Snatch Treeives (1/2)

Year 153 (continued)

Each rift had a different frequency and resonance, but it was still possible to align it. The beetles and Valthorns fought demons by the thousands to gain access and reach the rift. Again, no big deal. With Lovis’s new demonslaying power, the regular demons were easy. Under the effect of the demon suppressing aura, these demons were more like slow moving zombies. Together with my subsidiary trees spawning up to the rift itself, it wasn’t hard.

Once they managed to reach the rift, they too, tried matching their mana to match the rift, but they struggled to do so. They do not possess my ability to manipulate mana in one’s body at such great detail. I did after all, face decades of corrupting demon energies, and also use mana for magical soul-surgery. All of these meant I was capable of incredibly subtle mana control, and I could handle the fluctuations in these frequencies.

I tried wrapping a beetle in my vines and then sending it through the rift. It didn’t work.  The vines went through but the beetle just bounced off.

Again, my vines and roots went through the rift, and once I had vision, I immediately activated my [subsidiary trees] on the other side of the rift. It worked. The subsidiary tree instantly spawned beetles that fought with the demons on the other side, and bought me some precious time.

My vines and roots grabbed the red crystals, those red stones and pulled them through the rift. Then I saw the giant demons. Massive boney mammoths. Their magical blasts destroyed my subsidiary tree in a single energy attack.

Ah. The rift was closed again. But I got them, the red crystals. Never mind, there will be more rifts. The demons seem like they are unable to stop opening the rift.

I hauled the red crystals back to my labs for analysis. They were not demonic in nature, and instead... They are void mana batteries. Each of them were slightly depleted.

One of them exploded suddenly and left a massive crater, killing a few Valthorns and destroyed a few hundred beetles. The Valthorns got the message and so they maintained a large distance from the crystals. Another one exploded when one of my lab-trees prodded it with too much mana. The void mana inside is clearly quite unstable and is prone to strange behaviors.

One of the Valthorns injured in the first explosion soon developed symptoms similar to the Princess, and testing in the [biolab] soon proved me right. He had the exact same curse, [Exposed to Void Mana]. Thankfully, I am far better equipped now, and I have more mana at my disposal. This time, I was about to crush the curse outright.

But he lost some of his levels and skills from the void mana.

This made me wonder... Could I use void mana to remove the [hero] class?

I suppose this is like using chemotherapy to remove a cancer. It’s harmful, in more ways than one.

-

There were easily 30 to 50 rifts open at any one time, and from them, out came these undead-like demons. With so many rifts to secure throughout the continent, it was a bit like playing whack-a-mole on a continental scale. This meant our forces and our elites had to be distributed throughout the continent.

Hytreerion, my tree walker finally saw battle, and it was incredibly fun to watch it stomp demons, the same way those demon walkers stomped on us. Have a taste of your own medicine! It’s also my first time witnessing the full combat capabilities of a Titan-Soul powered Walker, and its accompanying army of Wood Soldiers.

Those wood soldiers are quite like beetles, in that they don’t have much intelligence. In a way, Hytreerion is pretty much a land based Protoss Carrier and the wooden soldiers are its interceptors.

So far, the first wave of demons from the rifts did not contain any ‘champions’ or ‘walkers’, and were just large masses of mobs. That meant a single Hytreerion was sufficient to secure one rift, or a few if they were located close to each other.

Now that I know those rifts are actually two-way gates, I’d like to prepare for an eventual counter-invasion to the demon worlds, and Hytreerion, as a champion-tier creature would be my advance force. But first, I’ll have to figure out how to create these rifts on my own.

There’s a few good reasons to go to the other side.

One - there may be a chance to figure out why and how the demons are invading our world. This may be one of the best ways to get an answer. Two - More of those void battery-crystals

Another matter at hand, was whether I should tell Kei about these two-way rifts, that it is possible to go to the other side with some mana-synchronisation. My concern was, if the gods have a read on her mind to some extent, then if she knew, then the gods must know too. Then again, there are certainly secret followers of the other gods in the Central Continent, and the gods may have observed my actions.

I decided to tell her anyway. She promptly returned to the Central continent within a month, and attempted to assault one of the rifts.

She managed to synchronise herself with it, her natural magical gift as a hero meant this was easy stuff. But once she entered it, the barrier seemed to drain a little of her star mana and then the rift quickly collapsed.

Fucking hell. Because the heroes at almost entirely star-mana once they pass level 100, and the rifts seemed to be powered by void mana, the interactions between the two mana types caused the rift to collapse.

Well played, gods. Well played.

The heroes can’t use void mana since it reacts dangerously with star mana, so they can’t use void mana to travel back home, or travel to the world of demons.

Of course, this frustrated Kei. “So there’s this mana type, called Void Mana that lets you open fabrics of space and time, and we can’t use it because us heroes are loaded to the brim with star mana.”

But Stella was delighted to learn of void mana. She, after all, did not have star mana, and now, this void mana was a way to go home. I would have to ask the Zaratans whether its’ possible to send her back by riding on their backs, but from what he said, it seemed the distance is too far.

Conceptually, if the gods have star mana, and I presume that the reaction between void and star mana is still dangerous even at significantly higher levels, how did the gods summon the heroes from far away? One, the gods stored their mana off-body, i.e. in separated shells? Perhaps the gods have the ability to split their being, like multiple trees in a network?

If so, perhaps me and the gods are more alike than I thought. Either that, or there is some distinction between the mana types of the gods. Perhaps Mozart and gang are gods with void mana, and the Aiva, Gaya, Hawa and Neira gods are star-mana gods? That there is some kind of trading arrangement between them?

-

“Rift secured, master.” Hytreerion repeated, and more of my subsidiary trees spawn into place. Throughout the continent, the military and Valthorns have kept the rift’s demons suppressed.

After my first void battery, I’ve resolved that I want more of them, and so, it’s time for the Rift Robberies. I activated a few more artificial minds, and readied them for the task at hand. Vines and roots resonated their mana with the rifts, and all at once, all of them entered the rifts. We invaded 14 rifts, and spawned [Giant Attendant Trees] and [Subsidiary Trees] by the tens and hundreds. Beetles then appeared to fight the demons on the other side.

But, the terrain on the other side was incredibly dry, and it was an environmental energy that caused my trees to dry up and shrivel. They won’t last very long in that hostile terrain, the ground nothing more than rock and sand. The roots of my [Giant Attendant Trees] and [Subsidiary Trees] couldn’t extract any water or nutrients from the ground to sustain their strength, so all the nutrients and water had to be supplied by roots through the rift itself.

Never mind. I needed them to buy me time. I wanted a lot of that void mana battery. I would keep them and store them secretly as weapons against the heroes. If void mana reacted with star mana, it made sense that trapped the heroes in a void-mana-battery field would be dangerous for them.

One. Two. My roots pulled. I saw more of those boney mammoths, they used beam weapons and glowing red horns that shredded through my trees.

They were stronger on the other side. My beetles didn’t last long, weakened by the dryness of the air, and my aura was negligible.

Through one of the rifts, I saw a familiar sight. One I saw during the demons’ dreams, back when the souls of the heroes were trapped.

A massive city-like structure filled with massive spires of red crystals, the spires were everywhere and stretched to the horizon. A massive serpent of bone and decayed flesh spotted the trees and charged at them. It’s body glowed in pulses of red and black, and it rammed the [giant attendant trees]. It crushed my trees easily.

Never mind. More crystals were stolen. I’ve grabbed twenty five of them before all the rifts shut off.

Still, my rift raid triggered something strange. All the rifts throughout the continent instantly closed.

Great. If the demons are intelligent, clearly they figured out that I know how to go through their rfits. We expect countermeasures.

-

Year 153

Detailed analysis soon revealed something that was quite worrying.

These crystals are pretty much [daemolite], but before they were fully ‘emptied’ of their void mana. The demon king’s death always left [Daemolite], hence, the rifts would close quite soon after the demon king was killed. Simply because their ‘carrier’ of the [void mana] had fallen. In these crystals, we saw these magical patterns, powered by the void mana. They were almost invisible, and only now we could see them because of the void mana that caused them to flicker into existence.

Quickly, I asked for some existing daemolite, harvested from the previous demon kings. When void mana from the void mana battery was connected to the daemolite, those patterns reemerged. For now I don’t know what they did... but the fact that there is a magical pattern in these crystals suggested that they may have other purposes, on top of just batteries.