Unlike the angel, who kept growing restless, thinking, The Protection Period is almost over. The collision with another world is coming soon, I was calm. I knew the life-forms I had created would never lose to the life-forms of any other world.
Now then. In any case, my ecosystem—《Nectar Spring》 → [Nectar Jelly] → [Rock Jelly] → [Gravel Jelly] → [Soil Jelly]—has one problem.
“So there’s no civilization?”
No. The issue is that this ecosystem ultimately ends with [Soil Jelly] excreting sand, which means there’s a limit to the amount of rock available. Before long, everything will be filled with sand.
This desert world could turn into something like a midsummer white-sand beach, with a nectar sea and jellies skittering around all over the place. By then, my jellies would already have starved to death. If they consumed the world all the way to the end, the ecosystem might wind up as nothing but sand and nectar sea in the center.
“You’ll be eliminated from the game before that.”
I won’t. And if I win, I absorb the other world, which makes mine bigger.
Still, the other world probably won’t be an ecosystem full of rocks like mine. So to prepare for the future, I need to make my ecosystem more complete.
Right now, the “producers” are the jellies, and the “consumer,” so to speak, is the 《Nectar Spring》, which absorbs mana and produces nectar. I think it would be better to add a more proper consumer here.
「[Rock Jelly] has evolved into [Jelly-Eating Pudding].」
I named these carnivorous creatures pudding. Their bodies were slightly firmer than a jelly’s. Their mobility was still pathetic, but they could crawl or roll a little faster toward the creeping jellies, then catch and eat them to obtain nutrients.
“So that slows down the production of sand, but it doesn’t solve the root problem, does it?”
「[Jelly-Eating Pudding] has evolved into [Gravel Jelly-Eating Pudding].」
「[Gravel Jelly-Eating Pudding] has evolved into [Soil Jelly-Eating Pudding].」
“Ah. Right. Sure. Make whatever you want.”
Into the peaceful desert, where the jellies had been quietly sucking up nectar with no outside threats at all, wicked puddings suddenly appeared.
These savage jelly-eating life-forms used their relatively hard bodies and jaws to chomp through jellies, stealing nutrients others had made instead of going through the hassle of nectar synthesis themselves.
With the appearance of the puddings, the number of jellies would plummet if things continued like this. Then the puddings’ numbers would fall too, then the jelly population would rise again, and eventually the two would reach equilibrium.
I had no intention of letting that equilibrium last. I forcibly, rapidly evolved the jellies.
“Are you going to give them intelligence and have them build a civilization?”
Ah. No.
The jellies’ strategies for dealing with predators were as follows.
First: grow bigger. In nature, size is power. Just being larger is enough to stop you from being prey. [Rock Jelly], which decomposes the greatest quantity of minerals, grows first, followed by gravel and then soil.
But naturally, that just makes the predators bigger too. The puddings grow larger in order to catch the larger jellies.
Second: run away. They begin improving their mobility. The era of lying around in the desert sun is over. The jellies start developing their own methods of locomotion—tube-foot-like organs like starfish, arm-like appendages like clams, or crawling systems like snails—and begin fleeing. Naturally, the puddings grow more agile in response.
And there is another way to escape. Burrow somewhere the enemy cannot enter. But the jellies need sunlight, so instead of digging into the ground, they move into the water, where sunlight can still reach them, and begin aquatic life.
The heavy-bodied puddings cannot enter the lake, but I deliberately evolved them too and gave rise to puddings that swim through the water and feed on jellies at the surface.
Third: make poison. They combine the organic components of nectar to create toxins. Instead of fully releasing the <Mana> generated during nectar synthesis, some of them use part of it, carrying heat or cold within themselves. As a result, puddings sometimes die when they eat jellies, or their palates split open.
Naturally, the predator puddings develop stronger digestive organs and sturdier mouths.
“You made magic. Primitive magic, but still.”
“I like mysterious mechanisms that don’t rely on intelligence too. It’s a fantasy world. Some things are possible here because of that.”
“So in the end, you’re still not going to raise intelligence…”
And finally, fourth: harden. The jellies develop exoskeletons. If they become too hard to eat, then naturally they stop getting eaten.
For creatures called jellies, they grow so hard it is as if their outer surfaces have been coated. Some take the clam-and-snail approach, covering soft bodies with hard shells. Others develop scales. Others sprout spines like sea urchins. The variety is endless.
Naturally, the predator puddings become stronger and harder as well.
Now then. They cannot become hard for free. To make materials for hardening their bodies, the jellies and puddings extract every last bit of saline mineral content they can, and end up using sand—the hard, useless residue left behind.
“Oh. That’s actually impressive.”
Wasn’t it said that the Stone Age did not end because the world ran out of stones? But the desertification of my ecosystem ended because it ran out of sand.
Of all the jellies’ strategies, the most successful and most popular was the shell-making strategy. The reason was simple: the puddings only had soft jaws, and hard glassy shells could defend against them.
Which meant the puddings started developing organs that could break hard shells too.
Hard jaws, teeth, spines, muscular tentacles. They evolved at a speed that called the Cambrian explosion to mind, and I artificially accelerated the process.
As a result, all that sand disappeared. The jellies and puddings all developed shells, and the creatures that had entered the lake evolved hard scales, excellent tails, and fins to escape the predators that had followed them underwater. The result was genuine convergent evolution—jellies and puddings evolving into things that really did resemble organisms from the Cambrian explosion, springing up everywhere.
“So?”
Even [Nectar Jelly], the very first jelly, could not stop evolving. [Nectar Jelly] split into two directions.
One direction remained packed tightly across the lake’s surface, absorbing sunlight and heat. The other went lower and lower, eventually all the way down to the lakebed, where it began nectar synthesis in faint light. Some puddings then evolved to feed on those aquatic plant-like jellies that covered the bottom.
《Nectar Spring》. The place that produced the pure source of life-energy soon became a lake overflowing with life.
At the surface, countless jellies multiplied wildly like water hyacinths. They reproduced the fastest and died the fastest. Because they had to remain afloat on the water’s surface, they evolved to be light and highly fertile, while the creatures that preyed on them evolved to eat more and reproduce more as well.
Below the surface, the floating jellies either gradually developed mobility and evolved into fish-like or jellyfish-like forms, or else massively increased their reproductive rates, continuing the life of fissile microorganisms that produced a thousand offspring—of which 999 died, but if even one survived, it would multiply a thousandfold again.
The most successful life-form was [Anomalocari-Pudding], which, like Anomalocaris, had eyes, swam with multiple fins, and crushed clams, snails, and shells alike before devouring them whole.
At the bottom lived countless creatures reminiscent of crinoids, starfish, clams, and snails, locked in endless struggles between defensive strategies and offensive ones.
The most successful life-form there was the starfish-type pudding. It used brute force to crack open jelly species protected by hard shells, like sea urchins, snails, and clams, and ate the contents.
The producers and consumers had both become staggeringly diverse. And at that point, I created a third type of life-form.
「You have created [Gel].」
It was even softer than a jelly. These things could never grow large. They were merely tiny bacteria, and their function was very simple: they gnawed on the corpses of dead organisms.
They decomposed the bodies of jellies and puddings, extracted nutrients from them, converted them into primitive mana, and in turn were eaten by other creatures that fed on gel.
The changes continued. Among the puddings, the larger ones began targeting other puddings instead of jellies, which had become too difficult to catch. They had become secondary consumers.
The terrestrial jellies split into fast-moving and slow-moving types. The slow-moving ones became almost plant-like, forming rigid exoskeletons and extending glass branches and leaves made by breaking down sand across a wide area to absorb sunlight, while their main bodies burrowed underground and remained still like plants.
The fast-moving jellies gradually evolved into something like herbivores—or rather, rockivores—digging through the ground in search of rocks and stones to eat. And the jelly-eating puddings that preyed on them became even bigger, faster, and more ferocious.
With that, producers, consumers, and decomposers achieved perfect balance. A perfect ecosystem.
“To be honest, it is cool…”
Yeah. I think I’ll call this magnificent ecosystem the Dessert Desert. What an incredible name. The next life-forms I create should have that same kind of feel.
「The world’s <Life> score has surpassed 441 points, raising it to Level 3. You may now select a new trait.」
Even the system message was blessing me. In that case, shall I choose my third trait?
I looked at the angel and gestured for her to hurry up and show me the trait cards, but she hesitated for a moment.
What now. Lag? A bug? Loading? What’s the holdup?
“Excuse me, but are you aware that the Protection Period is about to end?”
“I’m aware.”
“Then let me ask. How exactly are you planning to win with these jellies? I understand, of course. 《Nectar Spring》 has grown, and the number of associated life-forms has exploded. Even I know that reaching Level 3 in any category during the first Protection Phase is extremely rare.”
That’s right. This was originally a disgustingly hard game to level in.
You started at Level 0, and the basic rule was that whenever worlds collided, you rose by one level. And because you could not raise every category at once, any world that led in one field was bound to lag badly in another.
Then let me ask this.
“So my score must be terribly lacking right now.”
“Of course. Look. The average total score across all players is 300. Since you have 441 in <Life> alone, you may look like you’re in the upper tier, but in reality, you only have a life score, so…”
The angel trailed off—and then, after seeing the status window for my ecosystem, froze completely.
“What is this. How are these numbers even possible?”
「Nonhuman’s World
Life LV.3: 441
Military LV.0: 62
Industry LV.0: 25
Technology LV.0: 0
Culture LV.0: 0
Politics LV.0: 0
Mysticism LV.0: 40
Faith LV.0: 0
Total LV.0: 568」
“How are you actually getting this score?! There’s no civilization, so how do you have Military, Industry, and Mysticism points at all?!”
The Military score was probably the combined combat power of the predators in my ecosystem.
Industry came from the whole process of turning rock into sand.
Mysticism came from the jellies and 《Nectar Spring》 continuously developing primitive magic.
And everything else was zero. Because there was no intelligent species.
“No, wait. This is different. Sure, Military says 62, but that’s just the sum of all your life-forms’ combat power. If you fought a world with real military strength, they’d just be prey. And Industry and Mysticism may have numbers, but it’s not because they mastered some incredible magic—it’s just that you have a huge number of creatures using primitive magic.”
That was true.
“And Politics is 0. Faith is 0. That means you can’t control these life-forms according to your will. So how exactly are you going to win when your world collides with another one?”
The angel’s tone hovered somewhere between worry and protest. I thought for a moment.
“Hey, angel. You just asked me, ‘How exactly are you planning to win?’ So let’s change the question.”
“?”
“This game is won by achieving complete cooperation with the opposing world after collision, or by complete conquest.”
“That’s right. And that’s impossible with these jellies.”
“So here’s the question I want to ask. How, exactly, could I possibly lose? Think about that seriously for once.”
The angel looked at me like I had lost my mind—and then suddenly recoiled in horror.
So she finally understood. The angel was not stupid. Just short on imagination.
「A world collision will begin shortly. Only surviving players will advance to the next round.」
So hurry up and show me the Level 3 trait cards. At this point, I couldn’t lose even if I wanted to.