Torches through the Forest (Patreon)

Year 176

Stella’s attention temporarily focused on training new void mages, and also recharging the daemolite crystals harvested. I’ve mostly decided that the daemolite will be destroyed at a later date, and for now, they are used to study. The value of the other worlds temporarily outweighs the risks of maintaining the status quo.

The other worlds represented opportunity, and potential allies. A chance to learn of things done in other worlds, their history, and how the demons and heroes interacted in the past. A chance to see and compare things. Daemolite’s ability to store void mana meant we could augment her range, to reach the further ‘worlds’ that occasionally drift into range.

Still, it’s a long process of experimentation, and training new void mages isn’t something we can achieve in a year or two.

-

In the south, more rifts appeared. I know this first hand, because the wispy tendrils through ‘space’ seemed to glow more frequently, and I noticed all the different tendrils grow a little brighter. I wondered how they achieved this, and Stella couldn’t explain it either. The way the demons used their void magic was different. Stella certainly couldn’t see ‘tendrils’, not the way I could. To her, this ‘outer’ world is really really dark and all she saw was little faint markers.

A dark forest. Maybe the wider world is just a dark forest, and gods are just magical equivalent of superpower civilisations taking shots at each other. All hiding, and keeping themselves unseen, because once they are seen, they are attacked.

Then again, it didn’t make sense. If it’s truly a dark forest this world should be doomed.

Back to the South, the local militia of the respective southern nations seem to be holding their own. The typical nature of the demons meant the local forces were quite well equipped to deal with these ‘normal’ type demons.

It goes without saying that all of us wondered whether we will get a ‘normal’ demon king, and what that meant.

Kei, now eager to regain some of her power after she’s seen the level that Edna and Lumoof achieved, set out to the south. She hoped to challenge a few demon champions and regain some semblance of power, so that she can be of some use in Alvin’s fight with the demon king.

Oh well. It can’t be helped that she felt a need to assist her one and only remaining friend from earth.

-

On the domestic front, I gained a special type of tree while I kept tweaking with the ley lines.

[Unique Tree Type unlocked : The Trees of the Earth Veins. Helps to channel and direct ley lines. Requires gems and crystals in large quantities, and also tends to spawn monsters]

It reminded me of the [Ginseng Tree], another of the trouble tree types that have the whole [monster lure] functionality. But I’m not the same tree from that time, and I have the ability to station far stronger defenses, with dedicated commanders. I functionally have no real limit in terms of artificial minds, now that there are tens of millions of connected trees all across the continent.

Sadly my ginseng tree limit did not change much, in spite of my levels and domains. At about 15 ginseng plants simultaneously, this was my 2nd real bottleneck in massively increasing the output of high tier individuals. Both unlocking the said individual, and then subsequently having the dungeons needed to train them up to the necessary levels.

Restrictions.

Right now, I feel like I’m hitting quite a few limits. Like in terms of Soul Forge, I’ve not had a new color for quite a while. In terms of Titans, I’m still hesitating on activating my 3rd Titan, simply because I’m not sure what I’ll need in the future.

Patreeck has been exceptionally helpful administratively, but his levels too, have stagnated. Hytreerion’s only seen one large scale battle against the demon king, and even in that battle he didn’t really show any exceptional performance.

Reviewing their performance thus far, the Titans are pretty much ‘champion-class’, despite requiring a hero’s soul fragments. In fact, in all combat forms, they just fail to live up to the strength of a real hero or a [domain]-class individual.

Thus, as bad as it sounds, I felt that Hytreerion had been a mistake. The titans, despite their strength, are meant to be utility providers.

“But we don’t have level limits.” Patreeck clarified. “It’s just that... well, it’s hard for us to level.”

I wondered whether Hytreerion could get to level 150, but because its’ size, there’s no way it could go into a dungeon. Dungeons so far are all relatively ‘small’. Even the largest of the dungeons I’ve seen and created so far are just big enough for Hytreerion to squeeze in, but it’s effectively useless in such a tight spot.

I would have to reengineer Hytreerion’s loadout to be more of a utility player, with more support functions and to serve as a staging and resupply function for the real damage dealers. The very nature of their capped levelling meant they would never keep up.

So, I thought greatly about Hytreerion’s role again. He’s huge, and that mean he functioned more as a tank, and perhaps a powersource. Were there advantages that size had, that could not, or not as easily replicated by levels?

Because levels clearly overpowered everything else, so why should anything be big? Surely there must be merit to being naturally big. So, what would that be?

Firstly, I would think about materials. Certain materials have overlapping roles with equivalent skills or levels gained but size meant massive mana crystals, and runic formations. Sure, size meant more space to duplicate skill functions. So, firstly, Hytreerion would need to be reequipped as a mobile mana bank, and also store runes. It’s also easier to have ‘conflicting’ magical formations separated by the sheer size of Hytreerion. The walkers were all massive creatures and they can grow even bigger with levels.

Like equipment slots, they should be carrying larger, titan-sized equipment. Things that individuals could carry, but render them unable to do anything else. Titan-Sized anti-demon ballistas were one of the first few ideas.

Or could I equip Hytreerion with enough magical crystals to make him a walking bomb? Give the demon king a taste of their own medicine. I would have to rejig Hytreerion’s internals such that it could contain a massive multi-layer bomb.

Still, I decided to put the idea up for discussion.

-

Using the log obtained from Lilies, I subjected it through a huge amount of scans and tests. Then, we ran some tests on how they interacted with the Blackstar Gems. We wanted to know the degree of protection these Blackstar Gems provided, whether they would be able to protect the lower leveled individuals from divine influence.

I wasn’t sure what I expected, but the log shook violently after a huge amount of blackstar gems were placed around it. It... needed more tests.

Right now, only Patreeck, and the domain have any chance of resisting divine forces. I wondered whether I could enhance, or at least replicate a bit of that mind-checking ability, perhaps package it as a familiar? Like a voice next to my followers that helps keep the gods at bay.

I have more questions, of course. Is my domain a type of ‘divine’ power? If so, the domain abilities that Lumoof, and Edna both have should encounter some resistance from these Blackstar gems. But then, it didn’t?

Why is that the case? Is domain not the true ‘divine’, and that there is another tier above us? That perhaps domain is the realm of the demigods? In terms of power levels, that idea made a lot of sense, since gods summoned heroes, and whoever managed the demons could create demon kings. So, to place them a realm above the [domain] is a sensible one.

In terms of levels, would Level 200 be that threshold? Or is it higher still?

-

“Should we send our senior Valthorns to take on the demon champions too?” Lumoof suggested. “At this point, with the Court of the Deitree, you could teleport us back at any time. I’ll go with them.”

One of the small ‘flaws’ of the Court is that I have to activate the recall. The recall function cannot be activated by the Valthorns themselves, so I would need to send Lumoof with them in order to activate the failsafe.

“Defeating the demon champions will speed up their levelling.”

Duh. So I decided that it was worth it, so Lumoof and a group of 15 Valthorns, all with the Court of the Deitree to journey down south and help suppress the demons. The mission was simple, fight demon champions, level up, and run before the King comes along.

It was also my chance to see the South, through Lumoof’s eyes.

-

In terms of bombs, Alka’s continued research in the underground cities yielded slightly improved bombs. After all, the idea of bombing the hell out of the demons is hugely appealing, and I suppose one day I’d like to make a Tree of Fruit Bombs.

Between Kei and Aria, we are now acquainted with two beings who are naturally crystalline in nature, so Alka’s been really keen to obtain crystal samples from Aria, for testing. The goal, of course, is to find and make even better bombs.

On hexes and soul magic, my progress has not amounted to any real improvement in weaponry, though I am making some improvements in my conceptual understanding of their raw components. The main challenge has been the corrosive nature of hex, which distorted any surrounding runic formations.

I have yet to figure out how to ‘store’ a hexbomb for long periods. All the hexbombs we’ve made so far have a shelf-life of no longer than 1 year, and after that the crystal would be destroyed and we have a puddle of hex to clean up.

That said, I am getting a lot better at processing hex. Hex and curses are linked, since my [Curse-breaker] clearly improved my ability to process and clean up areas filled with hex. From an etymological point of view, the two words do have similar meaning. Is a hex essentially a ‘curse’ made of the soul?

-

The Treelogy Priests quickly whipped up the small continent of high tier Valthorns into a PR campaign, to expand our clout among the southern Continent nations. After all, we are already planning to send Valthorns there, might as well get some good press out of it.

We sent out communications with the southern nations that were in trouble, and arranged to send them where they can make a big spectacle by slaying the demonic threat on their lands. Of course, we chose those kingdoms and nations where their relationship with the four churches are already frayed and tested in the recent decades.

The journey to the south took the Valthorns took a month, and then they started whooping ass. Lumoof mostly stayed back, blessing the Valthorns with various enchantments, and I didn’t pay attention to the battles, since the demon champions were relatively easy foes for a group of level 100s.

The Four Churches mostly retaliated by seriously deploying their own forces to help suppress the demonic threat.

But as always, the defense of the southern continents were mostly left to the local kingdoms. Most kingdoms quickly formed coalitions to fight the demons together. The churches after all lacked the flexibility to deploy their high leveled individuals, they already didn’t have many of them in the first place. Their best generals are around Level 50s to 70s, and usually demon champions require a few individuals at that level.

So, they compelled the hero Alvin to move out of his harem palace. Like, fucking finally. I still don’t understand why the hero doesn’t just rush off and kill the demons. I don’t recall Harris and the gang being so lazy. It’s free levels, and at no risk.

Year 177

Reefy was located on the southern part of the Central Continent, and I suspect his magical senses have improved recently.

> The demons are here. <

< They are underwater? > I asked. I had to treat Reefy’s words a bit more literally.

> No. But I feel them. Invaders. I will kill them. <

< uh.. Good? >

> But they don’t come underwater. They don’t... swim? <

< I think they do? > I believe the champions do swim over the oceans. Well, at least the walker-series of demon champions could swim over the oceans, but I wasn’t sure about this current generation of stereotypical winged demons with massive axes. I’d actually like to capture one of these demon champions, if possible. I wonder what it’ll be like if I managed to convert one of the demon champions into my own.

Would the axe or sword remain? Are those demonic axes a physical body part of the demons, or a magical creation of the champions? Why do they disappear when killed?

I wonder what’ll be like if we get an underwater demon king. That’ll be something of a sight, but I suppose since all the demon worlds we’ve seen so far lack water, I think that’s quite unlikely. The demon kings are clearly ‘grown’ in their home environments before they arrive here. The best they could do is a shapeshifting demon king that takes on an underwater form.

Thinking about it, if there are underwater civilisations beneath the oceans, they should theoretically survive since the beginning of time, unless a Rottedlands-class incident occurred.

But I have not heard of any? Is it because they are hiding? Or is there something else down there that prevents the creation of a long-lasting underwater civilisation?

Or perhaps it’s just the immense pressures of the deep sea that makes it impossible for intelligent creatures to emerge?

-

The Southern Continent endured the demonic waves relatively well. I saw more rifts open, my vision of the astral ways indicated that one rift now glowed, but I couldn’t interact with it. Not without void mana.

Stella felt it too, her own senses for the starways spoke to her. Her skill had an interesting name.  [The Ways Through the Forest Between Worlds]. It really reflected how one’s understanding of the world reflected in the skill’s nature. Or was it the other way round?

To her, she described it like there was a path of torches through the dark forest. More importantly, thanks to the path, she could now look back at the path to their homeworld. She opened just a tiny, tiny hole. It’s somehow easier, despite the distance.

She could tell it’s really far away, but with the figurative ‘torches’, it somehow meant it didn’t cost as much void mana for her to open a portal to see their homeworld. The demons clearly had a way of ‘lubricating’ the astral path. A small peephole and she saw a world of red and fire. Literally fire and brimstone. Demons with wings. It’s as if the gods copied a stereotypical demonic homeworld and pasted it in this world.

We monitored it for weeks and months, the torches got brighter and there were more of them.

“It’s soon.” Stella said, and honestly I knew it was coming. The tendrils appeared to glow and pulse in a bright white and red. I made sure my sensors were all honed in, I wanted to collect every single data point I could get. I notified Lumoof to be careful in the South, and that I would recall them immediately if the demon king spawned too close for comfort.

We both saw it. To Stella, it appeared like a fireball that surged through the path. It consumed the torches, growing each time, and then it reached the South. I felt the world twist and turn. To me, the tendrils appeared to flash and glow, like a filament of light. It was incredibly bright when I used it, and I saw like a blob move across that filament of light.

[Demon King Ethrezen has arrived]

The world suddenly felt significantly hot. Areas filled with snow capped mountains started to melt, and avalanches of mud crashed into their nearby cities. In the deserts, oasis suddenly vanished, and the water evaporated into violent thunderstorms, followed by torrents of rain that flooded.

Dry forests burned, and I felt the entire continent was suddenly filled with flash fires. Farms and orchards too quickly started to burn. The intense heat generated strong hurricanes and whirlpools, and strong winds battered the coast.

In the South where the demon king landed, it seemed the regular demons now had a halo of flame, their once regular-looking axes replaced by red-flaming axes. The regular hounds turned into fire-breathing hounds.

The demon champions had wings of flame, and their aura of flame burned most that got close.

“Do we stay or retreat?” Lumoof mentally asked. “We can beat the demons with ranged weapons, but fighting at close range is a bit risky.” I may have flame resistance, and Lumoof certainly shared that resistance, but the other Valthorns didn’t.

My sensors and artificial minds made some calculations and concluded the demon king was quite far from them. “Stay, but engage carefully.”

“Got it.”

Meanwhile, the hero, Alvin, finally arrived in the South.