Tree of Aeons

Year 197 

Another otherworldly episode of Lumoof

Lumoof spent time in the other world, making friends and establishing connections, and I redirected my attention back home. 

Home. Snek shared all he knew about the demons. 

Since demon kings were not outright creations but were instead ‘grown’ in these large spawning pools, I wondered whether this meant their power level was usually determined by the world that spawned these demon kings. The core’s energy, or the world’s energy was drained to feed the demon king. 

Essentially, these demons figured out a way to channel an entire world’s ley lines to create demon kings. 

I was amused that this actually meant that some of the earlier accusations against me that I was a demon god could therefore be true, since using ley lines to create dungeons is probably in the same category as creating demon kings from ley lines. 

No, more importantly, could I do the same? 

Currently, I’m essentially using ley lines to create dungeons, which then translates to experience, to more powerful subordinates. 

If Snek’s understanding is correct, after all, he could still be wrong since he is just an observer of the demon king’s spawning pools, it should be possible for me to ‘grow’ a demon king using the powers of a world. Essentially, I could remove the dungeon part, and essentially somehow use the ley line to create stronger subordinates directly. 

Of course, this is the magical equivalent of me knowing that birds can fly, and then theorising that I should be able to fly too if I have wings, and now I just need to go about actually creating the wings. I certainly don’t know the nitty gritty details about plane designs at all. 

Patreeck and my artificial minds got down to work and helped consider the issue and possible hurdles I would have to clear.

One - ley lines are currently difficult to manipulate. The demon kings must have a means of manipulating ley lines in order to create more demon kings. I believe this is true, because the [forest rod] is one such strange item. On this aspect, I would either have to steal the demon’s way of manipulating ley lines, or invade that demon world and see how these strange artefacts are made. 

Two - Demons have a way of directing energy and mana into creating life or creatures at that level of power. I think it is probably the harder hurdle. For me, I am not able to do so, and yet, I suspect my [soul forge] colors may essentially be the one of the components. If each color of the soul forge created a more ‘complete’ soul, a full soul forge should, in theory, create a whole soul. Essentially, I could create artificial souls that possess sentience and sapience above my existing artificial souls, and for them to then function as a vessel of the power from these ley lines. Based on what Snek described, these spawning pools seemed to be large, growing things. 

It may be a good idea to ‘invade’ a demon world just to gain control over these spawning pools. These demons were also thematic, and that implied that each spawning pool had to be configured differently in order to produce demon kings with different types of powers. 

I suppose in our world’s terms, it is the equivalent of one country without planes that witnessed another country’s planes, and now it tried to make those planes by collecting the pieces of the planes and piece them together. Or maybe just capturing the factories that made the planes. 

It’s possible that the schematics are offsite, and the factory is just an assembly plant.

In any case, it was an idea I kept at the back of my head. 

-

It was just Ken, Snek, Stella, Edna, Kei and Prabu in the room, when I introduced Stella and Kei for the first time to both Ken and Snek. Lumoof was still in another world.

Snek paused and looked at Stella. “She has void energy swirling around her. Have you discovered the way of the zaratans?” The zaratans disappeared from Snek’s world. 

Stella smiled. “I was taught by a zaratan.” 

Snek was amazed. “That means you could send me home.”

Stella shook her head. “Possible, but I believe we should first match our astral maps.”

Snek gladly shared. This snake spirit was incredibly cooperative. The mages of Snek’s world did have a map, but their maps were derived from whatever knowledge they stole or spied from the demons. We were able to roughly, using the ‘dragon-demon’ world as a point of reference, to roughly estimate the likely locations of Snek’s homeworld.

“No. Your world is too far. Beyond our astral vision, and so, I sadly see no way of getting you there.”

Ken watched Snek and Stella interact, but then he asked.  “Wait a minute, all this talk about going to other worlds, is only relevant to Snek. I want to know, is it possible to send us home?”

Stella shook her head. “Sadly, it seems earthlings and other earth variants exist in a different layer of space entirely. Only the gods are able to pierce that veil... for now.”

“Could Star Mana do so?” Prabu asked. To the archmage hero, star mana was the solution for everything. In most cases, that’s usually right. 

Kei then added. “Unfortunately, Stella’s void magic is incompatible with star mana. We’ve seen it react horribly when used together. So your trip is one-way.”

For now, I suppose. They could die and their gods reincarnate them back to where they started. 

The news that Stella couldn’t send him home was disappointing for Snek, but it was not the end. There was a moment of silence as everyone was in their own thoughts. For Stella, and myself, Snek’s own stellar maps expanded my own view of the multiverse. We knew, at least, it was located really far away, and somehow these demons are masters of these void paths. 

“There will be a demon king in four years. It may be possible for you to sneak through those rifts.” If it’s the correct world. Each demon king is linked to a different world.

Snek was aware of the need of mana-modulation and resonance to access those rifts. “Alternatively, I could wait until the right demon king appeared. One from my world. With the right items and ritual I could separate from Ken and he would be free to do whatever he wants.”

Ken, strangely, seemed to have an epiphany of his own. ‘But what if Snek and this tree plots something. It’s better- Wait what I am thinking? So what if they have a plot? Why should I even care? All I want to do is get out of this shit, that’s why I gave up the hero class. Does it matter if I live under an autocratic god-emperor of the world, so long as I don’t have to deal with it? No, if I want to live quietly and retire with a family, that’s actually good!’ 

Ken’s sudden change of heart seemed to make him smile. “Yeah. I actually want to just live somewhere safe and quietly for the rest of my life. Maybe it’s a good idea for us to separate.” 

No one heard him say it, well, maybe except Snek. 

Since no one responded to Ken’s statement, I merely continued with my proposal. “I think it's best to wait till the right demon king appears and figure out what’s the best way to send you back. We will have many demon kings to face over the next few decades anyway, and if it is on a rotational basis as you speculated, then your world will come around.”

We actually don’t know whether the paths to the demon worlds that faded away eventually return. The data of past demon king types has been insufficient to prove that there’s a larger ‘cycle’ in the background that rotated the demon kings like some constellation movement. 

My gut feel is there’s more than just the 8 or 10 lines we see in the sky. The gods said there are thousands or millions of demon worlds. So why are only these few worlds targeting our own?

No, what I also don’t understand is, why not just flood a world with thousands of demon kings? 

Is there some rule or perhaps a magical reason why they can’t come here directly?

-

Stella came and shouted in one of the rooms where my Tree of Prayers was.  

“Aeon. Aeon. You must see this. There’s a world that suddenly popped into our astral line of sight, and it’s moving quickly! We must visit it before it goes away.” 

Awfully convenient, but I suppose before this, I didn’t even know they came. We activated the monitor. It’s funny that I considered this world home. Actually, I feel it is my home, and its the same for Stella. 

We saw a moving shadow, small and barely noticeable. I would not have noticed it. It may have been there for some time. 

“It’s lucky that I saw it there. It’s thanks to Snek’s starmaps that I saw something faint that moved.” 

It was far, but reachable, at least from what I understood of Stella’s limits. But it moved quickly, and based on what I could tell, it would move out of Stella’s range within a year or two. It’s very dim, and as with worlds across space, they appeared like little bubbles. It was unique that the bubble was mostly dark, with little bits of light left. The other worlds, like the one Lumoof was in, were bright. “It’s a moving world.” 

“Yes. We should investigate it quickly. Pull Lumoof back and we’ll send him there now.” Stella insisted, while I can still reach it. “Or send Edna.” 

“No. It had to be Lumoof.” Lumoof spent a lot of time in the magic city of Maelga. 

“We have a small window of interacting with this world. Given it’s situation, it may be very different from what we’ve seen so far.”

Indeed. I could pull Lumoof back if I’m uncomfortable with the risks. All I needed was my seed to be deployed to this strange world. I immediately pinged Lumoof.

“Lumoof. We have a situation back home. I’ll need to send you elsewhere.” Lumoof nodded. He hurried off to make arrangements and said his goodbyes. It took three weeks for Lumoof to create a story that he would be away for some time. Luckily, no one asked too many questions. 

I pulled Lumoof back. I shared the view of the strange alien world that we saw.

“You want to send me there?”

“Yes. Stella said she will be able to send one. It has to be you, because I want to see what’s there.”

Lumoof nodded reluctantly. Stella immediately made preparations. 

I decided to name the world with the three large factions as Threeworlds, and the stray world as the Cometworld, since it’s behavior was comet-like. The fact that it drifted in and out of view suggested it had a path that it travelled through space. I was fascinated, and intrigued by what a world like that would be. 

“But Threeworlds? The magic city? There’s still so much to discover...” I could have put my clone tree somewhere just to lock my access to the world, but I decided it was better to wait. I wanted a good location, and I wanted to see whether it’s get certain special effects if my tree was located on some extremely powerful ley line. 

“We can return to Threeworlds later.” Threeworlds and that other world seemed to be somewhat ‘tidally-locked’, that our homeworld and these two worlds seemed perpetually close by. I think it wouldn’t leave us for a while. 

Lumoof stared. “Let’s go then.”

Stella quickly gathered her resources, and prepared far larger quantities of crystals than ever before. The spell strained her energy, and I had to support her with my vines. 

The portal opened, and my vines went through. “Quickly!” Stella shouted as she felt her void energies fading. The relatively faster movement of this cometworld through the void sea increased the cost and difficulty of the portal. It was essentially trying to throw a line at a moving speedboat. 

It’s land. I saw floating... islands? 

Lumoof stepped through, and I felt searing pain. It was a familiar one, a sensation of being torn apart. No, it’s like one was hanging by the side of a speedboat, or one of those tourist things, where the boat lowered a paraglider such that their leg’s partly in the water. I felt something smash into Lumoof’s body, and I tried my best to shield him from it. 

Lumoof went through. 

-

When we arrived, there were no trees, no grass. Just dirt and dust. The air was hot and burning, but filled with magic. Unpleasant, angry magic. It was as if mana itself took a personality, and it was unpleasant. The ground was unstable, and rumbled constantly. Huge chunks floated in the sky, and the sky was reddish. 

I felt it instantly.

This was a dying world. 

We saw a light, and it streaked across the red sky and smashed into somewhere off the horizon. Minutes later, a flash of light, and a shockwave of hot wind. There were more lights in the sky. 

I shielded Lumoof instantly and encased his body in an armor of wood. 

“What should we even do?” 

I activated my avatar form, and Lumoof turned into a massive tree. I spawned trees by the hundreds, and more magical labs. If there is somewhere or something left in this world-

I activated a dome of wood, there was another shockwave from another meteor. 

The red sky was filled with it. The sun was red, and it was large. My sensors tried to sense for any magic, but there were too many of these shockwaves, they contaminated the data. It’s like trying to listen for the footsteps of ants when there’s a band playing right next door. 

Boom. Another shockwave. 

“We should return, Aeon. There’s most likely nothing here.”

“Wait.” I said. If Snek can survive in their world, there must be survivors. Even if all I can do for them is evacuate them offworld, that may be good enough. 

As my roots spread, I felt something touch me from the deepest of my roots. It spoke to me directly.

Child of another world...

Who’s that? But before anything, I felt like I was entranced. 

We are dying, the sun father nears its end. Our world doomed. Save our children, they are there. 

[You have received a living map of the Cometworld]

The map appeared before me like-

The ground cracked, and it tore. A part of it started to float. 

“We have to move. Quickly.” The map instantly marked certain red spots, which I presumed where this voice wanted me to go. Lumoof closed his eyes and then brought out a magical scroll. 

[Greater Teleport].

We were instantly warped, and I was suddenly on another cracking island. It looked like a city, or at least, a castle. I saw people. No, they were... dogs? They had the head of a dog, and they were each a different type of dog. 

They looked at me in horror. “A monster!”

“Kill-”

A meteor smashed into one of the castle’s towers, and incinerated it instantly. People were fleeing, but they didn’t know where they were going. 

We saw another meteor. Lumoof instantly jumped onto one of the walls, and created a wooden shield. The meteor smashed into the wooden shield and disintegrated. My first direct hit from the falling meteors, and I realised, it contained star mana. Within these meteors were star mana. My shield would not have disintegrated so easily. Not to something as simple as falling rocks from space. 

I turned, and saw more dogpeople, they looked like mages, with their stone staff and crystals. “You.” 

Back home, Stella was in no condition to send anyone back. She had collapsed after Lumoof went over. How do I...

No. The clone seed was one of the ways I could save these people. I could exploit the Tree of Clones to send someone to me. 

Unlike the moon, which never had any trees, this world once had trees. I knew that from the brief avatar state, and from when my roots touched the ground. 

“Lumoof. Place my seed in the ground. Now.” Lumoof leapt off the walls and landed on the dirt. 

“Are you sure? This world is dying.” Another meteor crashed elsewhere. This was a world experiencing a meteor-pocalypse.

“Lumoof, are you suggesting we let these people die?” I mean, I usually don’t care, but I suppose seeing a world dying right before my eyes was something else. This was like watching a movie where someone used a black hole in the center of a planet. 

“I can always make more seeds, but let us not waste time.” 

My seed was planted in the ground, and it absorbed the mana from the ground, and quickly turned into a massive tree. The dog people looked in wonder. I had never used the Tree of Clone’s transportation ability. I didn’t expect to have to do an evacuation of an entire planet, but I suppose there’s a first for everything. 

Our childrens die.

I felt the voice again through my roots. Lumoof immediately shouted. “This world is dying, we will send you somewhere safe. Come quickly! Tell everyone!” 

The dog people talked among themselves, and some walked to the tree. The first dogpeople to volunteer looked like a warrior of somekind, he had armor and a spear on his back. He touched my clone tree, and a large tree-door appeared. 

I sent him through, and felt it drain my own mana. 

When he appeared on the other side, Edna had already mustered a group on standby. The dogpeople looked shocked, and the first thing he saw was the blue skies outside. 

“The skies. They are still blue!” He said. I would talk to them later. 

The dogpeople looked apprehensive, but Lumoof was persuasive, and more went through the door. More meteors were crashing, and more of the land cracked and splintered. Essentially, this was a planet that was in the process of crumbling. Within months the whole planet would turn into separated chunks. 

The rest of the dogpeople of this town went through, I couldn’t tell who was what, it seemed some of them were more important than the others, but eventually almost everyone went through. 

There were a few of them left, who stayed behind. Not out of suspicion, but to help. The dogpeople had faced the falling stars for weeks. It started with a strange twisting of space, and the stars changed. The sun was once golden, and the skies were once blue, but it turned red, and the world started breaking apart. 

Many cities have been destroyed by the falling stars since then. 

There were no demons here, just nothing more than plain old stellar catastrophe. 

This was no time to hold back on relics, so Lumoof used [Teleport] scrolls liberally and moved to the other cities. The map was real time, and the red dots marked surviving cities. Each day more of these red dots vanish. 

I didn’t know why, but I felt really sad. 

Our childrens die

Sadly, the inter-dimensional transportation can only be performed at my main tree of clones. 

“You must go too. We need your portals, else more will die.” I told Stella three days after we were at the Cometworld. By now, the dogpeople had briefed the rest of my Valthorns of what happened in their world.

They were still an official secret, of course, and they never left my Valley of the Unrotten. Instead, the Valthorns set up an entire refugee camp in my valley. It was nostalgic, of course. 

My valley was once the refugee camp of the surviving New Freekans. 

Stella, with her portal, worked with Lumoof and opened portals between the continents and cities of the Cometworld. Most of these dogpeople, they called themselves the Canar. Together, for weeks and months, we sent the Canari people to our world. 

We didn’t really negotiate much, it seemed the people there had acknowledged their doom, so Lumoof’s presence was perhaps that of an angel of salvation. 

The sunfather collapses

We couldn’t save everyone. Every day I saw more red dots vanish, either because of meteors, or from the sundered earth. The earth cracked more every day, and eventually, the last red dot was gone from the map. Everyone I could save was saved. Millions more have died.

350,000 Canari went through those portals over the course of months, and arrived at my Valley of the Unrotten. We immediately found an isolated, quiet place on the central continent, and transported them secretly there through our network of underground tunnels. 

Then, I sent both Lumoof and Stella back, and in the world of the Cometworld, my tree of clones was the last living thing that remained. 

Stella returned, exhausted, and rested. The next day, she vented her despair. “I could’ve done more if we found them earlier.”

At this juncture, I thought about what would have happened if I chose [Crown of Magic] or [Will of the World]. With Crown of Magic, I should be able to create more void mana and therefore open those portals myself. Not just that, in theory, I should be able to use those spells through Lumoof. With Will of the World, I’d probably try to move our world closer to it. 

The Cometworld’s meteor shower intensified, and the world cracked. A huge chunk had separated, and the weather had turned almost unlivable. 

But my tree of clones was not something so easily destroyed. My roots extended deeper into the ground. There was something I wanted to do. 

I sought out the voice. I may not be able to reach the core of my world, but I should be able to reach the exposed core of this Cometworld. 

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