Tree of Aeons

308. Dealings I

Year 279

Landas

The Valthorns recruited a sizable group of soldiers and warriors from Landas, many of them from the ranks of survivors during the earlier harsher periods and went on to be fairly high leveled soldiers and defenders of the elven cities were eager to take their skills to other places. Many of these have known a lifetime of fighting and so the sudden end of wars meant they were feeling out of place in a world where there was going to be peace. 

Thus they joined the call to serve and fight on other worlds.

Not all, though. There was also those that were more than happy to see the end of the fighting. Strong warriors who finally relished the chance to return to normalcy, and to do what they always wanted to do. Many finally settled down and restarted what they’ve long delayed. Family. Their old family workshops. Rebuilding cities and pursuing tasks their parents or grandparents abandoned when things got bad. 

Now, Landas is doing well. The demon king has been slain, and the world began to turn a corner. Things were coming around.

The old cherry tree that once guarded Samuel regained its old strength, and since it didn’t have to store energy to deal with the demons, Cherry redirected their powers towards the rebuilding effort. The old cherry tree had a wide range of forestry related powers, and so used it extensively to rebuild.

Despite these positives, I still expect a few decades before Landas regains some level of normalcy. The world’s population declined far too much. 

In terms of population, we estimated it lost 70 to 80% of its population due to the prolonged demon war. But with heavy intervention from the Valthorns, we were helping the repopulation. Children were born, and we ensured they were well supported. The Treeology priests went about blessing many of the surviving youths and even slightly more mature elvish ladies with fertility potions. 

It may seem a little heavy handed, but as a society, they needed the population to restore all their heavily battered society. The social wing of the Order came in to support many young families with caring for young children. 

Most of their material needs were catered for, with the presence of the Order’s craftsmen and workers that set up new factories and workshops, and helped retrain the Landasian elves in crafts, to revive Landas’s lost industrial capacity. 

In two to three decades from now, Landas’s babies of today will be the warriors of the future, and these growing workshops would grow into larger establishments that would help support the war of the future. 

It will be a long process, but the first few steps have already taken place. 

***

The first batch of Landas-origin soldiers, such as Novorosk, were given accelerated Valtrian Order training, though we had to supplement their knowledge with a good helping of teachers and tutors from Treehome.

Their combat capabilities and instincts were quite good, due to years of battle experience under defensive conditions. That said, we also felt the need to widen their skillset to cover some of the other things they would encounter in the demon worlds. Rescuing survivors, constructing makeshift structures, knowledge of the various demon types and monster types, and combat tactics.

Most of them were defenders, their focus was always in protecting their home cities. Large scale offensive tactics was an area they needed work on. From defenders, they would now have to be attackers.

It’s likely that Novorosk and their batch would be demon-world focused operatives, since that was the environment they excelled at. Constant battles, destroying demons and surviving with little on the fields came naturally to them. In fact, we generally observed that these survivors were able to tolerate the stresses of long term battle quite well. 

I figured it was some kind of survivorship bias at play. Those that couldn’t died. What’s left were battle hardened veterans. 

That said, unlike our homeworlds, it wasn’t entirely in the mind. 

There were [skills] that helped, and from these battle hardened veterans we were able to collect a few skill fragments that I happily replicated with my skill-fruit growing trees. These yielded fruits that contained skills such as [battle hardened], and [survivor’s heart]. Those who consumed fruits with these skills tolerated stress better, and made better warriors out in the battlefield. Many of my Valthorns didn’t need these skills, because they acquired it later on in their higher levels. 

I’ve always wanted a similar skill for mages. If there was something like a [mage’s instinct], I would’ve pounced and tried to replicate it by the thousands, but sadly, most of a mage’s set of skills were things like [magical memory], or [large mana pool], though we did notice more specific type of abilities like [void sensitivity], or [elemental instinct]. 

My hopes for the Magisarians were something that could help improve our magical training process. My hope was that the Magisarians had some kind of unique [skill] I could replicate, and then turn them into skill fruits.

As it is, we produced thousands of these skill fruits each year, and we distributed these across all our academies, training schools and institutions. Some were given out to students as rewards, some for my Valtrian Order recruits to round up their own set of skills.

My domain holders often claimed that the skill fruits saved each and every one of them hundreds of days of work, because they could shore up their weak points with a skill fruit, and is partly why the Valtrian Order and Valthorns are so feared. 

Very few institutions could claim to produce strong soldiers with such consistency, though the ability to grant skill isn’t unique. [Priests] and [trainers] could actually grant [skills], through some of their own skills. Even [teachers] were able to grant skills, but in most cases, these [skills] were often in the basic-intermediate level, and there was some element of randomness in how they worked. A teacher teaching [mana manipulation] may have students acquiring weaker variants like [mana shaping] or [basic mana flow].

For the Landas warriors, we also realized that most of them acquired a range of survival skills over their decades, and in some ways, that made them suboptimal for independent operation. This was because my Valtrian Order folks trained with the presence of my [familiars], and so they often rejected the acquisitions of survival skills since that could be outsourced to the familiars, in order to better focus on combat abilities.

My familiars came with a range of food generation, healing, and supplementary abilities. 

I believed this problem to be transitional, a consequence of recruiting experienced soldiers from a war torn Landas. Future Landas soldiers that went through our usual regime would not have these drawbacks. 

Whatever it is, talent is hard to find. We’ll take it, and we would just have to find ways to best exploit their strengths.

***

Shasan

The domain holders and the heroes gathered for another round of demonic attack. Alka decided to sit this round out, as he was busy infiltrating the Delvegardian Yards. 

“Alright, we’ll be going to a sand world.” Khefri was fairly excited when she landed. Her biology found the dry sand to be most comfortable, and unlike the rest of them, sand didn’t get stuck in her joints. There was just something about the hot sand, a burning sun overhead, and white-orange sands as far as she could see that appealed to her. 

“I think you’re partly brainwashed by your body.” Colette countered. 

“I know.” Khefri shrugged, and rubbed her head slightly. Despite a different biology, she wasn’t spared from headaches. “But it is what it is. The body likes this kind of environment, and so I like it.”

Colette said nothing, and looked at Prabu. Prabu was decked out in gear. A little overkill, but at this point, they’d rather not take many risks. 

Rajah and Wira, the two dragonling heroes, felt their wings warm up from the heat of the sun. They didn’t like it the dry heat or the harsh sun all that much. Gigantadragon was still far more comfortable to them than any of the other worlds so far, with the only exception being the magimodern facilities of Treehome and Branchhold. 

Samuel shared their struggles. The elven hero didn’t like the heat or the sun.

The domain holders and heroes chatted, as they prepared for the start of the operation. 

Edna clapped her hands. “Alright, alright, Shasan should be a fairly simple mop up operation. Shasan’s a fairly strong world, with strong natural defenses. We don’t really expect much opposition other than the demon king. As usual, Lumoof will fish out the demon king, and we’ll engage it on the surface. Hit it with all we can, and then we’ll only be left with Twinspace. Clear?”

Everyone nodded. There were about thirty level 140s Valthorns present as well, and they were the ones that were most visibly nervous.

Lumoof smiled. “Alright. Come come come. Shouldn’t be too hard. Relax, it’ll be fine. Check your protective equipment?”

Samuel still looked a little lost. “Is- is that it?” 

Adrian, the hero of Mountainworld, tapped Samuel, the hero of Landas, on the shoulder. “You’ll get used to it. Took me about five or six demon kings before I was able to get over how casual this whole thing feels.”

Samuel paused, and after a while, he sighed. Both of them knew each other faced their own trauma from the past. Adrian spent quite some time under the corruption of the demons, and Samuel nursed a demonic curse. The idea of facing the demon king still occasionally pulled out that trauma, and the whole thing being just a regular trip to the doctors was hard to reconcile.

“Alright, I’ll head in first.” Lumoof looked at the flooded pit that led to the core, and dived right in. The demon king was a kind of boney, half-shark, half-demonic creature that was still digging at the rocks. Lumoof, unaffected by the water, easily interrupted it’s constant digging, and engaged it in battle. 

Somehow, water numbed the demon king’s senses, because it was only then it reacted to our presence. 

That was a surprise to us. 

Lumoof got a good, powerful root strike through its body. Not enough to kill it, but enough for me to get a rough sense of its strength. 

It wasn’t going to be a problem. 

The shark-demon king soared out of the flooded pit, again, it’s senses seemed dull. The moment it exited the flooded pit, it was battered with a range of attacks. 

The demon king, weakened by the blast, shapeshifted, and then summoned more demons. But those extra small fries died like flies. The heroes and domain holders launched more attacks.

It was no match. The demon king of Shasan died. The heroes gained some levels, the domain holders gained none, and some of the Valthorn level 140s gained a level or two. Not enough to push them to a domain. 

But now, there was only one demon king left. The demon king on Twinspace.

We wanted to make it a spectacle. 

So, I redirected my attention elsewhere. I wanted to visit Hawa again. 

***

Satrya

Lumoof went through the portal first, and landed in a large receiving hall filled with people. Hawa’s priests and an entourage fit for a king. 

“Greetings. Patriarch Lumoof.” Olivia of Olpash stood there, waiting. She still asked about Roon occasionally, but this time, she was in her priestess mode, and spoke with all the gentleness and grace of a high priestess. “Are the rest of the entourage coming?”

Lumoof nodded. “They’ll be here in a second.”

Emperor Erranuel and the rest of the Emperor’s escorts warped in. They appeared around Lumoof through my teleportation ability. Erranuel brought about a hundred people to Satrya, and this same party would then be deployed to Shasan to launch Erranuel’s new world program. 

But the fact that Lumoof landed here so specifically seemed to trigger some alarm bells. Hawa seemed able to guide how and where Stella’s portals opened, and ensured that a large, luxurious welcoming party was present. 

Stella was fairly surprised that a god could do that, but this was Hawa’s core world,  guiding portals and specifying specific landing zones should be well within its range of abilities. However, it did highlight that this was a very clear vulnerability. Stella could teleport us right into a trap, especially if a god was hostile to us. 

Essentially, we could be on the receiving end on a spawn-camp attack. That was an uncomfortable thought to entertain.

Lumoof grinned at the sight of the two high priests of Hawa. “Well, nice to see you again, priestess Olivia and Priest Michael.” 

“It’s a pleasure to welcome you and your party, Patriarch Lumoof. It is especially blessed for us to finally meet those who are faithful to the teachings of Hawa from other worlds. Our God Hawa’s blessings and wisdom reaches even to the furthest of worlds, and from one Hawa’s servant to another, we sincerely welcome you.” Olivia spoke, and Lumoof grinned at her heartfelt praise of her god. Her words were genuine.

Though her words were sweet, it was somehow lost on the Emperor.

“So this is what it feels like where Hawa’s presence is strong.” Emperor Erranuel’s heart pounded. Lumoof could sense the trembling in his fingers, and we speculated that his class, the [Holy Emperor], was instinctively linked to Hawa. Therefore, it was possible that here, in this world, that class was stronger than even on Treehome. The Emperor looked around for a few seconds, took a few deep breaths, and then finally, turned to face the hosts. “My apologies to the very generous and hospitable priests and priestess. I am just suddenly overwhelmed by the presence of our god Hawa that I cannot but take a few moments to take it in. Patriarch Lumoof promised me a visit to a world where Hawa’s reach was still strong, and it is truly a unique feeling.”

The priestess could sense it too. A sense of comradeship in those that share the faith. “Yes, your majesty. Satrya did not face the need to create a [holy emperor], but I do agree it is most interesting for us as well to meet those who triumphed against great odds. It is the foul demons that cause Hawa’s influence to be weak on your world, but your people persevered.”

Erranuel nodded, and then turned to face Lumoof. “Patriarch Lumoof, thank you for sending us here. I’ll be able to handle it from here. What happens next, I believe, mainly concerns discussions about our faith, and so, it would most likely be uninteresting to you. So, thank you, I wish not to occupy your time any more.”

We expected that Erranuel would want to have some private words with the other Hawa-believers, so this went as planned. 

Lumoof nodded. “I’ll leave you to it. I’ll return in approximately three months.”

“Three months is plenty of time, Patriarch Lumoof. We will be ready when the time comes.” 

Erranuel was a man with his own plans, and I didn’t mind it. 

The world was large, and right now, there was enough for everyone. Even if he turned against me, it was fairly easy to cordon off certain worlds. We planned on sending Erranuel to Shasan because it wasn’t a world where we had much interest in.

They could have it on a silver platter if they so desired. 

I expect that as we discover more worlds, my resources and manpower would not be able to keep up to maintain a decent level of control, and so, rather than let certain worlds suffer because I lacked the resources to deal with them, I was willing to pass some of these worlds to other forces. From my point of view, I didn’t want to let these other worlds suffer from the demons just because I couldn’t help them and refuse to share the portals with others.

People like Erranuel were relatively low risk, since they lacked the means to travel through worlds. In time, maybe Lillies, or Aria and Aispeng, or the White Statue could be roped in to take control of certain worlds, though given the White Statue’s strength, it was a matter of time before he achieved travel between the worlds.

But now we stand at a position of growing strength, and we no longer need extensive paranoia. We have the weapons and strength to punish all those who break our trust.

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