Tree of Aeons (an Isekai Story)

333. Dangerous Woods

333.

Year 308

“We’re not ready.” I said. I knew we were not. I felt like I needed more than a few more levels. The fact that Hawa could have a weapon so powerful was all the difference in power levels I needed to know. Hawa could deal with whatever the demons could dish out.

Not just that. Hawa was in a better position now, because now he had fifteen less peripheral worlds to care for, and thus, his faith points would grow quite quickly. He could make something that annihilated entire worlds every twenty years.  

The weapon was so powerful that the only safe place to store it was on my clone on Cometworld.

It was a rather interesting way to use a stray uninhabited comet as the superweapons storage area.

But the question didn’t leave my mind. Could I deal out that sort of damage?

My domainholders recognized the gap in power, but Alka disagreed that waiting was the right choice.

“They are on the World Faith System. They do not get stronger as they defeat the demons. But we do. If there are stronger demon kings on the other side, then we stand to benefit in the long term, if we can keep defeating more demon kings and whatever stronger demon emperors or whatnot that they have at their disposal. We gain levels, and the more we defeat the demons, the better positioned we are.”

Edna agreed. “Let’s give ourselves a time limit. If we wait, we will wait forever. Let’s explore the five other Sun-Rings and their vicinity, talk to the other gods, and see whether we can get them to all help out. At least, if we talk to some of them, we will know where they stand with the demons.”

***

The ancient Erasian gates whirled to life once sufficient void mana was channeled into it, and there were a total of ten preset locations. The five other Sun-Rings and the Five Erasian Core Worlds. 

We decided not to send everyone. Just in case. Only Lumoof, Edna, and Stella. Just enough to get everyone through and for Stella to earn the levels needed to reach level 200. 

“Three of us once more.” Lumoof smiled as the portal brought them through to a rift gate, which opened to another rift gate on the other side. Unlike before, the rift gate brought them directly into the underground chambers of the Sun-Rings.

Again, it was a space devoid of any life. There were corpses everywhere, dwarves, humans, and more.

But there was a difference. A few, in fact. 

“This corpse looks like it used void mana.” Stella sat and noticed very noticeable burns from void mana. These were ‘void curses’, something suffered by young void mages as they attempted to change their souls into one that produced void mana. If those curses were not removed from the soul, they led to dark, black root-like scars throughout the body. She flipped the corpse over and noticed the presence of some unusual tools and equipment on her body.

“Roon’s gonna tell you to treat that thing gently.” Edna teased, but she too spread out of the main Erasian gate chamber and out into the actual temple.

“He’s not here.” Stella said. “And this isn’t an Erasian logo.” 

“I mean, I’m not surprised if the ancients tried to use void mana, when the Sun-Rings produced so much of them.” 

This temple also had a similar carving as the ones before. It depicted Eras carving and creating the Sun-Rings out of planets once more, but instead, there was another god present. Eras was depicted in strong, almost yellowish gold, but this other one was depicted in a far lighter color, a faint golden color, with a sigil on its body.

“There’s another god involved in the Sun-Rings.” Edna said as she continued to admire the carved illustrations of the Sun-Rings creation on the temple’s walls.

Stella quickly joined Edna and connected the sigils. “Well. So that void mage is this other god’s believers.” 

“For the use of the rift gates?” Edna just added. She didn’t believe it. 

“There’s a god that does rift gates? That doesn’t quite make sense. The Erasian gates themselves don’t seem to need help from others, though. Aeon isn’t a god of rift gates but that’s not stopping him from using them.” Stella continued to read the same carvings herself. 

“Does it have a name? I can’t see any.” Edna tried to check around, but didn’t see any. There was a statue in honor of Eras.

Meanwhile, Lumoof was already outside. 

The chambers were probably once home to at least ten thousand, if not more. Most of them were priests and crafters of Eras. 

He searched and searched, and eventually, we found a set of notebooks that was somehow readable. There were many books that somehow decayed despite the lack of air in these chambers. 

A notebook left by a crafter that was long dead. We didn’t find the crafter’s corpse, which we hoped meant that he managed to get out of the Sun-Rings. 

***

It’s been twenty years since I started work on these gigantic rings and living in these deep chambers was strange. Everything here had to be created by the mages and priests.

My shift should last until the end of the year, and I look forward to my return to the Crucible. 

“Crucible. That’s the Core world mentioned on the Erasian gates.” Stella interrupted Lumoof’s reading. Lumoof glared at her, and she quickly shut up.

The High Priest of Eras claims that there has to be sufficient people living in these Rings in order for Eras to exert his divine powers. This is the fourth ring, and as I understood it, Eras intended to construct six of them. Six to convert these suns’ energies into void mana and send them back to the Crucible.

For what purpose, the Erasian Priests refuse to elaborate, though I get the sense that they don’t know about it, either. 

Even now, there is a dark object that loomed over the Crucible. A creation of Eras himself, the great void sun. Few know how many centuries it will take for such a creation to be completed. 

“Eras created the void sun.” Stella gasped. “Doesn’t this mean Eras created the demons?”

“But the demons are much earlier than the void sun.” Lumoof frowned. “I don’t think we can draw such a direct link from the void sun to the demons.”

“Why not? The void sun powers the demon kings. If anything, it is the void sun that seeds each demon king with that final bit of power.”

“Maybe in some ways, yes.” Lumoof decided maybe Stella had a point.

“If Eras is the one imprisoned, then the demons must’ve turned on itself.” 

“Or it is an experiment gone wrong. Not the first time the gods thought too highly of themselves and then got boxed in by the limitations of whatever they created.” Edna decided to add her view in. 

“You really think so?” Stella ran around the temple like an excited child, trying to figure out whether she missed anything. “Tell me if you see anything juicy.”

Meanwhile, Lumoof continued to read the notebooks. The rest of the notebooks contained mostly descriptions of home. It seemed to be a diary kept by the crafter to document the work he did, which was to maintain the various machineries used to clean the Sun-Rings’ surface.

A diary of a dwarven crafter who maintained multiple machines throughout the world. But as Lumoof read more and more, we eventually figured out why there were priests and crafters.

“There used to be an Erasian Relic on each of the Sun Rings. The crafters and priests were here to pray and maintain the relic. The relic was a massive machine that extended the god’s reach, an object called the Erasian Spiritual Engine.” Lumoof finished the book. “Let me look for more.”

“That- is Hawa able to do that? Maybe, just maybe, any relic could do it.” 

“Surely if Eras could do it, then all the gods could as well.”

“Where was that relic supposed to be, anyway?”

The relic should’ve been on top of the temple, but instead, there was nothing there. The temple was a large structure, and the relic would’ve been on its roof. Yet, it was somehow so cleanly destroyed that now, all that remained was just a massive empty area filled with bodies. 

There were quite a few bodies. 

“There was a battle here. It’s amazing that the debris from the battle is still here, somehow.” Edna, being the main combatant of the three, squatted on the temple’s roof as she checked for clues. “It’s likely some really powerful divine weapon. Even now there’s still some faintly divine presence.”

“Another god.” 

“Great. If it’s not Eras, then another god.” Edna frowned. “I am beginning to suspect that someone destroyed these relics.”

“Why?” 

“Power struggle between the gods, perhaps?”

Stella groaned. “Really. We’re at the stage where we’re going to be challenging a god?” 

Lumoof and Edna both laughed. “I mean, we are going to head towards the demon’s black sun that holds a god. Were you expecting something different?”

Stella’s face flushed red as she realized how stupid she sounded. “Ah. I suppose when you put it that way...”

“Anyway. There should be a crater or something left on the other Sun-Rings.”

Lausanne and the other domain holders also investigated the temple’s roof on the first Sun-Ring and also found it empty. It was so cleanly destroyed that somehow nothing remained, not even a crater.

Or maybe, it was stolen.

But nothing else.

After almost three weeks inside the chambers of the second pair of Sun-Rings, the domain holders were almost done. They’d collected hundreds of books, equipment, and all sorts of artifacts for the archivists to study. 

The researchers were already backlogged from the materials from the first Sun-Rings, and now they had another set. 

***

The surface of Sun-Rings II wasn’t quite like what we expected. A gigantic golden sun where it’s magical energies was somehow turned into void mana, compressed into a beam, and fired towards the barrier. 

“Do you think you can survive that jet of void mana?” Lumoof asked Edna.

“No. That jet of void mana looks enough to poison an entire world. Even with our domain’s strength and my abilities, I think that’s too much.”

“I mean, that jet of void mana could be our way to pierce through the barrier.” 

“Could. But it’s like asking a regular mortal to jump down a waterfall, somehow make it through an underground river, and make it out alive. Not recommended.”

But Sun-Rings II was on another side of the void sea. Very, very far from where we were. Stella joined us too, and as she scanned the void sea from our new location, she looked horrified.

“There are two demonic comets in the void sea.”

“Where are they headed?”

“I can’t see their final destination. I don’t have a map of this part of the void sea.” 

“The Erasian Gates didn’t have it?”

“No. Only the ten presets.” 

“Great. Wanna do some hopping?” Edna asked.

“Or should we hit the other four Sun-Rings?” Lumoof intervened.

“Why are both of you looking at me?” Stella looked upset.

“You’re the void mage. You’re the only one who can work the portals and rift gates. Naturally, you should decide.”

“Eh.” 

She stopped for a while. “I think we have time to visit all the Sun-rings before we start exploring these other places. Let’s go.”

***

Sun-Rings III and Sun Rings IV were fairly similar to Sun-Rings II, with many dead bodies and many more books and documents to analyse. The carvings of these Sun-Rings didn’t show that other god. Only Eras.

On these two worlds, the temples were similarly attacked, but the fact that there were only battles on the temple’s roof suggested that this was somehow an inside job.

There were traitors from within the Erasian church, or someone close to them.

But there were also notebooks and records, and this was where we learned the name of the other god.

“These Wadran priests and people give me the creeps.” A diary of an Erasian dwarven priest wrote in a notebook found on Sun Rings IV. “Their use of void magic that poisons their skin gives them a short life, and yet their god keeps them alive, somehow. It feels as if they are enslaved to their gods by the pain and spiritual bindings of their void magic. I still don’t know why Erasian Priests were tasked to help them, and why they were asked to give them space in their world. Yet, their god must love them, because the chief of the Wadran priest is coated in divine power, quite like the chosen ones of Eras.”

But the Wadran officials and priests left no records or documents. All they had were sigils, tools, and weapons.

“Well. Godly struggle seems like a candidate.” Stella frowned. 

“You think so?”

“Let me ask Hawa about Wadra.” Lumoof decided.

***

“Wadra?”

“Yes. We’re exploring the Erasian ruins and discovered some hints about Wadra.”

“Wadra should be dead.” Hawa answered.

“When?”

“I do not recall. But his death came after the demons’ spread.”

“How do you know of his death?”

“I no longer detected his faith’s presence in any of the peripheral worlds or my world. There was a time when his cursed children were everywhere.”

“That doesn’t sound like a confirmation.”

“There is no confirmation that a god died. Merely the disappearance of his faith.”

“Could it be that Wadra is the one that’s within the black sun?”

“Possible.”

“Who is Wadra?”

“An old god of the nomads, golems, formations, rocks and stones, earth magic, and void magic.”

“Earth magic? Was he an enemy of the gods?”

“No. Not my enemy, at least. I do not know whether they fought against the other gods, but the Wadran children are travelers. They can walk the worlds and used to walk with the Zaratans as well, though the way they use the void magic is quite different from yours. They shapeshift in order to swim in the void seas.”

“They shapeshift?”

“Yes.”

“What else do you know of them?”

“Not much. Only that they disappeared. They used to be everywhere, and those blessed by Wadra could transform into powerful creatures. When they used to roam, I blocked them from entering my core worlds, but they sometimes still appear in my peripheral worlds and are fairly harmless, unless provoked.”

“I see. Why is there no mechanism to tell whether a god lives or dies?”

“I do not know. Perhaps, an oversight from us and the old gods.”

“We discovered that Eras created the black sun.”

“Really? That is... a surprise.”

“It is carved on the Sun-Ring’s temples, and that is how we discovered the Wadran presence.”

“Wadra is a wandering god. His center shifts all the time, and as a result, he too moves with his people. He may have just wandered to the Erasian worlds during that time. But I do not have insight into what happened.”

“When did the barrier appear?”

“I do not know. It is beyond my range of sight.”

“I do not comprehend how something so powerful can happen without the gods knowing.” I vented. It was frustrating how little the gods knew about things outside their area. It was as if each god only cared about their own little carved out section of the world, oblivious to everything else. 

But then I remembered that I am the same. It was just me on a larger, planetary scale too.  I did not pay much attention to those outside my sphere of influence. 

“Our powers are localized.”