Chapter 183: Treemunity

Year 198 (part 2)

 

One of the junior Valthorns developed a simplified process to check on demons, especially when demons were not available. Something that apparently, a few other places had independently developed.

If a demon consumed or destroyed a soul, essentially, that is just a body, but without the ‘will’ in it. A person’s skills and abilities were tied to the soul, so the theory was, most of these lesser demons would not be able to ‘copy’ skills. Accordingly, they may appear like a person, but if they are unable to use any of their skills, they were quite likely to be demons. 

It was quite clever. 

Of course, it’s likely that demons were still able to ‘copy’ some skills, especially the ‘champion’ class. So far, we have not seen any of these ‘champion-class’ parasites, and honestly, it kept me awake. What could a demon king that’s entirely focused on ‘possessing’ people do? Could it even possess a hero?

I thought back to Meela and Alexis, and wondered.

Was their demon king a ‘corruption’ king too? Or at least, a variant of it? Why else was Alexis consumed by the flames of the demon? That batch even had those talking demon-knights!

That was at least one hundred plus years ago. Have we finally looped the cycle?

I would have to approach them and ask them for more info. I recall Alexis didn’t have much knowledge of the demons that possessed them. 

Also, these demons were able to ‘read’ memories of the bodies they captured. From this alone, I immediately considered Stella and Kei as very high risk. If they were captured by the demons, that would be a really, really bad outcome, especially if the demons are then able to share their memories back to where they came from. 

I also wanted to know how these demons spread. They seemed to jump from person to person, and we noticed that they invaded drains, gutters, toilets and other naturally ‘dirty’ environments. We also found them in the waters, where they were, strangely, eaten by fish with little consequence. 

They were able, with surprising adaptability, to infest travelling merchants and somehow remained dormant or at least, non-hostile within them, at least, until they reached a new area.

All these observations suggested each of these parasites had intelligence, one corroborated by how they responded to my abilities. 

How do we fight them effectively, while minimising deaths?

-

Ken, Prabu and Colette met up in Freshka, and by now, my Valthorns have shared a dossier of the demonic body snatchers with them, and a rough summary of what we’ve discovered so far. I wanted the heroes to live, at least, if they could gain enough levels. 

Both Prabu and Colette have accepted my familiars as part of the deal to allow them to live here, and it was advantageous for me to keep them at a high level. 

“How does the trope normally go? Body snatchers eh...” Ken said. “There should be a kind of magic that should be specifically effective on them.” 

Prabu shrugged. “And what would that be?”

“I don’t know, we’d have to run some experiments. The common ones are usually electrical shocks, or some strange foods. Maybe we could get some anti-parasitic drugs? Or maybe just some strange rare chemicals.” Ken said as he tried to approach it from a trope-angle. 

My Valthorns were already capturing these demonic larva specimens to conduct my own tests. We wanted a widespread way to hit these demons, and we wanted to know their weaknesses. They had weaknesses for sure.

There was one very immediate sample that worked really well.

Using Stella’s gateway, we sent three ‘possessed’ individuals to Freshka, and Patreeck blasted the possessed individual with his psychic power.

It worked really well, since the person literally convulsed, and the demon actually crawled out of the possessed individual’s mouth in an attempt to avoid the psychic blast. It was pretty much nightmare material as everyone squirmed. Well, almost.. Only the knights or those who usually  had the [Still Heart], or [Calm Mind], or [Horror Resistance] or other similar passive abilities didn’t react to it.

Luckily, as long as the person’s not dead, they do not ‘spawn’ additional larva. In order to make a person into a living hatchery, they’d have to fully ‘convert’ the person, so in such cases, it’s straight-forward. Kill anyone who doesn't have a soul. 

Since they are just demons that had the appearance of people.

Snek suggested that it should be possible for certain classes to fight off such parasites, usually through boosting their own spiritual power. Their world, at least, prior to the conversion to the demon lands, were filled with naturally occurring parasites and body snatchers. But this was like multi-generational adaptation to parasites, not something that’s possible for the people of this world to acquire on a widespread scale. 

Wait. Unless I massively distribute [Skill seeds] with these skills. But I would need these skills in the first place. No, I’d need to know which skills work best against these demonic body snatchers!

Stella was extremely fascinated. “This is essentially planning to develop some kind of anti-demonic possession ‘vaccine’, and now you’re in the concept phase of testing which skills work best?”

I had a lot of skill seeds, and with them, I could make class trees and skill trees. These were old abilities that I still used on a smaller scale, but if this worked, it would essentially create ‘safe’ villages. 

“How are you proposing to test the effectiveness of the skills against the demonic possessions. No one here is going to volunteer themselves, and where do you get the demons? You’d have to have a hatchery!”

On a high level, the idea was really rather repulsive. It meant I’d capture one of these demon-possessed persons and keep it alive as a hatchery for demonic larvae, and then test out the demonic larvae on different individuals of different skills, and monitor them. Not just that, it’s essentially a test that I can only perform in Freshka, since Patreeck’s psychic/mind blast could effectively sterilise anyone infected with the demons.

Stella, of course, wondered. “Could we replicate this psychic attack on a smaller scale?”

-

The heroes, on the other hand, went in a different direction. A good solution, too, but not one I could apply on a large scale. It worked well only for them since they had the star mana.

Chung, the archer in the south, asked for help. In fact, the idea even came from him, since he was on the ground.  “We know demons don’t like star mana, and star mana is effective against them. Can we inject the villagers with star mana, as a ‘wave’ essentially? Is there a spell like that? If there is, can you make that spell into a hero-item and give it to me? I really, really hate having to kill all these guys that look like humans. I didn’t fucking sign up for this shit.”  

Prabu and Colette, the two archmages, went to work. They end up with a kind of ‘star-mana-electromagnetic-wave’, essentially Star Mana X Ray guns. It tingled for us, but it killed the larva and demons effectively, and got to work to make large quantities of them. 

They also planned on creating large versions of the weapon. Something large enough to cover entire cities, so that they could ‘clean’ the entire city and areas in a single blast. 

It was possible, but they needed time. Time that meant more cities were getting infested with demon possessed folks. 

-

The temples of the South Continent, however, publicly rejected all offers of assistance and claimed they had it all under control.

They didn’t. 

Instead, they torched entire villages once they realised it wasn’t helping very much. The larva was able to remain dormant within a body, so just because one passed a skill check didn’t meant it did not carry the larva!

Entire cities became infested with demon-possessed individuals, even with the skill checks and spell-checks. Chung had to essentially sleep alone out in the wilds, surrounded by multiple forcefields, because he got so paranoid with people and animals. Anyone could be possessed by demons. Anyone!

Then, the kingdoms started going to war with each other, and the temples. Trade and travel essentially slowed down to a halt, and cities that relied on food from trade had no choice but to go to war. 

“Look, the cure is worse than the disease.” Glassing entire cities, and it’s not even effective since the larva could still be in the waters. 

“How is the cure worse? They’ve become demons! They should die.”

“We don’t know who can still be saved?”

“We’re not taking that risk.”

Paranoia, suspicion and madness turned nations to chaos. Kings, mages and healers tried their best, but when anyone could be possessed, it was not easy to even compel anyone to work. Some cities enforced massive lockdowns, banning visitors outright. 

It took three months before the heroes all moved to the south, and Prabu and Colette had finally completed the first version of their new star-mana emitters. The emitters could even kill dormant larva.

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They were greeted by feral monsters, as the emission of star mana on a wide scale merely triggered the possessed to run wild. At least, now, they resembled demons. The heroes killed the demons. 

The only problem was, emitting star mana on a large scale drained huge quantities of star mana, and the heroes could not be everywhere at once. There were too many infested cities, too many infested towns. Even if they methodically cleaned cities after cities, the demons could still return. 

They needed something to hold the fort while they pushed their emitters outwards. Skills that helped resisting demonic parasites and body snatchers. 

-

Edna made an observation while in the South, covertly. We were unannounced, but the temples knew we were there, but they were too busy fighting their own fires to give Edna’s delegation trouble. 

“The demonic suppression aura weakens the larva and slows the rate at which they take over individuals.” We could plant my Giant Trees everywhere, since those suppressed the demons.

I wasn’t particularly fixated with using my clone seeds on other worlds. 

Edna shot down the idea. “No. Your clone trees should be reserved for the demon king. We shouldn’t deploy it yet. We can handle it.  We’ll just need to deploy more Valthorns and higher ranked priests to suppress the demon’s presence.”

But the aura fluctuates, especially for creatures that need sleep, and true enough, the demons were still able to return. 

We needed a better way to spot them, especially since these parasites have incredible natural camouflage and infiltration abilities. 

An entire village attacked Edna’s delegation when she approached. The team had to kill them all, and they all needed a pep talk. Then, we saw a man who seemed to be surrounded by thick demonic energy. 

A champion. He looked every bit human, well, other than the armor of demonic flesh that gave him wings. 

“To think that the natives still resist.” . 

Hoyia saw and was bewildered. “He still has a soul inside! It didn’t consume it.”

“Consume? Why consume when we can enslave? Is that not our role?” The demonic champion fired a beam of fire, and Edna immediately stepped in to create a shield. Fire didn’t work. “Hmmm... let’s see... this human can do this.”

The demon charged ahead and swung its sword. “[Double Cut]”, The sword blurred into two, and slammed into Edna’s shield. Yet, at that moment when they were close, the demonic flesh detached from the human, and latched onto Edna.

It attempted to infiltrate Edna’s body, and then, just as suddenly, Edna’s body made a glow of light. The demonic champion was incinerated by the power of her [domain], and turned to cinders. 

Edna frowned as she later reported back. “This is not good. Demon champions can use possessed skills. Luckily it went for me, instead of the others.” Everyone was horrified as they tried to imagine the champion possessing them. 

This meant the checks done could still miss the demon champions, since the demon champions were able to go beyond physical control, and even turn the possessed person to a puppet, and use its skills in conjunction with its own demonic abilities. 

Could a demon king, therefore, possess a hero?

-

“You can’t be serious?” Prabu vented as we shared the news of the demon champions with them. “I feel like we’ve just made a few steps forward and this demon champion sent us all back to square one.” 

Ken didn’t join them as he, without his hero class and without any star mana, was pretty much sitting ducks. “I don’t think you need to panic. The demons clearly are designed to attack heroes wherever you are. So, even if you miss them, they can’t help themselves and will attack you.”

Snek agreed with the assessment. “Our own records agree with that. Demons can’t help but attack heroes. It’s in their very nature. So, it’s almost confirmed that you did not miss any champions so far.”

“...I’m not convinced, but alright.” Prabu said. “Anyway, can you arrange a shipment of snacks?”

“That’s not critical at this time.” Kei answered. 

“It is. I’ll work for 5 years if you can send snacks here. Help me negotiate with the Order, please?” 

Ken and Kei shrugged. Ken sighed. “Prabu, you know, if you keep doing this snack thing, you’ll be relegated into the disposable joke or fodder character trope, and you’ll die. Don’t play that part, please?” 

“Fuck that trope shit. I want my snacks!” 

-

We had a few spies infected by the demons, and we brought them back for further investigation. My familiars apparently helped to detect the demons, and because my familiars also occupied a link with the soul, they contested the demonic parasite’s attempts to possess my spies. 

My spies received regular familiars, and the demons won, two out of three times. But, even though they won, it took them longer to gain control of the spies’ body, and this gave the others time to get help, or, in our case, put them into a magical coffin for further studies. 

It had to be done, and we captured more and more of these demonic larvae. With sufficient samples, we sent them to Freshka for further studies in my biolab. I also created a small section in the Rottedlands, secretly, to attempt to ‘breed’ these larvae in non-human bodies, such as hybrid demon-monsters. 

It created a few rather strong monster-demons, but nothing we couldn’t handle. 

We needed a solution, as our news in the South indicated the infestation spread really, really quickly. The heroes literally could not sterilise cities faster than the demons can ‘infest’ one. 

Worse still, some of the templars and warriors of the Gaya and Hawa temples were infested, and against the backdrop of a full rebellion by the kingdoms, it was getting, really out of hand. 

-

Lumoof continued his time in Threeworlds’ magic crystal city. He played the role of the charming, affable and clumsy old man wonderfully, and some of the local mages were quite smitten with him. 

He spent quite a lot of time gathering information about the world generally, but the knowledge of magical crystal growth remained elusive. Those who held the secrets gave it in bits and pieces, and never the whole picture. Perhaps that was how it was structured over the years, that all these little pieces were separated in order to prevent total theft.

“Sir Lumoof, this way.” A mage was more than happy to introduce some interesting types of magic to Lumoof. To the locals, Lumoof seemed to be a wealthy but foolish old man, and they were happy to make money off him. 

It was small money for us. After all, his expedition is pretty much funded by the entire central continent, which was, on an overall level, more developed than this world, even if this single city was pretty unique on its own. 

They demonstrated some magical formations and ice spells, all tethered to crystals. They had slightly different magical formations, and they were really good at using some of the natural properties of these magic crystals. “What do you think, Sir Lumoof?”

“It’s nice. I’ve never seen it. How much would it cost?” 

“Ah, this formation would cost 344 Gold Coins. Or we would be happy to trade for an artefact of sufficient quality.”

Lumoof nodded. “I see.” He retrieved another magical sword from the inventory, made by a level 50+ magical smith. “I was told this was worth about 450 gold. If you can throw in another few more manuals...”

The mage stared with greed and nodded. “Certainly.”

Alka and a group of high-ranked mages assisted Alka would receive all these scrolls and they would study them. They were aware of our expeditions to another world, even if they didn’t know of the full details. Anyway, once they studied the scrolls, they would proceed to replicate the spells and formations back home, and this added to our body of knowledge on magic and formations generally.

It was a very laborious process, but it worked.

I hoped this would allow me to unlock the knowledge needed to truly comprehend the demon king’s core, but from what I could see, progress remains very, very far away. Even with a platoon of researchers and mages, it’s a very long process. The journey to get from the iron age to the space age is long indeed.