Year 219

Assimilating by force is easy for an institution like me. It’s easy, to use my way, the way that worked so far, and apply it elsewhere. That is 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 is mainly to grow my mana pool, and gain valuable talent. Thinking from this angle, whether the Central Continent or Branchhold has similar or different culture, doesn’t have much significance. In fact, the only reason to really ‘mold’ culture is to grow a culture that feeds into the talent pipeline.

Which thus, leads to the issue of assimilation via force.

Force, as pleasant as it sounds, makes it a lot harder to get genuine cooperation, and true loyalty among those who have 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 need to be weighed against the future loyalty and value of any high-leveled individuals such a system would produce.

The system encourages conflict. I’ve thought about this at length many, many times. As a consequence of that, I’m also viewing that cultural uniformity is a weakness. Genetically identical plants, for example, all have the same vulnerability to a virus, and I apply that same concept to cultures and societies when faced with demon kings.

They also encouraged different sorts of talent, and even if it’s hard to see, this culture managed to create multiple level 85s 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 believe that the ‘war’ and ‘survival’ would be a lot easier to ‘transfer’ to newly settled worlds, or ‘restore’ old worlds. Worlds where things are 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 who sought out how to get things to work with nothing.

In my own Valthorns, they also have 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 behaves when they face 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’s not 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 is sensible to do.

There are 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.

85-100 levels scattered over multiple classes, and 85 levels in a single class had very different combat outcomes. The Mountainworld folks are 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’s quite common for the people of Mountainworld to have many classes, and when added up, it is usually slightly more than Level 85. 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 is 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 the 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’ve not 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 70s, and he could control ten elephant-sized 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, 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, Witchdoctors and Spiritualists to create some kind of “soul-focused” versions of their class.

Ken paraphrased Snek slightly when he said the soul has the best power-to-size ratio. It’s such a small thing, but contains 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’s 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 domainholders, 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 ‘weaponised’. 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’ve 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 can 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’s 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 it’s 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.

It’s 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 it’s 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 the Parasiteworld has granted you access to it’s 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 Angel World 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, and they saw it 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 see one bright, glowing path to this other world. Treehome. Treehome would see it’s 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 have to fight another one. It’s so darn tiring, though my domainholders clearly don’t think that way.

I needed to space them out, but my people say it’s 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 125-149s, just so that they can get the experience needed.”

Roon and Johann met them regularly, those who are on the ‘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. Stella gently tapped a little of the core mana and the link to the astral path stabilised.

“Alright. 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.