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’s the ‘number’ 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 ‘lock’ the number, ‘locks’ the number, even as it wobbles. But if we never ‘lock-on’ to the world’s number, that number keeps changing.

Stella called it like a ‘slot-machine’ or a ‘schroedinger’s cat’, because a world’s ‘calling number’ is not ‘fixed’ until it is observed and locked in a riftgate. Perhaps the very act of ‘locking’ it in a riftgates releases a signal to the void sea or void forest that identifies 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’ll still hurt as hell, and I’m not sure if there are 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 felt like it just tripled. Not just that, it even felt 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, 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 that parasiteworld get back to its feet.”

Our victory on the 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’s clamouring for anything, but now that I pretty much have an entire world to repopulate, it’s something I needed to think about more seriously.

“What do you guys think about a planetary migration programme to the Parasiteworld?” I asked them. The parasiteworld has 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 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 2 decades now, and there’s a group of ‘lost generation’, those born on Treehome, but 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 haven’t waged any large wars is 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 100 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 were slightly better, but even the new generation had two groups. One group that was fine with coexistence, because that’s all they’ve known, and another group that wants 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 do they understand what created the heroes. I didn't even understand it, despite all the research I’ve done.

It really makes me wonder whether the process of creating heroes isn’t actually something the gods have control at all, but instead is 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, centuries of thinking they were the sole sentient race, and then losing their world, they’ve 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’s left of their society was left at another’s mercy.

Perhaps this ‘anger’ and this desire to return to how it was, is a societal ‘coping-mechanism’.

I’ve seen this generation gap emerge between those who moved from the 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’ve recruited some of the Canari as members of the Valtrian order, but because of their relative ‘youth’ with us, even their strongest is only about level 80 to 85. I’ve 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’ve found that it’s 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 believe there will be a ‘lone-wolf’ Canari that I can ensnare into the Valtrian Order.

Or at least, establish a Canari group that’s wholly part of Valtrian structure such that their loyalty and ‘pack’ instincts were with us.

***

Lilies asked as the statement sunk 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.

> 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. <

> 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. <

I naturally found that statement hilarious. > All life is filled with suffering. <

> 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’m god or something. But surely, a world full of life is better than a world with none. From my point of view, this was not debatable, because life is 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 domainholders 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 artefact will get attacked.”

“So we need to play defense?”

“Yes.” Ginseng tree on a far greater scale. I think life seems to love fractals and it’s 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 can pull the wool over their eyes, the stronger we can be.

“That too.” Stella nodded. “Secondly, the bad news. The demons have a set 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, which 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 ”

I suddenly realized that maybe it’s a variant of my own clone ability. Were the demons, at it’s heart, created by some kind of ‘demon-life’ type of god?

Or should I treat the term ‘slavers’ literally, that there is, at its heart, a ‘parasitic’ virus that seeks to assimilate all races into its fold, enslaving those which resisted?

“The third item is that I should be able to locate Snek’s homeworld within the next 10 to 15 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 homeworld. Saving it, or rescuing whoever that’s 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 towards the demonic core and find what’s there, or 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 more ‘wild’, 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-hero and domainholders that voted against. They are focused on their targets.

***

It’s been one year since we’ve liberated the Parasiteworld, and the world’s energy level continues 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 believe the world would recover.

For now, that consciousness from within the core remain dormant.

I 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.