them to the Treeology School, again fairly boring to the lizardfolks but fascinating to the elves, humans, and others.

Sometime later, Lady Ghairen came with splendid news.

“Yes. The Valthorns agreed to provide some free time to visit Wetport Lapule,” Lady Ghairen said with much joy. “I won’t be going with you, however, as I have some tasks here. You will be received by a district chief of the city instead.”

Four days it took for the lizardfolks to make the trip to Wetport Lapule.

It was nestled along the Lapula Bay area, where the once-pure waters of the Pule River met the Great Eastern Oceans. Along the eastern seaboard of the Central Continent, Wetport Lapule was the noisy hive of the lizardfolks.

A stench foul to all but lizardfolks filled the air; the place was once idyllic. Urbanization and the massive influx and population explosion of lizardfolks erased most of that purity.

Over ten million lizardfolks lived across the many structures and lizard-made rivers along the coasts of the Lapula Bay, and another ten to fifteen million more across the great metropolis.

Here, it was where the great chiefs and kings of the lizardfolks would rule over the rest of their kind, though no lizard had dared call themselves king of the lizardfolks since the great catastrophe of the Rottedlands.

For all it took was to look up and witness the great tree that loomed over Wetport Lapule, the twisted, swamp-adapted form of their guardian and patron, Aeon.

A reminder of death, an obelisk of the great restoration, and also a shining, guiding flame of the city.

Many other gigantic trees loomed over the city and the bay, spawned over the generations by their patron, but it was their Light of the Swamps, the beacon of the Wetport, that was the biggest of them. It was both a tree and lighthouse. On the tallest branches of that tree, there were a stairs that led to a large, forever-burning flame.

They once wanted to replace the flame of the ports with a bright, magical crystal that did not require the careful tending of a group of specialist lizards, the [Flameguardians].

Yet superstition prevailed, as rituals and beliefs emerged over the decades and the plan for the crystal light wildly resisted.

What was Wetport Lapule without the ever-burning flames on the highest of their trees? The lizardfolks believed, even if untrue, that the flame was a remnant of the Rottedlands. In truth, it was just Aeon’s copy of the crown of flames that once lit its true body. The lizardfolks needed a lighthouse, and his giant tree could easily serve the purpose.

Despite truth, symbolism. Faith.

Prevailed.

Aeon was perhaps wise enough to know that it was pointless to stop superstition. The races sought patterns and symbols, so Aeon allowed it.

It was the symbol of rebirth. A symbol of the way home.

Rain or shine, whether storm or hurricane, the [Flameguardians] ensured the flames lit the skies, marking the lizards’ return. Next to service as one of the great Valthorns warriors, the [Flameguardian] was coveted.

Among those lizardfolks who survived that fateful day and lived, many privately worshipped the great tree as a variant, an image of some animistic deity of the lizardfolks.

Heresy. It was not what the Treeology priests taught, thus quietly said and whispered among the closest of lizardfolks. It was something a lizardfolk would only share when their scales touched and their bodies intertwined with each other.

Yet tolerated.

As Jaan and the rest of them marveled at the great, foul, disgusting, and sprawling mass of their kind, at that moment, they had a realization.

“This is what we could be,” the matrons realized, if nothing else. A sight that they’d never realized possible, that their kind could have a great city of their own, so massive and so large that the residents of the Wetport Lapule would need days of scrubbing and showering to wash off the stench of all the droppings.

Jaan shook his head. Of all things, this was what the matrons wanted for their kind?

A city of lizardfolks? It was true that lizardfolks did ascend to quite high and senior ranks back home, and there were lizardfolk kingdoms and nations in the past. But the sheer nature of lizardfolk breeding habits and their weaker-than-average strength, on average, mean lizardfolk kingdoms rarely lasted long.

Civil war was common in lizardfolk kingdoms, as generations after the founding king, so many claim to be descendants of the king. Their communal breeding nature did not help, and Jaan had always felt this was a flaw of their breeding practices.

But he did not express his thoughts, as his eyes looked at the city around them. Their carrier beetles led them through the long, dedicated passageways, but they could see housing and shops that seemed to stretch as far as the eyes could see.

Almost all lizardfolks, though some other races had chosen to live among them.

The bay was pristine once, but much had changed. Instead, it was filled with ships of all shapes and sizes, and massive, gigantic lizardfolks meant for war filled the docks.

Pirates. Privateers. Sailors.

Back home, Jaan had never known of lizardfolk sailors. They could swim quite well, but they were most familiar with the shores and seas. Not the deep oceans, but here, their kind adapted.

Jaan’s [inspect] quickly revealed that their levels were not much higher than his own, yet their physique and health suggested a far better quality upbringing. Their scales all had at least some shimmer, unlike their own dull scales.

“Chief Jaan.” A Valtrian order assistant had to wear some kind of mask. The stench was overpowering. “We are arriving in another hour. I’ll introduce you to District Chief Saraf. He runs District II of the Wetport, and he’ll bring you all around.”

The beetle convoy of lizardfolks stopped at the bottom of the great tree of the Wetport Lapule. The location itself was grandly decorated with a large, opulent receiving platform and ornately carved walkways, lifts and handles. Statues made of valuable materials littered the location, and smaller but incredibly beautiful trees were scattered all over.

Their eyes drifted to the crowd waiting for their turn. There were lines of pilgrims and young lizardfolks, led by their teachers, minders, and matrons.

Faith and superstition reinforced.

But to the matrons, they saw tradition. A tradition not their own.

“Greetings, Chief Jaan. Must be a journey, to come from a small, faraway village to the big city.” Saraf was a tall, slender lizardman with spotted red scales. He was ornamented from head to toe with gold studs and gold-plated scales to replace where some scales had dropped off, gemstone rings on his scaled fingers. He had a large, thick necklace similarly made of gold and silver.

“Greetings, Chief Saraf,” Jaan responded.

“Ah, I must correct you there. I will be referred to as district chief. There are many chiefs in this city, I am but one of the thirty-four district chiefs of the central Wetport administration, and I would be in trouble if anyone heard you refer to me as anything else.”

“My apologies, District Chief.”

Then he laughed and gently jabbed Jaan on the shoulder. “I’m joking. Don’t be a tense lizard. Your tail might drop off. We are not so uptight. We’d die from stress if we’re anal about things like naming. Come, come.”

Jaan noticed there were guards but just ordinary ones. Better equipped, and in better health, but noticeably ordinary.

“We’ve arranged for a trip up to see the Light of the Wetport. That’s the first touristy thing everyone does. Or religious, I suppose.”

“Touristy? What does that mean?” Jaan asked out of genuine curiosity. A concept unheard of, back on Mountainworld.

“What you happen to be doing now, Jaan. Visiting. Touring.”

“Ah. It is a thing here. Pardon me.”

“No worries. Village bum problems.” Saraf laughed as they waited. The matrons watched eager, cheerful young lizardfolks escorted by their minders into specially made wooden lifts so they didn’t have to climb up the steps. Each lift had multiple ropes and anchors, and once filled and properly secured, it was then lifted up to the top.

The work of lizardfolk [crafters] and [builders].

But not all took the lifts. There were those who took the hike up the great tree as a journey of their own, the fenced stairs and ladders coiled around the twisted giant tree like a snake.

It was soon their turn, but by now the matrons’ faces were visibly different. They had seen so many, old and young, visit.

The light, a flame that seemed to burn the tree itself, was located on the tallest branch of the tree. It seemed to burn ravenously and burned the branches, intentionally so. Yet it never seems to spread; specialized lizardfolks ensured it never did.

Jaan felt the heat from the bright flames and watched the [flameguardians] go about their work.

The tour group was safe. Their vantage point was a large ring-shaped platform around the flames. They shared the large platform. The earlier groups were also admiring the flames. Jaan looked at little young children, with their still-tiny scales and bright eyes, wobble and go gaga over the huge flames.

A matron couldn’t help herself. She approached the guardians of the young lizardfolks and struck up a conversation with the minders. The rest of the matrons swarmed in to join her, eager to learn about the locals.

They were curious, and conversations between the matrons and the minders were juicy.

Jaan just watched and looked at the district chief.

“Everyone visits these flames?”

“Yes. It’s a thing. We sell paintings and sculptures downstairs for lizardfolk visitors who wanted to take a bit of it home. Souvenirs.”

“Really?” Jaan didn’t understand the concept.

“Yeah. I don’t get it, either. Paintings and souvenirs just can’t compare to actually being here, high above the city, and being next to the flames that guide our raiding ships home. A painting or a sculpture just doesn’t have that presence.”

Most captains and sailors had some navigational skills, but [lighthouses] and [ports] were structures that acted as beacons in their own minds. Like waypoints.

Symbols.

And if enough people believed in it, the system absorbed elements of the symbols.

Jaan couldn’t get the matrons to stop talking, but luckily, the minders and the children had to go back to their care centers.

Yet he could see it in some of the matrons, who realized that traditions changed.

Yes, there was an argument to hold onto original traditions, to write them down, to remember why they were and what they were for. Jaan knew that their own matrons understood the traditions and their purpose.

The beetle now led them to tour the rest of Wetport Lapule, which was different.

There was a bustle, an energy in the docks that was palpable. Everyone did something and wanted to do something. There was always a ship setting out, and even though the skies looked cloudy, no one seemed to mind.

Just being here made Jaan feel like he was a slacker.

The eldest matron stood next to Jaan and sighed. “They are so strange.”

“Strange?” Jaan asked.

“Lizardfolks. Sailors.”

“Their world is different. They have large oceans, while ours only has one large one.”

“Their traditions, their ways. So different.”

Jaan nodded. “We may be similar in appearance, but their people changed over time.”

A ship sailed in, battered, but the captain was a large, burly lizardman with scars and tattoos that glowed. Level fifty [Pirate War Captain]. Enchantments. He wore gloves made of some kind of unusual steel, thick with magical enchantments.

“But look at them.”

The matron gave out a long sigh. “That’s the thing. I can’t say they are wrong. They have life, and they have dignity, their own city, their own culture. These lizardfolks belong here, unlike us, running and fleeing from the flames of war. Our kingdoms never last more than a decade, and here—”

“They have the might to defend their claim. We don’t.”

“You know we usually fall to infighting,” the matron answered.

Lizardfolks of Mountainworld were segregated. Separated. Treated as disposable units deployed just to overwhelm their enemies with sheer numbers.

The largest they had was just a city not even one-tenth of this monstrous, sprawling agglomeration. They never got large enough, which was ironic, given their breeding patterns designed for volume.

Even when they did, infighting broke their clans and villages apart, and they were back to square one. The poorer average quality of lizardfolks meant many just died along the way. Their poor skills and abilities meant they couldn’t even feed that many, if they wanted to.

Jaan nodded. “I don’t believe they are entirely right, Matron. But there are things to learn from their path. Something in between the two traditions.”

The matron shook her head. “Mixing traditions is even more dangerous.”

Jaan shrugged and saw what they liked. Lizardfolks of Wetland Lapule were truly masters of herbs and potions, due to competition among the [herbalists], [witchdoctors] and [shamans], and far better record keeping and tracking of recipes by the central authority.

There was tradition, but new traditions could also be made.

“District Chief Saraf, when we were back on Freshka, we saw some Valthorn lizardpeople. Are there any here?”

Saraf laughed like it was the most ridiculous statement ever. “Is your village so small that they didn’t even put a Valthorn? The Great Tree has people everywhere. Everywhere.”

He then pointed in a particular direction, where Jaan’s eyes suddenly saw a giant tree, just as large as the one with the flames, located slightly further inland but still deep in the suburbs and districts of their city. “Strange. Why didn’t I see that before?”

“Tree-magic.” Saraf laughed. “I think. Or some godly shenanigans. But if you want to find Valthorns, that is where you go. That’s also the super-rich district and the administrative district of Wetland Lapule.”

“Super rich?”

“Yup. If you’re one of the guild lords or great admirals, you’ll have a home in District XII. It’s a fancy, really upscale place where they’d kick you out if you got a scale out of place.”

“Really?”

Jaan stared, and Saraf eventually shrugged.

“All right, I’m half joking. The Valtrian Order doesn’t do that. But the private establishments do. Uppity farts with half-drooping tails between their legs.”

“If you didn’t tell me, I wouldn’t think you look out of place.” Jaan smiled.

“Meh.” Saraf cursed. “They think I’m a tryhard. Fools with too much money and too little brains. They’ll be poor in a generation or two.”

Jaan didn’t get it, but he nodded.

“Anyway, let’s not bore you with class dynamics in this swamphole.” Jaan saw through Saraf’s fake laugh. All was not perfect here, and so Jaan tried to poke a bit harder.

“What’s life like being…poor?”

“Fantastic. You just make your babies with some whore from the bar and dump them at the Valtrian Order’s nurseries, and it’s no longer your fucking problem, then you’re back to serving on the decks and a deckhand, then at night you’re pissed drunk somewhere, somehow, but never actually falling into the bay,” Saraf said. “Then you try to claim every orphan lizardfolk who made it as somehow your descendant. One you don’t have a hand in raising.”

Jaan felt that sounded way too personal, as if he lived it.

“Hah. Didn’t expect that, right? But anyway, I’m kidding. I wouldn’t want to be poor again. It’s terrible. All that alcohol doesn’t numb the fact that society sees you as worthless.”

Another set of statements Jaan couldn’t wrap around his head.

“But honestly, it’s the middle class who gets shoved. Mainly from stupid, ridiculous, absurd property prices. You know us lizardfolks. We don’t like tall skyscrapers like humans or elves. We like our homes on land, with some bits of flowing water and all that. That’s why we’ve kept building outward and pretty much taken over the entire bay! The other races now call this place the Bay of Lizards.”

They were now back on the deck.

“Huh. It’s almost entirely why they instituted production quotas. This place essentially bore the faults of lizardfolks over-birthing in the earlier half century. Aeon wanted to repopulate the lizardfolk population, which was fine and all, had everyone listened to their directives and lived in the old lizardfolk lands where there’s still a lot of space, but every other damned lizardfolk wanted to be here.”

The chief stared at the district chief again and couldn’t help but ask. “Why?”

“It’s the biggest market for lizardfolks. Highest wages, good competitive roles, best employers, and the land where all the famous non-Valtrian lizardfolks live. If you want to work for a famous [buccaneer admiral], this is the place to be.”

“Don’t chiefs tell the young lizardfolks what to do?” Jaan asked, as if the idea was so ridiculous. Why were younglings not listening to orders? In his mind, there was room for discussions and all, but once the decision was made, everyone had to follow.

That was the way. “Oh lord, you’re one of those oldies that still wants to dictate younglings, aren’t cha?”

Jaan paused and felt like he got slapped in the face. Metaphorically.

“Haha, my bad. Don’t mean to step on your old tail, but seriously, young lizardfolks these days are brought up with so many supplements and provided with such large amounts of knowledge and education, they’re just different. You gotta adapt or you won’t keep your role for long.”

“Wha—”

“I can feel that you come from a place unlike this, but reality is the young will have their own thoughts, and they won’t agree with you all the time. Time to let go. Let them experiment. This place was an experiment, after all. Though I suppose you could also say this damned place is an experiment that went on for far too long and it’s high time Aeon stepped in to revamp this damned bay.”

Suddenly, he now understood the matrons’ resistance.

Tradition dictated that they defer to the matrons on matters of family and raising younglings, and he tried to change it.

Here, his role was subject to change. He was old and felt old. This was what it was like to feel like the world was changing too fast and you couldn’t keep up.

He had been too selfish and perhaps ignorant. He thought that his own position was safe from change. Was the matron’s resistance arising out of insecurity over their own roles in the future lizardfolk society?

Where did they go from here?

52

YEAR 236 (PART 2)

“Aworld since Borealworld,” Stella said as she stepped out of the portal and landed right into a pile of mud. Her magical shield immediately popped out around her. Lumoof and Edna followed close behind and looked at the world around her.

Borealworld was linked to two other worlds, and the world was surprisingly empty. Yet, no demons.

“Hmmm. Where are we?” Lumoof asked as Stella tried to triangulate her location in the void sea. Each world’s location was different, depending on which map we were looking at, so Stella looked back at Lumoof like it was a weird question. He naturally picked it up and laughed. “Sorry, stupid question. Still happens sometimes.”

“Hah.” Stella sighed, and then her eyes gazed on the skies above. The location was not good; it seemed further away from the demon sun. “Not good.”

Lumoof looked. “Well, I suppose all we can do is keep hopping until we figure out how to link our version of the void sea to the demon’s version of the void sea.”

Stella’s magical senses blanketed the world and discovered that it was a medieval fantasy society of humans.

“So. Do we spend time exploring this world?” Lumoof asked.

“No time. We’ll need to keep hopping. We can come back later.”

Edna looked around. “Well, then I shall give it the temporary name of Mudworld.”

“Your naming sense is just as bad as Aeon.” Stella cursed.

“I’m a [Knight]. Not a [Namer]. Nor a [Scribe].”

“As someone who used to paint posters for a living—”

Edna didn’t let Stella continue. “Now, now, we’re pressed for time, right?”

“There’s two,” Stella said, referring to two other worlds we could visit.

“Pick one.”

Stella pouted, waved her hand, and then we felt more void mana in the air. She used solely her void mana, a portal ripped apart the space before us, and we stepped through.

The next world was supposedly Mudworld’s astral neighbor, and it was just quiet. It was also barren and dusty and perpetually gloomy.

The sun was small, tiny. There was a faint scent in the air. Strange and alien. Stella’s senses spread out, and so did Lumoof’s.

“There’s some living beings here, and I sense magic.”

“Another non-demon world.” Edna seemed puzzled. “If we are headed toward the demons, shouldn’t there be more demon worlds?”

“Void sea peculiarities. The demons targeted every world that is close, but only from their perspective. From our perspective, it isn’t,” Stella said. She once described it as each world existing in a 3D space, and the demons compressed it into a 2D flatland from the top. For her, they were viewing it from the front. Our attempts to reverse-engineer the original 3D illustration of the void sea from our 2D perspective proved to be very challenging.

“Wouldn’t our perspective of the astral neighbors be the real one?”

“As real as the demon’s star paths,” Stella said and sighed. “We’re somewhere far away now. We’ll have to hop again.”

“All right.” Lumoof waited, and then another black void appeared before them.

“I’ll need to rest after this. I have enough for a single portal back, but that’s it.”

Edna paused. “Before we go, we should give this world a name. Do you want to do the honor, Lumoof?”

“Tiny Sun World,” Lumoof said, and both the ladies groaned.

“It’ll have to do for now,” Stella answered. Names were temporary, anyway. They could be updated once we interacted with the locals on a later date. “Let’s go.”

“Got it,” Lumoof and Edna said, and they were through to the third world.

The third world was a demon-conquered world. Edna was the first to sense their presence, as the demonic hounds roamed the terrain.

The demonic world itself was covered with the same type of spires we’d seen in other demon worlds. There were multiple large spawning pools.

“Are we close?” Lumoof asked as Edna slaughtered the rest of the demonic hounds. They were weak, but these hounds looked almost exactly like the ones we’d seen on other worlds. Demonic hounds were frankly like the low-level grunt-type that the demons spawned on so many worlds.

Stella frowned and didn’t answer. It was a stupid question. She rested in the small prototype rest stops. These prototypes were meant for Valthorns to use in the event they couldn’t retreat to any of my trees. The domain holders figured this was as good a time as any to test it out. “Honestly, no idea.”

With magical bag of holdings and a set of crystals that functioned as a controller, they deployed a magical wall, a small home, and also carried a small store of materials, things that a domain holder didn’t really need but was still nice to have.

It was fairly easy for three individuals to hide, and the fact that the defenders were so weak just made it easy.

Edna looked around. The air was fairly dry.

“Houndworld?”

“Hounds are everywhere, not just this world. I don’t think calling it Houndworld would identify it, though it is quite funny we haven’t seen anything other than hounds.” But they were not really looking and lazed about in the encampment. Stella took a nap, and Lumoof read a book. Edna fiddled with her knife.

Void mana took about three times longer to recover than regular mana, even with Stella’s soul and domain powers. A regular archmage regained their mana pool within hours; a void archmage would take a day.

Lumoof looked around and then back at the mostly barren, lifeless terrain. “Let’s call this Demonhound World?”

“Not better, but I suppose it’ll have to do for now.”

Lumoof shared my ability to see the astral paths, and we saw this world had an active starpath to another world. The demons of this world were invading somewhere else. It was also linked to another two worlds.

Once Stella regained her void mana, it was another choice. There are three worlds we could access, one through the rift gates, once we found it, and two interplanar neighbors.

“Which one?”

“Going to the invaded world is definitely going to be a habited world. We’re trying to reach the demon sun this way, so logically we should be going in the other direction. Stella, is there a way to trace the rift paths backward? Like, to see old rift paths?”

Edna stared back at Lumoof. “She’s napping!”

“She can hear me,” Lumoof retorted. “I know she’s not really sleeping, just closing her eyes.”

Stella turned and yawned.

“Yeah. So you know how roads, after they are not used, they eventually stop looking like roads? I’m not sure whether these ‘void sea’ roads leave any…marks.”

Edna looked at Lumoof. “You’re saying that since every demon world must have been invaded at some point, there must be a demon world where that was the source. By repeatedly following the source, if such a thing is even possible, you suspect we eventually get to the demon sun.”

“Exactly. You’re smart!”

Stella yawned. “Void mana decays very quickly. No marks.”

“What about core mana?”

“Core mana decays when exposed to any form of light. The mixture doesn’t stay stable for long. Once the rift path collapses, it’s gone.”

Lumoof paused. “There must be a better way to do this than just randomly hopping, I think. What about the rift gates? Do they have an origin coordinate to call?”

“No,” Stella said. “I checked.”

“How these rift gates are made is still a mystery to me.”

Stella nodded. “They are ‘spawned.’”

Edna looked back at Stella, seemingly thoughtful. “Actually, let’s say our suspicion that the demon sun threw a comet our way, this comet must exist in both perspectives of the demons, and ours, even if its movement is erratic in one of them.”

“It would appear as if it’s teleporting,” Stella said.

Lumoof shrugged and sighed. “I don’t get it. You’re using void mana, and the demons are using void mana. Why does it work so differently? Are the rift gates doing something we’re not? You say they look at it differently, and our views and theirs are different. But that cannot be the case, is it? There must be an absolute truth somewhere, even if it’s beyond our scope of understanding.”

Before Stella could continue, Lumoof went on.

“Like, is void mana compressing dimensions or something? Or does it flattens perspective, and it’s the users’ perspective that’s flattened—”

Stella’s eyes widened, and she stared back at Lumoof.

“What?”

“You might be on to something,” Stella said, and she went on a monologue, speaking her thoughts for all to hear. “Void mana as a mechanism to flatten one of the dimensional axes is worth exploring. Perhaps there is something within the rift gates that we’re not studying properly. If void mana is a form of anti-dimensional mana, then the star mana, which eliminates and offsets void mana, is an extradimensional form of mana or at least contains some kind of super-dimensional quality. Thus they just collapse on each other when they interact in large quantities. Our initial assumption of star and void mana as matter and antimatter is a close enough comparison but clearly misunderstands the way they work.”

“I’m lost,” Lumoof said.

Edna just closed her eyes and teased the priest. “You’ve awakened the thinking Stella. I’m going to take a nap.”

Stella then continued, “If that’s the case, it’s possible to posit that core mana is actually a form of node. Wait. No. It might be that core mana is a form of origin marker, which allows void mana to achieve stability as it collapses one of the dimensional axes. Wait. Wait. That may not make sense, either. Core mana could be a plane of reference that allows the void mana to have directionality.”

I was equally lost, but I supposed it made sense to some people out there. Perhaps the void mages would be interested in such academic discussions.

Stella flicked a finger, and a magical notepad appeared. She began repeating the whole thing, and once done, she passed it to Lumoof. “Send this back home for the archmages. They should start exploring how to go about doing this.”

Lumoof shrugged and activated our teleportation ability. The void mages would have a lot to do. “How long before we can start going somewhere?”

The void mage laughed. “Another two hours.”

“Oh Aeons! I’ve got to bear with your magical mumbling for another two?”

“Hey!”

“I’m kidding!”

They picked one of the other worlds at random, and it was another demon world.

“Well, if we’re heading toward demon worlds, that should be a good sign, right?”

Edna nodded. The demons of this world took the form of gigantic turtles, similar to the gigantic lizards seen on the anti-magic world, but also subtly different.

“Demon Turtleworld.”

“Demon Turtleworld it is.” Edna sighed. “We probably shouldn’t reduce the name of a planet to the single first thing we see.”

“We say that, but we still do it.”

Lumoof looked back. “I’m wondering whether this is really the best way to do it. Have we tried to just use the rift gates and call home?”

Stella rolled her eyes. “Of course we did. There’s a barrier. So we can’t.”

“Hmm. Would we encounter a barrier eventually? How’d they make such a barrier anyway?”

“No matter, let’s go look for a rift gate,” Stella said, and it wasn’t hard to find one. The rift gates were very visible in the large, barren plains of the Demon Turtleworld, so once we found it, Stella captured it and stored it in her own personal supersize magical bag of holding.

The reason for looking for the rift gate was simple. It allowed Stella to find this world’s rift gate number, which did seem to be somewhat correlated to distance from the demon sun.

“Yup. We’re somewhat in the right direction. Let’s keep going.”

“Got it.”

It was not a demon world, and instead, they landed on what appeared to be…storms and clouds.

Stella’s magical shield twisted as her shield was battered by lightning. There were strong storms around them. And yet there didn’t seem to be any land or earth. Edna and Lumoof both levitated around her, aided by their own levitation artifacts.

“A gas giant?” She looked around. No land at all, but the gas was so thick and dense, it seemed like there were bright rivers of cloud.

She extended her senses to the world around her and through the clouds. Lumoof did the same, but he was uncomfortable in this world of gas. In fact, I was uncomfortable, too. I didn’t like being so far away from solid ground.

It was just a nagging sensation about being away from earth that I disliked. It was gas and cloud as far as I could feel to our surroundings.

There was nothing below us, or at least nothing except those thick, flowing rivers of dense clouds, intertwined with some kind of magic.

Ley lines, forming rivers of clouds.

This was a strange, strange world.

Edna looked up and squinted. “Hmm. Look at that!”

“Huh?” Stella stared, trying to see what Edna saw. The knight had the best eyesight of the three, her physical abilities augmented by her levels and abilities. “Where?”

“There.”

Stella and Lumoof followed the general direction of her finger and extended their respective magical senses in that direction. They felt something, and then Stella manipulated the bubble of magic around the three and levitated them in that direction.

As the three moved upward, bolts of lightning from the storm clouds around them smashed into her magical shields.

It felt like forever, and those bolts of lightning were powerful.

“Alka would like this. He’d probably try to store some of this stuff in his crystals.”

They floated up the skies, and Stella felt the magical energies around her churn. “Weird.”

There were rivers of energy in the form of clouds that flowed in this world. Ley lines. Such a strange phenomenon.

They floated up even higher, and now they could begin to see the sun and the skies above. The sun of this world was very bright but very small.

“I should’ve been more careful,” Stella said as she continued to levitate everyone closer to the stars. “I just checked that there’s nothing obstructing us.”

“There really was nothing obstructing us.” Lumoof laughed, and then we began to see what Edna saw.

It was hidden, small and high up in the skies. The stormy clouds and lightning made it hard to even see, but then we saw it.

A floating island.

The trio landed on the island and looked at what appeared to be flat on the top. There were no plants; its surface was bare.

“I’ve got no expectations.” Lumoof shrugged. Stella did. She expected an island with trees and probably some people.

Nothing. But why was the island floating?

Lumoof looked at Stella. “We’ll explore this place for a bit, but if there’s nothing, we should get going. The other worlds await us.”

Stella nodded. “Yeah.”

The island itself was really empty, but then Lumoof paused and examined the rock itself. Why did it float? Then Lumoof deployed avatar mode.

My roots entered the stone and rocks of the floating island, and then, as I kept searching, I felt the presence of something at the center of it.

Through my roots, I created [Root Tunnel], and both Edna and Stella went to the location where they saw a small black stone plaque. It radiated a presence that felt familiar, and it emitted a strange energy that pushed back against mine.

And it was really, really old.

Stella approached it, and then she stopped. “Aeon, it’s divine energy. Or at least a half-decayed version of it.”

As Stella squatted and examined it, she looked at Edna. “I’ve got a theory.”

“And you want me to listen?” Edna groaned.

“Yeah.”

“Next time?”

“Fine.” Stella pouted. “Lumoof, get down here.”

The root tunnels should last for a while before they started to collapse, so Lumoof rushed down and reached the strange plaque. Lumoof squinted at the etchings on the plaque. “Let’s keep it for now and let’s keep moving. We can come back to this Stormworld some other day.”

Lumoof released vines and wrapped around the stone plaque and with a bit of a tug sent it home. It went directly into one of my research pods, along with the old divine wooden log.

The entire floating island started to shake. “We’ve got to go.”

Stella nodded and began to scan the starways. “All right, goodbye, Stormworld.”

53

YEAR 237

It began with a challenge.

“Aeon wouldn’t actually do it,” some of the nobles said, a statement echoed by many throughout the world. Those older and who had seen the more violent era were wise enough to know I would, and they tried their best to persuade those sitting on the fences.

It was one of those cases where there really was a generation gap in thinking. Those who grew up during the first few decades of my rule would remember me doing what I needed to do. Those who grew up in the post-Freshka dominion would not, so they highly doubted my resolve. Partly because a lot of the duties and battles became things that occurred without much fanfare.

The wars were fought by Valthorns and the elites, using means that most young nobles would not see.

“Would Aeon actually do it?” Some younger nobles met with Matreearch Hoyia after a regular sermon. “The threat of capturing all the leaders.”

Her wrinkled eyes seemed to smile. “A priest does not doubt her god’s words.”

“But—” the nobles protested her answer. She nodded and began to walk away.

“Again. A priest does not doubt one’s god. If Aeon does not act, it is because Aeon chooses to do so.”

“How would Aeon do it? How is it even—”

The old matriarch just smiled. “Look around the continent, young one.”

“It seems the nobles love to bother you, Hoyia.”

Hoyia smiled at the other old man, who was also dressed in the same robes—one of the fellow decarches of the Treeology, Patriarch Walfad. “I hear you’ve been bothered just as much.”

“Do you remember the last time Aeon issued such a public threat?”

Hoyia laughed. “No.”

“This is an entirely predicted response.”

To some extent, it worked. For a while. In the few months following the threats, the propaganda quieted down, and all the participants in the war seemed to take precautions. The war between the guilds and the Holy Empires of the four continents seemed to take more of a conventional approach.

But it didn’t last, and soon the participants all returned to their old ways. I repeated the threats again and this time had my void mages deliver little messages right to their doorstep.

This spooked them, but I needed stronger deterrence.

So I escalated my response. I hauled up the propaganda masters of the empires and also the warring merchant guilds with a contingent of void mages, where they came face to face with my main body directly, where I then deployed the age-old tactic of intimidation by sheer power. The weight of my presence deployed on these level fifty to sixty [Rumormakers], [Plotters], [Spies] and [Rabble Rousers].

It made almost all of them pee in their pants. I was fairly impressed with those that could hold their own.

“Do you know why you do what you do?” I asked the few that could still stand. Even together, the level gap was so large that they couldn’t. Some of them brought out their weapons, their items. They failed before my shields.

It was interesting that one’s soul was a weapon. The weight of our presence was a tangible thing that we could control.

Weaponize.

“I didn’t know you were real.”

It was just sometimes horrifyingly annoying that people didn’t believe what they didn’t see. No, even when they saw it, they just thought you were not real.

“Really? Even those with Aeonic classes?”

“Those classes…they are super rare in the continental states!” That wasn’t true. I could sense their presence. Those who believed in me, and thus gained the Aeonic classes, were scattered on all the kingdoms and even in Mountainworld.

I was silent, and the crowd of inciters shuffled uncomfortably. This power, to find and pick up the masterminds all over the world, was something that tyrants would kill to have. All because of an army of artificial minds and trees monitoring and tracking everyone of any value.

A power unimaginable to our world but possible here.

Power and magic shaped societies in different ways; magic and power added power and tools for a tyrant to rule. A world like this, with this sort of system, was pretty much designed for tyrants.

Every god was a tyrant. Every god imposed their will.

The inciters were uncomfortable, and then one of my spymasters emerged. Spymaster Varida had served us for decades, and he grinned at those present.

Some of them recognized him. “You! You’re that merchant!”

“Oh. I am a merchant in service of the great Aeon, tasked to haul you fools here. We are here to remind you to play within the bounds set out for you.”

Many knelt for forgiveness. Some fainted, again.

A tyrant flexing his strength on the weak. I felt disgusted at myself for doing so, but I remembered Lilies’ words.

Mortals needed pain to remember. This was only normal.

“You will be released this time. But next time—”

A portal opened, and Lavaworld was clear for all to see.

“We intend to send those who break the rules of engagement to the demon worlds. And we mean it.”

One of them stood, a priest of Gaya. “You’re a demon god! You have the power to access the demon worlds!”

Varida laughed. “It seems you fail to see our perspective. Let us provide you with some…dreams.”

The priest looked horrified. Mental reeducation. Perspective. I wished I didn’t have to do so. But these folks escalated the conflict and brought about the threats of a wider-scale war.

[Dream Academy].

The inciters were all subjected to a dream where they saw the demon worlds and the various conflicts with the demon king.

Dreams of death and destruction.

Blood. Suffering. Pain.

There would be no clean hands in the path I pursued.

I valued choice. I valued freedom. But with choice and freedom came consequences.

This path to end the cycle required me to make some sacrifices, and for the rest of the world, they would have to suffer under my laws.

Every ruler imposed their will or lack thereof. Their power shaped the world.

“There are laws. You may not agree with it,” Varida answered after the session. The inciters were all shaken. It was one thing to incite conflict and flee before suffering the consequences; it was another to directly experience suffering. “But until you are powerful enough to overturn Aeon’s laws, you are subject to it.”

There was not a whimper of protest.

“Remind your emperors and kings that it will be their turn soon enough. You are free to go.”

They all knelt in gratitude.

I felt disgusted again, but this was the steps I must take.

This was the blood on my hands.

I accepted it.

The propaganda shifted once these inciters were returned. A few were so mentally distraught they were unable to perform their duties any more.

Regardless, a message was sent.

I could reach them all, and the emperors truly feared my reach. The merchant kings were horrified to see what was done to their chief strategists, and the letters in their rooms made it clear they were next. If they were not paranoid before, now they were. Trees were chopped down and uprooted. Not a single plant in their chambers and castles. Even plant art or flower motifs were removed and outlawed; those who drew plant art were now suspected to be my worshippers. It was the greatest anti-plant movement, even if they dared not publicly arrest them.

One emperor even decreed that he shall have no vegetables or grain on his meals, demanding to consume only meat, fish, and bread.

But these days, my trees could see a lot further, and my roots were a lot more discreet. My vines could sneak through the gaps in their stone castles easily, even those made with skill and enchantments.

Enchanted castle walls. Enchanted floor panels. What was their skill and ability before the weight of my domain?

It was no more than a paper wall before a bulldozer.

I broke through them easily, and I did so publicly.

It was an event unseen to the larger public, but the nobility all learned not to throw stones.

The vassal wars continued but this time without the attempts to test my limits, and the scopes of engagement were now properly respected. To reinforce the laws of engagement, I commanded the Valtrians to set up branches in each of the continents so that the continental kingdoms could benefit from the same protections afforded to the merchants.

“It’s probably the least bad option,” Prabu said as he ate. The heroes had their own preparations, mainly for the next demon invasion on Mountainworld, and according to Zhaanpu, they also needed to prepare for the demon king two years after that on Threeworlds. Mountainworld already had rifts opening, and a few of the void mages there were deployed to perform scouting.

Ken’s age really was showing. His hair was now all white, and some was falling out. He had the best medical and healing abilities we could offer, so despite his age, he could walk and move just fine. But age was the slow decay of the soul blueprint. A person aged both in body and soul. It was why when the body was healed magically; it recreated or regenerated to the aged body instead of the body from a long time ago.

“Least bad? Aeon could do much more. Take away the tools of war.”

“You know that’s not practical,” the archmage hero said.

Ken smiled. “I would’ve forced them to sign a treaty. Have some kind of Geneva Convention.”

“As if such a convention has teeth.”

“Eh, if it somehow gets absorbed into the system, it would.”

“That’s quite a fascinating idea.” Prabu actually took the idea seriously. “Since the system does respond to changes and has the ability to create new classes, there must be a way to influence the system.”

“You’re going into wildly theoretical realms here.” Ken laughed. “But honestly, I think you heroes are unlikely to be able to affect the system. It’s likely that it’s domain holders who get such privilege.”

Mountainworld was invaded by a type of harpy-demon, which highly suggested a flying-type demon. Not the worst type of enemy to deal with, since we had a wide array of anti-air equipment.

“That’s a little heavyhanded coming from the man that thought this was a religious fascist empire.” Prabu smirked. All the heroes except Khefri were in Mountainworld. Khefri instead returned to Threehome to prepare for their own set of demonic invasions.

Ken choked on his drink and then laughed. “The hell with you.”

The void mages had triangulated the location, so the strategy was the same as the last time. The heroes punched through the spawned demons to claim the arrival spot and began to rig the place with bombs.

In order to encourage the leveling of the level one hundred thirties and one hundred forties and get their domains, all the domain holders did not participate in the preparation or the combat. Instead, the preparation was significantly performed by the ones who needed their domains.

But Roon, Johann, and Alka were not far away, just in case.

The locals had never seen so many high-leveled individuals in one place, since many of these Valthorns were frequently never seen in public. They would either be fighting in dungeons, or working in some secret location, or battling it out on Lavaworld.

The heroes didn’t mind. They were essentially the superheroes, and we were the supporting cast. Rigging the battlefield was our strength.

While the preparation was underway, a group of void mages snuck through the rifts to visit the world of the Harpy-demons.

It was a world filled with soaring cliffs, covered in demon spawning pools. The demons had somehow adapted; their spawning pools were in the form of large bird nests. These spawning pools on these cliffs then had bird-like eggs that hatched these harpy-demons.

Harpy demons were the most common type of demons in this world, but they also had giant demonic birds that could manipulate fire and lightning and giant demonic goats with magical horns, which could leap really high. The few champion types we encountered were larger variants of these three demonic types.

The void mages raided a few of their rift gates, found their pit, placed a few listening devices, and then got out.

We ruled out engaging the demon king on their home planet until we found out what exactly the countermeasures were.

Some of Edna’s knights on Mountainworld came equipped with specialized anti-air swords. Edna, during the years since she gained her [knight’s quest] ability, consistently attempted the quest’s monsters to unlock all sorts of different weapons.

And so they had an assortment of strange, unusual swords, such as these Feather-buster Swords. She left them in her Knight Order’s care for use at their discretion.

Along with that, the crafters and blacksmiths also built large ballistas, rapid-fire arrow-machines, net throwers, and harpoons.

The heroes didn’t complain about our spawn camp strategy.

It was also a good thing that the site of the invasion was already attacked by demons, so there were very few commoners and regular folks to notice the large amount of items and preparations we made.

Snek had given up on the Ularans back on Ulara. His focus, for now, was the small group of young Ularans that went through training. About two hundred went through the whole rigmarole of training to be Valthorn tier, and honestly, of the two hundred, we found almost three-quarters of them to be inadequate.

Only fifty matched the usual markers for progress to the level sixty to eighty range.

It was a tough message for Snek to swallow, but eventually he understood that it was a game of numbers.

If you hoped to create one hero, and the odds of that hero were one in a million, you really had to have a large pool to pick from.

The Ularans refused to respond to Snek’s other proposals, at least until he had something to show for it.

All entirely valid points, and I was not keen on moving Ularans to other worlds, since I absolutely did not understand them as a society. At least the Canari lived on Treehome for long periods of time and I understood the forces and factors that mattered in their culture.

I could, of course, use my ability to level up any single Ularan to level sixty. But I was rather sure it would backfire. A poor, unfamiliar level sixty would only send the message that high levels didn’t matter.

The Ularans must at least be able to slay their local demon champions on their own. Only then we could have a conversation on what and where they wanted to go with their civilization.

My worldhopping trio spent some time on another demon world that was filled with more regular demons. I dubbed it Regular Demonworld 2.

Stella began noticing that the void portals she used to hop to nearby worlds consumed a lot more void mana than before. So they had to spend some time resting and recuperating before they were ready to make another hop.

The sensation on this next demon world was unmistakable.

They instantly felt as if they were bombarded with waves. It was like being on the beach when a storm was raging, the violent waves crashing onto the shore.

The reason was simple.

There was a burning wall of darkness occupying the skies above and beyond this world’s sun.

A wall in the void sea itself.

I wondered whether this was a barrier meant to prevent incursions.

Despite the wall, Stella’s vision could see clearly, and she noticed something moving very slowly in the void sea, though it remained out of range.

“I need more time to observe what’s happening here,” Stella said as she immediately got to work. A wide array of monitoring equipment immediately emerged. “I need to get a team here with me. There’s way too many things to understand here.”

Lumoof looked around. “All right, I’ll get in touch with those back home and get started on the accommodations.” The barrier emitted a constant wave of energy that made life on the surface incredibly uncomfortable, so Lumoof activated his avatar’s ability and then constructed underground dwellings.

There were various pre-made templates stored in their assorted spatial pouches.

Edna shrugged. “I’ll handle defenses, then. Let me just go check out what sort of demons inhabit this place.”

As it turned out, only champions. The presence of the void waves meant any lesser creature without adequate protection was “boiled” out of existence.

Our attempts to discover what was happening encountered another wall. But we now knew we were headed on the right path.

54

YEAR 238

“I’d feel better if Patriarch Lumoof or Edna were here,” some of the senior Valthorns mused as they prepared the battlefield for the demon king from the harpy world.

“Pretty sure that’s what everyone feels,” Arjan said as he participated in the preparations. After his departure from Threeworlds, his new assignment took him to Mountainworld to do something he liked.

Fighting.

The harpy demons had spawned, and with multiple rift gates everywhere, the Valthorns participated in a few defensive battles at the invitation of friendly nations.

Mountainworld had their own high-leveled individuals, but there were too few to actually protect everything. The wars between the kingdoms also led to some unfortunate deaths.

It was a good chance for my guys to gain levels and build goodwill.

The two local heroes, Adrian and Kelly, zoomed from place to place, participating in the defense. They split up but were supported by a few of my Valthorns just to prevent any unintentional events. It wasn’t impossible for a demon champion to kill a high-leveled hero, even if the chance was very remote.

“It’s my first time fighting a demon king outside of my home world. I’m nervous,” Khefri said as she hung out with the Treehome heroes in Branchhold. They were just one short teleport away from the invasion location, and there were minders tending to them.

“You get used to it, milady. Do not worry. We’ll be here with you all the way.” Chung smiled. He was thoroughly smitten with the scorpion-lady and so spent a lot of time trying to woo her with all sorts of things. He extensively tapped on the Valthorns to get bookings at the fine restaurants, beautiful beaches, and beautiful gifts, but Khefri wasn’t impressed at all.

Prabu and Colette collectively shrugged, though they both really enjoyed watching and gossiping. Hafiz was just minding his own business. As king in his own right, Hafiz had a harem of his own, though he fairly recently decided to move his kingdom elsewhere. He gave his own kingdom to his harem members, though he still guaranteed their sovereignty and provided them with protection.

If he died, it’d be a repeat of what Harris went through, though his harem was a lot smaller.

Ken and Snek approached my valley, escorted by one of my Valthorns. Ken’s hair had turned all white, and some parts were balding. He had the best medical services on Treehome, and with the effect of various abilities, he was in exceptional health, but it was so easy for it to fall apart.

Age was like a gradual decay of the soul, the wearing and withering of time.

“Would you not take Aeon’s offer, Ken?” Snek said, during his break away from the young Ularans. The Ularans’ progress was as fast as it could be, but clearly not fast enough.

“I’d like to die properly for a change.” Ken laughed. “In bed, surrounded by my friends. They used to say to die old and with whitened hair is a fortune of its own.”

“And what about a family?” Snek said. “Ularans used to believe that to die at one’s den, surrounded by fellow Ularans, was a great blessing.”

“Neh. I think it’s unfair to anyone to be my partner knowing what I know.” To be fair, Ken did have some dates here and there, but his dates were usually elves. He had a thing for elves, even if he didn’t mention it.

Eventually, they reached my central valley. Here in the depths of my valley, it buzzed with all the artificial minds and various strange trees performing all the weird research.

Snek looked at Ken and then said, “Well, Aeon, there’s actually a theory that I’ve had on my mind for a while. I’m not keen on speaking about it with any heroes around.”

“Yes, yes. And you want to speak about it within my domain protection.” So I allowed the two into my [secret hideout].

“Aeon, have you ever considered that the gods and the demons are actually on the same side?” Ken said. It was something I heard before a few times, from my domain holders, no less.

“Yes.”

“What do you think of it?”

“Possible, but currently no evidence points toward it. The fact that the demon sun has remnants of divine energy strongly suggests they are not friends. My current belief is to approach the gods cautiously, that these gods are no more than higher-leveled versions of myself, and their ability to intervene is strongly affected by distance.”

Ken nodded and then continued his own side of the theory. “We know that this world copies a lot of abilities and systems from the fantasies of Earth, and a common knowledge is that there’s always a war in heaven. A war of heaven. The presence of the dead god at least gives credence that there might have been such a war of heaven.”

“And you theorize that the demons are one faction of gods?”

“Currently, I have three main ideas: one, there is a demon god somewhere; two, the demons are a creation of the gods that overwhelmed the gods; and three, the demons are some kind of shadow of the gods, which makes them a natural counterbalance of the gods.”

“That last idea presupposes the existence of a counterbalancing mechanism in the system.”

“Yes,” Ken said.

“It is also fairly common for demons to be creations of ill will and void energies. What do you think about this sort of theory?”

“That also requires a counterbalance mechanism in the system. Hell exists because of the evil of men. Demons therefore exist because man exists.”

“I hear your concerns that the gods might not take it lightly if we meddle too hard and upset this balance of things. But so far, their behavior has not indicated anything unnatural. Perhaps the gods have not gotten to the point of paying attention to them.”

“Exactly. The gods barely keep track. But if they did—”

“Again, not worth worrying about. Our path takes us to the demon sun, and we will destroy it. Or whatever we need to do to disarm the demons.”

“What if the solution requires you to quarantine them? Have the demons focus only on a single place, a single world, instead of everywhere?”

I thought about it for a moment and nodded. “So be it. If one world needs to be sacrificed to spare the other worlds from the wrath of demons, I will do so.”

“What if…what if it’s you? What if you have to be the demon’s jailor for the rest of your life?”

I paused for a moment and asked myself if it was the only way forward. I actually didn’t know the answer to it.

I knew the heroes would. They were compelled to.

But me? What I did so far was because this thing threatened to destroy us all. But would I go as far as sacrifice myself to stop it?

I—I might.

I wasn’t sure, but I knew it was the right thing to do in the long run.

Did it have to be me?

Stella was on the demon world, together with Lumoof and Edna. It took more hops, but eventually a group of thirty void mages arrived on the world, supported by another fifty or so builders and other generalists.

They had an outpost to construct, and they deployed a huge amount of magical readers to try and figure out what was going on with the “barrier.”

How did it work? Why? Could we break it or get past it?

The void barrier was extremely fascinating, and my void master asked for help. “Is it possible for you to create a large pool of water here and then invite the zaratans to come and see this?”

“I could, but I’ll need to protect them from being boiled alive by the waves.”

Even the eighty or so support team members had to be covered in thick, protective armor and artifacts, at least before they finished construction of the underground base, which was similarly covered in many, many layers of protection to weaken the effects of the void radiation.

Over the course of three months, they built a massive dome that emitted an offsetting energy wave that counteracted the void barrier’s radiation waves.

Their studies began to have some success, as Stella and her team were soon able to identify the net flow of energy in the void barrier and follow its energies to trace it to a certain set of worlds within the void sea.

“There’s a set of ten or so planets that maintain these barriers. If we want to get closer, we’ll need to break down the barrier. So we’ll need to hit these ten planets and crush whatever machine that’s creating this thing.”

We still couldn’t see what the demon sun did, but it was likely that whatever it did, it either moved very slowly, or it was just some kind of message.

“All right. So more hops?”

Stella nodded. “Yes. We’ll need more hops.”

According to Stella’s speculation, the sun was probably protected by a set of sixty or eighty worlds, each of which had a role to play in the void barrier.

Of course, Roon, Johann, and Alka were rather keen to see some unique demon architecture.

“The demons are clearly capable of building things.” Even my own Valthorns had a different understanding of the demons. Those less experienced, at least, before our education program, presumed that demons only built spawning pools, and those demon rift gates were some kind of invention from elsewhere or were ported in.

It was a very appealing tendency to think of demons as this mindless horde. It was a popular set of thoughts, especially Mountainworld and Threeworld, who viewed the demons as nothing more than overpowered pests.

“How do we hop there?”

“We keep hopping until we find it,” Stella said, now that they’d gotten some idea of where the demon’s barrier world was. “That’s largely the only way.”

“Can’t you level up, get a skill, and solve the issue? There has to be a better way than just random chance.”

“That requires me actually leveling up,” Stella responded over the transmission. “Building a star map is still a work in progress. Their locations are largely on the demon’s map, here and here.”

The locations were marked in a magical projection, based off the demon core. “We could try to use rift gates to get there, but we don’t have enough void mana if it’s from Treehome.”

“What if we use other places? Like that place you’re at. Do you think it has enough void mana?”

“Possible. I’ll test it out.”

Roon nodded. “All right. We’ll join you once we’re done with these two demon kings. We’ve got one coming our way soon.”

The seven heroes waited as I gave the signal. My void mages on the demon world already detected the demon king leaving its womb at the center of their world.

It was coming out.

The demon king was a demonic giant of a bird, and the first set of magical traps prepared itself to go.

“Seven heroes, one demon king. A fuck-ton of traps. This should go quite well.” Chung tried to reassure Khefri and calm her nerves.

My Valthorns retreated to a safe location. They would initiate the bombardment and the traps once the demon king landed.

A massive rift opened at the predicted location, and the bird charged out, a flying bird surrounded by lightning. A thunderbird demon king.

[Demon King Triclaw has arrived.]

The spells triggered, and the Valthorns commenced fire. The entire Mountainworld felt the sudden surge of magic as they unloaded the entire arsenal on that specific valley.

The detonation of so much magic in a single short moment would leave magical scars in the place for decades to come and cause the spawn of various magically warped monsters. But that was a later concern, as for now, the giant thunderbird was bombarded with an overwhelming amount of sufficient firepower.

“Holy shit.” Khefri had never seen such massive detonations in her life. “You guys weren’t kidding when you said Aeon’s really hacking this whole thing.”

“I know, right?” Chung said as the thunderbird’s wings were vaporized, its entire body filled with scars and burns.

The thunderbird regenerated. It had tremendous toughness, comparable to the older demon kings. But we were also getting better at fighting demon kings, and the firepower we deployed just got bigger and better.

After the third volley of traps and bombardment, the demon king was already weakened.

The heroes engaged with their star mana–powered weaponry and abilities, and it was a fairly short battle.

Seven heroes overwhelmed the demon king to the point it was frankly bullying.

Every demon king was escorted by a small army of demon champions and regular demons. These other demons were fodder, but even they could distract, weaken, and hurt the heroes. But here, they could focus.

When the heroes could focus only on the demon king and nothing else, it made the battle nothing more than a one-sided beatdown.

Even when the thunderbird split into three and summoned lesser thunderbirds, seven heroes was still too much. The lesser thunderbirds were destroyed by the supporting volleys from the faraway Valthorns.

“This is ridiculous!” The Scorpion lady lamented how her fellow heroes died for nothing. “No one would’ve needed to die if you guys were there to help us. I didn’t even need to deal with the lesser pests.”

“Khefri! Don’t drop your guard. The demon king usually has a nuke at the end,” Prabu reminded.

“Got it, got it!”

They killed the demon king in record time, and the thunderbird was about to detonate once more. It went so well, according to plan.

They teleported out, and the detonation was a relatively small one. It wrecked the valley and left a huge pile of daemolite behind.

Next up was Threeworlds.

“Khefri spoke greatly about your accomplishments in the other worlds.”

“Oh, she has?”

“Indeed. It seems sending her to the other worlds away from me has improved our relationship. Perhaps absence does make the heart grow fonder.”

“She just couldn’t stand being cooped up,” I countered.

“I admit that it is a flaw of my method of upbringing. It is what I know best.” Zhaanpu chuckled. Khefri returned to her little queendom, where she played with her own harem once more. Her harem members were frankly a little bored because Khefri was away for so long.

“The crystal king sent a missive protesting my agreement with you. Do you want me to have it delivered to your outpost up north?”

“Oh? He has?”

“Yes. They discovered that my hero, Khefri, was missing and traveling to the other worlds. I suspect some of my servants may be compromised, and some of his agents are actively searching my lands,” Zhaanpu responded. “I normally let him do what he pleases. Such small matters are not worth struggling over. But do you want me to intervene?”

“Let him search.” It didn’t take long for me to detect those agents in the quiet, secluded lands up north. They found nothing, but they didn’t stop trying. “It’ll just make him angrier, and I’d rather not deal with that. Not with the new demon king coming.”

“Indeed. The rifts should be here soon.”

That was when the news was a bit annoying. The demon king would spawn in the human-populated crystal king’s lands.

A part of me didn’t want to assist.

But that was not what I agreed with Zhaanpu.

So now that the battle on Mountainworld was over, we began to move people over to Threehome to wage the next war.

Since Arjan left Hoofhall, the capital of the Centaurs, Eudoxus had continued to work on expanding my influence indirectly. Most of this was through awareness of another world.

We didn’t need to be so discreet now that we didn’t have any significant plans beyond friendship. Eudoxus’s plan was to create our own little allied group and draw the attention of the relicholder of the Centaur.

I also engaged a Centaur diplomat from my Treehome and now, armed with what we knew of Centaur society, publicly sent a delegation.

The reception was fairly lukewarm, but my Centaur diplomat Kinnara was eventually allowed to set up a small diplomatic chamber in the outskirts of Hoofhall.

We accepted it anyway. Some official means of communication was better than none, even if the diplomatic chamber was pelted with eggs and other trash every now and then.

They claimed we lied.

They didn’t acknowledge the existence of other worlds.

It was so weird that people thought that their world was the only world when there was so much evidence to the contrary.

After the defeat of the thunderbird demon king, quite a large assortment of my Valthorns gained levels. A few of them were now getting closer to the level one hundred fifty boundary, but for now, none reached it yet.

Strangely, one of the closest ones was one of the projectile makers. Allana, a [Magical Weaponcrafter], was now about level one hundred forty-three, and she had a penchant for making her weapons in exotic locations and making requests to use ley lines’ energies to help enhance her tools.

It rose quite drastically from this battle alone, and she gained fourteen levels. Partly because she made quite a large portion of the tools used to crush the thunderbird demon king.

For the heroes, most of them gained about three or four levels.

Oddly enough, I also gained two levels despite playing just my coordination and support role.

[You’ve gained two levels. You are now level 240.]

[New domain skill unlocked: Lesser wooden avatars (shareable with pantheon)]

[You are now able to create up to five lesser wooden avatars with the strength of approximately level 100. You may use these avatars yourself, or you may link them with any of your fellow pantheon domain holders, where they may use these avatars as a split version of themselves. Your pantheon members can gain experience through these wooden avatars but will be unable to use their domain-tier abilities. Once linked to a fellow pantheon member, the wooden avatars cannot change until it is destroyed. Avatars take a year to regenerate if they are destroyed and can be spawned at any of your clone trees.]

I supposed a conversation with my fellow immobile pantheon members would now be necessary.

55

YEAR 239

“Who’s best to use the avatar?” Lumoof shrugged. “Anyone, really. It’s just a chance for people to see the world for themselves.”

I spawned one of the avatars; technically, the ones that were used by me could be linked and transferred to other pantheon members, but once they were transferred, they no longer could be changed. I supposed that was because this was my pantheon?

The avatar was surprisingly nimble and could essentially take any shape I wanted it to take. It was like a living, flexible, ever-changing tangle of wood and vines. It could form a face and could even talk.

“I think this ability came a little too late,” Ken mused. “It’ll totally be a human form for you.”

“But it’s level-capped at level one hundred. It’s just a dummy,” Prabu countered. “Lumoof’s ability is way better.”

“Lumoof’s a domain holder. This is a destructible dummy. You could send it to places where you expect it to be destroyed as a scout,” Ken answered the archmage.

“You mean use it like a summoned creature, like how Johann can look through his animal companions?” Roon said as we analyzed the new ability.

“Yeah, kinda like that. Johann’s pets are way more precious than these spawnable avatars. Think about it: we could use it to communicate anywhere.”

Johann’s little pet dragon was actually a lot larger than expected. A spawn created from the dragonbones, it was some kind of fire dragon, with jet-black scales. Based on my estimates, it’d get stronger as it aged, but it was still a long way to maturity.

It was also one crazily hungry creature, and Johann had to pack loads of meat for it. It was a great thing he had bags of holding that could easily store and preserve large quantities of meat.

Without bags of holding, the animal companion would probably suffer for it. Johann claimed that the pet could survive off his magical energy alone but would not be able to grow during that period of time.

Within the Valthorns there was also a debate between whether it was better to level up my domain holders or just try to create more domain holders.

I’d mostly decided to focus on creating more domain holders, but this argument still came out every now and then. But thankfully, it seemed I still gained levels just by planning and supporting all the demon king battles.

< We are not a member of your pantheon, but an avatar is greatly making us reconsider that position. > Lilies was surprisingly interested in the avatar. They had made something of their own, after all, but it wasn’t all that interesting, and the limitations were so annoying that their avatar was functionally useless.

This one, at least, would retain some of their strength, at level one hundred, and allow them to gain experience from the other worlds.

< We must deliberate on this matter a little more. > Lilies’ language and sensation felt more keen, more interested, and so, if an avatar was what swayed their position, so be it.

Aria and Aispeng naturally booked one. They’d been carving up various models of their avatar with ice, but their condition was really vain. “I want to decide what my avatar looks like.”

“That’s a small matter.”

“All right!”

The second avatar was granted to Aria and Aispeng, and Aria tried her best to recreate how she looked from a long ago as a human. She really wanted to be a human once more.

Once I created the avatar and linked it to her through our pantheon, she was off fiddling with her avatar.

I also took the chance to offer it to Zhaanpu. Zhaanpu didn’t accept my pantheon membership due to his concerns about the interactions with the gods’ pact.

“Tempting.”

But no answer.

“This avatar ability on its own is pretty average,” Lumoof said. “But Aeon, the fact that you could share really opened our minds to possibilities. Imagine for a moment if all the domain holders’ abilities were concentrated in a single body.”

“It’ll be as strong as a hero,” Stella said. “Or more.”

“It may be a good idea to explore the way it works and to use Aeon’s soul-magic to explore whether we could link power.”

“So we are building off the power of friendship, literally.” Stella laughed at how corny it was. “But I like it. Linking and concentrating the powers of multiple souls in a single body seemed like a great way to create something where the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts.”

It really made me have a different perspective of the soul-stitching mechanism of hexbombs and blood-soul magic.

If we could somehow adapt the links within hexbombs to amplify the power of multiple domain-tier individuals, somehow allowing a single avatar to express their combined power, we could really create a god-level war machine. Hacking the avatar function to host multiple and allow them to amplify each other’s ability would really create something world breaking.

“Looks like we have sort of a roadmap to the end: Cometworld as the delivery mechanism, and a multiple-avatar in a single unit as the weapon or warrior to destroy that damned demon sun.”

Sharing power was always a part of my repertoire. My familiars were a means of sharing power, so I really liked this idea. It seemed consistent with the path I took so far. It seemed plausible, even if it involved linking multiple people together.

“Maybe it’s some kind of pantheon ability,” Lumoof wondered. “We know that sometimes, if we think about it enough, the system finds a way to give it to us.”

“What—” Stella looked surprised. “Oh. You’re trying to tell the system that we want this sort of pantheon ability.”

“Yeah. Ability to combine powers across the pantheon.”

“Well, then I want the ability to manipulate the movement of an object through the void sea.” Stella pretended to pray to the system. “And the ability to break down that void barrier.”

Edna just laughed at her two fellow domain holders. “Why don’t you wish for the ability to destroy the demon sun while you are at it?”

“Yeah! But that sounds so vague, y’know,” Stella said. “I think what the system awards usually has some specificity, like we roughly know what we want. It’ll give you a hammer if you know what exactly a hammer looks like and what you expect it to do.”

It wasn’t hard to infiltrate the crystal king’s territory. The crystal king maintains nominal control of all the smaller kingdoms in his territory, just like how Zhaanpu controls all the smaller desert cities and nations or how Hoofhall oversees the lesser Centaur tribes.

That meant it was very easy to disguise ourselves as people from other kingdoms and cities, and we also had “invisible” means of infiltration such as my trees. I was fairly sure the crystal king sensed me, but it hadn’t gone as far as to order outright deforestation.

The rifts soon spawned demons, and we were greeted with the large demons with axes and wings. In short, the regular demon world.

One of the theories that developed from the void archmages was that worlds that were closer to the source of the demons should be more regular-demon like than those that possessed unusual characteristics like Parasiteworld or Sandworld.

The idea was that the variance in the demons was something that accumulated over multiple invasions.

His idea was demons invaded World A. Demons spawned by World A possessed some additional characteristics adopted from the World A’s cores. Demons from World A then invaded World B and captured it. Demons from World B thus had qualities inherited from World A and World B. Over time, the demons would be wildly different from each other, depending on the path they went through.

We also observed that each generation of demon king, even though they might’ve come from the same world, had minor variations, so this suggested that the core of each world essentially had a certain degree of flexibility in the powers granted to its demon king. We saw that when we compared the Sabnoc demon king we faced, and the Sabnoc-type encountered by Adrian and Kelly.

The different types of demons we encountered was the result of cumulative adoption of traits from multiple demon worlds. It was perhaps intentional, perhaps unintentional, but this was a natural theorem arising from the demon-spawning mechanism that adopted its host worlds’ qualities.

Thus, working backward from this idea, worlds where the demons were plain and regular were thus a lot closer to the demon sun than those further away from the demon sun who went through more jumps.

It was a theory, a hypothesis that we could not quite prove. Each demon core didn’t keep records of how many worlds came before it. Or at least not that I know of. Perhaps there was some kind of genetic marker within its core.

Anyway, that digressed. We found the rifts quickly, and they spawned regular big demons with flaming axes and the like.

Typical demons, in short. Frankly one of my favorites, because of how big they were.

Some of my void mages snuck through the rift and found another Lavaworld, which we named Lavaworld 2.

We roughly triangulated the location of the demon king, and then we encountered resistance.

“By the order of the crystal king, stop what you are doing.” The crystal king sent a small army to any location where they detected our presence, and it decided to camp at where we wanted to set traps.

The demons spawned, and they fought it.

“We should just let the demons overrun them, then continue with our work,” the Valthorns quipped as we helped the crystal king’s minions fend off the demons.

I asked Zhaanpu for his assistance.

“He will not be cooperative. In fact, I’m fairly certain his preferred response is to let Khefri die and a new batch of heroes get summoned so he can have one hero under his thumb.”

“Ridiculous,” I answered.

“Having fought his forces over the centuries, yes, that is what the crystal king is like. Actually, if I was in his position, that is what I will do, too.”

“What?”

“It’s just politics. The balance of power is upset by the presence of heroes. Their response is normal. The only saving grace is that the pact forces us not to use heroes against each other. But each hero makes hero-items, and hero-items still have plenty of power. If I was the crystal king, I would’ve done so with probably much better finesse.”

I sometimes forgot that Zhaanpu was just as manipulative as any other domain holder. I’d lucked out that the first domain holder I met was Lilies, who seemed just happy to hide away in their little lake like a hermit.

I wondered whether Lilies would be best suited to advise on how to merge the powers of multiple domain holders, since Lilies was, after all, some kind of hive mind.

It was another thing in the list of magical research to pursue.

The Vassal Wars’ threat was not as serious once the fangs of propaganda were weakened. The holy emperors continued to use their power to push back against the merchant guilds, but their leaders took greater control of public opinion and ensured that they remained focused on the merchant guilds, and vice versa.

The holy emperors were also happy to welcome my banking services and some of my security people into their cities, which ensured that some of their nations’ assets were now somewhat secure.

Yet now it was the temples that goaded the holy emperors to continue and push the war against me, despite the differing counsel of their propaganda masters and strategists.

Thus it was time to flex my might once more and stain my roots and branches with a bit more blood.

I invited another group of senior priests from all the four temples to come meet me face to face.

I didn’t do this before, since the last time I met the senior leaders of the Aiva Temple was really long ago and I never met them again ever since. All our dealings with Aiva were through my agents and proxies.

It was something that none of the temples publicly stated, because it would greatly impair the nobles’ confidence in them. What sort of protection could they offer if their own leaders couldn’t protect themselves?

The three triumvirs of Aiva, the first priest of Gawa and Hawa, the council of five of the Neira were all captured and then, through void magic, sent my way.

It was something to come face to face with so many priests, and I thought they withstood my presence a lot better than the first group of propaganda spreaders and plotters. The priests were far more composed, and they were trained in the priestly ways to combine their auras to resist my own.

Yet it shook them.

All of them looked sick. Unlike the earlier group, they never doubted my existence. They only challenged my rising divinity.

Yet the presence of my [domain] at level two hundred was a weight they could not deny. My own people spoke of it as being face to face with a force of nature, as if one was in the way of an avalanche, gazing into one’s doom.

But they were brave.

These men of faith, for their nagging resistance and struggle against me, had incredible nerves. One of the bravest, a priest from Gaya, stood, his legs shaking, his fingers shivering, his face as pale and purple as one could be, but still he said with every word in his soul, “Aeon, you resist the call and prayers of our gods.” He tried his best to speak, but each and every word shook. “Why have you brought us here?”

“I brought you here to talk. And, first, I was never given a chance to accept your call or prayer,” I responded frankly. If I remembered correctly, the Gaya faith didn’t like trees that much. “A century or so ago, the four temples declared a crusade against me. For what? I tried to sue for peace, for coexistence, but your gods or your leaders then declared I should be crushed.”

They were silent. The edicts of their own gods back then were clear: crush the pretender.

“Only Aiva was wise enough to pull back.” The priests of the three temples’ heads all turned suddenly at the Aivan priests present.

“What?” They glared accusingly, their question aimed at their peers. “Explain yourself.”

“I spoke to Aiva. Many should’ve felt its presence those years ago.”

“You received a message.” The priest tried to downplay what I did.

The Aivan priests shook their heads. “A temporary link was opened.”

“What?” The other priests glared. “You’ve known how to open a link and you’ve never shared?”

“It’s…it’s complicated.”

“No matter,” I said. “What matters is right here. I’m here, and your four gods are far away and will soon abandon you.” It’d been decades since my talk with Aiva, and I supposed it was about damn time I started spilling beans.

“Abandon us?”

“Aiva said so. The gods’ reach fluctuates to the whims of the void sea and the great disturbances of the land beyond.”

The priests’ paled and looked at the Aivan priests. “You know this?”

“To—to some extent, yes. The full truth is only heard by the Triumvirs present.”

“Lies,” one priest barked, but it took all his willpower to resist. “If you brought us here to awe us into submission, no, we won’t do it.”

I decided I made my message quite clear and lifted the oppressive presence. The color on their faces returned. “I do not expect or require conversion to my faith. Hell, it’ll be great if you maintain your faith to the best of your ability.”

“Then why are we summoned?”

“Because this war annoys me.” At that moment, a group of void mages appeared. “And I realize we’re fighting because you don’t see the greater enemies we face, nor do you truly comprehend what the demons want to do to our world.”

“Greater enemies?”

Perspective. It was a privilege of the Valthorns, and now it was something I had to share with the others.

They may be my enemies, but I believed they, too, deserved to see the truth.

“Come, they will lead you to see the demon worlds.”

The leading priests of this generation stared at the vast, desolate lands of Lavaworld, at the hordes of demons that we left free to roam, so that my Valthorns could fight them for experience.

It was hell and intentionally left so.

“This is where you sent the strategists?”

“No. They were shown the place, but no, they’ve not visited. Come, let us visit another.” The void archmage led them back, and this time, we sent them through a rift gate.

A rift gate set for Ulara.

With our discovery of the rift gate’s dialing numbers, and the small amounts of core mana granted by the world’s core, we were now able to restore temporary rifts to the demon worlds such as the anti-magic world, Ulara, and many others.

Those more distant or delayed by the void barrier were inaccessible for now. It cost a bit more void mana to form and link the two worlds, but now that we could, I used them to teach, to share and let them witness the world beyond.

I decided I would and should extend this experience to the rulers and nobility.

Perspective.

It was a weapon.

It was an idea.

It was letting them see the sword of Damocles that hung over all our heads, to see the extent of the demon’s true power, and to unveil the ignorance of their entire lives.

What was remote wasn’t so. It was a certainty in the future, even if not their own future.

The priests were silent as they saw what happened to the Ularans. How they now lived in little holes rather than the cities of their past.

“The world is a lot more perilous than you know. We face demons who seek to do this to us. To our world,” the void archmage said on my behalf. “Honestly, those of us who’ve seen what’s out there cannot unsee it. Why is it even worthwhile to fight over scraps when there are entire worlds out there that can be reclaimed? Why is it even worth it to fight each other for power when we’ll all get destroyed by something far bigger?”

“The gods will protect us. The gods grant us power to resist those who want to destroy us.”

“They do want to protect you.” The void archmage didn’t rebuke them. “But they are drifting further away, and their power wanes over longer distances. Your god wants to help, but they are losing the ability. It is our speculation that their weakening power is why we have less heroes.”

“It’s all Aeon’s fault. His presence blocked the gods’ ability to help us.”

“Oh, please. Aiva said so Itself. In about two centuries, it’ll all be over,” the void archmage said.

“This is blasphemy,” one priest said. “One does not insult the gods this way.”

“Is it?” the void archmage said. “But no matter, with Aeon, we are reaching to the other worlds to take the fight back to the demons. You folks can indulge in your jostling for position back home, but Aeon does not intend to let you disturb our greater war.”

“This system was created by the gods. Your attempt to go against the demons directly is not what the gods planned.” I sometimes marvel at the priests’ ability to warp any position into an argument against me.

“And that’s why you’re a fool,” the void archmage said frankly. “Do you not see that this system engineers all of us to die?”

“If that is how our gods want us to die, then it is how we shall die.”

My archmage was frustrated, but not all priests were so stubborn. Some saw the other worlds and now realized what we had become.

We were not just a temple ruling a continent. We were an organization engineering the goal of destroying the demons for good.

“What is it that Aeon wants?”

The void archmage sighed. “It is not something I agree with, but Aeon wants a truce. We’ll let you fight your wars, but leave Aeon and the Valtrian Order out of it. We have bigger fish to fry.”

Some of them were quiet; they took the offer seriously. One of the priests asked, “Isn’t this just a ploy to weaken us while you gain more power?”

The void archmage laughed. “Yes, but you’re wrong on one point. We have no need to weaken you. We can crush you now, and it is Aeon’s mercy that prevents it from happening.”

“And you expect us to appreciate that your monstrous god stays his hand? A dictator is still a dictator. A monster.”

The void archmage’s laughter continued. “Oh, I think you are sorely mistaken. We’re not looking for appreciation.”

“Then?”

“I expect you to have the wisdom of leaving the damned beetle nest alone.”

56

YEAR 240

The crystal king didn’t like us on his land, and he knew we were coming. He could see it, so he sent his men to harass us.

The harassment involved attacks with magic. His mages and his golems. His vassals stonewalled our attempts to reach the demon king’s spawn point.

Despite the demons from the rifts spawning constantly, the crystal king treated it everything as if it was under control.

After a long and thorough discussion with my Valthorns on how to deal with this annoying but powerful piece of rock, we’d concluded that he likely respected strength, and any soft approach would not work.

If we wanted them to give us space to do what we did, I had to show we have every right and power to crush everything that stood in our way.

This applied to all three factions of Mountainworld.

My Centaur spies told me that they wouldn’t respect anyone without strength. The Centaurs, who had trials by combat to select their leaders, also respected strength. Eudoxus lamented that they even had options for judgments and trials by combat instead of the more logical, evidence-based judgment we applied back home.

For the Sandpeople and Zhaanpu, I also needed to let my fellow immortal see what I was truly capable of. He had heard stories from Khefri and felt some of my powers, but I decided a demonstration of my might was in order.

I didn’t like this. It was against my insular, turtling nature. I’m also generally quite paranoid and dislike showing off my abilities too much. My favorite strategy was that of a camper. I’d build and tech up.

But time and again, my experience over the last century or two had provided me with evidence, with moments where I realized so much shit could’ve been stopped. So many pointless wars and also the whole silly vassal war shenanigans.

I needed to flex my powers every now and then.

A reminder of how high the heavens go and how tall the tree could grow.

Remind the common folk that I stood above. Even if I didn’t intend to.

It was the path of the tyrant, and the rice was already cooked. The timber had been made to a boat. The nice tree had been chopped by reality.

Thinking back, I was rarely nice. I thought power afforded me the luxury of being nice.

But it was also only true, if the other people realized I had power. If they believed I was powerless, they would be so tempted to cross me. Treat me as if I was not there. A nonfactor.

The crystal king once said I came to invade.

Well, he was right.

The site of the demon king wasn’t located close to the crystal king, but well within his territory. There were fifteen kingdoms in the way, all human, and all vassals of the crystal king.

They had fortified the entire path, and then beetles appeared everywhere.

I could’ve just used [Root Tunnels] and only invaded the chosen location, but I didn’t want to reveal that card. I decided to just invade the normal way and clear a path in the process.

It wasn’t necessary to clear or attack everything along it. There were segments that we could easily take detours, so we did. But I decided to attack about five fortresses along the path simultaneously for the spectacle.

“Milord! There are beetles attacking all our fortifications!” the defenders shouted.

“But where are they from?”

“The trees, sire!”

“Which one?”

“All of them!”

“But…how?”

“I don’t know!”

My beetles overwhelmed the defenders easily, and I equipped a variety of beetles. Some only injected paralyzing poisons, some more lethal. We had to be; some of these defenders were frankly trying to destroy the beetles, but for most, what we did was flood the area with so much beetles and paralyze everyone, and then the beetles moved everyone out.

I decided to go even further, sending Hytreerion over. Hytreerion’s combat abilities, as I experienced in earlier battles, was lackluster, but against human kingdoms, the walker was a walking fortress that signified death.

He was a walking icon.

This action naturally invited a response from the crystal king. It wasn’t even hard to detect the magical spells that formed, and they launched magical projectiles toward my Titan.

They were slightly more powerful than the magical blasts used by the demon champions during the Sabnoc era. Those projectiles smashed into my wall of wooden shields. It was powerful enough to destroy a few layers of my shields, but my Titan emerged unscathed.

“Having fun?” I asked Zhaanpu, who was obviously scrying the entire battle. He was curious and couldn’t help himself. I also knew the Centaurs were watching.

“I’d say the same to you. That giant creature—”

“A former demon champion.”

“Ah. That explains the similarities. You have the power to reclaim them?”

“I wouldn’t call it reclaiming, if you know and have seen how they are made. I’ve converted them.”

“Semantics.” Zhaanpu shrugged. “If no one has heard of you before, they will now. The crystal king will take this as the cause for war.”

“One can find a reason if that’s all he looks for. If it’s a war he wants, then he shall have. I intend to demonstrate a few more of my abilities and minions, just to show that I’m not to be trifled with. I’ll take a tense peace over this constant annoyance of warfare.”

“For a tree, you sure have a lot of grudges.” Zhaanpu smirked.

“It’s carved into my being.”

I flooded the area with enough beetles to make the horizon a line of darkness. It was a spectacle, even if it wasn’t the most efficient.

It wasn’t even the way I would’ve fought.

Instead, my strategists called it a “parade,” and Hytreerion was the big nuclear missile I showed off. I had Hytreerion shoot a few magical blasts, and I intentionally didn’t interfere with any attempts to scry or spy.

We wanted them to see, and they did.

We didn’t need to block scrying at where the demon king was supposed to land. The magical energies once the battle started usually caused all attempts to scry and view the battle to go crazy. Too much magical energy interfered with such spells.

But that did mean everyone could see all the teleportation that occurred and all the crystal bombs and trapped that were deployed at the soon-to-be ground zero.

“Impressive preparations,” Zhaanpu praised as he checked the area. “Khefri sung praises of your organization, and I see it’s not unfounded.”

“It’s the work of an institution, not mine alone. My job is merely to set the direction. In time, your men can participate in this and gain levels. In fact, if you joined my pantheon and gained an avatar, you could even participate in the battle yourself.”

Zhaanpu didn’t respond to my attempt to convince him to join the pantheon.

The area was rigged with our usual stuff. Bombs, bombardment towers, ballistas, traps. Snares and harpoons. The seven heroes all rested in a nearby makeshift dwelling while they waited.

We had some Valthorns sneak to the other side as usual to watch for the signs and plant our listening devices. It felt like we were beginning to develop a set of standard operating procedures on how to deal with demon kings, and I felt cautiously confident.

The heroes were flat-out confident, but both Ken and Kei tried their best to talk them out of it. They still needed to prepare, and the demons could easily spring a surprise.

Our biggest problem, essentially, was we didn’t know what we didn’t know.

My Valthorns on the demon world tried to spy and get some ideas, and it did seem fairly typical. The wildcard that I had to deal with was the countermeasures. I didn’t know what and where they was.

Anyway, for now, ground zero was a large, mostly uninhabited valley filled with trees and animals. It wasn’t hard to ensure the place was evacuated, and we were, after all, dealing with a typical demon king.

The crystal king was annoyed. He sent very harshly written missives to Zhaanpu, which was meant for me because, well, they assumed I was in cahoots with the pyramid-immortal.

Which wasn’t wrong.

He was fairly amused. One of my Valthorns activated the item, which was imbued with his domain’s energies. A missive in crystal form and a holographic memory. It was quite a bit like those crystal image storage devices commonly found in Xianxia fiction.

“The pact of the Three permits no intruders. Pyramid, if you know better, break off your alliance with this foul invader. His presence threatens us all.”

Zhaanpu laughed. “He’s taking some legal liberties there, interpreting your presence as an intruder, on par with the demons.”

“From his point of view, the difference in our nature is merely in form and methods. We are invaders either way. You three are the locals, the natives. It’s a nativist approach to things,” I countered. “But I’ll say it makes all the difference. It is differences in form, methods, and how we interact that separates friend from foe.”

“Again, differences in perspective.” Zhaanpu shrugged. “I look forward to witnessing this great trap of yours. You seem to have utmost confidence in your prediction of the demon king’s location.”

“Well, we hope we don’t disappoint.”

My diplomat to the Centaurs, Kinnara, was suddenly a very busy lady. Everyone wanted to talk to her.

Again, as a spectacle, there was a sizable Centaur contingent preparing for the invasion of the demon king. They wore ceremonial armor, flashy, colorful, not as practical. The Centaurs wanted proof of the existence of the other worlds.

The Centaurs themselves were fairly fragmented. Each tribe or village was a small nation on its own, with minimal oversight from Hoofhall, and this was especially so for the far out tribes. The Centaurs, as naturally fiercely independent folks, didn’t really like bothering each other, though, like tribal clans, they often banded together to fight off the humans or the Sandpeople.

Just like what I wanted to do on Treehome, I decided I needed to give the leaders perspective.

To open their eyes to the multiverse.

All in due time, though, I suspected once I did so, the crystal king and the leader of the Centaurs would take this perspective as an affront to their authority.

Zhaanpu didn’t care as much. Or maybe he was just hiding it. But I had a sense that he wasn’t really bothered with ruling over people. He often just had to rule, because that led to the best outcomes.

[The Demon King Malthusian has descended.]

Right at the location we predicted.

The traps activated, and in a sudden moment, the entirety of Threeworld shook from the explosion. The ripple of magic was so intense that even those not normally sensitive to magic felt it.

The demon king took the form of a large, ten-winged demon with four massive arms. But all of that didn’t matter when the bombs detonated and its first form was destroyed.

It transformed into something smaller.

The seven heroes engaged. But before that, a massive rift gate opened above the battlefield, and demons poured out by the tens of thousands.

A second wave of explosions and bombardments thinned the demonic horde, and the seven heroes focused on the demon king.

It was a fairly short battle, all said and done. The seven heroes had gained strength after each battle, even with their weakened star mana abilities.

The battlefield was littered with magical explosions, and those who sought to spy on the battle soon found the connection to be choppy. Quite like trying to watch a football match on satellite TV when there was a storm outside messing with the reception.

The heroes won. It tried to detonate itself once more. They teleported out just in time.

The battle was won.

More of my Valthorns gained levels. Yet still none at the domain.

Maybe not yet.

We’ve got a process. I wonder whether it’s worth it to replicate this in every world we visit. For the levels and for the spectacle.

Spread some goodwill as a dimensional anti-demon force.

The domain holders were impressed but not shaken. But the spectacle was seen by many others. Smaller kings, the vassals of the three Overlords of Threeworlds, all now considered the implication of a fourth force. They were shaken, and many made covert attempts to communicate with us.

Against the wishes of their Overlords.

The questions on their minds were simple.

What did we want?

What were we willing to give or trade?

How would this affect the dynamics of the three-party state?

Were we stronger?

Many had seen the presence of the seven heroes, six humans for another world, and one Khefri. It bolstered Zhaanpu’s reputation as a wise, farseeing partner able to ally itself.

My diplomat was frank. We wanted unique resources, talents, and abilities. Powers to help the fight against the demons throughout the world. Kinnara referred to her office as a recruitment and marketing platform to pitch the idea of joining the fight. A promise of a fight greater than the world.

If the people of Treehome grew soft, the net must widen.

Treehome was akin to an oil well, where the composition of its reserves had changed over time. In the past, we dug out more black oil, more gasoline. But over time, natural gas would form a larger part of the extracted resources.

On a long enough timescale, there were no permanent reserves, even if I tried my best to preserve and prolong them.

“Wait. We’re invited to visit the other worlds?” I had the Valthorns send invitations to all the leaders. “Is this a trap?”

The Valthorns who sent the messages to the various lords, and for the interest of things, I’d sent the same invitations to the [Holy Emperor] and [Holy Empress] of the other continents.

“A trap.”

The priests who returned didn’t know what to tell them, at least, at first. It was eye-opening but also horrifying. They generally advised the [Holy Emperor] and [Holy Empress] no. They were too important. They were rulers of an empire.

An emperor did not take holidays.

But it was no place for a priest to tell an emperor what to do.

An emperor did what an emperor did, and one of them was fascinated so much. Holy Emperor Erranuel read the document and laughed.

“Aeon invites me to visit the other world.” He laughed to his court. “He taunts me if he thinks I won’t accept.”

The Valthorn was a fairly high-leveled individual at level one hundred. I could sense he was inwardly annoyed, but the emperor’s aura was a strong one. Such was the nature of ruler classes.

“Tell Aeon I am not afraid of him. I will go. Men! Prepare to set sail for the Central Continent!”

My Valthorn shrugged. “That won’t be necessary, Emperor Erranuel. A portal will be opened to send you and your entourage across. Along with all the other folks we invited.”

“I think we need a formal tour guide division,” my void archmages privately petitioned. “We’re tweaking the rift gates to make it more of a standardized trip. There’s also the issue of these [ruler] classes. Some of them are using their powers on my people, attempting to sway us to their side.”

Escorting nobility was a common task of spies and diplomats, and thus, I approached the FTC’s graduates, the lords and ladies of the Central Continent, for candidates.

There were quite a few takers, especially some of these noble classes that didn’t want to actually go down and deal with the nastiness of politics. A formal role as Freshka’s Inter-Dimensional Tour Guides for these foreign dignitaries was respectable, well paid, and none of the risks of assassinations commonly associated with war.

57

YEAR 241

Imet the holy emperor, and I felt his aura brush against mine. It was quite like a dog, barking loudly against a truck. Pointless. He seemed confident at first, as the emperor exited the portal. His small army of companions and guardians followed, but they were pale.

He kept a straight face as my aura smashed into his like a hammer. “It seems the rumors have some steel behind them.”

The confidantes all didn’t fare better. The emperor’s aura couldn’t protect them, and against my own, his aura was pushed back into a small area no larger than the emperor.

“Likewise,” I thundered. My voice these days took the form of the echoes of the forest itself, a thousand trees all speaking at once. They echoed and layered over each other. “Greetings, Emperor Erranuel. Are you ready for your trip across the stars?”

He tried to keep a straight, confident face. I could sense the mild shaking in his fingers, but the fact that he wasn’t cowered in spite of my weight made me rate him much higher than I would otherwise. “Of course.”

For all the pomp and arrogance, I could feel that this holy emperor had a backbone stronger than many others. The arrogance was merely a cover for something more within him, and there seemed like an actual, active mind within him. “I will send you to the other worlds now. Through my power.”

He nodded and checked on his companions. I felt him use some kind of power to empower his fellow companions. “Steel yourself, men. We are not cowards.”

Some of them look better, a bit of color back to their face. My teleportation ability sent them through to Lavaworld first. “It is not often I speak to you people. I believe your people consider me enemies?”

The emperor paused and looked back at his men. They were now all in another world, and I noticed him touch his skin and feel the air. “Yes. You are our foe. The threat to our empire’s existence.”

“Strange you say so, when we offer coexistence at every available opportunity?”

The emperor looked at the demons that swarmed Lavaworld. He looked rather sad. “My advisors tell me you don’t mean it. Coexistence is a lie.”

“We do,” I said. “We have bigger foes to face. Our goal is to end this cycle of destruction. If we could hide the world, we will.”

“What if that’s done? Will you seek to annihilate us?” the emperor accused, but I realized that accusation came from ignorance.

“What are your advisors feeding you? Do we seem like a bloodthirsty bunch eager to kill at every corner?”

“The guilds, do you not fund them in secret?”

“No. We certainly don’t.”

“But the banks?”

“The banks are independent entities set up to protect the wealth of the people. Everyone can use them. Including you.”

“If you don’t fund them, why do you let them go wild? I ensure all the guilds in my land listen to me,” the emperor countered. “Tell your guilds to stop if you mean to coexist.”

I realized there was a gap in comprehension. I understood coexistence as a hands-off approach. I believed that by not doing anything, I was therefore coexisting with them.

For an emperor, everyone reported to him. So it was natural for an emperor to assume that by allowing guilds from my land to attack them, I really did not have the intention to coexist with them. The guilds, in the eyes of supreme rulers, were my minions by sheer association.

“What if I told you that these guilds are truly independent of me and I have no desire to rule over or control them? Feel free to destroy them if you are able to.”

The emperor paused. “And you wouldn’t step in the way?”

“Why should I? Guilds come and go. They are just temporary groups of people, like a cult of money or an adventurer party. These are just fickle, temporary existences. Do you care about how the packs of insects form groups or guilds?”

The emperor had an epiphany of his own, as if he suddenly understood that I really didn’t give a shit about the guilds.

“Capitalism and corporations have a tendency of constantly finding the best way to make money. This time, that sadly meant conquering other lands.”

“I would stop them.”

“Do you stop children from fighting, Emperor? You let them fight and hope they grow. All I will do is set boundaries so that both don’t end up worse off. But these days, I have to shout to get my rules heard and even summon the parents and the guardians.”

The emperor chuckled at the reference. “Your child is snatching away my things. But you don’t consider them your children, do you?”

“I don’t. They are folks that happen to live under my rule, but I do not care for their political structures. These guilds, corporations, cults, or whatever come and go, and in my lifetime, they will fade. It’s almost a certainty. If you can’t protect it, you will eventually lose it.”

“I wasn’t aware you believed in ‘might makes right,’” the emperor retorted.

“What stories do they feed people like you? For an emperor, you must be aware of what bullshit you are consuming.”

The emperor paused. His aura wavered a little as he looked at his weakened entourage.

“I see. The priests often say you are the hidden hand, but it seems we have all been too presumptive.”

“To me, war is nothing more than a complicated, bloody selection and training process for my future war talent. For this war. A war for our right to exist.”

The emperor’s eyes gazed on the vast Lavaworld, the wastelands, and the demonic hordes that filled the horizon. The perpetual battlefield and my Valthorns’ training ground.

The war was still fought, of course. Against each other. Like kids.

But for once, they learned. It was nice to feel like they wouldn’t bother the Valthorns. For a few years. Maybe a few decades if I was lucky. Then I’d have to do this whole scare-regime again.

It was what it was. My new dimensional tour guides did well; they sung praises of my efforts across worlds. The nobles were treated to a life on the other worlds. Of hardship. Of suffering. Of death.

It was tourism. With my values, my circumstances.

Many nobles came through with some comprehension. The scope remained too hard to fathom, and certainly, it was too much to take in from just a three- or four-day trip across the void sea. My priests were all generally in favor of publicizing the existence of the multiverse to the general public.

As far as they were concerned, it was already an open secret. There were all these folks that came from another world, like the Canari, or those who migrated to the growing Tropicworld. So it made sense to go all out and start talking about the other worlds. It certainly enhanced my position and helped separate us from the regular kingdoms. Everyone was gonna get some perspective.

In terms of finances, my Valtrian Order financial administrators salivated at the prospect of charging a bomb for the privilege of visiting other worlds and creating true interdimensional trade. Money didn’t mean much to me. To me, it was the ability to direct resources and talent that truly mattered. But this was one of the areas I left it to the experts.

Each trip, theoretically, cost mana. But I had so many trees and so many clones that the mana produced pretty much covered all my military and exploratory use. But commercial trips were usually an entire league of its own, though I supposed I could set quotas.

They’d have to bid for it, or perhaps, a lottery. Then folks would get to travel from place to place. Maybe it should be a one-way trip. Or maybe both, since I’d still want some financial revenue. That’d help make my administrators happy.

I’d sell it like “isekai-lite,” that these guys would start out in another world, with the option to return. Best fresh start for anyone sick of their current situation.

I was quite amused by the idea, though I was also horrified at how much I thought like the gods.

Stella, Edna, and Lumoof were on the move again. Thanks to more sensitive sensors and also some artificial mind work, they’d roughly estimated the locations of the barrier’s source worlds and now needed to get there.

As it turned out, Stella figured it was possible to abuse the barrier itself, to use the barrier’s void energies to create a path to those source worlds. The archmages were also getting better at modifying the rift gates.

They were prepped for a fight; any world where there was some sort of barrier mechanism was likely to be fortified. Unless the demons were so confident. All three took up arms.

“Ready?” Stella looked at her two fellow domain holders, and they nodded. “This will feel different. It’s not a portal, but instead, we’re going to be in a bubble.”

They warped, and Stella flung the three in that bubble of void mana onto the barrier itself. Stella said it was the equivalent of throwing a flat stone across a pond, and the barrier was that pond.

It bounced and hopped off the barrier.

They crashed into a world, their void bubble unstable, but when they landed, they saw a world filled with demons and a lot of demonic structures.

Spires of all kinds. The terrain was dry, devoid of all life. Lumoof extended his senses and felt the core was like any other demon world.

But it was clear this wasn’t any world, because all they had to do was look up and see that there was a sun with two black rings around it. Even from the surface of the world, they could feel the twisted energies of those rings. Stella’s magical powers focused on those rings and looked at her two peers.

“Well, the barrier is generated by extracting energy from that strange sun— Wait.” Stella looked around, her magical senses tracing the energies. “There seems to be some kind of space mining. I can’t see it, but I can sense them from the magical energies in space.”

“Okay.” Edna nodded. “We’ve got some things to destroy.”

“Those two rings—they’re producing void mana somehow. From the sun’s energies. I could feel them funneling those energies away, into the barrier, but also somewhere else.”

“Black sun’s essentially stored void mana and doesn’t generate its own?”

“Maybe it does.”

“But not enough to fuel its ambitions,” Edna countered.

“So the demons capture planets and also capture suns to supplement it?” Lumoof said.

Stella didn’t seem sure. “There must be something about this sun. We need to get closer.” It was quite amusing to realize that all my domain holders had some kind of summon ability.

It seemed that as one reached that level, having magical minions was part of the skillset. Lumoof could summon spiritual warriors, Edna magical knights. Stella could summon creatures made of void mana, energy beasts. Their summoned creatures fought the demons, while the three continued to survey the location.

The planetary surface was fairly normal other than the high presence of demonic spires and spawning pools. Demons.

“Can you get us to those rings?”

Stella looked. “No issues. Same world. Don’t even need to spend all that much void—”

She coughed as she felt her own magical senses blocked.

“Oof. Magical shield. We need to bombard it from here, break down that shield, then teleport onto it.”

“They’re surprisingly thorough,” Edna quipped. “Sounds like they have some intelligent demons among those present.”

“Like the demon parasite champions?” Lumoof looked around. The demons on the surface were all regular demons.

“It’s possible the demon champion versions of these demons are intelligent. We don’t even know it’s just some or all those demon champions. Ally can think. It’s not a stretch to consider those here are able to think just as well,” Edna said and then looked back at Stella. “If you need to bombard that place, we’ll need reinforcements.”

Stella nodded. “Yes. Let’s go get ourselves some rift gates. They should have some on this world.”

There were no star paths for this world. This world wasn’t invading any other world.

Getting people onto that world proved significantly harder than expected, even with captured rift gates. Its location was really far, and the way they got there was through bouncing off the surface of the void barrier. It was likely that if the void barrier collapsed, a group of them would not be able to return the way they came.

Unless they had my teleporting familiars, which was fairly limited. There were only twenty-plus slots; the rest of the Valthorns typically relied on special “call-home” scrolls to emergency teleport back to a safe location.

We needed volunteers for this mission.

Matriarch Hoyia gathered them, and about a thousand of my best Valthorns came for the briefing. Of these one thousand, I hoped about a hundred would agree to make the leap to the other side.

“This will most likely be a one-way trip for a long time. At least, until Aeon deploys a seed on that side of the void sea. Stella, Lumoof, and Edna are now on one of the barrier-worlds, where there is a magical structure that the demons use to extract void mana from the sun via some unknown process.”

Using magical crystals, we could display images and pictures, illustrations of what we had seen.

“Aeon is of the view that there is a fairly high risk of death, and his ability to protect everyone is uncertain. It is too far from our home world, and call-home spells will not work. We do not know what this structure is capable of. But if we can break down the protective barrier and infiltrate those rings around the sun, we would take a step closer.”

The matriarch flashed an image of the barrier world.

“We know something is headed our way. This mission supports that agenda. If it is the long-theorized comet of demons, we hope to catch it before it gets near. It is likely behind that barrier.”

She looked at the crowd.

“I understand that some of you may feel that this is a suicide attempt, because of the distance. That is all right. But Aeon will need volunteers, those willing to go along with the void archmages to make all the jumps needed. At the final part, Stella will be the one opening the portal from the other side.”

A hundred volunteered.

Stella’s void explorer was headed in the other direction, as far away from the demon sun as we could. The other side of the goal was to reach the god-covered worlds.

See whether we could get allies.

Talk to gods who could supply us with an army of heroes. One of the void archmages led this part of the project, along with all of our other initiatives.

The Cometworld project met a dead end. It was likely we weren’t getting the right materials. Or we didn’t have access to the system.

Veter was one of these void archmages, and he was most convinced of the god-world strategy. It was sensible. If gods could protect their own domain and even send heroes to further out worlds, the best way to defeat the demons was to reach the gods and get their help.

If a bridge could be created via my clone, essentially the gods could just keep summoning heroes and send them to the far-out worlds via my network of clones. I was the funnel, the canal that helped irrigate the abandoned worlds with heroes.

My void-treefolks grew up well. The first of them was in his teens and didn’t display any unusual behaviors. His physique was reasonable for his age, not exceptional. But his void magic was incredible, and he displayed the ability to manipulate small quantities of void magic with very minimal training.

The lizardfolk experiments were a bit more mixed. Some experienced some challenges later in their life as they aged; the void mana seemed to cause problems for their body that we did not encounter with the void treefolks.

I stepped in a few times to heal these lizardfolks and beyond that tried to correct the flaws created from the experiments with void mana.

The archmages wanted to create all types of mana-attuned people. Core mana or star mana attunement was naturally the next step, though star mana was just as difficult to work with as void mana.

Luckily, star mana didn’t have the tendency of harming the body. Star mana decayed into regular mana; in large quantities they triggered what we call mana poisoning. Mana poisoning was fairly easy to deal with. Lumoof was one of those who experienced extreme levels of mana poisoning.

We had not been able to replicate the gods’ ability to create souls capable of producing star mana like the heroes.

It was poured in the heroes through those magical vases as I’d seen in the soul spring, but the heroes themselves were somehow able to produce some star mana once their soul spring fully converted to that heroic white marble form.

I still tried to recreate it, though from the name, it highly implied star mana had otherworldly origins.

Even my own few star mana–generating leaves collected energies from the stars, though my earlier attempts to increase my production of star mana had gone nowhere. Among my normal mage-researchers, the creation of star mana from natural sources remained one of the most highly coveted goals.

58

YEAR 242

Ihad a fairly good impression of Emperor Erranuel. He seemed level headed, if a little misguided and uninformed of what could exist beyond his sphere of knowledge. Once educated, he wasn’t stupid and commanded his empire accordingly.

War was still brutal as hell.

The merchant kings were far more calculative about things, and they did have a tendency of measuring territories in terms of how much money they made. But the existential threat was super effective.

Since that visit, we maintained contact, much to the displeasure of the priests around the emperor. He had questions, and a curiosity for the greater war beyond Treehome, but alas, we were from different factions.

It was rare to find nobles and administrators interested in the greater war playing out. There were some, of course, and those that did, we would rope them to assist with the greater battle. There was always a need for people to grow our fortifications on our other worlds, such as Branchhold and Tropicworld.

Branchhold remained one of the locations where we maintained just that one patch of land, legally. But since every nation respected us, and we sent our missionaries, spies, and traders everywhere, we were respected as the one true neutral nation in the entirety of Branchhold.

We also spoke of other worlds more openly. This intrigued the nobles and wealthy of Mountainworld, and my tour people had more work to do.

At some point, we would have to allow for more open travel between the worlds; right now the movement of individuals was artificially limited. There were medical concerns, such as the introduction of unusual diseases.

This factor was negligible with my Valthorns since they had the blessings of my familiars and various abilities, but for civilians with none of that, we were concerned they’d kill themselves without knowing it.

Even those who went on officially sanctioned trips, we maintained a small team of healers just to make sure they didn’t suddenly keel over. It was unlikely, but not a good look for us if those that went on trips didn’t return.

On the Barrierworld, my domain holders and the small group of Valthorns were still at work.

“It would be better if Aeon could deploy a seed here,” Lumoof actually suggested, since, with its unusual location, it was hard to ship anything over or back.

“We’ll need it for the Sun-Rings itself,” Stella countered. We settled on the term “Sun-Rings” to refer to the two rings around the sun. The Valthorns built a large base essentially overnight and shifted to constructing an array of magical bombardment tools meant to break or weaken the magical shielding around the two sun-rings.

There was a group of mages that studied those rings, and they claimed it to be some kind of dyson-ring, harvesting sun energy. I thought that was pretty obvious, but I guessed we had to establish foundations, however obvious they were, before we could make more meaningful conclusions.

The main issue with the bombardment tools was essentially range.

We were the equivalent of some guys on Earth, trying to shoot something toward the Sun. The distances involved were massive, and even with the void mages’ portal magic, which significantly reduced the actual projectile travel time, it still involved a lot of coordination. Teleporting bombs right onto the magical shields was also quite costly, mana-wise.

One of the great things, however, was the presence of daemolite, and it was quite easy to recharge void mana. This world was filled with it; those two rings created so much void mana that some of them inevitably diffused to the environment around them.

So, for Stella, it was just picking up those excess void mana.

Alka, naturally, decided it was best if he went to this barrier world, so he, escorted by a second contingent of about twenty volunteers, also made the journey to this world. Their journey would take at least a year, because even Stella took a while to get to the barrier world.

They estimated it’d take another year or two to create sufficient tools to bombard the place.

On Threehome, as the specter of war against the demons was behind us, my issue now shifted to war with the crystal king. He had essentially declared war on Zhaanpu, and the rest of us by proxy. What this meant was harassment, since, despite his claim of total war, he didn’t dare actually mount open war.

None of his vassals were keen on facing a seemingly limitless beetle army, but they postured. It was all smoke and mirrors, all show and no actual action. It was pointless open hostility, but they still did it anyway.

Zhaanpu claimed it was just pride, and frankly, he poured oil on the fire by goading the messenger, claiming he was not afraid of war.

I naturally realized Zhaanpu was a bit of a warmonger himself and loved to use the excuse of my presence to fight wars. Strange, because he claimed he was weary of the war and the stalemate. Yet he was more than happy; hell, it felt like he was looking for any excuse to have a war.

In his own words, “I do not shy away from war. If it is war that Crystal King wants, it is war he shall get. I have scimitars that desire blood. I have raiders eager to hack at their kingdoms.”

The war between the Sandpeople and the fortified humans were essentially rough, and there were no observations of any war conventions. There was rape, there was pillaging, and there was war in its most brutal form. The Sandpeople did not share my values, even if we were nominally allies.

I decided, after speaking to my own folks, to stay out of their shit.

There were centuries if not thousands of years of bad blood between the three factions. Everyone wronged everyone, and I didn’t want to get into it.

Zhaanpu didn’t really mind that I didn’t give assistance. He was a domain holder, and just like the crystal king, he had an ego and pride. He wouldn’t take things from me, unless it was something he didn’t want to deal with. Like Khefri.

He made himself clear. “I will fight this war myself. There is no need for you to get involved. In fact, I’d prefer it if you don’t meddle.”

My spies eventually realized it was because he had to still maintain the semblance that he was the main boss of the Sandpeople, and thus, it didn’t reflect well on Zhaanpu, if I fought wars for him.

If his power was not necessary to win the war, the nations of Sand would lose their loyalty, and that was not what he desired.

The Centaurs, however, didn’t have a choice. They were too weak. They were more than happy to sit out this war between the Sandpeople and the humans. They were the weakest of the three after their recent problems with the previous demon king, and thus they also needed to rebuild.

My diplomat naturally wanted to support the Centaurs in their reconstruction, since supporting the three-party state seemed like a good idea. This was a complicated process since we essentially needed to use portals extensively to deliver goods to the Centaur lands after teleporting them in through my clone tree in the far north.

I didn’t want to ship goods through the Sandpeople’s land, since we weren’t exactly short on teleportation spells, and it just wasn’t a good political look to ship goods to another nation when we did not give that same support to Zhaanpu’s Sandpeople.

My diplomats recruited talented Centaurs to join our cause. My Centaurs, as odd as it sounded, recommended me to “throw them into the pool and watch them swim,” as these talented Centaurs from all over the Centaur lands were shipped to Lavaworld, where they found demons until they were exhausted, gave up, or found it to be what they wanted to do.

They were a martial kind, after all, and war was a calling.

The prospect of a war where they could go all out for long periods of time, without having to adhere to any ethics, since demons were pretty much monsters, excited some of them. It was even therapeutic to dance in war with a foe that was truly inhuman.

But it worked, and we recruited about a thousand Centaurs to join us. Warmongers, really. These Centaurs loved war, and our mental analysis soon revealed that as long as we gave them the tools to wage war against the demons, they’d be loyal.

It was a drug, and hell, I’d use it.

Centaurs like Arjan and many others were deployed to the Centaur lands to help them with reconstruction and reclamation of the tainted lands. This was an easy political win for us and made us friends with the tribes that used to own these lands.

It was a dangerous game, of course. Just as Zhaanpu saw the potential for civil war if he allowed my influence to set in, the same would happen with the Centaurs.

Each act that benefitted us pulled some of the native Centaur tribes away from Hoofhall. At some point, they would perceive us as a rival state, rather than friends, and the Centaur tribes may even descend into civil war.

It was a future problem, since right now they were in no condition to do so.

Along the same lines, my diplomats tried their best to get closer to the powers within Hoofhall.

Even till today, I knew little about the magical creature or item that claimed to rule over the Centaurs. Zhaanpu himself was vague and elusive about the nature of the Centaurs’ guardian, referring to it in passing as “them.”

One day.

59

YEAR 243

“How many bombs do you think it’ll take to break that down?” Lumoof asked. Alka arrived just a few weeks back and got straight to the task of battering down the magical shielding around the Sun-Rings.

We did test detonations, where we sent smaller bombs toward the barrier, and they worked fairly well. The shields held, of course.

“I’m guessing something a hundred times bigger, if we go the normal way,” Alka said with a big laugh. “It’s a blended shield with demonic and void mana. All we gotta do is dump star mana on it, and it should go crazy.”

The demons had some kind of defense mechanism, of course, where we detected the Sun-Rings emitting a distress beacon, the same one that came from the demon mother.

“It’ll just drive the demons nuts.” Lumoof looked. “Sure that’s a good idea?”

“Well. We have company,” Edna complained as she went out to deal with the champions that spawned out of the demon’s core. Nothing we couldn’t handle. Not yet, anyway. It’d take the demon mother itself for us to actually plan something serious.

The Barrierworld itself was astral neighbors with two other worlds, but Stella was too busy trying to crack the magical shield to travel there. One of those astral neighbors was inaccessible anyway, somehow located behind and on the other side of the barrier, despite being clearly visible to us.

“I think we could dig a hole, though,” Alka said. “Rather than blow up the shield, it may be easier to just go with an offsetting magical signature to neutralize the effects of the shield, creating a small path for us to go through.”

“You do realize if whatever we use to create that hole collapses, we’ll have no way out.”

“Just make more. We’re not exactly limited by resources.”

“We are.”

“Oh. Then, Stella, travel back to Treehome to fetch our stuff and back.”

“Hey! The void mages can do that!” Stella whined as she did her own things. “Besides, you need me to offset that void magic element in that shield.”

“But you’re a lot faster.”

“Next time Aeon gets more clone seeds, we should recommend he keep two in reserve. We’d have a much easier time if we could place one here as a base of operations,” Lumoof said. Not all items could be sent back and forth with my ability, and for larger items, the void mages essentially had to be magical couriers and delivery.

“That starts us down the path of eventually asking Aeon to keep a hundred clones in reserve.” Alka laughed.

“If Aeon had a thousand clones, we’d have an amazing time. Imagine the number we can field across such a world.”

“If that happens, Aeon’s new job will be a full-time email server manager,” Stella joked.

“I didn’t get that.”

“Imagine someone whose job is to tell [messages] where they need to go, from world to world.”

“Oh. That sounds mundane as hell. Aeon would just offload it to an [artificial mind].” Alka laughed. “By the way, I read the studies about Void Magic as a mechanism to flatten a limited aspect of dimensional space. It’s intriguing.”

Lumoof and Edna’s mind promptly shutoff the conversation.

“It is, right! The concept of void magic as an anti-dimensional mana seems to be linked to this barrier. By pushing this ability to the extreme, they’ve somehow created a null-dimensional space. The demons essentially created an impassable barrier.”

“You could reverse it or offset the effects of the barrier.”

“On a smaller scale, I could. At least, my smaller tests suggest I could do it, but the power at place here is orders of magnitude higher. I’ll need something much more powerful to break it, and we need to get a sustainable opening, if we want to look behind the veil.”

Alka looked up at the Sun-Rings. Stella nodded.

“The demon sun is clearly able to release a portion of its energies to support the demon kings on their invasion. You think those rings also serve as a form of funnel?”

“I would think so. The ‘rhythm’ of invasions may be somewhat linked to these rings.”

“Didn’t seem like something the demons would do, to restrict their own expansion that way,” Lumoof butted in.

“That’s true, unless this was a defense mechanism against the gods.”

“The gods can’t reach them. Or maybe they used to.” Lumoof thought. “When the multiverse was smaller.” The concept of a multidimensional expansion was probably weird.

“Maybe they don’t know that,” Stella said. “Over the eons, it’s likely this barrier itself will collapse as they run out of the mana needed to maintain it.”

If space constantly expanded, and mana consumption thus increased with space, it was only logical that eventually this barrier would consume more mana than could be produced and thus collapse on itself. This null-space barrier was very, very tiny, as it turned out. The demons were spreading it thin.

It worked both ways, of course. If I could create this null-space barrier, it should break the demons’ ability to invade as well. Permanently, at that.

It was likely Alka had a point. The demons had a way of getting things out, despite the presence of the barriers. These Sun-Rings likely served as gates into the protected area. Anything going in or out of the demon-space was through those rings.

“So even if we get onto that thing, do we destroy it or capture it? Both work, but capturing it would let us tap this massive void mana generation device,” Alka said. “If we break it, and somehow cancel this barrier, we’d have free access to the demon realm.”

“You’re saying as if it’s a done deal.” My void archmage stretched. “We don’t even know what happens if we destroy the Sun-Rings.”

“Over a long period of time, it is.” Alka laughed. “Haven’t you spent the most time with Aeon to know that everything is ultimately inevitable? I prefer to capture them. Access to large quantities of void mana and the ability to study the magical concepts behind them would greatly push our comprehension. This is an actual magical structure that could ultimately redesign our future.”

“When you put it that way…” Stella looked up. “There is incredible potential for the ability to manipulate space.”

“Why can’t we use it as a weapon?”

“Souls reject void mana, remember? There’s a reason we go through that toxic void-mana ordeal in order to become void mages. Also, these dimensional spaces are inherently unstable and will collapse.”

“Doesn’t seem that unstable to me.” Alka laughed in jest. “But I get it.”

One of the Ularans back on Treehome finally reached level seventy, and with the right equipment, the Ularan Earth Mage could technically take on a demon champion on its own. Once they were better prepared, I would intend to send them to Lavaworld where they could fight with the demon champions.

Snek, of course, was excited to see one from his world get stronger. There was still more to go.

But his partner was getting older, and increasingly, Snek grew worried.

“Ken, are you sure you don’t want some kind of magic treatment?” His level plateaued. It was true that levels made them live longer, but Ken’s age was now closing in on the late seventies to eighties.

The magical snake didn’t age. But Ken did, and Ken resisted all attempts to de-age or extend his longevity more than necessary.

Even the heroes were increasingly touchy about it, especially Chung.

“Bro.” Chung met him for lunch back in Freshka. “I know it’s hypocritical of me to ask this, but please, reconsider your choice. We’ve been friends for decades now, and I can’t see you go.”

Ken laughed. It was true that Ken looked like a man in his sixties, while Chung appeared to be no more than a man in his late thirties in amazing shape. “If you know me that well, then shut it.”

“I can’t, bro. We’ve been friends for decades, and frankly, there’s that few of us. If Aeon offers you a deal, please, take it.”

“Fuck that,” Ken said as he sipped on his anti-oxidizing tea. Health fads were very real in this world, since magical teas did exist.

“You don’t intend to see Aeon reach the goal of defeating the demons for good?”

Snek, who took the form of the tiny lizard, agreed with Chung. “Chung has a point. Aeon needs guidance.”

“All I provide is trope advice. And these days, everyone has heard my tropes a dozen times over. I’d like to age gracefully and die in my sleep as I originally envisioned. Let me die, brother.”

Chung didn’t seem happy and decided to approach me directly for a deal.

“Aeon, we’ve fought together many times. Can you go against Ken’s will and let him live longer? I can’t bear to see a friend of mine die. I’ve seen so many of mine die back during the early days in this world, and the idea or thought of seeing Ken die—”

“He is healthy and well. He still has a few decades in him. There is no need for this conversation.”

“But he looks so old, and he—”

“He reminds you of his mortality.”

Chung sighed. “Yeah. Looking at him, his skin wrinkled, his hair white, I can’t help but really feel how fragile his life is. Like all it takes is just a snuff.”

I felt that way with everyone, actually. Everyone aged and died. “If it makes him happy, I won’t go against his wishes.”

“I’m a hero. He’s not. Do something. I know I’ve been a bit of a rebellious bastard, but make a deal with me. Don’t let him die.”

“You seem confident that you will live longer than him. He doesn’t serve on the front lines, but you do. Perhaps you should care about your own life more than his.”

It was still early for any of them to die, actually.

60

YEAR 244

“All right. Shield-piercer deployed,” Alka said with relief as the portal closed. The magical artifact floated into location, right above the shield around the Sun-Rings. “Activating.”

The shield-piercer was a ring-shaped object about the size of a rift gate. It was large, about three stories tall, and meant to essentially create a hole within the shield by creating an offsetting magical energy.

It was a work of incredible craftsmanship; a few level one hundred craftsmen had to travel to Barrierworld to see it made.

The Shield-piercer whirled to life, and my void mages grinned. “Yep. It works. Ready for our invasion?”

“What’s the freaking plan?” Lumoof cursed. “Go in, deploy Aeon’s seed, and conquer? What if the seed doesn’t work on the rings? It’s not a planet, you know. You can’t grow plants on steel.”

“It doesn’t look like steel.”

Stella looked at the rest. “Well, I think the four of us should go first. If the coast seems clear, then the rest of the team comes in.”

One of the level one hundred forty Valthorns nodded. “We’ll cover the base here if you need a place to retreat.”

“Got it.”

“We don’t really know what we are dealing with,” Lumoof said.

“My bet is more demons.” Alka laughed. “But you know what? The four of us can go with minimal risk. All we waste is time.”

“Aeon, should we go?” Lumoof asked for my opinion. Stella and Alka both advocated going; the prospect of learning something new was worth it. Edna was neutral. Lumoof was the only one feeling a little cautious. “I feel like, given the size and importance of the Sun-Rings, its defenders are likely more powerful than what we’ve seen before.”

“Agreed. But we need to do this. We can’t figure out how to deal with the demons without some risks.”

Alka had a point, and I couldn’t just wait here. We’d have to risk it. “Four of you go. If it seems clear, then call the rest of the team in to investigate.”

Lumoof nodded. “As you command.”

The void domain holder weaved her void magic through the Shield-piercer, and then the portal whirled into existence. She frowned. “Not very stable, there’s some disruptive elements coming from the surface of the Sun-Rings. Possible anti-magic presence.”

Alka looked around. “We go first. The rest stay behind.”

“All right.”

The four moved through the portal and landed, possibly, as the first mortals on the Sun-Rings.

[Title awarded: Invaders of the Ring]

“Snarky system.” Stella cursed as we landed on what was super, super close to the sun. At this distance, there was a perpetual searing heat that threatened to bake anything that faced the sun. A protective shield emerged above, and even that was cooked.

As we looked around, we were pretty much on the inner side of a Ring World. On this side, it was just a sheen of gold; the surface was cooked. But we saw some crystalline formation collecting the sun’s incredibly intense mana.

That heat was laced with mana.

It was star mana, yet it didn’t feel like star mana of the heroes. Instead, it felt like a raw form of star mana, untouched by the divine energies of the gods, very much like those produced by my little star-mana producing leaves, but in a slightly different form.

Even star mana had variants within them.

“Stella, I thought the prevailing theory was that suns don’t produce star mana.” At least, our tests didn’t indicate that to be the case. We were unable to replicate the conditions of Cometworld, but our tests on Treehome, Mountainworld, and Threeworld did not find any star mana from their suns.

“Clearly that theory was wrong,” Stella answered. “Some of them still do.”

Alka countered, “Maybe it’s just the star’s age. Ken once told me that a star goes through a life cycle of growth and gradual death. This is a sun in its dying days. Like Cometworld. It takes the dying moments of the sun to produce it, and this is a really large sun, so…”

“Has a long time to go from when it starts producing star mana to its dying moments.”

There was nothing here. Not on the inner side.

“Let’s move to the other side of the ring,” Stella said. “Bad news is we’ll have to walk. At this distance from the star, I’m feeling quite a strong drain on my magic.”

“Fine with me, actually.”

The walk was uneventful, and for four domain holders with all sorts of augmented abilities, they moved quickly. Lumoof’s blessings and enchantments meant they moved through the strangely steel and glass-like structure of the Sun-Rings.

Then we reached the dark side of the Sun-Rings and were greeted with demons. The demons were slender and looked quite like those cool demon knights we’d seen long ago. They all had swords.

“Company,” Edna said, and her weapons shredded them easily.

Here, on the dark side, the weather and temperature took an abrupt turn, becoming incredibly cold instead. We also had a better look at the materials beneath us.

Crystals and glass, with bits of steel and rock. The unusual magical formations seen on the rift gates were seen here once more, but in different words and different patterns.

The demons had their own runic language, one we didn’t understand, though we tried to copy it.

The defenses were cleared fairly easily. At least, we managed to remove those that we found with not much trouble.

“Think it’s safe to call the rest of the team here?” Stella asked.

Alka nodded, squatted, and touched the floor. It was beautiful when it wasn’t burning hot. “Yeah. I want people looking into these glass materials beneath us right now. They are incredible.”

Edna looked around the cold, dark side of the Sun-Rings. “I’ll look for somewhere to set up a base. It’s likely we won’t have any, if this whole place is built for purpose, so we’ll have to just set up camp on top of this.”

“That’ll have to do, I suppose.”

Stella nodded as she did her thing, a portal whirling into existence. “I’m still feeling the mild magical interference, and I think it’s coming from beneath us.”

“Ambient interference from the sun?”

“Possible, but you think the glass has some anti-magical qualities?”

“We’ll have to look at it,” Alka said. “Can’t say for sure, even with my identification abilities.”

Lumoof spread out his own senses and mine. I felt like I was floating in the air, despite the presence of a solid surface. This whole thing was artificial. It wasn’t Earth. Except certain parts. My senses abhorred most of the surface, but it was likely the Sun-Rings were built by joining asteroids or planetoids together to form an underlying structure.

There were parts where I wanted to be. Parts where there was an asteroid still hidden underneath all the glass and crystals.

Lumoof repeated our observations, and the rest of the team stepped through.

“Should we approach the holes?”

There was a part of the Sun-Rings where the star mana of the sun was pulled and pushed through a set of unusual gigantic holes on the Sun-Rings. That was where the star mana was somehow transformed into void mana. It certainly invalidated the idea that super-dimensional mana could somehow be converted into anti-dimensional mana. Or at least there was a way to excise the “super” part and replace it with “anti”?

Or there was a way these two facts could exist while still being true?

Stella shook her head. “I think we’re not ready. Let’s just do some more research. We find out what we can, then once we’re mostly done, we push through to those places.”

“Why? Because of defenders?” Alka countered. “We could get more research done there.”

“Well, yes,” Stella said. “If that place is important, it’s likely to have stronger defenders. We have a good base of operations here. We ought to just stay here and take what we have.”

Edna nodded in agreement.

“Very well. But we will be spending time. Valuable time.”

Nothing much occurred for the next two months, as the demons ignored our small base of operations in that quiet corner of the Sun-Rings. The samples of the Sun-Rings’ materials were extremely interesting, being made of some kind of fusion of crystals, anti-mana glass, and some weird type of steel alloy not found on our worlds.

That steel alloy felt like one of those rare minerals only found on selected worlds, a world we clearly needed to capture for our own.

“So we’re ready to go?” Alka was excited, as were the rest of the team. We packed up and began to journey to what we referred to as the “Furnace.”

The journey there was littered with demons, and we slaughtered them as they came. There were no spawning pools here, so we had no idea where they came from.

Then after a month of walking through the magically disruptive dark side of the Sun-Rings, we arrived at the Furnace. Strange statues were along the surface of that circular ring that guided the jet of void mana.

The Furnace was massive; looking across it was quite like looking at the moon. The distances were probably similar, or more, since this was pretty much a solar-scale superstructure. The ircular rings were made with even more unusual materials, and the magical energies here were extremely powerful. The void mana generated and sent into the null-dimensional Void Barrier and beyond felt like an intense pulsar.

A very intense pulsar that even my domain holders couldn’t get near.

This was akin to approaching the sun itself. We’d be baked alive. For the level one hundred thirty and one hundred forty Valthorns, this was a sight they’d probably never forget.

If they survived this trip.

“You know, the idea that the demons are some kind of self-replicating machine is starting to make sense,” Alka said. “This is the kind of thing I’m pretty sure Ken would say to be the work of a robotic creature.”

“Demon-golems.” Edna shrugged. She spent enough time with Kei and the heroes to be familiar with the terms.

Lumoof looked at Stella. “Well, from our earlier observation, we know that capturing this structure is impossible. We’d only be able to capture the rock-remnants still within certain parts of the Sun-Rings.”

“That only leaves destroying it,” Alka said.

“Can we even destroy something this massive?” one of the Valthorns interjected.

“We’ll have to—”

At that point, we noticed the statues around the circular furnace activated. A distress signal? Stella immediately cursed.

“Prepare for battle. We have company.”

The aura we sensed was immediate, as a rift opened right in front of us. A demon king emerged. It was a massive creature the size of a building; it had two glowing axes the size of cars, and armor. Around it were those slender demons, but with more power than before.

[Demon King (Defender) ???? arrived on ????]

“Now’s not a good time to be funny, system.” Lumoof cursed.

The entire Sun-Ring vibrated and then pulsed. The glass-crystal structure underneath our feet glowed, the symbols and runes flashing.

My mages immediately cursed. “Shit. A strong anti-magic suppression field!”

It was so strong that it would disrupt most normal magic and Stella’s portal ability.

Edna looked back at the demon king and smiled. “Well, it seems I’ll have to hold the demon king back. Lumoof, Stella, Alka, get everyone back to safety.”

“Safety?” Lumoof cursed. “Not everyone has teleporting familiars. Aeon can’t recall all of us back with it.”

There were about eighty level one hundreds with us. About ten of them were in the level one hundred thirties. I wasn’t going to lose them. They’d served me for decades.

They were prepared to die. I wasn’t planning on letting them die.

Edna’s magical shield appeared and parried the demon king’s axe. “Figure it out, Lumoof.”

Lumoof looked around. With the anti-mana present, it meant most magical forms of teleportation to safety would be out of the window. Stella’s own void mana was somehow nullified. Normally, it wouldn’t affect her, but there was just way too much anti-magical suppression on the Sun-Rings that it overcame her domain-tier abilities.

The demon king roared, and I felt it use some kind of anti-magic ability, too.

Edna cursed as the ability bounced off her shields.

The level one hundred thirties were not ready for this fight.

“Lumoof,” Alka said, somehow turning back to join Edna, “use Aeon’s clone somewhere. The domain abilities should circumvent the anti-magical preventions. We’ll waste Aeon’s ten years. But it’s better than losing our people. Go. Take Stella.”

Lumoof and Stella both nodded. “All of you, with me. We need to get to a location on the Ringworld that has an asteroid underneath or within it. That’s our key out of this, or we’ll be killed by the demon king.”

Lumoof activated one of his strongest blessings. A priest’s abilities were mixed, some spell-based, some system-based, and they immediately empowered the entire group.

Edna attacked the demon king relentlessly, doing her best to attract the demon king’s aggro.

But it was not the only demon. Demons emerged from everywhere, as more rift gates opened. The demonic knights poured out of them.

“How do the demons do it?” Stella cursed, as she had to rely on conventional weapons. The level one hundreds and one hundred forties could deal with the regular demons, and with Lumoof’s blessing, they could flee. But there was nothing that could really take down a demon king, and attempting to fight it now was a stupid idea.

Thus, the only solution was to retreat.

The win condition was to stall the demon king, and Edna had to occupy it before it reached any of our non-domain holders.

“Lady Edna, may I join you? I hope your [Duty] is already active.” Alka leaped to join the battlefield. My researcher had rarely seen battle, but he had seen enough from afar that it didn’t scare him.

“Of course. But I hope it’s not a death wish.” Edna laughed as she parried a few more furious, earth-shattering strikes from the demon king. The attacks left huge gashes in the glass-crystal platform beneath them. “You have a plan?”

“Just one, really.”

Alka looked back. Lumoof, Stella, and the rest were speeding through the Sun-Rings. They’d likely reach somewhere safe soon enough.

Edna parried more attacks, and Alka threw some bombs to shake off the smaller demons. “You don’t really need to help, you know. Aeon could just pull me back once you get to safety.”

Alka laughed. “Actually, I’m just buying time.”

He looked back again, as more time passed. He was protected by a wide variety of skills and abilities, but they wouldn’t hold against the demon king.

So, for now, he was just nearby, waiting for the moment and watching Edna harass the demon king as an undying knight. Her sword of anti-demons was like a golden flame, and it left some clear cuts on the demon king.

But this demon king was at full strength, not yet weakened by bombs or traps. She may be strong, but she was not yet enough to beat a demon king on her own.

Yet the demon king was gaining ground and pushing them back. Edna’s range of attacks was also running out, and it was increasingly clear that the demon king began to realize he could ignore Edna.

Alka looked back at Lumoof some more. It felt like they were far away.

Lumoof and Stella reached a particular segment of the Sun-Rings. With the anti-magical aura present throughout the Sun-Rings, void mana teleportation was impossible.

“Here. Aeon, can we use the seed?”

“Yes.” It was a difficult choice. I’d give up the flexibility and insurance of one clone seed for the next ten years. But I had to.

I wouldn’t let these people die. Not when they were so close to the domain level.

Lumoof pulled out the clone seed from his pocket space and with his entire strength punched the platform. It left a crack.

It wasn’t necessary. My seed pierced through the platform like it wasn’t there and zoomed toward the rocky portion hidden underneath all the glass and crystal. My ability to seek out soil was uncanny, and a clone emerged.

My tree cracked through the platform and the turbulent magics, and I felt the magical power of the Sun-Rings interact with my own.

It was strong and felt like burning lava. This Sun-Ring produced more mana than I had a few times over.

The Valthorns looked relieved as they rushed to the clone.

“All right. Let’s send you guys back.”

“What about those on the surface?” There were some of them still on the world’s surface, not on the Sun-Ring.

“They’ll have to wait. Stella will have to come back and pick them up.”

They touched my tree, and I sent them home.

Lumoof and Stella didn’t go through. They waited.

“Should we go help Edna and Alka?”

The demon king naturally felt the presence of my clone and immediately assessed me to be its greatest threat. It wanted to move.

Edna pulled out a harpoon and attempted to shackle it to the ground. She wasn’t strong enough to hold the demon king down.

Alka smiled. “Edna. I’m coming.”

Alka ran toward the demon king as he consumed some non-magical potions. His speed wasn’t impressive, but it was enough to dodge some of the demon king’s magical attacks and get close enough.

The demon king saw him coming, and the axe almost landed.

“I always wanted to do this.”

Alka grinned.

“[Always a bomb].”

Alka’s body flashed, and at that sudden moment, the entirety of the Sun-Rings shook. It was an explosion so large that it was equal to any of the traps we left for the demon king. Alka had somehow tricked his ability into accepting the traps as a single superstructure?

A sudden burst of light was so bright it briefly outshone everything in the world and could even be seen on the world’s surface. The explosion ripped through a portion of the Sun-Ring’s platform and charred the demon king.

But this was no ordinary demon king. It was a Defender, and its toughness was incredible. The explosion merely revealed an inner self that was thoroughly unharmed. Slimmer. Smaller. But still just as powerful.

It had a sword of liquid blood that came down with the fury of an angry god.

Alka cursed. “Oh fuck.”

I pulled my [domain holder] back home using my [Court of the Deitree].

The attack wrecked the already wrecked platform. The Sun-Ring shook as a segment of the Sun-Ring cracked and shattered.

Edna laughed. “Oh dear. Aeon, I think we’re done here.”

“Agreed,” Lumoof and Stella answered.

I pulled all of my three remaining domain holders home.

My clone was the only thing left on the dark side of the Sun-Ring. I had never fought a demon king head-on. This was perhaps my only chance. In truth, there was nothing more to achieve here.

The demon king instead turned to my clone tree and charged at it. Furious. Angry, its attack was incredible. It met my wooden shields, and my shields shattered. But it did not hurt my clone.

It attacked again. And my shields shattered some more. But its blades or claws didn’t reach my body. I countered with my roots.

I was stronger. I was no longer an ant trying to bite an elephant. I was just a small cat.

But my defenses were leagues above my offensive ability, and I blocked every attack the demon king threw my way. Shields were shattered, but I could make more than it could shatter. This exchange of none of us hurting each other lasted for hours.

Then it stopped and called for help.

Another distress signal. I sensed a twisting in space. A rift opened.

[Demon King (Defender 2) ???? arrived on ????]

“Oh shit,” I cursed as I watched a different type of demon king emerge.

Realizing that I was fucked, I decided to not let it have the luxury of killing my clone. I pulled my clone back and unmade it.

“That was a disaster.”

“No one died. I don’t call that a disaster,” Stella said. Luckily, the void archmage on the surface world quickly ordered everyone to retreat once they saw that bright light coming from the Sun-Rings. They were far enough not to be affected by the anti-magical properties and could still teleport away.

“But the barrier is still there.”

“That is true. But it is weaker. Fainter. I can see deeper into it.”

“Well, we could do so again?”

“When Aeon’s clone recharges in another ten years,” Stella said. “We know Alka’s bomb ability worked. We can bomb that shit out of existence.”

“So what now? Recharge and go at it again?” Lumoof asked.

Stella looked at the barrier from the safety of Treehome. “Actually, we have a comet to deal with.”

Tree of Aeons will continue in Book Six!

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