Tree of Aeons
340. King

340

Year 313

Worlds passed us by and behind us, a trail of fallen demon kings. 

Demons. After a while they were all the same. 

After a while, I really didn't feel anything when Lumoof’s gigantic magical hand, made of divine roots and bark, ripped the demon king’s core out of the creature’s flesh.

The object that once felt so unfathomable now was in our magical tree-shaped palm, and this time, I looked at the spherical object and found it weak. 

Once more, I tried to flood it with my mana. 

The demon king’s core stood wrapped by my magically throbbing roots and vines. The juxtaposition of the smooth, magical, and spherical core and my organic roots and vines with all the little folds and bumps, was quite something. 

The creature resisted. The spherical object radiated magical energy and tried to fight off my influence that was permeating through its body. 

I pressed in anyway.

I had always wanted to do this. I wanted to turn one of the demon kings into mine, and I wondered what would happen when I reached this point. 

“Have you ever considered how mad it is?” A much lower ranked Valthorn quipped, while watching the battle from afar. 

“No. Not at all. At some point I just started to presume that it was normal.” Alka smiled at the younger dwarven mage. This world was far away from the network of dwarven worlds, but the Order rotated people around the various battlegrounds in order to share the experience. 

Alka and the others worked with the Darkgardians to attack multiple demon-infested worlds and freed a few dwarven worlds, but there were many more. Their sector was relatively sparse in terms of divine presence. Our internal conclusion was that these were once Erasian worlds, and since the capture of Eras, that all had just vanished away. 

Lumoof focused, as he augmented [Aeon’s Spirit]’s powers. My spiritual powers manifested and flooded the object, and I had a feeling I would succeed. 

Stella watched from afar, as she kept tabs on the core’s behavior. The demons had some communication ability, and we’d been trying to interfere with them for a while.

We needed to take out their ‘communication’ worlds. Worlds that helped ‘relay’ the messages from the demonic sun. 

Stella was getting better at intercepting those messages. But decoding these alien messages still took time, since we didn’t understand them. They used language differently. 

But we would eventually crack the code. 

Five demon kings. Six.

Each world. 

And now, we were at our seventh demon king since we started exploring and helping the Aivan peripheral worlds. 

Now that Stella reached Level 200, it was up to the rest of the domain holders to fill in the gaps. It was their turn to reach Level 200.

But they were still far away, and right now, among the newer domain holders, only Lausanne could slay a demon king on her own. Even Stella couldn’t defeat a demon king, though we truly knew amongst ourselves that it was not her role to defeat demon kings. She was our pathfinder. Stella created the path for us to reach the demons and have the battles. Without her, we would be on the defensive.

“I never found out what your Level 180 and Level 190 domain abilities were.” Roon asked, but his eyes never left the object in Lumoof’s hand. “Did you tell me?”

My powers spread into the demon king’s core slowly, and it broke

“I did.”

“Then I must’ve forgotten. When did you get it anyway?”

“I just gained them while fighting demon kings along the way, and they were not that great. We’ve been fighting so many demon kings. One of them, [Void Explorer Possession], just turned my [Void Explorers] into actual spirits that could ‘possess’ objects and turn those objects into [Void Golems], so that they possessed a bunch of abilities. The other one is a Void Layer ability, that made it possible for me to move into certain void layers with much more ease and also look further into the chaos of the void sea..”

“Oh look.” Alka intervened, as my mana flooded the demon king.

This demon king was fairly weak, and was easily defeated by my roots. We ripped its core out, and began to corrupt it with my mana. This time, my spiritual tendrils also pierced through its powerful spiritual protections, and broke through its inherent anti-possession tools.

The demon king fought me. It fought us.

But we were stronger. The worlds together, I was not just a tree. More importantly, I was not alone. I was one of many. I was the combination of all the clones, subsidiary trees, and normal trees spread across multiple worlds. 

A collection of existences spread across many worlds.

A demon king struggled to fight against our weight, and this time, in that faraway peripheral world, one of Aivan’s littoral territories, we finally succeeded.Together our might was enough to break through the demon king’s resistances, and this time, there was no pesky inbuilt self-destruct command to interfere with our plans.

We transformed a demon king.

[Title awarded: Captured King]

[You’ve gained a level.]

[Unique Unit Unlocked : Realm Tier Unit - Naturalized Demon King. Each Naturalized Demon King must be linked to a Living World in Order to maintain its power output. You are currently able to support 6 Naturalized Demon Kings. Deploy more clones to increase your realm tier unit limit ]

[Naturalized Demon King is a former demon king that has been fully transformed, and its inherent demonic qualities stripped out. However, it still retains its tremendous combat abilities, can open void portals and also can spawn lesser Naturalized Demons.  However, as it is no longer a demon, it lost its connection to the demon’s void sun, and so its void mana pool is fairly limited and must be externally recharged.] 

The round, spherical object changed as it sucked in my roots and took a different shape. Empowered by fresh mana through my network, it began to transform and change into a gigantic, towering creature with demon-like wings and horns, only each of the original demonic parts and organs replaced with a dark bark-like material. 

The naturalized demon king immediately spoke to me through a kind of psychic link, and this time, I saw things. 

“Demon King Nakhasas.” The naturalized demon king verbalized words through our shared connection, and I saw its origins. 

It was made in another world one jump away, and it had received commands to continue expanding to these Aivan worlds. 

Hatred. 

Destruction.

There was a chain in the hearts of all demons, and they were slaves to the great demon blob’s will. 

But interestingly, this time, we saw even before the demon king’s gestation on another world’s core. 

We saw a blob and a droplet separating from the droplet. Visions. 

Commands.

Expand. 

Destroy.

Convert core. 

Then for a brief moment, I felt a tremendous demonic presence within the demonic blob. This was the true demonic existence that controlled the demons, indirectly by commanding the demon kings.

The demon king was then created from the fusion of the two.

The power and instructions within the blob and the body forged by the corrupted Core. 

The same demon blob we saw every time a demon king completed its gestation within the demonic core. It was a place we could not reach, and it was because it existed on a different void layer, a unique void layer created by the demon’s massive void sun. 

“The demon blob is hidden in its own void layer?” Stella tried to digest the revelation obtained from the heart of the demon king. “That means every time we see it appear, it is actually temporarily manifesting from the void?” 

“Yes. That seems to be the case.” I answered. 

So, only two objects existed in the real world. One was the demonic sun, which then had the demonic prison orbiting around it. There was likely an actual demon controlled planet somewhere too. 

But the main key was that the demon sun and the prison both exist in the real world. The demonic blob existed within its own void layer, but could ‘pop’ in and out. 

“Is the demonic blob the real enemy?” Stella asked the question as we contemplated the implications that there was a tremendous demonic presence from the black demonic blob. “Maybe the demons really are a god-experiment, but it is more than they could handle? That this blob is the residual demonic entity from ancient times that hid away within the void layers in order to avoid divine wrath?”

“That means we have to venture into the void layers, if we really want to destroy the demons...”

“Or, if we can destroy the demonic blob, then there’s no real need to go to the demon sun and the prison. Without the black droplet, the demon kings will no longer be able to expand and receive instructions. The entire structure will just stop.”

“So there is a single point of vulnerability after all, just that it is hidden elsewhere.” I contemplated what it meant. “But it's difficult to access the void layers.”

“Do you think the gods can get into the void layers?”

***

“No.” Hawa answered firmly. “The World Faith System does not extend into the void layers, and so we are powerless there.”

“How convenient.” I vented. “Why?” 

“The Void is the boiling primordial soup, and we reach into it at our own peril. The constant wobbles of the void’s ever changing state erodes everything, including the divine. Even if some of us last far, far longer than regular things. Even if our own bodies are unharmed by the void, our powers are eroded by them.”

“Yet domains are protected from it?”

“Because that is part of the original system, and the void is also part of the original system. That separation remains even within the void layers.”

“Then how does the demonic blob hide there?”

“They must have a way of managing the void fluctuations. Perhaps, as you suggested, the void sun plays a role. The large amounts of void mana could be for something that I am not privy to.”

***

Travelling was a learning experience, and interestingly, one of the great appeals of the Order was the frequency and flexibility of travel.

Many young individuals, particularly those who came from relatively comfortable and affluent families, were inspired by the tales of otherworldly explorations, and so they desired to visit different worlds. The tales of visiting entire different worlds and returning with stories appeared to be something fairly universal, especially the races with a slight mercantile and exploratory bent.

Humans, lizardfolk, and the Caprans seem particularly fond of travels. The elves and dwarves not so much, even if dwarven merchants were fairly common throughout the worlds with dwarves. 

The implementation of travel lotteries and quotas as part of the controls of movement made the movement rare, but more importantly was the flow of goods.

Unlike capitalistic societies and institutions who were more concerned with profit, an institution like the Order was much more interested in keeping people in challenging jobs such that they gain levels. 

As an indirect result of this desire to ensure people were employed and working in tasks that challenged them, we’d generally restricted movement of goods and services between worlds. Most movements of goods were mainly for military purposes, in order to support our large military bureaucracy. 

We came to this sort of arrangement entirely out of necessity. Each world that we added to our network had its own local economics, prices, and production, and we did not want to destabilize it by allowing free flow of goods and people. 

Though I realized how far we’d come from my original goals of being a ‘warden’, and how hypocritical it was of me to claim to be a warden when we, the Order as a whole, were meddling in so many worlds, but where we could, I’d like to believe that we would be a force for good.

Staying true to these principles was a selling point. It allowed me to hire people who shared our goals and aspirations. 

And so, it was generally, and generally being the operative term, that we treated each world with a fairly light touch. 

We recruited. We built. We helped. But where we could, like wardens of a forest filled with endangered species, we tried to give them room to grow and recover. It would be detrimental if the locals changed too much as a result of over-tourism or too much traffic.

It was a set of contradictory goals. 

My domain holders knew it, and knowing which of these contradictory goals took priority in that particular circumstances, emerged with experience. Experience gained from visiting, traveling to multiple worlds. 

We, in very simple terms, were more concerned with control and capacity. We used the controls and restrictions on travel between worlds as both a reward and a tool to facilitate our goals of increased production, higher overall levels, and generally, better overall strength within the population. 

That said, those with more mercantile elements within our institution would always try to exploit price differences between different worlds to make incredible profits. 

Those who traveled between worlds had an advantage because they had seen how goods and services are priced differently. Crystals and magical scrolls had a different price on Maelga compared to Branchhold. Magical weapons were significantly cheaper on Treehome due to the massive industrial weapons production, compared to the newer worlds where high leveled crafters were rare.

But, we’d kept such transactions at a low volume, because our goal was to promote and encourage our members across different worlds to gain levels. 

It was thus interesting to observe that the path to encourage the largest amount of levels in a large population, would be to place everyone in vocations that were close to the edges of their capabilities. 

From this aspect, the system was inherently utilitarian. 

The concept of money existed within specific classes of the system, but did not permeate the system as a whole. 

We’d noticed in worlds where gods play a large part, and in the Core Worlds, money appeared to be a fairly trivial and minor element of their society.

Instead, ‘faith’ and ‘experience that led to levels’, became the primary means by which vocations and resources were allocated. 

The worlds of Aiva, Hawa and Gaya were optimised for faith. Their society as a whole was structured towards worship, and generation of more worship and idolatry. 

“I wouldn’t have realized it until I’ve visited more worlds.” Emperor Erranuel explained, as Hoyia visited the man on Shasan. They sat around one of Shasan’s oasis gardens and spoke about things back home. Olivia of Olpash, one of Hawa’s high priestesses, naturally didn’t understand how worlds could transform to become hyper capitalistic. To Olivia, her world never went through a period where merchants could buy out everything. Hoyia and Olivia were both people of faith, and they got along swimmingly. More so than Lumoof, who was heavily influenced by my presence in his psyche.

But on Shasan, the concept of money was also fairly tenuous. Labor in itself is the means of trade, simply because a rock outcrop was often an island, and movement between the villages and towns was fairly minimal.

When people didn’t travel far and everyone in a village knew everyone else, everyone could assign value to their labor directly, without the need for a financial intermediary. 

In hindsight, the presence of skills, levels inherently countered hypercapitalism, because gaining levels and experiences was something pursued by individuals for their own sake. Everyone knew their own exact value, because it was in their levels. They did not need to jump through mental hoops to tie up their self worth and identity with jobs and how much money they made. 

For us, myself and the heroes who came from Earth and Earth-like worlds, it was likely that our experience living in a world with the extreme power in the hands of the oligarchs and the way money corrupted everything would feel surreal. 

To locals, it is something that they could not even grasp.

“As we venture closer to the lands of gods, I truly believe the merchant kings and the guild wars are an aberration. Something that can only occur under specific circumstances, where money and resources become an end in itself. Because here, where divinity feels close, I cannot imagine men who felt the weight of the divine would ever forsake that experience for the allure of money.” The Emperor declared, and through Hoyia, I noticed he had changed slightly. His demeanour actually felt more holy, more faithful. 

It was a sensation I did not understand at all, but many of my priests related to them instinctively. To them, it was such a soul-shaking experience to be in the presence of powerful beings, that money and all that did feel meaningless. 

Some types of institutions so commonly found on our original worlds could not survive for long on such worlds, because the way the world worked was different. Individuals were not the same. Money didn’t sway people the same way real power could, and worse, because of the fractured nature of the world, there were many, many things that money could not buy. Many things that required a specific thing or a specific ability from someone. 

In that manner, what Emperor Erranuel saw on Shasan, was also how a world with skills and levels operated at, even if it was less obvious. When you were in the level 80s, what that individual needed was often the output of someone of that level or higher, and it became more of a personal, one-to-one barter system, where one traded the output of one [skill] for another [skill]. 

Thus, what was the best way to trade between worlds of unequal strength and development? How did we, as the Order, consider what is a fair contribution between worlds? 

Money could not be fair, because it was warped by many things. Money was a feeble attempt at measuring the value of output. It did not consider effort, only market demand for a particular good.

Money, thus missed the part where effort leads to levels. 

We wanted to keep as many people, as possible, in a state where they had the opportunity to gain levels. This was the overarching goal. Allocation of goods by Central, my group of super-administrators and their assistant artificial minds, was thus an ultra-contentious subject.

In a way, what Central tried to achieve through allocation of resources of goods, was really an optimization of high quality, meaningful effort. 

To do so, Central’s people needed to travel. They needed to see, and where they could, experience the lives of the natives of each world. To know their struggles, and what could provide a meaningful struggle. 

Effort. Struggle. To do better. To do more. 

It was useful in the short term to stave off hunger by shipping surplus food from Treehome.

But it was not useful in the longer term, because they needed to solve their own problems. 

That was where we got strength. 

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