Tree of Aeons

291 - Greenfields VIII

The Purple Moon of the Three Ringed World

The four domain holders landed on the purple moon, and the sensation was immediate. 

“Core.” Lumoof said, but he didn’t really need to say it. All the domain holders knew, it was similar to the time when they reached the Core of Tropicsworld. There was no doubt, no uncertainty. 

Just merely stepping on it they felt the core attempt to make a connection. For the rest of them, their domains blocked it. but Lumoof allowed it through, so that I could speak to it. 

The feeling of a million thoughts seeping through his feet, and somehow the million voices coalesced into three distinct voices, yet they speak as one. The mere contact flooded me with visions of the Three Rings, of a world once without the plague of the demons. 

Of a world when the Purple Moon did not release bursts of energy to cause the monsters to run amok. 

Visitors. How- strange.

The voice spoke through my mind immediately, and by now, I was quite used to the presence of such ancient things. “Hello. I am Aeon, from another world.”

There was a long pause, but I said nothing, because I felt it’s probing senses. Cores, from what I could tell, were not evil. It was looking for things around me, and its energies moved.

I can sense the vague remnants of my fellow Cores in your being, their power subsumed into yours. 

I wondered then whether those were my clones. 

Are you here to claim us? Like the foul constructs?

“No.” I answered through the avatar form. With things like the Core, I decided honesty was the best policy. They were in some ways, sentient machines. “I come to destroy them, as requested by one of the gods.”

So you are a claimant either way. A less destructive one.

I could feel Lumoof’s intention to respond negatively, but again, I’ve talked to enough cores to understand that their statements tend to be more pointed. 

“If that counts as claiming, then yes. I will establish a presence in your ringworlds, and then use it to mount a counterattack on the demons.” I said plainly through our mental link. The domain holders stood on the purple rock, and the entirety of the rock was this realm’s planetary core.

It just didn’t take the form of a planetary core, but instead placed itself out of reach of the demons by existing as a moon. 

What will you do to our children?

The cores created and took care of each of their inhabitants. In that way, each native is a ‘child’ of their core. Still, I was not sure how to answer them. “They will live. Prosper, perhaps. But live.”

I felt a probing sense, as if it tried to understand where and what I had done. It somehow traced my flesh across all the worlds, yet not through me, but as if it were droplets of rain flowing down the leaves and barks of a tree. 

Yet. Protectiveness. This was a protective core. A world that wanted to keep its children alive. 

Altered forever, but alive. Our voice, if our children believe.

I felt a sense of acceptance, that my presence would be tolerable. Acceptable. The core’s voice vanished. 

We were still standing on the core. The core refused to entertain us further, as I felt the Will retreat back into the depths of the Core. I could force it if I plant a clone here. 

But would I be better than the demons that way? 

I think of planet cores, or actually, these ‘realm cores’ as the center of each world. It is not the ‘sun’ like our old worlds, but instead, these worlds are as if medieval beliefs where Earth was the center of the universe was true. Well, almost every one, except for this one. I had many questions about the design and creation of this world. 

We looked back at the Three Rings. From this vantage point, it was as if the three rings moved around us. We glanced at the sections where the three rings intersected one another. There were six intersection points, and at each of these intersection points were beams of light that connected one ring to another, a place referred to as the “ladder”. 

It allowed the natives to move from one ring to another, and it was how all three rings are connected, even if one didn’t have magic.

“I suppose we should just move on.” Stella said. “Or step into the demon worlds linked through the rift gates.” 

“This world has two demon kings.” Edna countered. From the purple moon it was surprisingly easy to find the demon king, because it’s presence was not obstructed by other things, and there was a straight line from the purple moon to the sun-facing side of the rings.

“And this world is a long way from being captured.” Stella countered. “It’s only issue is that Hawa can’t send anyone over anymore, and anyone Hawa sends need to send enough to deal with two demon kings.” 

Lumoof looked at the rifts, and the paths through the stars. “Let us hit the other worlds. We have a mission. This world can wait. The locals look very cozy and the demon kings seem content to wait.” 

“Why don’t we just take a tour, pay a visit to the demon kings and just see what it was up to?” Edna smirked, and it made all the other three domain holders stare at her. 

“You’re serious.”

“Yes. Why is it not doing anything? Don’t you want to get more data points?”

And it was strange. We stood near it and watched the demon king remain as if it was in a hibernating state, or at least, in a state where all it did was reproduce. The demon king did not move as if waiting for something to happen.

“Does this count as a stable state?” Edna asked. We were wary that there are ‘vulnerabilities’, like what happened to Kei’s demon king. If we attacked a living but ultimately harmless demon king, we could invite the presence of a far stronger demon king that would not just sit idly around.

As weird as it sounded, when demon kings didn’t act and remained passive, our immediate thought was to consider whether it would be less harmful overall to just suppress the rest of the demons, and leave the demon king as it is.

A sort of ‘fantasy’ version of ‘harm mitigation’. 

“I think we should ask Hawa. This sounds like something Hawa would know.” Edna said. 

Lumoof nodded. “Well, another thing to add to our growing list of questions.” 

“Probably easier to just visit Satrya again.” Edna said, but she knew we could not do so. 

Our mere presence creates doubt, and shakes the faith of their followers. In a world where god is present and that god says it is the only god, the mere presence of someone outside that god’s rule is heretical. 

“I bet there’s more to ask after this.” Kafa said. “Every single one of these peripheral worlds is about to be abandoned by Hawa. Might as well just move ahead and get on with it. We can compile our questions later.”

“Is that artifact time limited or with limited use?”

“Not really, it just takes a long time to charge between uses. The divine energies contained within it takes a while to accumulate.” Lumoof said.

“Then let’s keep going. Let’s split up again. You are with me, this time.” Lumoof pointed at Stella. Stella grinned.

“Sure, old man.”

This time, Edna would go with Kafa to the Ninth, while Stella and Lumoof would go together to the Eighth.

***

Eight World - Triotuga

The eighth world started with Lumoof landing on what seemed like an alley. That was a good sign. Stella followed a brief moment after, since she did have to open the portals for everyone. 

“An alley. A narrow street. A good sign.” Lumoof said as his senses fanned out into the surroundings. There were people. Humans, just the typical humans. They were both cloaked in illusions made to hide their presence, and so, they walked out of the alley to find a vibrant market. For once, this human city was not at war. 

Not yet, at least. 

This world’s human society resembled the typical human-magical medieval society. There are kings, knights in armor, guards in chainmail and mages in robes walking around the main street.

“This is one of those copy-pasted worlds.” Stella said. “Kinda lazy when they designed worlds like that.”

Lumoof chuckled. “You make it sound like creating worlds and societies to be an easy thing.”

“I would think the natural evolution of-”

“One of those “the heroes cause the spread of humans across the worlds” theory?.” Lumoof looked around and felt calm. Relaxed. “At least, for one, I like how familiar everything is.”

“Familiar yet different?” Stella laughed as the humans argued. As with all medieval societies, there exists a noble class, a priest class, a tradesmen class, the soldier class and then the peasant class. A priest wearing typical Hawa outfits walked by, but he looked like the most corrupt, fat priest she had ever seen. “Correction. Familiar, and extremely disgusting.”

“From one priest to another, let us not judge too hastily.” My avatar smiled, and walked about. The pair explored the human kingdoms, and found that this world was a tripartite state similar to Threeworlds.

The humans, the forestfolks, and the demon-users. 

Humanity and corruption are almost inseparable. The humans were incredibly typical. It was a wide number of small and medium sized human-dominant monarchies that were spread over one third of the land. 

Unlike Threehome, they didn’t have dominant bodies, and so, the alliance of the human nations were motivated by a need to stick together to counter the incursions of the others. There was no set of central authority, and overtaking it would be fairly easy.

The forest folks were made of two great subspecies, the winged faeries, and the earthbound dryads. Unlike the myth of our own world, these faeries were all large, almost human seized and possessed sharp claws and teeth. In some ways, these winged fairies were more like winged goblins than actual faeries, and the faeries were more like the lower class, and seemed to be bred in gigantic hives that looked like an oversized bee’s nest. 

The dryads were the usual rulers, twice the size of humans and the largest were the size of full trees. They took the form of humans with bark skin, but could shapeshift into trees, or even animals. They also possessed a variety of earth magic. It reminded me of the dryad body I once possessed, and wondered whether that would be one way to infiltrate them. Or I could use my parasite, Ally, the former demon champion.

From what we gathered, the forestfolks were also made for a collection of kingdoms, each a gigantic forest of its own. 

With the existence of such a place, naturally I wondered whether their kingdoms were anchored by spiritual trees, but despite the large amount of magic coursing through their forests, Lumoof did not detect any spiritual trees.

The forest folks used a kind of light [camouflage] and [illusion] ability, similar to my [dark forest] in order to hide their presence from others, but around domain holders, it was fairly easy to unmask. 

The border areas between the forest folks and the humans were outright battlegrounds. The forest folks tolerated no humans, and killed them with their control over the trees. The humans of the border practised extensive culling of trees, and permitted no shrub or bush higher than a child. Every single large plant along the border and a large buffer zone was effectively purged of all large plants. The humans were just as brutal, and the humans of the border used magical nets and harpoons with a kind of iron string. 

The priests of Hawa, despite their corruption, also possessed a set of [Purge] and [Banish] abilities that seemed extensively effective against the forest folks. The forest folks, on the other hand, were able to regenerate and recover from damage by draining their nearby trees of it’s life force. Their weakness was iron, and so, in a defensive battle, the forest folks could fight with extremely high toughness. The dryads, on top of their passives also had good ranged abilities and had the ability to control their environment. 

I suspected that the dryads had a hostile relationship with spirit trees, and potentially, given the forest folks’ ability to drain life force from spirit trees, it’s likely that any spirit trees that spawned in their magical forests were sucked to death. 

The third faction, the demon users, were a kind of boar-faced people with strong hides, and it was walking into their lands that we realized what was wrong with them. They controlled demons, and I could feel their spiritual tendrils extend beyond their body. Young boarfolk could extend one or two spiritual tendrils out of their bodies, and they would link this to the demons. This would allow the boarfolk to control them. 

But this link was not a one-way link, and in older boarfolk that controlled more demons, the demons’ influence also corrupted them, and turned them into almost-demon like creatures. 

“This is like Aeon’s mana overwhelming, but far more specific.” Lumoof observed them from our hidden location. The tendrils were visible to me because of our spiritual vision, but to normal mana sensitive folk, they would feel as if there is a haze of magic emitted out of the boarfolk. 

The boarfolk created a society of sorts, small cities made of boarfolk and their enthralled demons. They were able to control weaker demons, but from what I could see, not a single demon champion.

Instead, we followed the footsteps of the stronger boarfolk and observed that their ‘base’ abilities were similar to animal tamers. They controlled the demons as their pets, and empowered their ‘pets’ to do the fighting. Maybe they even were beast tamers at one point, but then turned their talents towards the demons. 

Unfortunately, this link would be supercharged whenever there is a demon king present. A link that would corrupt them.

In short, when a demon king arrives into this world, the entirety of the Boarfolk suffers from demonic corruption, and transforms into a demon. This process would strangely reverse itself once the demon king dies. 

Not all boarfolk transformed into the demons, like the children, and the boarfolk constructed special locations to house their young boarlings during the demon years, supported by a group of boarfolk that did not control any single demon. 

They essentially sold themselves to the demons. The demons spared the boarfolk, because of the demonic corruption through their mental link. I would love to capture them and study how their mental link worked. 

It should be possible for me to create more powerful versions of the boarfolk’s demonic control, and turn the demons against itself. Though, looking at how the demons’ mana worked, it’s likely such a thing would be outright rejected by my domain holders, unless the circumstances truly demanded it. 

As of now, the world is still relatively stable. The rifts have not yet opened, but there was a glowing path in the skies above. The demon king was coming soon, and war would break out. 

The boarfolk always invaded the rest of them, and so the other two races erected massive fortifications along the border. 

But we’ve seen enough. We would send Valthorns here to understand them in detail. It was time for the domainholders to keep moving.

***

Ninth Peripheral World 

The Tale of the Two Continents

The portals opened, and Edna landed on the roof of what seemed to be a heavily populated city. Kafa followed. 

Crowds. They saw crowds, and everyone lived their lives. It almost seemed like none of them worried about the demons. 

“Well. This doesn’t look like a demon world.” Kafa laughed after a week of traveling. It was just more and more people. It was just a world with a lot of humanoids. Humans, lizardfolk, dwarves, elves, centaurs. It had most of the types of people, and yet they were all trapped on this massive continent-sized island. 

An island that clearly didn’t have enough resources to meet everyone’s desires, and so they fought each other over what little they had. The land was mediocre, the metals were mediocre, and the magic in the air was thin. 

It was a massive continental island, home to hundreds of millions, and not a single demon in sight. There were few forests in this world, instead, everyone lived in cities, or in the case of the elves and dwarves, turned forests into cities. 

Farmland was also plenty, but unlike the other worlds, the farms here were heavily worked. They could feel the presence of many effects and abilities trying to force more output out of their limited farmlands. 

A large, heavily populated world with a scarcity issue. 

But only on this continent. Edna and Kafa knew the world was much bigger, and so they used magic, and traveled. 

Then they discovered a few more islands, with more resources, but infested with monsters.

And even further away, another full sized continent overrun with demons.

It was as if imagining Treehome, in a situation where a demon king stuck to one continent and never left it. The humanoids claimed one continent for themselves, and the demons claimed another. The continent of demons was densely covered with demons of varying strength, and the demon king was a gigantic three headed demonic elephant that was already digging into the ground. 

In a decade or two, it would completely dig into the core, and this world’s way of life would change forever. 

The rest of the smaller islands were just overrun with magical creatures, and this was where the humanoids ventured for wealth and resources.

But the great demon continent remained forever a land none dared touch. A land of death and destruction. 

They referred to it as the cursed continent. 

I couldn’t help but feel a tinge affected. That was what they called the Central Continent, once. 

“Well.” Kafa and Edna landed on the island, and Kafa looked at his fellow warrior. “This world’s not in trouble. Not yet, anyway.”

“Seen enough?” Edna smiled after about a month of travel.

Kafa sighed. They’ve largely formed an assessment in that month. “The great part of this world is its population. If our goal as an institution is to truly collect talent, then a significantly larger surviving population is more likely to produce the talent we need.”

“Outside of the population, I suppose you are right. Let’s go to the next.”

Each world had their own demon kings, and each had their own ticking timer. Some had more time, some had less. 

We would likely need to do a full sweep of all the worlds, clean it up for demon kings, and then decide where to properly set up base. There were six more worlds to go.

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