Sprightly Vonwacq

Within is the most famous island on the planet Vonwacq… Wacq Island. On this lush green island stands an ancient tree named Thestang, whose fruit gives birth to many kinds of wild animals on the island.

Vonwacq is a small and crowded planet, almost entirely covered by rainforest and islands, and its abundant wildlife is its most recognizable feature.

The powerful vitality of Vonwacq has made the rainforests near its equator grow so lush that they blot out the sky, and in the low places of the forest the sunlight cannot be seen all year round, which creates a perfect space for fungi and shade-loving plants to spread everywhere. The intelligent beings live in the regions near the tropics, where plants tall and low alike can grow of their own accord. Every day there is fresh fruit and fresh produce that can be picked at any time and in any place, and this is also the staple food of the local people.

However, whether new immigrants or the native Wacq race, they have always kept an almost worshipful awe toward the fruit and the animals that grow upon the ancient Thestang tree.

The great Thestang tree flowers and bears fruit without pause. In time, all those translucent orange-yellow spherical fruits grow larger and heavier and droop down from the branches until the trunk can no longer bear their weight. When the moment comes, a fruit falls to the ground with a loud, crisp sound that cracks its thin shell and releases whatever was held inside. The fauna of Vonwacq is all born in this way, whether fish, bird or polar bear… On the planet Vonwacq, every living kind shares one and the same mother.

The creature named the “Demon King” is also born from one kind of fruit of the Thestang tree. From the very moment of its birth it knows by instinct how to swing its enormous axe-like pincers at others, declaring war upon the whole ecosystem of Vonwacq.

Every sixty natural years the Thestang tree gives birth to a new Demon King, and the cycle goes on in just this way. The people of Vonwacq have long been prepared for this hopeless wheel of fate. When the Demon King's cycle of awakening draws near, they set their disputes aside and join hands, gathering their strongest warriors to set out together for Wacq Island… Sixty years, and then another sixty, and these meaningless campaigns of subjugation played out over and over again for hundreds of years on this tiny planet. The Demon King is the everlasting disaster of Vonwacq, and whatever civilization has built is wiped away clean with every cycle.

And so, for Vonwacq, these lives full of vitality that struggle against one another without pause may look fierce and powerful, but in truth they are no more than a pool of dead, stagnant water.

On the coast of Wacq Island the sea level rises and falls, the tide comes in and goes out… This scenery, unchanged for a thousand years, has witnessed a rise and a decline much like the tide itself.

When the fruit of the Thestang tree ripens and falls to the ground, it gives birth to all living kinds. These creatures awaken, cry out, and then leave Wacq Island to seek a habitat of their own on the planet Vonwacq.

At first the people from afar were taken for reckless thieves, and after receiving the tribe's “kind” welcome they began to understand the dilemma of Vonwacq's civilization. Soon afterward these people from afar boarded the boats of the locals and went to Wacq Island, curious about how a Demon King would be born out of a fruit. The tribal warriors lay uneasily on the shallows, gripping weapons from the Stone Age. For the sake of sixty years of peace, they had long since resolved to go and never return.

The deeper they went into the fighting, the more the people from afar uncovered the truth of the “Demon King”… It was a species of cosmic insect that had already gone extinct, and no one would have imagined that it would appear in such a form in a forgotten corner of the vast universe.

After the disastrous campaign ended, the few surviving locals carried the news of victory away from the coast, while the people from afar quietly stayed behind. They pushed aside the drooping branches of the great tree and waded half submerged through the swamp, and in the low ground of the rainforest these outsiders found a control cabin in the deepest place of all. And from here the secret of Vonwacq was revealed at last… the Thestang tree turned out to be an ecological restoration system from a far higher civilization, able to decode countless forms of life in order to restore the planet's ecosystem.

The Demon King that appeared with every cycle was nothing more than a line of data in an enormous biological database. The outsiders deleted the data on the Demon King and left Vonwacq, wanting neither fame nor profit from the local people.

On the coast of Wacq Island there was only the sound of waves beating against the shore. The allied army of Vonwacq stood drawn up and waiting, certain that the Demon King would never appear again. They raised their cups in celebration, sang through the night and talked of the future. And yet, as soon as the two allied peoples parted, they at once began plotting a war to seize the whole of Vonwacq for themselves… Without a common threat like the Demon King, their alliance was no more than a worthless scrap of paper. The tiny planet could not endure the conflict between the two tribes, and the brief, fragile peace vanished without a trace.

The coastline of Wacq Island remains as calm as though nothing had ever happened. After humankind and the Wacqwacq left the stage of history, Vonwacq at last restored its ecosystem.