Priming the land

Priming the land

Year 190

We focused on preparing for the upcoming fight. We were going to hit the demon king hard, and hopefully get some levels out of it. I wanted my Level 200, I was so close, and I would empty my entire arsenal at the demon king if it gets me there.

So, first things first, Kei got in touch with the heroes to negotiate an arrangement.

Hi Colette and Prabu, where are you two these days! Kei said. It took a while, but what Aiva said now faintly at the back of her mind. Follow the latest novels at novelhall.com

Were actually in the Western Continent already to hunt the champions. The Western Continent, home and stronghold of the Neiran Temples. Or was it? My spies told me some of the Neiran top dogs have moved to the South. But I wasnt sure, Neira was probably one of the more secretive temples, but also one of the weakest, despite being spared of most of the demons attacks.

Perhaps Neira was even more distant. No. Maybe Neira doesnt even bother anymore. At this point, I really wonder which god still looked after this world. Whatever little that means.

Kei nodded. Alright, thats great. So, remember that question you asked a few years back, about having an arrangement to fight the demon king?

Uhuh. Prabu nodded.

Aeon would like to volunteer his elite forces to support your next battle with the demon king. Im not sure whether you guys want our assistance, thats why we thought of asking.

The two mages paused. Hmmm I need to talk to Chung and Hafiz, but it shouldn't be a problem. More hands should help. At least, we could use some help with the champions and all the other small fries while we focus on the King.

Alright! Kei nodded.

-

Next step was figuring out how to deploy and project sufficient force that we could have an impact on the demon king. The system clearly favored those who contributed to the fight, and it is a reasonable assumption that our level gain is correlated to the contribution.

So, this meant we needed a few things. One - a way to send my forces to where the demon king was at a short notice. It was possible to use my own tree-networks and Stellas portal to send a small force there quickly, so that meant the logistics of manpower was partly solved.

One of the things I wanted to test out was whether Lumoof was able to function as home when using the Court of the Deitrees recall function. It didnt work, and they still automatically returned to my main body. I suppose the system for the Court is still programmed to only consider my main body as home.

Its too bad. If it worked, I essentially could use Lumoof as a warp point and then dropship the rest of my forces around him. I could even use him to send people across worlds, as long as he was on the other side.

Perhaps some other upgrade to the Court of the Deitree will allow this. No matter, I had to work with what I have at my disposal.

I also needed to figure out how I could throw huge amounts of crystal-bombs at the enemy. Thanks to Alkas persistent experiments over the past few years and almost decades, we now have a rather huge arsenal of crystal bombs. Similarly, we experimented with my vines flinging the crystal bombs through a void portal. It worked, as long as the components of the crystal bombs did not involve star mana.

Its a crude solution, but I didnt like the fact that everything depended on Stella and her band of void mages in training. A single point of failure meant if the next demon king had some kind of anti-magic or anti-void energy ability, we wouldnt be able to use it. No, there was also the risk that the demon king, a creature with at least some void magic ability, would be able to interfere with Stellas magical portal.

So, we had to consider alternatives, as backup.

Through a bit of upgrades and outfitting, we finally managed to get Hytreerion to gradually swim to the Western Continent with a huge arsenal of crystal bombs. But thanks to its incredibly slow speed, it would take half a year for him to actually arrive there. We also arranged for ships loaded with crystal bombs too. The idea was to plant the bombs everywhere and then detonate them when the demons are near.

Stella didnt seem particularly pleased with the idea. This has the problem with landmines written all over it.

Thats partly true. But of course, these crystals are magically activated. They shouldnt cause such problems, right?

Wait, no. Actually, all bombs have this problem. Its possible that some crystal bombs dont detonate and are instead embedded in the ground. Some day, they will get accidentally triggered by some hapless adventurer. Or their demon-sensing runes get confused and blow something up.

Everything decays over time, even magic. So, once they decayed, their behavior is unpredictable. Institutions decay too, and I noticed it in the Valthorns. As the central continent accepted my dominion, there was a shift in the behaviors of those who are admitted to the Valthorns, especially those who grew up knowing that I am the supreme authority of the land. Arrogance. Minor abuse of power. Some of these were hidden when they were just part of the Valtrian Order, but the promotion to the Valthorns revealed some of this.

Worse, I was only made aware of this after a few incidents I witnessed while doing other things, and commanded my artificial minds to highlight all of them. There were many small instances. Arrogance was not punishable, even if it did make us unlikeable. For the minor abuse of power, it was hard to really assess whether it was the person who provided or granted the payments were trying to curry favor.

On this front, this was also one of the problems we have with diplomats, spies and our other agents. Away from my eyes on the central continent, all I could do was trust them to know what to say, to know how to spot those who seek to curry their favor with the powers they possessed, to know that just as we seek to gain from them, they too will gain from us. There, I have to believe that they have the experience and skills needed to spot what they should spot, and know of their biases.

There were no eyes to watch them when they are away.

Well, except through Lumoof.

-

While Lumoof handled the preparations on the Western Continent. I also spoke with my fellow spirits.

I intend for my warriors to join the fight against the demon king. Would you be willing to make some weapons for them? I asked Aria and Aispeng for the best weapons they could make. They agreed, and forged 10 weapons made out of some magical ice, which I offered to the 10 of my strongest Valthorns.

For Lilies, they made 5 sets of magical staffs made of fused bone and metal, which amplified both healing and death-elemental magic.

I also asked the fused wolf-shaman for some things, but it had nothing to offer. That was fine.

I decided not to ask for anything from Reefy. I think it would probably be mistaken what my intentions are.

-

The demons that spawned this time were mostly smaller, impish creatures. They look like dark-red versions of goblins, with small reddish wings that seemed to do nothing but let them hop a little bit higher. Claws.

We also encountered one demonic champion, a large two-headed reddish ogres with tentacles fo. I think we were gonna have the Demonic Corrupted Orc Hordes for the demon king. If so, are we gonna get some kind of corrupted orc shaman for a demon king?

I must admit I am absolutely clueless about what you are talking about. Both Kei and Stella probably didnt play the popular gaming series.

Of course, we also met the heroes. This time as fellow combatants.

Im actually pleasantly surprised that Aeon would help us. Prabu said face-to-face to Kei. Lumoof was there, of course. Edna was on her way, by boat. One of my concerns was what if the demon king was early? In that case, we would avoid combat until we could get our full forces in order. You made it sound like he was rather hesitant.

Kei smiled. Well, just consider it a pleasant change of heart.

Just to be sure, theres no catch, right?

Nope. Just help fight the demon king, and theyll leave right after. Kei repeated. Of course, the prize is the demon king itself.

So, whats the strategy?

Wait for the demon king to spawn, and lure the demon king to you on favorable grounds. Kei said. Im sure youve seen in the journals how the demon king can see us. Its possible to pretty much shout were here with the use of star-mana. Hopefully we get a dumb one that would fall for the trap, then well soften the demon king up and you guys can land the finishing blow.

The part where Jura and Lovis landed the finishing blow was happily omitted. There was no need to highlight that it was my people that did so. But it is a common story on the Central Continent, so maybe theyve heard it.

The mage-hero nodded. Sounds doable. Were setting up our own magical formations too, hopefully itll help. But if the journals are right, there must be a trick.

The heroes, too, were scattered. Only Prabu, Colette and Hafiz were here. Chung seemed to be working on some kind of secret project, but he promised that he would magically teleport to the Western Continent once his project was ready. As for Ken...

With Lumoof preparing for the demon king, I lost my ability to see through the trees of the Northern Islands, and so I lost Ken. I was not very confident I could find him again, especially with that snake-spirit, but I weighed my priority and decided that gaining levels from the next demon king outweighed whatever risk that they posed.

Well, we cant predict the trick, the best we can do is prepare as hell, and fight like crazy. Kei said.

Prabu paused. True, not like we have a choice with all that godly mind control all over us.

Try some tea. Kei offered. It might help.