Chapter 254: 248. Perplexitree

Year 252

One year to go till the first intersection and my void mages tried to cheat. Approach it. Extend their range. Find ways to get there and buy us more time. By my mages’ estimates, we have a short window when we can deliver people and goods onto the Comet. After that window, it’ll move out of range. 

It’s critical that both Lumoof and Stella get there. My clone seed still has another three years to go, but if we can’t deploy my clone, we’d have to make do with all the equipment we can deliver during this somewhat short window. How we’ll proceed will depend on what we discover. 

***

Mountainworld. 

The path in the skies above now glowed and the rifts arrived as predicted. Demonic spiders poured out of the rifts, but the Valthorns on Mountainworld slaughtered these poison-users easily. Their gimmick seemed to be a combination of poison and self-replication, larger demonic spiders exploded into smaller spiders, and smaller spiders exploded into even smaller spiders. The smaller one was no larger than a basketball, but it meant that every gigantic demon spider was an actual army of spiders. 

It reminded me of tower-defense games where mobs had decay or devolution mechanics. 

“Spiders.” These demonic spiders differed from their regular spiders by their body composition. The demonic spiders were made of the same kind of rocky, semi-crystalline material seen on other demons, and they had their signature reddish glow through their body. 

A few captured samples indicated that underlying it all, their nature was similar to the demonic hounds, and I was able to capture some to study their abilities. If my beetles could replicate that ability it would significantly enhance my beetle’s combat powers. 

It didn’t take too long to overwhelm them with my mana, just like the demonic hounds, but once I captured them, they lost that ability to break up into smaller pieces. It was soon clear that the ability came through linked energies, linked to the unborn demon king, just like the parasite-demons with their ties to their own demon king. 

Just as I dealt with the strands of faint energies seen in the Cheecak, I have become more aware of the faint threads and links that exist between these creatures, and their masters. With the same refinement and finesse I attempted to tap into these links, to trace the path of these faint lines of magic and control. 

To see what was behind it all. 

My mana got better at piercing behind the veils, and it followed the roots down to the sources of  water.

The demons collapsed like puppets with their strings cut. 

Even the giant spiders collapsed and disintegrated, rather than resist. All it took was for my root to pierce it, and for my mana to begin seeking the source. It was as if I was getting closer to the drone controller, and in panic, just as it always had, its first instinct was to cut off the connection. 

I didn’t know whether it was fear. 

“Aeon, you’re making this too easy.” Alka laughed. “If we still want demons to fight we’ll have to jump to the other side.” 

Alka looked more than happy to dive headfirst into the demon world, and mess with the attackers. He needed the levels, and killing a lot of demons was one way to get them. Even if it’s hardly worth it for him, it took forever for a creature of his strength to level. 

The rest of my demigods were on demonic turtleworld. 

***

The demon spider’s homeworld was naturally named Spiderworld, because, well, it had to be. When we got to the other side, what we saw was a variant of the Rottedlands.

A vast, towering world filled with huge demonic trees, and a lot of webs everywhere. I felt a sense of kinship immediately. These were trees, even if they were demon trees.

I still keep a small amount of demonic trees, in specified orchards, just to continue studying these fascinating hybrid trees. Here, this was essentially a demonic ecosystem, geared to invade other worlds. 

The demonic trees were essentially vast spawning pods, each of them containing large numbers of cocoons made of webs. Inside, were dormant demon spiders, by the hundreds and thousands. Still, they were trees. 

The hybrid trees were under my control, now. Their links to their foreign masters severed and now mine. They still produced small quantities of demonic mana, mana I used to fiddle with demonic equipment. 

The earthlings speculated that the demons were the magical equivalent of self-replicating gray goo. The evidence, despite my skepticism, generally supports this view. They may feign intelligence, even possess it, but ultimately their base instinct was to assimilate everything, and turn everything into demonic gray goo. 

Lumoof wasn’t here, so all I could see was sent through Alka’s magical communication devices and scrying. 

A group of Valthorns accompanied Alka to the other side. 

“Well.” Alka looked at his team. “This world has demon trees, and our patron will want to study it.” Each of these Valthorns went through years of training to get here. These were the level 80s to 120s, and so they know the drill. Each of their squad leaders went through at least two demon-world raids, and knew what to do. “Same stuff as the last time. Capture the rift gates for our void lady, locate the pit, kill the demons that stop us, and report back.” 

The team of about three hundred fanned out. The spiders were no match to the well armed Valthorns, even if they were incredibly persistent. 

The entire world was filled with trees, and we soon found water. It wasn’t regular water, though. It was purple and laced with metals. Poisoned for normal people, but the demon trees of this world adapted to them. 

Eventually the Valthorn druids began shipping some of these demon trees, packed inside special containers, through the rift gates back to Mountainworld, for my studies. They were adapted to the metals of the Spiderworld, and the metals of the spiderworld had surprising self-reconstruction abilities. 

They were not very strong, but these metals, when stimulated with small amounts of magic, could ‘remember’ their form, and would naturally reform that remembered form. A dose of magic later, the metals could then forget that form, as if it never happened. This metal immediately made me check the captured demon spiders. They were not made with this metal, and yet, the demons somehow manage to pass on the qualities of the metal to these spiders, which was why they could explode into smaller quantities. 

The demon’s abilities often feel like borderline bullshit, because there shouldn’t be a way to have such a wide array of abilities. 

The simpler explanation is that the demon king is a kind of adaptive virus that adopts all the abilities of its parent planets, and then all its minions essentially get a weakened version of those adopted abilities. 

If this is true, we can conclude that the demons only have a few abilities. The rest is just stolen shit. 

The ability to capture, absorb abilities and then pass it on to minions. 

The ability to self-replicate itself in smaller and weaker versions. 

The ability to build void portals, structures, and the ability to use void magic. 

The ability to create and summon these infesting superminion-controllers, the demon king. 

Based on this core set of demonic abilities, the ability to unmake or interfere with any of these abilities individually, would stop the demons in their tracks.

Stopping the demon’s ability to build void portals and void magic would stop the demon’s ability to travel and reach new victims. Stopping the ability to create demon kings would essentially reduce the threat level of demons to the equivalent of an army of strong natural magical beasts. 

This was the medical equivalent of stopping the infection vectors, or mutating and turning the demon king into just a slightly strong influenza. Dangerous, but not undefeatable.

Anyway, Alka eventually found the pit of the demon king, but it was so rigged with demonic spiders and webs, that it wasn’t worth the risk.

He wasn’t a one-man army. He’s essentially a glass nuke. The Valthorns captured the rifts, took some more samples of every single strange or unusual thing, rigged the pits with bombs, planted our magical sensor equipment and then, went back to the Mountainworld to await further instructions. 

***

My mages were more than happy to have new metal types to play with. The immediate uses were not clear, but with research and magical items, their usefulness often emerged after decades of tweaking, experimentation and happy little coincidences. 

Each small step enabled something further down the line. It was just how it is. 

We plant trees today, and only decades later do we know what they look like. Even if we have druids guiding their path, nature often surprises and takes unusual turns. 

***

We captured enough rift gates that the number of rifts on the Mountainworld was pretty much cut by two thirds. There were still some rifts coming through, and the demons likely had even more rift gates in places we didn’t find, but the number of demons was manageable. 

The heroes waited. 

The location of the demon king’s arrival was getting clearer, and then we realized something absolutely annoying.

The spider demon king will arrive right in the center of one of the Dwarven capitals of the Mountainworld. 

***

“This is ridiculous.” The king of the Dwarf slammed his table when my envoy from Branchhold arrived with the news. 

I didn’t have the resources to send a strike team to the Spiderworld, not with the plan to invade the demon comet, and I didn’t want to do it anyway. Destroying the demon king on the Spiderworld could trigger another demon comet, and that was a risk I didn’t want to take. 

Thus, the safest way was to evacuate the capital for a battle with the demon king. 

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The capital could be rebuilt.

“My ancestors built this capital four thousand years ago. This palace was built three thousand years two hundred and eleven years ago. Do you know how many ancient structures remain in this city?” 

My envoy was apologetic, and tried his best to appeal to the distraught emotions of the Dwarf King. But he was stubborn, and his people stood by their king. They were not moving, and looking at the city of the dwarven king, I certainly could see why. 

They were prosperous, industrious, and the city super well fortified. There were enough magical weapons and defenses to stop a regular demon attack. The people would lose all they have built, all the resources and time they invested in building this city. 

All I saw was how it would burn like paper before the demon king. 

I couldn’t nuke the demon king if it arrived here. Not without killing the locals. 

***

The void mages scrambled to find a solution, whether we could try to meddle with the demon king’s path, just like how Lumoof meddled with the anti-magic demon king. 

But the answer was no. Unless Lumoof was willing to hitch a ride on the spider demon king again, but the last time we did it, Lumoof was out for weeks. 

I needed Lumoof for the Comet intersection. 

***

I called the heroes for a briefing, for a message that was going to be hard to swallow. 

“The dwarven king refused to cooperate and will not evacuate. The entire city too.” 

The heroes cursed. Ken looked absolutely sad. I knew this day would come one day. The demon king has so far avoided populated areas, but it was by sheer luck and the fact that the wilderness outnumbered cities by a large factor. 

There would come a day that the demon king would strike a populated area.

It just sucked that I had another commitment. One that threatened our world.

Adrian and Kelly, the two native heroes of the Mountainworld, looked absolutely devastated. Adrian volunteered to talk to the dwarven king again. “He’s killing his people, I will try to change his mind.”

The dwarven capital was one of the most prosperous in Mountainworld, and there were screams of jealousy. They said this was a plot to destroy a competitor, despite our track record of predicting and dealing with the past demon king attacks. 

The heroes immediately asked to replicate what was done before. “Can Lumoof-”

“No. He can’t. I need him when the Demon’s Comet intersects with the Demon Turtleworld. He cannot be at two places at once, and I am not triggering another demon comet.” 

My reasoning was clear.

But the unspoken truth hung in the room.

I would let the dwarven capital die. 

If they refuse to heed a warning or our assistance, so be it. It is their choice, and their choice has consequences. If the other cities see the consequences, they will be more cooperative in the future. 

As for the heroes, they would have to face the Spider Demon King without the benefit of a softening blow. I have utmost confidence in their ability, they were all much higher level than they were before, and my Valthorns will still assist to provide bombardment support. 

In fact, I soon pulled Ken for a quiet discussion.

“I intend to rig the dwarven capital with bombs without their assistance or approval.”

“There are people there.” Ken thought. 

“I will have the void mages teleport out who they can, by force. They won’t be able to save everyone, but the demon king’s arrival is a death sentence to the capital anyway. I am merely accelerating their death.” 

“Why not act by force?” 

“I will make an enemy of the world.”

“Should you care?” Ken asked. 

“It would greatly endanger my recruitment efforts if I’m seen to forcefully take over another world. I can recruit good people because I am still perceived as doing the right thing. This-”

Ken sighed. “This is just all shades of gray. Someone dies, and no one will be happy.”

“I want you to talk to them, tell them don’t do anything too crazy while we figure out some ways to deal with the dwarves.”

“I- I don’t think they will.” Ken said with uncertainty. “But I will see what I can do.”

***

The heroes’ attempts to persuade the dwarven king failed, and all they got was more curses and mugs flung their way. It was supposedly the highest of the dwarven insults, to have beer mugs filled with beer thrown at them.

The heroes’ morale took a dive. They liked what they were doing before this, and to some extent, they had life on easy mode since we were able to spawncamp. Now, the horrors of their assigned duties caught up with them again.

They would fight in a city filled with the dead. People they could not save, and it massively triggered their hero classes’ effects on their minds and thoughts. 

Chung took this time to talk to Ken on death. To talk him out of it. “Ken, there will be a time when all of us need you to talk us out of this. More than ever, we need a friend who is with us.”

Ken gave the archer hero the eye. He knew what this was all about. “Chung. Let’s leave that aside, and try to figure something out.”

“No. You know how broken we are. We need a guide. Aeon isn’t that guide, but you are. You know us. You were one of us. You see the effects of the gods on us more than ever, and can talk us out of our failings.”

Ken felt Chung trying to guilt trip him. Guilt. That he shouldn’t abandon the cause. 

“The heroes from all the worlds need someone to hold it together. We are all these broken, cracked glass cannons.” Chung admitted. “We are all flawed in some way, compelled by this power, this- this- curse. This duty. You can’t just leave us and let us fight this war while you die peacefully of old age.”

Guilt.

Ken sighed and kicked the barrel down the road. “I hear your concerns, old friend, but I’m not dying.”

“Yet.” Chung didn’t want to let him go. “Tell Aeon to make you immortal like Kei. He can rip your soul out and place you in some other vessel.”

“-let’s leave that decision to later.” 

***

My pantheon on the demonic turtleworld heard the news, and Lumoof took a day to pray for things to go well.

For Mountainworld. For the dwarven capital to be safe.

I found it ironic that he chose to do so, even though he was praying to me. 

He was praying to me. 

I am his god, and this god’s hands are tied.