Tree of Aeons

Chapter 358. Asymmetreec Warfare

Library of Eras

The streets of the city were filled with noise. The constant hum of work in the background. There were at least a few kinds of steam-powered machines and crystal-powered machines working in the background. 

The buildings were covered with pipes and little thin crystal rods, both for the purposes of transporting hot steam and magical energies, and their constant hum served as the Library's background soundtrack. Unlike the elves, the dwarves were not particular about greenery or the noise and seemed to particularly enjoy the stone and dirt textures found throughout the almost perpetual city.

Edna snuck about, her form that of a middle aged female dwarf. She wasn't the best at stealth, that would be Roon and Johann. But the crowds made it easy for any one extra dwarven person to blend into things. 

It wasn't hard to earn money, either. There were jobs she could take, like guard duty and protecting caravans through busy streets. 

Security was naturally spotty. There were just so many dwarves and so many buildings. There were also so many layers of tunnels and underground cities, some recent, some not-so-recent. So, even the dwarves themselves knew that there were the better, safer districts and the not-so-safe districts. 

The dwarven forces were still looking for Gorkun, Seva, and the rest of the heretics. They deployed elite guards, those leveled 80 to the field. 

But she thought that was insufficient. As long as the Descendants themselves didn't appear, they were no match for Gorkun. Gorkun was created as a Sentinel of Eras, and with his mana-powered self-healing ability, he would be equivalent to a level 120 to 130 warrior, and he singlehandedly could fight against a decently sized group of elite guards. 

So, the local security forces needed the Descendants with their higher levels, and that was the first vulnerability.

From what Edna could observe, the Descendants did not trust the dwarves to do the dirty work. All the high leveled dwarves were capped at around Level 85 to Level 90, even Seva. Whatever the Descendants achieved so far, was through embedding themselves in the society and just throwing large numbers of people at their problem. 

Then, there were at least a few thousand Descendants, spread across the five core worlds, and amongst the non-domain holders, their strength was about level 100 to 140. Respectable and likely due to a lifetime of farming the true demons as a form of power leveling.

"They likely lack any real combat experience beyond battling those demons." Edna realized. They may have the levels, but they have never actually fought other powerful domain holders. So on this front, both factions, the Order and the Descendants, were fairly similar. Their powers were thus likely geared towards large scale suppression of the dwarven populace, unless they had some kind of prophetic or zealot-type abilities. 

That would be fairly similar to what Hoyia possessed, and if so, it would not be unusual if some of these level 150 domain holders could express significantly higher levels of power temporarily and some kind of mind-control ability that would allow the Descendants to control and create certain powerful dwarven servants. 

The Descendants did not hide themselves from the dwarves. In their mind, they were the superior beings, nobility. Any dwarven warrior that even bothered to challenge the Descendants were quickly reminded of their place. The Descendants were just superior, because they had the level advantage and somehow, not constrained by the level limitations of their form. 

Descendants even claimed that their ability to go above Level 85 is proof of their divine connection and their superiority over the dwarves. 

It was absurd, but Edna could understand how such beliefs could entrench themselves within the Erasian societies after so many decades. 

She snuck into the various military and security organizations of the Library, and there were certain qualities about dwarves that Edna always admired. 

Records.

Dwarves were very good at making notes and recording things. Dwarven historians were incredibly thorough.

On that front, the Descendants must have spent a lot of time undoing and removing all the ancient records about Eras, Wadra, and then creating false records about the Reviver. They must have missed some.  ȑ𝔞ƝŐ฿Ěŝ

But anyway, Edna noticed that the dwarves kept records about the military capabilities of their opponents, and there were already files about Seva and Gorkun. 

That was not their interest. 

There was an entire cabinet marked as "VIP", dedicated to the Descendants as well. It was clearly a copy made and distributed by the dwarven bureaucracy to ensure everyone knew what to do. Unlike the rest, the records about the Descendants mainly contained details about their past events, their favourite activities, their preferences and dislikes, and interestingly, their relationships with the other Descendants. 

She quickly stole the entire cabinet.

***

"This is fascinating." Lumoof sat as he reviewed the dwarven dossiers. "The Descendants may not like each other all that much."

"Do you think it is real?" Stella stared and read it as well. "Do you think there's one on each of the worlds?" 

"There have to be, and there are departments within the Erasian Bureaucracy dedicated to managing the Descendant's affairs. If I am reading what else is in all these papers, it sounds like we have a heist on our hands. A few heists, actually." Lumoof added. The documents were well made and clearly meant to ease the dwarven personnel's points of contact. A department, called the Department of Descendant Affairs, or DoDA, was responsible for ensuring that their needs were met.

"Are we warning them if we hit these places with a robbery?" Edna wondered. "We should hit them all at the same time."

"Or, we rob it without anyone knowing." Stella said. "We can easily replace documents with magic. We need someone inside these organizations."

"Or something." Edna looked at Lumoof. "We have more clones and nodes. The Erasian DoDA are not as well fortified or secure as the Descendants' various fortress homes. Deploying a clone might be a good idea, especially with how well Aeon can hide himself with his various illusionary abilities. These buildings may be built with stone and steel, but some brown roots and critters would easily get through the walls."

***

The Department of Descendants' Affairs occupied a massive building located deep within an upper-class district and was widely considered by a large majority of the Erasians to be a prestigious place to work, though true upper class Erasians were strangely absent among its workforce. 

In theory, it was where the Descendants' made their plans, communicated their various whims and desires. In practice, it was where the employees, the Erasian officers and bureaucracy, tried their best to mitigate whatever chaos created in their wake and to fix the fallout of the various Descendants' actions. As a result, it was more of a place of constant noise and movement. Someone was always screaming into some magical transmission device somewhere, commanding some other department to get certain things done. 

A tiny little brown root would be easily missed in the chaos. It was perfectly camouflaged by the steam pipes and crystal rods that covered many pillars and corners. 

It poked out of the stone floors. The roots found it easy to crawl through ancient stone and steel buildings. Many such structures were reinforced with steel, but there were always tiny little gaps, and even if there wasn't one, the root could easily make its own. 

Then another little brown root poked out at another corner of the building, and somewhere else, there were a few more. Hundreds of these roots appeared throughout the building, and not one of them was considered as anything more than a rotting parasite.

These roots poked out of the stone walls, and when no one was looking too closely, they snuck into the various rooms, cabinets, and files. 

The roots perfectly matched the color of the floor, or the walls. They were thin, just the size of a small tube, but they could pierce through steel storage cabinets. 

The dwarves ran around. Some of them looked around and frowned. "Did the cleaners slack off? Why are there a bunch of overgrown weeds in my damned room?" The dwarven man screamed, he was one of the higher ranked officers. 

But he had no time to dwell. His crystal transmission device shone and flashed like an alarm, and a dwarven woman ran into his room. "Milord! The Descendant Zanan-ya is in the Upper Stones District unplanned, he's apparently approached some of the city-folks and got into an argument with one of the local axe masters! I've sent a squad there to diffuse the situation!"

She was not the only one. Another man came over. "Descendant Lord Snusnu-ma is in a fight with a dwarven alchemist over potion quality!"

The dwarven officer's face was pale. "Shit. Get our best guys there asap. Healers too! Let's try not to get anyone hurt."

The dwarven man had already forgotten about the thin brown roots, and tossed the document he held back to the table. "Dammit. Why can't these Descendant Nobles just do what they are supposed to do and leave the rest of us out of their mess! Hurry."

The tiny roots in the room watched the officer run back out, barely seconds after he just came in. The tiny roots happily resumed their spying as it made its way into the cabinets.

Documents vanished, teleported away once the roots touched. Somewhere, in a magical workshop worlds away, they were then copied. And then they were back in the cabinets where they belonged. 

The little tiny roots repeated this little act of subterfuge thousands of times over the course of months, and paper by paper, entire records were stolen. 

An entire institution's records were stolen and copied right underneath their dwarven beards. 

***

"Well." Stella, Edna and Lumoof gathered to review the full records. Edna stared as the army of mages and artificial minds back home quickly compiled the data and put them in one piece "I suppose we now know that tiny vines with full vision and hearing may be perpetually watching us."

Lumoof smiled and said nothing. The domainholders knew about my surveillance abilities, but they could not quite grasp how extensive and wide it is. It is something that they know of, but they do not understand its implications. 

Now, though, we knew a lot more about the Descendants. The dwarves were impeccable record keepers, and the Descendants were tough masters. They punished the dwarves when things did not go as they wanted it, and because they were so much stronger than them, there was nothing the dwarves could do to stop it.

Many of these punishments, preferences, and statements were recorded, and together, it gave the rest of the dwarves a generally good idea on how to behave around these Descendants, and the interesting political and social power struggles within the Descendants.

Centuries had numbed the dwarves to a life of obedience.

As a whole, the Descendants' place in society was very much entrenched, but the former upper elites of the dwarven society generally choose to avoid interacting with the Descendants. Many of these former elite dwarves now served as merchants, farmers, and academics and they tried their best to get out of the Descendants' way. 

It was fairly obvious that the dwarves might be innately resisting the mind-influencing abilities and magical artifacts throughout the entire Erasian worlds. 

The DoDA offices also contained surprisingly thorough records about a series of twenty magical transmission formations. A quick glance through how they were described made it clear they were more like mind-alteration and mind-suggestion artifacts, and the Descendants spent a lot of time there, especially two of the Lords, Lord Masa-na and Lord Daham-na. 

"These two might have some kind of mind-altering domain." 

"Do you think Gorkun would be willing to be bait?" Stella asked, as she realized there were some serious observations and talks about how the Erasian Sentinels were dangerous threats. The Descendants as a whole seemed fairly surprised that Lord Shu-na seemed to have died in battle, and their current theory is that the Sentinels were capable of far more than they initially anticipated.

"Well, right now, that's a good way to use him as cover, isn't it?" Edna said. "They wouldn't suspect the presence of outworlders if they believe they are only dealing with remnant ancient Erasians."

"If only the Erasians were actually so dangerous." Stella said. 

"You know, why don't we make the threat real, then? Surely someone like Gorkun is capable of gaining levels and becoming stronger." Lumoof said. "We take Gorkun back to our world, give him a bunch of divine items, send him through a rigorous training regime, and send him back here to kick their asses."

The Erasians were also extremely wary of the ancient Sentinels. Within the DoDA, there were multiple active secret programmes to hunt down and eliminate all these 'corrupted' Sentinels from the pre-Reviver Era. The current propaganda that emerged claimed that these were sent and corrupted by the evils from beyond the void barrier. 

The three domain holders realized that we could essentially supply resources, equipment, and training to these heretical Erasians, and equip them for war against the Descendants.

"Funding a proxy war and insurgency unit sounds right up Varida's alley." Stella smiled. "That old sleuth would love to be here." 

"We must first find more of these ancient Sentinels. There must be more hidden throughout the entire world. Once we expand the sentinels, the heretics can use their relics to expand their numbers.” 

“Can we help that process?” Lumoof asked. “Do we have Erasian Relics in our midst?”

“If we don’t have it, surely there are some in the various Erasian worlds. Once we find the right relics, we can use it to convert more people to the heretic’s cause.”

“Great.” Edna summarized. “So we help recruit, fund, equip and train the heretics, while the heretics front the cause and face the Descendants?”

“Works for me.” Lumoof said. “If it works, we can use the chaos as cover.”

***

A node tree found itself undetected at the heart of one of the few parks of the Library of Eras. Its roots spread quickly, and soon found itself everywhere. Though a node was significantly weaker than a clone, a node of myself was still very useful.

I could spread roots everywhere, and roots were a fascinating way to explore a world with many many ancient layers. Roots had a way of growing into places where there were none before.

Even if it took months, years for my roots to get to many places, they were very, very thorough. 

My attempts to discover and locate Eras's ancient golems and war machines soon revealed our first haul.

Another Sentinel.

It was dormant, hidden underneath an old dwarven woman's apartment. Thoroughly without mana, it was somehow in an 'off' state. 

"I have found one of your peers." Edna told Gorkun, much to the ancient sentinels' surprise. They'd been trying to locate many other ancient sentinels like themselves for years and found none. 

And here we are, within months, we found one.

"Take me there." 

The heretics based themselves really deep within the ancient layers and decided against going close to the surface. Edna, thus, became their supply route. She was able to change her appearance due to her massive supply of magical equipment, and her strength meant she could go places without fear. 

"Come." Edna said, and used a teleportation scroll, linked to an anchor placed in the old dwarven woman's basement. 

A sleep potion on the dwarven woman later, Edna and Gorkun stood in front of a long dormant ancient armor. 

"We've passed near this apartment block so many times." Gorkun said. "And here you are, my brother, sleeping soundly while our creator's name is dragged through the mud and actively erased." 

Edna thought that was incredibly human, from the Sentinel. It was strange that golems felt that sort of emotion. She took out a mana potion. "Would you wake him?" 

"Not here." Gorkun said, as he approached the dormant sentinel. He lifted him with ease. "Can you take us back to the depths?"

"Certainly." A magical scroll later, the knight and the two golems were in the deep depths of the ancient tunnels once more.

There, Gorkun and Seva looked in surprise. "Gorkun, that really is another Sentinel!"

Gorkun touched the dormant golem's chest with one of its metal arms and opened one of the golem's metal compartments. He then poured the mana potion into a small tube. 

"Wake up, brother Zarkun. I, Gorkun of Eras, call upon your aid."

The mana potion glowed briefly as blue magical mana lines appeared throughout the dormant golem's body. The steel shell shone with thousands of tiny blue lines, as power returned to the sentinel. The seemingly normal golem returned to strength, as Edna felt the power of a sentinel restored. 

"I, Zarkun, answer the call." The golem stood, and looked at Gorkun. The two shook hands, and then, blue lines appeared on both of their connecting arms. 

Nothing was said, but Edna knew they were communicating. Seconds and minutes later, the golem answered.

"My apologies, brother." Zarkun said. "Let us find more of our brethren and purge these heretics. To think we were so betrayed by our friends."

Edna grinned. "Actually, Seva, Gorkun, and Zarkun. On the Reviver problem, we have a proposition. One you will find quite amusing."