A few days had passed since the contest had been issued, and boy howdy, were the entries coming in. The variations ran the gamut of being overly evil in design to being more… angelic, but in the end, what Kain had feared had come true. Nearly 80% of the designs and ideas proposed by the people of the Greater Darksol Empire were purely designed for the furthering of or for general use in war, violence, and general bloodshed.

Still, though, a great number of these more…. Aggressive designs and concepts were quite useful. Although to be fair, many were little more than iterations on existing things or were so stupidly broken and overpowered that Kain knew for a fact that the App would not let him make them.

One of the more utterly broken ideas was a single statue that would rampage uncontrollably like an immortal, stony demon the moment all sentient eyes were off of it. Now, Kain knew exactly where that idea came from, and he probably could have made something like it, but smaller and having it bound to a small area and acting as a trap. The problem was that this particular version was supposed to be roughly the size of Mt. Everest, covered in guns and ballistae, capable of using potentially world-ending magic, and yet also able to fly and hypersonic speeds.

He took one look at the design, which looked to be just as impossible to make as a decent number of other designs that the contest had generated and decided to give the ten-year-old kid who dreamed up such a thing one of the ‘Not Technically a Winner, But Very, Very Creative’ awards. He did wonder what the hell was going on in that kid’s head that he could dream up something like that, though.

On the other hand, there were some damn good ideas that were not focused on either defense or offense. One of which was a streetlamp that doubled as a device that could warm up or cool down the nearby roadways and sidewalks. On the surface, it looked to be rather useless, but when you factored in that a decent amount of the wear and tear that certain roads and sidewalks took was because of ice and temperature fluctuations, it became clear that the streetlamps could possibly save a lot of taxpayer money.

Another useful design was a small autonomous machine that would patrol the sewers that were a certain distance from the main construct. Once again, on the surface, it seemed useless, but that was only until you learned what the drones were supposed to do. Equipped with Magic Energy Projectors designed solely to cause buildup inside the sewer pipes to decay at an exponentially faster rate, it would allow for less time to be spent making sure the pipes worked properly and were not blocked. This was another idea that was given the green light due to how it would benefit the nation.

But, of course, all of this did not mean that Kain didn’t decide to accept some of the more destructive ideas. He had to give credit where credit was due, as even he had not thought of the next design; a magical version of the Obelisks of Light from Command and Conquer, or the Prism Towers from that series’ spin-off, Red Alert. A design that was so obvious that he was surprised that he had not come up with it himself, it would be a bunch of towers that were slow to fire but powerful and could also use a cascade of power from each one to generate an even larger and more destructive lance of energy.

The contest still had a few days to go until it reached its end, but Kain already had a few favorites. Some were practical and had a decent chance of being made, while others were so impractical that they would exist solely as ideas and nothing more. Of course, some of these more unrealistic ideas could be used, but only if scaled down by several degrees, and Kain still intended to give credit to those whose ideas laid the foundations for the more sensible versions of those ideas.

With all that being said, he was really looking forward to what new ideas would find their way into reality. He could only imagine what would come from this contest, and with each hour that passed came more ideas that could be used, in one way other another.

…

Meanwhile, in the middle of Arcfira, the dumbass tree that had fallen for Raziel and Elizabeth’s trick was stewing in its own emotions. It had taken a lot of its power and attention to heal the damage dealt to Arcfira’s ecosystem, and it was still royally pissed at both Kain and itself. It was angry with Kain for basically treating its ultimatum like it was the demands of a petulant child before giving his own demands. And as for why it was angry with itself?

Well, it had fallen for that trick, and it was of half a mind to believe that Kain was in on the prank from the beginning and had used it as an excuse to come to Arcfira and do what he had done. Then again, he did not bear the mindset of a man who was aware of that deception when he first arrived, which made his actions and words after the reveal even more upsetting.

Those damn, dirty bastards up north and their corrupt ways… if only He, the Great Tree, could muster the courage and forces needed to launch a full-0scale invasion of Darksol and its puppets! The more he doubted himself, the more that the myriad Elven Tribes would doubt themselves. It was a vicious cycle, and it was one that only he had the power to break. That is if he could muster the courage and willpower need to break it in the first place.

And, as if that all wasn’t bad enough, he could feel that his sibling was beginning to stir from its slumber. Well, perhaps ‘slumber’ wasn’t the right word, as his sibling was more or less fully awake but utterly insane and only kept from harming others due to the magical binding that kept it contained. Still, the fact that it was beginning to once again try and break from its cage was worrying. Perhaps it was just that the age-old seal was weakening, or perhaps it meant something more sinister was afoot.

He would need to make it painfully clear to the myriad Elven Tribes that worshipping the Fallen Tree was a terrible sin and a terrible idea, but that could wait until he was sure that such dark actions were actually taking place. Of course, what elf would dare to worship something like that, anyway? No, no… He was probably just diving too deeply into his fears. There was no way that anyone would be that dumb.

…

Meanwhile, in another part of Arcfira.

“Oh, Great Dreadwood! Oh, you who are one with the True Majesty who rules over the Living and the Dead! We offer our lives, our minds, our bodies, our souls to you in eternal service! Praise the Dreadwood, the Floral Avatar of the True Origin of All! Praise the Origin of All, whose power fuels the world of Mortis!”

“Praise be! Praise be! Down with the False World Tree! Let the world know the might of the True Origin of All!”