Year 257

I collected demonic mana from all my demonic hybrid trees, and began manipulating them. I’ve practiced with demonic mana in the past, and even went as far as attempting to mold them. I once used demonic mana to coat my beetles, and made them appear as if they were demons, but inside they were still normal beetles.

But I’ve never tested creatures made with demonic mana against other demons.

So, concurrently, on some secluded location on Lavaworld and Mountainworld, I began to shape one of my Giant Attendant Trees into a spawning pool from all my experiences taking over demonic spawning pools on all the various worlds.

Lumoof, naturally, sensed and understood what I was doing.

"Aeon, this is the path where we have to walk carefully, lest we become the monsters that we fight. A small step here could lead to depths we cannot foresee.”

"I know." I was worried, but I had to push on. The fate of Treehome depends on it. "If I stray, my dearest Avatar, tell me. Let the domain holders know of my plans to create my own demons."

I felt the risks were reasonable. The domain protected my soul, and the demons energy would change only the creatures I created. I wanted to create a puppet demon.

The Giant Attendant Tree transformed as I allowed the demonic energies to transform it.

Lillies was wary. “The fury of the multiple worlds may descend on you. Transacting excessively in the demonic energies might create a curse.”

The tree transformed slowly, as I replicated the forms I’ve seen in the spawning pool. I had ideas about the spawning pool, because I always wanted to create a champion like the demons. I studied them excessively hoping to create champions of my own.

Each time, I tried to use the concepts but made entirely out of my own mana. This time, I tried my best to stick as close as possible to the original recipe of the demonic spawning pools. With demonic ingredients.

The demonic energy caused my tree to turn into this hard, rocky structure, with spikes and jagged edges quite like the demonic spires I’ve seen. This was the natural form of the demonic energy, and suggested that the demonic energy itself came from a rocky world with such features.

The tree was ready and then it died abruptly. Insufficient demonic mana.

I tried again. Repeatedly, tweaking and tweaking the mana. As weird as it sounded, each demonic spawning pool was surprisingly specific about its energy requirements. It needed resources from the surroundings, the right intensity of mana throughout the spawning process, and the structures had to be formed carefully.

I couldn’t just play with one demonic giant attendant tree at a time. If I wanted this to work, I needed an entire farm of spawning pools, each with slightly different configurations. That would allow me to test what works, and what doesn’t.

So, on Lavaworld where it still overflows with demonic mana, and there are still local demonic spawning pools, I started a large-scale demonic experimentation facility.

A thousand giant attendant trees, each a slightly different configuration. This would allow me to test which configuration worked better with demonic mana. I also tried using the demonic mana from the Comet itself, absorbing it through my roots.

Mana of all forms carries the intent of its ‘controller’. It was this intent, embedded with mana, that allows mana to function and do things. Mana without will just floats around without purpose.

Each mana absorbs or carries this intent when it emerges through the Soul Spring.

It is why when my mana encounters another mana, whether it resists, passes it by, or absorbs each other, is because of the intent that is tied up with that mana. Intent, from the mage, shapes the mana into form. Into spells. Into abilities.

Demonic mana that seeks to corrupt carries within it, the intention to corrupt. While, my mana, seeking to protect myself, will therefore clash and fight with the mana that resists.

This is why it’s often a battle of wills, because intention within the mana is the one that’s driving the resistance, and refining how one’s mana resists the intentions of other forms of mana is how I got better at fighting off demonic mana.

This is why, intentless demonic mana, like those generated by my hybrid trees, can be possessed and manipulated. My soul can impose my intention onto these blank motes of demonic mana, because there was nothing there to resist it. The ability to project intention comes from the Soul Spring. The Soul Spring is a printer, the device in which the code is injected into each mote of mana.

However, if these two intentions do not conflict, they can coexist. This is how groups of people manage to work with each other, and overlap their spells, or even bless each other.

But at the same time, this is also a vulnerability. Intentions can be changed, but luckily, a soul’s ability to control the intention of mana usually ends once it leaves its body. In short, the mana’s intention is usually fixed the moment it exits the body, as the soul can no longer interact or pass on its intention to the mana, or even if it could, the range of interaction is usually limited.

It’s the equivalent of programming codes going live, free to interact, coexist, or fight other codes. To change it, we’d have to upload or send a new set of codes.

Mana themselves have certain natural properties. Just like how star mana was the equivalent of coding with radioactive nuclear fuel, demonic mana felt quite like coding with poison, core mana felt like coding with stone and rocks, and void mana is like coding with some kind of thick black oil.

In its raw, base form, demonic mana and energy is naturally slightly corruptive and wanted to change everything into itself. It wanted everything to take its usual shape.

It’s a familiar sensation, my own mana has the tendency of warping things into trees or plants.

Every soul changes the mana they produce slightly, even if it’s not enough to be considered a whole category of its own.

There are elemental biases even in the mana, just like how Aria’s mana is tinged with ice, and Lillies’ mana has both water and death’s taint. Residual codes as a result of processing from each soul spring.

This theory explains why, despite no real input from me, demons that I controlled were transformed into wood-forms. Like the first time I turned the demonic hounds into wood hounds so many decades ago. Or how the demonic walker transformed into the hulking mass of roots that is Hytreerion.

Allowing the demonic mana to flourish is counterintuitive, but I had to rein in my own intentions. I pulled the demonic mana produced by my hybrid demon plants, and used them to produce demons.

Gradually, I found a set of configurations that allowed my demonic-mana giant attendant trees to not only grow, but surprisingly, absorb the natural demonic mana of the demon worlds and convert them into a usable form.

[Skill acquired : Demonic Mana Refinement. You are now able to refine and ‘clean’ demonic mana from certain worlds.]

This ability did not work on mana from the Demon Comet. The intent to conquer from the Demon Comet was too strong, too violent.

But this was a huge revelation for me. In a single skill, it changed the balance of mana production altogether.

***

“With these demonic giant attendant trees, I can produce mana on the demon worlds. With this, I am no longer mana-negative.” I said the domain holders, much to their horror. “But-”

I didn’t really need to say it. But for clarity, I had to.

“It means I will be using a lot of demonic mana, and demonic mana will flow through my body in large quantities.”

“Do we know what happens when you have too much demonic mana?” Stella countered. “Void mana changed my body, and those of the void mages.”

“I don’t know.”

“No.” Stella said. “We shouldn’t go down this road. The demonic mana might gain control of you, and its effects-”

The rest of them promptly agreed. They think this was a line that cannot be crossed. Small scale demonic mana was fine, but once large quantities of demonic mana flowed through my body, the effects on me- well, I don’t know what the effects are.

My soul should protect me, or it might not. Actually, no. It won’t.

This is MY demonic mana, and it’s likely the domain would not step in. After all, the domain would not resist itself, and the domain is subservient to the soul.

This was granting the demonic energies the equivalent of root access to my programming. It could unmake me and there’s nothing I could do.

My domain holders were unanimous, and they voted no.

Even if this would significantly elevate my mana constraints by turning Lavaworld from a mana-negative location into a mana-positive location. Lavaworld’s demonic mana, which was controlled by it’s demon mother, could be easily converted into usable demonic mana.

But it is a risk.

I realize I probably wasn’t in the best mental state to make this decision, because it is entirely possible that the demonic mana had already affected me without me even noticing it. So, I decided it was wiser to agree with my council’s thoughts, and did not expand the demonic mana harvesting.

I didn’t expand the demonic giant attendant trees’ mana farm, and instead, focused on tweaking the spawning pools. Once the demonic giant attendant trees were functional, they could now begin to produce my new prototype demonic scouts.

The first demonic beetle created from almost entirely demonic energies collapsed on itself. It died. There were aspects of it’s creation that reminded me of my earlier days when I first experimented with beetles.

We learned a lot from those days, much of that knowledge is now handled by my small army of artificial minds. Still, we had to redesign the creature from the ground up. The structural elements of the demonic beetle body had to be different, due to the different strengths and flexibility inherent in the demon-organic materials, and we couldn’t just reuse the old templates.

The one thousand demonic giant trees became a large experimental spawning pool, where I figured out the strengths and weaknesses of the demonic-material.

One, they were naturally hard, and we’ve known demons had a strong earth-fire element bias. But, unlike the beetles, they were significantly less flexible, and so, certain elements of the demonic beetle had to be reinforced, while certain parts could do with less.

My first functional demonic beetle struggled to walk, but the data we gleaned soon allowed us to prototype newer models.

***

Back on Treehome, I faced Colette, who could no longer put off her request. She waited long enough, and she finally insisted for it to happen.

Prabu was there, and I could see a resigned acceptance in his face. Her daughter, Rohana, understood it as ‘Mother needs to find a missing piece of herself’, and was thus naturally supportive of her mother.

“Suppress the hero class.” Colette repeated.

“Very well.” After so long, everyone knew of it, but no one dared stop Colette. Despite her calm appearance, everyone could sense as if there was a maelstrom swirling within. It seemed as if the threat of her fury was enough.

I gathered the energies from throughout Treehome. With my expansion on the Demon’s Comet blocked by the rivers of demonic mana, there was nothing much else I could do. Colette dipped into my [Soul Forge], where I would apply the weight of my domain and my energies against her hero class.

I entered into her soul spring, and found the cracks on the vast marble spring had gotten much larger.

“Your soul-”

“I feel as if my soul and the [hero] class are at odds with each other.” She repeated, our minds linked through my vines wrapped around her body. “Ever since the day Hafiz died, and that conversation we had, I felt as if something weighing down on me. It’s holding me back from remembering and reaching into- into something.”

Cracks.

About a hundred and forty years ago, I tried to suppress the hero class for Mirei, to lift the curse within. Today, I looked at the cracked hero class around Colette’s soul spring, and wondered whether the hero class was the curse.

Power flooded my soul-vines and appendages, and it wrapped around the stones that formed her soul’s spring. I knew I could do it. The power I had in my disposal was no less than what Harris and Gerrard provided to me, and not just that, I was much more powerful.

This entire thing was the [hero] class. It is the means that translate their intent into power.

It didn’t even take much of my power to lift the white stones of her soul spring. Her very soul resisted it. It felt as if the ground itself pushed against the stones, and all I had to do was give it a hand.

Her soul had grown stronger, the core part of her soul now wanted to shed the class that sought to impose itself on her.

It wouldn’t be too far-fetched to think she might have been able to suppress her hero class, with enough time.

Unlike Mirei, who found it extremely painful, Colette’s unconscious body relaxed. As if she was in a long, peaceful sleep.

She was in a dream.

A long dream, as I held the hero class as long as I could. With her soul itself resisting the hero class, I- I didn’t even have to spend much energy to do so. I took this chance to look closer at the stones that made a hero, a [hero].

There were severe damages into the structure of the hero class itself. Parts of the stone were worn out, hollowed from below, likely from the soul’s resistance.

There was accumulated damage in the structure of the spring too. Gaps and holes where they probably should be none. Cracks and scars. Chips in the rocks.

Was this caused by the natural weakening of the hero class? Actually, could it be that due to the ‘forced’ nature of the hero class, the soul itself struggles against the hero class, and so inevitably it would decay over time? The symptoms we see might be just the side effect of prolonged wear and tear, as the soul grew stronger over time.

I could mend the hero class, but I realize it may not be what Colette wants.

The floating vase of star mana in the sky continued to pour down into her soul, but nothing.

Suddenly, I felt a rumbling. Her soul vibrated and yet she looked peaceful. The rumbling came from where the actual waters of the spring surged out. Like a wave, it blasted outwards.

Then, I felt Colette awaken after hours of sleep. I felt joy.

“You can stop.” She answered.

“The hero class is damaged. Do you want me to fix it?”

“No. That won’t be necessary.” I gently placed the stones back, and then just as suddenly, the rocks began to move and reshape itself. “I can do it.”

Just there and then, huge waters poured out of her soul, and flooded the [hero] stones. Encased in the waters of her soul, the rocks themselves vibrated and then glowed dimly, as if they were stones around a very hot fireplace.

This lasted for an hour, while ripples of energy whipped through the valley.

When it was done, her words answered all my questions. “The gods control me no longer.” Colette said, as we all felt the change in her hero class. “I am now a [Liberated Hero].”