Year 255

My clone could finally be deployed, and the emotions among my Valthorns was a mixture of excitement and relief. They’ve waited two plus years for this moment.

Some of them just couldn’t wait to finally head home for a rest. Some just couldn’t wait to get started.

My Valthorns double checked their computations and plans. We had one good shot, and if we stretch it, maybe another shot. If the circumstances forced me to, I would withdraw my Lavaworld clone to deploy a second clone.

Based on current projections, it’ll still take fifteen years before it impacts Treehome, so if I withdraw any of the other clones now, I should be able to deploy them a few years before impact.

If that makes a difference. I hope it doesn’t get there.

I felt the clone seed in my soul notify me of its readiness. Ready for deployment, and through Lumoof, I could summon the clone seed.

It’s finally time to nudge this Comet out of its path.

***

“Alright!” Lumoof said, as my clone seed emerged through the avatar form and sunk into the rock. This former-asteroid or former planet received my seed easily, and my roots emerged from the rock-

Retaliation came instantly.

A surge of demonic mana gushed in from the surroundings, and flooded my growing clone’s roots. Luckily I was well prepared for this, and through the mana from the rest of my clones and bodies, I pushed back with mana of my own.

My roots spread through the rocks, weaving through the gaps, or forcing through at times. The tree grew upward and outward.

Scientifically it didn’t make sense for a tree to exist here. There was no sun to guide the tree’s growth upward, so in space, in an area with nothing but ambient magical light, the tree should just grow randomly in whatever direction it happens to be in.

I wasn’t sure why I was thinking about such a thing while I was drawing mana from all my clones, and pushing that mana against the demonic mana from the Comet’s Core.

My tree grew, as the flow of mana intensified. The demonic mana was strong, but I was really good at filtering the demonic mana. It’s something I’ve done for decades.

Ever since the Rottedlands.

It’s as if the Comet tried to flood me with this dirty mana, only to find that I can clean it and expel the dirty mana faster than they could throw it at me. It’s true that they are still a large ocean of mana, but I didn’t need to clean all of it at once, just whatever that could reach me.

The amount of demonic mana from the Comet’s Core was less than a full grown planet, but it was still more than the smaller, recovering worlds.

My clone tree grew, and reached it’s full size. I felt my branches and vines push against the crevices of the comet’s rocks.

There is no sun.

A tree shouldn’t exist here.

Yet, despite the impossibilities, I do have a tree on the Cometworld, and now I have another one on the Demon’s Comet. I felt like this was too much adventure for a tree. For a tree to boldly go where no Tree has gone before.

I mentally slapped myself at how ridiculous that was, and focused on the retaliation from the demons. We detected the presence of demons headed our way.

Parts of the Comet itself shook, and the rocks transformed by the demonic mana. They turned into demonic golems, and tried to attack us. Demons made of rock, and crystals, and cobbled together from whatever that was present. It was as if the demonic mana possessed the earth itself to rise up against us.

But this type of resistance was useless. The aura of my demonic suppression field weakened these lesser creatures, my vines and roots stabbed the demons, drained them of their mana and without their demonic mana, they had no ability to regenerate. The rest of my forces crushed the defenders easily.

The demons foolishly repeated the attacks. The walls around us, those made of crystals and all that transformed into demons. That was actually quite helpful, because it meant that with each group of golems made from the crystalline walls, it just created more space.

With my Clone effectively draining the demonic golems of their mana, Edna and my Valthorns made short work of them.

***

“The Clone is active.” I declared to the Valthorns eagerly waiting news on Treehome, Branchhold, and Lavaworld. The crowd cheered. “It’s time to move to the next stage of the plan.”

Titans.

I reached out to the Titan Frames stored in my soul realm, and prepared them for use.

“Depth Worm.” I repeated to my Valthorns. My domain holders nodded. While waiting, my Valthorns constructed even more tunnels throughout the Demon’s Comets, preparing for the bombs that would be everywhere.

My roots spread.

The demons resisted, their overwhelming quantities of mana put up a good fight and slowed the speed of my spread. I couldn’t plant subsidiary trees here. They were too easily overwhelmed by the demonic mana, and would then die. Instead, only my Giant Attendant trees could be deployed in this sunless world.

Back home, I abused my teleportation ability to ship truckloads of the Comet’s crystals to Lavaworld, where a huge deployment of research trees and Valthorns worked on developing roots and plants adapted to the crystals. Just as how some plants learned how to grow and climb on concrete structures, I believe I can magically create plants able to work on these crystal structures.

We already shipped some back during that one year overlap as it coasted close to the Demon Turtleworld.

It’ll still take some time to develop plants adapted to crystals.

My roots spread.

Demonic mana pushed back. Despite the presence of tremendous tranquility, the battle between the demonic mana and mine continued forever. My clone drained the demonic mana, and expelled them.

The crown of my clone tree ignited in flames, as the demonic mana burned.

I pushed towards the nodes. Giant Attendant trees, bit by bit.

All while the demonic golems tried to attack us

The pace of my expansion was slow.

Slow.

We were too damned slow.

***

“I need more mana.” I explained the progress to my Valthorns. Right now, the mana generation from all my worlds was used to sustain far too many different projects.

In terms of mana, Cometworld, and Lavaworld are both mana-deficit worlds.

Tropicsworld has finally approached breakeven, but it hadn’t started to really generate mana to add to the pool. Treehome, Mountainworld and Threeworlds are the three mana-generating worlds.

On top of that, each teleportation between worlds, through my clones, also consumed a little bit of mana. Immaterial individually, but in aggregate, they added up. I also spent mana sustaining two titans, Patreeck and Hytreerion, and now will add another one for the Depth Worm. I was relatively sure I’d keep them, so turning them off was out of the picture.

Patreeck got to work analyzing all my mana consumption. I spent a relatively large amount of mana sustaining the whole beetle army that supported the Central Continent. These were pretty much the logistics backbone of Treehome, and again, out of the picture.

So, I thought about it for a moment, and spoke to the heroes, and the other domain holders.

“Do you want to share your mana with me?”

Due to the way my clones work, I can essentially move mana from place to place with hardly any loss between my clones. There’s always some mana loss from transportation, when it’s moved, but my clones are pretty much magically entangled that any movement between them is instantaneous.

Between my lesser trees and through my roots, there is some energy loss. Just like how my attacks and my abilities are weaker far away. That said, my Giant Attendant Trees also act as amplifiers, and they also reduce energy loss from transmission, in the same manner that the Giant Attendant Trees also reduce the distance penalty to my skills.

For heroes and for the other domain holders like Lillies and Aria, their mana was respectable too.

The heroes just needed to drop by every few days to let me drain them off their mana, which I used to supercharge my expansion on the Comet. I could theoretically send them to the Comet, but without knowing what I faced, it seemed rather dangerous.

With the additional mana, I burned through them to force the demon’s mana back.

But it stirred the Comet’s defenses. The presence of star mana swirling against the demonic mana triggered the Comet to vibrate violently.

“What the hell is happening?” Edna looked around while the entirety of the Comet shook, and this time, I felt the mana flows that was previously sent to the nodes shifting and moving around us.

The rivers of demonic mana that powered the nodes instead moved like it was a serpent, and the rocks around us, those that still carried the taint of the demon’s energy transformed.

“Demons!” Edna said as gigantic demons charged at us. Golems that were made of so much demonic energy, and I immediately recognised the familiar feeling.

“Run.” I commanded. “They’re self-destructing golems.”

Inwardly I cursed. The demons clearly didn’t mind blowing themselves up. In a way, that would achieve the goal of destroying the comets. But, why would they do something like that?

Unless-

“The entire Comet is a crudely made golem.” Stella’s observation came just as immediately as mine. “We’ve been lurking on the demon’s body, and Aeon’s a parasite on one of it’s parts wrestling against it.”

“They could regenerate.” Alka mused. He’s been itching to use his detonation ability, but so far, we didn’t get such a violent reaction from the Comet.

My roots attacked them, preventing them from getting close to my clone.

The golems exploded in a flash of demonic mana, their explosion was made of highly dense demonic energy. Then I noticed something unusual.

The golems were running towards where I injected the star mana into the ground. They stopped if engaged, but otherwise they seemed to be looking for something.

I decided to test it out. I spawned one of my trees, and used some star mana to push back against the demonic mana all around it. The golems, as if alerted, swarmed and charged towards that tree, and detonated themselves.

The subsidiary tree didn’t stand a chance and exploded into smithereens.

My initial plan of hacking into the nodes now had to be scrapped, because the rivers or flows of mana in the Comet were now shifting violently, moving and spawning more of those explosive golems packed with demonic mana.

The demons started spawning conventional defenders, but also packed with demonic mana. Serpents made of rock and sand. They attacked my clone, and together with the self-destructive golems. These golems, with the amount of mana they contained, could rip through my defensive shields. At a certain distance I could still block them, but it was hard to properly protect my Valthorns while fighting the demonic serpent.

I had to ‘pop’ them before they got close and trigger their explosions. Their explosions at a distance still created shockwaves, and my forces immediately retreated into my clone. The multiple gigantic serpents.

The demons, as much as I hated to admit it, was pushing me back and winning. They didn’t mind blowing themselves up, because the immense magical energies they possessed meant they could regenerate easily.

I needed to push back-

I struck the demons with roots and vines. I drained them of demonic mana.

Then, the demon core’s river of mana moved around and all of them focused on my clone.

***

If I had hands, this sensation was quite like putting my hand into a burning fire.

The demonic mana, previously just distributed and scattered, now focused all on my clone. It overwhelmed my lesser trees easily, because this was the entirety of the Comet’s mana. All of the rivers of mana that fueled the nodes redirected towards my clone.

A part of me, my clone body struggled to push back, and maintain control.

My clone body shook as if we were being uprooted. Parts of my peripheral roots were transformed by the demonic mana, turning into black-reddish things, mixed with crystals.

The mana tried to wrestle control of my body, but the main part of my body was protected by my domain. That was impervious. My domain was like an invisible screen that it couldn’t pierce. This was a part it couldn’t possess, it was a feature of the system.

But everything outside that screen burned and transformed. All my smaller trees were torched and turned into crystallic rock by the overwhelming quantity of demonic energy. Like standing in a thunderstorm with an umbrella, my soul and the main parts of my body were the only parts that were still dry. Everything else was soaked.

The demon’s mana poured and tried to overwhelm me, but it was useless against the domain.

Instead, it tried to corrupt the ground around me. Again, my domain protected a large segment of the ground where my roots reached.

***

It felt like we were imprisoned. With the overwhelming amount of mana the demons kept sending our way, and all the suicidal golems constantly blowing up around my tree, I couldn’t even send any of my folks out there.

My clone only survived because my main body’s toughness is really high, and the explosions merely burn through a few layers of my wooden shields, and just merely blackened my clone’s barkskin.

But for my Valthorns and domain holders, I don’t think they could face the demonic mana head on. Maybe the domain holders, because their domains protect their souls and body- but with the overwhelming demonic mana severely restricting my range, we needed to rethink our approach.

I constantly drained the demon’s mana, trying to get better at dealing with them, and even with the entirety of the demonic mana focused on me, I still tried to push back. I tried to grab control. Corrupt it.

How do I reverse this?

Even with the hero’s star mana, the Comet had way too much mana.

I needed more.

Or maybe, I needed something different.

If I fail to regain control, the Comet will effectively destroy everything we’ve built. But as much as I hate to say it, it seems like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.

Evacuation. It was the option I hated the most. I’d be giving up on Treehome, and I’d have to rebuild from scratch. I needed to figure out what was the best way to fight against the demon’s mana.

There must be a way I can win.