Chapter 243: 239. All Bark

Year 241

I met the Holy Emperor, and I felt his aura brush against mine. It was quite like a dog, barking loudly against a truck. Pointless. He seemed confident at first, as the Emperor exited the portal. His small army of companions and guardians followed, but they were pale. 

He kept a straight face as my aura smashed into his like a hammer. “It seems the rumors have some steel behind them.” 

The confidantes all didn’t fare better. The Emperor’s aura couldn’t protect them, and against my own, his aura was pushed back into a small area no larger than the Emperor. 

“Likewise.” I thundered, my voice these days took the form of the echoes of the forest itself, a thousand trees all speaking at once. They echoed, and layered over each other. “Greetings, Emperor Erranuel. Are you ready for your trip across the stars?”

He tried to keep a straight, confident face. I could sense the mild shaking in his fingers, but the fact that he wasn’t cowered in spite of my weight made me rate him much higher than I would otherwise. “Of course.”

For all the pomp and arrogance, I could feel that this Holy Emperor had a backbone stronger than many others. The arrogance was merely a cover for something more within him, and there seemed like an actual, active mind within him. “I will send you to the other worlds, now. Through my power.” 

He nodded, and checked on his companions. I felt him use some kind of power to empower his fellow companions. “Steel yourself, men. We are not cowards.”

Some of them look better, a bit of color back to their face. My teleportation ability sent them through to Lavaworld first. “It is not often I speak to you people. I believe your people consider me enemies?” 

The Emperor paused and looked back at his men. They were now all in another world, and I noticed him touch his skin, and feel the air. “Yes. You are our foe. The threat to our Empire’s existence.”  

“Strange you say so, when we offer coexistence at every available opportunity?”

The Emperor looked at the demons that swarmed the lavaworld. He looked rather sad. “My advisors tell me you don’t mean it. Coexistence is a lie.”

“We do.” I said. “We have bigger foes to face. Our goal is to end this cycle of destruction. If we could hide the world, we will.”

“What if that’s done? Will you seek to annihilate us?” The Emperor accused, but I realised, that accusation came from ignorance.

“What are your advisors feeding you? Do we seem like a bloodthirsty bunch eager to kill at every corner?”

“The guilds, do you not fund them in secret?”

“No. We certainly don’t.”

“But the banks?”

“The banks are independent entities set up to protect the wealth of the people. Everyone can use them. Including you.” 

“If you don’t fund them, why do you let them go wild? I ensure all the guilds in my land listen to me.” The Emperor countered. “Tell your guilds to stop if you mean to coexist.”

I realized there was a gap in comprehension. I understood coexistence as a hands off approach. I believed that by not doing anything, I’m therefore coexisting with them..

For an Emperor, everyone reported to him. So, it was natural for an Emperor to assume that by allowing guilds from my land to attack them, I really did not have the intention to coexist with them. The guilds, in the eyes of supreme rulers, were my minions by sheer association.

“What if I told you that these guilds are truly independent of me, and I have no desire to rule over or control them. Feel free to destroy them if you are able to.”

The Emperor paused. “And you wouldn’t step in the way?”

“Why should I? Guilds come and go. They are just temporary groups of people, like a cult of money, or an adventurer party. These are just fickle, temporary existences. Do you care about how the packs of insects form groups or guilds?”

The Emperor had an epiphany of his own, as if he suddenly understood that I really didn’t give a shit about the guilds. 

“Capitalism and corporations have a tendency of constantly finding the best way to make money. This time, that sadly meant conquering other lands.” 

“I would stop them.”

“Do you stop children from fighting, Emperor? You let them fight, and hope they grow. All I will do is set boundaries, so that both don’t end up worse off. But these days, I have to shout to get my rules heard, and even summon the parents and the guardians.” 

The Emperor chuckled at the reference. “Your child is snatching away my things. But you don’t consider them your children, do you?”

“I don’t. They are folks that happen to live under my rule, but I do not care for their political structures. These guilds, corporations, cults or whatever come and go, and in my lifetime, they will fade. It’s almost a certainty. Two, if you can’t protect it, you will eventually lose it.”

“I wasn’t aware you believed in ‘might makes right’.” The Emperor retorted. 

“What stories do they feed people like you? For an Emperor, you must be aware of what bullshit you are consuming.” 

The Emperor paused. His aura wavered a little, as he looked at his weakened entourage. 

“I see. The priests often say you are the hidden hand, but it seems we have all been too presumptive.”

“To me, war is nothing more than a complicated, bloody, selection and training process for my future war talent. For this war. A war for our right to exist.”  

The Emperor’s eyes gazed on the vast lavaworld, the wastelands and the demonic hordes that fill the horizon. The perpetual battlefield, and my Valthorn’s training ground. 

***

The war was still fought, of course. Against each other. Like kids. 

But for once, they learned. It was nice to feel like they won’t bother the Valthorns. For a few years. Maybe a few decades if I’m lucky. Then I’ll have to do this whole scare-regime again. 

It is what it is. My new dimensional tour guides did well, they sung praises of my efforts across worlds. The nobles were treated to a life on the other worlds. Of hardship. Of suffering. Of death. 

It was tourism. With my values, my circumstances. 

Many nobles came through with some comprehension. The scope remains too hard to fathom, and certainly, it’s too much to take in from just a three-four day trip across the void sea. My priests were all generally in favor of publicizing the existence of the multiverse to the general public. 

As far as they were concerned, it’s already an open secret. There were all these folks that came from another world, like the Canari, or those who migrated to the growing Tropicworld. So, it made sense to go all out, and start talking about the other worlds. It certainly enhanced my position, and helped separate us from the regular kingdoms. Everyone’s gonna get some perspective. 

In terms of finances, my Valtrian Order financial administrators salivated at the prospect of charging a bomb for the privilege of visiting other worlds, and creating true interdimensional trade. Money didn’t mean much to me. To me, it is the ability to direct resources and talent that truly mattered. But this was one of the areas I left it to the experts. 

Each trip, theoretically, cost mana. But I’ve got so many trees and so many clones that the mana produced pretty much covered all my military and exploratory use. But commercial trips are usually an entire league of its own, though, I suppose I could set quotas.

They’d have to bid for it, or perhaps, a lottery. Then folks get to travel from place to place. Maybe it should be a one way trip. Or maybe both, since I’d still want some financial revenue. That’ll help make my administrators happy. 

I’d sell it like “isekai-lite”. That these guys start out in another world, with the option to return. Best fresh start for anyone sick of their current situation. 

I was quite amused by the idea, though I was also horrified at how much I think like the gods. 

***

Stella, Edna and Lumoof were on the move again. Thanks to more sensitive sensors, and also some artificial mind work, they’ve roughly estimated the locations of the barrier’s source worlds, and now needed to get there. 

As it turns out, Stella figured it’s possible to abuse the barrier itself, to use the barrier’s void energies to create a path to those source worlds. The archmages were also getting better at modifying the rift gates. 

They were prepped for a fight, any world where there’s some sort of barrier mechanism is likely to be fortified. Unless the demons were so confident. All three took up arms.

“Ready?” Stella looked at her two fellow domain holders, and they nodded. “This will feel different. It’s not a portal, but instead, we’re going to be in a bubble.”

They warped, and Stella flung the three in that bubble of void mana onto the barrier itself. Stella said it was the equivalent of throwing a flat stone across a pond, and the barrier was that pond. 

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It bounced, and hopped off the barrier. 

They crashed into a world, their void bubble unstable, but when they landed, they saw a world filled with demons, and a lot of demonic structures. 

Spires of all kinds. The terrain was dry, devoid of all life. Lumoof extended his senses, and felt the core was like any other demon world.

But it was clear this wasn’t any world, because all they had to do was look up, and saw that there was a sun with two black rings around it. Even from the surface of the world, they could feel the twisted energies of those rings. Stella’s magical powers focused on those rings, and looked at her two peers. 

“Well, the barrier is generated by extracting energy from that strange sun- Wait.” Stella looked around, her magical senses traced the energies. “There seems to be some kind of space mining. I can’t see it, but I can sense them from the magical energies in space.”

“Okay.” Edna nodded. “We’ve got some things to destroy.”

“Those two rings- they’re producing void mana, somehow. From the sun’s energies. I could feel them funneling those energies away, into the barrier, but also somewhere else-”

“Black sun’s essentially stored void mana, and doesn’t generate it’s own?”

“Maybe it does.” 

“But not enough to fuel it’s ambitions.” Edna counted.

“So the demons capture planets, and also capture suns to supplement it?” Lumoof said. 

Stella didn’t seem sure. “There must be something about this sun. We need to get closer.” It was quite amusing to realize that all my domain holders all had some kind of summon ability.

It seemed that as one reached that level, having magical minions was part of the skillset. Lumoof could summon spiritual warriors, Edna, magical knights. Stella could summon creatures made of void mana. Energy beasts. Their summoned creatures fought the demons, while the three continued to survey the location.

The planetary surface was fairly normal other than the high presence of demonic spires and spawning pools. Demons.

“Can you get us to those rings?” 

Stella looked. “No issues. Same world. Don’t even need to spend all that much void-”

She coughed, as she felt her own magical senses blocked. 

“Oof. Magical shield. We need to bombard it from here, break down that shield, then teleport onto it.”

“They’re surprisingly thorough.” Edna quipped. “Sounds like they have some intelligent demons among those present.”

“Like the demon parasite champions?” Lumoof looked around. The demons on the surface were all regular demons.

“It’s possible the demon champion versions of these demons are intelligent. We don’t even know it’s just some or all those demon champions. Ally can think. It’s not a stretch to consider those here, are able to think just as well.” Edna said, and then looked back at Stella. “If you need to bombard that place, we’ll need reinforcements.”

Stella nodded. “Yes. Let’s go get ourselves some rift gates. They should have some on this world.”

There were no star paths for this world. This world wasn’t invading any other world. 

Getting people onto that world proved significantly harder than expected, even with captured rift gates. It’s location was really far, and the way they got there was through bouncing off the surface of the void barrier. It was likely that if the void barrier collapsed, a group of them would not be able to return the way they came.

Unless they had my teleporting familiars, which was fairly limited. There’s like only twenty plus slots, the rest of the Valthorns typically relied on special ‘call-home’ scrolls to emergency teleport back to a safe location. 

We needed volunteers for this mission.

Matriarch Hoyia gathered them, and about a thousand of my best Valthorns came for the briefing. Of these one thousand, I hoped about a hundred would agree to make the leap to the other side.

“This will most likely be a one-way trip for a long time. At least, until Aeon deploys a seed on that side of the void sea. Stella, Lumoof and Edna are now on one of the barrier-worlds, where there is a magical structure that the demons use to extract void mana from the sun, via some unknown process.” 

Using magical crystals, we could display images and pictures. Illustrations of what we have seen. 

“Aeon is of the view that there is a fairly high risk of death, and his ability to protect everyone is uncertain. It is too far from our homeworld, and call home spells will not work. We do not know what this structure is capable of. But, if we can break down the protective barrier and infiltrate those rings around the sun, we would take a step closer.”

The matriarch flashed an image of the barrier world. 

“We know something is headed our way. This mission supports that agenda. If it is the long theorized comet of demons, we hope to catch it before it gets near. It is likely behind that barrier.”

She looked at the crowd.

“I understand that some of you may feel that this is a suicide attempt, because of the distance. That is alright. But Aeon will need volunteers. Those willing to go along with the void archmages to make all the jumps needed. At the final part, Stella will be the one opening the portal from the other side.”

A hundred volunteered. 

***

Stella’s void explorer was headed in the other direction. As far away from the demon sun as we could. The other side of the goal was to reach the god-covered worlds.

See whether we could get allies.

Talk to gods who could supply us with an army of heroes. One of the void archmages led this part of the project, along with all of our other initiatives. 

The cometworld project met a dead end. It was likely we weren’t getting the right materials. Or we didn’t have access to the system. 

Veter was one of these void archmages, and he was most convinced of the god-world strategy. It was sensible. If gods could protect their own domain, and even send heroes to further out worlds, the best way to defeat the demons was to reach the gods, and get their help.

If a bridge could be created via my clone, essentially the gods could just keep summoning heroes, and send them to the far out worlds via my network of clones. I was the funnel, the canal that helped irrigate the abandoned worlds with heroes. 

***

My void-treefolk grew up well. The first of them was in his teens, and didn’t display any unusual behaviors. His physique was reasonable for his age, not exceptional. But his void magic was incredible, and he displayed the ability to manipulate small quantities of void magic with very minimal training. 

The lizardfolk experiments were a bit more mixed. Some experienced some challenges later in their life as they aged, the void mana seemed to cause problems for their body that we did not encounter with the void treefolks.

I stepped in a few times to ‘heal’ these lizardfolks, and beyond that, tried to correct the flaws created from the experiments with void mana.

The archmages wanted to create all types of mana-attuned people. Core mana, or star mana attunement was naturally the next step, though star mana was just as difficult to work with as void mana. 

Luckily, star mana didn’t have the tendency of harming the body. Star mana decayed into regular mana, in large quantities they triggered what we call mana poisoning. Mana poisoning was fairly easy to deal with, Lumoof was one of those who experienced extreme levels of mana poisoning. 

We have not been able to replicate the god’s ability to create souls capable of producing star mana like the heroes.

It’s poured in, in the heroes through those magical vases as I’ve seen in the soul spring, but the heroes themselves were somehow able to produce some star mana once their soul spring fully converted to that heroic ‘white marble’ form. 

I still tried to recreate it, though from the name, it highly implied star mana had otherworldly origins. 

Even my own few star mana generating leaves collected energies from the stars, though my earlier attempts to increase my production of star mana had gone nowhere. Among my normal mage-researchers, the creation of star mana from natural sources remains one of the most highly coveted goals. 

***