Treemunity
Year 198 (part 2)
One of the junior Valthorns developed a simplified process to check on demons, especially when demons were not available. Sothing that apparently, a few other places had independently developed.
If a demon consud or destroyed a soul, essentially, that is just a body, but without the will in it. A persons skills and abilities were tied to the soul, so the theory was, most of these lesser demons would not be able to copy skills. Accordingly, they may appear like a person, but if they are unable to use any of their skills, they were quite likely to be demons.
It was quite clever.
Of course, its likely that demons were still able to copy so skills, especially the champion class. So far, we have not seen any of these champion-class parasites, and honestly, it kept awake. What could a demon king thats entirely focused on possessing people do? Could it even possess a hero?
I thought back to ela and Alexis, and wondered.
Was their demon king a corruption king too? Or at least, a variant of it? Why else was Alexis consud by the flas of the demon? That batch even had those talking demon-knights!
That was at least one hundred plus years ago. Have we finally looped the cycle?
I would have to approach them and ask them for more info. I recall Alexis didnt have much knowledge of the demons that possessed them.
Also, these demons were able to read mories of the bodies they captured. From this alone, I imdiately considered Stella and Kei as very high risk. If they were captured by the demons, that would be a really, really bad outco, especially if the demons are then able to share their mories back to where they ca from.
I also wanted to know how these demons spread. They seed to jump from person to person, and we noticed that they invaded drains, gutters, toilets and other naturally dirty environnts. We also found them in the waters, where they were, strangely, eaten by fish with little consequence.
They were able, with surprising adaptability, to infest travelling rchants and sohow remained dormant or at least, non-hostile within them, at least, until they reached a new area.
All these observations suggested each of these parasites had intelligence, one corroborated by how they responded to my abilities.
How do we fight them effectively, while minimising deaths?
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Ken, Prabu and Colette t up in Freshka, and by now, my Valthorns have shared a dossier of the demonic body snatchers with them, and a rough summary of what weve discovered so far. I wanted the heroes to live, at least, if they could gain enough levels.
Both Prabu and Colette have accepted my familiars as part of the deal to allow them to live here, and it was advantageous for to keep them at a high level.
How does the trope normally go? Body snatchers eh... Ken said. There should be a kind of magic that should be specifically effective on them.
Prabu shrugged. And what would that be?
I dont know, wed have to run so experints. The common ones are usually electrical shocks, or so strange foods. Maybe we could get so anti-parasitic drugs? Or maybe just so strange rare chemicals. Ken said as he tried to approach it from a trope-angle.
My Valthorns were already capturing these demonic larva specins to conduct my own tests. We wanted a widespread way to hit these demons, and we wanted to know their weaknesses. They had weaknesses for sure.
There was one very imdiate sample that worked really well.
Using Stellas gateway, we sent three possessed individuals to Freshka, and Patreeck blasted the possessed individual with his psychic power.
It worked really well, since the person literally convulsed, and the demon actually crawled out of the possessed individuals mouth in an attempt to avoid the psychic blast. It was pretty much nightmare material as everyone squird. Well, almost.. Only the knights or those who usually had the [Still Heart], or [Calm Mind], or [Horror Resistance] or other similar passive abilities didnt react to it.
Luckily, as long as the persons not dead, they do not spawn additional larva. In order to make a person into a living hatchery, theyd have to fully convert the person, so in such cases, its straight-forward. Kill anyone who doesn't have a soul.
Since they are just demons that had the appearance of people.
Snek suggested that it should be possible for certain classes to fight off such parasites, usually through boosting their own spiritual power. Their world, at least, prior to the conversion to the demon lands, were filled with naturally occurring parasites and body snatchers. But this was like multi-generational adaptation to parasites, not sothing thats possible for the people of this world to acquire on a widespread scale.
Wait. Unless I massively distribute [Skill seeds] with these skills. But I would need these skills in the first place. No, Id need to know which skills work best against these demonic body snatchers!
Stella was extrely fascinated. This is essentially planning to develop so kind of anti-demonic possession vaccine, and now youre in the concept phase of testing which skills work best?
I had a lot of skill seeds, and with them, I could make class trees and skill trees. These were old abilities that I still used on a smaller scale, but if this worked, it would essentially create safe villages.
How are you proposing to test the effectiveness of the skills against the demonic possessions. No one here is going to volunteer themselves, and where do you get the demons? Youd have to have a hatchery!
On a high level, the idea was really rather repulsive. It ant Id capture one of these demon-possessed persons and keep it alive as a hatchery for demonic larvae, and then test out the demonic larvae on different individuals of different skills, and monitor them. Not just that, its essentially a test that I can only perform in Freshka, since Patreecks psychic/mind blast could effectively sterilise anyone infected with the demons.
Stella, of course, wondered. Could we replicate this psychic attack on a smaller scale?
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The heroes, on the other hand, went in a different direction. A good solution, too, but not one I could apply on a large scale. It worked well only for them since they had the star mana.
Chung, the archer in the south, asked for help. In fact, the idea even ca from him, since he was on the ground. We know demons dont like star mana, and star mana is effective against them. Can we inject the villagers with star mana, as a wave essentially? Is there a spell like that? If there is, can you make that spell into a hero-item and give it to ? I really, really hate having to kill all these guys that look like humans. I didnt fucking sign up for this shit.
Prabu and Colette, the two archmages, went to work. They end up with a kind of star-mana-electromagnetic-wave, essentially Star Mana X Ray guns. It tingled for us, but it killed the larva and demons effectively, and got to work to make large quantities of them.
They also planned on creating large versions of the weapon. Sothing large enough to cover entire cities, so that they could clean the entire city and areas in a single blast.
It was possible, but they needed ti. Ti that ant more cities were getting infested with demon possessed folks.
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The temples of the South Continent, however, publicly rejected all offers of assistance and claid they had it all under control.
They didnt.
Instead, they torched entire villages once they realised it wasnt helping very much. The larva was able to remain dormant within a body, so just because one passed a skill check didnt ant it did not carry the larva!
Entire cities beca infested with demon-possessed individuals, even with the skill checks and spell-checks. Chung had to essentially sleep alone out in the wilds, surrounded by multiple forcefields, because he got so paranoid with people and animals. Anyone could be possessed by demons. Anyone!
Then, the kingdoms started going to war with each other, and the temples. Trade and travel essentially slowed down to a halt, and cities that relied on food from trade had no choice but to go to war.
Look, the cure is worse than the disease. Glassing entire cities, and its not even effective since the larva could still be in the waters.
How is the cure worse? Theyve beco demons! They should die.
We dont know who can still be saved?
Were not taking that risk.
Paranoia, suspicion and madness turned nations to chaos. Kings, mages and healers tried their best, but when anyone could be possessed, it was not easy to even compel anyone to work. So cities enforced massive lockdowns, banning visitors outright.
It took three months before the heroes all moved to the south, and Prabu and Colette had finally completed the first version of their new star-mana emitters. The emitters could even kill dormant larva.
They were greeted by feral monsters, as the emission of star mana on a wide scale rely triggered the possessed to run wild. At least, now, they resembled demons. The heroes killed the demons.
The only problem was, emitting star mana on a large scale drained huge quantities of star mana, and the heroes could not be everywhere at once. There were too many infested cities, too many infested towns. Even if they thodically cleaned cities after cities, the demons could still return.
They needed sothing to hold the fort while they pushed their emitters outwards. Skills that helped resisting demonic parasites and body snatchers.
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Edna made an observation while in the South, covertly. We were unannounced, but the temples knew we were there, but they were too busy fighting their own fires to give Ednas delegation trouble.
The demonic suppression aura weakens the larva and slows the rate at which they take over individuals. We could plant my Giant Trees everywhere, since those suppressed the demons.
I wasnt particularly fixated with using my clone seeds on other worlds.
Edna shot down the idea. No. Your clone trees should be reserved for the demon king. We shouldnt deploy it yet. We can handle it. Well just need to deploy more Valthorns and higher ranked priests to suppress the demons presence.
But the aura fluctuates, especially for creatures that need sleep, and true enough, the demons were still able to return.
We needed a better way to spot them, especially since these parasites have incredible natural camouflage and infiltration abilities.
An entire village attacked Ednas delegation when she approached. The team had to kill them all, and they all needed a pep talk. Then, we saw a man who seed to be surrounded by thick demonic energy.
A champion. He looked every bit human, well, other than the armor of demonic flesh that gave him wings.
To think that the natives still resist. .
Hoyia saw and was bewildered. He still has a soul inside! It didnt consu it.
Consu? Why consu when we can enslave? Is that not our role? The demonic champion fired a beam of fire, and Edna imdiately stepped in to create a shield. Fire didnt work. Hmmm... lets see... this human can do this.
The demon charged ahead and swung its sword. [Double Cut], The sword blurred into two, and slamd into Ednas shield. Yet, at that mont when they were close, the demonic flesh detached from the human, and latched onto Edna.
It attempted to infiltrate Ednas body, and then, just as suddenly, Ednas body made a glow of light. The demonic champion was incinerated by the power of her [domain], and turned to cinders.
Edna frowned as she later reported back. This is not good. Demon champions can use possessed skills. Luckily it went for , instead of the others. Everyone was horrified as they tried to imagine the champion possessing them.
This ant the checks done could still miss the demon champions, since the demon champions were able to go beyond physical control, and even turn the possessed person to a puppet, and use its skills in conjunction with its own demonic abilities.
Could a demon king, therefore, possess a hero?
-
You cant be serious? Prabu vented as we shared the news of the demon champions with them. I feel like weve just made a few steps forward and this demon champion sent us all back to square one.
Ken didnt join them as he, without his hero class and without any star mana, was pretty much sitting ducks. I dont think you need to panic. The demons clearly are designed to attack heroes wherever you are. So, even if you miss them, they cant help themselves and will attack you.
Snek agreed with the assessnt. Our own records agree with that. Demons cant help but attack heroes. Its in their very nature. So, its almost confird that you did not miss any champions so far.
...Im not convinced, but alright. Prabu said. Anyway, can you arrange a shipnt of snacks?
Thats not critical at this ti. Kei answered.
It is. Ill work for 5 years if you can send snacks here. Help negotiate with the Order, please?
Ken and Kei shrugged. Ken sighed. Prabu, you know, if you keep doing this snack thing, youll be relegated into the disposable joke or fodder character trope, and youll die. Dont play that part, please?
Fuck that trope shit. I want my snacks!
-
We had a few spies infected by the demons, and we brought them back for further investigation. My familiars apparently helped to detect the demons, and because my familiars also occupied a link with the soul, they contested the demonic parasites attempts to possess my spies.
My spies received regular familiars, and the demons won, two out of three tis. But, even though they won, it took them longer to gain control of the spies body, and this gave the others ti to get help, or, in our case, put them into a magical coffin for further studies.
It had to be done, and we captured more and more of these demonic larvae. With sufficient samples, we sent them to Freshka for further studies in my biolab. I also created a small section in the Rottedlands, secretly, to attempt to breed these larvae in non-human bodies, such as hybrid demon-monsters.
It created a few rather strong monster-demons, but nothing we couldnt handle.
We needed a solution, as our news in the South indicated the infestation spread really, really quickly. The heroes literally could not sterilise cities faster than the demons can infest one.
Worse still, so of the templars and warriors of the Gaya and Hawa temples were infested, and against the backdrop of a full rebellion by the kingdoms, it was getting, really out of hand.
-
Lumoof continued his ti in Threeworlds magic crystal city. He played the role of the charming, affable and clumsy old man wonderfully, and so of the local mages were quite smitten with him.
He spent quite a lot of ti gathering information about the world generally, but the knowledge of magical crystal growth remained elusive. Those who held the secrets gave it in bits and pieces, and never the whole picture. Perhaps that was how it was structured over the years, that all these little pieces were separated in order to prevent total theft.
Sir Lumoof, this way. A mage was more than happy to introduce so interesting types of magic to Lumoof. To the locals, Lumoof seed to be a wealthy but foolish old man, and they were happy to make money off him.
It was small money for us. After all, his expedition is pretty much funded by the entire central continent, which was, on an overall level, more developed than this world, even if this single city was pretty unique on its own.
They demonstrated so magical formations and ice spells, all tethered to crystals. They had slightly different magical formations, and they were really good at using so of the natural properties of these magic crystals. What do you think, Sir Lumoof?
Its nice. Ive never seen it. How much would it cost?
Ah, this formation would cost 344 Gold Coins. Or we would be happy to trade for an artefact of sufficient quality.
Lumoof nodded. I see. He retrieved another magical sword from the inventory, made by a level 50 magical smith. I was told this was worth about 450 gold. If you can throw in another few more manuals...
The mage stared with greed and nodded. Certainly.
Alka and a group of high-ranked mages assisted Alka would receive all these scrolls and they would study them. They were aware of our expeditions to another world, even if they didnt know of the full details. Anyway, once they studied the scrolls, they would proceed to replicate the spells and formations back ho, and this added to our body of knowledge on magic and formations generally.
It was a very laborious process, but it worked.
I hoped this would allow to unlock the knowledge needed to truly comprehend the demon kings core, but from what I could see, progress remains very, very far away. Even with a platoon of researchers and mages, its a very long process. The journey to get from the iron age to the space age is long indeed.
Spaizzer
Thanks for reading.
Break announcent - I'm off on the WEEK of 1st FEBRUARY 2022. There will be a chapter next week, and then I'm a week off, and then returning on 8 February 2022.
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