Tree of Aeons

Chapter 367. Slaughter I

***

Lausanne, Peripheral Worlds

Lausanne felt it to be an unnatural balance, at first.

Star mana and regular mana within her body were redirected to different parts. Her star mana churned within her spirit and flesh, bubbling under a layer of regular mana.

She knew and heard of the resistances of the True Demon Kings and waited for them to appear. The few lesser true demons were not difficult, but would be if she used star mana.

Their flesh and bones were not like the old demons that were vulnerable to star mana. Instead, these true demons were engineered to counter the old god’s heroes and their chosen warriors.

The riftgate pulsed. They were coming.

She was around such void pathways often enough that she had begun to recognize their patterns. She could tell when something big came through and her magical spear was already flying when the True Demon King stepped through the gates.

The creature winced.

Flesh.

The sensation she felt as her magical spear pierced the flesh unnerved her.

It was like fighting criminals, but tougher.

It was uncomfortable to witness a creature that looked more fleshlike than before. Past demon kings were demonic and often had stoney, rock-like or metallic substances as their skin or scales. She recalled even the anti-magic demon kings were covered in crystals and stones.

So the sight of flesh was disorientating. Her mind and her experience struggled to put them together. Skin and muscles.

The True Demon King was shaped even like a man. Humanoid and with two legs, but every part of her mind and heart screamed that it wasn't human. Not at all.

The flesh-arms of the True Demon King shapeshifted into a sword and slashed with the fury comparable to the past demon kings. She realized that Edna, Lumoof, and Aeon would have a big advantage against these True Demon Kings. They were generalist fighters who relied on their overwhelming strength, not specific type advantages.

"This is nostalgic." Lausanne said as she dodged a magical wave. The wave left a scar in the ground that stretched a good distance, and she was thankful that the wave of True Demons attacked the peripheral worlds first. It was very much like how she fought before she got her domain.

She tested out the demon king's resistances. Her initial wave of attacks seemed to leave just small marks and scars, but nothing truly sunk in.

"Really? The part where you are playing with your food?" Ebon said, as he too, joined the fight. After a while, he agreed. "It feels the same to me. Despite the differences in their physical defenses and qualities, their attack patterns are very similar."

"I mean my regular attacks are not working that well." Lausanne laughed, perhaps a little hysterically. "I miss this."

"Oh. That. Must be nice to be a regular domain holder again, right? The rest of us watch with envy how your star mana just cut through the rest of them like butter!" Ebon blocked the True Demon King's attack with a crystal. The crystal hummed and emitted one of Aeon's gigantic wood shields. Ebon too, alternated with a few attacks here and there.

His raw physicality was slightly better than Lausanne, though, without specific domain abilities, there was not much damage on the demon king.

"I suppose you would be." The elf's spear thrummed, as she charged a different set of abilities. Lightwood glowed green, and she thrust with immense magical force. "I've been practicing against the regular demons, trying to use as little of my star mana as I could."

“Well, on the bright side, we might level.” Ebon said. “Which we will need.”

“You’re still not picking your domain?”

“Who knows, when we face that giant Wyrm, the system might decide to give me something else that could tip the scales and push us to victory. Why pick when the assimilation of the domain is near instantaneous?”

Lausanne nodded, thoughtfully.

This time, Lightwood's enhanced attack left a deep puncture. She groaned slightly as she noticed how the flesh demon bled. It had blood. It had flesh. Ebon noticed her twisted expression.

"Disturbing, isn't it?" Ebon said. "Almost as if made to counter human heroes and unnerve them. A shame they didn't see a tree coming their way."

"A shame." Lausanne agreed as she repeated her attacks. Lightwood flared with life, and interestingly, while regular demon kings were immune to poisons, the flesh of the True Demon King seemed to be slightly more susceptible to poisons and paralysing drugs. The tree-derived toxins and poisons innate with Lightwood's form seemed to trigger it. "Domain level poisons? Is there such a thing?"

"If there is such a thing, Aeon would have it." Ebon said. "But it won't bypass any of the domain protections. It's too powerful for that. I'm surprised that you didn't know about it."

"I actually never saw this ability in action, ever. Maybe it'll just weaken our flesh." She said as she battered the demon some more. She found it curious that Lightwood's indirect effects worked. Most creatures never lasted beyond two hits, regular demon kings were non-flesh creatures and as such were unaffected by such toxins, and the fellow domainholders were immune to poisons thanks to Aeon's familiars. So, she never had the chance to witness Lightwood's poison abilities.

But, flesh did have some advantages, such as enhanced regeneration. The other domain holders fought their own True Demon Kings and found them regenerating far faster than regular demon kings.

Still, regeneration required time, and as long as they dealt more than the demons regenerated, victory was still assured.

***

I continued to watch the leaders of the Descendants, and though they met, it only solidified their suspicions of each other.

"Zam-Zaqa speaks of unity, but he is an untrustworthy snake." Ghul-dah quipped privately to his fellow domain holders. "We would be wise not to trust him."

In his private meeting room, it was the perfect environment to attack, but there were too many unknowns about Ghul-dah's abilities. He remained master and divine lord of the Forge of Eras.

Then, one of Ghul-dah's subordinates suggested the most vile of ideas.

"If we believe that the Lord Reviver is close to completion, then we do not need the dwarves any more."

Ghul-dah's eyes blinked. "Elaborate."

"We kept the dwarves around to sustain Eras and harvest a portion of their faith. But if the Lord Reviver is close to completion, the key to victory is for our Lord to fully consume Eras. So, we must weaken Eras. Two, our enemies are small. They are a powerful group, but their resistance is tiny. There are tens of thousand Descendants on the Five Worlds. We outnumber them. And we outlevel the dwarves."

Ghul-dah got it. "We can lure the resistance out on our terms, and since we would be finally harvesting our cattle, we would get stronger."

I listened to the entire conversation with my metaphorical mind a little stunned.

The creature, the monster that called itself the Divine Lord of the Forge of Eras thus gave the order.

"Let us pretend no more and end our toleration of these dwarves. Since these fools buy the heretic's words, there is no need for mercy." Ghul-dah ordered. "Tell every Descendant in our world that every dwarf is now our prey. Kill them all!"

"We must stop them!" Stella and Edna screamed mentally.

Ghul-dah reached for his spell and shouted the order through to all of the Descendants. It was the same magical transmission that Zam-Zaqa had used.

"Intervene! Jam that magical transmission!" I said as Stella tried to use her magic, and I tried to push my magical interference aura.

[Intervention failed.]

I felt a domain like ability blocking my attempts, and Stella's pale reaction said everything that needed to be said.

"Kill them all! Kill the dwarves hiding in their homes. Kill the dwarves hiding in the tunnels. We have no need for the cattle any more. Feast, my fellow Descendants. Feast and join the ranks of the divine!" Ghul-dah said as he burst out of his office. He waved a hand, and a gigantic magical steel creature that towered over the endless cities emerged. Its fist came down on the homes around the Descendants' quarters.

Edna teleported and blocked the golem's attack, but the massive shockwave shook and damaged the homes around.

“Oh? You’ve come so quickly.” Ghul-dah commented as Edna’s magical shields stopped the golem’s attack.

But the eruption throughout the world was immediate. The Descendants had long looked down and considered the dwarves to be lesser beings. The slaughter started from their homes. Some Descendants maintained servants and staff to support their day to day affairs, and yet, these same Descendants showed no mercy for them.

The Forge had about twelve Descendant Domainholders with Ghul-Dah at the top. I tried my best to intervene, my roots rising where I could to hit them back.

But I placed my clone on the Library of Eras a while back to help with my expansion and search for the hidden relics. Here on the Forge of Eras, my connection was through a node tree.

Against domain holders, a node was not good enough. My movements were slower, and my attacks were weaker. There were still parts that I did not manage to infiltrate, simply because my node trees' reach was not as robust as a clone.

"What are you doing?" Aman-ah, one of the other domain holders from the other worlds detected it too and started a magical transmission. Edna was determined to keep this slaughter contained, attacked with a powerful beam, her [Martial Paragon] in full view.

"Oh, I just realized the solution is oh so simple. Kill the dwarves, and our enemies would come out. Try it too!" Ghul-dah said as he dodged the weapon. Barely. Edna's knight-sword still slashed through a third of the tentacles on his head, but the half-dwarven lord was a Level 200 peer.

"You're killing the dwarves?" Aman-ah said through the communication spell, and then after what was a moment of mental calculation, there was a sinister grin. "I get it."

Edna's blade went for it again, but Ghul-dah exploded into a massive blob of lava. He transformed himself into a lava elemental like creature, and the world around them began to burn.

"You are one of the outer realm creatures! An invader!" Ghul-dah declared. "But you are just like the predecessors who came before you. You care too much for these cattles. They are cattle! All they exist to do is to feed us!"

The buildings burned, as a domain holder of Level 200 made the entire surrounding region erupt in flames. Hundreds of thousands of buildings burned altogether at once. But thankfully, it triggered Edna's [Three Strikes of Honor]. No one died from the first wave of fires and lava explosions.

Unfortunately, there were now hundreds of thousands who were trapped in their burning and collapsing homes.

"They are meant to feed us!" Ghul-dah declared as the now lava-shaped creature exploded into three. "And you cannot kill us all at once!"

Edna activated her various summons such as [Regenerating Guardians] and her battalion of knights. The guardians worked fine, but the knights were then slammed by the influence of the leviathan Reviver overhead, but they still managed to move thanks to Edna's blessings, which reduced the effects of the Reviver’s curse.

I felt the screams throughout the entire city. Those dwarves who fled their burning cities and out into the streets were then attacked by the presence of the Reviver as well.

Lumoof said. "Aeon! Convert the node tree to a clone and start sending the dwarves away! By force! There's no time! They are not going to give us time to negotiate or convince these dwarves to leave!"

I quickly did so and felt my power over the Forge of Eras grow.

But those minutes felt like an eternity, as I waited for my clone's effects to ripple throughout the Forge of Eras. Meanwhile, Lumoof and Stella both rushed to another part of the Forge of Eras to intervene against the moves of other domainholders. Stella, as she was less combat focused, faced off against a weaker domain holder, while Lumoof attacked two rampaging Descendants. I activated the rest of the golems, and sent them to fight against the non-domainholder Descendants who are also making a huge mess.

"[Aeon's Spirit]!" Lumoof tapped the ground and my presence soared. My vines lashed out. I sent my vines and roots to their hidden locations, and killed descendants wherever I could find them.

Every moment my roots hunted the lands of the Forge of Eras, killing any Descendants along the way.

But these Descendants were mad. Ghul-dah screamed through their shared communications network. "Kill the dwarves! These warriors are soft-hearted fools, just like the old gods! Aman-ah, I have them here! Kill the old gods!"

Edna channeled the powers of our combined pantheon, and her blades slashed through the lava monster. But he was right.

He had our weak point. He wanted to kill the dwarves, and so, he could 'direct' us in a specific direction.

Zam-Zaqa's magical screen flickered. "What in the world are you doing?"

Ghul-dah was injured, but still he grinned. There were two other parts of him, and my vines chased after those separated body parts. But Ghul-dah didn't care. All he focused on was to kill and destroy as many dwarves as he could. "Harvesting the cattle that we fattened up! Zam-Zaqa, it is time to drop the pretenses! Kill the dwarves!"

Zam-Zaqa frowned. "Don't we need the faith?"

"The Lord Reviver has been harvesting the faith and remained largely unchanged for hundreds if not thousands of years! The Lord needs to consume Eras, not just steal from it!" Ghul-dah took another set of blows from Edna's powerful blades, and he suffered for it. But he did not care. "Silly creature of the old gods, do you know why I do not care?"

Edna ignored his response and jabbed with magical power.

"Because I can regenerate! I am the Divine Lord of the Forge, and so long as the Forge continues to burn, I will return!"

Edna cursed, but it didn't matter. As long as the creature lived, he would kill more dwarves. I quickly converted more nodes into clones of the world of the Crucible of Eras and the Bestiary of Eras, because just as I feared, Ghul-dah's choice was unfortunately the right one.

Aman-ah and the rest of the domain holders on the Crucible of Eras also started their own mass slaughters.

It was horrific as the dwarves fled from the Descendants, and I felt myself spread thin. I called upon the rest of my domain holders.

"There's 40 domain holders over these 4 worlds, we cannot engage them all at once." My domain holders rushed through, supported by my teleportation abilities.

"We have numbers. There may be hundreds of thousands of them, but the Order is many times larger, and we had more elites. We'll have to engage them when the environment suits us."

But in my heart and mind, we knew it was a huge risk. Domain holders and their domain abilities meant I could send ten, twenty Level 149s against a single Level 150 and still lose everything. The odds of winning without domain abilities of our own was extremely slim, even with large numbers.

The two domain holders traded blows some more, and Edna asked for help. "I'm a bad matchup against this guy. His form is lava and I can't seem to pinpoint where his core is. All I can do is keep him suppressed, and that's not going to be good long term. I need to switch with Lumoof!"

Lumoof, thankfully, found an easier target, and my Aeon's Spirit crushed one water-elemental mage Descendant domain holder named Mara-ru with a well placed strike.

Even so, the entire city district was flooded, and at least hundreds of dwarves drowned or died during the battle. Huge floods of water rushed into the underground tunnels. It would be hell trying to evacuate them normally, as only my roots could reach the trapped dwarves.

***

My domain holders and Order elites were not sitting idle. They had to stop the True Demon Kings, the wave of flesh demons, and on top of that the regular waves of old demons still attacking from the various demonic worlds.

The war for the peripheral worlds never ended, and now we were stretched even more.

"What about the True Demon Kings?" Lausanne said as she finally slain one true demon king after a battle that lasted for a day and a half. There were still many more.

"The Level 140s will have to keep it at bay, and the peripheral worlds are lightly populated. We're looking at millions if not billions dead if these Descendants slaughter their way through the dwarven population." The Order scrambled, a full scale mobilization, as more and more void mages warped through my clones to arrive in the Core Worlds. Their mission was simple. Evacuate the dwarves and kill the Descendants. While somehow staying indoors and away from the gaze of the planetary leviathan wherever possible.

With blessings, they could move around and still function, but it was a risk. We had not tested the full extent of the curse's various effects, especially under prolonged exposure.

***

Lumoof raced across the Forge and found entire city blocks turned into a blazing inferno. Ghul-dah's two other bodies transformed and slew many, even as my vines and roots evacuated just as many people.

"I can beat him." Lumoof said as he landed, and this time, there was no need to hide. My spiritual senses tried to look into Ghul-dah's form, but unfortunately it mostly appeared as a giant haze.

He entered into avatar form, and my empowered roots rose to wrap around the gigantic lava elemental.

Fire did not hurt me.

The creature's lava felt warm. Pleasant even, and it struggled. Ghul-dah was confident when he faced Edna, he could easily absorb blows from the knight.

But my roots struck fear into the creature, as I recalled the experiences of battling the Crystal King.

I called on the trees of my network, and my roots pierced the lava flesh easily, and then hit into the creature's flesh with soul damage. The monster roared in true pain.

"IMPOSSIBLE-! WHAT- WHAT IS THAT!" Now, the lava monster struggled and flailed. I felt a chip, a deep crack in the domain of the creature.

There was no need to explain. This time, he tried to dodge the spirit-charged roots, but I could shift my energies around quickly and between them. The monster did not know which one held my soul-rending energies.

Ghul-dah panicked when it received a second blow from my soul forge powered root strike, and activated its communication systems. It quickly called up the rest of the domain holders. "HELP!" He screamed. "We- we have an unknown enemy! Someone capable of hurting our domains!"

That made everyone else truly panic. Zam-Zaqa, comfortable in the heart of the Bestiary, asked. "What are we dealing with?"

He couldn't answer. Through Lumoof, I landed another soul-forge powered root strike, and this time it seemed to mess with Ghul-dah's abilities. His lava elemental form melted into dust and he reformed into his original shape.

Edna, fighting the other form a few destroyed city districts away, saw the separated part of Ghul-dah melt into nothingness. "Did you kill it?"

"Not yet." Lumoof said.

Ghul-dah screamed with the wails of a monster. The half-dwarven, half-Descendant now truly looked like a mutant, his flesh seemed to fester and rot.

There was no need to talk. Lumoof struck again and this time, he could not resist.

I felt the creature's soul crack, and he died instantly. His flesh collapsed, lifeless.

[ You've earned the Title : Soulbreaker ]

[ You've killed a domain holder by destroying their soul. You've gained one level ]

Lumoof stood, and looked at the wreckage around us. "Quickly. Let's get to the others before more dwarves die."