City of Sin

Sleeping Nyris

Richard and Niya talked for a while longer, but the chieftain eventually left to lead her tribe. As he watched her talking to her subordinates and setting things up, he sighed and sent the order for the ships to set sail.

500 night elves walked over to the camp that was being set up, the elite warrior heading them bowing to Niya, “Your Excellency, we have been stationed under your command for the next five years. You may use us how you see fit.”

At the same time, a long horn sounded as Richard’s fleet departed in Norland’s direction. Niya stared at the seven ships with a complicated gaze; she knew that the night elves were stationed here to protect them from any retaliation from the Empire. These soldiers represented Richard himself; with the entirety of Lithgalen having been beaten back once, they wouldn’t dare provoke another visit. Five years would be enough for the seed to grow into a small tree, exerting its power over the region. Under its protection, they would be able to guard against most attacks.

On the bridge of the Blue Moon, Richard stared at the now-distant island and felt a sense of calmness in his heart. He had finally fulfilled his commitment to Tzu, fulfilling an unsaid promise to his mother as well. He then chuckled at the irony of it all; Gaton Archeron had destroyed Evernight Forest, and the man’s son had just set it on the path to resurrection far away.

Unlike the rest of Lithgalen, the silvermoon elves already had a strong basis for the rebuilding of their tribe. They were amongst the highest elven bloodlines in the past, so they wouldn’t lack talented youths. Their experiences living on Norland had also given them a hunger that the rest of the elves lacked; they knew the power of the outside world, and they would do their best to prepare for it.

In fact, he wouldn’t even have left the night elves behind were he not heading into the abyss. However, he just didn’t know if he would be able to return from this journey, so he wanted to be sure just in case.

The fleet gradually sped up, going even faster than when they had first headed to Lithgalen. All seven ships zipped past the ocean at a blistering 150 kilometres every hour, but stabilising magic ensured that it felt like they were actually flying above the surface. In his lab on the Blue Moon, Richard barely felt any movements.

He used the long journey to his advantage. Outside of Lifesbane, which had been redone only recently, he examined and re-engineered every single rune on his body. By the time Norland was on the horizon, every single rune on him was grade 5. This made Disintegrator the first true grade 5 rune set of Norland, the only one designed by a native!

……

Even back in Norland, Richard was faced with an enormous task. He couldn’t go into the abyss alone, but he also didn’t have the political clout of Charles the Great to just recruit millions upon millions of soldiers. If for nothing else than to give him a break from fighting the endless demons, he needed a large army of drones to let him recover from time to time.

The enormous war machine of the Archerons started roaring again, leaving every major power in Norland cowering in fright. However, what everyone didn’t know was that all of Richard’s night elves were currently being sent back to the Forest Plane, modified and specialised for fights in the abyss.

When he returned to Faust, his desk was full of documents and requests for meetings, but this time he didn’t deal with these things on his own. He divided everything amongst his followers and family, emptying the desk completely. Slightly uncomfortable at the sight of the bare wood, he activated a map of his planes and switched through them all to ensure that nothing was unusual.

A short while later, he called Alice into the study and pushed three golden crystals into her hands, “These are three resource planes, take some troops and go capture them as quickly as possible. Yes, they’re different from normal ones; these are top-tier planes of the elven empire. Be careful, they’re all hurting after what I did to them, and I can’t guarantee they won’t try something in secret.”

“Wait… Did you say the elven empire?” Alice asked in rare shock. Unlike humans who spread out, the elves were famous for thoroughly controlling a small number of powerful planes. They held absolute control over the locals in each location, forcing them into endless labour to feed a perfect resource-generating machine. Anyone with these planes would make money doing basically nothing.

The income from any one of these resource planes was more than 100 million gold a year, more than double what Richard made even from Faelor. Of course, the Dragon Plane had higher overall potential and Goldflow Valley would get to such a point as well, but even with the point buy system the Archerons couldn’t ignore this huge influx of resources. This was enough money to support 300,000 elites— each a fully-equipped level 12 soldier. This was enough to lay waste to an entire empire!

Richard himself was more concerned with a dozen rare resources produced in these three planes. Three were rare metals that the Archerons had never had access to before, and which would give their blacksmiths a dozen more options when it came to equipment.

As Alice took the crystals and walked away, he made some calculations and frowned. His transport lines were already bottlenecked by the width and cost of the planar channels, and the addition of three new planes would increase the tension. Most of the resources on these three planes were extremely useful, from things as simple as high-quality iron ore and a special metal used for bows and arrowheads, but they were all enormous in quantity. Even if most of the initial processing was taken care of within the planes themselves, they would still need to transport thousands of tonnes of materials to the outside. The astral chrysalis was the best way to solve this problem, but it was a special unit from the broodmother and couldn’t be remade so easily.

Richard hesitated for a while, but it was a difficult decision to make. He eventually gave up on making it for now, taking a bunch of resources from the elven empire as well as the leaves from the world tree and setting off for the Forest Plane.

“Where’s Nyris?” he asked as he walked out of the portal.

The mage who was on the other side bowed, “Her Highness is not at the base, she is currently sleeping in the Golden World Tree.”

Richard nodded with amazement, sending a few saint guards to deliver items to the broodmother.

There were currently two special areas in the Forest Plane. One was a section of deep purple that was hundreds of kilometres in diameter, while the other was a bright and vibrant jungle that was just as big if not bigger. The trees in the latter were clearly different from the rest of the Forest Plane, and at the centre of them all was the Golden World Tree that was nearly a kilometre tall. The canopy alone was several kilometres from end to end, raining down sunshine from an unknown location.

The warm sunlight sprinkled in all directions from the branches of the Golden World Tree, turning everything nearby into a sunny and vibrant world. The forest here was lively and agile, possessing joy that was completely different from the oppression of the rest of the plane. Richard couldn’t help but shudder when he entered the zone, stretching with joy, “See? This is a real forest.”

Before, he had thought the forest in this plane was very uncomfortable to live in. Now, with this special zone as contrast, it felt downright depressing. The creatures growing up naturally in this plane were distorted by the moist vitality, with the forest elves being the prime example.

A lively and joyful conscient connected to him the moment he entered the zone, the soul of the Golden World Tree. However, it was still a small sapling. Compared to the mountainous tetrahedron that was Richard’s own soul, this was tiny. Still, it didn’t seem intimidated in the slightest as it danced around him, boasting to him about its achievements.

While Richard was gone, the Golden World Tree had gone to battle with the local world tree of this forest and won over three trees of life. The other side had now retreated from battle entirely, the elves and their treants hiding away in fear of the combined forces of Nyris and the broodmother. The night elves were just far too strong to defeat, and could also resist the will of the forest to a great degree. Were the enemy position revealed again, it would spell death.

However big the Forest Plane was, it still had borders. The world tree could hide for a while, but it would eventually be found. Once it became a true adult, the Golden World Tree would have enough power to scan the entire forest, forcing the other side to surrender and downgrade to a tree of life, or be outright destroyed.

The growth of the Golden World Tree was slow, taking hundreds of years, but it also grew astonishingly powerful. Even now, it could already control millions of square kilometres of forest around it, and that range was growing by the day.

Asking where Nyris was, Richard found out that she was currently lying in a special treehouse at the top of the Golden World Tree. It was similar to a pod of sorts, containing a pool of spirit liquid that the naked princess was drenched in. She was deep asleep, only waking up for one day a year unless something big happened.