Year 227 (Ulara)

“The way of our people has changed, Sawabesarulars.” The Ularan answered, as they met in a quiet cave in the canyons of Ulara. Snakeworld, or Ulara, as Snek called it, eventually opened up to his presence. Snek wanted to meet in the open, to show that the Valthorns could give them safety.

“Why? We can undo all of this. I have a hero class, all we need is a young child who has not received her class to accept it.”

“Centuries of living in the shadow of the demons.” The Ularan den lord answered. “We are not the race we once were. We have accepted our fate.”

“Fate? Where was my kind that was proud and willing to stand up to the demons? My fellow Ularans who were willing to sacrifice themselves and partake in the soul arts? To send me and many others like me to seek help?” Snek was furious. “We hid away because we couldn’t fight then, but now, there’s an army strong enough to defeat almost every single demon above us, and heroes to retake our world.”

“Centuries, Sawabesarulars.” The den lord was pensive. “Will your army be here forever? Will we be able to resist the demons forever?”

“If the other worlds could do it, why couldn’t we? We resisted them for a long time, too.”

“We had heroes.”

“I have a hero class here.”

“And what? A single hero. When that hero passes, we’re doomed once more, perhaps we will face a type of demons that doesn’t let us survive in the caves and canyons.”

It was a conversation he had with many others. Snek couldn’t believe it. “I feared that my people were dead. I came to find that my people lived, but were dead at heart.”

He refused to believe that the young were like that.

“If you refuse, at least let me speak to the young Ularans. Surely some would wish to live in a world not in the shadow of the demons. Where we can step into the light with pride.”

The Ularan den lord sighed, and then nodded. “Very well, I’ve seen enough that I can trust our young to you.”

Sawabesarulars smiled in relief. “At least some wisdom in the others who remain.”

***

After his stint on Ulara, Snek eventually settled on two goals. Collect as many young Ularans, and send them to Tropicworld, and also regain access to the clean blood magic and various rituals.

“Lord Sawabesarulars, is it true that you went to another world?” The young Ularans were extremely curious and Snek nodded. “That you could defeat the demons?”

Snek, who lost his physical Ularan bodyform, nodded to the young Ularans. Right now, the Ularans lost their faith in themselves, that they, these small snake-like creatures had no ability to fight against the demons. “Yes. I could not, but these people have.”

Snek pointed to the Valthorns. Almost all regular Valthorn were tall, healthy and strong as the elite soldiers of my force. The Ularans were half their height, and they found us intimidating. Over the years, the idea that Ularans cannot win against the demons, what more the giant dragon-like demons, was carved into their psyche.

If Snek wanted to retake the world, we could do so with our Valthorns. But that would not restore the confidence of the Ularans, or destroy the belief that their people are meant to exist in the shadows of these demons.

The snake spirit asked for my assistance to train the young Ularans, so that they could show their fellow Ularans that they have the strength to fight the demons, even the champions.

I spoke to my council, and I felt it was worth it, even if there was a risk of creating another “Raph-type” event with the Ularan’s knowledge of clean blood magic and the existence of the multiverse.

It’s a long, hard journey. But they had the time.

“At the rate this world is going, it’s unlikely to die in the next hundred years.” Snek had spoken to my mages, and the mages had performed a wide range of data collection and magical studies. Their world still possessed a fairly robust core, and though we found the pits to the demon mother, it wasn’t time for us to go in.

Snek, ideally, would like his own people to be the ones to free his world. A hero made from an Ularan, but he was not yet ready to gift the hero class stored in his soul to a young child.

In fact, he soon confided with me that he would require my assistance to ‘assess’ the suitability of the young children.

I wondered, personally, whether a [hero] class like that, taken away from Ken, and then later granted to another, would still have the same mental compulsions and controls. My question is the mental compulsion a part of the [hero] class, or is it something that came together with the application of the [hero] class?

No matter, the new Ularan hero would be a fascinating case study.

As part of the talks to convince the young Ularans, and also inspire them to achieve something, Snek told them stories of the Valthorns and our conquests through the stars. It was quite effective, that eventually a few of the older Ularans agreed to join a small exploratory batch of 500 young Ularans, to be trained by the Valthorn academy in the ways of combat and offensive magic.

These young Ularans were brought through the rifts produced by the void archmages, and to Treehome. They had an experience that was far more exaggerated than the lizardfolks of Mountainworld.

It was expected, since these young Ularans grew up in the relative modesty of their dens in the caves, and they have not seen life out in the open, or the vast sprawling cities. Their dens, some which are fairly luxurious for them, are all built in their underground labyrinth, and therefore the sight of a large city out in the open is absolutely alien.

I believe they would have a similar reaction if they’ve seen the cities of Mountainworld too. Still, the spectacle helped to convince the young Ularans and their minders to get started on the training program to create the next generation of Ularan warriors.

The Ularans were very amused to see the lizardfolks. Ularans, unlike lizardfolks, are egg-layers, and do not have the practice of communal spawning pools or private spawning pools. Ularans do generally keep their eggs within their dens, and Snek explained that in the pre-demon days, their dens were pretty much regular buildings.

Their current practice of tunneling labyrinths, which had grown far more extensive since Snek’s time, was an evolution of their adaptation. The Ularans had developed and trained good tunnelers, and abandoned some of the classes and roles that they no longer needed underground.

In other words, the current Ularan, despite their meekness, were quite the ideal doomsday preppers because they could build entirely self-sustaining environments entirely underground.

The Ularans’ fighting style needed to take advantage of their natural size, and a brief assessment of their physique soon leaned towards a more magical approach. Despite their size, their magical prowess was comparable to the others, and they were also naturally more in tune to the spiritual side of magic.

They were quite fascinating subjects to study, quite like the angels.

Ken and the rest of the heroes, when faced with the Ularans, found them quite cute, and they were even slightly smaller than the Canari.

Like little pet snakes, but they knew better than to say it out loud. Snek said references to snakes would’ve offended them.

They would be specced into mages, druids or agility rogue-types in order to take advantage of their small size. They were naturally mages and also transformation-type druids, where they would take on giant snake forms to do battle, but their mages never got very far due to limited research on spells and abilities. The system awarded and awakened new spells for a leveling mage, but without centralized teaching for mages, the resources of the land, and the loss of many older records, newer mages didn’t have the level of competence of even their predecessors.

They were pretty much sent back a few centuries, if not millennia, in terms of magical development.

Within months, the young Ularans displayed promise. Their weakest one was in single-digits, simply because the Ularans couldn’t take on a large dragon-demon on their own, but without ‘low-level’ mobs for them to gain experience, they couldn’t progress very far even with spars and practice battles amongst themselves.

Their levels were around 20 to 30 at first, but once they were introduced to the dungeons of the appropriate levels, this quickly shot up to level 30s and 40s.

I could use my ability to let one of them instantly reach level 60, but from my own experience, this wasn’t a good idea.

I foresee their progress would slow down significantly, since they lack the experience boosting abilities commonly seen in my Valthorns. So I doubt I’d see a level 100 Ularan mage or fighter within the next few years, but getting some of them to level 80s should be possible within the next five years.

Snek believed that Ularans taking down a dragon-demon on their own would be a significant ‘psyche’ change, and help break the mental shackles that weighed down their now insular society.

***

Our forces captured a few riftgates, and Stella immediately worked to set them up. Once they were properly set up, it freed up Stella's [void explorer] to keep on exploring the void sea or void forest.

She also had an epiphany one day, looking at the map contained within the demon king's core.

The alphabets used in the rift gates were in a sequence centered around the void gate. But only if viewed from the demon's perspective.

From our perspective, there was no order or sequence.

It made sense since the riftgates were constructed in their language, but it also meant that the riftgates themselves had a way to understand the demon's perspective.

How? Why?

If the perspective of the void sea was relative to the viewer, what made the riftgate view the stars as what the demons saw it?

How?

Did all races see the void sea differently?

“You’re suggesting that because you and I have human origins, we see the void sea in a certain manner?” Stella proposed.

“What else could it be?”

“Yet it is not the same with mine. What you see and what I see has subtle differences. We’ve known that.”

Was that because of my mixed origins, as a tree with what was once a human soul? “If that is true, our treefolk and other race void mages would’ve seen it differently.” I countered. “They don’t. They see the way you see it.”

“Because I handed them the flame, and their view is forever colored by mine.” Stella mused. “Yours was gained through the system.”

“We should find a way to exploit this different perspective, since it essentially widens our reach.”

“Heh. We already have access to two sets of void-perspectives. Ours, and the demons.” We didn’t count the subtle differences between mine and Stella.

***

Year 228

Threeworld

Eudoxus, Arjan and my four other centaurs had established a network of friends and allies within the centaurs. Arjan, privately, relayed that as a centaur, he admired their society. A society where centaurs were a majority, and not a minority.

On Treehome, we had certain areas where centaurs were the majority, and they were the local ruling government. But in Freshka, Centaurs were definitely a minority, and as strange as it sounded, Eudoxus, my spymaster, soon commented that some of the centaurs were getting very attached to their new found friends.

“Are they compromised?” I asked. It’s not entirely unheard of, but it is fairly rare that my agents become compromised. Simply because of the sheer superiority of our culture, and our extensive training before deployment.

“Not yet. But it is something I’m concerned with.” Eudoxus commented.

At some point, there is a degree of freedom of association. I didn’t hold my people to be loyal to me forever, and I generally allowed them to leave service when they wanted to.

Thing was, they were entirely remote in another world, where my trees could not see them. I had to trust that they knew what they were doing.

Trust.

That’s something I struggle with, but here I had no choice. If these agents run off, I could catch them, but it would require me to expend significant effort.

Lumoof offered to speak to the Centaurs, as part of a regular briefing session, and so snuck through some portals. My priest’s assessment was simply, the centaurs truly considered their new ‘friends’, as friends.

They were still loyal.

But that was a form of compromise, wasn't it?

“I suggest we let it go.” Lumoof said.

The centaur society was honestly one that was nursing its wounds. Their hero, the Centaur hero, and the human-hero, died in the final battle against the demon king.

The demon king was the only time when the three heroes of the three sides came together and fought. But that didn’t mean it was a sign of ‘unity’ of politics. All three factions clearly disliked each other, and my spies soon revealed that due to the extensive damage suffered by the centaurs, the humans and sandpeople have begun encroaching on their land.

Only the sandpeople’s hero was left, but no one actually deployed their hero against the others, due to the bad precedent it sets. The heroes themselves, from what the centaurs gather, were mostly content with their own kingdoms, all nestled in the security of their respective lands.

I was really curious what a sandpeople-hero would be like, and I quickly made a request to both Roon and Johann, whether they’d be keen to do some deep spying into the heart of the sandpeople’s territory.

***

Roon returned to the land of the sandpeople and this time, tried to look for the hero. With his significantly higher levels, and high quality equipment, he was able to sneak into the sand peoples’ cities with no problems.

The Great Pyramid of the Sandpeople was a fortress, and from afar, it appeared entirely made of stone. But closer up, it’s actually made of a kind of sand-colored steel and was actually an armor for the large magical construct within.

That magisteel pyramid was humongous, the size of a city and some, and could be seen a mile away. It was pretty much a crystal mountain, but made of this ‘magical’ steel.

We didn’t detect the presence of the domain, but the pyramid itself radiated energies that felt more like hero-items.

Roon passed through their greatest city, aptly named the Pyramid, and headed for the kingdom of the sandpeoples’ hero.

****

Back on Treehome, my focus remained on training more people, and preparing for the upcoming retaliation. For most of the world, they still expect to see a demon king in a few more years.

It is when it doesn’t happen, then I expect to see some shift in the mindsets of the general population.

The challenge of the Valthorns to keep our swords sharp, our equipment polished, even when there is no demon invading our world. As the angel rightly pointed out, one of the ways I could keep my warriors in fighting form is to constantly send them to other worlds, to fight the demons.

There is a shift in mindset, though. What a warrior has in his mind, when he is defending his home from the demons, versus an expeditionary, invasive force isn’t the same.

It doesn’t matter much at the senior level, because my experienced Valthorns all understand our long term goals of ending the cycle. They could see the purpose of the fights, to eventually reach the demons’ heartland, if there is such a thing.

How it would affect me, of course, is future recruitment of young talents. “Defend your home from demons” is a lot more effective than, “Invade the demonworlds” or “Protect the multiverse.”

Okay, maybe protecting the multiverse would work for those with a hero complex. My Valthorns and priests would have to adapt to hiring, but in a world without demon kings, it’s likely that there would be higher discontent towards our militarization.