Jasper had a feeling that he knew why the anchor points had been rerouted to A'kastin, and more importantly, how.

  Based on his understanding of magic, which, thanks to his Domains, was probably the most complete understanding of the system, the entire thing was being facilitated by the leylines that he was maintaining by his Impact.

  He had plans for the leylines, wanting to create them into a network of various magical fields, but thanks to the meeting with Weird World Computing, where they had learned that the world would be used for a mobile game, and they had quit, only to be saved by one of the nepotism employees at the company, it had been almost forgotten.

  It did, however, give him an idea of a new skill that he could create. Jasper looked over his options. He didn't have that much Energy left, as it was still locked up in some of the Ur-spells that he had cast during the last session.

  Even so, he spent a single point of Energy to create a new skill.

  Text from Image:

  New Skill Created!

  Leyline Channeling

  Effect: Your body and mana reserves become attuned to the leylines weaving through Kalish. Each level in this skill increases the efficiency of drawing mana from the earth by 1%, allowing you to regenerate mana more quickly when standing upon natural ground (doubled if directly atop a leyline).

  At level 25: You are able to anchor yourself to a leyline for short periods. While anchored, your mana regeneration is tripled, and spells cost a percentage less to cast equal to your skill level. For 30 minutes, you cannot move away from the leyline.

  At level 50: You set yourself in series with the leyline you are standing on, effectively rerouting it into your body, giving you damage equal to 1% of your maximum HP every second. While this effect is active, any magic that would deal damage to you instead heals you.

  At level 75: If you are standing on a leyline while casting a ritual spell, you only need 10% of any material components for the spell.

  At level 100: Wherever you stand, a temporary artificial leyline forms beneath you, and the first spell you cast each day does not have a mana cost.

  Jasper checked the spells he was still in possession of. He had the marble containing the Ur-magic Directed convulsion of Law

  Text from image:

  Directed Convulsion of Law

  Tier: Unbound Ur-magic (3rd tier)

  Full effect: The processes of natural law bow to you. Once cast, you can immunize yourself and up to a half-dozen allies from particular natural laws, material objects, or natural phenomena.

  You could absolve yourself of gravity, for example, and fly or exempt yourself from acknowledging a stone wall and walk through it. This lasts for up to an hour.

  Then there was his other spell, Sign of Avulsive Banishment. It was probably going to be very handy now that they had decided to try and hunt down demons.

  Text from image:

  Sign of Avulsive Banishment

  Tier: Supreme Ur-magic (2nd tier)

  Full effect: Smite a creature not of this world. Instantly dealing them 1d20 damage per caster Rank and returning them to the realm from which they originated. Beings stronger than you gets a check to resist the effect of being sent back. This can target up to one small army, as long as none of its members are stronger than you.

  He had one last spell up, though it was probably not the most useful at the moment. The Palace of the Sorcerer-Prince was clearly meant for some kind of extended siege or stay in an area.

  Text from image:

  Palace of the Sorcerer-Prince

  Tier: Unbound Ur-magic (3rd tier)

  Full effect: With but a single use of this invocation, you call forth a luxuriantly-appointed tower or similar structure, one capable of housing up to a hundred inhabitants in comfort. The palace is appointed with dozens of conjured servitors, concubines, and laborers, albeit none are capable of fighting. The tower is sealed against entry by anyone, save you and your chosen guests. However, siege weapons or powerful magic can break through the walls and steel-hard windows of tinted glass.

  The tower naturally creates sufficient food, drink, and other common necessities to serve a hundred guests indefinitely. If taken from the tower, however, these amenities crumble away in moments. So too, the servitors, if they are forced to leave its walls.

  The palace may be dispelled at the caster’s whim. Any foreign objects or persons left within the tower when dispelled will appear on the ground where it once stood. However, the caster’s personal possessions may be left stored within whatever timeless pocket realm the tower goes to when it is dispelled. You may have only one palace standing at any one time.

  All in all, that left him with spending 3 Energy on keeping up spells that would normally wreck the world, but thanks to his planning, it was probably fine, and with two new skills created, he looked over his stats.

  All in all, he could still fight, and since his normal magics didn't cost him anything to cast, he would definitely have enough for either creating a new skill or firing off some Ur-magic.

  Flying over the lands, following the ley lines, it was obvious that the work that Jasper had put into place had been strengthened. As far as he could tell, this was due to some vast underground network of roots that had been pushing into the magical channels of the world.

  The source was clearly the World Tree, atop the giant mountain of Azken Kanpe. Riez had mentioned something about an ancient artefact in the shape of a stone, though it she had done so while outside the game, and Jasper's ability to retain and recall information was garbage out in meat space, at least compared to his abilities in the game.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  From what Jasper could tell, and he was mostly relying on some formal documentation the elves had made, it seemed like this World Tree had strengthened the leylines, or at the very least made the ones from Leltho to Mek to A'kastin far more rigid. Jasper assumed that even a Demon Lord wouldn't want to spawn an entire army in a landscape that was actively hostile to them, especially not since the werewolf clan that Martin had been taking out was maxed-out creatures that would rival even elite warriors.

  Whatever the case, the demonic influence was clear, and as they flew above the Southern gate that protected A'kastin from Leltho, everything became clear.

  The area they had designated as a starting zone was decimated. Large scars of battle was barely covered by trees, and a massive tree, seemingly made from pure mana, was spitting angry lightning bolts at everything around it.

  Jasper landed just a kilometre or two into the starting zone. Not because he was afraid of getting too close to the tree, but rather thanks to his stamina bottoming out.

  The giant buzzing multiheaded mosquito that Martin was riding landed a second or so later, only for Jasper to heave for some air. The gate seemed abandoned, which was probably due to the empire not having enough people around.

  "Wanna go take a look at the Chaos Tree?" Martin said, lounging on the giant beast.

  "Ah- Just... Give me a second... Why am I so... Exhausted?!? This body... should be empowered by divine essence." Jasper answered, still struggling for breath.

  Martin smiled, studying his fingernails, which, thanks to being an ork, were a healthy shade of off-white yellow. "Well, you are flying at a really high speed, which is effectively a sprint. And if I remember right, your constitution is actually one of your worst stats... right?"

  Jasper wanted to shake his head, but the fact that he had just done a cross-country sprint put a dampener on his mood. Maybe being a bit exhausted from flying wasn't that bad after all.

  Martin slid down from his mighty steed and sent it back to its lair. In a backwater country like A'kastin, something like that would be causing a commotion for sure.

  The two colleagues wandered side by side through the forest, and Jasper couldn't help but miss his wife. The scenery of blooming beech trees, and the way their light leaves let the sun through them, was all very nostalgic. That was, of course, also due to the fact that they would always arrive during the same time of the year every seeding cycle, as it was the first available time.

  In the distance, Jasper could see the town of Marcusburg, named after the now legendary king. It was back to its old self, meaning that it had been absolutely decimated by demons and was little more than a fence with some houses.

  It was almost quaint how the AI kept preserving the town in its initial state, thanks to the time lock they had put on the area. Jasper was quite happy that he had managed to solve the bug where they weren't able to enter the area thanks to that lock, but it had actually come down to some fairly simple read privileges that were put on the area.

  Walking over to the tree of Chaos, Jasper felt how his mere presence seemed to calm it down, the buzzing of magic appearing to funnel into the bottomless pit that was Jasper's Mana value, or rather, the fact that he didn't have a mana value at all.

  "Huh", Jasper's mind was moving as he noticed the low buzzing that almost seemed like a hum to him.

  Martin rolled his eyes a little, but once again, he was kind enough to allow Jasper to finish his thoughts before asking a ton of questions that the god of magic couldn't answer.

  "It's a spectrogram," Jasper concluded.

  "My guy. What do you mean, it is a spectrogram? Have I said how much I hate you being all-knowing?" Martin burst out, clearly a little exasperated.

  "What do you mean, what do I mean?" Jasper asked, confused. It seemed fairly obvious to him.

  Martin took a deep breath, clearly he wasn't seeing what Jasper was seeing... or rather hearing. "I have a meme right for this situation, and I promised myself I wouldn't implement some kind of functionality for sharing that kind of stuff in the game, but honestly, it would make communicating with you so much easier sometimes."

  The ork seemed to collect his thoughts, seemingly trying to formulate himself in a way that would make it clear what he wanted from Jasper. "I cannot see how you concluded that something, I do not know what yet, was a spectrogram. Can you please, if you will, take me through your process from start input to end output?"

  "Oooh." Jasper rubbed his neck, a little embarrassed that he had been assuming that Martin could just follow along with his moon logic.

  "Okay, so I can feel a soft hum from the tree. Like an oscillating synth beat. Can you not?" The god of magic asked, clearly wanting to know if they were working from the same baseline data.

  Martin paused and was surprised to feel something from his Plant Domain. It was like a melody, a soft, gentle hymn to the gods that he did not know the name of. "I think I hear something, but it is more like a song." He answered.

  Jasper's eyes furrowed, but he nodded slowly. "Seems like you get a full picture while my Magic and Knowledge Domains are just giving me the baseline information needed to crack the secret message inside." The god shook his head. "Doesn't matter. I recognised the hum as having very rapid pitches and a strange, non-existent beat. It reminded me of some of the Capture The Flag events we used to do back in college, and it is a classic hidden clue to have some kind of music be a spectrogram."

  "Sooo... how do we extract it?" Martin asked, satisfied with the explanation, though he wasn't really happy about it. Jasper's logic was a little too intense when he had access to this much information. The fact that he couldn't even recognise that the Knowledge Domain was pushing all this information into his brain was kind of wild as well.

  "Well, I would suggest that we measure it out using some pen and paper. I could probably draw it for us if I just channel my Domain." Jasper explained, and without a word, Martin produced pen and paper from seemingly nothing, all thanks to his Wealth Domain.

  Jasper quickly started working, sketching and measuring various distances. His hands were moving fast as he made a sketch over the northernmost part of the world: The Northern Gletchers.

  Martin looked down at it, noting the strange markings around some giant icesword that was stuck in the world. "I am calling it now... that is a trap." He said, fairly confidently.

  "What? How can you call it a trap? You know-" Martin's smug smile must have tipped Jasper off on what the God of Dungeons was about to do, because Jasper took a deep breath and instead reworded his response. "Can you please take me through your process from start input to end output?" Jasper parroted Martin's earlier words.

  "Heh... Yes... Yes, I can. You see, the full song that I am hearing is about the demon war. Apparently, Ballator opened the portals here, since not only do the leylines meet at this point, but thanks to some scar in the fabric of reality, it would be much easier to open things here. The song tells me that when Ballator found out that he could not bring out his father, the Archdemon of Hatred, he etched instructions for his followers into the tree of life, in turn making it viable for corruption, which was triggered when the network of the World Tree connected to it." Martin had a smile on her lips as he ended his spiel.

  "Huh... so this was meant for followers or worshippers of Ballator, and someone smart enough to realise that the song was a pattern that could be decoded into a location, which in turn probably would be smart enough to get past whatever defences were set up to protect the location... That is fun. We should do something with that." Jasper concluded.

  Martin blinked. "We are not getting our players to do a spectrogram to solve a puzzle."

  "Why not? Did you see some of the stuff Fez managed to get away with?" Jasper countered, packing away the piece of paper containing the location.

  "We are not making Fez. This game was not intended to be a puzzle game." Martin looked at his friend and colleague with a serious face.

  "Skyrim could have done so, too. That game has been picked apart by so many lore fans that they would definitely have spotted something like this. Think of it! Just because people expect one thing, it doesn't mean that we can throw in some interesting puzzle too."

  Martin sighed. "Fine... what do you want to do, then?"

  Jasper started to explain how he wanted to split the tree in two, making it both the tree of life and the tree of chaos, since the dual nature seemed really important for druids. They could pool their Worship together to achieve this, which in turn would also mean that Martin didn't have to hold up Energy to continue the power "The Golden God's Hand", which he used to move the crystallised mana from Leltho to A'kastin.

  Text from image:

  The Golden God's Hand

  Type: Activated ability

  Energy usage: Variable

  Full effect: Commit Energy and curse or bless a faction or community.

  You may either grant them a beneficial feature having to do with prosperity or wealth, or you may suppress an existing feature they have that relies on money or large amounts of resources. The curse or blessing manifests very rapidly in the course of a day, and lasts for as long as the Energy remains Committed.

  Each of the two halves of the tree would include one-half the spectrogram, meaning that you would have to listen to both halves if you wanted to decode it.

  Text from image:

  You are making the Tree of Life and Chaos

  Cost: 10 Worship

  Effect: You will permanently make a tree of Life and Chaos, which will become holy to the druids of this world. The tree will include a hidden puzzle that only the most dedicated players will be able to detect.

  The price of 10 Worship was a little steep, and with Martin only having 6 left, and Jasper having 17, they decided that Martin would pay 2 of the combined costs, while Jasper would pay 8.

  As they committed their Worship, power streamed from this, and in the same heartbeat, Martin released his hold of the crystallised mana. Energy poured back into him, but as it did, a scar that the tree had been protecting started to slowly peel open, and a massive green hand hammered through from the other side.

  It was clear that their interference had released Orlek from his prison.