Tree of Aeons

349

White suns. While many worlds' suns appeared white from the surface of their various worlds, they were not considered 'white'. Many were more on the yellowish scale of colors.

This was only clear when one stood at the very edge of the world's reality bubble. Even Treehome's sun wasn't white. 

Thus, it proved a lot harder for us to find one than we first anticipated. The colors of suns was not something we readily recorded, but there was one demon world that we knew did have a white sun. 

However, there were no souls here. Nothing for the white sun to 'melt'. There was no mini-world where souls could die and then melt.

Then, Alka brought up Darkgard III's white sun. 

So, I recalled Hoyia all the way from her current duties and sent her to investigate. 

The three once-separated worlds were now joined, and yet somehow, it maintained three different positions in the void sea. 

For the void mages, standing on the now united Darkgard was like standing at an unusual intersection of three roads, and they could hop into three different parts of the void sea.

The three Darkgardian Worlds had merged to form a single solar system with three orbiting planets, with a single, beautiful white sun at its heart. That same sun was also somehow three different suns at the same time, each world still saw their sun slightly differently, perhaps as a result of their distance from the sun. 

Yet, even in the closest world to the Darkgardian Sun there was none of this 'White' soul energy that we were looking for. 

We moved even closer to the sun, just to be sure, and found nothing. 

As I was increasingly frustrated, I wondered whether I could just ask for help. So, through my node tree's roots on Darkgard, I tried to reach to the core and reconnect with the Will of the World once more. 

***

My roots stretched deeper into the ground, and though a node on Darkgard didn't have most of my abilities, and thus the trees were not that durable, I still possessed the benefit of incredibly large numbers.

I went deep, and strangely enough, the core extended a ley line and met me halfway.

I felt three shattered pieces of will, gradually reforming into a single whole. This reformation started years ago, and it is still not yet complete.

But I felt the strength it possessed and realized it felt more robust. More connected. A shattered world eager to restore itself to be a single whole. 

Their voices still felt like three overlapping voices, not yet truly united. But their thoughts and answers were coherent enough.

What you see is not what we can give. It is not here. The white sun you seek is pure, and it is a rarity even among the stars. 

Ah. Darn.

But I realized the other gods might have them, and so I sent Hoyia, as my envoy, on a trip to visit the three other gods in search of this special white sun. ȓάŊö฿Ès

"I know of it. These are the ancient remnants of a sun. They are small, but incredibly dense. There are none of them in my worlds." Hawa answered. "But, you will find them in the graveyards of the older worlds. I believe they are located on the fringes, so you would take a while to find them." 

Through Hoyia, I asked. "How do the old gods overcome the limitations of the [Soul Forge]?"

"We don't. We use the faith system to alter the souls directly. The souls can be built in many ways, the [Forge] is one of a few known ways. [Blood] and [Spirit] mages can dabble in the soul as well, though their paths are longer and more dispersed. As a god, faith allows me to do many, many things."

It sounded like a White Dwarf type of sun, or perhaps, a neutron star. 

So, that was another thing to look for. 

***

Meanwhile, Lumoof, Stella, and Edna were still deep within the demon's barrier. The entire world was flooded with demonic spawns, and unlike the other demon worlds, there were no pits, no paths that led to the Core of the world. 

So, we had to dig our own. Or cut our own.

The land itself was made of demonic flesh. 

We cut into it like we were carving into the meat of a gigantic beast, hoping to reach the heart. The more we dug, the more we encountered strange demonic flesh. 

Demonic flesh that functioned like magical ley lines and channeled magical energy everywhere. Demonic worms and critters attacked us as we dug deeper. 

For months and months we cut and hacked the fleshground beneath, and we ventured closer. There was no food to be harvested in these worlds. The air was demonic and filled with demonic spores. 

If we came as invaders, we would have no natural resources to harvest. My treefolks theorized that they would be weakened by walking on these types of worlds, and my army would have to ship in all their own supplies. 

A part of me wanted to believe that there might be normal worlds amongst all these hundreds and thousands.

But Stella's void mana quickly surveyed those worlds that she could, and she answered with a shake of her head. 

"Not one in the hundreds of the outer group of worlds. There seems to be some closer to the inner areas that looked and felt normal, but everything else here is just full of demonflesh worlds." Stella answered. 

It made me really curious what was at the heart of the demonflesh worlds. 

Was there still a core? 

Or was it replaced by something else altogether?

***

Year 324

The journey into the depths took far longer than we anticipated. There were, in other words, walls of demonic flesh to cut through, and Lumoof also sent samples of the demonflesh back to Treehome.

My mages and researchers indulged in the magical research, testing out their bodies and signatures, and we discovered something potentially horrifying, if unleashed at a greater scale to the wider world.

The demons developed star-mana resistant demons. 

Many of these 'true' demons did not suffer from a severe weakness to the heroes or their star mana. 

If normal demons were approximately ten times weaker against star mana, these demons were instead like normal creatures, with no natural weakness. 

My mages and researchers heavily poked into the samples of demonic flesh and realized that because they were some kind of demon-organic flesh, they were not 'spawned' in typical spawning pools. They were instead creations of a 'core'. 

These natural demons had to be created under the influence of the Core of a world truly under the demon's control, because they could not be spawned through the demon's usual spawning pools.

Star mana still had its advantages. They augmented their owner's physical abilities and on that front, these new resistances did not prevent the heroes from moving quickly and hitting far harder. It also did not prevent support type abilities.

It was primarily a counter of heroic spells and star mana-augmented magical attacks, which so happened to include quite a large variety of heroic abilities. 

Stella, Lumoof, and Edna were almost close to the Core of that True Demonworld when they were informed of the findings, and our immediate suspicion was that there might be an active 'controller' of the demons at the heart of it all.

The regular demons sent to attack and invade the rest of the worlds was to buy time for them to develop these powerful anti-hero demons. With large quantities of these demons, what was once a swarm of pesky flies would turn into a mob that overwhelms the heroes, because their traditional area of attack magics would be heavily weakened. 

Given that we had not seen these demons in the outer world, our next conclusion was that the demons intended for a large, outbound push to overwhelm the gods' defenses, before they were able to implement countermeasures. 

Even if the gods did manage to defeat the push, they would have been able to win over large quantities of new territories by flooding the peripheral and even outer core worlds with these new hero-resistant and star mana-resistant demons. 

I ordered the mages and researchers to find some weakness to these new demons, because we expected that there would be more of them. 

***

The Core did not look like a core anymore. Instead, it looked like a gigantic, pumping heart, truly corrupted by the demons into flesh. It throbbed, expanded, and shrunk at regular intervals, and we felt it beat. 

There were no demon kings here, but we felt as though we were in the presence of one. The heart was filled with so much demonic energy and core mana in a way we found surreal, a blend of magic that we had not seen on the worlds outside the true demonlands. 

It moved about, wiggling, expanding, and we felt its foul blend of demonic energies smash into our domains. Lumoof pushed ahead.

"Should we make contact? We may very well declare our presence to the wider world." 

"No. Destroy it. If there is something left, then we make contact." I declared. There was something so strange, abhorrent and alien about the demonic fleshcore that I did not want anything to do with it. 

"With pleasure." Lumoof's fists transformed into a gigantic wall of pointy wooden spears, and thrust them into the massive fleshcore. The very strike itself shook the entire fleshworld.

It was as if the entire world screamed in pain. The very walls of the heartchamber shook and vibrated, and we felt the thick, void mana of the world shift.

"Something's coming." Stella cursed. "There's a defensive mechanism. I'll mess with it." 

Lumoof struck again, repeatedly, while Stella flexed her newly earned void powers. She was no longer a tiny feeler trying to push back against the world. Now, her strength was vastly expanded, the level 200 threshold meant she could even meddle with an attempted inbound teleportation.

"I'll buy you time." Stella said. "I think we can do a hit and run."

Edna took the hint and pulled out her weapon, and added to the attack.

The entire fleshworld's vibrations and tremors were now constant, as more demonic spawn emerged from the walls around us. They were hostile, and attempted to fend off any attackers. They were like the demonworld's immune system, they came in through the paths we carved, from the holes in the wall, some emerged from the walls itself, as if the walls transformed into these star mana resistant demons. 

We summoned our normal magical allies to fend them off. Edna's magical knights and my beetles matched the demonic defense force while we ate away at our goal.

Edna's [Martial Paragon] sliced through the demonheart core, and Lumoof's powerful root strikes made holes in the flesh. We cut and poked repeatedly, each time more of the flesh was destroyed .

It tried to regenerate, but our strength was too much for it. Lumoof cut slices and stored them for later examination. 

The flesh of a transformed core. 

Stella, too, faced a battle we couldn't see. But we felt her battle as well, as the entire void sea rippled from the clashing energies. Her thick, dense void mana faced the invaders, and managed to delay their arrival. 

"You guys have an hour. Work faster!" Stella yelped.

"Got it!" Edna's arms never ceased, and the strikes against the demon planet's heart sounded like the blades of a master chef at work. As we made halfway through the demonflesh heart, we began to see a noticeable shift. The flesh in the world itself began to change and turn. The colors warped and turned brighter. They were less red. Less brown. Less... demonic.

We were now assaulted by attempted mental attacks.

[Domain blocked attempted mental attack]

[Domain blocked attempted mental attack]

[Domain blocked attempted mental attack]

The entire fleshheart shook, tensed up and shivered as if it was trying to scream through mouths that it did not have. It could not see us. And we refused to contact it.

Our slashes cut through the heart, the massive, massive object. The reality bubble around us began to weaken, and we felt the world itself shake. 

"Is the heart really the core?" Edna winced at the horrifying idea that a world's core could really be a demonic heart. "There's nothing underneath all of this?"

But our slashes, thrusts and everything we ripped up had nothing. It really was just demonic flesh. Layers and layers of demonic flesh. Peeled. Torn. 

I hoped to find something, and eventually, we did. It was small, no more than the size of a large ball. Big enough to fit in two hands. It looked so torn and weakened. 

An ugly, horribly misshaped stone. The only thing that wasn't made of demonflesh. 

A quick inspection confirmed our worst suspicions.

[Remnant World's Core - Drained of all energy and minerals, this is but the desiccated shell of what was once a normal world] 

We tore it out of the flesh, and the entire fleshworld convulsed as if its heart was ripped out. The walls of the world began to behave strangely, and it was not missed by our void domain holder.  Stella turned around and saw we got something. "Alright, alright. I think we've made a big mess today, wanna run?"

"Should we?" Edna asked. The rest of the demonflesh still pumped and attempted to fix itself, yet somehow, it couldn't. It was as if something essentially had been ripped out, and all attempts to restore itself just failed. "Lumoof, take us home?"

Lumoof paused and felt the pull of my clone's teleportation ability. "Come. Let's go." 

The three held hands, and with the misshaped rock in Lumoof's hand, we returned to Treehome. 

It didn't take very long for us to get a title

[ Title awarded : Fleshworld Destroyer ] 

[ You've gained a skill : Corebreaker Aura. Your attacks are more effective on planetary and world cores ]

***

"This is some monstrous stuff." Alka looked at the flesh of the demonworld bobbing about within a magical vat. "I have no idea what it is. It looks like flesh, but if we cut it small enough, it transforms into little sand-like things. Yet as a whole, it doesn't behave like sand."

There was an army of researchers working overtime on many of my whims. Decades and centuries of equipment upgrades, magical tools, research. 

The air was thick with anticipation and energy. 

The news of what we'd seen would spread quickly, but a part of me wondered whether they were waiting for something. 

In another magical storage container was the rock that we had recovered from the True demonworld. 

Unlike the other cores, it was just a husk. It no longer contained a Will of the World. I examined it, and then, I felt a voice reach out to me.

"One of ours, and why the [system] considers demons to be enemies. A thank you, from us, to those who brought back one of our many once-sisters."

A voice from the Will of the World. 

[ You've received a [World Blessing]. Those who worship your faith on Treehome have improved experience gain. This [World Blessing] will last for a hundred years. ] 

A small thank you. 

Alka walked over and also looked at the rock. "Nothing we can do about it." 

"Strange that it still acted as the anchor for the demon's heart." I thought. "Even though it no longer did anything."

"Perhaps, and I theorize, the demons may want to get rid of inorganic cores altogether. They have no choice, given the realm's limitations. They've drained the core's power where they could, but until the [system] allows them to fully overwrite the rules, they have no choice but to hold it as proof of their authority as the Will of the World." Alka said. "What we can see on the demon worlds outside of the barrier are just the first stages of what they are doing inside."

"Should we warn the gods?"

"The friendly ones, sure."