Chapter 253: 247. Tree-minus Two

Year 250 

Three years till first alignment of the demon’s comet. We see it bright and clear in the void sea, its transmission to the worlds were picked up by our sensors across all the demon-infested worlds. 

It taunts us with its presence. I wonder whether it’s intentional, or it’s just confidence that there’s nothing we can do to stop a planetary comet barreling our way.

Lumoof returned from the stint on the Beastworld, and Stella sent her [void explorer] further. I’m not sure if we’ll see them again, but what we shared with the Cheecak’s hive mind was a story told a thousand times over. 

Instead, my attention was split on our preparations on the Demonic Turtleworld, and also Mountainworld where a demon king should be arriving any time. 

My void mages on the Mountainworld observed the path of the stars to the demon world grow in strength and form, almost enough for the void mages to activate the rift gates and send our own spies through to the other side. 

Preparations on both worlds were fairly intense but the preparations for the demon’s comet truly stretched our forces and our resources, and caused wild swings in the economies of Treehome and Mountainworld. 

We sent resources to our bunkers and bases on Tropicsworld in huge batches, enough to build new cities outright. Steel, iron, metals. Stone. We bought so many for the weapons and bases we constructed on Tropicsworld and also the Demonic Turtleworld. 

To make bombs, we bought so many crystals, and materials for runes that we essentially caused a shortage of runic language liquids and ink. 

To set up the void platforms and amplifiers, we bought all types of precious gems and rare metals. Our craftsmen and builders were fully booked, some of them working extra hours. 

The resource demands to destroy a demon’s comet was so high that as long as any matching resource or material hit the markets, we would bid for them.

As strange as it sounded, the economic and resource demands for the Demon Comet essentially drained the fuel and fire out of the vassal wars. Soldiers couldn’t fight without weapons. Warships couldn’t be built without runic ink and liquids, formations or steel. Fortifications couldn’t be built. 

Even magical scrolls were in short supply because we kept buying and ordering scrolls. 

In order to stockpile food, should we ever need to resort to a large-scale evacuation, we bought seeds and various long-lasting food types for storage on the other worlds.

For merchants and for the kingdoms on the other continents, this wild purchase drove prices up, but to me, money is always just a means of exchange. There was always gold somewhere, in some other world where we can easily mine. Some of my [subsidiary trees] were even specialized resource harvesters, collecting gold and precious metals where they are easily found. 

Essentially, money was aplenty, and we could pretty much print as much as needed to pay our suppliers. Resources were not. 

Most nations, in the face of our massive buying spree, had to resort to export embargoes and export quotas, preventing merchants from selling too much, or only their excess supply. Some resorted to nationalization, where the Holy Emperor essentially commanded that certain mines were temporarily Imperial Property, in order to continue their war effort.

Ultimately, the strain on their resources placed an uncommon burden on their logistics network.

It was as if two warships sailed at each other, and both of them ran out of fuel. 

As the Valtrian Order, the central Freshland authority, commonly referred to by the folks as Central, we were the preferred customer for many resource producers simply due to the scale of our orders, the military protection we provided, and the banking networks that we controlled. If we put in an order, most of them would prioritize our orders, simply to avoid offending us. 

It’s a threat we rarely used, but my spies ensured that the propaganda and words spread out there ensured most merchants knew their place and strongly believed we would. After the whole vassal wars, it was imperative as an organization that we were not seen as a ‘lame duck’ authority. Our threats were real threats, and not just statements we didn’t mean to act on. 

I think about that sometimes. For threats to be real threats, there had to be action. Seen, visible action. 

Actions done in my name, actions such as bribery, kidnapping, torture and assassinations. Threats. Actions. 

Blood on my hands. Blood on my roots. Blood on every single leaf and tree. 

I think about it, and remember that it must be done. 

 

***

For the heroes, they were taking things easy. They were well prepared and there didn’t seem like any reason for them to panic. They traveled frequently between Mountainworld, Treehome and Threeworlds. 

Colette had a daughter, Rohana. She was perfectly normal, like what a human child was expected to be, and had no unusual or inherited abilities. 

Both Prabu and Colette were strangely relieved, and asked that she be cared for by us, directly. I wasn’t comfortable being the trustees and guardians of a hero’s child, and it reminded me of that time when Roma was growing up. 

History sure loves to rhyme, and with enough time, there is always a rhyming pair. Ken naturally understood my position, and instead volunteered to arrange for other long lived persons to play the role. In this case, Ken actually asked Kei, Lausanne and Edna to play the role of Godmothers. 

It wasn’t the first child. Hafiz had many children outside, with his little harem, but Hafiz always kept his harem separate from the rest of the heroes. Chung, prior to his infatuation with Khefri, also had a harem, with some children too. 

But as strange as it was, I was fairly sure the heroes didn’t consider their children to be one of them. I’ve observed Hafiz with his harem, and I could tell there was some genuine love for his harem. Yet, there was always a wall that these children didn’t get through. 

Their children were not part of this little club of earthlings. 

Rohana was different. She was the first child born to two heroes I’ve known so far, and it was actually quite difficult for Colette to conceive Prabu’s child. It was a matter that strained the couple’s relationship, and was instructive to both Khefri and Chung. 

I learned something throughout Colette’s challenges, even though I had to play the role of a voyeur, after Prabu came to me for assistance. 

The hero class is incredibly fertile, and this was why the heroes could have a harem and get so many ladies pregnant. It was why Harris had so many offsprings, and why every hero seemed to have some descendents scattered all over the world. There were written letters and books passed down by various royal families that recorded that a hero’s discharge could fertilize and cause a princess to be pregnant even after a month. 

Essentially, the class was really a [super breeder]. 

But this benefit did not apply, when the other party is another hero. The hero class didn’t like to give birth to another hero’s child, and rather than promote it, it actively suppressed their bodies when they were in the act. 

But it was something they both wanted, and I had to find ways to augment both their fertility and align their cycles. It wasn’t difficult to pull a few herbalists, healers and mages to help out on this project. 

The hero class’s resistance to fellow hero pregnancy wasn’t extremely difficult to defeat. The class actively discouraged pregnancies to other heroes, but with sufficient fertility boosting stuff, it was eventually a success.

Privately, I wondered what the purpose of such a restriction was. To prevent friction with a hero group? They already suppressed their mating instincts before they killed the hero. Or was the intention really to dilute the hero’s bloodline with some native?

Why?

And why did the class make them so fertile? Was there a purpose for that level of excessive fertility? 

I had no answer, even if there were many theories.

Was there a function of why the hero’s genes seems to be designed to mix in the common genetic pool?

A part of me wondered whether this is due to some kind of inherent flaw in the nature of the people. At some point, people must be created by the system. 

All these magical races didn’t emerge out of nowhere. They must be created at some point far in the past, and perhaps the intention of mixing hero’s genetic data with the offsprings of created races was for some kind of genetic resilience?

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Again. Many theories, no answers. 

***

The entire Treehome wanted to know what we were up to. Why did we buy so much stuff?

I believed that most economies were self adjusting, that if prices were high enough, it would be so profitable that more people would do it, and that was true to a certain degree. But rare materials are rare for a reason. 

Even if one dumped more people at it, they wouldn’t be made or found. 

My Valthorns thus considered the need to expand beyond the ‘Clone Worlds’, worlds where I had a clone, and set up mining and resource bases in the worlds such as the Angelworld, or the Beastworld, or many other smaller worlds. Mining and trading outposts, essentially, where we could learn from the locals and buy from them. 

Threeworlds, we couldn’t do much trade, because only the Sandpeople and the Centaurs would trade with us, and with their own war ongoing, Zhaanpu didn’t authorize any significant movement of materials or resources. The Centaurs followed Zhaanpu’s decision. The human faction, beholden to their Immortal Crystal King, refused to interact with us in any substantive manner, even if we knew they were curious. 

Their criminal factions were willing to work with us, but only on a surface level. Their suspicions of us as outworlders was surprisingly high, and the Crystal King went all out on the Outworlder propaganda.

To counter this Outworlder narrative, I did what we did elsewhere. Tours.

For the Sandpeople and the Centaurs, we invited some of their leaders for a trip to Treehome. To see our world, and for them to learn. Over the past few years there were at least a hundred such trips granted to the people of Threeworlds, and Mountainworld. 

I hoped to pull these two worlds closer to us, in time, these three worlds should be our local group, where all three could easily support each other. 

***

Despite this, my artificial minds already began to observe the same sort of nativism espoused by the Crystal King. Those on Mountainworld would wonder why goods and resources were redirected to other worlds, instead of reinvestments. 

Even my Valthorns, a significantly large majority of them came from Treehome, and trying to balance the viewpoints of those who came from  Branchhold, or the other worlds was a problem that would only grow. 

Secretly, I thought of creating a voting system where each world could send representatives to Treehome to deliberate on matters pertaining the whole. 

After all, the kingdoms and nations of the Central Continent all have representatives in the Central’s ruling council. 

Right now, although each of these worlds are somewhat self-administered, their position is quite like the Six Ports, where they are direct territories of the Valtrian Orders. 

It was a potential for dissatisfaction if the local citizens were not given a means to express some of their views and discontent, even if it’s a largely performative role. We are a growing interplanar empire, and thus, the political and administrative structure that rules the Empire cannot be the same one that ruled the Central Continent. 

It didn’t matter for my military worlds, where the only ones who lived there were my military operators and were primarily a transient population. 

My base on Threeworld, right now, is governed by an appointed governor from Treehome, a Valtrian administrator. Tropicsworld is also similarly governed by an appointed governor, but unlike Threeworld, Tropicsworld has a far larger civilian population due to the settlement programs over the past decade. Branchhold, my nation located on the Mountainworld has a large number of refugees who then turned it into their home. 

Some day, if Lavaworld or Cometworld have their own populations, it is likely they will ask for some means of self governance, at least in areas where it is relevant to them. 

Each of these worlds are in different levels of economic, political and structural development. The size of their populations were different, so the level of administrative talent was therefore different. The expectations and degree of self management afforded to each of these locations cannot be the same.

There were legitimate and valid concerns about standardization of laws. 

Especially if we plan to have a large civilian group traveling between worlds in the future, for commercial and social traffic. 

In the meantime, my lords suggested the creation of a second representative council, one called only when I desired their views, each with representatives from each of the ‘Clone Worlds’. 

 

Year 251

The Comet got closer, and my void mages actually tried to reach it from the asteroids of the Demon Turtleworld. It was still too far. 

Even Stella couldn’t go so far. 

“Couldn’t you use your void explorer on the Comet?” Edna complained, and it was an idea raised before. But the void explorer actually needs to travel back to Stella. It is not something that can just be ‘dispelled’. Perhaps some day, Stella would gain levels and unlock multiple Void Explorers. That would significantly improve our exploration speed.

Still, all of this was not fruitless. We were getting better at detecting, scanning and figuring out the nature of the demonic world. Just like how scientists of Earth had many tools and scanners to detect the composition of a planet, our magical tools improved over the decades. 

Our tools suggested a high likelihood of crystals, and so it’s likely to be a rocky planet filled with daemolite. 

I could tell there was an undercurrent of worry and anxiety among the Valthorns tasked to prepare for the alignment of the Demonic Turtleworld and the Cometworld, especially the void mages. 

Everything depended on the void mages actually successfully opening a portal to the Cometworld. If there was some kind of core-defense, just like how planetary cores shredded void portals close to their core, then we would be in trouble. 

Infiltrate, Manipulate, Redirect, Destroy, Evacuate. If infiltration failed, evacuation was the only way. 

***

On Mountainworld, the Star Path to the demon world solidified. We should be seeing the rifts soon, though so far, there was none spotted. 

My void mages on the Mountainworld, on average, were less experienced than the team on the Demonic Turtleworld, but they were still led by my experienced void archmage, and Stella still moved between the two worlds to provide some guidance and oversight.

It’s in our interest to settle this world’s demon king as quickly as possible, so that we could redirect manpower to the demon comet. 

Alka, after a long and convoluted argument, decided that it was best that he supported the heroes on the Mountainworld. He needed the levels, and if he could blow the demon king up, or weaken it significantly, he could get stronger and use that strength to hack at the comet. 

I didn’t want to risk it with the demon king. Demon Kings can vary wildly in strength, and some have really unusual power sets, so I felt it was an unnecessary risk for Alka. 

Despite my disagreements with that approach, we put it to a vote with my domain holders. Edna, Roon and Johann all supported Alka’s attempts to grow stronger. To the three, fighting demon kings was absolutely normal, so they didn’t think it was a problem.  

Lumoof and Stella opposed, preferring the more conservative approach, and partly because we didn’t know how long my respawn process was. 

Oh well. 

We’ll just have to deal with the consequences, whatever they are.