Tree of the Moon

Year 195

Snek wanted to know how we stood up to the demon kings. I was frank, we didn’t. At least, not yet. It was a very depressing conversation, as Snek wanted to know what levels were needed to be able to fight toe-to-toe with the demon king.

In truth, if Edna was alone, she would survive the first day, but she’ll be dead on the second. So, Level 150 was not enough. No. Even level 200 was not enough. We would need an army of us to do so. To think that the ancient dragons were able to hold the demons back, they had to have many creatures of that tier of power. 

Or were the dragons naturally so powerful?

It was a very high bar. Level 200? They would have to gnaw at the demons for decades before they get there, and on top of that, fight the demon king itself. Without the hero fragments, it would be very difficult to actually reach such levels. 

But my two compatriots did it. Both Edna and Lumoof did. In Edna’s case, she served me for about 50 years when she achieved her [domain]. Lumoof, relatively speaking, got there faster, because of the boost from the dungeons. 

Could we transplant this to their world? After decades and centuries of hiding, they were not used to fighting. All they fought were the natural spawns that emerged from the tunnels, and there were powerful monsters even deep underground.

The demon-dragons of their world were not exactly interested in total annihilation, either. They seemed to only care about great crystal spires, the largest of which served as the spawning pools of demon kings. Snek had seen at least three such spawning pools on their worlds, nursed by the energies harvested from their world’s core. 

There’s clearly a mechanism in the background, where a world will transform to a demonic world under certain circumstances. Snek doesn’t know.

“Told you you should not have done shit.” Prabu said. “Now you’ve got yourself entangled with Aeon itself.”

“I wasn’t expecting the Empire.” Ken defended himself.

“Which signs did you miss? The extremely powerful subordinates? The strange compliance from even the peripheral states? The magical beetle creatures that’s clearly controlled by someone that can reach the entire continent?” 

Ken frowned. “When you put it like that.”

Snek on the other hand, seemed absolutely converted. It’s almost embarrassing how much of a fanboy he had suddenly become. “Aeon is the hope we’ve been looking for.” 

Ken sighed. “I really want to send you back, now. I can’t stand all this praising Aeon shit. Seriously. What do I need to do to send you back?”

“No. I need to learn more from Aeon. Our world would do much better if Aeon could help us.” Snek was a fanboy, and I felt secondhand embarrassment from eavesdropping.

“Where was the crafty clever snake I met?” Ken smacked his face. “I miss the snarky snake.”

“As you’ve once succinctly described it, I had eyes, but I could not see Mount Tai. I have now seen the difference between heaven and earth, and there is much for me to do.” Snek answered. 

Prabu laughed. “That’s the first time I’ve seen a spirit turn into a fan-animal. Ken, you’ve outdone yourself in training your pet.”

“One must know their place in the world. There are mountains beyond mountains.”

Ken sighed. “And I regret exposing you to xianxia quotes.”

Prabu, the archmage was literally in tears. “You absolutely deserved this, Ken. You know, you did all this to avoid the whole hero-shenanigans, and here you are, entangled in the bigger shenanigans.”

“Yeah. A snake’s attempt to save their own world. I don’t see how one hero class is enough to change the scales though, at least, from what we’ve seen in this world, the demon kings clearly can take on multiple heroes.”

The snake spirit responded. “We don’t need to. The demon king, at maturity, would be immediately sent to invade another world. The demon’s defenses on our world are the demon champions, the greater guardians, and the demonic spawning pools’ spires.”

“The spires are defenses?” Prabu was curious.

“Yes. They are.” 

Ken sighed. “What have I done to deserve this?”

“Bad karma, dude.”

-

Stella was ready, and the crystal batteries charged up. We avoided using daemolite, even though those could store more void mana, simply because we didn’t want to leave any trails for the demons to follow. Edna held one of my clones, the [Seed of Aeon], and we waited. Lumoof waited next to him.

“Alright. Let’s open a portal to the moon.” 

The portal manifested, and I saw a thread of darkness that seemed to stretch ever further. We had a portal to one of the moons.

Lumoof gulped, took the seed from Edna, and looked at Stella. They nodded. Now was not the time for hesitation. He stepped close to the portal, and Stella and the other void mages felt the void mana drain from the crystals. “Portal is ready and stable.”

Lumoof stepped through, and I felt a searing pain from Lumoof, as if we were suddenly exposed to something extremely harsh. 

My priest was now on the moon, and even though the atmosphere was non-existent, and his skin burned from the harsh, unprotected light of the suns, the sight was breathtaking

It was like how the astronauts sent back the first pictures of Earth. I activated a range of shields, and I knew that any lesser druid would have died the moment they stepped through the portal. There was no ‘life’ on the moon. Nothing for a druid to work with. 

There was no breathable air, but Lumoof was sustained by magic, and a bubble created from my adaptive powers. 

He placed my [Seed of Aeon] on the dirt floor of the moon, and I sensed that different, extremely parched dirt. The seed buried itself into the dirt. 

‘Should I go back?’ Lumoof mentally asked, and I noticed the lag wasn’t as noticeable as the other worlds.

“Not yet. We’ll start by exploring the moon, whether there’s anything to see.”

Lumoof walked, and damn the moon was huge. For most part, there really was nothing to see. It was just vast plains and mountains of dirt and rock. Here, we had an unblocked view of the stars and the suns, and it was unforgiven. My wooden shields were hammered by the rays of the burning light, and I regenerated them constantly.

“It seems we can put the contentious theories of the moons to rest.” Lumoof said as he observed the moons in the sky. “There are five moons after all.” 

We mostly only saw two moons, these two being the largest and the closest. But there have been claims of multiple, smaller moons that are further away. “I wouldn’t be so sure. There may still be moons we have not seen, and the other three moons, are they really orbiting the planet? And are they really moons or just extremely large asteroids?”

“That difference is academic.” Lumoof stated. 

There was mostly nothing to see.

And then there was. 

In one of the valleys, we saw a crater. The moon was covered in craters, but this one was different. There was a big pile of silvery bones right at the center of the crater. This was a crash crater. 

Bones. It wasn’t hard to tell what it was. Four wings, claws, horns on the head. It looked quite like a type of dragon, and it was massive. The largest dragon bones I’ve ever seen, and strangely, most well preserved as well. Strange that it did not decay under the battering of the sun’s harsh rays. 

There was not a single bit of flesh left. It was just bones exposed to the harsh sun. It shone.

“How’d it get here?” Lumoof was just as amazed as I was. The fact that it crashed seemed to suggest it somehow flew here? All the way from the planet? It’s large. “Maybe there’s some scales or other such stuff that’s in the dirt around us. We should dig.” 

I sensed my [Seed of Aeon] still gradually settling in. It takes time for the seed to sprout in these parched lands. “Agreed. But let’s wait for the tree to settle in. These bones won’t go anywhere soon.” 

I didn’t want to touch them. Not yet. I mentally marked the location on a makeshift map of the moon. Lumoof kept walking. 

Patreeck said then. “We should tap into the bone’s memories when we can.” Yeah. That’s right. The bones could show me a glimpse of what happened in the past. I wondered whether these dragon bones could show me something different from what I’ve seen before.

If anything, dragon bones could be used to make very powerful weapons, at least, if I follow how the stories normally go. Hopefully these would be more useful than the previous batch of dragon bones.

We went further, and walked more of the moon. I had to take over at parts, as Lumoof needed to rest. The moon was covered in craters, and the moon-dirt was all loose, the texture was powderish. There was no water on this moon. I would have to magically create them as part of my terraforming programme. 

I felt mana flow to my [seed of Aeon] as it created its first root on the moon.

[You have acquired a new title : Tree on the Moon!]

Ah! Titles! I’ve forgotten such things existed. They usually did nothing. 

-

It took months for my new clone trees to even make it’s first tiny sprout, as most of the mana was used to change the environment. 

“We should make a cocoon, rather than a full terraform of the moon.” Stella insisted. “Moon base, not change the moon. Atmosphering changes may bring about widespread weather changes and may cause things to decay.”

That was also a valid opinion. I should test out the impact of terraforming the moon on a smaller scale before applying it to the entire moon. In addition, I wasn’t fully sure how my new terraforming powers under [Tree of Life] actually worked. 

This part of the project would take a while, since I would have to take some time to check the impact of my new powers on an entirely foreign moon-environment.

“Maybe you should do this first, on an asteroid.” Stella suggested too. “An asteroid is far more replaceable.”

“That’s a waste of my clones.” I said frankly. “It’s not like I can’t recreate my clones, but it is still a waste. If the plan is to create a moon-base, then let’s do a moon base. Remember, the whole purpose of starting out with a moon base is to amplify void magic.”

Indeed, void magic as a whole is a relatively fragile type of magic. They decay too quickly, and easily get weakened by a whole lot of other factors. Stella’s earlier attempts to interrupt the demon king from my supertall tree tower was insufficient.

The natural next step was to go even further, and thus we decided on the moon base. If we could interrupt the demon king’s arrival, that’ll be a good way to win. 

-

-

My spies embedded within Neira and Gaya had rather upsetting news. We still could not locate any records of attempted communication with their respective gods, and my agents even managed to comb through their ancient records. 

Nothing. Not a single mention of a way to speak to the gods, other than prayers. Gods find them, not the other way round. 

With, of course, tied in with what Snek wanted to know. How did we speak to the gods? 

“I can’t share that. It is a secret of the Triumvirs.” I was on friendly terms with the Snake spirit, but some things should remain secret. They were also not aware of Stella’s portal magics, and that was a good thing. Stella’s ability to open void portals remains a secret known only to the top of my organisation, just like my ability to create clones. I really wondered whether I should help Snek. I barely knew them, and though he had been honest, I wasn’t sure I should. 

“Shame. My people have many words they want to say to them.” 

At Prabu’s recommendation, Ken also got a chance to visit the journal, but sadly, it didn’t work for him. He didn’t have star mana and the journal could not open for him. It was also their first time to the Valley of the Unrotten, and Snek was particularly sombre.

“This reminded me too much of my world.” 

Ken merely sighed. “That’s quite depressing.”

-

Back on our homeworld, we discussed where to put the other three more cloned bodies. No, what exactly to do with it. 

“The other two nearby worlds are a clear candidate.” Edna said during the discussion. “We could send the high-levelled Valthorns to those worlds, and help fight the demon kings there. This meant we could essentially gain experience from three demon kings over the same period of time.” 

“That’s a whole lot of fighting.” Lumoof sighed. “I’m not sure I’m keen to do that much of that.” 

It was true, and at Lumoof’s advice, I’ve also increased the dungeon-battles for the other Treeology Patriarchs and Matriarchs. A few of them have gone past level 100 recently. The most recent battle with the demon king made it clear to me that he wasn’t that fond of battle. With my clones on other worlds serving as ‘gates’, I could definitely send some of my priests and Valthorns there to gain levels. 

Edna had another private opinion, one she shared only with me and Lumoof. “One tree on the Eastern Continent. For the Aivans who now require our protection.”

Another idea was to wait for the demonic rifts, and hijack the rifts to send my seed to the demon worlds. In short, I would invade the demon world with my seed, and use my seed as a springboard for a full scale assault to retake the demon world. I could use my seed, together with the [forest rod] to speed up the terraform, and quickly establish a defensible position. I’ll most likely need Lumoof to be in that demon world for some time. 

Alka, my scientist, also had a view to use the clones offensively. He proposed that the clone trees be deployed on the continents where the demons were most likely to appear next. Three clones for the next three demon kings. That way, we would be able to significantly support the battles against the next few demon kings, and relieve the pressure on Lumoof. 

Of course, this would mean I would also be able to establish a surveillance network on the other three continents. Something that my spymasters would love.

Nay. While that was appealing in a way. I do prefer having the two seeds go to each of the other nearby worlds. Currently, I was already able to learn a lot through my spies, my network of minions and vassals, and through trade. But the knowledge of these two worlds could be radically different, and the combined magical knowhow of the three worlds was likely to be more useful. 

Not only that. I wondered whether there are others like me in those worlds. An alliance of spirits across the three worlds would be fantastic. 

I’d have to send Lumoof for an information gathering visit. 

Why, it’s time for my old priest to have his own isekai adventure on another world.

He gave me a look filled with horror.

Spaizzer

MERRY CHRISTMAS IN ADVANCE, OVERLORDX120 

(Before I forget the week after) :P

Next, we have Avitue's Unliving and Blood Demon's Retirement! 

Follow the footsteps of a girl, who gained unasked for immortality, through tragedies and ages, into a living legend.

Tired of politics and bloodshed, she retired, to travel the world with her own two legs, looking for a new purpose... In life.

Please check these three fics out, because, well, they're awesome people and they write alot and are both really good. 

Also

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