Treesellations

Treesellations

Year 208 (continued)

[Vine and root related abilities are all significantly upgraded. Your root distance has been significantly increased and the depth and range expanded.]

[Demonic Mana Resistance significantly enhanced.]

[New Domain Skill - Guardian Treants]

[You are able to spawn guardian treants near your clones or your main body. Guardian treants can act independently and fight, but may not move too far from your main body or clones]

Eh. I found that ability quite weak. It just added more of the same type of ability to my skill set. I already had strong support skills, and guardians... well, that didnt add much.

I needed more offensive ability, or failing that, more movement and mana related abilities. Adding more flesh to the battlefield generally, well, didnt do much.

Yet, I also wondered whether thats a wise choice. Im a tree. Even with clones and more trees, I am still a tree, and was I trying to fit a round peg into a square hole?

Its tempting to believe, as one gains levels, that I would become more all-rounded, more able to do what I was not able to do before. But Im increasingly noticing that the system also forces a type on me, and doing something outside what the system considers normal for me generally requires extensive preparation. Even then, I would still be outcompeted by those who had the right classes and optimal builds for those things.

The domain choices were really one of the rare times when the system actually allowed us to actively steer the direction of our powers.

This is not so for humanoids, who, through their actions, can choose what class they acquire.

Monsters, on the other hand, are what they were designed to be, and evolutionary choices still had to remain linked to their core form. Therefore, now that I could somewhat modify living beings to some degree, could I therefore guide this path elsewhere? Just as I attempted to steer the development of my treefolks and my lizardpeople, Im starting to realise perhaps I missed monsters.

The creation of true anti-demon monsters would be a great start. Just as nature is often an arms race between different species, why couldnt nature have their own counter for demons? The demons evolved indirectly, adapting the qualities of their captured world into their own, each time, expanding the variety of demons, one world at a time.

I would also speculate that each demon king was also slightly different, thus, adding another form of evolution to their force. My evidence was that Sabnoc was slightly different compared to the demon king of the Mountainworlds, perhaps the ratio of demon and core was mixed slightly differently with each new spawn.

So, nature had to evolve. The natural world most likely had two main ways of evolution. The first one, unique to this magical world, was the subtle evolution through the spawning process, in which the system creates life out of thin air, perhaps using a blend of the existing creations. This was most apparent in the Rottedlands edges, where we had hybrid creatures and plants. Second was of course the supposed earth-way of accumulated surviving adaptations.

I am inclined to believe the first was the main evolutionary tool in this world, simply because magic and demon kings just killed everyone so quickly, that the system repopulates the world with slightly better-adapted individuals.

But why let the system be the only one doing it? If I could make Treechis, why not make demon-eating hounds and beetles? Giant demon-eating worms?

Training, equipping Valthorns with the right skills is fine and all, but evolution must consider all choices. A point I had clearly neglected, even when it was what I started with. I had trained beetles, and my artificial minds continued to make incremental improvements to better adapt them to our ongoing war on the Parasiteworld. Things that artificial minds were good at.

Faster. Stronger. Bigger.

But I could do more. Especially more radical recreations. Different. Reconstruction from the ground up to make them more focused demon-killing machines.

Artificial minds could take one or two steps back, but they were not designed for ground up remakes.

I could redesign them from bottom up, create stronger versions of their original form. Not just that, I could attempt to fuse the anti-mana glass, or any other kinds of material into their structure to create something alien.

Weaker, but different. And then incrementally improve that weaker type to make it more powerful.

Not just that, looking at it, could I also recreate artificial minds and improve them? I had responded to the growing need for oversight and for routine automation by adding more and more artificial minds to the problem. Patreeck assigned and allocated tasks to them.

Could we make better artificial minds, and improve their hardware such that each level they gain did more?

***

The heroes celebrated the death of the demon king. Kelly recovered after two days of intense care.

So... now we need to help you with your demon king. Adrian said. But how do you already know whats coming?

Complicated story, one Ill let you have more details once you visit our world. But the gist of it is that Aeon can see the demon king coming. Sort of.

Whoah. The two heroes were impressed. You guys have counters for most demon kings, then?

Prabu shook his head. Not for the one thats coming. Aeon said the next demon king will be a massive, heavily physical, super-magic resistance, anti-magic type. Something we have no counter for. Not directly. We dont have a physical hero in our lineup, and sadly, the two of you are not pure-physical types either. So, well have to make do with larger numbers, and hopefully, better equipment.

The heroes gained some levels, but strangely, it wasnt very high. The four heroes and many of those who joined the battle also gained the same Title as I did. A useless trinket. Even those who assisted indirectly obtained the title. The four heroes from our world gained four to five levels each, though Adrian and Kelly, being lower levelled, gained about ten.

A big party was held throughout the kingdoms, though the atmosphere was somewhat tense among the elites. My presence partly dampened the euphoria. The kings were fearful, and the worries had many aspects.

Thats sad. It makes me feel like what weve struggled so far is pointless.

Its not. Even in our world, we eventually die. We are doomed, either disease or old age, or many other reasons. Yet, our life back home didnt feel meaningless.

I thought going to class all the time was pretty meaningless. Adrian quipped.

Meaning is something you can create. Our predecessors tried different things. One went on a hunt for good wines, another dabbled in fashion and arts. They took what they liked, and dived deeper into it. For me, I quite like killing demons, so Im trying to be even better at it. Chung answered frankly. Or you can be a snack-addict like Prabu.

The two other heroes heard him but did not respond.

***

Around the same time, I also sent my trees to explore the area underneath the demon king. My trees spawned in where that demon king once camped, and I detected strands of daemolite that went really deep into the ground. The leylines were tainted by demonic energy, though they would fade in time.

I sensed the taint weakening each day, and eventually the ley lines would flush out all the demonic energy.

The demon king had somehow pulled the ley lines of the entire region to this single spot, and now that the demon king was gone, these ley lines were slowly drifting apart. This would be a good time to pin the leyline together to form a dungeon, but then, I wanted to see how a world recovered.

Defeating the demon king did not answer the question I had.

What was the demons win condition? How did they win, and what determined how long the world held up?

From what Lillies said, I knew that a demon king could remain undefeated for decades, almost centuries, but still the world did not fall. Yet, from Sneks world, their world clearly collapsed quickly.

This was comparable to a doctor trying to diagnose a novel disease, and now we are trying to figure out the mechanics of the disease. A mutating virus.

Concurrently, I started to clean up the corruption in the areas designated to be under my rule.

It didnt take more than a week to clear my marked lands of the demonic corruption, my energies easily overwhelming the demons presence.

Whats the plan with this location? My domainholders didnt stay long, Edna, Roon and Johann returned home. There was also the topic of names for this new nation, and I decided to call it Branchhold.

I would like to first increase the tree population, and increase my total mana output. Later on, I would relocate some of the void archmages to this world, and begin surveying the skies for other worlds.

My astral sight was enhanced now that my clone body was here, and already I could see that this world could access Threeworlds and also Treehome, and also some other further worlds. It was the interstellar equivalent of expansion.

I decided to open my land to refugees, and got some of my experienced Valtrian Order administrators and mid-level Valthorns to come over to Mountainworld to set up the new nation of Branchhold.

In time, I would like to introduce the Canari to this world, and also implement offshoots of existing institutions.

As for the lands outside, I also cleared a few safe paths to the rest of the inhabited worlds in order to kickstart the migration and resettlement, but for now, the rest of the demonic corruption remained.

The locals of the Moountainworld called it the Demontouched lands, and they spawned hybrids and demons quite similar to the Rottedlands, but still different in their own way. This was useful research and I wanted to take another opportunity to examine them. It would be good to study them and compare them to the specimens we had back home.

***

Alka actually gained his domain while bunkered somewhere far from the battlefield, though he was actively supporting the battle by giving the bombs some extra power-ups. As a field scientist, he could amplify the strength of certain equipment, and that included the bombs, and I figured through those contributions, he gained the experience needed to get through to the domain.

He naturally joined my pantheon for life insurance.

He got the domain of [Explosions], and the first, extremely unusual ability of his domain, [Always a Bomb], was his ability to be a Living Bomb. Essentially, he could detonate a bomb around himself, without actually needing a bomb, of varying strength and up to the strongest bomb he has ever made. The number of bombs he could release was pretty much scaled to the strength of the bomb.

At the same time, the [Field Scientist] class returned to me, since, once he had his domain, his class no longer existed. It was merged into the [Explosions] domain, along with all the skills.

In a way, that sort of made Alka very dangerous. He could theoretically nuke himself next to me if he wanted to, and I was really thankful that I had other bodies as my own personal insurance.

Then again, thats the same class any offensive-geared domain holder will reach. A hero, or a mage-with-a-domain would probably be similarly dangerous, so, there really was no need for excessive paranoia.

I would need Stella to get her domain, and we should largely have the pieces needed to really jam up the demons process.

Too bad we missed a chance to send some roots through that rift. Stella said to me privately. I would love to see what kind of world that demon king came from.

In the heat of battle, that was not an easy thing to do. The rifts were not common either. Since this set of demons spawned their own demons by manipulating existing leylines, they did not require much reinforcements from their homeworld, except during that final battle with the demon king.

With the festivities mostly over, we had a demon king to prepare for, and this time, I wanted to attempt to jam the demon kings teleportation process.