「The Protection Period has begun. During the Protection Period, the player will not come into contact with other players’ worlds. Once the Protection Period ends, your world will collide with another world.」
Since winning in a single year counted as a fast victory, I still had a substantial amount of Protection Period left.
If a fight dragged on too long, it was possible to collide with yet another world in the middle of it.
That wasn’t going to happen right away, though. I’d deal with it when it did.
For now, it was time to make my ecosystem even more perfect.
“You know, the more I think about it, the more annoying it is that you insist on calling it an ecosystem.”
Who cares.
I had work to do.
The newly evolved life-form, [Coral Guppy], had evolved from [Sponge Pudding].
It doesn’t follow any actual Earth biological lineage, but I named it that, so just accept it.
[Sponge Pudding] was, literally, a pudding that lived like a sponge.
And if you don’t know what a sponge is—the yellow one in square pants, that’s a sponge.
No, actually, sponge is just the word itself.
It anchors itself to the seafloor, sucks in water, eats the microorganisms inside it, and filters the water back out clean. It’s one of the most primitive forms of animal life.
[Coral Guppy] was similar.
The difference was that, true to the guppy part of its name, it was harder. And because it built even sturdier body structures out of sand, it looked less like an animal and more like a plant.
But it was an animal.
And despite being an animal, it didn’t hunt jellies. It gained nutrients through nectar synthesis.
That probably sounds strange, but coral is an animal too, and it keeps symbiotic algae inside itself and lives off photosynthesis.
These things worked on a similar principle.
In exchange for being unable to move, they grew tough mineral structures that other predators couldn’t tear apart, then stored [Nectar Jelly] inside their bodies.
Those [Nectar Jelly] produced nutrients for them, while living inside the sturdy mineral framework the [Coral Guppy] had built.
“Then couldn’t you just make a [Nectar Jelly] with a hard structure?”
“That’s possible, and I already have life-forms like that. But it’s easier to think of it in terms of division of labor. A life-form that both performs nectar synthesis and builds hard structures won’t do either one especially well.”
“Ah. So if the weak one handles nectar synthesis, and the tough one just protects it, efficiency actually goes up.”
“Exactly. Besides, if you’re going to ask that, shouldn’t you ask the more obvious question first? Why do the ‘puddings’ hunt and eat jellies instead of consuming nectar directly?”
For the record, the answer was simple.
Nectar lacked the minerals essential to pudding growth.
Puddings required massive amounts of minerals for their bodily structures, yet had no direct ability to consume minerals themselves.
Nectar provided only life-energy, not inorganic matter.
Thanks to the 『Construction Specialist』 Trait, [Coral Guppy] began spreading across the bottom of the nectar oasis at a terrifying rate.
Since they consumed minerals to build body structures, the bedrock of my world began eroding away rapidly.
Wait a second.
Eroding the bedrock...?
“I’ve got a question. In the game, resources were effectively infinite, but what about now? This world loops back on itself eventually, right? If I just keep digging downward forever and reach the very bottom, do I fall out of the sky?”
“No. The world only appears flat for convenience. In truth, it is spherical in all directions, so if you keep digging downward, you will eventually emerge at the opposite point in the world’s coordinates, digging upward from below.”
“So even ‘land’ is a finite resource.”
“That situation is unlikely to occur under normal circumstances... but yes. For reference, if you travel all the way to the end of the sky, you will likewise emerge from the opposite side of the ‘sky.’”
I had no idea what “spherical in all directions” was supposed to mean, but whatever.
If that was the case, then I had nothing to worry about. Dig deeper.
After expanding in width, the lake would now begin expanding in depth.
[Coral Guppy] filled the deeper zones, and all kinds of life-forms slipped into the spaces between them in search of safety.
On Earth, coral reefs account for only one percent of the ocean’s area, yet provide habitat for twenty-five percent of all marine life.
That was the sort of environment I intended to create.
Basically, nectar welled up from the spring on the lakebed, then got diluted by the water produced by the [Nectar Jelly] above, after which the jellies at the surface and on land shared it among themselves.
That meant the coral living on the lake floor got the purest nectar of all.
And yet, despite that advantage, [Coral Guppy] grew more slowly than I’d expected.
“It’s not growing nearly as well as I thought.”
“The water’s too deep. The sunlight in this desert is monstrous, but all that heat and light is getting consumed by the life-forms in the upper layers. Because of that, the water near the 《Nectar Spring》 at the bottom is practically cold.”
Of course, even that had been balanced out to some extent through the evolution of [Nectar Jelly].
Put simply, the [Nectar Jelly] at the lake’s surface received light and heat directly, but had to drink the most diluted nectar.
The ones in the upper layer received lots of light and heat, but highly diluted nectar.
The ones in the middle layer received a moderate amount of light and heat, and moderately diluted nectar.
The ones in the lower layer received little light and heat, but somewhat concentrated nectar.
And the ones at the bottom received almost no light and heat at all, but drank highly concentrated nectar.
“My nectar oasis ecosystem is already divided into five stages by water depth. After forcing evolution again and again, you can see how they’ve diverged in different directions. The ones in the upper layers hardly discharge any <Water> and instead release large amounts of <Mana>. But the ones in the lower layers release lots of <Water> and almost no <Mana>.”
And the ecosystem differed not only by depth, but also by distance from the 《Nectar Spring》 at the lake’s center.
Near the very center, where nectar still rose in relatively high concentration, dense jelly colonies clung together.
Toward the edges, where it was more diluted, Rock Jelly-line organisms dominated—creatures that consumed large amounts of water and rock while producing huge quantities of mana.
As the size of the 《Nectar Spring》 increased, the ecosystem would likely become even more diverse.
Honestly, this much ecological variety shouldn’t have appeared in a lake of this size.
The only reason it had was because I had forced mutation and diversification through my <Divinity>, so in that sense I was cheating a little.
“So what do we do?”
“Create a new life-form.”
“Not an intelligent species, right?”
“Right.”
Another microorganism.
This one, however, could use magic.
“That should raise your Mysticism score.”
Exactly.
Classified properly, it was a <monster>—a life-form that lived by consuming mana.
Its mana consumption would slow the growth of the 《Nectar Spring》, but from the perspective of the ecosystem as a whole, it would be beneficial.
I consumed <Divinity>, and a new monster-microorganism appeared.
It was a tiny, slightly flattened disk-like life-form, the most primitive type possible, surviving by consuming mana within its own body.
「You have created a new life-form! What will you name it?」
“Topping.”
「You have created [Topping].」
And then I evolved [Topping] into other life-forms.
I gave this mana-consuming, energy-generating organism a new function—one that used “mana synthesis.”
「[Topping] has evolved into [Sun Topping].」
This creature, marked by multiple cilia radiating from its body like a stylized sun, possessed motility.
It consumed the pure <Mana> overflowing throughout the lake, along with <Water>, to generate energy, built its body out of <Earth>, gained mobility through <Wind>, and released fire-aspect mana and light-aspect mana as byproducts.
In other words, it drank the surplus resources—<Water> and <Mana>—that were flooding the lake, creating currents within the stagnant waters like ocean flow, replenishing mineral matter, and producing the light and heat the ecosystem needed most.
“You really came up with that. And from a world with such a poor understanding of Mysticism.”
As [Sun Topping] multiplied, the water level of the nectar lake dropped.
But the inside of the lake began to glow brilliantly.
It began to heat up.
Light and heat reached all the way to the bottom of the lake.
Absorbing them, the [Nectar Jelly] multiplied explosively.
As the jellies multiplied, the [Coral Guppy] housing them grew larger as well, generating structures at a manic pace.
They gnawed through the deep bedrock of the lake—places even [Rock Jelly] couldn’t consume—and multiplied the lake’s depth several times over.
Its volume increased too.
And as that volume increased, still more [Nectar Jelly] poured out <Water> and <Mana>. [Sun Topping] consumed part of it, but most of it remained in the lake, which swelled to several times its former size.
「The level of 《Nectar Spring》 is increasing.」
The 《Nectar Spring》 was now Level 4.
Its diameter was nearly two kilometers, and its depth reached fifty meters.
Even after swallowing another world, the total surface area of my ecosystem was still only around twenty square kilometers.
That meant the 《Nectar Spring》 alone now occupied fully fifteen percent of the entire world.
And if I included the marshland created by the overflowing spring, then roughly forty percent of the whole world lay under its influence.
For reference, the former Oswald Oasis was fairly large too.
It occupied about twenty-five percent of the world.
Admittedly it was only ordinary freshwater, with no nectar at all, but if you looked at my ecosystem this way, it seemed less like a desert and more like a wetland...
Which was normal, really.
Even in real deserts, wetlands form around rivers and oases, and rich ecosystems spread out from there.
“Actually, in a rich desert wetland like this, wouldn’t it be more normal for civilization to take root?”
Anyway, the monstrous abundance of life pouring out of the nectar oasis supplied yet more jellies to the life-forms on land.
The puddings ate those jellies.
The puddings that ate jellies got eaten by other puddings.
Those puddings lived and died, and then got torn apart by [Gel].
And [Gel] got eaten by jelly-eating puddings and jellies in turn.
「The world’s <Life> score has exceeded 926, increasing its level to 4. You may now select a new Trait.」
Before I knew it, the Life score had reached the next level.
I had only devoured a single world, and yet the growth rate was absurd.
“Haaah... What even is this... How is it already Level 4?”
I obtained the Trait 『Carnivory』.
Now the most aggressive, fastest, and strongest species among the puddings evolved into [Meat-Eating Pudding], and in addition to the jelly-and-rock diet they had maintained so far, they could now tear flesh apart and eat that too.
The chicken-like creatures, pig-like creatures, and cattle-like creatures Oswald had created for his species in the previous world would now have to run for their lives across the narrow grasslands, fleeing the attacks of the puddings.
And the next world’s player would have to stop the carnivorous puddings I sent in.
After wiping out those inefficient creatures with ease, they’d realize too late that the [Meat-Eating Pudding] had only been bait—and that the real main force was [Soil Jelly] and [Gravel Jelly], breeding in freshwater, turning farmland into desert, and converting freshwater into filthy masses of jelly.
「The world’s <Military> score has exceeded 100, increasing its level to 1. You may now select a new Trait.」
「The world’s <Industry> score has exceeded 100, increasing its level to 1. You may now select a new Trait.」
For the military Trait, I chose 『Belligerence』.
For the industry Trait, I chose 『Expansive Construction』.
『Belligerence』 made life-forms less likely to fear stronger enemies, while 『Expansive Construction』 simply allowed larger structures to be built.
The nice thing about choosing a non-civilization build was that the Traits you got only strengthened life-forms.
Traits I couldn’t use simply didn’t appear at all.
“Rather than a non-civilization build, could you call it a ‘mindless’ build?”
“I’d rather call it an anti-intellectual build than a mindless one.”
“That’s not what anti-intellectual means.”
“Neither is mindless.”
Call it whatever you want.
In any case, whatever civilization the next player built, they’d get a guided tour of hell from the jelly-and-pudding offensive.
So before that, maybe I should go inspect the ecosystem around the former Oswald Oasis too.
After all, the real offensive power of the Dessert Desert didn’t come from carnivorous puddings.
It came from the freshwater jellies that turned enemy land into desert and their water into garbage.