Global Lords: My Territory Heart Is a World Tree

For example, an ordinary human at adulthood is a level 1, common-rank individual with average attributes of 14.

When faced with these Eye Demons, they would be utterly slaughtered.

Moreover, Eye Demons are born with the ability to manipulate Spiritual Energy. While their control is crude and they aren’t as strong as the elite soldiers in Lin Yu’s territory, it’s more than enough to handle the weapons of an ordinary world.

Furthermore, once an Eye Demon invades a living creature, it can rapidly absorb the host’s flesh and blood to split into multiple lower-level Eye Demons.

Combined with their ability to parasitize and control living creatures...

To sum it up, if an Eye Demon ever entered an ordinary mortal world, it wouldn’t take long for all life on that world to be enslaved.

’What a terrifying race. If we hadn’t been so cautious, many of our soldiers and heroes would probably be under their control by now.’

Looking at the Eye Demon’s data and combining it with his previous research, Lin Kong realized just how formidable the species was. It was no wonder the one that had parasitized him yesterday had been so arrogant.

Next, to better study how the Eye Demons transferred their attributes to their hosts, Lin Kong needed to keep them in an isolated laboratory.

Although he could keep one Eye Demon in the territory by allowing it to parasitize him, he couldn’t be the sole method of containment. Even if he offered himself up once a day, he could only preserve 30 Eye Demons this month, which was just a drop in the bucket for the research they needed to do.

Inside the small, individual isolation rooms of the laboratory, some of the territory’s denizens and soldiers were already in position.

These included denizens from various races—beasts and birds, Slimes, Fairies, Sprites, and Dwarves—as well as soldiers like Withered Messengers, Death Devourers, and Shadow Reapers.

To prevent the Eye Demons from taking over their brains, Lin Yu had also drawn upon the power of the World Tree to place protective wards on the minds of all who volunteered for the experiment.

Finally, the plant-people entered the Eye Demon isolation chamber. Each took out an unharmed Eye Demon and placed it into one of the small isolation rooms.

Upon entering the isolation rooms and finding the defenseless creatures inside, the Eye Demons joyfully attached themselves to their new hosts.

They couldn’t care less that their enemies were using them for experiments. Throughout history, many civilizations, curious about the Eye Demons’ abilities, had tried to study them. All had ended in failure. Most were destroyed by the Eye Demons, a process which in turn created many powerful Eye Demon Overlords.

Therefore, to an Eye Demon, being used for an experiment was tantamount to a shortcut to becoming an Eye Demon Overlord.

The results came in quickly. The Eye Demons could only parasitize creatures with bodies made of flesh, blood, and nerves. They were powerless against the Withered Messengers and Death Devourers, whose bodies were composed of straw and woody stems, and showed no interest in them.

Surprisingly, however, the Eye Demons could invade Sprites and Slimes. Because Sprites and Slimes have no nervous systems, the Eye Demons were unable to control their bodies, but they could still share their attributes with them.

’Are the Sprite and Eye Demon races somehow compatible?’

This strange phenomenon greatly surprised Lin Kong. To test whether it was an anomaly or a widespread occurrence...

...Lin Yu had more Sprites and Slimes brought over for testing.

Without exception, when faced with quasi-energy life forms like Sprites and Slimes, the Eye Demons showed an extraordinary level of interest—even more excitement than they did for the flesh-and-blood creatures they could control.

However, when Lin Kong had an Elemental Druid summon a pure-energy Elemental Life Form and placed it alone with an Eye Demon...

...the Eye Demons were unable to parasitize these pure-energy Elemental Life. They grew listless, showing no interest in the Elemental Life whatsoever.

In other words, they were only interested in quasi-energy life forms.

In the end, before four o’clock, Lin Yu had 1,000 parasitized Sprites, 1,000 parasitized Slimes, and one parasitized member from every other participating race.

When the invasion ended, any Eye Demon that hadn’t found a host was teleported away, while all those currently parasitizing the denizens and soldiers remained.

Of course, with the exception of the Sprites and Slimes, the bodies of all other parasitized denizens and soldiers were now under the Eye Demons’ control.

"Next, let’s test how to remove the Eye Demons!"

At that moment, an elven researcher named Lin Haoyue entered the observation room of the isolation lab. She was the institute’s top researcher.

"Let’s try Healing Magic first," Lin Haoyue said after a moment’s thought, deciding to call over some Healing Druids and Elemental Druids.

Once the Healing Druids and Elemental Druids arrived, they, along with the Death Devourers and Withered Messengers already present, made up the territory’s full complement of healing units.

The four types of healing units took turns using their abilities on the parasitized birds and beasts.

However, no matter which type of Healing Magic was used, none could generate new nerves to force out the Eye Demon. On the contrary, it was like a health treatment for the parasite. From Lin Yu’s perspective, he could see the Eye Demon even sprouting more tentacles in an attempt to breach the host’s brain. Fortunately, the defenses provided by the World Tree were powerful, and all the Eye Demon’s attempts ended in failure.

Lin Haoyue exclaimed, "This Eye Demon’s parasitism is incredibly potent! It completely tricks the spell’s recognition system."

"To put it another way," she continued, "the Eye Demon’s tentacles perfectly mimic the host’s nerves. Not only do they avoid the body’s natural rejection response, but standard magical IFF models can’t distinguish them either."