Volcano Defense

Volcano Defense

Year 82 Month 3Updated chapters at novelhall.com

Silence is eerie. Without the communication networks to inform ones decisions, most travellers decided to stay put and wait. Only those truly desperate, or daring, make the journey.

Throughout my network of trees, demons appeared more frequently, and in larger numbers. Given my now-smaller effective range due to the interference of the demon king, its also harder to move my beetles from one place to another as they have to travel close to my chain of [subsidiary trees].

When is the damn messages going to get through? Merchants, some of them have started drinking extensively. It seemed they are in a limbo. Some of them started to band together and just try to make the trip to the next town. A small minority just sold all their inventory and decided to just stay put.

Im not going anywhere. This town can defend itself against a demon walker, Ill just stay. Its a risk to go out there, you might not know if a demon walker is nearby!

We are merchants! We do not sit still in a place. We need to sell to make money!

Anyway, back to the beetles, the attacks throughout my network increased, and so, with Trevor and Dimitrees advice, Ive split my beetle force into six squads, of 1,500 each, all stationed in a different part of my network, the rest of them in New Freeka. I cant move the beetles as quickly as before, because of the longer route they now have to take, and with lesser visibility, I have lesser amount of time to plan and respond to any incursion.

In a way, this is a hub-and-spoke strategy, mini-bases for my beetles.

Frankly, I didnt see this coming. I thought demon kings were just overpowered, and have high destructive abilities. Utility or passive abilities wasnt something I expected. It really feels like there is a mind behind the demon.

Would you think its a reincarnator? A hero from your world?

Alexis paused. That... would be terrible, isnt it? If they brought someone from my world...

Theres really no reason why the demon kings would change tactics this time. There has to be a trigger point. When you fought the demon king, what did you think?

Alexis waited, and then she responded, off tangent, but very relevant. ...I wonder whether the demons accessed my memories.

Huh?

When I was trapped as a fire-demon. Whether... whether the demons looked into my mind, just like how I saw their homeworld.

You... you saw their homeworld?

I think so. Im not sure whether its a dream or its their home world, but after the demon walker, it brought back memories. Its a massive desert with large spires, similar to the ones on the demon walker's back, but many, many times bigger, and more.

Okay, now we have two suspects. One, the demons somehow brought a reincarnator or offworlder. Two, the demons took a look at your mind and decided to copy some tactics. Or possibly both are true. Or you may have let the demons in on where you are from, and therefore they can now summon their own version of heroes.

Alexiss spirit body rotated and twirled in the air. She looked horrified. That... I hope not. We need to warn everyone if we are potentially dealing with an enemy reincarnator. All the nations must treat the demons as intelligent!

Hmm... lets not panic yet. I do suspect that this generations demons are possibly intelligent, or have some kind of thought process to their tactics, but the fact that they only have a small variety of units, seem to imply that there is some kind of migration-limit on what they can bring to this world. Maybe the reincarnator himself isnt here in this world.

We need countermeasures. We need to do something! Alexis spinned. I think her spiritual body is changing color. Meeelaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Meela was happily in her inn. Now that the merchants arent going anywhere, they need a place to stay, so her inn is full house. And many merchants are drinking their worries away.

Busy, Alexis. Ive got a full house to manage. Meela waved her off.

This is important Meela, IMPORTANT!!!

After Im done with my customers... which is like, really, really much later. Later, okay?

Meelaaaaa! Alexis pouted.

In the meantime, I called Jura and Madeus to discuss the possibility of an intelligent demon king.

Demon kings are somewhat monster-like, at least in history. They seek out places with large populations, and have an ability to sense the presence of heroes. Their instincts seem to drive them towards the heroes. They have some primitive intelligence, according to statements from past heroes, but in combat, and once provoked, they are like... monsters.

So, how bad is it, if the demon king is intelligent, say... like an average human.

On the bigger scale of things, its probably the demonic equivalent of a very very nasty undead necromancer.

Is that bad? It sounds bad. I asked.

Jura shook his head. His knowledge about such things are quite... shallow. Madeus has a better understanding on historical outbreaks.

Madeus nodded. Hmmm... if the heroes can work with the kingdoms, should still be possible to defeat the demon king. After all, the demons cant level, and the lower level demons, demon walkers dont display the kind of intelligence that I would associate with sentience. So... its likely that only the demon king is fully intelligent.

"I agree with that theory." Indeed, the demon walker or the demon general did not appear to be 'intelligent', even if they have some tactical sense. Else, they would not have walked in a straight line towards the source of the Hexbombs. If so, all the thinking must be done by the demon king, and that is inherently a weakness.

Jura and Madeus looked at the map. There's nothing on it, now that we have no data on the demons.

Jura shrugged. "Nothing actually changed, isn't it? The heroes still have a demon king to slay, it just meant the process is harder for them. For the rest of us, the demon king will continue to wreak havoc. Our preparations just need to continue."

"True."

Alexis on the other hand. "We need to send letters to all the kingdoms. The threat of the demons should be higher."

"That achieves nothing. For kingdoms already fighting for their survival, such as those in the Southern Continents, the demons are already their number one threat. For those currently safe, all of them are preparing. By now, no one is treating the demon king lightly. I believe many other strategists and kings must have come to the same conclusion as we did, that this demon king is sentient and intelligent."

Alexis pouted.

"Our best course of action is hunker down and prepare for war. And pray the demon king isn't on our continent. As for you, what have you got from all your research? Can you research how to counteract or offset this demonic interference, so that we can restore the communication with all our neighbours?"

"...I will get started."

-

Lausanne came back at the end of the month. They have been forced into hiding, to avoid the roaming demons. With the beetles 'asleep', they do not have the numbers to take the demons in a fight, so their progress home was super slow.

Laufen was delighted to see her daughter again, and gave her a big hug.

"Then die when the demons come along." It really wasn't a lie. A demonic base next to us? They could spawn more demons, more than the beetles I can field.

Still, keen or not, we had to fight. I was not planning on letting the demons get too far into the volcanic area, and already I see the demons fight the native magma golems.

The native magma monsters didn't mount any extra defense, after all, they didn't even know an army was headed their way, but the giant magma golems were more than a match for conventional demonoids.

But the demons were focused. While some demonoids kept the magma golems occupied, they charged for the caldera. And I didn't plan on letting them get there and establish a foothold.

I spawned subsidiary trees, even in this hostile terrain, the army of beetles and New Freekans chased after the demons. They have one day's head start, and the army passed by more casualties by the wayside. Some soldiers took this chance to collect any loot that the golems dropped, since the demons were not interested.

As the beetles and soldiers headed up, I felt it.

A surge in mana, a shiver in the magma and earth below. "Shit." I told myself, they might have already started. Demonic energy is starting to corrupt the volcano's energies, and all the trees in the area can feel the incursion.

An hour of climbing up the volcano with this army, we saw the demon's fortress. Past a field of crushed golems and the half-skewered demonoids, right at the edge of the volcanic caldera, a fortress in the making. Its growing slowly, but it already has the shape of spires, similar to the spires of the demon walker. There it was, at the center of the under-construction fortress, a banner-like reddish object, the so called demon-rod as told by the merchant guilds.

"This.... this is a terraforming army." Alexis muttered. "They plan to turn the world into the factories of their homeworld?" We could see the demonic energy leaking from the rod into the ground, and its trying to take control of the land beneath it. But the volcano would not be tamed so easily.

This scene somehow reminded me of a game I played, where the four factions used little magical rods to conquer the land, and with it, convert the neutral land into the four types of racial terrains, hell, blight, frost or bloom.

"No time to waste. The fortress is not ready, and we must destroy it now." Or actually, destroy the rod first. If the rod is the source of the corruption, there's really no need to focus on the army.

In fact, I thought of cheating, so I created a few subsidiary trees as close as I could to the fortress and started unleashing [root strikes] at the rod.

But it all met a barrier of some kind. And that barrier prevented my roots from approaching, and it also blocked my subsidiary tree.

There were 3 demonoids standing around the rod, in a mini-circular formation. They seemed to be channel the energy from within the rod to create the fortress and the barrier protecting the rod. I need to stop them, or by tomorrow they would start to spawn demons. The barrier blocked the roots attacking the 3 demons too. Ugh.

"Jura, need you to take those 3 demonoids down."

"What, where?" I forgot they can't see past walls, unlike my top-down visual through all my subsidiary trees. The demonic army form up around the fortress, and now we have a better sense of what we were up against. The demonoid army had suffered losses to get to this part, a section so close to the top of the volcano.

No matter. 16,000 demons noticed our presence, and they fought hard to hold back our 7,500 beetles and 4,000 soldiers. And once again, another larger scale battle.

Without a demon walker to focus on, my role in this battle is to prevent unnecessary deaths. This meant, observing the soldiers, and interfering when they are in trouble. At the same time, I also clear a path for Jura and Yvon that leads to the three channeling demons, so that they can quickly end the rod's corrupting magics.

They are my best combatants, and since there is a magical barrier, I hope they can still physically pass through the barrier.

Jura quickly cut through tens of demon knights, Lausanne, Yvon and some of the captains take out a few as well. The battle lasted three hours, and the beetles finally managed to punch through the wall of demons. A path is open, Jura, Yvon and some soldiers charge in. The barrier does in let them through.

Yvon rushed ahead, and with a quick slash, she slashed through the three demonic channelers.

The rod was almost completed enveloped it some kind of demonic energy, and when the three demonic channelers evaporated into demon-dust, it just levitated in mid-air, un-moving.

Is it done? Jura asked, I sensed the corrupting influence of the demonic rod slowly subsiding.

I think we need to hit it. Another soldier looked and said. Apparently other countries have destroyed such rods before.

"Uh..." Jura looked at it, it is surrounded by a black flame. "I am not touching that. Madeus?"

"Guard it. Don't let any of the other demons continue channeling the rod." The beetles and Order soldiers fight off the rest of the demonoids. We should not stay long, I saw a giant magma golem starting to form in the distance. The native monsters are trying to fight back, and they see both us and the demons as intruders.

"TreeTree, can you move it, or knock it out? The channelers are gone, so the barrier should be down." Jura asked, Madeus was busy blasting some demons. Jura continued to cut through demonoids. The captains reorganised the men into defensive formations, the beetles doing the bulk of the fighting.

I launched a few more [root strikes], and there's no barrier blocking it. It hits through the demonic flame, my roots just lightly scathed by the black flame, and the massive banner-rod falls down. But even as it collapsed, cracked, I could sense residual demonic energies from it.

The rod fell to the ground, dark energies jumped out like an arc lightning, and it tried to create more demonoids. This rod is the spawner of the demonic hordes, isn't it?

"Destroy it!" Jura shouted. "It's trying to spawn more demons." Thats obvious enough. The demonic fortress and the spires around the soldiers started to vibrate, shake, and chunks started to collapse. By now, the demonoids have been defeated. We're only left with the rod.

But no, I don't plan to destroy it, just yet. "Take the rod." I asked Jura, but then I realised its massive.

"What? No way. It's still emitting that black demonflame. You need to knock it out a bit more."

Ugh. That meant I am the only one that can manipulate it? A beetle approached and the flames burned the beetle.

I briefly considered leaving it here, but that meant the rod will spawn more demons, and that defeats the purpose of this incursion.

I decided to weaken the rod a bit more, so with some [Root strikes,] the demonic energy dissipated, and the rod itself cracked. Still, I could sense some remaining demonic energy, and that's what I wanted. Good, I feel it would be better for me to hold onto it and subject it to some research, see what I can learn from it. If this demon king is intelligent as I predict it is, then I need to know how I can counter him, whether I can use the energies from such rods against it.

No one wants to touch the demon rod surrounded by the residual black flames, and only I had the necessary resistances.

I used a bit of my vines and the black flames are unable to hurt the vines much, and I moved the rod. It takes a bit of effort to play pass-the-baton with my vines, tossing the rod from one subsidiary tree to another, all the way down from the volcano, back to New Freeka. This baton-pass took two days, for the rod to arrive back at the valley.

Must look rather silly, trees passing a cracked rod, swinging it from tree to tree. It took a lot of effort to get the rod to move correctly.

Wait. Why does that sound wrong?

"Okay, let's retreat before the golems respawn. There is no need to fight the natives." Meanwhile, Jura ordered the army to retreat home. I would rebuild my defenses around the volcano after this.

[You gained a level. Level 138]

[New Skill learned : Vine-Ropeway Network. Vine-Ropeway networks allows you to move things and people from place to place, like a cable-car or aerial gondola system. Must be part of the same connected network of vines.]

[Star mana-variant : Consumes 150 star mana : Creates a star-mana vine-network that temporarily folds space and time, and open a portal between any two subsidiary trees or your main body. Allows movement of any one person, animal or thing instantaneously from any subsidiary tree to any other subsidiary. Need not be connected.]

(TreeTree presently has 300 star mana, and generates 30 star mana per month)

Uh. Wait.

This is like that story Jura, or was it Casshern, said so long ago, of the twinned tree spirits that have a steady portal between one another. Like paired stargates.