Year 212

Lumoof had finally recovered from the effects of the trip, and he noticed his sensitivity to the soul realm had increased. There were moments when he saw specks of things flying in the air and briefly wondered whether his vision was bugged.

Then it was clear it’s actually the souls’ movement in the world. He could seem, faintly, and if he was in a zone.

“Is it because of all the mana practice we are doing?” Lumoof asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“I didn’t get a skill, though.”

I thought it was a matter of time.

“I thought we get the skill first, then we see the results, not the other way round.” Lumoof chuckled. We both knew the system can be irregular and inconsistent, even if it broadly tries to stick to a set pattern. Broadly.

Level-specific things have been followed quite strictly, but when do people actually ‘learn’ or ‘acquire’ a skill has been one of the weirder aspects of the system. Perhaps a system had to have ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ aspects, both RNG and checkpoints in order for it to work?

Mana practice and soul-sight practice took up most of Lumoof’s time. His mana control wasn’t poor, but now, his mana tolerance has improved.

It made him sick, and he actually got skills to cope with more mana. Just that the quantities we needed to ‘poison’ the demon king were too high.

He would have to reach even higher levels.

***

For me, Alka’s team of scientists finally gave me one demon king core model. It was a replica, constructed from the data gathered from all the demon cores we had so far.

It did not contain all the elements of the demon, just the parts of the runic carvings that we somewhat understood. They said it seemed to open up some kind of ‘network’, but it fizzled out before they could get further. The amount of power needed by the model was quite high, and Alka said he saw what appeared to be a very, very large three dimensional map in his mind.

But it hurt his head so much he had to stop. His speculation was that it was not designed for mortal minds, or at least, designed such that it suited how the demon’s mind worked. Therefore they brought it to me.

My vines wrapped around the object made of some of the toughest crystals we had, and my mana flooded it. The runes within it flared, and then, I briefly saw the entire core glow.

I felt it and saw the magic of the replica core seemed to tap into something. Something that existed in an entirely different place.

It was a mini-portal within it. No, metaphorically, it was the equivalent of an interdimensional wireless modem that’s now making a call to this... space in another part of the world.

I felt a connection, and instantly my mind was assaulted. My artificial minds stepped in to protect me. It wasn’t a domain-type attack, but more like a ‘DDOS’ or a ‘Ping’ bombardment.

[Mental firewall activating... filtering...]

This felt like a nostalgic return to the days of Rootnet.

Then I felt a strange, uncomfortable sensation, like something attempting to pull me from the other side of that connection.

It pulled, and then-

-Snapped.

At that moment, I saw the ‘stars’ that Alka claimed to see. It was vast, and then, they disappeared. And reappeared again.

The map seemed to twist in unusual ways, and I realised it wasn’t actually three dimensional. I wasn’t even sure it was a map.

That uncomfortable sensation returned, and then, I felt something push back against my presence very, very strongly. It was so strong that the energy somehow spilled through the replica, and the replica cracked.

The connection was lost then.

Alka just looked at the cracked replica with a look of bewilderment. “What just happened?”

“I saw the stars, and then, something kicked me out. I’m not sure what.” Alka strapped in as I shared what I saw with him through our dream academy.

“There’s a guardian on the other side of that. It might be possible to kick it out, or at least, stop it from kicking you out.” My bomb-domain holder touched the cracked demon-core replica. “We’ll have to make a few more of these, out of different materials to see what’ll work well.”

“What do you think we saw?”

“A starmap. An invasion plan. A path. Or just a history of worlds invaded.”

If there was a ‘centralised’ controller that told demons where to go, it had to be on the other side of the demon core.

So, I wondered whether every demon king essentially ‘calls-home’ and asked ‘where do I go?’, and somebody or something on the other side tells it where to go.

The key point is, if I figure this out, I could fuck with it. If I stop all the demons from being able to essentially ‘dial-home’, could I take out the momentum behind the demon king’s constant invasions? Essentially, cause them to turn on themselves, or invade worlds that were already invaded, and so, slow their expansion across the multiverse?

This strategy was an expansion of my earlier demonic IFF-interference strategy.

Of course, I eventually shared our findings with the other domain holders, the heroes, and my other senior members.

“It sounds like the demon king’s actually a remote-controlled drone, and the mind behind the demon king is safe somewhere else.” Ken quickly connected the connection and gave a wild speculation. “We have been fighting clones all this while. The core of each planet’s just a clone-factory to manufacture more drones.”

Lumoof, naturally understood what that meant. “Are you saying each demon king is an ‘avatar’ of some controlling entity?”

“Well, close. Actually, yes. It’s like how Aeon speaks through you. Absolutely.”

“Then we just have to take out the demon king’s controller and all of this should end?”

Actually, if the demon king was really some kind of entity like myself, that’s actually a lot harder. It meant the entity behind the demon kings, if there is such a thing, could have many, many clone bodies and are manufacturing these self-replicating motherships.

I pondered the thought for a while, and realised that countering the demon kings as a whole fell into two large ‘long-term’ angles.

One. Destruction and extinction. If it’s possible to destroy it’s power source, or if there is some kind of ‘central’ will at the heart of all the demons, then destroying it should end this demonic plague once and for all. Part of this strategy requires heavily levelling my domain holders so that they could fight battles on the demon world. There are lesser outcomes under this ‘angle’, such as just destruction of it’s ability to travel worlds, or destruction of whatever’s assisting its wayfinding.

Two. Confusion and redirection. Messing with the demon’s “world-finding” abilities, and under this umbrella, messing with it’s friend-foe identification. Under this set of strategies, if it’s not possible to ‘destroy’ the demons as a whole, maybe because there isn’t actually a ‘center’ or a ‘node’, then we would essentially confuse the shit out of it, and mess with it’s ability to find habited worlds. We could create curtains, such that they couldn’t find us, or jam the teleportation portals such that the demons couldn’t invade us.

There are lesser angles, or ones I consider unlikely, such as ‘assimilation’. From an evolutionary standpoint, if the demons at the center were some kind of ‘code’ or ‘virus’, could I ‘alter’ them such that they became benign?

If the demons were some kind of ‘rogue’ program or magical grey goo that ran out of control, could someone reassert control over them?

***

The evolution of beetles with more specialised materials continued, even beyond Alka’s suicide beetles. Since the creation of specialised ‘Treechikomas’, we’ve expanded the evolutionary development to a wider range of creatures.

My domain powers over evolutionary meddling extended beyond beetles, so it’d be a waste to restrict myself to them. Horns would be upset, but he’d understand. And he’s too busy fighting demons in the parasiteworld to nag me about it.

We experimented on anti-magic infused beetles, but creating them consumed the anti-magic glass, which was now a finite resource. The first few designs were crap and the ‘regular’ beetle-mind struggled, so I made ‘artificial-mind’ variants.

These performed better with the custom-designed bodies, but they also struggled. Actual performance in the battlefield didn’t seem to match up with how they were designed, so, we had to make multiple revisions.

It’s not as if they were not working, but when compared to a regular beetle at the same level, their performance was lacking at first.

The later versions finally managed to perform just as good, but it did take about sixty different variations. The artificial minds too had to adapt to their new bodies, and that was also another ‘lagging’ aspect.

These minds were able to seamlessly work with regular monsters because it seemed their movement and attitudes were already in them, somehow. It’s like there’s a blueprint of how to move a ‘spider’ or how to move a ‘beetle’ already available, while this modified anti-mana beetle was different, so even basic things had to be learned from ground up.

Honestly, some of the earlier designs were embarrassing. It reminded me of my younger days when I played with Spore and I just placed all the horns and spikes I could, and made what looked like a nerubian or a porcupine-beetle.

Yeah. More spikes is better... not really.

Over time, the refinements made by my artificial minds made them more functional, and they began to look more like something more functional.

In terms of experiments, I also relooked at my artificial minds, and tried to create more powerful, fully formed souls.

With my higher number of soul forge colors, it was theoretically possible. It took some time, but eventually I managed to increase the artificial mind’s overall performance and mana production.

It still wasn’t much, not when compared to the Titans. But twice as fast, or twice as much mana is still a significant improvement, and helped the artificial minds cope with the huge amount of background administrative work to keep everything running.

***

Branchhold had it’s own set of artificial minds, to run the wooden lifts and coordinate the carrier-beetles.

I also sent Ally over to the Mountainworld, and she, or, it, really, took the form of a lizardperson, salvaged and repaired from the corpse of a dead lizardperson. Ally, as the parasite, received an ‘artificial mind’ at the core, essentially giving it sufficient power to function, but not enough to truly exhibit the full range of its abilities.

A converted demon-champion parasite was something even my own Valthorns viewed with an uncomfortable suspicion. There’s just something uncanny about a shapeshifter that could possess another that made normal people uncomfortable.

Something that I don’t get. Maybe it’s the assurance that it’s almost impossible to ‘possess’ me that made it discount that threat.

In any case, Ally would assist my spymasters in my plan to bend the opinions of the Mountainworld in my favor.

Within the immigrants to Branchhold, we swiftly detected agents of the various kingdoms eager to find out more about us. At this point, I merely informed my spymasters of their presence, but did not do more than that.

I didn’t want the natives to realise I could monitor them, so, I decided to let the agents work as they please, and only allowed capture in places where it was probable that someone could have noticed them.

In short, my spymasters had to hunt for spies without relying on my tree’s surveillance. This was good practice for him, of course, and it also hid the full extent of my abilities from the natives.

Working in other worlds would be a common occurrence as this went on, as I foresee my gradual expansion over time.

Eventually, as I get in touch and have a presence in more inhabited worlds, I’d see myself become some kind of centralised transportation network. The ‘warp network’ between the worlds.

I’d probably make a lot of money just by charging for transport, and with very few alternatives, well, except the void mages, I’d essentially be a monopoly.

Of course, as it is, I’d already have tremendous economic advantage because I could easily arbitrage any pricing differences between Treehome and Mountainworld, and the Central Continent, by extension, has access to two economic markets.

The merchant lords easily saw the economic opportunity to exploit the pricing difference, but all these depended on me agreeing to teleport the goods.

I decided against it, as it would not be good for me to crash the prices by flooding the market with essentially imported goods from another world.

***

There were some ideas that came out before our supposed invasion of the parasite world.

What if we shifted daemolite from our world to the Mountainworld?

“No. What if it triggers a permanent increase in demonic invasions to our world. That would not be good.” Kelly and Adrian refused, and frankly, I could see their point. I wasn’t sure how the demonic surveillance and targeting mechanism worked, and if I shifted it there, could I essentially trigger more demons without reducing ours?

So I considered some more alternatives. One was to shift the daemolite to the Parasiteworld, or to the Cometworld.

I didn’t want to shift it to the Cometworld, because, if the demons could somehow ‘see’ the daemolite, essentially these daemolite were surveillance ‘bugs’. I didn’t want the demons to target a hyper-mobile ‘void explorer’.

Thus, we settled on sending more of these daemolites to the Parasiteworld, and see whether it affected the frequency of the demon king’s invasion to Treehome.

We shifted almost all of our daemolite to my clone on the parasiteworld.

“No change to the existing astral paths.” Stella said. “But the further ones are wobbling and fading. It seems removing daemolite only reduces the frequency of demon kings multiple decades down the road.”

Stella later theorised those that have already ‘locked’ onto our world are coming as scheduled, but those further away have not properly ‘locked’ on, thus removing the daemolite made targeting more difficult. Essentially, that meant daemolite was some kind of ‘aiming-aid’. Without it, the demon could still find us, but just a bit harder.

We kept the daemolite in the parasite world.

***

Lumoof kept practising with mana and trained hard. He needed to be ready for the shit I was gonna throw his way, and after the shit I put him through, he clearly understood he would be seeing things way out of his league.

Even the invasion to liberate parasiteworld essentially depended on Lumoof to provide support, since the heroes demanded his presence as a condition to the invasion.

My trees were busy ‘draining’ the waters from the parasiteworld to create patches of drier land. Strangely, now that my trees covered a large part of the parasiteworld, some normal weather had returned.

A return of seasonal rainstorms, and small snows during the colder period. The parasiteworld had always felt a little hot and humid, a bit like being in a tropical swampland, but my large patches of trees had gradually repaired some of the weather. I found it weird, because this wasn’t a conscious thing.

I didn’t actually attempt to change the weather, but the changes on the Parasiteworld over time had been rather dramatic and some parts absolutely no longer resembled what was still a demon-controlled world.

With more mana coming from the Mountainworld, I gradually inched closer and closer to the pit of the Parasiteworld.

Each piece of territory was won through a constant war of attrition against the hordes of the demons. They spawned more creatures, newer variants, but we had improved beetles to counter them.

The demons clearly had some ability to learn and adapt, especially on the demon-controlled worlds, since they were able to spawn new variants. The fact that demons in the invaded worlds did not adapt that strongly, when compared to the demons on their controlled worlds, made me wonder whether demon kings and demon ‘mothers’ had some control over the development of demons.

Or perhaps, because the system considered demons to be ‘native’ in this world, thus the system spawned adapted demons? Or was there some kind of automated learning, or just through recombining known traits in different ratios, in the same way nature adapted to changes in the environment through reproductive processes?

The only I’d know is if I controlled a core.

My trees encroached on the areas around the pit to the core and we began the process of draining the pit of water. Moving water wasn’t difficult, and I eventually released the water throughout my controlled areas, essentially creating rivers out of these once shallow lands.

There was a lot of landscaping to do.

The water from the pit had to be cleaned and filtered too, as I noticed it contained far higher quantities of demonic presence within it.

I didn’t know how long it took for the core to spawn another demon king, but from what I could detect on the surface, there was hardly any progress, and it seemed like an exceptionally long ‘spawn’ time.

New lakes appeared too, as more water was shifted out of the flooded pits. The fact that it was an exposed pit made it significantly easier for me to remove the water because I could spawn trees all the way to the edge, and those roots at the edge functioned like pumps. Water was then gradually ‘sucked’ out of the pit and then channeled through the root network.

At the rate we were draining the pit, I estimate it would take about two years to drain the water and reach the core.

Good enough. By then, Lumoof and the heroes should be ready for another fight in the depth.