Planned Rerooting

Planned Rerooting

Year 203

We moved one of the riftgates back to Freeka, and located it right in the valley. Alka and the rest of them returned, except Roon and Johann who continued the fight and expansion.

It was frustrating to expand, because of how magically sparse the environment was, even with the recent gradual improvements. Since the demon king ended, I felt mana slow, very very slowly, trickle back to the world.

As it is, my expansions essentially relied and drained mana from the Central continent, in order to support my trees and my forces on the demon world. This was because there was a shortfall in the natural mana and life in the soil, so I had to top up that shortfall with my own mana. This was similar to the moon, but as my moonbases trees grew, they were able to generate more mana passively, and a few years ago, was mana-neutral on my overall mana-production.

The fact that I had to constantly support and regenerate my beetles and trees at the battlefronts also amplified the mana drain on the central continent.

In the long run, though, things are positive. At the rate of natural mana recovery in the world, in a few decades, my trees would turn mana-positive, and I would be able to mount a more coherent and decisive push towards all the major structures of the demons.

There was no reason to expand when doing so only increased the mana use, without the capture of any particularly unique structures.

All these were lessons, for our next planned invasion for the demon world.

Alka also had other ideas. One of which, was to develop a supermassive star mana bomb. Something with so much mana that we could throw at the tower of void mana, and hopefully disrupt the demon king while it is still gestating.

I was somewhat skeptical of the star mana bombs chances of actually destroying the demon king, because Ive seen the demon kings body gestating really deep in the ground, and I doubt a supermassive explosion would be able to reach deep into the worlds core. Still, destroying the void tower would mean they couldnt come to our world that fast, since it would take out the fuel that supported the pathway to our world.

It may buy us some time, for little to no cost. It may possibly also weaken the demon king, such that we would be able to survive it with better odds.

Of course, Alka also proposed to sink the tower in that deep tunnel, and then detonate the bomb. The idea of detonating such a powerful bomb underground probably would be very damaging to the world, but it does mean an explosion closer to the gestating demon king. for new novels

Possible, but more moving parts. Its more difficult to send a bomb in the tunnel where my roots or trees cant reach. I could, theoretically, have a tree next to the tower, teleport it right there.

Anyway, Alka was thus focused on developing the bomb. He already had some ideas, gathered from his past research, on how to make a large star-mana bomb.

Ideas that he quickly pitched to Prabu and Colette, and he shared our findings, as well.

This is Aeons idea? Prabu immediately asked.

Not really. More like mine, but he consented to the budget for a super star-mana bomb, meant specifically to activate on contact with the void tower.

The problem was, star mana, just like void mana, both had corrosive effects on their containers. The objects that hold these things could not hold them for very long, unless they were made by the heroes through their special [hero forge], and in those cases, the mana stored evaporated very slowly over time. Even my specialised potatoes eventually decayed, and the stored mana leaked out, though they did last quite long.

Only my own 300 star mana did not cause any decay, and I suspect that the soul may be the most common object that could hold star mana without these storage problems. That, of course, implied it could be possible to make living star mana batteries.

Could I create artificial souls specifically to store star mana or void mana? I see Stella is able to accept and handle large quantities of void mana without much issues, even if it did make her soul transform into this pitch black mass of... thing.

Despite how her soul looks, her body clearly didnt suffer for it. She was healthy by all measures, and her body, even though drenched with void mana, didnt seem different. Perhaps the soul had a passive effect of controlling, manipulating and processing mana, such that it didnt harm itself.

It was a worthwhile idea, even if one I previously never considered because of how many artificial minds I could support. Nowadays, with a continents worth of trees, and more, its really not much of a problem to use artificial minds more freely, even if they were just made to be sentient batteries.

Worth exploring? I asked Patreeck.

It really depends how much mana an artificial mind can store. However, based on what weve seen, its likely that they wont be as effective as a fully formed soul.

I paused as those words sunk in. Patreeck clearly had more data than me, even if he is functionally a part of me. If Patreecks speculation are true, mana responded more strongly to the inner part of the soul. No matter, I had to try.

I created one of my tuberous storage in an uninhabited part of the central continent, and created an artificial mind for it. This part went normally.

Then I injected it with star mana. At least, the 300 star mana I had. I borrowed a little bit more from the heroes, and injected a little bit more. Then like a balloon that suddenly had a hole, it just shrunk, and died.

1,000. Patreeck said.

Thats too little.

I did the same, this time with void mana. We had void mana from Stella, and those I previously stole from the demon king. They were already in various states of decay, some of them only had less than 10% of the void mana originally.

This was a war that would only gain in intensity, since the recovering ambient mana of the world meant both sides would gain strength. I could deploy more trees and more beetles, and for the demons, they could regenerate their spawning pools, spawn more demons, and spawn stronger demons.

Still, the recovering mana also meant the demon forces noticed my trees near the massive hole of the demon king. A location I wanted but was not able to hold due to the sheer distance from my main clone body, as my trees and beetles were overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of demons.

Thankfully, now Roon and Johann both were up for some scouting.

The deep hole of the demon king, now flooded with normal demons, and they saw the collapsed towers and the rubble somehow had vanished. The entire deep hole transformed into a massive spawning pool.

But because there were too many demons, they did not attempt to engage. Not with just two of them. It was likely that the demon spawning pool, given its size, was some kind of pre-demon king pool?

Still, after that spying, and all the fighting on the demon world, they were both really emotionally drained, and Roon requested to return to Treehome. There was something about fighting in the lifeless world that was just more emotionally taxing than normal.

Edna called it the Long Term Dungeon Syndrome. Similar to fighters whove spent too long in the dungeons, they would crave some normalcy.

Oh well, I suppose I would need to start considering some kind of otherworld combat roster. Maybe thats what happened with Prabu and Colette, and their snack withdrawals. They needed an emotional base, and fighting long periods away from home drained that battery.

-

There was something else I had to work on, which was, core mana. The activation of the astral path seemed to rely on the core mana, though it is possible to wait for the rifts to open, and then only invade. But we wanted the option to invade at our own time.

So I had to figure out core mana.

I intensified my analysis of the Cometworld Shard, and concluded that I needed to dig deep. Much, much deeper. What kind of creature would have core mana?

I already reached my limit on Treehome in terms of depth. I couldnt get deeper, even with all the intermediate trees in the way. This was the secret at the center of the world.

> Lilies, do you know how to contact the will of the world? <

Ah. I got similar replies from Aria, who didnt even know about the will of the world.

I only have one seed left. Unless I could gain more levels, Id have to use it strategically.

Lumoof, when you were on the Threeworlds, were there any really, really deep places? Like chasms or cracks that led all the way into the core?

Lumoof, naturally got what I was trying to get at, and shook his head. Not that I know of, unless the Sandpeople and the Centaurs are hiding it. Do you want me to ask?

Then we should aim elsewhere. Lets go to another world. I suppose Lumoofs job scope now expanded to also look for sources of core mana, usually in really, really deep places.

There had to be a world where theres already a natural crack in the world. Such things were common in fantasy after all. Places where the world ended, and it led to the great beyond.

Threeworlds, Cometworld and Treehome had been typical planets, but not all worlds are like that. If I wanted core mana, I needed to find a world where the core... isnt in the center of a spherical world.

Lumoof nodded. Yes boss.

Maybe the next world wont have my answer, but we had to try. Our next best choice was a stray world similar to the Cometworld, where its core was exposed in some way.

I then thought about my little trigger happy Reef friend.

> Reefy. <

>Do you know any deep, deep place?<

>Deeper. Much deeper. < Like, far deeper than the Marianas. Even my own underground trees have gone a lot deeper.

I contemplated that question for a moment. Is the Will, someone? >Well. Yes. Maybe.<

>If you could, please.<

I actually have no idea what Reefys been up to underwater, but it seemed to be pretty stable, so I presumed it to be alright.

Spaizzer

THANKS FOR READING.