Treetiary Studies

Treetiary Studies

Year 134

Mini-Dragons. More accurately, demon-drakes. The demons had opted for a strategy I speculated a few decades ago that I thought would be effective against heroes. No fodder units, just high-tier demons.

They made it into drakes. Fire-breathing and lightning-breathing drakes. At first, news was hard to come by. The Central continent was on lockdown after all. But the drakes spawned and spread quickly, and somehow they multiplied rather quickly too. Just 10 drakes could lay waste to an entire town, and the defenses would be hard pressed to even counter them. The drakes would fly up in the air and just use their breath attacks until the defenders were dead.

It reminded me of Alexis. Alexis easily torched the forest too when she was possessed by the demons will. Decades later, Im still likely to be rather defenseless against a similar tactic. I mean, I have spiders who could fire ensnaring webbings, but I am highly skeptical of their effectiveness against mini-champion class drakes.

As a result, Ive been using my class-fusion ability to train specialist anti-air. [Sharpshooters] and [Bowmasters]. These are regular rangers and archers, upgraded a little more. But still, I think they would be insufficient if there are champion-class demon-drakes. I suspect they would be more like... dragons?

The blockade has faltered in parts, because there was chaos in the Eastern Continent. We receive news of the citizens fleeing underground, as these flying demons were mostly unchallenged. What good are walls, when these demons just fly over them?

In fact, what good are my walls? My walls wouldnt do shit either.

Jura, we need to restart our underground bunker project.

In the days of New Freeka we built a massive sewer thats also an underground bunker. But it proved ineffective when the ground itself liquified into demonic goop. Will it work this time?

Against flying demons... what else?

This is essentially air superiority. The demons have it, and unless I can field dragons or garudas and whatnot, the best defense is some kind of anti-air defensive array. Magical cannons to counter them.

We started work on massive anti-demon ballistas, and a special beetle-spider collaboration, a beetle-cannon that would fire spiders at the demons. These spiders would hold onto large vines and they would ensnare these flying demons. It would pull them to the ground where the rest of my forces and my root strikes can easily disable them.

Ballistas, nets, and shields. Harpoons and arrows too.

This was the time for my upgraded classes to contribute. The upgraded master woodworkers and weapon-makers assisted to make stronger anti-demon weapons. Their skill allowed them to make these ballista bolts lighter, go a bit further, and deal more damage. They can even weave a few extra enchantments than usual.

More weapons, with a focus on anti-air. Theres also a side effort on improving my mages, but the thing was, mages are hard to scale and reproduce in large numbers. Mages are ultimately dependent on their personal talent and I cant give them much anti-demonic effects, unlike these ballistas and arrows, where I can easily improve their damage output against these demons by using special wooden materials made from my body.

The demons remained mostly on the Eastern Continent. News was sporadic, and it seemed like these demons didnt attack everywhere. But they hit really, really hard, with large groups of flying demon-drakes.

So, the War of the Eviltree entered a quiet phase. Other than the blockade, no one actually did any large scale fighting. A time to hunker down, and prepare for the eventual demonic conflict. Every general worth their salt would make plans. How to deal with these demon-drakes. Archers. Ballistas. Huge army of mages.

Every King would be watching the skies, for when these demons would cross the oceans and assail their lands. In an odd twist of events, the blockade essentially became a ring of watchers that helped the Central Continent act as a chain of lookout points for these flying demons.

Whats the last record of flying demons?

Uh... according to surviving records, 500 or so years ago? One of Kavios assistants answered. It was reported then that they were horned demons with massive wings that threw fireballs.

Ah. Do we have records of the heroes?

Not much, other than their names and the Kingdoms theyve founded.

Hmmm. Its annoying that the history of the worlds in such a great mess. No one actually knows what happened. Even Lilies has only a slice of the world, and only from their perspective. The idea of an objective history rarely exists because of how frequently the demons reset every attempt to collect information in a single place.

So, I decided, maybe I should throw my hat into this game as well. Have there been great libraries in the past?

It seemed like a thing for Trees to be collectors of the worlds knowledge. Its almost tropey that heroes would inevitably consult an ancient tree for some historical context. So well, I should play my part in the trope.

But you cant read...

Correct. And that is a problem. I had people read to me in the past, like when I was studying the runes. I already had a program to collect books, but that was in the days of New Freeka. Many of the collected books were destroyed when the corruption and flames torched the valley, but some were still safe, stored inside my [secret hideout].

If I could create a library, and make it into a skill like what I did with Meelas Hotel, I could fuse an artificial mind into the new library-skill, and create a living tree-librarian.

And I attempted this on a few [subsidiary trees]. I made shelves after shelves and stocked them up with books.

In this world, books are expensive. They are handwritten or magically written, so the cost of producing books has not gone down at all. They are also made of paper. But at the same time, this was not true everywhere. There ARE cities where books are common, because some of the mages have set up book-making enterprises, but in a world where global trade is still in its infancy, this sort of practice has not spread.

There was a mixed reaction at first.

Then I dangled the reward for the children. I would grant the top 10 students a select choice of upgraded classes, skills, and equipment. Then each of these nobles saw the potential. It would be a 4-year programme from the nobles, and quickly some of the nobles volunteered the children. It would be between ages 16 to 25 for humans, for elves, during their teen years, any time between 18 to 40, for the treefolk and so on, during their formative pre-adulthood years.

Jura and Yvon. Both of you will continue to lead the Valtrian and Valthorn Academies. Their priorities should remain with the Valthorns. They are my de facto military arm, and I see the Valthorns essentially as the Military Academy.

I would have to hire new people to lead this entire practice, and so, I set out to gather generals, retired administrators, merchants, and people who are old and have a reasonably high level.

I also started checking around the surroundings of Freshka for a location. It would be a massive mini-city of its own, in the same breath as the School of Treelogy.

In my mind, I would call it the Ivy League College, but that sounded too much like copyright infringement so I decided I was going to call it the Universitree. But then, the Universitree would be a better fit for the university of the commoners. I even have a slogan already.

Unitree is strength!

Eventually I settled on a name for the school for these nobility, the Freshlands Treetiary College of Governance, or the FTC. I wanted to avoid any specific mention of nobles in the name, such that I could eventually convert it into a regular college that can also accept non-nobles, so I had to plan this out.

ALso, there was no immediately suitable place for this college, so I decided to call our [master builders] and [grand druids] to terraform and shape a land into a place suitable to build the FTC. It would take a full 6 months for a place to be built, even with the resources, but at the same time, I also quickly auctioned up smaller subdivided plots of land in the FTC zone to all our allied kingdoms, that they can build a mini-palace for their offsprings in the future.

From what I understood of the nobles, they have a strong need to maintain face and so, allowing the nobles and royalties to invest in a plot of land to show off to other young children would be popular.

For the first batch, I had to start off with a bang. So, I looked at my skill and class seeds, and experimented on the [Lord] classes from the dead nobles, and eventually, I made two classes, from a mashup of Rangers and Traders with the Lord classes.

[Ranger Lord] and [Trade Lord]. In addition to [Marksmen], [General] and various other classes.

We announced it to our allies that the best two students will be given these class seeds, which they may consume for themselves or gift to anyone they please. Then, real interest started to come in. Kings from across our allied nations all volunteered to send a small group of their children to vie for the spot.

Of course, now that we have students, we then had to build a syllabus. We already have one from the Valthorns, but the Valthorns are essentially a martial school. They are exceptionally combat focused.

This programme would have to be a little bit balanced, across combat, magic, trade and governance, culture and history, and equally important, an education in the aeonic faith.

The goal was cultural dominance on the continent, secure the Freshlands place in the world and establishing myself as a legitimate faith and religion, with my own followers to push back against these 4 enemy faiths. So the combat focus would have to be watered down, and the other aspects expanded.

I had to gather a few Decarches, some of the Freshlands best traders and makers to give their input, together with those level 30-40 tutors. I would also have to train the tutors such that they become respectable in their own right, else this school wasnt going to work. Level 30 to 40 is... average.

-

Freshka, would transform into the home of 3 large competing schools. The Valthorn Academy located in Freshka itself, and the associated military fields and locations. The School of Treelogy in another outskirt area of Freshka, as a school for my clergy. Then lastly the Treetiary College as the school for future nobility. Secretly, I also earmarked a large spot for the future 4th school. The Universitree of the Masses. As it is, I can only gather sufficient talent for one school, and I didnt need to increase the tension from managing noble-commoner dynamics.

Its a plan that would take centuries to play out, but if I do this right, this generation of young leaders would eventually propagate my faith. This was an investment that would only pay off at least 20 to 30 years into the future.

-

Im impressed, but at the same time, its hypocritical. Yvon said one evening. Aeon once said he hated the royalty, and here he is, amplifying their power.

Jura nodded. I agree. Its pragmatic though. But Im sure he is aware of the hypocrisy. Lately, Aeon is rather... calculative.

Its those trees. I mean, youve seen them, right? The weird flashing ones.

Nope. Jura shrugged as he watched a bunch of archers practice another volley. The Valthorns focus has been anti-air. [Archers], [Rangers] working with our [master woodworker] to make anti-demonic wooden arrows, further enchanted with magic. In a mildly interesting development, the senior [Aeonic Priests] and [Patreearches] gained a skill that allows them to bless weapons and people with [aeonic-style anti-demonic effects], on top of their regular [holy]-element enchantments. So, the Treeology School is also assisting to produce enchanted weapons.

I wonder how the [holy]-element can coexist when Im the patron deity and I have only one [holy-enchantment] magic that I inherited from long long ago.

Ive also observed that the priests powers are mostly independent from mine, even if derived from me. In the sense that the priests can use as much power as they have, and I would not be affected. Its not as if their use of [aeonic-abilities] are a drain on me. Quite unlike Lausannes Warden, which has a defined monthly star-mana maintenance cost.

How does that work?

Is it like the system created a specific pool of energy from which all these aeonic priests then call on for power? Or are all powers derived from the system, and Im just the lawmaker, but not the source of the power?

This is certainly a rather weird system.