Contreegencies (1/2)

Year 141

It was classified information, clearly no one knew it, but I did. I first informed the Valthorns, the Valtrian order, my Patriarchs and Matriarchs. It was met with a resounding silence. Patreeck told me they were making plans.

What did this mean? Have the demons won?

I wouldn’t be able to get anything from the regular people. At least, I didn’t think I would. The only person who I thought could even attempt to answer ‘what next’, was Lilies.

> Lilies. The Heroes died. <

< We know. We sensed their presence fade away in the fabric of the world. >

> So what now? <

< Hunker down. A true winter comes. >

That sounded awfully ominous.

> Tips? <

< Hide and spread far. Demons cannot reach everywhere. >

If we’re doomed, we’re doomed, isn’t it? But I don’t believe so, since... well, I just don’t believe it. I refuse to believe it.

Then, I announced it to the representatives of the various cities, and the nobles of many kingdoms. The heroes have died, all 10 of them have fallen in battle.

The entire hall was in uproar. It was a panic I’ve never seen the nobles exhibit.

One of the noble lords went a little nuts and shouted, “We’re doomed!”

Some said rather strange things. “Why is this happening? It’s the first time in documented history!”

“Is it?” Some nobles challenged, clearly trying to be the level-headed one. “Our historical records only go back so far. What if this wasn’t the first time?”

I recall when I first arrived, the gods always summoned heroes if the previous generation died to the new demon king. But would the gods summon heroes again, if the new batch of heroes died?

“If it isn’t, then we have chosen correctly to break away from the 4 temples! They’ve lied to us all this time!”

But why? Why are the gods restricted from summoning newer heroes, if the new heroes died? Certainly they can try again, right?

“Is that something worth arguing over at this time? We need to deal with the reality before us, that the heroes have all fallen, and yet the demon king still lived. We must focus our efforts on surviving this!”

“Survive? How? I for one am going to be rushing out there and spend all my money and live a life.”

Patreeck’s ability told me all of them are seeing their lives flash before their eyes. This was one of those, ‘if you died tomorrow, what would you do?’ moments.

A noble said. “We must try something. If we must call on the blood mages to perform a ritual of massive proportions, then we must. It is either they die, or everyone dies!”

I’m certain some of the kings and the temples out there would be considering this option right now. But based on Patreeck’s calculation and my own historical data, it wouldn’t be enough. From my observations of the hex to date, and my experiments, the existing hexbomb would not have enough power to destroy a demon king. Unless I sacrificed close to 20 million people, maybe more. I recall sensing the huge surge in magical energies when that hex-like thing, and now that I’ve got access to the hex on my own, I’m able to put the two data points together to calculate the energy needed to replicate a similar power level.

20 million. Did he sacrifice so many? I don’t think so?

Yet, how did Astra do it? Is it because of the amplification power of Star mana? Could star-mana and hex fuse together, or does the star mana apply it’s anti-demon king qualities to the entire hexbomb?

“What are our options?” I asked the artificial minds.

“The hexbomb is a good direction, master. We should focus on amplifying the power of the soul, in order to create a superbomb. To borrow your memories, master, the hexbomb is essentially a massive bundle of 10million TNTs, if we could use the soul-fragments in a significantly more efficient way, it may be possible to achieve the same effect with far lower sacrifice.”

It still required sacrifice. Just less.

“What level of efficiency can we achieve at the moment?”

The artificial minds paused and started calculating. It took them two days.

“Based on our current knowhow and converting the entire valley of the Unrotten, we can amplify the hexbomb’s efficiency and power by 4 times.” Trevor said. “Still, that meant at least 5 million sacrifices.”

Was I willing to do this to get just a single shot at the demon king with the hexbomb?

It bothered me. I didn’t think it was the right thing to do at all. It felt like I’m cutting off my limbs just to live another day.

“From a utilitarian point of view, master, sacrifices are necessary. 5million is a number the Freshlands can afford.”

It took a few days, but I then decided. “It must be a last resort. But we must make preparations.”

The preparations required were massive. Firstly, we needed to make sure that there were at least 5 to 10 million people within a 5 day walk of Freshka. Next, was preparing the structures, formations and runes needed to properly concentrate the energies released from 5 to 10 million souls.

We didn’t know how much time we had, but preparing the formations and runes needed to perform a blood ritual of this size was going to take years.

In a way, this option was dead from the start. There’s no way we could have done the preparations needed in time, if the demon king attacked this year, we would have failed. Even sacrificing 20million people isn’t so simple, since the souls of all 20 million need to be stitched together into a single shot. This endeavour alone required the construction of a massive containment array to control the energies.

How did Astra do it? Was my magical measurement and sensors so far off?

There must be some star-mana or hero-level shenanigans at work.

-

“The heroes died.” The Valthorns’ upgraded classers spoke among themselves. “This meant the demon king may very well be on the way to kill the rest of us.”

“Does Aeon have a plan?”

“I say we hide. Construct massive installations deep within mountains and wait it out. The demon king may rule the world outside, but with our skills, we’d live. Faris and the druids, the mages together could generate all the things we needed to live.”

“Ah, Aeon’s underground bunkers taken to the extreme, huh?”

“Well, yes. But we’re talking extremely, extremely deep. Far deeper than before.”

“It’s a good possibility.” Some of the Valthorns considered the idea. It had a good merit. “The demons certainly can’t sense us if we hide that deep.”

“Then let’s do it. We can expand it if we can create enough space.”

“We better not tell the nobles. They’ll demand we protect them if they know.” All the Valthorns nodded.

The Valthorns started what they called the ‘trench-hideout project’. They, using their powers together, started to dig really, really, really deep underground. Their project would take a few months, but if they do it right, they’d probably survive.

-

At the same time, Lausanne’s still alive. That was a good sign, in the sense that the entire Eastern Continent has not fallen under the demons. There must be pockets or nations that survived.

As the year went by, captains and sailors began noticing that the temples’ blockade now had holes. Some navies still maintained the blockade, but there were pockets where the ships left. The temples after all are a hodgepodge of contributed forces, so some of the kingdoms may have given up.

Then, we began capturing some ships that strangely sailed into the harbors of our allied kingdoms.

“What’s happening out there?” We interrogated the crew.

“We don’t know, but our supply ships stopped coming and we were starving. So all of us had to come here! We either starve, or sail to the nearest harbor.” They didn’t know much. Even the captains were not very well informed of what was happening back in their home country.