Year 211 (continued)

***

“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 snackruns, 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 hoped that it wouldn'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, 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 civilised 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 90 to 95 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 the 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 god’s own homeworlds 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 500?”

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 towards 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 have no idea about the existence of a ‘higher’ level cap, but I enjoyed eavesdropping. Their predictions can 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, isn’t it?” 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 outwards. 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. A surge of mental attacks, and Lumoof yelped in pain.

Then the pain receded a little, the mental assaults on our presence weakened. 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’s 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 know very well, deep within all those little 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 planktons 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 attempted 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, and 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’ve been absorbing souls without ‘seeing’ them most of the time, only when they are 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 outwards, 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’s 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 won’t land in the scheduled location. They protested and complained how we’ve 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, wasn’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's 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.

Was, because the impact momentarily pushed all the sea and turned it into land. The impact was so strong that it became the epicenter of a tsunami that propagated outwards, 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 it’s head damaged by the twisted rifts. Throughout the demon king’s body were strange cuts, like parts of it’s 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’ve got a migraine and also had too much to drink. The magical energies of the demon king’s astral path was 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 towards it.

I couldn’t focus, my mind seemed hazy from all I’ve 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 domainholders 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.