Long ago, tailless apes lived in the forests of Africa.
Among them, the apes that lived where resources were plentiful and abundant evolved into a species called bonobos. Real animals, absurdly enough—creatures that settle conflict and disputes through “love” rather than violence, like something out of a fantasy.
Meanwhile, the apes that lived in poorer forests fought over the few resources they had, and gradually became more violent. They came to enjoy war, slaughter, torture, and tormenting the weak.
Those were chimpanzees.
And the weaker apes, unable to endure the chimps’ abuse any longer, escaped that agonizing forest and came out onto open grassland with no trees.
Because they had to walk long distances, the hair kept falling from their bodies to let heat escape.
Walking on two legs was more energy-efficient, so they started walking upright.
And once their hands were free, they made tools, kindled fire, and built civilization.
That was humanity.
Do you understand what that means?
Human beings are, by birth, a worthless species—failures that even chimpanzees used to beat down.
This species began by being born into a life of getting hit and driven out of the good forest, so whenever it sees something weaker than itself, it turns sly and vicious; and whenever it has more than others, it puffs itself up and crushes them without hesitation.
There is no need to argue about good and evil. This is simply how the thing was biologically designed.
Humanity is trash. Not philosophically. Biologically.
A species that managed, in barely twenty thousand years, to wreck the ecosystem it lives in badly enough to trigger a mass extinction—and even after that, still has no idea how to reflect on itself, and keeps wrecking the planet in real time while acting like the future can deal with the consequences.
I was born an orphan abandoned by my parents, and as I grew up under relentless abuse and humiliation, I decided to place the blame for my suffering not on myself, and not on the world, but on the species itself: humanity.
I am human too, of course. But if I had been born as something less intelligent, I probably would have been free from this kind of pain and anguish, and lived chasing only simple, animal desires. Being born a bonobo would not have been so bad either.
While analyzing humanity in order to hate it properly, I ended up using one of the purest expressions of human madness—crypto—to make tens of billions of won. And when everyone around me, even people I had never met, came crawling over claiming to be my real parents and asking me to lend them money, my hatred for humanity reached its absolute peak.
I wanted to kill them all.
But civilization had imposed this limitation called law, so instead I just quit my worthless job and hid myself away in the countryside.
Survival in this era was easy enough. Anything I needed could be delivered over the internet.
And my only hobby was gaming anyway.
The game I played was [The Fantasy World Creator].
A fairly standard simulation game. A game where you create life and civilizations in a fantasy world with magic and play around with them. You can fight other players, or you can just build your own perfect world and enjoy yourself.
Some people might ask why someone with tens of billions would spend time on a game that cost 300,000 won at full price and 30,000 when it was on sale, but what was I supposed to do?
I do not know whether you are familiar with a real-world project called [Biosphere 2].
It was a project in the Arizona desert to construct a closed artificial ecosystem that would circulate using only the resources inside it.
(For the record, the thing was supposed to last a hundred years, but collapsed in two because a bunch of biology PhDs failed to realize the lime in the concrete would absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.)
If I had possessed not tens of billions of won, but tens of billions of dollars, I probably would have done something like that.
Or maybe I would have bought a stretch of land the size of a national park somewhere in Africa and wandered around observing animals.
Or built a private aquarium for myself.
But since I did not have that kind of money, I settled for vicarious satisfaction through games like this.
And so, on that day too, I had just finished bringing yet another ecosystem into perfect equilibrium without a single human in it. If I counted only the time actually spent playing, I had probably passed fifty thousand hours by then.
Then all at once, the computer screen flashed.
And from it emerged a humanoid female figure wrapped in some kind of unidentified radiance.
The softly glowing being slowly opened her mouth.
“I’ll do it.”
“...Pardon?”
“Ah, sorry. I may be mistaken, but isn’t this where you offer to reincarnate me as a god in another world inside the game because I played too much?”
“That is correct, but I haven’t actually said anything yet.”
“My apologies. I’ve always been prepared for something like this, so I got a little ahead of myself... Anyway, O god of another world who would bestow divine office not on a politician, nor a businessman, nor even an ecology PhD, but specifically on a game-addicted burnout—may I take your place?”
“To correct one minor misunderstanding, I’m not a god. I’m an angel. In any case, it has been a while since I’ve seen a player this positive and composed. Still, explaining things is part of procedure, so please hear me out.”
I quietly waited for the angel’s explanation.
“From this point on, you will become the god of another world separate from Earth: the world of [The Fantasy World Creator].
All the powers, functions, and interface you enjoyed as a player will be carried over exactly as they were. In fact, you will be able to wield powers with even greater freedom and far greater boldness.
Every mechanic that existed in the game will still apply, but because it has now become actual reality, some interactions may differ.
You will begin in a small world containing only a single environment. By fighting other players and defeating them, you will absorb their worlds and civilizations, gradually building a larger and larger world of your own.
In the end, if you defeat all competitors and complete a vast world, you will reign over it permanently as its god.
If you lose along the way, your soul will be extinguished and cease to exist.
If you accept this off—”
“I’ll do it.”
The angel shrugged.
“I have truly never seen a player this eager. If you die, your soul is erased. You understand that?”
“If I win, I become a god. If I lose, one human disappears from the world. Either way, I’m fine.”
“Remarkable. Very well. Player nickname [Nonhuman]. From this moment on, you are a god of our world.”
The angel’s hand slid into my body, and leaving my flesh behind, dragged only my soul into the other world beyond the monitor.
When I turned my head, my soul still retaining a human shape, I saw my human body collapse in front of the monitor and roll onto the floor.
Leaving it behind, I followed the angel forward, looking ahead to the life of a god that was about to begin.
∞
When I opened my eyes, what I saw was outer space, filled with a gigantic sun and countless worlds.
Those worlds revolved around the great sun in their own orbits, but each one, if my eyes were not deceiving me, was not round like a planet. They were flat, or shaped like broad plains with tall mountains jutting out of them—as if worlds had been sliced apart and laid bare.
And those planets—
No, those worlds—
were circling the sun by the hundreds of millions, each on a different orbit.
“Welcome. This is the universe in which you will fight.”
It looks exactly like the game interface.
“That’s right.”
...Huh. I didn’t say anything out lou—ah. Right. I don’t have a body anymore.
“Yes. I can now read your thoughts. Not your innermost heart, but your thoughts, yes. In any case, you will each take charge of one world in this universe. The moment worlds cross paths and meet, a collision begins between them.
Then the species and civilizations of your world and the opposing world will fight, and you need only seize control of the world and win... The rules are the same as the game, so it’s simple, isn’t it? Whoever ends up the owner of the last surviving world wins.”
Hmm.
“There are currently exactly 1,073,741,824 worlds. It may sound like a lot, but half are eliminated each round, so after thirty matches, it’s over.”
So there are that many players too. Where did you even find a billion people?
“They were brought not only from your world, but from all dimensions.”
I see... A pan-dimensional international tournament. Must have been a pain to put together.
“Hehe. Each world is given a different environment, but the balance is fair. The world you receive is random, though. You don’t mind?”
I don’t care. As long as it’s balanced. Though thinking politely inside my own head feels ridiculous.
“Why worry about something that trivial? You’re a god now. Speak to a mere angel however you like. I’ll continue observing the game and answer any questions you may have, as well as offer advice, so do as you please.
Now then. Let me guide you to the world you’ll be managing.”
∞
After something like a blink of consciousness, I found myself looking down over the entirety of the world I had been given.
It was a strange sensation. I was not focusing on any one place, and yet I was focusing on the whole world at once. Impossible for human eyes. A gaze that was, in every sense, divine.
The world’s surface area was about ten square kilometers. In other words, a stretch of land roughly 3.16 kilometers by 3.16 kilometers. And if one traveled to the edge of the world, one would emerge from the opposite side.
At a glance, the surface of that world was close to despair itself.
The entire thing was dark brown rock. No water. No grass. No trees, no insects, no soil.
And on top of that, the surface temperature was atrociously high. Half the day was a daytime of over fifty degrees Celsius, and the other half was a night cold enough to freeze to death.
In one word, it was a desert.
「World of Nonhuman
Life LV.0: 0
Military LV.0: 0
Industry LV.0: 0
Technology LV.0: 0
Culture LV.0: 0
Politics LV.0: 0
Mysticism LV.0: 20
Faith LV.0: 0
Total LV.0: 20」
The world score was 20. There was not a single living thing, and yet for some reason it had points in <Mysticism>. Which meant there had to be something there.
After poking around, I found what looked like a patch of glass on the desert surface. When I looked closer, it turned out to be a small spring around fifty meters across and perhaps five meters deep, narrowing downward into an inverted cone.
When I checked it, an explanation appeared, just like in the game.
<Nectar: Pure essence containing the energy of life. Any life-form can consume it, and for any life-form it functions as the highest-efficiency resource possible.>
《Nectar Spring LV.0: A terrain feature that produces Nectar. It absorbs surrounding mana and continuously refines it into Nectar.》
Perhaps because of the life energy given off by the Nectar, the temperature and humidity around the spring were both moderate. Any organism would be able to grow successfully there.
“An interesting world. Almost all of it is a desert where life cannot survive, and yet the area around that spring is richer and more hospitable than any other world.”
Even in the game, Nectar had been one of the very few ultra-efficient resources with almost no equal.
A world that continuously produced such a supreme resource, and yet contained no life of any kind. That grotesquely lopsided world was the one I had been given to start with.
“Well then, the game begins the moment you create your first life-form. You are already an experienced gamer, of course, but the sensible strategy in a world like this would be to build an ecosystem around the Nectar Spring first, and then use that foothold to establish a mana-centered civilization. After all, the spring can continue expanding as long as it has mana.”
Ordinarily, yes. I too was about to create plants first using <Creation>, the player-god’s power, without giving it much thought.
But then, for a moment, I remembered what the angel had said while bringing me into this world.
“Hold on. Angel.”
“Oh? A direct question. Ask whatever you like.”
“You said that once this became reality instead of a game, the freedom would be greater. How much greater? In the original game, I could only make three kinds of life: plants, animals, and monsters. Can I create any organism now? In other words, can I make forms of life that don’t fall into any of those three categories?”
The angel put on a mischievous expression and nodded as if telling me to go ahead and try.
“I don’t know what kind of powerful life-form you’re planning to create, but as long as the physical laws of this world allow it, you may create any life-form you wish.”
“I see. Then I’ve decided on the first one. The rule that the first life-form gets one extra <Trait> still applies, right?”
“Of course.”
The angel looked almost amused. I knew exactly what that look meant.
It was thinking I would be just another fool who heard that the freedom had increased, tried some fancy new strategy, and ruined everything. In the game, after all, the choices had naturally been limited to what was efficient and sensible.
But I had always thought this game’s freedom was laughably low. Even with dozens of mods installed, it still could not reproduce the kind of ecosystem I actually wanted. If one could truly create life, then this was exactly the kind of organism one ought to be able to make first.
The moment I concentrated, the physical laws that made up this universe flowed naturally into my mind. I understood at once that the life-form I wanted to create did not violate those laws, and so I created a single organism.
“I will create a life-form three to ten micrometers in size. It will grow and reproduce by consuming <Light>, <Heat>, <Minerals>, and <Nectar>, and in return it will produce <Water> and <Mana> as byproducts.”
“Hm?”
Along with the angel’s confusion, my <Divinity> condensed, and in the Nectar Spring, my very first life-form was born.