Untangling Roots

Untangling Roots

Year 206

Lumoof announced their plan to return to the others, and strangely, they asked to watch his return. We consented, since, well, theres no real risk. Its not as if they could replicate it anyway.

Or maybe they could if they had some kind of hero artifact with spell-copying abilities, but I highly doubt it.

In any case, trying to get Stella to open a portal where we want her to is actually quite hard. One of the methods we found to help Stella find where to place the portal, was to connect her to me, and via [dream academy], share Lumoofs location to her. It enabled highly accurate portals, across worlds, but only around individuals I could sense, like Lumoof and the Valthorns. Its also slow, because the process of sharing the location took a while.

She described that each world was centered around the planets core. Not the star or the sun, but the planetary core. So, a portals position was calculated relative to the core, and the core itself has a bubble that protects it from portals or any spells.

Anyway, the portal of void opened in the chambers. Everyone gasped as they saw a portal materialise out of nowhere. The heroes were busy hunting demons, and they didnt come.

From what we understood, they were about level 100 now, it took a while for them to regain their pace. Theyve been asleep and weak for so long, that even though they wanted to fight the demons as a result of their compulsion, their body struggled.

Will you be back? One of the dwarven strategists asked.

With the heroes back in action... maybe not. Unless the heroes need our help to take on the demon king.

They did say they would appreciate the help...

Then Ill see what I can do. But for now, duties back home require my urgent attention. Lumoof gave everyone watching a wave, and they stepped through it.

***

Lady Lausanne, free to talk? Prabu and Ken approached her one day after her class at the Valtrian Academy. Lausannes role in the Valthorns had declined significantly, and she had quite fully transitioned to the role of an administrator and trainer, a bit like what Jura did for her.

Ah. Yes. They met at one of the many cafes along the streets of Freshka. Is this confidential?

Quite.

Lausanne nodded, and took out one of the standard privacy artifacts given to all Valthorns. It created a small bubble of magic around them that blocked sound. But it didnt block me. Because a little bit of my roots were inside the bubble.

Were thinking of pitching an idea to Aeon and Stella, and we want your thoughts on what do you think Aeon will think?

Lausanne laughed. Lausanne, Laufen and Yvon are all sought after, even as their roles have changed. They were the go-to-persons for the pre-pitch assessment. Essentially, the equivalent of having someone who had a lot of experience looking through their resume. Yes. Thats what I do in my spare time these days. So. Hit me with it.

Ken coughed. Were thinking that Aeon should start the equivalent of the multiverse League of Heroes.

Lausanne stared, and then coughed. Sorry I dont understand.

Ken paused as he realised Lausanne may not comprehend references. So. Each habited, civilised world has their own heroes, and frequently, we are all stuck trying to fight each demon king by ourselves.

Lausanne caught on immediately. But Aeon can consolidate all the power, so that you can hit the demons with the power of heroes from multiple worlds.

Ken smacked the table. Exactly! Thats what we want to pitch. This combined force can also function as a reclamation force, to retake worlds lost to the demons.

Prabu added. Each demon kings powerset is tailored differently, and the heroes, each of us have a different power meant to counter our generations demon king. So our response to different types of demon kings are essentially less effective because our matchup sucks. But, if we get other heroes who are meant for different types of demon king, we could cover up for our shortfall.

Yes. Stella currently needs void mana for her portals, which meant us heroes cant use her methods. But Aeons clone-body teleportation doesnt need void mana, which meant heroes could move through it. Aeon can essentially be the tree that links all the heroes together.

Lausanne nodded. I think Aeon would be keen to listen, but it does require friendly heroes. Heroes that can play by Aeons rules. There are risks to it, Im sure you are aware that Aeons naturally cautious with you guys, due to the powers you all have.

Prabu nodded.

Aeons actions are also often misunderstood, as his perspective is very broadly zoomed out. Aeon is probably not keen to play coordinator for heroes, so one of you must be willing to step up for that.

Prabu nodded and looked at Ken. Actually I have just the candidate. The guy whos superpower is his knowledge of tropes.

Fuck that. Ken looked back at Prabu.

Lausanne has a point, its your idea. You have to manage it. You cant just propose ideas and expect others to run it for you. Prabu responded.

What if these other heroes try to kill me? Ken said. Im powerless!

That could be your advantage, really. Its because youre now outside this whole setup that you could be the manager! Lausanne answered and Prabu nodded along. I do think it is a worthwhile setup, and could serve to bring all these worlds closer.

...Ill need to think about it. Ken wasnt keen on it.

Looking at it that way, it sure seems like my moonbase and my Cometworld deployment had a mana-opportunity-cost. I lose the mana that could be generated by having a clone on these normal worlds, in exchange for the novelty and exploratory aspects of the Cometworld, where I could travel to other worlds and see those other places, and for the security of the Moonbase.

Our treechikomas did find some good hints though. There were certain rocks with metallic ores that seemed to retain a kind of mana layer, but that didnt help us much in terms of identification of dates.

Our digs into the underground also didnt reveal much.

I also started to wonder about the system again. There was a missing piece in the game. Something obvious that I wasnt seeing or realising.

So, I took some time to do a bit more thinking and tried to understand what was the demons win condition. Lets say the demon king won, the demon king defeated the heroes, and the heroes no longer came to the world.

Was that it, and they won? The world would automagically turn into a demon world? Essentially, that question could be explained as, what made a demon world... a demon world? Why did a normal world, perfectly able to spawn regular stuff before this, stopped creating the normal monsters and stuff, and started spawning demons?

The only one who saw a world lose was Snek. Lilies didnt actually go through the full loss.

I dont really know? Snek answered. We lost our world to the demons, but we were so afraid that we spent our times running and hiding.

Wait wait wait. Do you know what happened to the demon king?

Not really. It was... there? Snek answered. But honestly we were just trying to survive in the underground tunnels that no one checked.

But do you have any idea whether the demon king left?

...maybe? Were not sure, but I think it probably didnt, because the world started to produce demons, and probably other demon kings too. But we were too far from such places to actually know.

Wait. I had an epiphany then.

If the demon king sent to invade other worlds were products of existing demon kings, then didnt that mean there should, in theory, be at least one demon king still on the parasite world somewhere, playing the role of the Queen or a Hatchery?

Maybe the demon king is just a massive [forest rod] that captured the Core?

This absolutely clicked. No. It explained how such a massive tunnel to the core was created. The demon king that won dug towards the core, and captured the core. Through that process, the worlds natural spawning mechanism was converted to produce demons.

Each demon king was a massive colonization mothership too. But... how?

That also meant that somewhere in the core of the parasite world, was a demon king. Perhaps no longer a demon king because it has been deployed to control the core of the world.

If this was the case, I needed to send the heroes to the parasite world, and attack the core.

Free the core from the control of the demons, and that would greatly change the balance of power of our world. Maybe this would also significantly improve the natural mana recovery, and also get access to the cores mana.

Of course, I then submitted this theory to my domain holders and the other senior leaders.

Doesnt that just mean that demons that won essentially start digging downwards? Lumoof speculated. But that doesnt happen, isnt it?

Edna, who was also present. Are you suggesting an attack on the parasite world? Aeon, with all due respect, we have no ability to attack two worlds at the same time.

I am aware.

Actually, this cycled back to the Mountainworld again.

The demon king was not moving.

Was it digging all this time?

So we have three ways of checking. One, we send the heroes to the parasite demonworld, and attack the hole to the core. Two, we go back to the Mountainworld and figure out what the demon king is doing underground. If your theory is right, it should be attempting to reach the core. Edna repeated. Three, we also have the riftgate to this new world. If we do fight the demon king on this new world, and our initial conjectures are proven correct, the heroes and us could mount an assault on the core of this new demonworld and see whether theres one there.

Three priorities, and I had to decide which one to pursue.

I was keen on the riftgates, so that was a clear yes.

But this would mean all my domain holders would be deployed there, in order to achieve my intended objective of denying the next attack. My seed would also be there for a while, at least, until the battles over and everyone is safe back home.

Kens League of heroes would have to wait until this is over.

Spaizzer

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