Contreegencies
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 wouldnt be able to get anything from the regular people. At least, I didnt think I would. The only person who I thought could even attempt to answer what next, was Lilies.
> Lilies. The Heroes died. So what now? Tips? Has this happened before? <
Lilies responded a day later.
I wonder how long LIlies must have lived. But then, most of the time, they dont?
Again, not exactly new under the sun, is it? Life goes on. Well deal with the demons when they arrive on our shores.
In the meantime, we continued our preparations. The school was doing well, and this year, I had a few exceptional students from both the Valtrian Order Academy, and also the Freshlands Treetiary college. Talent was a strange thing. It almost seemed like they came in waves, with some years just having a lot more good people than others.
The College had one exceptional centaur [Chiefling], and over the period of the 4 to 5 year course, transformed into [Warlord] at just Level 25. Right next to him was a master [Ranger Lord], again, he started just as a [Noble], and as the course developed his administrative and archery skills, it fused together at Level 30.
On the Valtrian side, a young [archer] hit Level 43 at 16 years old, mostly from hunting hybrids and participating in all sorts of archery competitions. There was also a [knight] who managed to hit level 35 as they graduated from the academy, and his class evolved into [Guardian Knight] without needing any prompt or special class seed from me.
It made me wonder whats really the evolution threshold of classes? Juras [Warlord] class happened very late, when he was almost level 60 plus in his warrior-type classes.
The nature of class is a perplexing thing, almost as if the rules don't apply uniformly. Everyones class system had different thresholds and triggers.
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On the blood magic front, we continued to make preparations for the grand ritual, should we ever need one. Again a last resort, and I wondered whether I should shelve the project since the heroes arrived.
We should prepare the formations regardless. It can be repurposed for other uses. My artificial minds suggested, and so I agreed with it.
Indeed, a massive formation used for containing souls seemed useful, even if just for my [soul forge].
The other preparation was partly Juras idea, to create a mini-hero by fusing classes together. This was also where I spent quite a bit of time.
Its a process of knocking class seeds together to see what worked, and what didnt. Its a lot of tracking and math, so I created an artificial mind to help keep track of all the ratios and numbers.
There were some successes. I could not upgrade, or maybe, I have not found the way to upgrade some classes, but in the process of tweaking the [Knight], [Druid], [Spearman] and [Soldier] classes, Ive somehow merged them with my own essence, and created the [Tree Knight] class, and I could then further upgrade it to [Knight of the Woods], and even further to [Knightmaster of the Woods]. There were some classes that I thought could be further evolved, like [Sharpshooter], or [Grand knight], or [weaponmaster], but so far, I didnt make much progress on those.
If there were a class that made life difficult for me, it would be the [mage] classes.
It was easy enough to fuse [mage] with [druid] or [mage] with [knight]. Mage classes also could be fused together at the first layer, into [Great Mage]. But things got wacky from there. The higher mage classes repelled each other when I attempted to create [archmages] or [wizards].
Its not as if these classes were rare. I have [archmage] classes, collected from dead archmages. I even have existing Valthorn mages who managed to evolve their [mage] classes into [archmages].
Yet the class fusion resisted my attempts to create [archmages] out of [mages] or [great mages]. I wonder whether this was a deliberate system restriction for high tier magic, or theres some quirk to it that I didnt know.
I needed time, and I was partly throttled by the number of class seeds.
Experimenting with class seeds required and consumed huge amounts of class seeds. Even if it takes just 10 seeds of the same type to fuse it to the next level, by the 3rd level it needed 1,000 seeds.
It was just lucky that I had trees that could grow the normal class seeds by the bucketload, so I could do so. I could also create a tree that grows the upgraded class seeds, but then theft remains a huge concern. As my reach extends throughout the continent, all my trees aid me in the process of collecting more class seeds, via various death rituals, via my [soul harvesters].
All in, the entire Continent, now under my direct or indirect control, produced between 5,000 to 50,000 class seeds per year. A rise in the class seeds usually arose from a massive war or battle where many died. Or a slaughter or something.
Per the statistics provided by my artificial minds, its roughly one in every fifty deaths would result in a class seed. That ratio is about 1 in 10 if the dead were buried via the Aeonic burial ceremonies. The ratios better if the ceremony was performed in Freshka, where almost 1 in 2 burials result in some kind of class seed or skill seed.
Theres clearly a problem of proximity. I cant be everywhere at once, not all full strength. As it is, many abilities are just better when they are done near to me.
I suppose if I could split a tree into multiple copies of myself, such that I could be 100% there, everywhere. As it is, the [Giant Attendant Trees] can only push up to 50%.
Decent, but not great, and that ratios wonky for certain kinds of abilities.
As the year went on, we didnt see demons crossing the oceans. Maybe they went to the Northern Isles or the Southern Continent, instead of directly west to the Central Continent.
Why?
If the demons have a head start, they should push hard and expand. After all, if the demons can fly, whats stopping them?
Also, none of the heroes were on my continent. I tried looking for them, but nothing. No stragglers either, unless they died. Or took a form different from the normal humans.
I wonder whether there are others like me out there, taking their time to hide away. Or have they all died?