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 has 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. “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’s 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. But 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’s 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’ve done so on Branchhold, I’ve aided the heroes to clear the demonic corruption, and there, it’s 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 just 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 domainholders, but the temples were, naturally, unaware. They had no means of seeing the astral paths, unless they happened to have angels.

The lavaworld was now our primary farming location, other than our dungeon, while I began resettling the 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 it’s 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 shall be named 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 is 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, Lizardpersons 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 foresee 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 the 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 the Cometworld is like a mail in a bottle floating on the wider ocean.

My Cometworld had somehow barreled far away from where we are, 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’ve 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 have 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’s unlikely. Ken’s counter argument was that the demon king may just give up on it’s ‘corruption’ ability and instead make a ‘combat-focused’ demon king, since every demon king has two roles. One, to both defeat the heroes, and two, 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’s giving me trouble, my first instinct may not be to throw stronger units at it, but just wait and see.

This is because I’m an immortal, while these ‘habited’ worlds are usually humanoids, and humanoids don’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 have 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 know. 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 don’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 suppose it's true, there’s 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 have close to fifteen such treefolks, our process of ‘breeding’ more of them was slow because we checked everything.

Our concerns of their weak physique was 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 naive innocence, a clear, wide-eyed wonder of the world around them. They do not know to be intimidated, the very act of speaking to me did not strike them with fear.

Every time I look 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 remains 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’ve achieved my goals. I asked my domainholders once, whether this was it.

That this was where we should stop, since we’ve ‘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 wish I never had to fight.

But it must.

One day it will end. One day we will have our victory. But until then, I will keep adding more to our war potential.