Year 248

The time ticked. We had 5 years until the comet intersected with the demon turtleworld, and Alka was in a rush to hunt more demon mothers. Alka got a title, but the rest of us didn’t, simply because it was the same title as the one before when we liberated Tropicsworld.

This demonic houndsworld was free.

Lumoof stayed back, and made regular trips to this world, to get a sense of the world’s mind. Each world had a will, and each will was probably slightly unique-

Woof.

I was flooded with sounds and images of dogs and hounds, and they came from the freed core instead. Dogs. Hounds. All kinds. I saw a field of grass and flowers, and dogs running through them, chasing after larger animals. Sheeps. Cows. Animals.

There were just dogs. They were a little like the Canari, but these were not truly sapient. It was just a world with dogs. I felt more images of dogs, and I briefly wondered whether the overwhelming presence of demonic hounds throughout the demonic worlds was due to worlds like this. Surely there are demonic cats as well.

I should’ve known that some of these Will of the Worlds have primal, feral minds. Just like how tropicsworld communicated mainly with images and sensations.

***

On Mountainworld, the local team prepared for the coming demonic invasion. Five years was plenty of time, but with explosive crystals in relative short supply, the forces on the Mountainworld had to find local alternatives.

The heroes, in particular, led the charge, as they adopted some of our methods and used their [hero forges] to create star mana explosives. These were functionally unusable via the void portals as they can’t be shipped and delivered as payload to the coming comet due to the void-star mana interactions.

So, they deployed and made them on Mountainworld instead, and for now, everything was stored in my clone tree. These were incredibly powerful bombs made of pure star mana, and if I intended for any of my clones to go with a bang, teleporting these star mana bombs through my clones was probably one of the best ways. It’s likely to destroy my own clone in the process, or severely injure and damage my clone.

The demon king could be early or late, but for now the star paths through space were still relatively fuzzy. The path still wasn’t robust enough, but if we wanted, a void archmage could open a path to explore the invader’s world.

But void archmages are in short supply. We have four, still only four, and they are all occupied with their own projects.

Despite that, the heroes are confident, and they have every reason to be. Even with our B-team deployed on Mountainworld to support the heroes, they should still have enough weapons at their disposal to weaken whatever came their way.

We should be able to pin down the demon king’s location closer to its arrival, perhaps in another four years.

***

Tropicsworld was our primary backup location. Large and mostly uninhabited, we maintained multiple operation bases back in the days of the war, but since it’s eventual reclamation, we granted the use of some of these bases to the pioneer migrants.

But, with the coming comet, we had to prepare for evacuation of an entire planet, and a lot of my Valthorns came over and constructed a few cities out of locally available materials. Along with it came everything the cities needed to be self-sufficient.

The pioneers did well, with the few [Pioneer Lords] and [Pioneer Chiefs] leading the way, and the relative safety provided by perpetual Valthorn presence meant there were already a few independent cities of their own.

The great thing is that there’s effectively an information embargo between Tropicsworld and other worlds, because almost no message got through without the void mages, or me knowing about it.

[Message] spells didn’t work across worlds, though there are some magical ability that allowed communication across worlds. My Valthorns tested certain communication abilities like [mind-link], which allowed two people to maintain a mental link, and it persisted even through other worlds, albeit at a high mana cost per message.

In time we would probably need to figure out a way to tweak the riftgates such that they function as information routers and modems.

Prior to our reclamation of the Tropicworld, there were already multiple large forests due to my presence and the long war against the parasitic demons, and these days, the entire world was pretty much covered with trees, except for the areas where the terrain warped to suit the recovering core’s preferences.

The pioneers had to adapt to the new environment, and they did so with quite a bit of success since the beginning of the reclamation projects. But so far, the core somehow knew where we were and no one had actually died when it did some unusual terrain adjustments.

I estimate the core to be about a third of Treehome’s strength since it’s freedom three decades ago. The rate of recovery over the past three decades appear to be fairly erratic. I’m not sure whether the rate of recovery of Tropicsworld would slow down or accelerate.

In any case, at the current strength it should be able to sustain the population of Threehome. If barely.

I do have a tinge of worry, whether overloading a world with too much people affected the core.

***

“Stella. A few decades ago you estimated that there are a certain set of core suns, and also the command nodes.” I asked Stella once more. She was on the Demonic Turtleworld, setting up more magical platforms on the asteroids. “Has that changed? Are these Sun-Rings these command nodes?”

“It seems to match.” Stella said. For her, its a theory she worked on for the last few decades. “We know there’s the black sun, and there’s also the blob. The core has a single demonic blob that serves as the prison. I also know there are multiple black suns, at least from the core, but the demonic blob is the one with the divine energy.”

But we have only know of one demonic blob so far, at the center of our copy of the demon’s star map. The demon suns were located further away, and only one was in the star map. In their star map, the demon sun and the demonic blob were not far away.

Why would the demons need multiple demon suns if it’s far away? Was there a purpose? Or perhaps, more demonic prisons at the heart of it all?

I found the demon’s structure entirely confusing, but in the end, to end the cycle, all of these things must be destroyed.

As a tree, the demons have brought pointless destruction. If they could exist without resorting to blanket destruction and world-draining, it would be much more palatable to tolerate their existence.

Stella suspects it may be easier to destroy the demon sun and severely weaken the demon’s ability to power it’s network of riftgates. Doing so would take out the demon’s ability to invade new worlds, and thus turn the tide of battle in our favor. A game of defense and where we are the attacking party.

But, if the demon suns are linked somehow, then that wouldn’t do us any good.

“Are we ready for the first pass?” I asked my domain holders.

Alka shook his head. “Based on the sizes estimated by the void mages, we currently don’t have enough weapons to blow it up from the surface. But, if we could somehow access the core of this Comet, we can teleport enough bombs into the depths such that this demon comet shatters from within. It’s a shame we can’t use the heroes’ star mana bombs without Aeon’s clone, and my ability doesn’t work with their star-mana bombs.”

A lot of our actions are constrained by this foul void-star mana elimination.

My chief explosive researcher then further explained. “That said, we don’t really know whether we can use Aeon’s clone. Based on what we’ve seen on the Sun-Rings, the clone can only be used if there’s an earth-like object. It’s not possible to deploy a clone on steel, for example. So, depending on the materials of this Comet, there is a fairly remote chance that we have to count Aeon’s clone out.”

Stella said. “Remote.”

“I know, but we have to prepare for it. Not being able to use Aeon’s clone will be a significant problem.”

“Can we ram an asteroid with Aeon’s clone into the demon’s comet?” Roon asked. “Is there a minimum size of asteroid that is needed for Aeon’s clone to work?”

“We don’t even know if there’s an asteroid near this demon comet. The best chance for that is when it’s nearest to our world, when the bubble of existence of Treehome and this comet are theorized to collide.” Alka answered.

“I mean, can Stella send an asteroid through her void portal?” The ranger repeated and looked at the void archmage. “That’s just a mitigating step if the surface is hostile to Aeon’s clone.”

She frowned. “A small one, probably. Not sure if it’s big enough for Aeon.”

“Work on it?” Alka pushed the void archmage, and she frowned, but eventually accepted. Edna chuckled.

“Stella already has a lot of things on her plate.”

“Well, if there’s some other alternative to void magic to move shit around, then we better get to it.” Alka said. “If Aeon is willing to kidnap some angels, for example.”

I rejected that idea. “No kidnaps. I don’t want to ruin a potentially sensitive relationship with the angels. They appear to be the kind that remembers such transgressions, and petty enough to wage a war over it.”

Alka laughed. “We’ll have to make some enemies, even with people we like, Aeon. We need their angelic powers. If we can breed some of our own-”

Edna stepped in. “Alka, I think that’s probably not where we want to go.”

The scientist paused as he realized he probably said too much. “Ah, yes.”

Year 249

There was nothing much to do beyond watching my folks prepare for the inevitable. My trees and research trees did their best to find ways to dig into the demon’s planet. It took slightly longer than expected, but the demon’s comet could now be seen on the demon king’s core. Our magical sensors picked up it’s transmission to each of the demon worlds.

A group of my mages tried to figure out how the demon sent transmissions through the void sea, because if we could replicate that, we could have interworld communication that’s not entirely reliant on my network of clones.

My domain holders were busy, but with the Houndworld freed from the demon’s hold, it was also another potential evacuation spot.

But it was a lot less accessible, because it required my void mages to multiple hops to reach the Houndworld.

A smaller group went and set up an operating base anyway.

***

The vassal wars had a small breather this year. Both sides grew weary and tired of the war, and the merchant guilds wanted to consolidate their positions. So, in an entirely unplanned moment, most of the guilds and the defenders just stopped launching new offensives, focused on their own defenses and shoring up their own economy.

They will return to the wars eventually, but the breather gave the general populace a great chance to recover from damage.

Until it all gets destroyed all over again.

***

“Do you feel we are increasingly becoming irrelevant?” Chung asked the other heroes one day when they were on Mountainworld. The preparations were going well, and there was still leisure time.

I didn’t push the heroes very hard, as long as they fought the demon kings. What they did in their free time, I left it to them. Like Prabu and Colette’s plan to have a child.

“What do you mean?” Prabu said while stuffing himself some more.

“Not really.” Colette answered. “We’re still doing what we are meant to be doing.”

“But we’re increasingly becoming less- less important.”

“Did the [hero] class suddenly trigger something, Chung?” Prabu looked at his friend with a strange look. They’ve been together for decades, and the relationship among heroes can be a little tense because even the smallest things trigger them after so long. Thankfully, they only need to be together when they prepare for the demon king, and the heroes frequently return to their own ‘homes’ to decompress.

I’m very torn on the nature of the [hero] class. It certainly has an overwhelming influence on the heroes’ mindset, and guides them towards fighting the demons. The best time to investigate the hero class is when a hero is weak, when it’s still growing and not fully matured. But that often involves capturing or letting a hero suffer some kind of injury such that I’d be in the position to access the hero class and their soul spring.

Just like Harris or Meela.

I remember being able to remove Meela’s class at one point, but with the current generation of heroes I had never gotten that prompt.

***

“My [void explorer] reached a new world. I’m not sure if it’s near the gods, yet.”

The gods could be hiding, and honestly we don’t know how exactly to sense a god. I know that Aiva’s presence could be keenly felt, but there’s no certainty that it is repeated everywhere, or whether the other gods transmit their presence.

Therefore, it fell on Lumoof to explore this new world.

***

“Is it a good idea to explore when we face the prospect of a demon’s comet?” Lumoof asked me privately. Alka spent some time fighting more monsters in the dungeon, but since the demon mother only gave a few levels, it wasn’t really worth it. Freeing an additional world was a risk, especially if it meant that world could be retaken by another invading demon king.

Even the Houndworld, without my clone, I didn’t have much confidence in my ability to secure that world if we were attacked by demon kings since the heroes wouldn’t be there to deliver the final blow.

“There’s nothing much we can do, beyond getting stronger, but the prospect of gaining allies from far away is worth it.”

Lumoof shrugged. Alka was busy preparing weapons and checking on all the bombs on Turtleworld. Stella’s still working on the void magic platforms on the Turtleworld’s asteroids. Roon, Edna and Johann were preparing the invasion force.

There were priests and other patriarchs to do the priestly stuff that Lumoof sometimes did.

“You’re my avatar, if not you, then who?”

Lumoof laughed. “I suppose so.”