Year 226

“I’m there. I’ve reached Snek’s world.” Stella said the words that they’ve all waited for.

“Really? Seriously?” Ken jumped from his chair as the message propagated to all the senior leaders and the hero-related groups. We knew she was getting close, but the uncertain nature of the void and its erratic patterns made predicting the specific time and date difficult.

The void was simultaneously a stormy sea, a folding space and a thick, dark and confusing forest.

Snek immediately asked. “What did she see?!”

“My void body just arrived... and I can’t see anything. The void body’s just a ‘void-portal-probe’. I’ll have to open a portal-”

“-wait!” Snek yelled and Ken just shook his head.

“What now?” Ken said. “We’ve finally reached your world, the goal you’ve always wanted and now you’re saying wait?”

“-I’m not ready!”

“You’re a spiritual snake ready to sacrifice your life to somehow bring heroes back to your world, and now you are not ready? Come on!” Snek felt a range of emotions I’ve rarely seen in the spirit-snake. Confusion, uncertainty, fear, hope.

To return after so long. How much time had passed?

He didn’t know. We didn’t either.

***

“The gates are open.” Stella said, and it was Lumoof, once again who stepped through. We were greeted by mountains and canyons so high, that it felt unreal. Instantly, we felt the presence of the demons.

A world of dragon-demons, the ones we saw from an earlier time. The ones that Lausanne fought. They zoomed overhead, so far above the canyons that they couldn’t see us. “They don’t have very good eyesight.” Lumoof quipped as the demons seemed to ignore us.

Snek and Ken ran through the city and rushed to the Valthorn’s keep, and ran to the room where the portal floated midair.

Stella nodded in the room. “Well, the gate’s there. Lumoof is already on the other side.”

Snek’s little snake form seemed nervous, and I felt it. “Is it safe?” Ken asked. He hadn’t actually stepped through to a demon world.

“Yes. The weather seems a little dry, but for now still breathable. The demons did not do much to the air.”

***

“Well, is this your home?” Lumoof asked, Snek sat on his shoulder.

“Yes. Yes it is!” He said. “It’s the same sun and moon!” The terrain had changed, and their world had become even more mountainous. There were huge cliffs, deep valleys, and mountains that were filled with caves. All inhabited by the demon-dragons.

The dragon-demons flew overhead, and in truth, they were a pale imitation of real dragons. They lacked the overwhelming power that I felt in the ancient dragon bones, the energy and magic that could survive the batterings of time.

“Where are your... family? Or friends?” Lumoof asked, as we walked through the valleys. The valleys all had small streams of running water, grass and foliage still grew on the banks of the stream. It seemed that certain demons didn’t outright destroy their worlds, and instead merely ‘leech’ off the core like some kind of planetary parasite.

“I’m not sure.” Snek answered. “The terrain has changed so much, but my people live underground.”

A strange coexistence. One I considered, and Lumoof felt the world through his feet. “The good news is, your world looks like it has hardly aged.”

There was still a strong, pulsing presence in the core, deeply entangled with the demons’ presence. The demon king in this world was still growing, and it’d be years before it was ready for an invasion. Stella popped up right next to them.

The first thing she did was to look up, and we saw the growing but still weak astral path that led somewhere.

“So, how do we find your kind? Do they have any magic or markers?”

“...no. We hid everything. But things may have changed.”

Stella closed her eyes, and I felt her energy pulse outwards, like a wave that swept out. Lumoof activated my avatar mode, and my magical labs spawned at the edges of the stream. These magical labs then activated my array of magical sensors.

We had to first offset the magical energies of the core and the demons, but once that was out of the way, we were left with a smaller pool of possible locations, about 500 places.

“Do you think we can hide from the dragons?” Lumoof asked Stella, and she shrugged like it was a stupid question.

“Do we even need to?”

“True. They may look like dragons but lack their power.” If Lausanne could take them on, Lumoof and Stella certainly could steamroll their way through them.

“Actually, now may be a good time to get the next generation of Valthorns up to speed.” Lumoof realised.

“That’s more like it.” Stella grinned.

***

Stella and Lumoof were at the center of about 250 Valthorns, all level 100s and above.

“These are the possible locations of Snek’s people, based on our magical sensors and they refer to themselves as the Ularans.”

Ulara.

“After the demonic invasion, their [message] infrastructure collapsed, so there may be multiple surviving Ularans in this world, scattered all over the world. Snek claims he came from the Utara Ularans, and there’s the Selatan Ularans.”

The Valthorns separated into groups of five, and they fanned out. “Simply put, make a spectacle, lots of noise, and crush the demons, and see whether the Ularans will come out and talk to us.”

Everyone nodded.

Lumoof and Stella just followed their trail of destruction. The demon dragons themselves were strong, relative to the other demon types, but their low quantities were a drag.

The Valthorns tore through the flights of demons, here, the ranger-archer Valthorns had extensive advantage. Their piercing arrows and crystal-bomb-tipped arrows were very effective against their heavy scales.

Our sound-and-fury agenda was successful.

“Patriarch Lumoof, we spotted some natives.” Aderan, a Valthorn-Treeology Monk-warrior reported through our message system. “One of them was spying on us, and we tracked him back to a network of tunnels in the nearby valleys.”

I felt Snek breathe a huge sigh of relief. He had feared for his fellow snakefolk.

“We spotted some Ularans.”

All in, we spotted three separate groups of Ularans as we fanned out, and Stella, Lumoof teleported us to the nearest one. They lived in what appeared to be a really complicated network of deep tunnels and chambers, and built secret irrigation tunnels and light-collecting structures that funneled light into underground farms.

Snek was nervous, but he knew how the tunnels worked. The tunnels were small, and not meant for normal-sized humanoids.

Instead, Snek, in his strange form, went to the door, and searched for something-

There was a metal plate, no larger than a small teacup, and he hit it five times. He held it up, and it vibrated midair.

And waited.

Soon, an Ularan emerged, a snake with two hands and no legs, that resembled a really small naga. The Ularans were all small sized, no larger than a small table, but what was interesting was that they all had a large Cobra like head.

He had a small dagger in small arm.

“Who is it?”

“I am Sawabesarulars.” Snek did the introduction. “I was once one of the High Blood Ritualists meant to find heroes for Ulara. I have returned and wish to speak to the present Ularan Lord of the Dens.”

The Ularan looked unsure. “I know not of this name, or the ritual you speak of. Begone, you are not welcome.”

“Wait. We acted on the orders of the Ularan Lord Rajatedungular and Lord Kapakular. Are those names familiar to you?”

“They are long dead, and their den long destroyed.”

“How many years has it been?” Snek asked.

“I do not know. Do not enter, as you are not welcome.”

“Are they welcome?” Snek pointed to Lumoof and Stella. “They can defeat the demons of this world, and may even bring us to a world without demons.”

There was no response from the Ularan, and instead he just hissed.

***

“That didn’t go as planned.” Snek sighed. “Let us try the other dens but it is a good sign that my people survived after all.”

The second attempt was a lot better. “Oh. You are one of the ancient ritualists, and these are the leaders of the creatures above ground?”

“Yes.”

“They do not look like the humans that the gods used to send. They look... so old.” Stella frowned.

“Times have changed.” Snek responded. “And they are not the heroes.”

“Unfortunately, we cannot let you into our den. We can meet outside.”

“The demons, do they not come for you?”

“Most dens have settled to a comfortable status quo with the demons. We leave them alone, and they hardly bother us. Those that venture too far get eaten. That is the way.” The Ularan of the 2nd den said.

“Are you in contact with the other dens?”

“No.”

The rest of my Valthorns continued to fan out, and scout out more of the locations. There were surprisingly more dens than we expected, as the dragon-demons really didn’t like going down to the valleys, and were happy to remain in the peaks and surface.

It was an unusual coexistence, and I was getting the sense that the Ularans didn’t really want to rock the boat, either.

Snek’s mood soured, as we encountered more and more dens, almost all of them turning us away.

“I don’t get it. I even obtained a [hero]-class, and they don’t even seem convinced.”

“Too much time has passed.” Lumoof said, and they’ve changed their minds in that period of time. Or maybe it’s just a form of stockholm-syndrome.

Don’t rock the boat.

***

As Snek’s frustrations with the dens grew, I’ve decided to go on a small detour.

“Lumoof. If there’s a dragon-demon champion, let me know. I want to capture one.”

“Ah!” Lumoof nodded, quickly passed the message to the teams, and I got a target soon after.

“Patriarch Lumoof, there is a dragon-demon champion in this location. We’ve backed off.” Lumoof charged to the location at high speed, and then landed before a dragon-demon, these dragon-demon champions were one of the strongest types of demon-champions we’ve seen, just slightly weaker than the combined demon walker-super cannons.

Lumoof leapt on the dragon-demon champion, it flailed and struggled, but my vines wrapped around the giant dragon-demon and flooded it with my mana.

It’s gotten easy.

My vines pulled the dragon down to the ground, and continued to flood it with mana-

[Natural mana overwhelming has converted the Demon Drake Champion to a Giant Tree Drake]

[Giant Tree Drake requires a Titan Soul to operate at full power]

The Tree Drake lumbered helplessly, unable to move much, so I had Stella send it back to Treehome for further investigation. Destroying the demon-dragons, or demon-drakes, since the system doesn’t consider them to be real dragons, was quite entertaining for my Valthorns.

Every wannabe hero has been sold the idea of slaying dragons, so this was the fulfillment of that dream.

***

“Alright, what should we do?” Lumoof gathered the senior leaders, and Snek, while the rest of the Valthorns had fun slaying demons. “Snek is clearly not having much success with his kind, though some of them are willing to at least talk.”

“My humble and utmost apologies, Patriarch Lumoof.” Snek offered, and seemed extremely embarrassed by what had happened. “I did not expect my people to be so... difficult. But at least I now know that about 340 years have passed since I shed my physical form and entered the void.”

“What is the root cause of their resistance? You have the hero class, surely they should welcome you as a savior of some kind.” Stella was fairly curious as well.

“Generations have grown up under these dragon-demons, and only the really old would remember life before them. As weird as it sounds, my fellow Ularans adapted and accepted life as it is, and adopted some insular behaviors. I will need some time to address their concerns.”

Lumoof said. “Do we have time?”

“Plenty.” Stella said. “The starpaths are weak and the core of this world is still holding one of the ‘baby’ demon kings.’

“There you go. You have time. You may offer them a chance to move to our world, we will have somewhere safe for them. Perhaps the bugworld.”

Snek nodded. “I fear my fellow people may get aggressive, if I badger them too often, but I will try to undo this.”

“The Valthorns will be stationed here to support you. They could use the experience. Snek, you have... three years to make a difference. If nothing happens after three years, we’re bailing. We can leave you here if that’s what you want.”

The little snake-creature bobbed his head, and looked back at the insular little Ularans all hidden in their dens.

***

With Stella’s [void explorer] locked on Snekworld, we were able to open portals to the world as needed. For now, Stella and Lumoof returned to Treehome.

“Alright, what’s next?” Stella said.

Lumoof shrugged. “I’m taking a break. I’m going to go get some tea, a nice hearty meal, and then get a shower. I’m all dusty.”

“Hah.”

Without the demonic invasions to regularly pulse and space out our time, even though I did feel it was a little too frequent, it helped structure my time and allow me to aim for the next goal. Now, I needed to figure out that goal for myself. I had to prepare for what came through the astral ways next, especially from that blob.

Stella and my void mages regularly checked the stars, and for Stella herself, she spent a lot of time working and training her mind-assistants to support her with the map within the demon king’s core.

Some of the distances were still too far, even with riftgates, and how the demons created those astral paths, which was subsequently reinforced by a combination of void and core mana, was still a puzzle.

At least my other Valthorns seemed to be growing.