Year 236 (part 2)

“A world since Borealworld.” Stella said as she stepped out of the portal and landed right into a pile of mud. Her magical shield immediately popped out around her. Lumoof and Edna followed close behind, and looked at the world around her.

Borealworld was linked to two other worlds, and the world was surprisingly empty. Yet, no demons.

“Hmmm. Where are we?” Lumoof asked, as Stella tried to triangulate her location in the void sea. Each world’s location was different, depending on which map we’re looking at, so Stella looked back at Lumoof like it was a weird question. He naturally picked it up, and laughed. “Sorry, stupid question. Still happens sometimes.”

“Hah.” Stella sighed and then her eyes gazed on the skies above. The location was not good, it seemed further away from the demon sun. “Not good.”

Lumoof looked. “Well, I suppose all we can do is keep hopping until we figure out how to link our version of the void sea to the demon’s version of the void sea.”

Stella’s magical senses blanketed the world, and discovered that it was a medieval fantasy society of humans.

“So. Do we spend time exploring this world?” Lumoof asked.

“No time. We’ll need to keep hopping. We can come back later.”

Edna looked around. “Well, then I shall give it the temporary name of Mudworld.”

“Your naming sense is just as bad as Aeon.” Stella cursed.

“I’m a [Knight]. Not a [Namer]. Nor a [Scribe].”

“As someone who used to paint posters for a living-”

Edna didn’t let Stella continue. “Now, now, we’re pressed for time, right.”

“There’s two.” Stella said, referring to two other worlds we could visit.

“Pick one.”

Stella pouted, waved her hand, and then, we felt more void mana in the air. Using solely her void mana, a portal ripped apart the space before us, and we stepped through.

***

The next world was supposedly Mudworld’s astral neighbour, and it was just quiet. It was also barren and dusty, and perpetually gloomy.

The sun was small, tiny. There was a faint scent in the air. Strange and alien. Stella’s senses spread out, and so did Lumoof’s.

“There’s some living beings here, and I sense magic.”

“Another non-demon world.” Edna seemed puzzled. “If we are headed towards the demons, shouldn’t there be more demon worlds?”

“Void sea peculiarities. The demons targeted every world that is ‘close’, but only from their perspective. From our perspective, it isn’t.” Stella said. She once described it as each world existing in a 3D space, and the demons compressed it into a 2D flatland from the top. For her, they are viewing it from the front. Our attempts to reverse engineer the original 3D illustration of the void sea from our 2D perspective proved to be very challenging.

“Wouldn’t our perspective of the astral neighbors be the real one?”

“As real as the demon’s star paths.” Stella said and sighed. “We’re somewhere far away now. We’ll have to hop again.”

“Alright.” Lumoof waited, and then, another black void appeared before them.

“I’ll need to rest after this. I have enough for a single portal back, but that’s it.”

Edna paused. “Before we go, we should give this world a name. Do you want to do the honor, Lumoof?”

“Tiny Sun World.” Lumoof said and both the ladies groaned.

“It’ll have to do for now.” Stella answered. Names were temporary, anyway. They could be updated once we interacted with the locals on a later date. “Let’s go.”

“Got it.” Lumoof and Edna said, and they were through to the 3rd world.

***

The 3rd world was a demon-conquered world. Edna was the first to sense their presence, as the demonic hounds roamed the terrain.

The demonic world itself was covered with the same type of spires we’ve seen in other demon worlds. There were multiple large spawning pools.

“Are we close?” Lumoof asked as Edna slaughtered the rest of the demonic hounds. They were weak, but these hounds looked almost exactly like the ones we’ve seen on other worlds. Demonic hounds were frankly like the low level grunt-type that the demons spawned on so many worlds.

Stella frowned and didn’t answer. It was a stupid question. She rested in the small prototype rest stops. These prototypes were meant for Valthorns to use in the event they couldn’t retreat to any of my trees. The domain holders this was as good a time as any to test it out. “Honestly, no idea.”

Magical bag of holdings, and a set of crystals that functioned as a controller, they deployed a magical wall, a small home, and also carried a small store of materials. Things that a domain holder didn’t really need, but was still nice to have.

It was fairly easy for three individuals to hide, and the fact that the defenders were so weak just made it easy.

Edna looked around. The air was fairly dry.

“Houndworld?”

“Hounds are everywhere, not just this world. I don’t think calling it houndworld would identify it, though it is quite funny we haven’t seen anything other than hounds.” But they were not really looking, and lazed about in the encampment. Stella took a nap, and Lumoof read a book. Edna fiddled with her knife.

Void mana took about three times longer to recover than regular mana, even with Stella’s soul and domain powers. A regular archmage regained their mana pool within hours, a void archmage would take a day.

Lumoof looked around, and then back at the mostly barren, lifeless terrain. “Let’s call this Demonhound World?”

“Not better, but I suppose it’ll have to do for now.”

Lumoof shared my ability to see the astral paths, and we saw this world had an active starpath to another world. The demons of this world were invading somewhere else, and was also linked to another two worlds.

Once Stella regained her void mana, it was another choice. There are three worlds we could access. One, through the rift gates, once we find it, and two interplanar neighbors.

“Which one?”

“Going to the invaded world is definitely going to be a habited world. We’re trying to reach the demon sun this way, so, logically we should be going in the other direction. Stella, is there a way to trace the rift paths backwards? Like, to see old rift paths?”

Edna stared back at Lumoof. “She’s napping!”

“She can hear me.” Lumoof retorted. “I know she’s not really sleeping, just closing her eyes.”

Stella turned, and yawned.

“Yeah. So you know how roads, after they are not used they eventually stop looking like roads. But I’m not sure whether these ‘void sea’ roads leave any... marks.”

Edna looked at Lumoof. “You’re saying that since every demon world must have been invaded at some point, there must be a demon world where that was the source. By repeatedly following the source, if such a thing is even possible, you suspect we eventually get to the demon sun.”

“Exactly. You’re smart!”

Stella yawned. “Void mana decays very quickly. No marks.”

“What about core mana?”

“Core mana decays when exposed to any form of light. The mixture doesn’t stay stable for long. Once the rift path collapses, it’s gone.”

Lumoof paused. “There must be a better way to do this than just randomly hopping, I think. What about the rift gates? Do they have an origin coordinate to call?”

“No.” Stella said. “I checked.”

“How these rift gates are made is still a mystery to me.”

Stella nodded. “They are ‘spawned’.”

Edna looked back at Stella, seemingly thoughtful. “Actually- Let's say our suspicion that the demon sun threw a comet our way, this comet must exist in both perspectives of the demons, and ours, even if its movement is erratic in one of them.”

“It would appear as if it’s teleporting.” Stella said.

Lumoof shrugged and sighed. “I don’t get it. You’re using void mana, and the demons are using void mana. Why does it work so differently? Is the rift gates doing something we’re not? You say they look at it differently, and our views and theirs are different. But that cannot be the case, is it? There must be an absolute truth somewhere, even if it’s beyond our scope of understanding.”

Before Stella could continue, Lumoof went on.

“Like, is void mana compressing dimensions or something? Or does it flattens perspective, and it’s the users’ perspective that’s flattened-”

Stella’s eyes widened and she stared back at Lumoof.

“What.”

“You might be on to something.” Stella said and she went on a monologue, speaking her thoughts for all to hear. “Void mana as a mechanism to flatten one of the dimensional axes is worth exploring. Perhaps there is something within the rift gates that we’re not studying properly. If let’s say void mana is a form of anti-dimensional mana, then the star mana, which eliminates and offsets void mana, is an extradimensional form of mana, or at least, contains some kind of super-dimensional quality. Thus they just collapse on each other when they interact in large quantities. Our initial assumption of star and void mana as matter and antimatter is a close enough comparison but clearly misunderstands the way they work.”

“I’m lost.” Lumoof said, and Edna just shrugged.

Edna just closed her eyes and teased the priest. “You’ve awakened the thinking Stella. I’m just going to take a nap.”

Stella then continued. “If that’s the case, it’s possible to posit that Core Mana are actually a form of node. Wait. No. It might be that core mana is a form of origin marker, which allows void mana to achieve stability as it collapses one of the dimensional axes. Wait. Wait. That may not make sense either. Core Mana could be a plane of reference that allows the void mana to have directionality.”

I was equally lost, but I suppose it makes sense to some people out there. Perhaps the void mages would be interested in such academic discussions.

Stella flicked a finger and a magical notepad appeared. She began repeating the whole thing, and once done, she passed it to Lumoof. “Send this back home for the archmages. They should start exploring how to go about doing this.”

Lumoof shrugged, and activated our teleportation ability. The void mages would have a lot to do. “How long more before we can start going somewhere?”

The void mage laughed. “Another two hours.”

“Oh Aeons! I’ve got to bear with your magical mumbling for another two?”

“Hey!”

“I’m kidding!”

***

They picked one of the other worlds at random, and it was another demon world.

“Well, if we’re heading towards demonworlds, that should be a good sign, right?”

Edna nodded. The demons of this world took the form of gigantic turtles, similar to the gigantic lizards seen on the anti-magic world, but also subtly different.

“Demon Turtleworld.”

“Demon Turtleworld it is.” Edna sighed. “We probably shouldn’t reduce the name of a plane to the single first thing we see.”

“We say that but we still do it.”

Lumoof looked back. “I’m wondering whether this is really the best way to do it. Have we tried to just use the rift gates and just call home.”

Stella rolled her eyes. “Of course we did. There’s a barrier. So we can’t.”

“Hmm. Would we encounter a barrier eventually? How’d they make such a barrier anyway?”

“No matter, let’s go look for a rift gate.” Stella said, and it wasn’t hard to find one. The riftgates were very visible in the large, barren plains of the Demon Turtleworld and so once we found it, Stella captured it and stored it in her own personal supersized magical bags of holding.

The reason for looking for the riftgate was simple. It allowed Stella to find this world’s ‘riftgate number’, which does seem to be somewhat correlated to distance from the demon sun.

“Yup. We’re somewhat in the right direction. Let’s keep going.”

“Got it.”

***

It was not a demon world, and instead, they landed on what appeared to be... storms and clouds.

Stella’s magical shield twisted, as her shield was battered by lightning. There were strong storms around them. And yet, there didn’t seem to be any land, or earth. Edna and Lumoof both levitated around her, aided by their own levitation artifacts.

“A gas giant?” She looked around. No land at all, but the gas, was so thick and dense, it seemed like there were bright rivers of cloud

She extended her senses to the world around her, and through the clouds. Lumoof did the same, but he was uncomfortable in this world of gas. In fact, I was uncomfortable too. I didn’t like being so far away from solid ground.

It’s just a nagging sensation, about being away from earth that I dislike. It was gas and cloud as far as I could feel to our surroundings.

There was nothing below us, or at least, nothing except those thick flowing rivers of dense clouds, intertwined with some kind of magic.

Leylines, forming rivers of clouds.

This was a strange, strange world.

Edna looked up, and squinted. “Hmm. Look at that!”

“Huh?” Stella stared, trying to see what Edna saw. The knight had the best eyesight of the three, her physical abilities augmented by her levels and abilities. “Where?”

“There.”

Stella and Lumoof followed the general direction of her finger and extended their respective magical senses in the general direction. They felt something, and then, Stella manipulated the bubble of magic around the three and levitated them in the general direction.

As the three moved upwards, bolts of lightning from the storm clouds around them smashed into her magical shields.

It felt like forever, and those bolts of lightning were powerful.

“Alka would like this. He’d probably try to store some of this stuff in his crystals.”

They floated up the skies, and Stella felt the magical energies around her churn. “Weird.”

There were rivers of energy, in the form of clouds that flowed in this world. Ley lines. Such a strange phenomenon.

They floated up even higher, and now they could begin to see the sun and the skies above. The sun of this world was very bright, but very small.

“I should’ve been more careful.” Stella said as she continued to levitate everyone closer to the stars. “I just checked that there’s nothing obstructing us.”

“There really was nothing obstructing us.” Lumoof laughed and then we began to see what Edna saw.

It was hidden, small and high up in the skies. The stormy clouds and lightning made it hard to even see, but then we saw it.

A floating island.

***

The trio landed on the island, and looked at what appeared to be flat on the top. There were no plants, it’s surface was bare.

“I’ve got no expectations.” Lumoof shrugged, Stella did. She expected an island with trees and probably some people.

Nothing. But why was the island floating?

Lumoof looked at Stella. “We’ll explore this place for a bit, but if there’s nothing, we should get going. The other worlds await us.”

Stella nodded. “Yeah.”

The island itself was really empty, but then Lumoof paused and examined the rock itself. Why did it float, and then Lumoof deployed avatar mode.

My roots entered the stone and rocks of the floating island, and then, as I kept searching, I felt the presence of something at the center of the floating island.

Through my roots, I created [Root Tunnel], and both Edna and Stella went to the location where they saw a small black stone plaque. It radiated a presence that felt familiar, and it emitted a strange energy that pushed back against mine.

And it was really, really old.

Stella approached it, and then she stopped. “Aeon. It’s divine energy. Or at least, a half-decayed version of it.”

As Stella squatted around and examined it, she looked at Edna. “I’ve got a theory.”

“And you want me to listen?” Edna groaned.

“Yeah.”

“Next time?”

“Fine.” Stella pouted. “Lumoof get down here.”

The root tunnels should last for a while before they start to collapse, so Lumoof rushed down and reached the strange plaque. Lumoof squinted at the etchings on the plaque. “Let’s keep it for now and let’s keep moving. We can come back to this Stormworld some other day.”

Lumoof released vines and wrapped around the stone plaque, and with a bit of a tug, sent it home. It went directly into one of my research pods, along with the old divine wooden log.

The entire floating island started to shake. “We got to go.”

Stella nodded, and began to scan the starways. “Alright, goodbye, Stormworld.”

***