Tree of Aeons

329

Year 301

***

Darkgard

Alka inspected 10,000 dwarven warriors and hundreds of the dwarven war machines, all in various states of readiness. Six rift gates were set up, each able to send one war machine through every minute. 

Alka wanted more, but the void mages didn’t have enough rift gates or void mana to sustain such a large movement of forces. Not without Stella or any of the void archmages. Alas, void archmages were so rare that they had far greater things to do. 

“Are your people ready, Desonian?” Alka asked and the man nodded. Desonian, a level 74 dwarven [Battlecrafter], used to be a military commander of the Delvegardian Yards. He had seen three large scale battles against other dwarven cities, enemies of the Delvegardian Yards, and killed no less than a thousand dwarves with his war machine.

There were many craftsmen at work, the war machines modified for operations on other worlds. Breathing chambers, helmets and suits were installed on the war machines, while the dwarves themselves put on new suits. 

The craftsmen, both native to Delvegard and those from the other worlds, had adapted quickly to the suits used to function on other worlds. It was better to be prepared for whatever that was on the other side. 

These forces would head for Darkgard III, and their goal was to free the surface of Darkgard III from the control of the demons.

There was an unspoken understanding. They were ready, but they were all waiting.

The invasion only began when the domain holders were here. 

Darkgard III, just like any of the other demon worlds, possessed a demon mother. A former demon king that corrupted the planet’s core and turned it into a demon king hatchery. Without destroying the demon mother, any invasion of Darkgard III would fail. 

***

Prior to the invasion, Alka made contact with the natives. They were surprised, but the presence of dwarves that they didn’t recognize was all the proof they needed. 

It was a good choice to bring dwarves, because they were not greeted with skepticism, but instead treated like a kindred spirit. As if it was a miracle to see new faces. But the City Guardian was rightfully skeptical of our ability to destroy the demons. An entirely fair consideration for an entity without any track record so far. 

But, there were also things we didn’t know. 

“The Burning Sun is our punishment for the failure to protect our world from the demons.” City Guardian Rommar said, once Alka and the Order managed to sneak in and arrange a meeting. “The burning lands were once normal, back when the world used to turn.”

The presence of the demon mother changed how the world functioned. Then again, having seen how Tropicsworld was restored and even now how Deadworld was going through some environmental changes, it made sense.

But Darkgard used to be a single world. Could it be that one of those suns was the original one, and now what they had was split apart to three? 

More importantly, this raised the big question. “What exactly is the limit of the demons’ powers?” 

Hawa could add planets to his core worlds, so that they could accommodate more believers. If the demons had almost god-like abilities, then we needed to approach the demon’s sun with the same tactic as how the demons defeated the dead god Zafar. 

We needed to remove the demon’s ability to ‘collect’ power. 

So, what exactly gave the demons power? 

“Maybe, on a larger scale, the demons are like the demon king on Gigantadragon. The demons gain power for each and every core controlled by them. Directly linked.” Alka theorized, and it was a theory I understood. If so, we had to free up multiple worlds, weaken the demons, and then only we could take on the demon sun.

We would need to attack a whole lot of worlds for this to work.

There were mages and researchers focused on the study of demons. What gave demon kings their power? They possessed a demonic core, but was that really the source of their power? The droplet from the black sun?

Thus, I set out to try something different for the next demon king.

“Let’s try to use our powers on the demon king.” I told Lumoof, and Lumoof expected it. He shared my thoughts, after all. I wanted to test out whether it was possible to turn a demon king into something else, through [natural mana overwhelming]. 

But first, we needed a test subject, and the demon mother at the heart of the Darkgard III would be our first guinea pig.

***

Spiders. The demonic spiders massed everywhere, but throwing more flesh at the problem wasn’t going to solve things. 

The war machines’ giant magical beams burnt through the spiders, and their gigantic legs easily crushed them. 

“Keep formation!” The Delvegardian dwarven leader screamed. “March!” The war machines took a single step together. The demon spiders might not last long against the gigantic war machines, but thousands of them could easily overwhelm even the strongest war machines. 

Beneath them, there were smaller machines, where the dwarven warriors operated something that resembled mechanical armor. The spiders that made it past the array of magical beams from the hundreds of war machines had to get past three lines of dwarven warriors, armed with gigantic axes and heavy blades. 

The spiders were slaughtered. 

The dwarves got better at fighting the demons. 

It’d been a month since the attack on Darkgard III began. The Order managed to destroy hundreds of demonic spawning pools. The native dwarves were surprised, but the presence of almost 10,000 dwarven warriors was reassuring. 

The domain holders walked past the swarm of demons unharmed, Lumoof’s presence hidden. Roon and Johann came along to support the dwarves, just in case something happened.

But our destination was a familiar place.

A tunnel that led to the depths. 

Lumoof would go alone. Well, he would never be alone, but the rest of them would remain on the surface. 

***

The tunnel seemed to go on forever, and we could feel the presence of the demon mother lingering near the core of the dwarven world. Our thoughts were troubled. How did the demons do it? What exactly was the upper limit of their strength?

The demon mother lurked within the husk of a planetary core. No. This core felt like a fragment, a shadow of what it once was. 

“It has strands that lead elsewhere-” Lumoof could see magical, spiritual lines emanating throughout the core, and it seemed to vanish as it reached out as if those strands went somewhere else. The three worlds were still linked, even if they were separated. But how, and why? Why did the demons do such a thing? Or was it just an experimental thing it did once or twice?

But it was also easy for us to spot the demon mother. Its presence was like a dark shadow over the entire core. 

After falling for hours from the surface, Lumoof’s roots fanned out like legs and hooks and helped slow his fall. The demon mother was already wary, because we sensed it shrinking and preparing for battle. 

A blast of energy came our way, but only slammed into our wooden shields. “Block the entrance.” Lumoof said, as he activated [Aeon’s Spirit]. 

My spiritual form manifested where the tunnel to the surface met the world’s core chamber, and my roots fanned out to cover the entire inner wall of the core chamber. The demon mother was trapped, unless it was prepared to blast its way out of the core in another direction. 

But here, at this distance, the core that was the womb of so many demon kings was now a prison and my roots counterattacked. The demon mother attempted to hide within the core, but it soon realized how foolish that was. 

Its attacks were harmless. The demon mother was relatively weak, compared to the demon kings it spawned. 

Lumoof approached the demon mother, it was still a large, monstrous thing. Even shrunk to its smallest size it was still bigger than our beetles. It was much taller than Lumoof, but it was a shell of whatever it once was. 

All demon mothers were once demon kings. I wanted to study them. Figure out the mechanics of what made them do things. 

Lumoof’s steps in the hollowed core of Darkgard III felt ominous, the demon mother attacking with all it had. But none of the attacks got past Lumoof’s defenses. For a moment, Lumoof, surrounded by hundreds of glowing green spiritual roots, looked more like a demon than the demon mother’s black, slime-like form. 

It had nowhere to go and we struck back.

Our roots reached out, and via Lumoof’s avatar form, these roots easily grabbed hold of the demon mother. 

It struggled, as it flung its limbs around as if they were powerful whips. But my roots were much stronger, and the demon mother’s limbs only served as anchors for my roots to latch on. 

The creature attempted to screech. It wanted to release some kind of warning. But our roots moved quickly, and reached deep into its slimy flesh and touched its core. And the flood of mana that followed drowned out whatever struggles it had. 

We flooded the creature with our mana. 

A lot of our mana. 

Throughout the entirety of the worlds we were connected to, it felt as if there were a slight dip in the magic available everywhere. I sucked it from all the other worlds and flooded the demon mother.

The creature whimpered, as the dark, hollowed core of the demon mother started to change color. 

It still struggled, but with each struggle, the once dark demon mother transformed more into something that was both animal and plant at the same time. It was multi-colored, and the varied color mana visibly spread throughout the demon mother. 

I could feel its demonic energies attempt to resist. But there wasn’t much left in it to fight us. It screeched in horror, but those were the creature’s final gasps. 

The mana spread.

I felt it pour through into the strange, parched soul of the demon. It wasn’t a complete soul, but more like a stitched together alternative. Quite like the artificial souls, but with a demon origin. 

All the demonic creatures had some variant of this template. An incomplete soul, fueled by the dry fires of the demon’s mana. 

Like a flood, our powers were like a tsunami, and that powerful fire was extinguished. 

[Natural Mana Overwhelming upgraded. Efficiency improved. Anti demonic qualities upgraded]

[You’ve successfully converted the Demon King’s Husk.]

And at that moment, I saw the memories written into the demon king’s husks. 

The creature that now stood in its place was a multi-colored slime, but instead of liquid, it was a mass of flesh of all sorts that could reshape itself at will.

An [Aeonic Stem Mass]

An existence that was pretty much the primordial form of all flesh and could reshape itself to take any other. 

***

It first began with a birth. A presence deep within a pulsing planet. It knew it was in the heart of a planet’s core, and it felt its own power grow. The energies of worlds drained to feed the growing creature. 

This was its life before it was a demon mother. 

Power. 

Growing power. 

Death. Destruction. Consume. Expand. Conquer.

I felt the creature’s command. To destroy. To expand. To create more of itself. It was not a creature of evil. It had no emotions, but it was commanded to do what it always did. 

To consume. 

Yet it understood its targets to some degree, and I saw flickers of understanding. Of using emotions. Tactics. To turn the natives against one another through corrupting the natives into demonic hosts. 

I tried to understand the visions it shared with me. They were all imprinted with an intense desire to consume, and they sought out sources of great magic. 

They could calculate odds and weigh tactics. Imprinted in each and every demon king was an array of tactics and strategies.

This demon mother then shared how it slaughtered the heroes that came to fight it, because the demon mother used the natives as blackmail material. These natives had zero value to the demons, but the heroes had a given value. The demon mother embedded these living natives into its flesh and kept them dangling around it like a human shield. 

In their moments of hesitation the demon mother attacked, and the demons won. 

To them, these manipulative actions were just victory tactics. 

The demons did not view us more than tools. Food. 

A plague. A virus. 

***

I saw visions of how the demon king then dug into the ground with magic, utilizing the realm’s inherent leylines to open up a path to the core. 

Once there, its form was then separated. Its own power, that of the demon king, was separated into multiple seedlings, between fifteen to thirty depending on the power of the Core. Those seedlings then formed the start of the new demon king. 

What remained of the demon mother then functioned as a controller of the demon’s core, and it created a link to the heart of the demon’s sun.

The prison.

It didn’t show me what was inside, but I knew then that it contained messages. Images. Visions. Enemies. Locations and targets. 

The demons communicated in some way or form, and it was carried through pulses of magic. Similar to what the demon mother tried to emit before I’ve converted it into the [Stem Mass].

The demons had ‘emitter’ stations. Places where the messages from the demon sun were amplified and then spread to more places. That was a weakness we could capitalize on, and better still, now we knew where it was.

Could we hack the emitter stations, convert them into something we controlled, and use it to mess with the demon’s communication methods?

***

Darkgard III’s core hummed, a few moments of the disappearance of the demon mother’s presence. It was like an old machine that wasn’t used for a long time, suddenly restarted. Its hum was shaky, uncertain. It coughed. 

Like an old rackety engine trying to catch its breath. 

I fed it energy and already, I felt Darkgard III’s core slowly rouse from its hazy slumber, even if it constantly coughed. It had residual demonic energies to purge. 

***

“Well, what can we do with this creature?” Lumoof stood and approached the now docile [Stem Mass].

[You may assign a Titan frame to the Stem Mass. Stem Mass gains the ability to impersonate a demon king, and temporarily emit demon king-like presence. However, it would not possess the full strength of a demon king, only a fraction. The Stem Mass can also reshape itself into any known creature and grow flesh of any kind. You may also transform Stem Mass into a [Living Colony], and it can also help spread your influence. Adding additional Titan Frames may unlock additional abilities.]

“I don’t know.” I answered, my goal was to convert a demon mother, I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do with the end result.  But the presence of a [Living Colony] could be useful. But the information shared by the demon mother did give me a rough gauge of how strong the demon kings were.

I needed a few more worlds. 

But converting a demon king was not out of reach. 

***