Year 215

I am now in possession of two sets of bones from legendary creatures. One, the dragon bones, which I recovered from the moon before I withdrew the clone, and now, the bones of the Zaratan.

Both of which were now safely stored in my [secret hideout], in their own little section. Thanks to the effect of my preservation abilities, they were untouched, almost the same as if they were on the moon, and in the depth of the sea.

Since I wanted to now ‘see’ what happened to the Zaratan, I figured I might as well check the dragon’s bones as well.

I moved a large piece of the Zaratan’s skull from one part of my secret hideout, right to the biolab located within my body. The skull itself was large enough to be a truck, but this broken piece was about the size of a large door.

It pulsed momentarily, as my biolab began it’s work. Ethereal vines from my soul forge-biolab entered the bones, and I began to see images and little bursts of thoughts. Emotions.

A lake, and then, a sensation of moving. A black sun, then abruptly snapping. Forced off the path! Another lake but then it’s dried out. How? Then demons, large demons. Champions.

Running. Flee, and conjured water around itself. The champions latch on, and then, the sensation of moving again. It’s unstable, demons on its back.

Ocean. A struggle. Pain. Sinking-

The memories ended there, and I realised this zaratan had probably been ‘yanked’ out of its path across the stars. The demons could do that, or at least, that black sun could.

I feel that black sun is the key to everything, and I proposed the idea of destroying or capturing the black sun to the domainholders. They generally concurred that it may work, if it’s the only one.

I wanted to speak to Aiva again, ask them whether they’ve ever tried assaulting the black sun. If that would work?

I tried a few more zaratan bones, but the memories of it’s last moments were similar. So, I used the bones of the dragon from the moon that I’ve kept for so long.

It’s a bad habit. I would keep things, and only check on them when I remember them. Patreeck gives me regular reminders, but I find it hard to focus until it really draws me. Anyway, I focused on the dragon’s bones now.

It’s memories were far more hazy than the zaratan. The images I saw were faded, but I saw-

Flight. Run! Fear!

The sky. The stars, and then a really intense sensation of emptiness. Then the moon. The dragon looked back, and saw a world aflame. A roar, and then, a long period of waiting. Hope. Hoping for others to join it.

No one came. No one was strong enough.

I needed some time to process my thoughts. These were the last moments of these great creatures.

Both bones had power, and as I studied them, I felt I gained a better understanding of their nature. The study of their bones led to additional titan options.

[Titan option unlocked : Dragon Replicant. A creature with the flight, combat and magical prowess of a lesser dragon.]

[Titan option unlocked : Zaratan Replicant. A creature created based on the Zaratans of the void sea. Possessed ability to move between worlds, if there is an existing path. Comes with void mana as default and can use some void magic.]

I have one titan soul left, but I looked at the six heroes allied to me, and realised, I wasn’t in a rush. Not if this arrangement worked.

I would get more fragments, sure, I was so close to 100 fragments, but, that’s really a consolation prize if I could direct the hero’s actions.

These dragons, and Zaratans were so powerful, surely they would have achieved a domain? What stopped them from stopping the demons? Or, that was the wrong question. The dragons stopped the demons many times, as seen from the memories in some of the ancient tree, but they were eventually overwhelmed. If so, what can we do to avoid their mistakes?

If two or three demon kings invaded us at the same time, we would fall, just like the dragons. Even today, we don’t really know whether that’s a rule, or just a convenience of the demons. It is entirely possible that they assigned 1-to-1 worlds just to maximise the number of invaded worlds, but could easily focus on a single world.

We needed to test this. Was there a ‘physical’ or ‘magical’ barrier that prevented simultaneous invasions? It’s possible that a demon king’s presence emitted something that interfered with the ‘astral paths’, thus preventing multiple invasions.

Since we now had a ‘demon king’s core replica’, we also needed to figure out how to confuse their ‘targeting’ system.

We had seen the astral paths wobble when daemolite was removed from Treehome, and so, we’ve seen that the creation of stable astral paths required core mana.

Thus, I directed my attention to one of my potential sources of core mana. The core fragment of the anti mana world.

Unlike the shard of the cometworld, the rousing presence from a few years ago was still ‘dormant’. It was as if it slept. When I touched it again, this time, the presence was quite similar to the sensation from the cometworld.

The presence was still collecting itself, and it’s core mana, however few it was, seemed to resist me. Without actually convincing that presence within the core to give me its mana, the core mana was far more bound to its presence.

***

Stella was back on the Mountainworld after the Zaratan incident, and back to her magical research. She seemed to quite enjoy branchhold, and with our enhanced abilities, we noticed that Mountainworld was linked to two other worlds. One of those two worlds was a little further away, and we would likely need to redeploy some daemolite to reach it.

It was strange how each world’s ‘astral path’ was different, and how each world sees the void forest differently.

This made me think that even the demon’s starmaps may not be all that reliable, since they probably had their own frame of reference, or these maps were collected from their ‘jumps’.

Even the souls, on their path to reincarnation, travelled to this ‘void forest’, where they would move and wobble their way to other worlds.

I attempted to access that ‘view’ again, even with my soul forge, but I’ve yet to succeed. Maybe I needed the right levels, but I also consulted my fellow domain holders on whether they’ve seen such things.

Lilies, for one, had no clue. This was way beyond their experience.

Over time, I realised the process of learning is very often just repeatedly throwing something at a problem and seeing what sticks.

I wonder whether the gods got to their current solution through the same process.

***

“Counting down to the invasion?” Ken asked the heroes when they met. They didn’t meet that often, but they still made it a point to meet every other month. Everyone had their own things to do, some of the heroes had their own projects, like Chung and Hafiz, and the mountainworld heroes, Adrian and Kelly, also found their own ‘passions’ and ‘hobbies’.

They did say they felt lost after the defeat of the demon king, but eventually they found something to do and occupy their time.

Prabu nodded. “Kinda, but not really. We’re just working on our own thing for now, while waiting for the cue.”

Snek, the little snake spirit was the most eager of them all, which meant Ken had a little more ‘stake’ in this project than the heroes. Snek wanted this invasion to succeed, for all the obvious reasons.

After the zaratan’s warning, I wonder whether this invasion may be the wrong move. What if I drew their attention, and become marked by the demons?

What if we invited greater scrutiny? These were my worries, and so, for now, the best I could do was over prepare. If necessary, I’d cover them and pull the rest of them back to Treehome.

***

We’ve finally drained the waters of the pit, and I finally got a glimpse of what was within those pits. It was similar to what we saw in the anti-mana world, the ‘demon mother’, around a core. The parasite world’s core was smaller, and filled with holes, quite a bit like a ball-shaped swiss cheese.

The area around the core itself had been hollowed out, and instead, there was this giant octopus creature with multiple tentacles. Those tentacles weaved through the holes of the core, and tied itself to it.

[Inspection] didn’t work, but I reckon it was the same type of creature.

From what I could tell, it even had approximately the same level of strength as the demon mother, and I quickly shared my observations with the planned assault force.

We do have a clear path that leads all the way to the core. We could guide a lot of bombs to the core and flush out the demon mother, but that came at the risk of destroying the core, which is so tied up with the demon mother. So, we needed a surgical approach.

“Send Lumoof. Capture the demon mother.” Edna said, and Lumoof gave Edna the stink-eye.

“Oh come on, don’t kick me into the pits.”

“I’m not kicking you in. I’m asking you to go in with the heroes. Heroes weaken that creature, and then Aeon captures it.”

“Pause for a moment.” Chung asked. “Can you clarify what that was?”

“Aeon captures demons by flooding them with mana. Don’t you know that already?” Prabu said. “They’ve attempted to capture the demon king too.”

“I know, but can it work on the demon mother? ”

Edna shrugged. “It should. We’ve been prepping Lumoof for that possibility.”

“Can we supply you with star mana to do so?” Chung wondered. “Could star mana do the same thing?”

Actually, I never thought of it. That star mana was so toxic to demons that they die from exposure, but that was when we tested it against regular-type demons. We’ve never attempted to ‘infect’ a demon king with star mana, though I didn’t think it’ll be a good idea, since they did have void mana within them and that was normally an explosive reaction.

But it was worth trying. If one of the heroes functioned as a battery, I could channel the star mana through Lumoof and inject it into the demon.

“So, do we want to try it out with this demon within the core?”

“No.” I wasn’t sure why, but I felt that using star mana to capture the demon mother in the core would not go well, especially if it interacted with the void mana within the demon mother. “Just a normal attack will do. Our goal is to free the core and gain access to the core mana. Not crack the planet in the process.”

I wasn’t sure ‘scorched planet’ even worked as a defense policy. Destroyed worlds did not form a ‘wall’ that prevented travel. If it did, it may be worthwhile to look into destroying uninhabited planets to form interstellar barriers.

***

As part of the preparations for the invasion, we significantly increased the number of trees on Branchhold and soon made connections to more magical ley lines. I spread my trees, discreetly where I could, and ramped up my total mana output.

Back on Treehome, we did the same, I added more trees, and extended my trees further out to the various islands closer to the Central Continent.

Thanks to the skills earned before this, I was able to ‘tunnel’ to some of the islands, and this meant I now had some influence over the seas around the Central Continent. My minds suggested creating artificial islands, a point which I eventually came to agree to. The Valthorns quietly arranged for druids, earth mages and builders to commence the construction of these artificial islands.

This was an incredibly lengthy process, as lifting sand and rock into a stable structure was actually quite difficult, and we honestly had to look for locations where the ‘deep-sea’ monsters didn’t appear too much.

Publicly, these artificial islands were to serve as my military ports, of course, with all that excuse of reducing piracy and facilitating trade. It’s just a cover for my real intention to spread my roots across the ocean, and expand my total mana output.

My expansion on Mountainworld went relatively easier. Mountainworld as a whole only had one single ocean that’s rather deep, fed by hundreds and thousands of rivers. That meant there were very little ‘physical’ barriers to my expanding trees, and it was possible to go around any large habited areas.

The cold peaks of the Mountainworld didn’t do much to stop roots that could tunnel through mountains, though in the process, I discovered that Mountainworld has very interesting subterranean life and culture. There are entire parts of the world that resembled parts of the Eastern Continent, where cities and entire nations lived within mountains, and within many mountains, there were massive caverns that contained things from an older era.

Many of these were in territories far from Branchhold, so I’d probably need to cook up a plausible excuse to send my Valthorns to investigate, or probably just have them fake it as adventurers.

Yeah. That’ll be something to do. I could have an initiative to set up Branchhold-sponsored adventurers, and send them in that direction. But I could indirectly stir up a gold-rush if that leak came from me, since these guys would suspect I know something.

Anyway, as a result of my expansion on both my homeworld and Mountainworld, my total mana output increased by approximately half, and my total mana storage by that same amount. This was a massive increase, though most of that increase came from ‘greenfield’ expansion on the Mountainworld.

This wasn’t enough, obviously, but then again, the demon mother might be weaker.

Time to set it in motion, whatever the consequences may be.

***

“We’ve been working on this plan for years.” Stella said at the edge of my clone tree on the parasite world. She set up multiple observation posts, and a few more of her students, other void mages, joined her. They would monitor the stars for any signs that something was wrong, or reinforcements were on their way.

Lumoof, my domainholders and the heroes stood at the edge of the pit. Lumoof made a repeat of the mission statement. “Down there is the demon mother. Our goal is to capture it, or defeat it, and free the core of the parasiteworld. The reason to capture this is simple. We want to test whether it is possible to recapture a world from the demons, and gain access to core mana.

If it’s possible to free the world, it may mean we can have a new population base, and more future heroes to rely on. With core mana, Stella and the void mages can start to establish ‘stable’ astral paths through the void forest, and mount a counter invasion.”

The heroes gulped at the term, ‘counter invasion.’ Getting core mana was the equivalent of having the ‘fuel’ needed to make the journey. The counterinvasion was a ‘deep-strike’, meant to target the real command center of the demons.

“Any questions?” Lumoof asked out of habit. It was just a procedure, they have discussed the issue at length over the years.

Everyone shook their heads. The pit had been heavily reinforced over the past year. I have four seeds. One on Branchhold, One on the Cometworld, One here in the Parasiteworld, and one more in store, still serving it’s ‘cooldown’.

There’s four more years to go. They thought of waiting, but then, I didn’t feel like we needed to.

We had made extensive preparations, and they all had a variety of weapons, the ice blades of Aria, the death-staff of Lillies, Stella’s void-weapons and their own hero items.

“Check equipment?” Everyone took a minute to recheck their list, and nodded.

Lumoof nodded, and entered avatar mode. Vines branched out, and around him, the vines turned into a massive walking vine-creature. He looked at the pit, and thought of the many times he made a journey into the core.

The pit itself was already filled with vines, and my beetles already patrolled the entire pit. The only area we’ve yet to claim was the large cavern around the core.

Lumoof made a prayer, and the heroes nodded.

Time to claim the parasite’s core, and free this planet.