Visitreetions of the demon world
Year 201
The demon king took its ti, and we waited. So, I went on the offense, and wanted to claim a few more demon champions for myself. Just like the [Forest Rod], which I clearly wish I had more, I wanted more of these infestors.
I could find uses for them. Soday. Ally stood like a machine back in Freshka, and I quickly commanded it to sleep in one of my bio pods, safe in the valley. I didnt want an infestor like her walking about the city, mainly because I felt such abilities were more suited to be hidden. A spy is most effective when no one suspects a spy.
Thus, only Stella and a few others were aware of it, and I made it a point to make them know it.
What are your weaknesses? I asked Ally, like, I tried my luck whether its possible to directly ask a forr demon the answer.
I dont know. It wasnt so easy, sadly.
We watched the star-ways with great interest. One of the paths glowed bright, but it wasnt yet ready for the demon king. There were tell-tale signs when the demon king was about to cross, and so far, we have not seen it.
Down in the Southern continent, we continued our great ga of demon-parasite whack-a-mole, and eventually, I managed to catch two more demon champions. One was a general of a destroyed kingdom, nad Genid, and another was a King, King Rhoma of the Sanndea kingdom, which is no more. Since everyone alive was infested and incurable.
These two demon champions did not reveal anything new. They were similar creations of the Infestor King, and had no mories.
As our reach expanded in the South, I finally managed to catch sothing I was looking for.
A rift.
What are you doing? Stella asked as my trees approached a rift. She sensed so unusual magic fluctuations, a little more drain than usual. Another demon champion?
Not exactly. While waiting for the demon king, Ive decided to go on the offense.
Stellas eyes squinted, and then widened as she realised what Ive just ant. Wait. You need the entire team here-
My roots and vines approached the rift, and slowly tested out its magical resonance. Like the previous demons, I needed to know the exact mana frequency to confuse the rift, such that it would let through to the other side.
Why? Stella asked as she felt the energies passing through the void portals.
I have nothing to lose, and I realised, with my seeds, that I should use them offensively. Playing defense is tiring. I have two seeds left. From what I gather, it does take a while for any destroyed tree to respawn as a new seed, but with both Threeworlds and the other world remaining close by, I was willing to do it.
Its my first attempt at launching an offensive attack. From what I learned from Snek, I suspect that the demons most likely do not have ans of communication with other demon types, and that each demonic world is largely independent, though there were so ans of coordinating invasions.
I needed a solid presence in one such world, if I wanted to know what exactly happened. I couldnt learn about the demons without seeing them in one of their controlled worlds.
The last ti, I needed the forest rod. I wouldnt use the forest rod now. With the [seed of aeon], I could use my clones as disposable scouts. My only risk was if they possessed my clone bodies, but I suspect thats impossible.
I spawned more artificial minds, just in case. I needed the backup.
We dont know what our howorld is like. We were created, and before we could see or sense, we were flung to this world through the rifts, sent to infest anyone who feels strong.
I also learned that my infestors used to have so kind of ability to see strength, thats inactive as they are currently unpowered. Could they infest sothing like ? I suspect probably not, since a soul tree like myself should be invincible in its native domain. When asked, they seed to answer. We dont know, but we are programd to try.
Huh. That was rather strange.
I soon found the resonance needed to get myself through the rift gates. My roots and vines went through!
Stella imdiately winced as my roots went through.
The first thing I attempted to do was see.
A gate. I saw a gate. The gate was on a platform, and around the gates were those sa void crystals. They were so other demonic structures around those void crystals, and this ti, I was able to sense so magic flowing through it.
But imdiately beyond the dry platform was water!
This demon world was not dry! If anything it was more of a corrupted world. There were demonic trees and large gigantic monsters that would not be out of place in the rottedlands. I saw large blobs, filled with hundreds or thousands of those demonic parasites being hauled by large demonic creatures. They were pushed through the rift-gate, and they appeared on the other side.
The blob didnt survive the transfer, but the parasites did.
I imdiately extended my roots and my vines into the water, and I felt the pollution and dirt. No, this was so kind of muck. Ill have to analyse the details later.
The last ti I sent my roots through the rift, so demons saw it and imdiately cut us off. I wasnt going to let that happen to now.
I imdiately deployed my [seed of aeon], right here, right next to the rift gates.
I felt my seed sink into the water, and then little roots extended out of the water. I sensed my seeds root searching for dirt and earth.
Barren.
Even though there was water, the ground or dirt felt lifeless and weak. It was a little like the moon, but different. The moon was just naturally empty, its surface covered with moon dust that needed to be rehabilitated gradually.
This world was drained, as if every bit of life that once was, had been sucked out by the demons. I knew through my clone that the demons did this to their captured worlds, and that ant, Sneks world was on a tir.
Eventually the demons would drain the world until it had no ability to support life?
Was that how it always went?
I had to check with Lilies.
> We do not recall the exact ti as we were dormant, but from what we know, it was not very long. Almost one hundred years. We hid within the depths of the lake, and ti was lost to us. It was then we heard the will of the world, once. <
> The gods summoned their chosen. <
Hmm. That didnt quite answer the question. We didnt know how long Sneks world has. It could be hundreds more years, or thousands. Or maybe its already lost.
Either way, my seed spread roots into the lifeless soil, and rather than gathering nutrients from them, I attempted to sense magic.
These demons were not as alert as the previous ones. I suspect this was because the parasites themselves seem to have rather strange senses when they are not in a host. In a way, theyre quite blind. But eventually one of the demons that carried those blobs noticed the little roots and vines coming through, and they imdiately closed the rift.
I felt a jarring sensation, similar to how a livestream would get stuck when switching from a wired connection to a wireless connection.
It ca back a short while later, as my seed now supplied with my senses. I was already on the other side, and my vines, now connected through my seed, continued to observe the demons. I decided to take advantage of my past hybrid demon-tree knowledge, and changed my roots to appear sowhat demon-tree like.
I had to support my seed from the system, and I could feel the seed grow when I feed it mana. Its not getting enough mana from its ambient surroundings, just like my tree in the destroyed cotworld.
Luckily, the moon-tree has grown sufficiently that it is no longer a drain on my overall mana, even if it still depended on my mana to grow outwards.
In short, even though I have clones, each clone still needed to generate its own power. If it doesnt, due to the poor environnt, it would then draw down on the primary reserve, which was my own mana pool.
I would have to develop plants able to collect mana in this polluted demonworld. My roots moved through the dirty waters, and we sensed the presence of tals Ive not seen back on our howorld.
As my roots spread out from the gate, I noticed that the demons were actually quite concentrated in certain areas, and there were still vast swaths where there was absolutely nothing. Just plain dirt. Lifeless dirt and polluted waters.
The waters were shallow, and that was good. Itd be a pain if I encountered oceans in a demon world, since that was a problem in itself that I have yet to solve.
I spawned a few discrete smaller trees in these sparse places. In doing so, I limited the number of beetles each of them could support, but no matter. I wanted to see the demon world for myself beyond what I could see from the gates.
I didnt encounter any resistance, and my roots found the dirt. The parasite-world had a single, bright blue sun that was really small. It was probably further away than our normal sun, which ant the weather would have been cooler, if not for the thick smog that seed to coat the air. Even with these small trees I sensed the presence of strange minerals in the air.
I wasnt sure whether this was native to this world, or whether this was an output of the demons. I didnt manage to collect such data from my previous incursions to the other demon worlds.
With more and more discreetly placed trees, I was able to spawn so labs to begin analysing the magic in this world, and the first thing that imdiately stood out to was how little magic was in the air, and there were no... ley lines.
That was weird, and it reminded of the moon. No. Even the moon wasnt so empty.
Are ley lines essentially magical blood vessels of the core, and ley lines essentially supply life to the world?
I thought of the strategy-demons, and their demonic rods. They were essentially using the worlds ability to create life to create demons. I was doing the sa thing with dungeons. The world did it normally too, through the spawning of natural dungeons.
I know, from my own experience in Treeworld, that ley lines are rare. The moon, too, doesnt have any noticeable leyline, but I initially suspected this was because I have not expanded much on the moon. Thats because I still detected so faint magic that moved in the depths of the moon.
But here, in this demonworld, there should be ley lines, or very faint inklings of them, especially once my roots started spreading really far and wide.
Whats happening?
-
Back ho, I imdiately summoned Snek for an audience.
Tell about the lines from your ho. Are you aware of them?
Yes. These are the magical energies of the world?
Have you observed any change in the magical energies of the ley lines since the demons took over?
Snek frowned. Im afraid I dont have information on this. We are aware of so changes in these magical strands but I did not look into it.
Didnt you say you were an expert on your world.
...I lied, oh great Aeon. The little snake spirit prostrated on the floor. I rely have a high level knowledge of it. To have knowledge of everything in my world is not sothing one snake can achieve.
-
I spread my roots and trees more and more, and eventually stumbled on sothing Ive seen in the dreams of the heroes.
Pillars and spires, filled with dark red blobs, and looking at it for myself, I saw the spires were linked to large pillars and spikes, these were embedded into the ground, like stakes. There were also large vats and pools right next to the pillars filled with so kind of colored muck. The blobs on the spires themselves all seed to contain smaller, almost like baby-demons.
I felt a draining effect in the land itself, and thankfully, I was resistant to it. It felt like a vacuum cleaner sucking on my toes, and it didnt really hurt. It was just slightly irritating.
It wasnt the only one such structure I saw.
As I spread my trees as far and wide as I could in this new demonic world, I saw many more such structures. I was looking for the thing that created the demonic champions.
I soon found other rift-gates, and as my trees spread, I realised there were at least ten of them, each of them had a whole bevy of void crystals around them. I watched the rift gates open, and the demonic parasites were sent through.
This part was not new to . What was new was what happened after the rift gates were closed. I saw demons that replaced the crystals, and they replaced them by the hundreds and thousands.
Each rift gate was supplied, continuously, by a supply chain of these demons who did nothing but carry these void crystals.
So, I followed this supply chain. It took so ti, at least a month, since the supply chain was very, very long, and eventually I ca upon what was the largest spawning pool Ive ever seen. The waters were different. They were black with streaks in them, like a very thick soup.
Around the holes were massive spires that joined up at the top in the shape of a ring. From my viewpoint, it looked like a supermassive rift gate that was exactly above the hole.
My roots sensed sothing lurking within these lakes, and here, that sucking effect was extrely strong. But, more importantly, I felt its focus that went deep underground. I felt it draw energy from the depths.
I spread my trees around this lake, and noticed so parts where demons erged from the lake, hauling smaller void crystals.
This lake produced void crystals or were they mining them from deep underground?
I tried to dig underground, like how I dug back ho, and I soon found that this hole stretched downwards, and I sensed pain.
A pain that ca from the world itself.
I followed the pain, and kept digging. The demons hole was still there! How did they manage to dig so deep? As I went deeper, and deeper as I could manage, I sensed a powerful presence, wrapped in a shell. I knew it was powerful, because its energy was like a constant hum and it pressed on my roots.
The hum beca a constant grinding noise as I went deeper, and I realised it was the nascent demon king. It was further down. Much, much further down.
The core of the world was the womb of the demon king.
Spaizzer
Hi. If you are reading this on ranobes (or anywhere else for that matter), please do check out the original version on royal road, scribblehub, and patreon :)
On a personal note : Life's hard. So tired. Having kids are tiring. Think before you make babies. :P
Reviews
All reviews (0)