Treemunity

Treemunity

Year 198 (part 2)

One of the junior Valthorns developed a simplified process to check on demons, especially when demons were not available. Something that apparently, a few other places had independently developed.

If a demon consumed or destroyed a soul, essentially, that is just a body, but without the will in it. A persons skills and abilities were tied to the soul, so the theory was, most of these lesser demons would not be able to copy skills. Accordingly, they may appear like a person, but if they are unable to use any of their skills, they were quite likely to be demons.

It was quite clever.

Of course, its likely that demons were still able to copy some skills, especially the champion class. So far, we have not seen any of these champion-class parasites, and honestly, it kept me awake. What could a demon king thats entirely focused on possessing people do? Could it even possess a hero?

I thought back to Meela and Alexis, and wondered.

Was their demon king a corruption king too? Or at least, a variant of it? Why else was Alexis consumed by the flames of the demon? That batch even had those talking demon-knights!

That was at least one hundred plus years ago. Have we finally looped the cycle?

I would have to approach them and ask them for more info. I recall Alexis didnt have much knowledge of the demons that possessed them.

Also, these demons were able to read memories of the bodies they captured. From this alone, I immediately considered Stella and Kei as very high risk. If they were captured by the demons, that would be a really, really bad outcome, especially if the demons are then able to share their memories back to where they came from.

I also wanted to know how these demons spread. They seemed to jump from person to person, and we noticed that they invaded drains, gutters, toilets and other naturally dirty environments. We also found them in the waters, where they were, strangely, eaten by fish with little consequence.

They were able, with surprising adaptability, to infest travelling merchants and somehow remained dormant or at least, non-hostile within them, at least, until they reached a new area.

All these observations suggested each of these parasites had intelligence, one corroborated by how they responded to my abilities.

How do we fight them effectively, while minimising deaths?

-

Ken, Prabu and Colette met up in Freshka, and by now, my Valthorns have shared a dossier of the demonic body snatchers with them, and a rough summary of what weve discovered so far. I wanted the heroes to live, at least, if they could gain enough levels.

Both Prabu and Colette have accepted my familiars as part of the deal to allow them to live here, and it was advantageous for me to keep them at a high level.

How does the trope normally go? Body snatchers eh... Ken said. There should be a kind of magic that should be specifically effective on them.

Prabu shrugged. And what would that be?

I dont know, wed have to run some experiments. The common ones are usually electrical shocks, or some strange foods. Maybe we could get some anti-parasitic drugs? Or maybe just some strange rare chemicals. Ken said as he tried to approach it from a trope-angle.

My Valthorns were already capturing these demonic larva specimens to conduct my own tests. We wanted a widespread way to hit these demons, and we wanted to know their weaknesses. They had weaknesses for sure.

There was one very immediate sample that worked really well.

Using Stellas gateway, we sent three possessed individuals to Freshka, and Patreeck blasted the possessed individual with his psychic power.

It worked really well, since the person literally convulsed, and the demon actually crawled out of the possessed individuals mouth in an attempt to avoid the psychic blast. It was pretty much nightmare material as everyone squirmed. Well, almost.. Only the knights or those who usually had the [Still Heart], or [Calm Mind], or [Horror Resistance] or other similar passive abilities didnt react to it.

Luckily, as long as the persons not dead, they do not spawn additional larva. In order to make a person into a living hatchery, theyd have to fully convert the person, so in such cases, its straight-forward. Kill anyone who doesn't have a soul.

Since they are just demons that had the appearance of people.

Snek suggested that it should be possible for certain classes to fight off such parasites, usually through boosting their own spiritual power. Their world, at least, prior to the conversion to the demon lands, were filled with naturally occurring parasites and body snatchers. But this was like multi-generational adaptation to parasites, not something thats possible for the people of this world to acquire on a widespread scale.

Wait. Unless I massively distribute [Skill seeds] with these skills. But I would need these skills in the first place. No, Id need to know which skills work best against these demonic body snatchers!

Stella was extremely fascinated. This is essentially planning to develop some kind of anti-demonic possession vaccine, and now youre in the concept phase of testing which skills work best?

I had a lot of skill seeds, and with them, I could make class trees and skill trees. These were old abilities that I still used on a smaller scale, but if this worked, it would essentially create safe villages.

How are you proposing to test the effectiveness of the skills against the demonic possessions. No one here is going to volunteer themselves, and where do you get the demons? Youd have to have a hatchery!

On a high level, the idea was really rather repulsive. It meant Id capture one of these demon-possessed persons and keep it alive as a hatchery for demonic larvae, and then test out the demonic larvae on different individuals of different skills, and monitor them. Not just that, its essentially a test that I can only perform in Freshka, since Patreecks psychic/mind blast could effectively sterilise anyone infected with the demons.

Stella, of course, wondered. Could we replicate this psychic attack on a smaller scale?

-

This meant the checks done could still miss the demon champions, since the demon champions were able to go beyond physical control, and even turn the possessed person to a puppet, and use its skills in conjunction with its own demonic abilities.

Could a demon king, therefore, possess a hero?

-

You cant be serious? Prabu vented as we shared the news of the demon champions with them. I feel like weve just made a few steps forward and this demon champion sent us all back to square one.

Ken didnt join them as he, without his hero class and without any star mana, was pretty much sitting ducks. I dont think you need to panic. The demons clearly are designed to attack heroes wherever you are. So, even if you miss them, they cant help themselves and will attack you.

Snek agreed with the assessment. Our own records agree with that. Demons cant help but attack heroes. Its in their very nature. So, its almost confirmed that you did not miss any champions so far.

...Im not convinced, but alright. Prabu said. Anyway, can you arrange a shipment of snacks?

Thats not critical at this time. Kei answered.

It is. Ill work for 5 years if you can send snacks here. Help me negotiate with the Order, please?

Ken and Kei shrugged. Ken sighed. Prabu, you know, if you keep doing this snack thing, youll be relegated into the disposable joke or fodder character trope, and youll die. Dont play that part, please?

Fuck that trope shit. I want my snacks!

-

We had a few spies infected by the demons, and we brought them back for further investigation. My familiars apparently helped to detect the demons, and because my familiars also occupied a link with the soul, they contested the demonic parasites attempts to possess my spies.

My spies received regular familiars, and the demons won, two out of three times. But, even though they won, it took them longer to gain control of the spies body, and this gave the others time to get help, or, in our case, put them into a magical coffin for further studies.

It had to be done, and we captured more and more of these demonic larvae. With sufficient samples, we sent them to Freshka for further studies in my biolab. I also created a small section in the Rottedlands, secretly, to attempt to breed these larvae in non-human bodies, such as hybrid demon-monsters.

It created a few rather strong monster-demons, but nothing we couldnt handle.

We needed a solution, as our news in the South indicated the infestation spread really, really quickly. The heroes literally could not sterilise cities faster than the demons can infest one.

Worse still, some of the templars and warriors of the Gaya and Hawa temples were infested, and against the backdrop of a full rebellion by the kingdoms, it was getting, really out of hand.

-

Lumoof continued his time in Threeworlds magic crystal city. He played the role of the charming, affable and clumsy old man wonderfully, and some of the local mages were quite smitten with him.

He spent quite a lot of time gathering information about the world generally, but the knowledge of magical crystal growth remained elusive. Those who held the secrets gave it in bits and pieces, and never the whole picture. Perhaps that was how it was structured over the years, that all these little pieces were separated in order to prevent total theft.

Sir Lumoof, this way. A mage was more than happy to introduce some interesting types of magic to Lumoof. To the locals, Lumoof seemed to be a wealthy but foolish old man, and they were happy to make money off him.

It was small money for us. After all, his expedition is pretty much funded by the entire central continent, which was, on an overall level, more developed than this world, even if this single city was pretty unique on its own.

They demonstrated some magical formations and ice spells, all tethered to crystals. They had slightly different magical formations, and they were really good at using some of the natural properties of these magic crystals. What do you think, Sir Lumoof?

Its nice. Ive never seen it. How much would it cost?

Ah, this formation would cost 344 Gold Coins. Or we would be happy to trade for an artefact of sufficient quality.

Lumoof nodded. I see. He retrieved another magical sword from the inventory, made by a level 50+ magical smith. I was told this was worth about 450 gold. If you can throw in another few more manuals...

The mage stared with greed and nodded. Certainly.

Alka and a group of high-ranked mages assisted Alka would receive all these scrolls and they would study them. They were aware of our expeditions to another world, even if they didnt know of the full details. Anyway, once they studied the scrolls, they would proceed to replicate the spells and formations back home, and this added to our body of knowledge on magic and formations generally.

It was a very laborious process, but it worked.

I hoped this would allow me to unlock the knowledge needed to truly comprehend the demon kings core, but from what I could see, progress remains very, very far away. Even with a platoon of researchers and mages, its a very long process. The journey to get from the iron age to the space age is long indeed.

Spaizzer

Thanks for reading.

Break announcement - I'm off on the WEEK of 1st FEBRUARY 2022. There will be a chapter next week, and then I'm a week off, and then returning on 8 February 2022.