“Lord of Mass Extinction. It seems the results weren’t very promising.”
Unfortunately, the Angel was right. The Community marketplace had neither the life-forms I wanted nor the magical techniques I needed.
“It’s not impossible for a life-form to wield Mysticism through its own innate abilities alone. But creatures like that are powerful, and hard to make. Whether they occur naturally or were self-created, most players wouldn’t want to send them out to other people.”
Damn it. I had Points rotting out of my ears.
Other than trying to create a low-intelligence life-form capable of using magic, I was currently working on the following.
First: using Yogur-tosoth’s magic to make it rain heavily over the newly acquired desert region, then terraforming it with jellies until it resembled a plain more than a desert.
Second: comprehensively improving the desert forest and its ecosystem.
Third: increasing the Candies’ aggression, and evolving “ordinary life-forms” to serve as prey for the Meat-Eating Candies.
For that, I’d been using Community trades to buy creatures that could survive in deserts, or evolve to survive there. The Camel-Eating Candies had shrunk and grown through multiple iterations until they could hunt a wide range of terrestrial animals.
Fourth: maintaining the overall health of the ecosystem. Abhojuth managed Nectar Oasis, but the world as a whole still had to be handled by me.
This was what happened when you had no subordinates.
“You could always have some.”
I have no need for subordinates weak enough to lose to me.
“Why would any player capable of beating Lord of Mass Extinction ever become your subordinate?”
That was why the Demon King’s seat was a lonely one.
“Ah. Yes. Of course.”
No matter how hard I dug through the Community, everyone kept magic and magical life-forms locked up tight, like classified intelligence.
What the hell was with that? Back on Earth, people patented things and shared all their technology.
“I’m sorry, but they really didn’t.”
I could buy any information I wanted as long as I had money.
“That part is true.”
Apparently Mysticism, from everyone else’s perspective, was something like an extremely sensitive trade secret. I found myself lamenting that I had come from a world where you could search all day and never find anything but physical laws.
“Actually, not even that.”
?
“Mm-hm~?”
Fine. At the very least, that was what ordinary people in the world believed. Move on.
In any case, inside the game, magic and mana were both absurdly common, and there were too many kinds.
Even when I looked for something more universal, I had no way of knowing whether [Tertaivegaokoshu’s Introduction to Third-Order Multistream Mysticism] was more impressive than [Aeieio’s Beginner’s Guide to Pounga Gurun]. To be honest, I couldn’t even tell what the difference between them was, or whether there even was one.
What the hell was Pounga Gurun?
“Oh, Pounga Gurun? That’s a proper noun for the Mysticism used in the world called Teuncha. If I translate it into terms you can roughly understand, Nonhuman…”
Ma.
Gic.
“We can call it that…”
Wasn’t there some ridiculous genius around here? The ultimate authority on magic. Someone who could teach me everything about it from beginning to end.
But everywhere I looked in the Community, people either took magic completely for granted, or came from worlds with very little of it, or else didn’t know magic at all and had differentiated themselves through bizarre science and bizarre life-form knowledge I didn’t possess. They clustered with their own kind. It didn’t look like anyone was interested in teaching a complete stranger anything from scratch.
“If we’re being fair, Nonhuman, from their perspective you’re one of the ones with deep knowledge of bizarre science and bizarre life-forms.”
I see. Well, if there was no other way, then I’d just have to keep evolving, keep smashing my head into the problem, and somehow create the hypothetical magical life-form I had decided to call [Yogurt]…
「Player 'Sesaisa' has requested <Conversation>.」
Hm? What was this? Targeting me specifically for a conversation? Why? For what? How?
Sesaisa. The name felt strangely familiar. Like something I had forgotten so thoroughly it was almost beyond memory. Hm. Who was that again?
“The player who bought Nectar from you for 296 Points.”
Ah. That one…
Hm…
「You have accepted player 'Sesaisa's <Conversation>.」
“Eh?”
“What do you mean, ‘eh’? Look. If I want to win, I do whatever it takes. Even if that means communicating with intelligent species…”
“Aren’t you supposed to loathe intelligent species?”
Hey. Do you not understand priority? Did I come to this game because I didn’t want to talk to intelligent beings? I came here to win the game.
First I have to win. Only after that can I decide whether to wipe out every intelligent being in the universe or not. Should I throw the whole thing away just because conversation is mildly unpleasant? In a game where I need to actively use the Community to win?
The Angel, apparently unable to rebut any of that, shut her mouth for a moment before finally saying one thing.
“…So talking to other people makes you uncomfortable.”
That was harsh.
Even if it was true.
Harsh.
Anyway, I decided I didn’t want to see anyone’s face, so the conversation appeared in the form of a chat room. The other side spoke first.
[Sesaisa: Hello.]
Text with no emotion in it whatsoever. They were probably writing in their own language on their end too.
I responded with text just as emotionless.
[Nonhuman: Yep yep. Hiiii lol]
[Sesaisa: Nonhuman. I’ll ask directly. You have a Nectar Spring, don’t you?]
[Nonhuman: Kinda suuuper obvious right T_T Yeah, I do lol]
[Sesaisa: I’ll buy Nectar at twice last time’s rate for the same amount. No, three times. …How much can you sell?]
[Nonhuman: I only sold it last time cuz I needed quick cash ㅠㅠ Right now I need magic more than Points!]
The reply came back instantly.
[Sesaisa: Magic? What kind? Elemental? Yin-yang and five-phase? Heroic-spirit? Mystical-life? Unless it’s something related to good and evil or conceptual magic, I think I can give you information.]
They’d taken the bait.
[Nonhuman: I seriously don’t know much about magic in this world or anything like that ㅠㅠ Even if you say it like that, I still don’t really know what I need.]
[Sesaisa: Aha. So you’re from a low-mysticism world.]
[Nonhuman: Yep yep. Right right. I don’t even really get the difference between Mysticism and magic.]
[Sesaisa: Ah, praise be!!! By the standards here, I was a scholar who specialized in general mysticism theory in an ultra-high-mysticism world!!! Sell me Nectar and I’ll answer whatever you want to know.]
Lucky. Was the world itself trying to tell me I was meant to become a god?
[Nonhuman: Yep yep. Then for Nectar, I can probably sell like… maybe twenty times what I gave you last time! Kyaa~~~!]
[Sesaisa: Are you insane?! Fine. What do you want? I’m seriously desperate!!!]
[Nonhuman: lol okay okay. Hang on a sec.]
I turned to the Angel. She was staring at me as if she’d just seen something she should never have had to see. I asked flatly,
“I have a question.”
“I doubt it’s more than the questions I currently have.”
“Then keep those questions buried for the rest of your life. Is there any way for me to be certain this player won’t lie, deceive me, or try to cheat me?”
The Angel, to her credit, answered as dutifully as always.
“Well. You can use an official trade. Points, goods, knowledge—anything. As long as it’s flagged as official, then unless player Sesaisa is simply mistaken about what they know, they’ll have to provide the promised compensation. Naturally, Lord of Mass Extinction, you would also be required to hand over the Nectar properly, without tampering with it.”
I see. Then maybe I could have a fair trade with this one.
[Nonhuman: Then could I maybe make a life-form that uses magic? lol]
[Sesaisa: Meat isn’t my field, so I don’t really know about that.]
[Nonhuman: lololol I’m the specialist there so it’s okay! Huh? But if life isn’t your field, why do you need so much Nectar?]
[Sesaisa: Ah. Well. The species I got for my world was meat, and I didn’t know what to do with it, so while I was granting it intelligence and teaching it magic, it all started turning strange. Before I knew it, my meat species had nothing left to eat.]
……
[Sesaisa: They won’t eat just anything, but they do eat Nectar pretty well… Probably because it’s pure life-energy, right? So if possible, I really need a Nectar Spring—]
[Nonhuman: You fucking idiot. What the hell did you do to your ecosystem that it collapsed all by itself while you were teaching them magic?]
[Sesaisa: ???]
I glared at the Angel.
“Hey. Is there any way for me to look at this bastard’s ecosystem?”
“If you get permission, yes. Though viewing another player’s world does consume quite a bit of divine power.”
“Don’t care. I need to see exactly how badly this idiot trashed their own ecosystem.”
I sent the request through the Angel. Then, as if the other side also wanted to see my world, they let me see theirs.
And. You. Absolute.
「Sesaisa’s World
Life LV.2: 233
Military LV.5: 3,889
Industry LV.0: 79
Technology LV.5: 3,566
Culture LV.2: 233
Politics LV.1: 177
Mysticism LV.6: 5,003
Faith LV.5: 2,911
Total LV.5: 16,091」
I was simply speechless in the face of this disastrous world.
Even if you tried to ruin it on purpose, it would be hard to do it this badly, yet nearly every living thing in the place had withered to death.
So where were they getting food? I looked, and apparently the answer was that while the species sat in meditation, cultivated themselves, and trained in magic, their god created Life for them out of <Faith> every time they prayed. Either that, or they bought life-forms with Points.
And since the god just dropped goods down for them directly, <Industry> was trash too. <Technology> was high only because their magic score had driven it up.
In other words, the life-forms in this world were meeting all their food needs just by praying to their god and studying magic.
What kind of fucking idiot even does this?
And to make it worse, the species in question was some enormous elephant-like thing. I genuinely thought I might choke from the frustration. If that’s how it was going to be, shouldn’t they at least have reduced the things’ body size to lower their energy consumption???
On top of that, this had originally been a forest terrain, but they’d ripped out and eaten every tree in their ecosystem and turned it into a wasteland with no roots left in the soil. Not one blade of grass remained.
[Nonhuman: You absolute moron. Don’t you even know the most basic concept of an ecosystem made up of producers, consumers, and decomposers?]
At that, Sesaisa—who had apparently just finished looking over my beautiful ecosystem—sent back a message that was practically a wad of spit.
[Sesaisa: This is unbelievable. You think I need to hear that from someone like you, who makes a Legendary Creation and then teaches it how to make shit by itself?]
[Nonhuman: What? What exactly is wrong with Yogur-tosoth, the very core of my Dessert Legion—]
[Sesaisa: That intelligence! That mana! That Authority! With a mind that strong, does it make any sense at all to leave it alone to develop magic by itself?! And why is your Nectar production so inefficient? Unless you’re a complete cretin who doesn’t understand even the basic correlation between elemental interactions, mana pressure, and the flow of the spiritual world, there’s no way you could possibly end up like th—]
[Nonhuman: ?]
[Sesaisa: ?]
“Your player must have it rough, Angel of Nonhuman. Our player comes from a world of pure spirit, so they call both plants and animals ‘meat.’”
“Your player must have it rough too, Angel of Sesaisa. Ours calls all Mysticism ‘magic.’”
“That’s just how it goes.”
“Why did it have to be these two? This game really has been unbelievably unlucky for the other players.”
The more we talked, the more it became obvious that this Sesaisa…
[Nonhuman: Sesaisa haha, I don’t totally get it but it sounds like you’re super knowledgeable about magic, even if you don’t really understand ecosystems ><]
[Sesaisa: Ha ha. It seems the scholarly heart in me, unable to tolerate irrationality, got the better of me, and I failed to fully grasp your understanding of meat. If I may, could I hear some of your insight into how meat survives on its own without relying on <Faith> or Mysticism…?]
[Nonhuman: Yep yep. And I’m suuuper interested in magic that can be grafted into an ecosystem too lololol Any chance a life-form could use magic just through life activity alone ㅠㅠ]
[Sesaisa: I’ve now learned that such a thing is not impossible, even if the magic it can wield through a meat-mind may be limited. What does it matter which kind of meat exercises Mysticism?]
Sesaisa and I asked our Angels the same question at the same time.
Could we manipulate each other’s worlds?
“Uh… yes. As long as you limit the changes in proportion to the amount of Points exchanged. And if you make receiving the other person’s Points conditional on the degree of contribution made to their world? Also, you must not manipulate the other’s world maliciously or lay traps in it. As long as you both agree to that, it’s fine.”
“Though unless you form a full <Alliance>, there will still be limits on your authority. You’re not forming an <Alliance>, right?”
No. We were not.
I didn’t need to say why.
That Sesaisa. Not a single subordinate god. No visible alliances either.
They had definitely become aware of their own shortcomings through managing their world, and yet they had still killed every player they met.
“Much like Lord of Mass Extinction.”
And their world score was 16,091. Absurdly distorted, centered almost entirely on Mysticism, but still nearly on my level.
「Nonhuman’s World
Life LV.6: 8,300
Military LV.5: 3,999
Industry LV.3: 833
Technology LV.1: 160
Culture LV.0: 0
Politics LV.0: 0
Mysticism LV.4: 1,866
Faith LV.4: 1,771
Total LV.5: 16,929」
In other words, there was a very high chance that this one belonged to the thousand or so players who might actually be able to kill my Yogur-tosoth.
A player who had raked in nearly 16,000 points in only three World Collisions. A grotesquely misshapen yet brutally efficient independent build.
A monster of the same species as me.
Someday, we would have to fight.
“For reference, they’re thinking the same thing about you, Lord of Mass Extinction.”
Naturally.
「Player 'Sesaisa' has temporarily transferred authority to manipulate their world to player 'Nonhuman'.」
「Temporarily transferring authority to manipulate your world to player 'Sesaisa'.」
[Sesaisa: Nonhuman. In this shabby trash-heap of a world, the only light is Yogur-tosoth. I shall teach it what true sorcery really is.]
And I would be the one to blow your eyes open. I would turn your idiot-ridden ecosystem into paradise.
Looks like I was going to be very busy until the next World Collision.