Tree of Aeons (an Isekai Story)

294. Floodplains II

Year 274 (part 2)

There were still a few more worlds to explore, but back home, I tried to consider my options with the eleven worlds we have visited so far. I decided it was a good idea to pool all my domain holders and get some preliminary assessments.

It’s likely that the four worlds wouldn’t be too far off. 

A group back home started to work on our expected response to the demons. Some of these worlds were in a stable state. 

It made me wonder, of course. Despite the peripheral world’s distance to the demon king, not all of them have folded. So, why? 

So, I’ve been thinking about the nature of the peripheral worlds, and concluded that the peripheral worlds usually have some kind of ‘defensibility’. It is this defensibility that makes them into contested zones. Worlds that are hard for the demons to fully capture. Worlds that are also hard for the gods to properly reinforce. 

In short, peripheral worlds are not peripheral worlds by distance, even if it was one of the factors, but by sheer survivorship bias. Faraway worlds that cannot be defended, and lacked inherent defensibility meant they would easily fold to the demons.

That meant they were not the gods’ problem any more, since they are then demon worlds.

Worlds that are close to the gods can be easily defended and reinforced, so they remain as normal worlds. 

So, peripheral worlds are those that are in limbo. Worlds that are hard for the demons to conquer due to their design, and those that the gods find it hard to reinforce. If these two were true, it was likely that these sorts of worlds would become ‘peripheral’ worlds, because they would survive the drift. 

“Could it just be a fluke, that the heroes’ old artifacts and items give the natives some fighting chance to hang on?” Lumoof countered.

“Of course. But it’s just something I’ve been thinking about.” It was just a hypothesis, that peripheral worlds become battlegrounds, because they experience longer periods of struggle against the demons. 

Worlds that can’t put up a fight die, or fall to the demons, and thus drift out of the god’s influence anyway.

***

***

Lavaworld

“How do you feel?” Khefri said as Samuel, or Samahiro the elf hero, gained levels battling the demons of Lavaworld. 

“Better. Stronger.” Samuel said while he rested. He gained a level that day. The demon champion was hardly a threat. With more power, they would have the ability to retake Landas from the demon king. The goal was to get Samuel at least into the level 100s, one they achieved fairly easily.

But each new hero had their own style of battle, and Kei, as the new hero-manager, decided that all the heroes needed to have ‘practice’ sessions. It was something copied from the Valthorns, since the Valthorns had battle simulations in order to form their battle tactics. The heroes, even with their natural gifts, still needed practice. 

Samuel also needed to get used to his new abilities, even if the divine gifts of the hero class helped tremendously. 

But the demon champions were too weak to be a challenge. Without really pushing it, it was hard for the heroes to really know how well they worked together. Teamwork was one of the few things that the hero class wasn’t very good at. 

“It is good to have another close combat fighter in our team.” Adrian said. 

Colette, Prabu, Adrian, Khefri. Four heroes. And now they were five once more.

“I’m just happy there’s more of us.” Prabu sighed. “I hope they find more heroes on the other worlds.”

Samuel looked around. It was better than being alone, for sure. “I hope so too.”

The Valthorns concluded it was best to decide which world to clear out its demon king, only after we’ve explored all fifteen worlds. In some states it’s likely there were ‘stable’ worlds.

So for now, Samuel and the other heroes prepared for war. They repaired old hero items, restored magical defenses. 

***

Twelveth

Gigantadragon - The Planetary Dragon

Stella and Lumoof opened the portal and instantly knew this was one of those unusual worlds. A world that existed on the surface of a gigantic planetary dragon, that’s forever chasing a sun. The world was constantly moving, it wasn’t moving in the void sea, but after staring at the edge of its reality bubble for a moment, we concluded it was likely to only ‘appear’ as if it was always moving. Maybe, it was like a marble spinning in place as water flowed around it. 

“Well. A giant dragon.” Lumoof looked around. They landed on what appeared to be the middle part of the dragon’s body. The part that looked like the head was the brightest, and yet, even on the surface of this gigantic planetary dragon’s body, there was running water, plants, trees, and mountains. “That’s a first.”

“I wonder whether Aeon’s clone could link to the dragon’s will, then we could possibly gain control, or communicate with it.”

“You’re concluding that a planetary sized world’s core is a sentient dragon.”

“Yes. I suppose.” Stella said. “A creature of this size-”

“I think we have to let go of some of our assumptions. It may only possess the physical form of a dragon, but nothing actually requires it to be sentient. It’s movements, it’s mannerisms may just be a set of instructions imprinted to its being.”

“A machine.” Stella sighed, as she scanned around. “I suppose in a world of magic, nothing really requires planets to be, well, planets.”

Lumoof nodded, and through him, our senses expanded. I could feel it, and they could too. Heroes. There were still heroes here. And at the same time, we also felt the presence of a demon king. A strong one. 

We knew because it’s demonic energies were intense, as if amplified by the natural energies of the land itself-

“That’s not good.” Stella said, as her hands got to work. A portal whirled open, the two stepped through and found a battlefield with strong demons.

Demons that glowed with lines of magic, and they were strong. Champions littered the skies as if they didn’t cost energy. Because they didn’t. 

Stella’s magical senses expanded, as she sent magical probes all around. 

But here, around the ‘waist’ of the planet sized dragon, was a battleground between the land controlled by the demons, and the lands controlled by the natives. 

Two heroes, two humans with magical wings, surrounded by smaller drakes, fought back against the demons. They were strong, but the demon king, a giant two headed armored lizard breathed magic glowed with the same strange lines. 

“I’m not totally certain, but it seems this demon king left parts of itself on ley lines and that ley line energy fed the demon king.” Stella said as she landed behind Lumoof. It seemed like the demon king was going to fire a weapon their way as well.

One of the heads opened fire, and a magical blast smashed into Lumoof’s shields. It burned through three layers of shields, but didn’t reach Lumoof. It did make him sweat a little, and so he prepared to activate his shields again. “Well, that’s something.” 

The other head of the demon king fired, and the heroes dodged the energy blast. It was considerably more powerful than the average demon king, and it’s energies were a blend of demonic energy and the unusual ley lines’ energies. They couldn’t take the hit directly. 

“Think we should help them?” Lumoof looked at Stella, but that question was partly directed at me. I could feel Lumoof’s presence.

The demon king charged at the heroes at a surreal speed, and the two heroes countered with attacks of their own. They were fairly powerful, and their own energy attacks left large scars on the demon king, but those wounds regenerated quickly, it’s health supported by the ley lines. 

Stella could feel the demon king’s energies were linked to other places. There were fragments of the demon king spread throughout  the tail of this planetary sized dragon. “We should help to destroy those ley line sources, if we want that to happen.”

But we couldn’t do that. The demon king closed in on the heroes, and fired an energy blast at point blank. A shot that would’ve killed the heroes. 

Lumoof seemingly blinked in front of the two humanoid heroes, and created a massive wooden shield and blocked the attack from the demon king. The blast tore through layers of wooden shields, and the shockwave of the attack sent Lumoof and the two heroes backward.

I could feel the two heroes were tired, and had not much strength to continue this fight. “Let’s rescue the heroes and we can talk strategy later. Taking out the demon’s fragments on the ley lines should be quite easy.”

Stella nodded. “You’ll have to carry them out. My void portals won’t work with the heroes.”

Lumoof approached the two humanoid heroes. They were battered. They didn’t have much wounds on them, but they spent quite a lot of their energy on the demon king. 

“Hello, heroes. I think this battle is lost. Let us retreat and we can discuss details later?”

The two looked at each other, and back at Lumoof. “Sure.” 

***

The demon king didn’t give chase, while we followed the heroes away from the battlefield and arrived at a dragonling city, filled with flying drakes and the humanoid dragonlings. 

It was a border town, one closest to the creeping demonic corruption, and the home base of the two heroes, for now.  They’ve been trying to push back against the demon king for a while, but with just the two of them, they’ve not been able to overwhelm the demon king.

“I’m Lumoof, and this is my friend, Stella.” The two heroes, Rajah and Wira, were summoned about a year ago. But the demon king and the demons arrived about six years before that, and so they got a five years head start. 

“The demon king advances slowly.” The two heroes explained. “Each time it creeps forward, it tries to capture the ley lines within the ground, and it goes stronger with each captured magical ley line. The two of us couldn’t really beat it, even though we gained levels after each battle. It almost seems as if we’re fighting against a monster we can’t win. Each time we hurt it, it just regenerates.”

“Demon kings have exceptional regeneration ability.” Stella said. “What you experienced isn’t unusual. Does it have minions? I didn’t see any lesser demons beyond the usual hellhounds and critters.”

“A few. They’re not that weak, though.” The heroes said. 

“Why didn’t you sneak past it and attack the leylines?”

“It wouldn’t let us.” Rajah countered. “You know how this world is like one long dragon. Any time we try to get past that line it knows we are coming. It can tell we are headed there.”

Ah. The demons have hero-vision. So for the heroes, they would not be able to sneak past the demon king. Stella looked at Lumoof. “But we could.”

The two heroes looked at each other. “Yes. Yes you totally can.”

“Teleportation?” Lumoof asked.

“Jammed.” Rajah added. “The demon king’s energies spread throughout the demon lands and any teleportation spell into that area gets shredded. We can’t maintain a stable portal.”

“But what defenses do they have?” 

“Mostly the demon lords.” Rajah added

“Demon lords?” Lumoof asked. 

“Demons empowered by the ley lines. They are quite powerful, but nothing like the demon king. We could take one down, but the ley lines are all protected by these demon lords.” 

“Ah. Demon champions. Just terminology differences.” Lumoof breathed a sigh of relief. At least it wasn’t an unusual class of demon, most likely just a demon champion that has a similar energy-absorption mechanism as its parent demon king.

This demon king seemed to rely on capturing ley lines to make itself stronger, and also spawn more powerful demons.

“So, actually, we kinda got ahead of ourselves by diving right into the demon problem. What is this world?” Lumoof said. The dragonlings of this world, Giganta, looked at us with interest, but ultimately left us alone.

The heroes were more than happy to explain it to us.

The world of Gigantadragon is a long-dragon shaped planet that is perpetually chasing the golden sun. The day-night cycle is determined by the position of the dragon’s head, and the long shadow the head casts over the rest of its body as it moves through in a rotational pattern through space, blocking out the sun. It twirls and moves, as the stars around the world warped and shifted, as if it is forever chasing the sun, but we knew this was an illusion. Nothing was moving.

The land itself is separated into fifteen large segments, each representing like a chunk or segment of the body, as if the body of the dragon is some sort of gigantic centipede of stone and earth, and on those segments are rather normal features such as mountains, seas, lakes, farmlands and so on. Between the segments is a part called the dragon’s skin, essentially an unstable part of the land that frequently experiences fissures due to how two linked segments of the planet-sized dragon moves about as it rotates around the sun. 

The tail end is significantly colder than the parts closer to the head, where it is warmer. The magical energies of the ley lines are also stronger closer to the dragon’s head, but there are ley lines throughout Giganta’s body. 

The locals refer to the ley lines as the ‘dragon’s veins’, because they were the energies of the gigantic dragon.

It is inhabited by a mixture of dragonlings, drakes, and humanoids, and the dragonlings worship a mix of Hawa and Gaya. 

The dragonlings and drakes have elemental biases that were reflected in their skin. The green-shaded dragonlings and drakes generally had powers of the wood and earth, the reddish, orange dragonlings were fire, and the blue-white dragonlings and drakes were of the water, ice and wind elements. 

These three were the main subgroups of dragonlings, and the fire element dragonlings were clustered closer to the head of Giganta and the areas where there were volcanoes and rivers of lava, while the water and earth element dragonlings were more spread out. 

Rajah and Wira, as heroes, were the union of the three dragonling subgroups, and they had powers of all three dragonlings, and could empower their drakes. The drakes of Capra or Johann’s Dragon would be fascinating to introduce to the dragonlings of this world, and vice versa, but that would be a later problem.

For now, it is the heroes that would do the moving.

“So, when are you two going to sneak past the gates? Are you two like world travelers? Like some hero that finished their quest and now could travel from world to world?” 

Stella shook her head. “Nothing like that. We’re not even heroes, but let’s say we have an organization behind us.”

“I don’t see it. Is it like some kind of starship flying overhead?” Rajah and Wira looked overhead. The sky was somehow filled with stars, even if it’s not a real thing, and the stars looked like they moved in a particular direction.  

“No. I suppose if we deploy a node here, we can introduce you to the rest of us.” 

“Wait, wait, wait. What about defenses? We’ll have to hold the demon king back. If it senses us disappearing, it may decide to attack! We’re what stands between the demon king and total annihilation of the dragonlings!”

“That doesn’t always happen.” Lumoof countered.

“It doesn’t? No. We can’t desert our post here. Not even for a bit.” The two heroes said with certainty.

Their reaction made Lumoof pause for a while, before he said. “I see. Then we need to discuss our plans before we go ahead.”

The two domain holders left the heroes to their own affairs.

“What’d you think?” Stella and Lumoof met somewhere away from the heroes. “Their hero class compulsions seem a little strong there.” 

“They are fairly high level, that sort of meddling is expected.” Lumoof frowned. “We wouldn’t be able to move them, and we’ll have to bring the rest of the heroes here.”

Stella merely nodded, and waited for Lumoof to continue. 

“Or we do what’s sensible. We sneak past the demon’s battle lines and hit the ley lines. That would ensure that the heroes can survive the next conflict with the demon king. Then we bring the heroes. If we leave as it is, it’s likely they won’t survive an encounter with the demon king. I think we should call for some reinforcement, give them some breathing room then decide later.” 

The void domain holder nodded. “Yeah. That’s probably our best choice. We should figure out what’s up with this demon king anyway.”

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