Trunk Roads

Year 222

“It’s surreal.” 

We both looked into the skies, and even my void mages could see it too. An emptiness unlike before, not a single astral path headed our way. 

How did that work? Why did the astral paths disappear? I realized, at that moment when we finally destroyed the demon king for the first time, that the collapse of the rifts was also some kind of warning. The demons, or something at the top, could sense demon kings being defeated before their time was due, and we would soon invite greater retaliation from the demons.

This wasn’t the end, even if we’ve won a reprieve. 

No.

A part of me even suspects that it may have been a mistake to go all the way with the demon king. I should’ve pulled them back, dragged this arrangement for a bit more. 

We could have gotten more experience, and a bit more levels. 

“What’s done is done.” Lumoof assuaged my worries. “We still have links to the other world, and we will have to hunt for demon king’s through those worlds instead. Stella’s [Void Explorer], in particular, should get us to more habited worlds. If this gives us time, we’ll need to prepare for whatever they throw our way. I believe we can do it.”

I knew Lumoof wasn’t that convinced either. I felt it in our connection, but it was done. We now also had two more clone seeds, which essentially meant I didn’t have to recall the Lava world.

I remembered Roon’s strategy, which focused on ‘living-worlds’, and that meant these two seeds should go to Threeworlds, and the new Lawyerworld, if they’d let me put my trees there. Or else, I’d have to keep looking for other, friendly worlds. 

Or maybe, Stella could find a ‘super-world’. 

It had to be there, somewhere out there. 

***

“They fucking won.” The heroes couldn’t believe it. The fact that we’ve destroyed the demon king on the lava world invited a lot of chatter.

“The key seems to be that droplet from the blob. That explosion burnt through a lot of the demon king’s body.” Chung observed the battle through our dream academy. With the [dream academy], I could ‘record’ and ‘replay’ scenes, which I could then share to them as a ‘dream’. 

“Actually, Stella needs to target that blog directly.”

“She tried, but it’s too large and protected by too much magic.” 

“What if that blob is the real ‘heart’ of the demons’, and the ‘black suns’ are just nothing more than power-generators? They only seem to supply void mana, after all.”

“That does sound plausible. What needs to be made, I think, is some kind of interplanar nuclear missile. A black-hole missile, kinda. Blow that shit out of space.”

“You’re talking about a missile to destroy something that’s way too big. That blob looked to be the size of an entire sun! We don’t even know what that thing is.” Prabu countered. “We may be heroes, and our powers are incredible for sure, but we’re probably not at the ‘planet-buster’ tier.”

“No matter, it does mean that Aeon’s discovered a few weak points to the demon king. One, that droplet is a very big weakness. It explodes, and deals enough damage that the demon king is severely weakened. If that fails, corrupting and flooding it with mana seemed to poison the demon king and block a large amount of it’s powers.”

“More importantly, this world now doesn’t have new demon kings.”

Ken laughed. “You don’t believe that, right? It looks to me like it’s going back to lick it’s wounds, and come back with something more powerful.”

“What. a demon emperor?”

“Probably!” Ken said. “But based on what Aeon knows... it may be a meteor.”

The heroes stared at each other. “What, we’ve got ‘Armageddon’ and we have to knock a comet out of its path?”

“Yeah. Probably.”

Chung just stared at Ken like he said something insane. “If you’re right, I’ll hate you so much.”

“You already do, bruh.” Ken lightly punched Chung on the shoulder. 

“No I don’t.”

“It’s not the first time you said it, so I assume you’ve already hated me.”

“Oh. Wait. Now that you reminded me, I do.” Chung laughed. 

***

We had a large funeral for the Valthorns who died, the priests were quick to twist their deaths into a kind of martyrdom, and some of these Valthorns wanted to live on. My priests soon claimed that their death was a noble sacrifice to defeat the demon king before it arrived, much to the annoyance of the four temples.

Despite that, they were unable to actually mount any actual countermeasure beyond a war of sermons, as they denounced our claims. Most kingdoms didn’t care all that much about waging a war with us, they were all power crazy, but none of them were suicidal. 

The large funerals throughout the continent did draw some curious spies from the other kingdoms, as they wondered what caused such a large loss of Valthorns in the level 100s. 

But it was not all lost, as my powers of the soul allowed me to retain those who wanted to remain, and place them into new vessels, with no [soul contracts]. For those that wanted to remain, I took their souls, or what was left of it, and made them into training trees, or beetles, according to their own personal choice. 

For those who wanted to move on, for whatever reason, they were given a chance to say their goodbyes to those who they loved. Using my [dream academy] and other such abilities, I was even able to store some of their thoughts, their words as something that their family could revisit again. 

***

The common folk were oblivious. News about demon kings, especially faraway demon kings, were irrelevant. The people were mainly concerned with their day to day affairs. A demon king was killed on the planet or somewhere else, or what their name, or lack thereof, was useless information. 

As for the four temples, there was immense confusion on the ground. I detected multiple secret conversations on this matter, but it was all idle speculation.

Most of them had no clue that we did it, though they would suspect something once they noticed the deaths among my senior Valthorns. 

What was quite clear was the four temples were mostly stagnant, their leaders trying to hold on to vestiges of their past glory, but their strength was too weak to even try and challenge us. For now, our homeworld has now settled to a somewhat comfortable status quo.

Wars are still fought regularly between nations, but the idea of a ‘crusade’ has long faded as the foolish arrogance of their earlier priesthoods. Those that still wanted to do a crusade, my spies would identify them, and remove them. 

It was actually quite easy to get priests removed. In feudal societies like the kingdoms, priests existed as advisors to the throne, or played ceremonial and social roles in their respective cities, and everyone had secrets. 

Once we got hold of the secrets and the priests often got into quite a bit of trouble when their nasty activities were revealed for all to see.

My spymasters’ training had improved, and some of them had gotten quite high leveled, thanks to their stint on the Mountainworld. We’ve trained honey traps and handsome males to seduce our targets, and kidnapped priests on multiple occasions to get them to confess their plots. 

The world of espionage wasn’t a nice one, but it had to be done. Our sense of peace required regular maintenance, and maintenance meant removing bad actors. 

My next target for spies was to send them to Threehome, but to do so, we’d need a small base of operations. I intended to establish a base in the chaos of the demonic invasions, and so, sent Roon and Johann there to spy on them. 

***

Back on Mountainworld, the rifts of the demons opened. “Do we invade?” Edna, during her tour of Branchhold, and this time, I wasn’t so sure.

I didn’t know the long term consequences of destroying the demon king on the demon world, and without knowing what comes after this, I couldn’t decide with utmost confidence whether what we did was the right thing.

I did not want to face ‘escalated’ responses on two worlds, and so to maintain the status quo, it was ideal to just weaken the demon king, such that those on the Mountainworld had an easier fight on their hands. 

Adrian and Kelly didn’t really have any strong views on the matter, especially after the concerns of stronger retaliation. To these two, the demon king was always their duty, and the four heroes of our world had agreed to assist them anyway.

The demons that came through so far were variants of ice-type monsters, which suggested that the heroes faced an ice-demon king. Elemental-type demons were not exactly that much of a threat. 

My void archmages transported Roon and Johann to the demon world, and they arrived in what was a seemingly endless boreal forest. 

“There are trees here, Aeon.”

“How?!” I wasn’t expecting to see trees on a demon world, but it seemed that they’ve found one. A boreal forest, filled with ice-type demons. The trees, strangely, were not destroyed, and thus continued to live on in the demon world even post-conquest.

“No clue. I think you’ll need to send Lumoof here once he’s done with whatever on the other world.”

The world was filled with ice, and they eventually did find a pit. But they didn’t engage, and I decided we needed to take it slow. They captured a few rift gates, so Stella would be able to reopen access to this world at a later date. 

They were not comfortable heading into the pits without Lumoof’s presence, so they decided to back out. Instead, we prepared the Mountainworld for the impending invasion.

“We’re not going down there without Lumoof, so we’re backing out.”

***

Lumoof didn’t particularly enjoy returning to the world of Angels, but after a long absence due to the invasion of the demonworld, it was time to actually make our pitch. Lumoof and Stella faced a large council of angels and humans of at least twenty members. 

It felt like we were in a courtroom, before a panel of judges. 

“We’d like to seek cooperation with those with capabilities to fight demons.” Lumoof explained. “The core issue we want to solve is that demons are able to tap on the resources of multiple worlds, but we don’t. Each world faces the demon alone, or is assisted by their respective gods, but we feel this process is not optimal, it often leads to too much destruction and too much death.”

“First, explain what you mean by the resources of multiple worlds. How did you discover the demon’s ability to tap multiple worlds?” 

Lumoof looked at Stella and replied. “We visited them. We’ve seen the demonworlds.”

“Explain. How did you visit them?”

“We went through the riftgates-”

“Objection! That’s not possible. Riftgates cannot be traversed by the living-”

“It can.” Lumoof answered. “Each riftgate has a unique mana resonance and it is possible to reverse it-”

“This will require a demonstration-”

Lumoof looked at Stella again, and realised this was going to be hell. These angels required supporting evidence for every single statement we make, and they cross-examined our observations against their own. 

But we did learn something in the process. The nature of this society required that all daemolite be destroyed, and they thoroughly destroyed the demon king’s remains after every single battle. Their angels and enforcers also regularly patrol the world to destroy daemolite or any demonic remains, as they view the remains as unholy.

Their logic was simple. If a man that carried plague died, they burnt the body to prevent it from continuing to spread more plague. Thus, any remains of the demons had to be removed as well. In short, they’ve managed to do what we’ve always theorized, they significantly reduced the demon’s targeting ability and reduced the frequency of the invasions. 

All remnants of the demons had to be purged.

As the pitch became more of a grilling session, I realized I personally didn’t want to deal with them at all. I didn’t want to be shackled with terms, and after all the questionable things I’ve done and I’m willing to do, I don’t think these people would be able to understand it.

Even if we were allied, I was bound to break the terms somewhere along the way. Our opponent could adapt, and what we had to do may change. 

A legal document specifying the terms of alliance wasn’t worth it. If things worked for them, and it has worked well so far, then I didn’t need to pursue a ‘civilization-to-civilization’ type of alliance.

Maybe it would be better to just open an embassy and recruit interested parties instead, which, I suppose, will also require a messy list of agreements.

At that point, Stella proposed something else, since the grilling really wasn’t productive and there was a lot of arguing over nitty gritty details, all because they have no understanding of what happened. Stella, especially, found the entire ordeal exhausting and so spoke out. “Let’s just stop this farce of a grill. I propose that a delegation from this world visit us, we will take you on a tour of the demon worlds. We have access to the demon worlds, and you can see it for yourself. Arguing over details is fascinating, but I don’t have much time. There are more worlds to visit, more preparations to be made. No more than five persons are allowed.” 

Lumoof nodded, and the session was adjourned. The council of the angel-lords had a lot to discuss, especially the idea of a tour-group. You could talk at length about the beauty of the mountain, but it’ll still pale to actually walking and standing on it.

“That’s a good idea. Taking them on tour.” Lumoof complimented Stella’s idea.

“It worked for the lizardfolk, hopefully it’ll open their eyes to what they are dealing with.”

“They’ll definitely recommend we destroy all the daemolite.” Lumoof said with a chuckle.

“Which actually works on a longer timescale.” Stella said. “It allows the ‘cycle’ to be somewhat sustainable, since 80 years to a century per invasion is actually quite a long time, enough for any world to recover from the aftermath.” 

“A stable status quo, but it feels a little like cutting off one’s leg to save ourselves.” Lumoof conceded. “We would no longer be able to gain strength as quickly without the experience from the demon kings.”

“It is a good form of peace, and a dilemma. A stable status quo, or a constant grinding treadmill upwards.”

“After what we did, that is no longer a choice for Treehome. But it is for the Mountainworld and Threeworlds.”

“Should we decide for them?” Stella smirked. 

Do we cut off the path to ascension, in exchange for century long peace? We would be ill prepared for what comes after such a long period.

Lumoof didn’t have the answer.

I didn’t, either.

***

Eventually, the angels and humans decided to send three individuals, and we were introduced to one of the oldest angels we’ve ever seen in their world. He had eight wings, and was actually old, with white hair and an actual aged appearance. 

From what we gathered, the wings actually had an impact on the powers of these angels. Those with two wings had lower potential than those with four, and so on. Someone with more wings had no inbuilt level limits, so their path to a [domain] was unhindered.

“This is Raph, a former high-arbiter, and was once known as the One Closest to the Gods.” The angels introduced Raph and his two assistants, who would visit our worlds. The two assistants were fairly distinguished people in their society, but were frankly deferential, when next to Raph. 

“It’s not every day I am offered to visit another world.” He chuckled like an old grandfather. “They must really distrust you to demand I come out of retirement.”

Lumoof shrugged. “It seems they find offense in every statement we make.”

“They are either too young, or newly old.” Raph grinned, and he walked slowly. Yet, we could tell it was an act. He radiated a power similar to those in the Level 120s, and was clearly seen as one. “It is also such a rare thing to meet two people stronger than me.” 

My priest grinned. “Your attempt to [inspect] us was duly noted.”

“Old habits die hard.” Raph said. Everyone [inspects] everyone in this world, and as [domain] holders, it all just gets blocked. “Does it offend you?”

“It doesn’t, it is but a minor... disturbance.” Lumoof responded. 

“That is good. They spoke of an intent to form an alliance of some sort. Tell me you are not so foolish to think an alliance with these people would be worth it.” Lumoof was fairly stunned at how harshly he criticised his own council. 

“It’s in an exploratory stage. The war with demons is something we face across many worlds, and we could use some additional forces.”

“You’ll get nothing of value from the Council of the Tower Lords. They are bureaucrats, concerned with the administration of their lands to the letter, and war is fought in coliseums and gladiatorial arenas. Many of them haven’t even lived through a bad demon king. If you want allies, they are not the ones you should approach.”

Lumoof couldn’t reply to that. Not immediately, anyway.

“But I suppose you wouldn’t know.”

Stella and Lumoof just shrugged.

“How old are you, milady?” 

Stella paused, and looked at the old archangel. “I... lost count, frankly. Maybe eighties?”

“Ah, still very young, and already so powerful. I wonder what kind of hell they put you through.”

Stella chuckled. “Oh you wouldn’t want to know.”

“I will, actually. It would at least be a fascinating story for the younglings. They said there are more of you.” 

“Yes.”

Raph nodded and frowned. “Have we holed up in our ivory towers for so long?”

Stella and Lumoof just looked at each other for a while.

“Never mind. So, where are we going?” 

Spaizze