Tree of Aeons

364.2 Before the Crack

Year 341

Crucible of Eras

Stella looked up at the sky from one of the Crucible of Eras's many buildings. Crucible of Eras was likely the most heavily populated of the five Core Worlds, at least according to Gorkun's records, but that record was heavily out of date. Ever since the Descendants had usurped control of the Core Worlds, the Erasian administration did not maintain books and records to a similar degree. 

She was the only one who could see through the thick, dense void blob that surrounded the demon's prison. It loomed overhead at the heart of the five Core Erasian worlds, an object of tremendous power, meant to hold a god in stasis. 

Voidlings surrounded her and moved as if they were cats trying to cozy up to their owner. In her presence, these fearsome voidlings were no more than just mere kittens. They were rather flexible and did not have a set physical shape, though they were often stringy, long, and thin. This was perhaps a product of the void sea's tendency to stretch and distort objects into long strands. 

The black sun and the demon's prison were the goal. 

The entire demonic structure hinged upon the great black sun to power the riftgates, their only known tool for invading other worlds. If we could destroy the black sun, the entire infrastructure would collapse. They were also growing the new god-killer on the surface of the demon's prison.

Luckily for us, they were intertwined.

Just like our own worlds, the Black Sun existed as an accompaniment of the reality bubble of the demon's prison. The black sun might have been a source of void mana, but it most likely maintained no reality field to allow it to exist. That bubble was created by the demon's prison.

Once the demon's prison crumbled, the reality field would collapse, and the demon sun would destroy itself just like the Cometworld. 

"Well, can we reach that world?" She asked her friendly voidlings, and they grunted. But she could hear them in her head. They spoke in a language that was a mix of images and memories. 

A voidling vanished into the void sea and tried to venture towards the demon's prison. 

A sea of void that was intensely dense. So dense that the void currents pushed outwards like an overflowing cup that refused to accept any more liquid. 

The voidling returned moments later, and they spoke in impressions and memories. Things that Stella could understand. 

"Ah. We can't approach it without destroying the void barrier and letting all these void mana escape." Stella said.

Edna and Lumoof joined her on the roof. "Whatever it is, destroying the void barrier is necessary. The void energy feeds both the leviathan and also the demon's prison, and it helps the Descendants maintain control."

"Are we ready?" Stella looked at them.

"We never truly are. But the merits of messing with that creature's development trumps every other reason we have." Lumoof said as he pointed at the demon's prison. Even from relatively close distances of the Crucible of Eras, it was no more than a black mass to the rest of us.

The void, when filled with so much void mana, behaved like a thick black jelly. Everything we perceived was distorted by that thick black jelly, significantly restricting our ability to understand what happened within. Only Stella's void powers pierced through the black mass and allowed her to perceive the demon's prison with far more clarity.  ṛᴀɴȫᛒЁṩ

But it was not complete, the thick void energy bubble significantly interfered with our attempts to understand the leviathan and the demon's prison. We needed that knowledge, to build weapons best attuned to counter the demon's prison and the leviathan's defenses. 

"Then there is no postponing it for much longer." 

***

Darkgard

Along the vast, desolate plains of Darkgard, a vast construction yard had been built that was meant to house the development teams for the two bombs. After the first few prototypes and after the bomb test on a demon king, we started construction of even bigger bombs.

That led to two different opinions on how to go about making the bomb within a set time frame.

"There's no way we can build something big enough." Allana said, as many other master builders and craftsmen came together. With any big plan, there were naturally many, many different ideas. 

"Not if we use Cometworld itself as a weapon! And even the delivery vehicle isn't fixed. We can deliver it via Cometworld or directly with the voidlings!" A different architect countered. "If we're using the Cometworld as a weapon, we should just build it onto the Cometworld directly! Not having to build an entire world from scratch will save up a lot of time! Decades!"

It was a valid argument. Constructing a large weapon would take significantly longer if we had to do it from scratch. Repurposing Cometworld, which already existed as a moving object within the void sea, and directing it towards the demons with the help of voidlings would be significantly easier. 

However, with Cometworld, we only had one shot, and we'd lose a very valuable escape vehicle if things ever got so bad. We would therefore need to find another one or make one. 

Alka was at the center of the storm, because in a way, the Gigaweapon project was his baby. He heard arguments from both sides, and they were with their own merits. 

In the end, Alka decided to make it a race, and we hoped that the discoveries of both teams would be used together. There were two groups, one called the Comet group that would develop the superweapon based on the Cometworld with the intention of turning the entire Cometworld into a bomb.

I personally enjoyed the sweet revenge of sending a comet back to the demons. 

The second team focused on building a smaller, more compact weapon from scratch, but heavily relied on optimizing Lausanne and Stella's soul fragments such that they detonated perfectly. This second group called themselves the Wormbreaker group, inspired by the Hawan Shieldbreaker.

If Hawa was able to create something like the Shieldbreaker, we should be able to create something of a similar power, and for this group, the Hawan Shieldbreaker was the goal to beat.

I wasn't sure how much damage a fully mature Reviver-Leviathan would do to the rest of the world, but given its massive size, it is likely some kind of 'planet-eater' type of creature, and coupled with sufficient divine energy and star-mana resistance, we believed the Reviver's bet was that they could consume the old god's core worlds faster than the old god's resistance. 

For now, the two teams started, and Alka tapped into the Order's massive network for resources. 

By now, the industrial base of the various Order Core worlds were used to complete massive demands for resources, crafts, and tools from the Order. If not the upgrades to the various Titans, it would be outfitting tens of thousands of new recruits or building new forward bases on the various peripheral worlds.

Demand was pretty much perpetual, and it was a damn shame that all these demands created a war economy. 

Treehome, Mountainworld, Darkgard, Twinspace, and Threeworlds were the factories for our war, and the effect of this was distortion. 

Economically, the Order itself had to intervene to ensure sufficient resources were redirected to civilian needs, because the Order would consume crystals, tools, and metals in such large quantities that commoners would not be able to afford them. 

Even as Alka sped ahead with the development of the two teams, in the background, the Central administrative apparatus rushed to meet that resource requirement. New developments, new mining outposts on the various peripheral worlds, more resource extraction from those peripheral worlds.

Extracting resources from peripheral worlds was something we had to handle gently, because there were strong imperialist and colonial overtones when an external force took resources from the peripheral worlds.

We wanted these peripheral worlds to be integrated into the Order's wider society, so we had to ensure enough of those resources remained within those peripheral worlds as well so that they could properly develop and recover from their past destructions, but special projects like Alka's gigaweapon required massive quantities of resources.

The Order set up special briefings to discuss findings with the various local native leaders, to arrive at a ratio of resource contribution acceptable to them, and the Order as a whole offered skills and services. The Order offered the use of various abilities to help speed up redevelopment, help the construction of new cities, mines, and industrial districts, and the supply of various equipment that improved their lives.

In some worlds, their requirements were basic. Food. Shelter. These worlds were so torn and ravaged by wars that many of my younger Order operatives still could not fathom how they managed to survive such chaos. 

But integration happened smoothly, and worlds with humans in them transitioned quickly. Within years, humanoid races could go from barely surviving, to somewhat functional pre-industrial societies. 

Many of these peripheral worlds were also not directly connected through my limited node trees, as they were located closer to the territory of the four old gods, which also limited how much we could offer in exchange. 

Often, the number one request from the peripheral worlds was a direct connection to the Treehome. 

Many of them wanted a Node Tree. 

A direct link to the greater society. 

It was strange how a node became the most valuable thing I could offer in trade, because it represented a connection.

This was the network effect at play. With more worlds connected through my nodes and clones, the value of the nodes to these previously unconnected worlds was incredible. 

Alas, my nodes were still highly limited and details were confidential, since the invasion of the Erasian core worlds were something we kept mostly under wraps, known only to my elite Valthorns. 

But there was no pleasing everybody in these peripheral worlds. Dissatisfaction was inevitable, but we tried our best to ensure recruits felt that they were contributing to a just cause, and tried managing those differences.

The resource extraction also put someone like Alka at odds with Lausanne, Hoyia, and the other domain holders who looked after their own set of peripheral worlds, since he wanted more than the domainholders felt could be reasonably obtained from them.

For some of the prosperous peripheral worlds, the other domain holders had spread those resources to the less prosperous worlds to help them rebuild and restore normalcy. 

But high quality industrial output was significantly slower to expand, even if these peripheral worlds were able to get low level and some mid-tier industrial production up within years.

Getting craftsmen to Level 100 was significantly harder than opening a mine. Such things took years of development, decades of constant improvement and involvement in construction and crafting projects. Even the most accelerated of our training programs spent about twenty years on an individual, which averaged to an annual level gain of 5 to 6 levels to reach the elite tiers of Level 100.

This meant, for many peripheral worlds, though it was fairly easy to restore these worlds to a somewhat comfortable standard of living, the higher tiers of development were exponentially harder. 

Some peripheral worlds escaped this fate by being the seat of power for one of the Order's domain holders, such as Hoyia's Twinspace. 

However, this unfortunate reality which meant most peripheral worlds were an 'extractive' relationship, they supplied resources, which were processed by skilled craftsmen on other worlds. The local craftsmen could only work on low to mid-tier projects, which also meant their outputs were not good enough for such projects. Without sufficient opportunities, craftsmen on these peripheral worlds would not grow that fast.

So, even though Alka wanted to push the two teams quickly, how that directive filtered through the rest of the Order's machinery had to be managed by the Central planning office and also the competing interests of the various local leaders and needs.

It was a difficult, mindbending challenge that the planning Lords and Officers relished, and hated both at once.

Ensuring that peripheral worlds are adequately developed, while simultaneously extracting resources to supply the war’s various competing needs.

Alka’s bombs were not the only ones that demanded resources. 

***

Twinspace. 

Hoyia became the de-facto head of the expansionary Order military. 

Lausanne, the Spear Goddess, might have been the tip that led that force into the periphery, but it was Hoyia that focused and formed the base. The Matriarch led the recruitment and training of zealots, and every year she sent thousands of relatively fresh trained bodies to Lausanne, Roon, Ebon, and the others. 

Hoyia's work as the Chief Recruitment Officer also put her in conflict with Alka's technological push for superweapons. Hoyia needed the very same resources and craftsmen to ensure her newly trained soldiers were sufficiently equipped for the war. 

Every year tens of thousands were added to the army, and Twinspace's blessed continent became the heart of this military driven prosperity. 

Hoyia's desire to select Twinspace for a large population truly made a difference. For every one we recruited on the peripheral worlds of Landas, Delvegard or Gigantadragon, we could find ten willing men and women on Twinspace. Ten fresh, young folks we could send through the training grinder. 

Many would not be ready. Many more would be half ready. But with enough numbers, there would still be hundreds of thousands of ready warriors to face the coming flood. There were thousands of True Demonworlds as well as many more normal demonworlds spread throughout the entire void sea. 

Many of them would die fighting to protect faraway worlds, on worlds far away from the protections of the domain holders. It was a thought that Hoyia pushed to the back of her mind, and for that reason, she advocated for good equipment. 

Equipment became a contentious point as the industrial base raced to meet demand. 

Hoyia even quietly convinced some craftsmen from the Core Worlds to set up new workshops and factories on Twinspace, just so that there was a steady level of equipment for her recruits.

But Alka had stronger connections with the various crafters. As a dwarven alchemist, many of the crafters were his friends, and he worked with them to a far greater degree than Hoyia did. That gave Alka legitimacy and a strong reputation that most craftsmen did not want to offend. 

It was a difficult place, having to choose between the orders of two different domain holders. 

As a result, the crafters Hoyia recruited tended to be more faithful, more religious, and that also influenced the equipment made. There was a distinct difference in style and the type of skills infused into the various weaponry. 

But Hoyia pushed forth. 

On those far away worlds, far from Aeon's reach, on the day that the curtain of darkness came down, these operatives were on their own. 

***

Gantreethor floated in the air, as swarms of beetles rushed down. The upside of living airships like the massive beetle carriers like Ganthreethor and Dionaea was that they grew bigger. The titans were souls with a level around Level 130, and though they leveled extremely, extremely slowly, each level made them bigger by a little bit. 

Each level added an extra bay. Or an extra room. More space for more things.

Admiral Nulven led Gantreethor as the beetle carrier's operational leader, but no admiral worked alone.

Just as the Order scrambled to build new bombs, build new tools, existing tools such as Gantreethor also had their own set of upgrades. 

Thanks to intensive training and various initiatives, the Order had about ten void archmages. A small number, but in normal times, that was enough. One void archmage could be stationed on these giant beetle carriers, to help the gigantic beetle carrier make the trip through the void sea.

It was a workaround and a limitation. 

A limitation that would become sorely obvious once we destroyed the demon's void barrier. We predicted at least a thousand worlds would be invaded.

This meant gigantic military bases like Gantreethor and Dionaea that could operate long distances, for long periods, would be critical to supply and reinforce the Order's military scattered over those thousand worlds. 

So, tying down a powerful void archmage to the beetle carriers was not ideal. 

So, at the heart of Gantreethor was a repurposed riftgate, meant to improve the mobility of these gigantic ships through the void sea. This time, with a large void battery enough for ten trips and a set of void mana collection arrays. 

In theory, the arrays would scoop up the ambient void mana released by the destroyed demon's barrier and help recharge the void batteries for the next jump. 

The demon's riftgates remained one of the best ways to 'hijack' the demon's pathways as a means of movement. With the help of void magic developments over the past few decades, void archmages were finally able to reengineer riftgates to emit a small bubble of void mana to shield the entire Beetle Carrier. Just enough for one emergency flight out of a particular location. 

Admiral Nulven stood at the bridge as the various officers and craftsmen prepared for their first riftgate powered travel through the void sea. 

The first without the void archmages or Lumoof's teleportation. 

The void batteries were full. The repurposed and amplified riftgate whirled, as its powerful energies were directed to the outer panels. 

"Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have a trip to make. Make it happen." 

Gantreethor was surrounded by a sheen of void energy, and the gigantic beetle carrier warped through the sea of void.