First War Read online

  He tried to focus on that link and pushed mana through the link. There was an instant reaction, like opening a tap, an amazing strength surged from the mana pool and entered his body..

  Crack! Crack! WOOOSH!

  An aura covered Akor like a black flame. A heavy pressure filled the entire village while Akor felt immense pain all over. He opened his eyes with a lot of effort causing every newborn imp and even the older ones to feel fear. His eyes had turned bright red and were glowing through the black flame like two deadly glaring lights.

  Akor forced his lips open as best he could and with a rough hoarse voice he spoke. “You… are my servants. Kneel!” he forced out.

  As if responding to his command, the pressure intensified causing more pain in his body but it perfectly transmitted his desire.

  Not only the new imps, even the old ones were filled with fear and awe by the immense power their lord displayed.

  They dropped what they were doing and kneeled.

  As for the players, they had long been forced to their knees and were sweating and trembling.

  Ding!

  Congratulations, you have conquered the minds of weakling subordinate demons and they will now follow your orders and that of your minions.

  You have learned a new skill.

  Demon Lord’s Aura

  Level 1

  All Demon Lords possess an aura of power. This aura originates from expressing the power inside their main demon heart and it has the ability to reinforce their bodies as well as create a lord’s pressure which is used to conquer the minds of weaker demons into your service.

  The black aura vanished the next second and Akor staggered when his body relaxed but Valring held him up. “My Lord is impressive, as expected of a lord.” She said grinning.

  “Why was it so wild?” he asked tired.

  “My Lord had no control, of course. Now that you have awakened your aura, you can train to control it properly.” She said.

  “Okay…” He said completely exhausted, but he straightened up. “Release these subordinates and take them to become militia.” he ordered before turning around and walking into the lord’s house weakly.

  His body collapsed and Valring walked in worried. “My Lord, was the pressure too much?!” She said worried and lifted him before taking him to his room.

  The room was on the second floor next to the throne room and had a wooden framed bed but it was still filled with straw but above the straw were pelts used for bedding.

  Akor was placed on the bed to rest and recover in safety.

  Valring went to take care of the new demons that would become part of the army.

  ***

  While Akor was unconscious, the rest of the world was not idle. Far to the western side of the continent the players spawned in, a small sized forest that had appeared over the last month was undergoing a large change.

  The forest was not natural to the region which was endless grasslands with little vitality. Only the small outcrop of forest about 1 km in diameter was visible.

  At the center was a village which was the source of the forest.

  Many beautiful men and women were walking around with bows and spears on their backs. At the very center of the village was a male elf with long blond hair and fair skin with a thin frame and a sculpted face making him look like a living sculpture.

  This was the elf player lord of the village, Gwen Holytree.

  Elves are strange creatures, they are born with a special seed in their hearts. The tree is their home and origin of power as well as the source of their last name.

  For the name ‘Holytree’ is a unique name among elven kings. In fact, even among the elf lords, the ones with a holytree seed were less than the number of fingers on a person's hand. Most other lords would have ‘great (followed by a breed) tree’. The type of tree changes but all of them are ‘great’ meaning immensely powerful.

  Gwen had finally achieved the conditions to plant his tree. Different from demons who must plant a demon heart from the get go, other races were different.

  Elf lords would not begin as a lord but as a class known as Forest Watcher. The class is very weak compared to a lord and is meant for an elf to watch the forest until it reaches a certain size before upgrading to Forest Village Chief. At which point they are officially a lord and get a larger bonus but are still weaker compared to official lords.

  As for the conditions to plant the tree? Officially, elf villages require 1 km of forests planted on top of mana springs, at least 3 sister forests planted on mana springs and the village at level 2.

  When the tree is planted, the elf village will officially upgrade to a level 3 elf town connecting to all the elf forest mana springs they controlled.

  The player slowly raised his arms and his chest began to glow drawing the attention of all the elves.

  The number of elves was much lower because of their birth rate at 1:20 but their talent is much higher making them an elite race.

  From Gwen’s chest, a glowing seed the size of a man’s fist appeared.

  “A holy tree seed!” someone exclaimed.

  “The Divine goddess has blessed us!” another elf shouted.

  Ding!

  By revealing your holy tree seed, your prestige among your elves has reached the level of nobility.

  He did not react and carefully took the seed and walked to the area the mana spring was located and dug a hole with his hands and placed the seed inside the ground before burying it.

  WOOSH!

  A sudden wave of energy surged up from the ground forming a small pillar of mana but it hit Gwen full on and seemed to suffocate him with energy. Even a small mana spring has immense energy inside.

  WOO!

  A wave of energy surged into the ground all around rapidly expanding. This was the seed expanding its territory and influence, attaching to the other captured mana pools.

  As the mana pillar slowly weakened Gwen tried to leave the wave but the system would not let him. Finally the mana returning from the other springs arrived and the mana pillar grew even more powerful. He was unable to utter anything as pain wrecked his body but all that mana soon vanished and all of it flowed into the ground.

  He collapsed. Behind him, a little sprout with white leaves appeared from the ground.

  Congratulations! By having a unique holy tree seed and planting it in the place of a great tree seed when advancing the level of your town, your class has upgraded into the hidden Class, Holy Tree Lord.

  Holy Tree Lord

  A special lord class which is born when a unique elf lord plants a holy Tree seed instead of a great tree seed.

  Unlocks holy mana for the lord and sprout fae plants once the tree reaches maturity.

  Gwen looked at the messages before smiling. holy mana is a special higher tier mana which is twice as powerful as the basic elemental mana and can mix with the other types to amplify the power of all spells. It can also be infused into weapons to give a holy mana buff making them the enemy of undead.

  The elves cheered but Gwen slowly started to black out and he barely had time to log out before he did so.

  He got up startled and felt his heart beating erratically. He breathed heavily for a few minutes before sighing and relaxing.

  He went to eat and rest but half an hour later a man appeared at his door and gave him an invitation to the show that would be happening the next day.

  “Awesome!” he said as he sat down. He was feeling like a star now. He was one of the elf rebels which is why he was #10 among the possible failure lords but as he checked his ranking, he found that he wasn’t even on the list anymore.

  He laughed wildly and felt a great sense of satisfaction upon discovering this and went back into the game to see the changes to his town.

  Chapter 4

  Ding!

  You have leveled up to level 10!

  Ding!

  You have reached level 10 and can now choose to undergo maturation.

  Do you wis
h to mature?

  Yes

  No

  Akor was unconscious when the messages suddenly began to flow in his sleep.

  His level increased with the hunting from his minions which activated the system to mature him to Tier 2. His mind was racing but he accepted since he had no reason not to.

  Examining choices and achievements

  ‘Good Demon’ title, ‘10 Strength’ achieved, ‘20 Intelligence’ achieved, ‘Faithful of Pyarus’, ‘Prays to the Good God Faction’, ‘Obtained ‘Demon Lord’s Aura’ skill’.

  You have achieved the conditions for several maturation choices

  Great Imp

  The most common maturing path of an Imp. They gain 100 HP and 1 stat bonus for all stats upon reaching Tier 2.

  Blue Imp

  A race of intelligent imps. They focus on magic and have a fixation on all things magic related making them great magic researchers. They gain 100 MP and 3 stat points each in Int and Wis when reaching Tier 2.

  Red Demon

  A new unknown race. A combat race of the good faction. They are intelligent and powerful with a high growth rate but a low birth rate equal to an elf.

  They gain 50 HP and MP and 2 stat points on all physical stats when reaching Tier 2.

  Akor did a quick count on all the races and didn’t feel much as he picked red demon. First off, it was a good faction demon race, something he hadn’t seen before, second, it gained 8 points in stats instead of just 6 with the blue imp or 7 with the great imp. Although the HP and MP buff was less, he gained both of them instead of just one.

  Because the changes from an Imp to a Red Demon are so large, the player will be logged off and the avatar will enter a hibernation state to undergo the changes.

  Five seconds after the message came, Lucas awoke in his living room blinking. The partially empty room filled his view as he sat up and rubbed his head. “This game really isn’t as simple as I thought. It needed time for maturing and all that.” he said and opened his video feed to see the changes in his avatar.

  What appeared in his view was his bedroom in the game. On the bed he had been placed at, he was glowing with the aura. The avatar’s body was quickly changing. His lean muscles began to increase as did his height. His three fingered feet became five fingered and his tail began to thin out into a long black leathery tail. On his head, the two large horns moved from the side of his head to his forehead. Finally long black hair began to grow and his bright red skin took on a deep blood red color.

  The changes were quite large but didn’t change his facial features. His avatar’s height had increased to 190 cm tall which was considerable for the current demons.

  Lucas sighed, but he saw that the entire evolution of his avatar was far from finishing and would actually take hours so he didn’t log in since there was no point.

  Coming off the video feed, Lucas looked around confused by what he could actually do for the next few hours. He assumed his avatar would be out for around one game day so around 6 hours.

  He turned on the TV because he was actually a little lost in his daily functions. Most of his life he spent working to sustain himself but now he finally had a moderately stable life. As he flipped through the channels, he finally came upon the channels of one of the studios which were showing the players.

  “...oll just can’t handle the Paladin John Rips! As you can see, paladins hybrid classing is quite amazing as both a tank and healer, it is a must have in a party. At the same time the priests are even better depending on their gods. From what is known, combat god priests all have stronger stat buff spells that buff from 20-50% better than others while element priests are better as attack magi.” the man was saying.

  Lucas flipped the channel and saw most of the stations were all about players. One thing he noticed was that the channels even gave advice in almost all of them but lord class players didn’t get this.

  He actually became curious about this and pulled up the sites of the ten studios and began to look at the videos of the lords.

  The videos had quite a few comments and chats but what he found among them were rants and insults about how bad the lords were. Complaints, insults, shouts. Of course there were those who were good but because it was too early, they simply lacked leaving more for the rant and hate comments.

  He pulled up a demon character and saw the savage style which focused 80% on combat research.

  Lucas looked at the videos and formed a confused expression before he pulled up the comment box, "If you continue following this style, you will lack food and your army will be only shocktroopers. You should retire your general and build a stable system while focusing on support classes and building research to form a foundation.” he posted.

  He didn’t really put that much in mind but he went to a dwarf this time, he was very curious about the other races.

  He logged into the VR system but not the game so he could have more hours to watch the videos and began to discover how the other races worked.

  The reason elves and dwarfs are called great tree lord and mountain lord when they reach a true ‘lord’ class is because they take that to the limit.

  The game is quite equal for all players. Demons get to access the demon heart early on because they are born weak so they get the buff quickly as well as the fact that they are Tier 1. The sentient races on the other hand all have basic 10 across the board so they start off with more difficulties. Of course that doesn’t mean they are exempt, Elves plant the great tree and get buffs like demons while dwarfs have what is called the mountain heart. Just like a demon heart, dwarf lords literally connect to the mountain after digging their village within its center and connect to the mana spring deep underground closer to its center.

  Animal and Monster lords vary depending on their race as do humans.

  Humans aren’t a magical race even if they have the ability to use magic they can’t handle that much mana like the other races. Animals and some monsters are similar but different from those who ‘plant’ connection items, these other races create ‘seals’ which connect to the lords who can access the power in large bursts.

  In quite a number of people’s videos he gave a brief appraisal, but it wasn’t like he really cared if they were taken into account, after all the lords were competitors. He didn’t even know if the others would see his comments.

  Among the people he looked at, he paid more attention to the weaker lords with a chance of failure. ‘Those who learn from their failures are smart but those who learn from others failures are wise’. This was his mentality as he watched their videos. He picked out the weaknesses in their foundation and left comments based on what he saw.

  After a few hours, he grew bored and decided to go out and jog.

  Because he had poor health before, his physical body was weaker than normal. When he remembered this, he thought about jogging to raise his physical proficiency to a more normal level for him.

  He put on an old pair of shoes and left.

  The other reason was to look around his home which he had not done yet.

  He took a taxi to a local nature park and spent his time in the natural environment. The dirt road, large trees and great shade from the canopy.

  Sha! Sha! Sha!

  Suddenly something in the trees drew Lucas’s attention. He looked up and his jaws dropped at what he saw.

  What he witnessed look like something out of a martial arts movie. Several men and women were jumping off tree trunks towards one another or grabbing the branches and swinging from one to another. They came and went in moments.

  Some nearby people saw his shock and chuckled, "Is this your first time seeing Superhumans jogging?” the man asked.

  “Jogging?!” Lucas said his eyes widening.

  The man laughed, “Those are some good young men and women, this is their daily routine to maintain their physical bodies from what I understand.” he said.

  “H-How long did it take for them to get… like that?” Lucas asked looki
ng at them.

  “They got it naturally of course. Just like any of us jogging and training for a marathon, they just trained normally until they reached athletic grade.” He said. “Of course, to become athletes with their racial background needs a strong financial background as well but which superhuman doesn’t have lots of money since most of them have a military background?” the man laughed and jogged off with his friends leaving Lucas.

  Lucas balled up his fists when he heard that and although his face didn’t show it, his teeth were clenched hard. He looked at where the superhumans vanished in the trees feeling the disparity between them.

  He sighed but his eyes burned with the desire to be a normal superhuman and not a regular human.

  Still, he knew his limits, he was only equal to a human and would not be able to match the weakest super human until he regained full health.

  When he returned home, he was really hungry and sweating heavily. He took a bath before he cooked up some food. The amount was quite small because of the bar he ate in the morning.

  After eating he finally logged on and woke up as a red demon.

  Ding!

  Congratulations! You have matured into a red demon

  Red Demon

  A demon of the good faction, can only be born in a nation blessed by a good faction god. They are an intelligent race and one of the most humanoid of all demons. Their matured DNA prevent their body from drastically growing due to the change in stats and will be similar to other sentient races.

  These can be considered the sentient race of the demon kin.