After the demoralizing bombardment of Wood Elf parts, Amber and I would begin the slaughter. I went for the central square, where all the churches and cathedrals were kept, while she would usually just fuck up one of the walls. It wouldn’t take long before the soldiers and many citizens would attempt to flee from every exit.

That first city had tons of siege weaponry and artillery. It was old-fashioned and practically useless compared to cannons, but better than nothing. Ballistas, catapults, trebuchets and scorpions could all deal considerable damage to basic infantry. If they were unlucky enough to get hit, even mages or dryads were vulnerable to such attacks. Of course, our treants dealt with the enemy treants, since they were particularly dangerous.

On my end though, it was pretty easy. I didn’t use my staff the second time though. Instead, I played around with my daikatana. Not that I really needed such a powerful weapon to deal with those weaklings, I just wanted to get some practice with it. Needed to know what its limits were. I’ve used all types of swords throughout my incarnations, since they’ve always been particularly popular weapons. Katanas are especially famous for their ability to cut through flesh… Armor on the other hand, not so much. But that has more to do with the material they’re made out of and the strength of their wielder.

My daikatana was longer than I was tall and weighed over a hundred pounds. The material was… Wait, no, forget what I said about the sword. I didn’t have that yet. Anyway, if I didn’t have the daikatana, then I probably used my hunting knife. That thing was extremely dangerous. The Lunar Silver material it was made from was an excellent conductor for mana, so even though it was just a knife, it could also be used as a magic wand.

Imagine stabbing your knife into your enemy’s gut, then creating a burst of scorching hot flames inside of their abdomen. Honestly though, the staff was a lot more effective and efficient. I just didn’t like to me monotonous. It was also fun to extend the blade of the knife a few extra feet, by creating a plasma jet of sorts. Ultimately though, it all ended the same way as before.

When the battle was over, we rounded up the residents and judged them. It took weeks each time, because of just how many people there were. Even after the trials and battles, every city still had a few million left alive. Even the heart of evil, the capital of Lum. Arlos was filled with ‘sinners’, the richest and most influential Wood Elves lived there… But they also had a crazy amount of people in absolute poverty in the outer regions of the town. Slaves and innocent children were plentiful, so at least three million were spared in that city alone.

The whole crusade took months to accomplish. If you’re wondering what happened to the Wood Elves and their cities, I actually didn’t try to integrate the Beast Tribes and other races into their society. No, that would’ve been a disaster. It would’ve given the conquerors the opportunity to abuse the conquered.

I let all the Beast Tribes return to New Hithu and the borderlands. New Lum was the home of the surviving Wood Elves. Most of them were merely commoners or slaves beforehand, but I liberated them from the constraints of their old society. I allowed the ones who were more ambitious to accept my Mark, becoming leaders and soldiers. The amount of land in New Lum was truly massive. And with the culling of the population from the war, they had plenty of room to expand their own personal properties.

Yes, similar to what I did with the Beast Tribes and Wyverns, I allowed the Wood Elves to own and protect their own land. As for government? I gave them my laws, along with the truth. I killed Hithu and Lum, then stole their power. Thus, I allowed them to deify me as the Spirit of Eternal Suffering. The God of Retribution, Punishment and Conquest. Fear is a useful tool to deal with idiots. Even if I wasn’t a deity, I was at least powerful enough to end all of their lives anytime I wished, so it made sense to be afraid of me.

“Thou shalt not rape and thou shalt not enslave!” My words were written in my own blood and engraved into the walls of every church, chapel, even the Grand Lumean Cathedral. I also used the Ziggurat of Arlos as an example of my power. Publically forcing a massive branch of Lum to grow up from the ground, a massive glowing green pine tree to forever be a symbol of my wrath. I didn’t raise the mana-density of Lum much though. At most it only reached the level of the First Ring of Lorthon. Humans would be able to live there without much mutation.

Wyverns and other giant birds were already laying waste to the edge of Lum by the time my war ended. Thus, I killed some, while winning over the others. With the only two inhabited World Tree stumps taken care of, I had one place left to visit… Agar.

***

“Hmmm, this land smells like death…” Amber growled as she knelt down and grabbed a handful of the blackened ashy soil. She was wearing her equipment. We both had to…

“Yeah, it’s a radioactive wasteland.” I snickered, waving my left hand and lifting up a huge chunk of yellow rock from beneath the ground. Then I clenched my fist, telekinetically stripping the boulder of all the dirt, revealing the green crystals and yellow rock. I sighed, then explained “This is uranium ore. The ground here… Everywhere is all uranium, in fact, the ash looks like uranium powder and thorium mixed together with charcoal. There are some more dangerous elements too, like plutonium and neptunium. I have no idea why they did this though. Was Agar experimenting with radioactive elements in order to create nuclear weapons? Or is it some kind of accident while fucking around with advanced Earth Creation? Either way, we need to fix the problem. All this nuclear waste has to go and if I can’t revive Agar, I need to replace her with a new World Tree… Maybe it would just be better to allow Hithu and Lum to devour what’s left, replacing it with their own offspring?”

As I was talking to myself, the curious tigress started a fire on her left palm and tried burning the radioactive dust. However, due to the copious amounts of radon in the air, along with the lack of oxygen, her attempt was futile. Of course, she only had to create her own oxygen, before the experiment continued. The results weren’t particularly interesting. Some of the dust burned, other parts melted. She was bored immediately afterwards.

The interesting thing about Agar was how little mana-radiation there was… While the regular radiation was unbearable. Even creatures as powerful as Amber and I would only be able to stay there for a short time.

“Let’s go. The air in this place is toxic. We can’t breathe it. But even just staying around here, we’re being bombarded by massive amounts of nuclear radiation… We’ll have to come back later.” I sent the bored tigress a telepathic message and the two of us started to fly back to the frozen lake. It was the middle of winter, but Agar had no snow or ice, it was just deathly cold. Once we made it to the golden pyramid, the two of us stopped to rest and purge our bodies of the radiation we absorbed… We pissed and shit it out. That’s basically the only way, aside from maybe consuming it? There are methods to turn nuclear material into energy and mana, using blood magic, but it’s risky. I wasn’t sure if we were powerful enough for that kind of magic yet.

However, it led me to understand what Agar was trying to do with all that nuclear material. She probably used her roots to dig it up and then tried to absorb it. Creating some excess materials in the process, which ended up not only polluting her piece of Salvation, but also tainting her own World Tree.

Although it was dangerous for me to try turning radioactive ore into mana and energy within my own body… I knew someone who could make a device that would be able to achieve the same result, with a lot less danger. I also knew someone who could help me ‘treat’ Agar, either bringing her back to life or replacing her with a new World Tree. Both of those people were at least a thousand miles away, and in the Forest of Lorthon.