Tree of Aeons

Year 134

Mini-Dragons. More accurately, demon-drakes. The demons had opted for a strategy I speculated a few decades ago that I thought would be effective against heroes. No fodder units, just high-tier demons. 

They made it into drakes. Fire-breathing and lightning-breathing drakes. At first, news was hard to come by. The Central continent was on lockdown after all. But the drakes spawned and spread quickly, and somehow they multiplied rather quickly too. Just 10 drakes could lay waste to an entire town, and the defenses would be hard pressed to even counter them. The drakes would fly up in the air and just use their breath attacks until the defenders were dead. 

It reminded me of Alexis. Alexis easily torched the forest too when she was possessed by the demon’s will. Decades later, I’m still likely to be rather defenseless against a similar tactic. I mean, I have spiders who could fire ensnaring webbings, but I am highly skeptical of their effectiveness against mini-champion class drakes. 

As a result, I’ve been using my class-fusion ability to train specialist anti-air. [Sharpshooters] and [Bowmasters]. These are regular rangers and archers, upgraded a little more. But still, I think they would be insufficient if there are champion-class demon-drakes. I suspect they would be more like... dragons?

The blockade has faltered in parts, because there was chaos in the Eastern Continent. We receive news of the citizens fleeing underground, as these flying demons were mostly unchallenged. What good are walls, when these demons just fly over them?

In fact, what good are my walls? My walls wouldn’t do shit either. 

“Jura, we need to restart our underground bunker project.”

In the days of New Freeka we built a massive sewer that’s also an underground bunker. But it proved ineffective when the ground itself liquified into demonic goop. “Will it work this time?”

This is essentially air superiority. The demons have it, and unless I can field dragons or garudas and whatnot, the best defense is some kind of anti-air defensive array. Magical cannons to counter them.

We started work on massive anti-demon ballistas, and a special beetle-spider collaboration, a beetle-cannon that would fire spiders at the demons. These spiders would hold onto large vines and they would ‘ensnare’ these flying demons. It would pull them to the ground where the rest of my forces and my root strikes can easily disable them. 

Ballistas, nets, and shields. Harpoons and arrows too. 

This was the time for my upgraded classes to contribute. The upgraded master woodworkers and weapon-makers assisted to make stronger anti-demon weapons. Their skill allowed them to make these ballista bolts lighter, go a bit further, and deal more damage. They can even weave a few extra enchantments than usual. 

More weapons, with a focus on anti-air. There’s also a side effort on improving my mages, but the thing was, mages are hard to scale and reproduce in large numbers. Mages are ultimately dependent on their personal talent and I can’t give them much anti-demonic effects, unlike these ballistas and arrows, where I can easily improve their damage output against these demons by using special wooden materials made from my body. 

The demons remained mostly on the Eastern Continent. News was sporadic, and it seemed like these demons didn’t attack everywhere. But they hit really, really hard, with large groups of flying demon-drakes. 

So, the War of the Eviltree entered a quiet phase. Other than the blockade, no one actually did any large scale fighting. A time to hunker down, and prepare for the eventual demonic conflict. Every general worth their salt would make plans. How to deal with these demon-drakes. Archers. Ballistas. Huge army of mages. 

Every King would be watching the skies, for when these demons would cross the oceans and assail their lands. In an odd twist of events, the blockade essentially became a ring of ‘watchers’ that helped the Central Continent act as a chain of lookout points for these flying demons.

“What’s the last record of flying demons?” 

“Uh... according to surviving records, 500 or so years ago?” One of Kavio’s assistants answered. “It was reported then that they were horned demons with massive wings that threw fireballs.” 

Ah. “Do we have records of the heroes?”

“Not much, other than their names and the Kingdoms they’ve founded.”

Hmmm. It’s annoying that the history of the world’s in such a great mess. No one actually knows what happened. Even Lilies has only a slice of the world, and only from their perspective. The idea of an objective history rarely exists because of how frequently the demons ‘reset’ every attempt to collect information in a single place. 

So, I decided, maybe I should throw my hat into this game as well. “Have there been great libraries in the past?”

It seemed like a thing for Trees to be collectors of the world’s knowledge. It’s almost tropey that heroes would inevitably consult an ancient tree for some historical context. So well, I should play my part in the trope. 

“But you can’t read...” 

“Correct.” And that is a problem. I had people read to me in the past, like when I was studying the runes. I already had a program to collect books, but that was in the days of New Freeka. Many of the collected books were destroyed when the corruption and flames torched the valley, but some were still safe, stored inside my [secret hideout].

If I could create a library, and make it into a skill like what I did with Meela’s Hotel, I could fuse an artificial mind into the new library-skill, and create a living tree-librarian. 

And I attempted this on a few [subsidiary trees]. I made shelves after shelves and stocked them up with books. 

In this world, books are expensive. They are handwritten or magically written, so the cost of producing books has not gone down at all. They are also made of paper. But at the same time, this was not true everywhere. There ARE cities where books are common, because some of the mages have set up book-making enterprises, but in a world where global trade is still in its infancy, this sort of practice has not spread. 

But I didn’t get it. Even after two months, there was no special library tree that I could make. 

-

I could use my special demon-slayer class now. I mean, I could assign it to one of my master archers, or Jura. 

“I’m not a good matchup against flying demons.” Jura shrugged. “I’d think Lausanne would be a better fit, but she’s not here. Or Lovis, [spearmaster]. Or the new [sharpshooters] or [marksmen]?”

He wasn’t keen on fighting more demons. “Oh, and Lausanne sent a note. She encountered some of these demons and there’s a ‘birther’ demon that spawns more demons. These birthers are wingless.”

Oh that’s a good thing. That meant that these demons can’t fly across the ocean and then start a new nest. Unless a rift appeared here, and these wingless demons appeared through it. But that is an assumption that these wingless demons stay wingless, or there’s no transformation-process for large demon-drakes to become these wingless demons.

In short, well, we still don’t know whether we’re really safe. 

-

Consolidation. Jasmine and my team of artificial minds focused on ensuring that the new territories are integrated into the land. 

It’s a case of fighting fire, really. We could sense areas where there’s growing discontent, and we would deploy Aeonic Priests and the Valthorns to help calm the place down, and reduce the possibility of an unrest. 

It’s a very Civ-like problem, dealing with growing unrest across the territories, and therefore demanded a social response. It’s relatively effective as my artificial mind’s observational abilities give me insight into the problem. I would then inform the priests of the problem, and they would then solve it.

In a sense, I help to cut out the ‘discovery’ aspect of their social work. In any social unhappiness, it’s very tempting to solve the symptoms, instead of the root cause. In fact, this is normally the cause back home, because the governments have no ability to read minds, and also, they are unable to communicate with themselves. Various departments are each like blind men touching an elephant, unable to form a complete coherent picture as they do not communicate.

The artificial minds’ are overpowered in this sense. Their ability to operate as a unified AI essentially meant they could seamlessly gather multiple data points on a single person and stitch them together, bypassing all the departmental silos common in government institutions and corporate structures. 

Using my artificial minds’ observational skills, it was also a lot easier to find out who wasn’t playing their part in society. Like a noble who’s hoarding too much gold. Or somebody’s collecting more taxes than what the law mandated. 

Still, unhappiness is something that not only needs to be managed, the people must also be directed into productive activities that feel satisfying. That usually involved getting to do work, and finding enjoyment in that work. A difficult task, but priests of this world are well equipped with skills that help them to do just that. 

My artificial minds also spied extensively on the nobles and the ruling class, and I would then use that information to also help the priests in navigating the nobility. 

It’s a tense relationship between the nobles and these priests. To them, they view our priests as ‘invaders’, and my priests, though they have training, still need help. They have to be sensitive, and be seen as working with the nobles, not against them. The intention is to convert these nobles to my faith, and have them work with us. That, to some extent, involved mild re-education of the nobles.

So, it was one of the Decarches who gave an extremely brilliant idea.

“Aeon, as it is, we have a school for priests.”

“Yes.”

“I believe it is also appropriate to have a school for the noble’s children and the royal children.”

I paused and considered the idea. Indeed, if I do want to culturally indoctrinate the entire continent, I should go beyond that. I need schools in every single country on this continent such that they all get history and views from the Freshlands’ perspective. I would need it to work hand in hand with the aeonic priests too, such that they also get exposed to my faith. 

But a first step would be to gather all the noble children and give them an education with a Freshland’s bias. That way, these nobles would take these ideas and principles that we inculcate and they would later act as our ambassadors. One day when they take over their respective regions they would naturally seek to be closer to the Freshlands. 

It’s a first step for a continent-wide compulsory education system. Right now most children do some kind of labor, apprenticeship. The wealthier ones employ tutors to train them in particular fields. 

I could capitalise on the present Valthorn’s reputation as a group of strong warriors to entice the nobles. I would make warriors out of their children. I would make leaders out of them too. I could even dangle special classes or upgraded classes as rewards for the best performing noble children, thereby granting these nobles a chance to get ahead in life. 

A noble children academy. If I do this, I will be the founder of an isekai academy center. What if the heroes end up isekai-ing into my noble academy? Or some otherworlder reincarnated as a lowly noble?

No matter. If I want cultural strength, a noble academy would work very well in the current framework. I could set up the noble academy, the priest academy, and the Valthorn military academy as competing institutions, and essentially acting as each other’s check and balances. It would work, and I get to avoid the whole marriage debacle too. It was a great idea, and if I set it up within Patreeck’s mind-reading range, I’d be able to get greater insight into the thoughts and personalities of these young nobles. 

Even if I hate the whole idea of a noble class, this would allow me to collect data on the noble’s powers across a vast sample of young nobles. I could then compare this data against the Valthorns and have a good understanding of how nobles compare against regular children. I would then use this to shape my education for the common folk, and eventually set up a school for commoners. I would then lift that class up, and build another group of elite from that group. 

“I agree, Patreearch.” I said a few days later. “The idea of a school for nobles and royals is a one with great potential.” Indeed, it was even natural that the idea came from the clergy. The idea of the modern university or college had roots in various missionary schools and cathedral schools. 

I summoned Jura, Kavio, and the entire Council of Representatives. The representatives are pretty much entirely nobles from the various segments of the Freshlands, and so, the pioneer batch of students will most likely be their offsprings. I explained the idea to them.

It wasn’t entirely a foreign concept. Some royal families have such similar academies, but they were all small. The various other temples operated a distributed education system where the education is conducted by the clergy. 

There was a mixed reaction at first.

Then I dangled the reward for the children. “I would grant the top 10 students a select choice of upgraded classes, skills, and equipment.” Then each of these nobles saw the potential. It would be a 4-year programme from the nobles, and quickly some of the nobles volunteered the children. It would be between ages 16 to 25 for humans, for elves, during their teen years, any time between 18 to 40, for the treefolk and so on, during their formative pre-adulthood years. 

“Jura and Yvon. Both of you will continue to lead the Valtrian and Valthorn Academies.” Their priorities should remain with the Valthorns. They are my de facto military arm, and I see the Valthorns essentially as the Military Academy. 

I would have to hire new people to lead this entire practice, and so, I set out to gather generals, retired administrators, merchants, and people who are old and have a reasonably high level. 

I also started checking around the surroundings of Freshka for a location. It would be a massive mini-city of it’s own, in the same breath as the School of Treelogy.

In my mind, I would call it the Ivy League College, but that sounded too much like copyright infringement so I decided I was going to call it the Universitree. But then, the ‘Universitree’ would be a better fit for the university of the commoners. I even have a slogan already. 

Unitree is strength!

Eventually I settled on a name for the school for these nobility, the Freshlands’ Treetiary College of Governance, or the FTC. I wanted to avoid any specific mention of nobles in the name, such that I could eventually convert it into a regular college that can also accept non-nobles, so I had to plan this out. 

ALso, there was no immediately suitable place for this college, so I decided to call our [master builders] and [grand druids] to terraform and shape a land into a place suitable to build the FTC. It would take a full 6 months for a place to be built, even with the resources, but at the same time, I also quickly auctioned up smaller subdivided plots of land in the FTC zone to all our allied kingdoms, that they can build a mini-palace for their offsprings in the future. 

From what I understood of the nobles, they have a strong need to ‘maintain’ face and so, allowing the nobles and royalties to invest in a plot of land to show off to other young children would be popular. 

For the first batch, I had to start off with a bang. So, I looked at my skill and class seeds, and experimented on the [Lord] classes from the dead nobles, and eventually, I made two classes, from a mashup of Rangers and Traders with the Lord classes. 

[Ranger Lord] and [Trade Lord]. In addition to [Marksmen], [General] and various other classes. 

We announced it to our allies that the best two students will be given these class seeds, which they may consume for themselves or gift to anyone they please. Then, real interest started to come in. Kings from across our allied nations all volunteered to send a small group of their children to vie for the spot. 

Of course, now that we have students, we then had to build a syllabus. We already have one from the Valthorns, but the Valthorns are essentially a martial school. They are exceptionally combat focused. 

This programme would have to be a little bit balanced, across combat, magic, trade and governance, culture and history, and equally important, an education in the aeonic faith. 

The goal was cultural dominance on the continent, secure the Freshlands’ place in the world and establishing myself as a legitimate faith and religion, with my own followers to push back against these 4 enemy faiths. So the combat focus would have to be watered down, and the other aspects expanded. 

I had to gather a few Decarches, some of the Freshlands best traders and makers to give their input, together with those level 30-40 tutors. I would also have to ‘train’ the tutors such that they become respectable in their own right, else this school wasn’t going to work. Level 30 to 40 is... average. 

-

Freshka, would transform into the home of 3 large competing schools. The Valthorn Academy located in Freshka itself, and the associated military fields and locations. The School of Treelogy in another outskirt area of Freshka, as a school for my clergy. Then lastly the Treetiary College as the school for future nobility. Secretly, I also earmarked a large spot for the future 4th school. The Universitree of the Masses. As it is, I can only gather sufficient talent for one school, and I didn’t need to increase the tension from managing noble-commoner dynamics. 

It’s a plan that would take centuries to play out, but if I do this right, this generation of young leaders would eventually propagate my faith. This was an investment that would only pay off at least 20 to 30 years into the future. 

-

“I’m impressed, but at the same time, it’s hypocritical.” Yvon said one evening. “Aeon once said he hated the royalty, and here he is, amplifying their power.”

Jura nodded. “I agree. It’s pragmatic though. But I’m sure he is aware of the hypocrisy. Lately, Aeon is rather... calculative.”

“It’s those trees. I mean, you’ve seen them, right? The weird flashing ones.” 

“Nope.” Jura shrugged as he watched a bunch of archers practice another volley. The Valthorn’s focus has been anti-air. [Archers], [Rangers] working with our [master woodworker] to make anti-demonic wooden arrows, further enchanted with magic. In a mildly interesting development, the senior [Aeonic Priests] and [Patreearches] gained a skill that allows them to bless weapons and people with [aeonic-style anti-demonic effects], on top of their regular [holy]-element enchantments. So, the Treeology School is also assisting to produce ‘enchanted’ weapons. 

I wonder how the [holy]-element can coexist when I’m the patron deity and I have only one [holy-enchantment] magic that I inherited from long long ago. 

I’ve also observed that the priests’ powers are mostly independent from mine, even if ‘derived’ from me. In the sense that the priests can use as much power as they have, and I would not be affected. It’s not as if their use of [aeonic-abilities] are a drain on me. Quite unlike Lausanne’s Warden, which has a defined monthly star-mana maintenance cost. 

How does that work?

Is it like the system created a specific pool of energy from which all these aeonic priests then call on for power? Or are all powers derived from the system, and I’m just the ‘lawmaker’, but not the ‘source’ of the power? 

This is certainly a rather weird system.

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