350. Progress in tiny steppes
Year 325
The flesh of the demon king rotted and melted. It had a head once. Or two.
Instead, Lightwood was firmly embedded in the stub of what used to be one of the creature’s necks, its magic burning through the demon king’s remaining body and slowly melting it from within. The king was dead, and Lausanne let out a sigh of relief. If each world faced demon kings at an average of once every 20 to 25 years, and there are now about a hundred or so peripheral worlds to oversee, that still worked out to be an average of five or so demon kings every year.
They had faced so many demon kings that she stopped remembering their names. Their powers started to blur, and her instincts responded to abilities that sometimes they did not have. She did not even notice when some of their names repeated, until one of her Order assistants mentioned it to her.
Internally, Lausanne heard that the Order was even working on a classification method to differentiate and rate the various demon kings. It felt quite pointless, because the demons had been known to surprise. There was almost always a little twist to them, like the one that blew up into a swarm of tiny demonic parasites she fought just a few months ago.
“You should look a little more happy for someone who just killed so many demon kings.” Ebon teased and sat on the rock next to her. “Want anything to celebrate for tonight?”
“Says the one who should be picking something and helping me a little more.” Lausanne naturally ignored the second part of the question. She was always a little too serious about work.
“I gained a level. Did you?” Ebon, on the other hand, wasn’t a very serious knight. Not any more. A weight off the shoulders, Ebon was a very relaxed knight.
Lausanne brought up her system notification, and nodded. “Well, I believe I did.”
“168?”
“Yes.”
Lausanne got her Level 160 subdomain a few months ago after a battle.
[New Domain skill unlocked : Starbound Pair. Lightwood is now capable of star mana overload to exceed its regular strength for short periods of time. After overexertion, Lightwood would need to recover. You also unlocked [Starfusion Form], a state where your combat abilities are amplified as long as you are exposed and in the presence of a favorable star.]
Lausanne twirled, Lightwood levitated itself out of the demon king’s corpse and flew back into her hands.
“Are you waiting for your level 160 to see what happens?” The elf asked the undecided knight. The undecided knight wasn’t that far behind at level 157.
It was harder to level. Sometimes, demon kings only gave one level. Sometimes, none at all.
“Honestly, yes. At this point I might as well stick to it. The [unchosen champion] and the champion that did not choose. It is quite a match.”
“That makes us such a terrible pair.” Lausanne cursed, but she was partly smiling. This peripheral world, thankfully, still managed to have large medieval cities where there are still nice restaurants and taverns. They would have a good meal there someday. Some worlds had fascinating delicacies, and in this world, rats were surprisingly fatty and meaty, and that made them a popular staple food.
It still disgusted some of the humans that refused to eat rats, but most of the Order were able to wrap their heads around how each world evolved to have different types of staple crops and animals.
“You should be thankful that I am here to accompany you.” Ebon teased. “We can have stuffed rats tonight, not sure if our other companions would want to join us..”
Lausanne rolled her eyes, she actually tried it already and found it quite good. But the imagery it often evoked in foreign visitors was not so pleasant. “They are not so bad! There’s plenty of fellow warriors that can keep me company.”
Ebon looked around, there were indeed older Order operatives, but many more of the warriors that took the field were younger and less experienced. Their roles are minimal, but it spoke to how stretched the Order was.
But every year, it got better.
Every year, more new people joined the force, most of them from the periphery. Those existing ones gained experience and joined the Order moving about. 
***
Order recruitment was a massive, multi-world operation, and many of the recruits were thus transported to Treehome, Branchhold, or Threeworlds, where there were multiple sufficiently sized operation centers to properly train the new people.
There were also smaller centers spread across the various planets, many of them on the new peripheral worlds.
These centers were small, manned by no more than fifty experienced Order individuals from the three core worlds, while the rest of the infrastructure was manned by the local recruits.
The largest of these ‘new’ Order institutions were located on Twinspace and Darkgard.
***
Alka commuted frequently and checked into his home on Darkgard. He lived here for a few months every year, where he had the Order build some of the largest workshops known to the dwarvenkind.
Darkgard’s change over the past few years and decades had been surprising, especially since the three Darkgardian worlds reunited. The strength of the magical ley lines that were once weak were now much stronger, and the local Order dwarves worked extensively to study their nature and use them for various functions.
Ley lines were the closest thing to ‘free’ mana in the many myriad worlds and were how the Will of the World extended their reach.
Using a series of magical tools made of crystals, these crystals stored the raw magical energy supplied by the leylines and then converted them into usable forms of magical energy. This was later used by dwarves to power heavy equipment, powerful forges, and tools.
Though the dwarven forges could not make things like the [Hero Forge] or even the spiritual equipment of the domain tier, size had a unique quality of its own.
The dwarves loved the challenge and the thrill of constructing these large war machines, and though Treehome continued to be the master of individual equipment with their overall industrial ecosystem and huge range of highly skilled and high leveled individuals, Darkgard had now transformed into the large-sized center of manufacturing.
Here, they built massive plates and armors that would go and outfit the two great beetle carriers, Gantreethor and Dionaea.
Here, they built the massive cannons and defensive tools that protected Hytreerion on the peripheral worlds.
And here, Alka had the Order’s mages and researchers work on research for large objects.
Darkgard was extremely sparse, even if it was now home to more than ten million dwarves, mostly from immigration and high natural growth. Darkgard’s Stand, the first city constructed here more than 40 years ago, was almost to half of that number.
So, most of Darkgard was open space for experimenting on large weapons.
Powerful tools and more exotic weaponry. Here, they tried to push the limits of magical bombs even further, with exotic materials brought from the peripheral worlds.
“The things you do to make your bombs more powerful.” Ezar said as they watched one of the bombs go off. It was all the way at the edges of their vision, but they could still feel the explosion.
Many parts of Darkgard were bomb testing sites, where many mages tweaked their tools. These new tools and weapons, helped Ezar, Kafa, and Alka, a rather odd combination of domain holders take on powerful demon kings.
They were still no match for Lausanne, and their battles often involved heavy preparation and spawncamping.
But a victory is a victory, and their levels spoke for themselves.
Alka was the highest level of the three now, at Level 180. His level 180 ability, [Attack Reabsorption], allowed him to absorb any magical or energy attack, nullifying it.
At the same time, the stored attack could be ‘encased’ into a crystal bomb that could be then reused against others. He could effectively store up to twenty attacks at any time, and any excess stored would detonate around Alka, but could also damage him. In theory, if he could store any attack into a crystal fast enough, he could functionally be immune to magical attacks.
Unfortunately, it didn’t absorb physical strikes, but it meant demon kings that relied on magical type attacks such as magical breath, and even the self-destruction abilities could be nullified by the [Attack Reabsorption]. 
So, Alka, the ever so slightly suicidal one that already died once, was on the hunt for more demon kings with the self-detonating ability.
As it so happened that it was fairly common amongst demon kings, and he eventually found one on the third demon king. Though statistically, the Order generally realized it was one in five demon kings who had the self-destruction ability.
Kafa and Ezar were still lagging behind, only in their high level 150s, and not yet reaching their Level 160. They would have to do better.
***
Across the many worlds, the Order scrambled to prepare for the coming war.
***
An egg.
A small, stone egg with little carvings. It stood, perfectly ordinary in his hands. Unlike the bomb, this thing leaked no energy. It leaked no divine power.
It looked unassuming.
[ Aivan Realm Egg – The Faith and Power of a Thousand Worlds condensed to create a New Will of the World. Will Spawn a New Sun and Two Orbiting Worlds. Locked to Aeon and Lumoof]
But just holding it, we knew it was a powerful item. Incredibly so. So much of that power was locked within, perfectly stitched such that none of it escaped from the egg.
“Can you make more?” Lumoof immediately asked.
“I am afraid plucking one of the Will of the Worlds from the [System]’s creation process and hiding it within this thing is not at all something so easily repeatable. I can make another, but it will be in about a hundred years. Any more within a shorter period, the [System] will temporarily bar my access.”
“Temporarily.” Lumoof countered. “That doesn’t sound like much of a problem.”
“It would also prevent me from creating normal planets and worlds to my existing ones, and that is a price too steep for me to pay. Time is the real currency you deal with.”
Lumoof waited, and sighed. “We’ve seen what is on the other side.”
Aiva paused.
“They’ve developed star-mana resistant demons.”
The god seemed pensive, as if recalling ancient history. “I had hoped it would not come to that point. Our core worlds will survive that, we have many ways of fighting beyond star mana on the core worlds, but it is the periphery that will be undefendable. It will take centuries for us gods to develop a countermeasure.”
“Why centuries? Surely you can work faster than that! Just spend faith points.”
“Altering the [heroes] to have something other than star mana is a fundamental change of what they are and will take the combined intent of all the gods. It is not so easy.”
Ah. So it was a systematic change, but that didn’t mean anything.
“Skip the hero system. Use your faith points, make powerful warriors, and send them to the periphery directly.”
“And how do you propose I send this large army there?”
“I can transport your defenses. Help me shore up the peripheral worlds.” Lumoof countered. “Develop a force able to counter these star-mana resistant demons, and if they don’t have star mana, my void mages can help deploy and station them close to where they are needed most.”
My proposal made a lot of sense, and Aiva ate a grape. And two. And three. They were golden grapes, and they looked tasty.
He offered Lumoof some. Lumoof took a bite and it was incredible. It was as if liquid bliss exploded in my avatar’s mouth.
[ Additional Crop Type acquired : Golden Aivan Grapes ]
“That was an experience.” Lumoof admitted.
“Your proposal is a fair one. Capture some of these true demons. Send them over and I’ll see what I can do to defeat them. If we presume that the demons know that they will be able to claim more of the periphery, that only makes me certain that their true goal is to shift the [system]’s preference even further.”
I thought that bit was obvious, but I wondered whether there may be someone who knew the truth on the other side of the demon’s barrier.
***
Elsewhere, my experiments on the [soul forge] and Jorkun went surprisingly well.
I spent more time trying to understand what Eras had wanted to achieve with his soul structure, and whatever Eras did was fairly standard artificial soul creation, though Hoyia’s idea of duplicating Jorkun’s existence was surprisingly tricky.
Though I was fairly certain it isn’t impossible, this required fashioning existing soul fragments into a one to one replica of Jorkun’s soul and transferring memories, a deep component of anyone’s inner soul, was actually far harder than I thought.
Memories were not bricks in the soul spring. They were contained within the inner soul as some form of entangled sequences of spiritual string bound to the soul core. To an outsider, each string on its own was meaningless, and yet together as a whole, they formed the basis of one’s existence.
It was a new thing for me, and we went through multiple failed attempts at recreating the memories of Jorkun.
Shape. Pattern. Texture. Arrangement. It required an even higher level of precision than repairing damaged souls and bodies that lost their limbs.
Though I enjoyed the process of learning about this, and at the same time, I also examined other specimens’ souls just to get a holistic understanding of the inner soul.
It was strange that I had never considered duplicating or cloning memories, and to some extent, I realized I likely inherently did not like the idea.
I may have gone way past my initial racial types, but during my earlier days, a [soul tree]’s primary purpose was to facilitate the movement of souls back into the reincarnation pool.
Retaining memories and giving these dead folks an additional ‘artificial’ extension to their lives by duplicating memories felt like a subtle perversion of these goals. Somewhere, a part of me has a slight sense that I’ve veered away from what was true.
Maybe it was that remnant of my origin [soul tree], now suppressed by my domain. Or maybe somewhere throughout my vast numbers of trees, billions of normal trees spread across all my clone-connected worlds, these trees innately believed in the cycle of life and death and to clone something and let them retain their memories was unnatural.
It was strange.
And contradictory.
My powers as the Tree of Life clearly granted me powers to meddle with life.
As they say, life finds a way, surely this form of cloning was also life finding its own way to continue on.
The thoughts were bothersome, and I shut them off.
“I’ll need more time.” I told Jorkun, but I had seen far more than I needed. Deep in my soul forge, I began to practice stitching and weaving soul fragments into those thin strings that formed the jumbled mess that is one’s memory.
It felt like reconstructing a brain, neuron by neuron. Tying strings in knots and patterns into a specific shape. With the exact thickness and length. Distances. I experimented and realized they all influenced the outcomes. A slight difference in length or thickness seemed to imply the strength of connections between two things, but they did not operate on their own.
So, as my domain holders ventured outwards, I turned my efforts inward at the inner workings of an artificial mind.
***
351. The Great Filter
351
Stella, Lumoof, and Edna decided to head back into the demon’s barrier once more. This time, it was a kidnapping mission. We would capture as many living ‘true’ or ‘new’ demons and send them back for experiments, and also, a few samples to the old gods to prove our point.
However, it seemed our return this time was slightly different.
Our first attack on that one true demonworld seemed to have rearranged the placement of the worlds within the barrier, and the world we landed on felt very much like a fortified world.
There were still the ‘new’ regular demons. They walked about and moved around the world normally as if they were just part of the natural environment. There were also strange plant-beast hybrids, and they seemed to react to our presence with outright hostility. They attacked us fairly immediately once we dropped our invisibility spells.
We captured a few anyway and sent them through Lumoof’s teleportation ability back to Treehome where they were thoroughly studied.
We wanted to understand our foes, and now with full, living samples, we could have a look at their overall makeup, not just analyze the flesh and corpses. We collected a few of every type of demon we encountered, and annoyingly on these true demonworlds, there were many, many variants.
The sheer variety of demons on a single ‘true’ world was equal to about six to ten previously explored demonworlds.
Under the hood, my [soul forge] realized that these true demons possessed a soul of some kind.
Unlike the dry, parched desert that often exemplified the lesser demon’s souls, these were filled with a kind of black blood as if they were pumping out black oil from their springs. The land also didn’t look like what I expected them to be.
Their soul springs were not surrounded by land and soil like all normal beings.
Instead, they were surrounded by flesh. Demonic flesh.
In a way, these demons were truly distant from the rest of us. If the old demons were attempts to construct demons using materials already available, then these demons were built from the ground up altogether, with not a single bit resembling our normal souls.
It also meant some of our regular anti-demonic abilities no longer worked. They were able to deceive some demon-sensing spells, and with our combat tests, we were able to isolate the effects of their inherent strength and reveal that they also were not affected by the usual demonic damage boosts.
But it did not matter.
They traded weakness as demonkind, for the regular weaknesses of the flesh. They could be crushed. They could be killed. They could be destroyed with enough force, even if some of our abilities didn’t work.
They did not respond to poisons or toxins. They also did not respond to certain types of mana-draining abilities, because what they possessed was an upgraded form of demonic mana, and more alien. More ‘natural’. But hostile all the same. It was almost at the point where my mages wanted to give it an entirely different category, rather than just mana.
***
Hoyia and Alka received and studied these demons on Treehome, and once we were ready, we brought one specimen of these new demons to the old gods.
Aiva was first to receive it as our void mages transported the creature to one of his outer core worlds.
“Interesting.” Aiva said as the true demon was encased in a glowing divine light. He, in the glowing form of a winged angel, levitated the trapped demon and poked at it. “They resemble our ancient foes, more than these new demons. Recall the tale of the Ravenous God?”
“This is an attempt to return to that?” Hoyia asked, curious.
“Not exactly. It is different, and it contains aspects that do not match the old ravenous. It is as if the demons are attempting to mix and retain the benefits of both the normal mortals and the old ravenous. The old ravenous creatures did not have this unusual type of soul. But no matter, I will have an army outfitted to deal with these. Conventional weapons will do just fine.”
“How long do you need?”
“Five.”
***
Hawa did not like us bringing demons to their territory, so the Golden Knight sliced through them the moment he laid eyes on it.
The creature burned in holy light, and yet, Hoyia saw the god seemingly learn about the creature through the very act of destruction.
“A painful foe. This is your idea?”
“Aiva suggested we bring some back for studies.”
“We will be ready.”
***
Gaya burned the creature, and chased us off. The god said nothing, and merely through divine will, sent us off world.
***
Neira the dragon god looked at the floating demon and laughed. The laughter shook the entire blue world that the dragon called its home.
We didn’t find it funny. But Hoyia, as my messenger, was clearly outmatched by the dragon god. The dragon’s presence was so thick that in the blue world, she had to borrow some of my strength to resist.
“The demons underestimate us greatly if they believe our core worlds will fall to such things.”
“Our findings suggest that these are only meant for the peripheral worlds.”
“No matter. You will deal with it.”
“And if we do not?”
“Then we will.”
***
Meanwhile, Lumoof, Stella, and Edna tried to use the opportunity to explore more of the true demon worlds.
Stella led them to more worlds to find them all undergoing the same sort of demonic evolution. They were all just regular armies, but in our minds, we wondered what were the trump cards.
What did the true demons have that could stand toe to toe with the heroes and give them a run for their money?
What would break the long stalemate of the peripheral worlds that constantly edged on full destruction and heroic comebacks?
Not all peripheral worlds we encountered were in terrible shape. Some had a streak of heavenly luck. A hero from the past left powerful weapons that gave them an edge. Or a powerful hero survived the first demon king and managed to take on the second. And a third.
Such worlds could build up their military arsenal and overall strength to face a harsh demonic winter.
So, we looked.
***
“I don’t know if it is just me.” Edna said. “But I think I can feel body language from these demons. They seem to sense our presence, and they are tense.”
“If they have souls and are made from ‘natural’ materials, it is likely they have some semblance of emotions. Even if it is not something we could understand.” Lumoof answered. Back home, there was a philosophical debate whether these demons could be considered living beings, and by most measures they fit, even if all the internal parts were swapped for something else.
We saw ‘pregnant’ demons. We saw demonic eggs. We saw demons that multiplied by separation or cloning themselves. Each different demonic world constructed an entirely new ecosystem built up from demonic flesh, demonic spawning pools, demonic insects, and demonic predators. There were some things that resembled plants, but we soon realized all these demons were feeding from the demonic energy supplied by such a corrupted world.
But our goal was to find the apex predator. Something at the demon king level.
We didn’t find it, but we noticed, just like our first world, there was another of those corrupted Wadran spawns that seemed to transport the mature demons somewhere.
Our instincts were to follow them and see where that took us.
***
“You know something strange about these inner worlds?” Stella said as she studied the arrangement of the worlds.
“What?”
“The void sea here is flattened. Everything is located on a single narrow band disc shape, and everywhere else it is as if they don’t exist. They are pushed. When I try to move a [void explorer] through these parts of the void sea, they are pulled back onto these discs.”
The six Sun-Rings fired six massive beams of void mana towards the heart of this group of worlds, but only two of these beams, one at the top and one at the bottom, took a straight line. The other four were curved by the void sea, and it was as if the rest of the worlds were curved along that same disc.
“Do you think if we crack the void barrier, these things will change with it?”
“I don’t know. It might. Right now, if I am reading the flow of the void sea right, like I said before, all the worlds are pushed onto the disc. But once we crack the void barrier and if the Sun-Rings go offline, the pressure on these realms will vanish, and this disc will inflate like a flattened rubber ball. It should push all these existing worlds back and cause them to all be further away from each other.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“I don’t know. They are clearly using this mechanism to move demons between the worlds.”
“For what?”
***
Then in the middle worlds, we found our answer.
The middle worlds were slightly different from the outer group of demon worlds. Here, we saw massive demonic arenas, connected to each other by pathways, and millions of these freshly arrived demons were then poured into these arenas.
It was quite like watching a pool of water overflowing with fish that their bodies touched. We watched with great curiosity when large groups of demons were placed into these large arenas. At first, they all seemed to do nothing, most were just busy doing their own thing, mostly nothing, since there was not much space.
Then, a weird, unusual energy flooded the arena, and all the demons glowed in an alien red color.
What followed was a slaughterfest.
Demons killing demons.
It was a massive no-holds barrel fight between demons of the same tier.
Then as invisible observers, we realized what was happening. The survivors were getting stronger.
“They are leveling.” Lumoof and Edna could see it. Through Lumoof, I could see the weight of their monstrous souls grow.
“You cannot be serious.” Stella answered mentally.
When each arena only had less than twenty demons left, that unusual energy vanished and was replaced with some other kind of energy. All the twenty remaining demons stopped their bloodthirsty ways and went back to their usual idle self.
From almost ten thousand, only twenty stood, and already we could feel that these twenty had the strength of champions. They grew larger and more monstrous than before. Some of them looked at us as if they could detect something of a presence.
“How confident are you in our invisibility spells?” Edna asked, as she was the most sensitive to their bloodlust.
“I think we’ve sent samples back home a little too early.” Lumoof admitted.
But we watched. Thousands of arenas throughout these worlds then guided the twenty survivors into a new arena. Almost a thousand gathered in this arena of new demonic champions. We knew something was up because we could feel the incredible strength of the arena’s design. The walls were made of regenerating flesh resistant to magic and physical attacks.
“They’re going to repeat it, aren’t they?” Edna watched with both a mix of awe and horror.
Then, that same magical energy triggered again, and the thousand demons burst forth with incredible fury. Their powers raged against each other, and we witnessed carnage.
A thousand champions brought their fury against each other. The battle lasted for days, and the three domain holders could not stop watching.
This arena had breaks, and there were moments when that energy stopped.
The survivors would rest, and we witnessed their form mutate. The rest period was nothing more than a window to allow each of these surviving demons to consolidate their gains and grow stronger.
“They are trying to exploit the souls to turn mortals’ strength into their own.”
Some grew monstrous with incredible armor. Some grew powerful with weapons that burned with intense elemental energies. Their powers were all varied, and already, we felt their power levels grew massively.
The arena’s foul energy flared once more, and we witnessed the demons attack each other with renewed fury. Their new powers made them monstrous.
From a thousand, they were now down to twenty once more.
But this was not the end. These surviving twenty went through another five rounds of thorough slaughter and filtering, with each subsequent arena reinforced to a far greater level just to withstand the heightened power.
Some things though did not change. The pace of leveling slowed down, and even if the surviving demons grew, they grew slower.
If we estimated the first round to be approximately Level 70, the second round only pushed them to about level 90. Then the third only to level 85, and the fourth to 90.
It was only at the end of the seventh round of filtering that they were about level 110 to 120 or so. It was hard to be specific, since we were not sure whether their power levels mapped nicely to our own. The weight of these demons that survived their brutal slaughter were strong, and the whole process took about six months.
We watched one of these seventh round slaughterfest, in a far larger arena, and noticed that there were periods of consolidation for these demons. The energy stopped, and we felt the surviving twenty’s demonic energies change. They grew some more, and turned into something more than champions.
Their energy levels were about level 120, and we were on high alert, wondering whether these creatures would reach a power level comparable to us. But thankfully for us, we did not sense the twisting of the fabric of reality.
They did not have a [domain].
Or maybe, they didn’t have a path to a domain.
Or maybe, their souls lacked the components necessary to form a domain. But in my mind, I wondered what made our souls special? What if the demons could compel the [system] to allow them to gain some kind of domain-equivalent?
“Can you win?” Stella asked.
“Yes.” Edna said. “I can. The three of us all can, I bet our peers too. But it will be harder for everyone else.”
In our minds, we thought about the Order. I didn’t see any of my domain holders or even level 140s face a challenge. But enough of these level 110s and 120s demons still could kill a few level 140s, or maybe one of my newer domainholders, since numbers was less of a problem.
“Should we just nuke these middle worlds instead of blowing up the barrier?” Stella counterproposed.
“You’re too hasty.” Lumoof said. “This is not the end of the line for them. They are moving somewhere. Let’s follow it.”
These surviving twenty powerful demonic survivors did not fight any more. Instead, they were moved once more. There was another of these Wadran Corrupted Spawns, and these demons were sent offworld.
We traced the path and realized they were moved closer to the inner worlds.
Stella was almost about to follow, but she stopped.
“This next move might be risky.”
“Why?”
“I feel a tremendous presence in these inner worlds. As if something emits a world-covering energy field that wants me to poke at it. There is malice in it as if I was dealing with a hostile mind.”
“If we do enter, are we declaring our presence?”
“I believe so.”
Lumoof didn’t quite understand.
“Before we crack the barrier, we should plan a way to simultaneously take out most of the key defenses on these outer and middle demonworlds.” Stella said. “I think Edna would agree?”
“The Outer circle of worlds seem to be mostly low to mid level opponents, the Wadran Corrupted Spawns are the only strong opponents that the rest of our forces have to be wary about. But these middle worlds can field these powerful near-domain creatures by the hundreds if not thousands.” Edna spoke her thoughts aloud, and spoke cautiously. “But, we don’t know whether the inner worlds could easily reinforce these middle worlds. If the inner worlds are home to [Defender Demon Kings] and even more powerful variants of these things, we do have a problem.”
“It isn’t so easy to reach the domain tier. We saw how their strength plateaued even though they fought powerful versions of other demons. I believe there will be very few opponents we have to fear.” Stella countered. Our own paths told us all we needed to know about the demons.
“By we, you mean only three of us. The rest of our friends will be slaughtered.” Lumoof clarified. “But if the inner worlds are stockpiling these powerful warriors, the demons must be planning a single large flood of demons to overwhelm the usual defenses.”
Back home, the Order made models based on our latest findings, and it was fairly grim.
My mages theorized that the demons must have been building their strength for a very, very long time. If they were able to field a thousand of these level 110-120 demons to each of the peripheral worlds, the sombre reading was that we would lose at least two third of our current covered worlds, and the Order would have to regroup and be highly selective of where we wanted to defend.
If we could field a clone, it was likely my clones would be able to withstand this flood. Even five thousand level 100s would not get past my clone. Each of my clones were too tough and regenerated far too quickly. But my clone was a massive rarity, and Lumoof could not be everywhere.
***
Year 326.
Stella spent the entire year surveying all we could about the outer and middle worlds. Her [Void Inheritor] massively increased her range, and she could make jumps we could not do before.
There were about a thousand and five hundred outer demon worlds that served as the true demon farms. Feeder worlds.
Each of these outer worlds produced anywhere around a million to ten million fresh demons per year for the twenty or so middle realm worlds.
There, in these twenty middle realms, these millions of demons were left to fight each other to feed their super champions, and by our estimate, each of these twenty middle realms produced about fifty or so level 110 to 120 demons. So, about a thousand per year.
We named these the true demon champions.
If they have been at this for at least the past thousand to ten thousand years, we calculated that there were easily a few million of such creatures.
Edna, on the other hand, didn’t think it was that much of a big deal.. They had to sacrifice 50 to push 1 up a few levels.
If we assume that each of these arenas processed 50 sacrifices for every 1 demon to gain 5 levels, then the next level would require 2500 sacrifices for 10 levels, 125,000 for 15 levels, and 6,250,000 for a total of 20 levels.
So, with a few hundred millions, once we whittled down the odds, we could be looking at maybe 10 or so potentially domain-tier demons?
That was a credible, dangerous threat for sure, and we were not exactly sure what skills these demons had. We were also not sure what sort of powers domain-tier equivalent true demons possessed.
“Something feels wrong. Ten million level 100s or 120s demons would be a far greater threat to the wider world than 10 domain holders.” Stella said. “The wider worlds have no way to resist that kind of flood.” Stella thought.
“Unless the gods have some way to destroy non-domain holders easily. Remember, our domains protect us from many, many things.” Edna countered. “If the demons want domain tier protection, that must imply some countermeasures only the gods have. It makes sense to me, because we have existed for not very long, if we consider the demon and god’s war to be something that occurred over tens of thousands of years. Their countermeasure is focused on something the gods were doing or have done before. They have never considered us to be a problem.”
Lumoof thought about the powers we’ve seen from the gods so far, and truly, a weapon like the [Hawan Shieldbreaker] could easily level billions of level 100s if they were in the wrong place.
So Edna was right. Quantity didn’t matter when the gods’ faith enabled them to crush the weaklings. The demons needed quality. Something to match the gods?
“Or they want the domain for some other purpose.” Lumoof looked. “Maybe, a way to access the World Faith System?”
352. Heart Surgery
Year 327
“Let’s have a guerilla strike plan against the demons.” Stella proposed. “As it is, the demons are manufacturing high leveled demons, but they spread their lower level resources across these many, many demonflesh worlds. There are thousands of them, but thousands are still achievable. We can nibble at the edges and weaken them from the outside.”
“Achievable?” Lumoof thought about it, but the more we pondered the matter, the more it made sense. There’s no reason for us to leave the demonflesh worlds as they are now.
“Three of us, or many more, we strike against these demon flesh worlds, taking them one or two worlds at a time. With enough destruction, we put an end to this foul manufacturing process. Our strategy will be two-pronged. Outside of the barrier, we continue to enhance our strength, while the three of us harass these outer worlds until they are no longer able to grow. If we can’t or find it too hard to take out the fleshworlds themselves, we hunt down the surface riftgates and the Corrupted Wadran Spawns that function as their transportation network, and then we come back to them later.”
Lumoof looked at Edna, and Edna shrugged. “I think it could work, and we might be able to lure whatever is in the inner worlds toward us. If we bait them out here one-by-one or in smaller batches, we might be able to manage whatever they send our way.”
The inner group worlds within the demonic barrier were home to many strange things. Floating demon comets. Worlds that looked like and felt like normal worlds.
Stella felt a constant, frightening presence within the inner worlds, but she could not identify whether they were just a single entity or multiple weaker entities that layered their influence around the turbulent void sea.
The void seas here were far more dense with void mana, and it must have been entirely intentional. Void mana, from what Hawa and Aiva shared, weakened the power of divine energy. The demons intended to use the void mana as a smokescreen to hide their affairs from the gods.
Lumoof paused, and sighed. “Well, if we can take five worlds a year, at best, we would need 200 years to even take out all the demon worlds, and they could certainly restore and repair the worlds we destroyed in that time being.”
“But we will get stronger, and the pace at which we move through these demon worlds will increase.” Edna countered. “Once our friends outside get stronger, they can join us in the assault, then we can spread our influence to more worlds.”
“But they can’t move without Stella. The rest of them, even the void archmages, can’t even move between worlds because of how dense the void seas here are.”
“So we must break the demon’s barrier.” Stella said. “The shattering of the void barrier will allow the void mana within these demon realms to flow out into the wider world. This barrier is like a dam, an embankment to keep these places far more dense in void energy. The six Sun-Rings also continuously send more void mana into these worlds, so disabling them will eventually allow the outer true demonworlds to be ‘traversable’ by my disciples.”
“We either wait, and hope that the pace of our growth outstrips whatever manufacturing process the demons have, or we break it, and then, we can bring our entire force to the fray and start weakening the entire thing as a whole. The three of us can destroy worlds, but we can’t do so faster than they can fix it.”
“Well, we’ll have to try it out, then.” Stella said.
“Actually, I’ve been wondering about your [void] creatures. Can they help us?” Edna asked. “Here in this void mana dense environment, shouldn’t they feel more empowered.”
“Yes. It’s exactly why I think we can do more damage, but I’m not sure how big of a difference that is on our timescales.”
***
The trio visited a second demon fleshworld, and this time, they were not here to sightsee and learn. They were on a path of destruction with the sole goal of crushing the true demon breeding operations.
We sought out the corrupted Wadran spawn and destroyed it. We crushed it, and then, we turned our direction downwards into the fleshworld.
We dug.
With the combined might of our summons and our domain-tier powers, we directed our attention below and excavated a hole.
The demons sought to stop us, and all the while Stella was on the lookout. We knew the corrupted core possessed some means of communication with the rest of the demonworlds, and she’d have to stop them.
But a part of us also wanted to know what would come to the world. Through Lumoof, I noticed that my roots and my attacks went much deeper than before, and this alone would’ve shaved us half of the time needed to reach the core.
The flesh could not resist my presence. My mana churned and burned through them easily as if my mana was a rotting infection.
“Do you think demons get sick from Aeon’s presence?” Stella watched in absolute bewilderment.
“Most likely [Corebreaker Aura].” Edna said. “That’s the only thing that changed.”
“If these things are no longer some kind of magical construct like the other demons, they could possibly get sick. They are somewhat organic.”
Stella’s thoughts were not unique. Our previous order to research weaknesses in these true demons led to a large-scale experimentation on what could work, and that included diseases.
***
The Order often experimented on demons to discover and test new tools, new weapons, bombs, and all that.
But disease research and poison research on demons was an entirely new field, partly because they were non-existent when the demons were constructs with no real vulnerability to tiny organic matter. Toxins and acids could work, but poisons and diseases did not work so well, since there were only a limited range of things they could interact with within the demons.
Now though, the idea of making an entire demonflesh planet sick and implode on itself was a fascinating idea, since these demonflesh were its own type of organism with physical properties not found on the old demons.
Though, we did realize that if these organisms had souls, they could just as easily develop [skills] that would offset or nullify the effects of our poison.
So, in true evil-wizard fashion, the Order’s poison would not only be effective, it needed to be thorough and work so quickly that the demons could not develop a counter [skill].
The heroes, like Colette and Prabu, occasionally supported the Order’s magical research division, previously with experiments on hero items and also because the [hero’s forge] was an exceptional prototyping tool.
We’d tried to minimize the heroes’ front-line deployment, since we noticed that the effects of the [hero] class often flared up when they channeled large quantities of star mana through their souls.
The Order thus found many ways to use the heroes in support roles. Teaching, magical simulation, sparring partners, and also in magical research and development.
It was quite easy to start from a weapon or tool designed from [Hero Forge] and then work backwards to discover what else could be used as a substitute.
The [Hero Forge] was also an exceptional ’emergency’ solution tool. If any particular machinery was missing a critical component, [Hero Forge] could patch it up and get it running while the rest of the Order’s industrial machinery cranked up to meet the needs. The only side effects were these hero items had all the usual hero item drawbacks, meaning star mana and the potential mana and spiritual overload for lesser mages when interacting with such powerful items.
The biological lab was located on Lavaworld, partly because we wanted an easily managed containment area just in case something went wrong.
Biological weapons against demons felt right and could be huge, but we also knew that there was potential that such a weapon could be used on normal people.
The thing that assuaged our concerns were the entirely different organic structure of the demonflesh that meant what was poison to the demons, would not react the same way with regular folk, and regular folk were so varied in physique, nature, and anatomy that it likely would not affect the majority of races.
An outbreak of a magical disease was likely contained to specific races, unless there was a way for these mutant magical diseases to adapt to all the different races. That was a horrifying prospect and likely too much power for a single disease to carry. Diseases didn’t have levels or skills, and that was a great reason to believe they wouldn’t be a world-ending danger.
Unlike earth or the source worlds, the mages and the heroes only needed to equip themselves with a set of bracelets that granted magical protection from magic and created a small protection field around themselves.
As a result, there was no need for uniforms in the lab. All the mages, herbalists, and healers here wore whatever they wanted, though most wore some basic protective equipment usually from their own paranoia.
These labs were filled with hundreds and thousands of experimental chambers filled with the organic demons captured from the True Demonworlds.
“Looks like something out of the movies.” Prabu said as the couple walked past a screaming demon. The way the demon wailed was unnatural, and everyone wore protections to cover their ears. The glass and magical protective barriers rattled as the demons attempted to break them.
“It is. It’s even experimenting on demons to develop a disease to kill them. Think this is how some zombie-horror movie starts?”
“Oh please. If they made a zombie magical plague we’d all be so screwed.”
“I don’t think we’d be.” Colette said. “But yeah, if it infects the Order, our society would be pretty bad.”
One of the true demons resembled a mutant ogre, and it hammered the glass walls repeatedly. Each time it did so, the attacks bounced off the magical barrier, and it only enraged the creature further.
Prabu almost instinctively felt the urge to blast the creature to smithereens, but Colette held his hand in time. “It’s alright.”
Prabu breathed. “Yeah, let’s go.”
***
We reached the second core far faster than we initially anticipated, the Corebreaker Aura’s effects meant Stella’s initial assessment was far more conservative than we predicted. We could potentially hit about eight to nine worlds a year, up from four to five.
Once we reached the core, Lumoof and I decided to try something else.
We hammered it with our attacks at first, just to weaken it.
Just like before, it attempted to call for help, and this time, Stella didn’t intervene. We wanted to know what was coming and whether they were opponents that we could face.
The second true demonworld’s core vibrated as we sliced more and more of the flesh out, our roots were exceptionally effective on its body.
Stella and Edna braced, as a rift gate appeared right within the core chamber, and out of it came a strange demon.
To call it a demon king was incorrect, because it felt different. It looked as if it was an experiment gone wrong. It looked like a stitched up mix of three demon kings as it had three distinctly different parts of flesh, as if each of them were made from an entirely different type of demon.
[ True Demon ???? ]
Edna’s spears glowed as her [Martial Paragon] sent power throughout her being. The creature parried the blow, but the powerful magical blow from Edna’s sword sent a vibration of magic through its flesh, and I sensed that it was, in every sense of the word, a stitched together monstrosity.
It had three demon king cores wrapped around a demonic soul. One of the cores was flooded with void mana, while the other two contained regular demonic mana.
[ Domain blocked attempted intrusion ]
We felt mental attacks from both the damaged demonflesh core and the True Demon Mutant.
“Well, here to protect your core? Come and get it.” Edna’s spears jammed into the creature, and we noticed the demon mutant was unnaturally restrained. It stuck to very specific attacks and angles that avoided damaging the core, and Edna exploited this vulnerability to position herself in the best attacking spots.
The creature clearly had more powerful weapons in its arsenal, because each of the strikes revealed its internal magical structure. The cores were not exerted at all, and their powers were clearly meant for a wider array of blast and magical attacks.
Yet here in the core, it did none of that.
Stella’s attacks did not hurt as much, but between Edna and the creature, it was a fairly even exchange of blows. So Lumoof stepped in, and with his avatar form, we brought the battle to an end fairly quickly.
It was stronger than a demon king, but as it began to realize that the battle was turning against it, it stopped restricting itself so much and started attacking the environment with its magic.
There were blasts,beams, and magical spells that burned both the environment, and also damaged the core even more.
I felt a little sorry for the creature, because my roots blew through its defenses just as easily as a normal demon king. If its opponent were a hero, I’d believe they would have had better odds.
The death of the True Demon Mutant brought levels for the four of us. My three domain holders and myself, fighting through my avatar, all gained one or two.
[You’ve gained levels. You are now Level 275 ]
[Clone Number increased by 2]
[Node Number Increased by 5]
[Second Subdomain Choice unlocked ]
But I decided to look at that later. I turned my attention to the demonflesh world’s core at the heart of the demon world, and wanted to know what happened if I flooded it with mana.
Lumoof approached the demonic world core. Roots, vines, and branches exploded out of his avatar, and quickly wrapped around the massive demonic core.
The demons had long been a parasite to the other worlds.
What would happen if it was in reverse?
My mana flooded through the demonic core, and that moment I felt its wailing screams. It sent me thoughts and memories, but all were blocked by my domain.
I did not need to know.
My mana seemed toxic as the flesh itself turned into goo. The goo melted away, and the vines tightened its grip on what was left of the flesh.
More of it melted away.
“Well, melting a demonflesh core is one way we can solve problems.” Stella said.
“It’s not planned.” Lumoof insisted.
More of the flesh melted and melted away, but within all organic matter were natural materials, and slowly my mana intervened and began to reorganize the melted goo and gunk into something more natural.
Something more rocky.
“Now this was what I was hoping for.” Lumoof said as some parts of the demonflesh began to transform and explode into rock-coral like structures.
Stella and Edna quickly found a place to sit down. She had already had a picnic table and mat set up, while Lumoof and my avatar pushed more of our mana into the demonflesh core. “We’ll be here. I’ll keep your food warm.”
There was nothing they could contribute to this part of the work. Perhaps Hoyia could help, but the other domain holders were better off doing something else.
“Aye, thanks. Hopefully we don’t have to run away from this world.”
“I bet the demons know.” Stella said as she offered a slice of meat from a package to Edna. Edna took the slice with her hands and placed it in her bread.
“They already know when we blew up the other world.” Edna added. “We’re just announcing our presence a little louder.”
“I wonder whether they’d panic.”
“You’re assuming these things have emotions.”
“They do!” Stella said. “The research papers claim they exhibit some basic emotions! I believe it comes as part and parcel of having a soul.”
“Wait. Doesn’t that mean we could, I don’t know, reason with these things?”
“Do you reason with cockroaches or locusts? Or a wolf that’s trying to eat you?”
“Why not?” Lumoof countered, though most of his mind was focused on the demonflesh core. My avatar felt the assistance of an army of artificial minds, connected through the avatar. “Maybe at lower levels, these demons have a way of controlling these demons, but I reckon once they reach domain-tier, whatever controls the demons have will weaken.”
Stella ate a sandwich. “The idea of making these true demons rebelling against their own masters is fascinating.”
“Of course, we’d have to make sure we can figure out what these things’ needs, desires and priorities are, if they have them. If they are creatures with souls but do not have that.”
“They might not get a domain.” Stella added. “WIthout a little bit of madness and personality, the system as it is would lock them out of a domain.”
“That’s just your theory.”
“I have faith in it.” Stella added. “You should have some faith in your fellow demigod.”
“Really?”
Lumoof and my spiritual energies flooded the core some more, and we were halfway. The rest of the demonflesh vibrated strongly as my mana overwhelmed the core in its entirety.
Its resistance faded altogether, and then, the entire demonflesh core vibrated as if it was a balloon struggling to hold its contents together.
It exploded in a splatter as it expelled all the unwanted demonic matter, and what was left was a far, far larger core than the piece we found back on the first true demonworld. Most of this larger core was new, things we made through my mana forcibly reversing the demonification of the world.
Still, the world shook. It shook violently.
I heard a voice from the core.
“This is not enough to sustain the world. At this size, the world still dies.”
Our reverse-demonification did not do enough to undo the damage. It was the equivalent of removing tumors, but not having enough critical organs remaining for the patient to function as a living being.
“Well,” Lumoof had seen this pattern long enough. “We’ll get it next time. We just got a few new skills and some.”
The world shook. It shook violently. It was the final throes of a world that knew it was dying.
Stella and Edna both frowned. A flick of magic later, and their picnic setup vanished. “I’ll give you your sandwich later.”
“Later.” Lumoof said, as he held the core. “Can I take you with me?”
The core thrummed, and we knew it agreed.
Stella, Edna, and Lumoof warped out of that collapsing world, and we got another title.
[Title Awarded : The Core Thief]