Tree of Aeons

311

Year 280

“Hawa, how long do we have to wait if we plan to hold off on rescuing one of the worlds?” Lumoof asked the object in his hand. Edna’s encounters with the hero swords made me wonder whether we could replace it with another world. 

There was silence, at first.

“If it’s one world, perhaps another 5 years, so all in you may have to wait and hold these worlds for up to 35 years before I gather enough faith points.” 

Thirty five years. In a way, that wasn’t a bad amount of time, since we could reinforce our hold on these peripheral worlds, and replenish the strength of the Valtrian Order and Valthorns. 35 years was enough for one to two generations of new warriors to join our ranks. 

Though a part of me wondered whether it is enough to attack the demons, I realize that at this moment, it didn’t matter. We’ll just have to get ready. If we are not, we will take a step back and rebuild. 

“Do you have domain holders under you?” Lumoof asked.

“Yes. A few, they care for some of my Core Worlds. They serve as my voice to my people.” 

“What do you do if they get too strong?”

“Why would they? It gets progressively harder to get stronger under the old system, and they would have to constantly seek out battles. My core worlds are safe, they do not get invaded by the demons frequently.”

Ah. It’s so easy to plateau, and I noticed this too, even in my domain holders. There’s always a point where progress seems incredibly slow. Years pass by without a level gained.

Even for me, my level gains have been so slow that I’ve not expected more levels unless I did something big. The last significant gain I had was during the demon’s comet. So far, our expeditions to the peripheral worlds didn’t lead to many levels for me. 

“Have you started to save up some faith points?”

“Yes. It will take some time, but faith points accumulate slowly over the years.”

“Yet you do not want to send your priests and prophets to these worlds to convert them to your faith?” 

“Distant worlds generate the least amount of faith points. I much prefer to create new planets in my core realms and populate them with even more believers. There is more progress that way.”

“Wait. How big are your core worlds?”

“Compared to some of the peripheral worlds, perhaps ten, or twenty times larger? Some of my realms have thirty planets filled with my believers, in the billions.”

That explained the sheer scale and why the gods are so unwilling to entertain distant worlds. It’s core worlds are so big, and just managing that should take up most of its time. “Ah. But how does the Will of the World work in such a situation?” 

“There isn’t one. I have merged with the old Will of the Worlds for those where I have claimed as my Core Worlds. These worlds and me are one and the same, and it is why my existence is calculated as a blend of the worlds where I rule.”

“But- wait, don’t you die if you lose your followers?”

“Yes, but the worlds will have to die first, and so long as I rule them, I won’t.”

Ah. Interesting. So since the World Faith System allows them to supplant the world’s existing will and made it their own-

“Wait. Then how do the demons capture a god if you are merged with your core world?”

“They must have defeated all of that god’s worlds, and forced it to its last controlled world. And there, it captured its last controlled world, effectively claiming control over its faith.” 

“But a god can draw power from further away than its core world.”

“Yes. But the core worlds are where we tie our presence. Call it an anchor of our reality.”

“But, why don’t the gods just keep merging with the Will of the Worlds?”

“Each merger costs Faith Points, and the less world we control, the harder it is to generate the necessary faith points.”

“Why don’t you keep merging with more worlds? At some point you control so many worlds that you can keep merging with more?”

“There’s a distance penalty for each merger, each merger shifts my center of faith ever slightly, making some worlds further away from that center and dilutes the faith point generated from that world. In other words, there is an optimal arrangement of worlds based on the current density of worlds in the void.”

“But you can move worlds as the Will of the World. Can you not just move it closer to the center of your mass such that each world is optimally arranged within your center of faith?”

There was an odd silence. A really, really long odd silence. “It can be done, at some faith point cost, but there is a size restriction of the number of realms in the same space in the void sea, but no real limit on the number of worlds within a single realm, but-”

Again, a weird, long silence, as if it was in thought.

“Maybe that belief is also flawed. I will experiment on this.”

“Ah.” Even the old gods work with fairly constrained information. The System works the way it does, but not all the tricks to optimize it’s performance are known.

At that point, I wondered how my clones interacted with the Will of the World. 

“What sort of powers do you get with the Will of the World? I mean, other than the power to move worlds.”

“Fairly wide. I can create and alter race compositions, alter species, create divine and magical laws that permeate the world, move worlds, alter its core concepts, subject to the [System]’s limits.”

“Can you shape portals?”

“Yes.”

I wondered. “Are you able to block people from coming, then?” 

“I have not tried, but maybe. At least, I can block a world’s core from interacting with a person. Like, I can weave rules into the world to prevent certain things from happening, such as dragons can’t fly, or trees can’t grow bigger than a certain size. Some rules will need to go through the System’s implied voting process, and can take a while.”

Could it even stop me from deploying my clones? “Can you stop the movement of souls, too?”

“A limited yes. I can create mechanisms that slow the movement of souls and recycle them, but over a long period of time, no.”

This lends credence to the idea that souls are one of the foundational forces of the world, but I wondered what the demons could do with worlds where it has fully ‘possessed’ the will of the world, and weaponized that ability. It has not done so with the demon worlds we’ve seen so far, but there is no reason to believe the demon worlds within the bubble are similar. 

“Are you able to prepare a force to fight with us, as we make our way to the demon’s sun?” I asked. “Join us, support us in our fight.”

A long silence later, it agreed. “Very well. I will have 1,000 high quality warriors ready within forty years.”

“Any domainholders?”

“No. My domain holders are far too precious.”

***

Three decades of relative peace should be achievable, though we are left with a few more worlds where we intended to see a little more happen. 

“We are largely ready for the next phase of our movements. The rest of the Valthorns will focus their efforts on restoring the health of the peripheral worlds, but for us, we have other things to do.” Lumoof gathered the domain holders for a talk. They were connected through [dream academy].

The dream version of Alka nodded. “I’ll spend another few years here in Delvegard. I think I can get a deeper grip into their society, but we’ll need a big deployment of staff to build a new space for these guys. In a safer world. Do we intend to use the world next to the Sun-Rings as a staging post? If so, that’s where we should go. It’ll make it much easier to send over the war machines to the Sun-Rings.”

“Is attacking the Sun-Rings with war machines even necessary?”

“Well, maybe not, but the Sun-Rings is where we are closest to the demon’s barrier. Once it breaks, it will lead to the inner worlds, and I expect a lot of war.”

“Fair.” 

“What sort of crack are we expecting in the demon’s barrier?” Johann asked. 

Stella then elaborated. “I’m not exactly sure of what sort of power Hawa’s weapon has, but let’s assume the barrier will either have a hole in it, or fall completely. We should be able to move closer towards the demonic worlds that are on the other side. I believe we should be seeing demon worlds.”

“So a whole lot of battle.” 

“Yes, and the domain holders will be the tip of the spear.” Alka explained. The rest of the Valthorns will need to hold on to a set of worlds that form a path for us to retreat, if needed. “The likelihood of that sort of path being necessary probably isn’t high if we can have Aeon’s clone deployed somewhere along the way, but we don’t really know whether there are restrictions of Aeon’s deployment. We know so far during our first attack on the Sun-Rings that Aeon cannot deploy on places without sufficient soil. We are highly likely entering worlds that have been heavily warped by the demon’s presence, quite like the core worlds of the old gods.”

“So more divine law stuff.”

“Yes, exactly. Which is why we are the tip of the spear.” Alka said. “We’ll need more firepower. Way more firepower.”

Somehow, Johann, Roon, Kafa and Ezar looked at Lumoof at the same time. 

Lumoof blinked. “What?”

“We’ll need to get more allies.”

“Ah yes.”

“It is the avatar’s role as the primary representative.” Johann said. “If we need more domain holders, we’ll have to recruit some of these others to fight on our side.”

“Or we find more allies.” Stella said. “We should resume the Void Layers exploration.” 

“Or reach for the other gods.” Roon poked in, and this time, he looked at Stella. “If we can get Hawa to give us some guys, Aiva probably could too. We should reach Aiva, somehow.” 

Stella frowned. “Aww man. I already have two void explorers headed in different directions. If we find something, we’ll know.”

Roon and Johann looked at each other. “But if we’re venturing to worlds where there are divine laws, we’ll need a void domain holder.”

“Unless if, we can somehow share the protections of a domainholder with any of five other void archmages.” Alka said. 

“Is there?” Stella asked. 

“Not that I know of.” 

Lumoof shook his head. “If we can locate more gods that is ideal. But our efforts should be on the basis that we don’t find any more gods, and so we need to improve the strength of our forces. The peripheral worlds are mostly connected to a demon world, we should make use of that.” Lumoof said. “That’s a good way to give our new recruits some additional knowledge and experience.”

Then Edna brought up her observations on the hero mechanic on Caval. The matter was circulated to the domain holders earlier, so most of them knew about it on a relatively high level basis. 

“I’d like to experiment on the hero class.” 

That made Stella squirm slightly. “The rest of the heroes won’t agree on that.”

“Why won’t they? They have another friend to fight with.” Johann asked. 

“It’s taking people away from their homes. Away from their current lives. It’s allowing the gods to kidnap them.” Stella countered.

“Not if you believe what happens to heroes when they die.” Alka said. “They get placed back as if it never happened. Nothing really was lost. It’s like a dream.”

“We have no way of proving whether that is true.” Stella countered. “I don’t like this. We’re allowing the system to take one.”

Alka looked at Stella, and frowned. “Just one, Stella. Think of the lives we can save, if there’s a way to make a super powerful living weapon. Something that we can then use on other worlds as well.”

“There’s ways to do that without the heroes.” Stella insisted. “Edna already has her quest swords, why can’t her quest swords do something similar once she gains more levels?”

“Stella, it will end on it’s own. It’s a matter of time.” Alka countered. “The more we can learn how the world works and how some worlds integrate the hero summons into it’s natural ecosystem, the better equipped we are to deal with the consequences. Caval will have its end of summons eventually, and I think Edna has a point. One hero. One summons. That’s it.”

“No.”

“Do you want some time to think about this?” Alka tried to brush off her rejection. 

“Aeon, we have to stop this cycle of pulling people from our worlds.” Stella said. “Stopping hero summons is a good thing!”

But I wasn’t so sure. 

***

Twinspace

Land of the plenty. Land of the overpopulated.

Kafa, Roon and Johann arrived and found the chaos even more overwhelming than the overpopulated cities of the Central Continent. Somehow, the population here was just bigger. People here just had more children, and children grew up faster. Fertility levels were high in every race, and it seemed the minds of the people were very much inclined to have children, and we discovered they were indeed wired differently. 

The souls of humans, lizardpeople, elves, dwarves. All slightly different. Their minds favored children, even though as a society, they don’t seem to treat their young very well. Instead, they generally were left to fend for themselves, though crimes on young hungry children were rarely punished, unless severe. 

But there was a price to such a different mindset. A price paid, in another form.

The level caps on everyone were lower. No one got above level 75 in this world. Ten levels of difference, and in return, a land slightly smaller than the Central Continent housed ten, if not fifteen times as many individuals.

Maybe even twenty. 

Kafa found the place pleasant. He was always fond of crowds. Lizardfolks generally were comfortable with crowds. It didn’t bother them, and their minds were able to shut out the unnecessary noise. 

***

“The demon continent is the promised land!” Matriarch Hoyia stood on top of the podium. A crowd surrounded her. “Our divine God Aeon has a vision, a task for us all. Once we reclaim the demon continent, it will be transformed into a land of plenty. Enough to feed your family. Your friends. Everyone!”

The crowd listened, as Hoyia’s [A Seed for the Masses] spread throughout the entire plaza.

“Aeon’s warriors await us on our journey. Our path, my fellow brethren. Our divine god calls on us to prepare for this journey. A crusade of our own to purge the unholy from our world! The reward is a new promised land. A land that is fertile, where minerals and resources are plentiful, and our god’s men will be there to help us. So, my brethren. We must make the journey. Our crusade awaits!”

Roon and Johann kept watch, just in case anyone tried something. But Hoyia had enough artifacts on her to block a demon king’s attack. “The crowd’s buying it.”

“A lot more than I expected.” Johann said, and realized a lot were nodding. Some were swayed. A few walked up. Hoyia bought a building later that day, and officially set up the first Temple of Aeon on the world of Twinspace. 

A total of three matriarchs and patriarchs of the Treeology came to Twinspace. The act of converting these masses into believers, zealots, was the first step. Once they gained scale, they would convert even the nobles, and from there, the preparations for the crusades would be on the way. 

The first Twinspace Temple of Aeon was located on a harbor city, it was ruled by a local King. There were soldiers, but anyone could tell that they were hardly loyal. They were only doing it because the King paid them. 

How easy it was to sway the hearts of these lost sheep.

An offering of food, a blessing from a priestess, and a light touch of borrowed divinity, and Hoyia turned a group of lazy, unmotivated guards into her own private army of eager zealots. 

“It’s quite scary what she’s doing.” Roon said, as each of the matriarch and patriarch somehow converted hundreds and thousands of regular civilians into believers of the Aeonic faith. 

Similar to Alka, Hoyia and the priesthood went down to the people, and converted them first. The ruling institutions will fall on their own, once the legs they stood on collapse. The powerful may have higher levels, and are stronger, but in the end, the benefits of that level only matter if they have someone to lord it over. 

With the Temple of Aeon, and the power of the matriarchs, it would be easy to resist their attempts. 

In two months, the Temple of Aeon on the shoreline cities had grown to thousands, winning over soldiers and citizens alike. 

The nobility began to notice, but by then the Temple of Aeon was already sizable, and some began to whisper directly into the noble’s ears.

In that shoreline city itself, the fire now reached the city’s lord. 

“The demon’s continent is actually our promised land.” A zealous converted officer explained to that very town’s lord. The Lord was furious. “We must join the Temple of Aeon on the crusade to the demonic continent! Our suffering all this while was because we allowed the demonic continent to remain corrupted!”

“What ridiculous claim is this? How are the other temples not crushing this fake priestess?” The Lord stared at the converted officer. The rest of the guards looked tense. They were friends, but the officer had been thoroughly mesmerized. 

The zealous converted officer stood, and drew his sword. “City Lord, the powers of the matriarch are real, and her divine blessing is true. You doubt it, but see this.”

His entire body radiated power for a matriarch’s blessing.

“Are you dabbling in demonic energy?” The Lord didn’t believe it, incredulous. “Haul him up and throw him in prison.”

“City Lord, you may throw me in prison, but I beg you, go see the priestess for yourself. Matriarch Hoyia’s faith is true, and her vision of god is real!” 

The Lord looked at his guards. “Throw the man in jail, and summon this false priestess to my office. I’ll see what this succubus is doing to my officers!”

***