In the Dessert Desert, there was nothing but rock in exchange for having the 《Nectar Spring》—though that wasn’t exactly bad for my jelly life-forms anymore.
The greatest advantage of Oswald Desert, on the other hand, was obviously the oasis.
The ecosystem around the oasis was extremely rich.
Now it was crawling with jellies, of course, but its area was roughly five square kilometers.
For a desert, that meant the oasis alone covered nearly half the land.
That blessed terrain was what had let Oswald build a reasonably strong army in the first place—farming, fishing, raising livestock, and so on.
“The plants growing naturally around this oasis—they weren’t created by Oswald, were they?”
“No. They were life-forms that existed from the moment the game began. The same seems to be true for the oasis ecosystem itself, including the fish. The player appears to have altered it only slightly, without changing it in any major way. Though of course, now it has all been swallowed up by the jellies.”
In other words, if the privilege my desert world had received was the 《Nectar Spring》 in a barren rock desert, then the privilege Oswald had received in his desert world was this rich oasis itself.
I took a closer look at it.
It seemed my jellies hadn’t wiped out every life-form in the lake after all. The original fish, frogs, submerged plants, and waterweeds were still surviving in the gaps between them.
The real problem was that the species Oswald had created couldn’t eat any of it.
Why had he been given a world this good and then made a human-like species instead of an aquatic species that lived in the oasis and fed on water plants?
I really didn’t get it.
If it were me, I’d have made frog-people or hippopotamuses immediately and ruled the lake.
I invoked <Divinity> to balance the ecosystem.
「[Unnamed Fish] is evolving into [Jelly-Eating Fish].」
「[Unnamed Amphibian] is evolving into [Jelly-Eating Frog].」
“You’re evolving the fish and frogs here too?”
“The freshwater jellies currently have no natural predators at all. They’re still the most primitive [Soil Jelly] and [Gravel Jelly]—they don’t even have the ability to protect themselves with sand yet. Predators that can regulate jelly numbers and increase the ecosystem’s diversity are absolutely necessary.”
After that, I left the rest of the evolution alone.
Some jellies would gradually become tougher by using sand.
[Jelly-Eating Fish] would gradually evolve harder teeth and sturdier scales.
And [Jelly-Eating Frog] would evolve to prey not on the hard ones, but on the soft, fast jellies, developing tremendous swim speed and digestive ability in the process.
As I’d explained to the Angel before, it was better to eliminate the water plants here.
Not because I had any grudge against ordinary plants, but because ordinary plants would be too easy for other players to adapt to.
The best answer was to preserve only the original life-forms—my jellies.
Using <Divinity>, I modified the [Waterweed Jelly] living in the nectar oasis so they could adapt to freshwater by inserting the photosynthetic genes of “plants.”
Now they were [True Waterweed Jelly].
“So the original [Waterweed Jelly] was fake?”
“That’s how biological naming works. [Waterweed Jelly] was just a jelly with an ecology similar to waterweed. These [True Waterweed Jelly], on top of the usual jelly ecology, also perform photosynthesis through chlorophyll. You could call them plants that are also jellies...”
[True Waterweed Jelly] absorbed sunlight and water, then released carbon dioxide and mana.
At the same time, it absorbed sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water, then released oxygen.
The end result was a life-form that consumed absurd amounts of water and expelled mana and oxygen.
The increase in dissolved oxygen they provided would be a major help to the fish and frogs surviving in an ecosystem where ordinary water plants had been removed.
And carnivorous puddings like [Meat-Eating Pudding], which had nothing to eat at the moment, would immediately start preying on those fish and frogs.
Fish, frogs, and puddings would all accelerate one another’s evolution, growing larger, faster, and more aggressive until they eventually became aquatic ecosystem destroyers capable of wiping out any life-form living near the water.
“This game was always about freely evolving organisms and playing around with them, but you’re the first player I’ve seen use invasive species this aggressively as an actual strategy.”
“In an extreme <Life> build, there isn’t much else you can do early on. And this strategy has limits anyway.”
At that, the Angel looked at me like I was insane.
“This has limits?”
“Once you pass a certain point, the development of civilization through <Technology> or <Mysticism> overtakes the growth rate of <Life>. A life-centered build is incredibly strong and efficient when it specializes in one thing, but it fundamentally relies on evolving species into stronger ones, which makes sudden pivots extremely difficult. I don’t even have any <Faith> right now, so even though there are plenty of life-forms I want to evolve, I’m forced to leave a lot of them alone.”
Eventually, there would come a point when even the jelly legion I’d scattered everywhere could be destroyed by a civilization’s own internal capabilities.
Of course, that wasn’t now.
In the next world, and maybe even the one after that, I’d probably still win by dropping the jelly legion into the enemy ecosystem and demolishing everything.
By the fourth collision, though, it would start getting a little difficult.
By the fifth, it would be shaky.
By the sixth, the civilization of that world would almost certainly be able to stop the jelly legion on its own.
By the seventh collision—when average levels were around 7, the higher ones were 8 or 9, and even the low end was still 5—there wouldn’t be any civilization or world left that couldn’t respond to ecosystem destruction caused by jelly deployment.
They could simply throw manpower at it and physically clear the infestation away.
They could eliminate it with magic.
They could advance their technology enough to analyze jelly biology, or find a way to eradicate them.
At worst, they could even use divine power to evolve predators specialized in hunting jellies.
“So you’re not saying you’ll build this glorious ecosystem and then lose spectacularly in the seventh battle. Are you finally going to build a civilization?”
No.
Why were you so obsessed with civilization-building?
Winning through ecosystem destruction wasn’t the only strategy.
There were other strategies for that stage.
Anyway, I put a fair amount of work into building the freshwater ecosystem.
Removing the water plants and introducing [Waterweed Jelly] without causing a mass die-off among the original life-forms was a pretty tedious balancing act.
At the same time, I had to keep checking the state of the nectar oasis, make sure the two ecosystems didn’t start exchanging life in ways that would damage either one, remove the livestock that had been eating water plants, and slightly modify the animals and birds native to Oswald Desert so they could eat jellies too...
And while I was in the middle of that cleanup work, a strange thought occurred to me.
“Hey. Something just occurred to me. Where exactly is the water in Oswald Oasis coming from? With the sun beating down like this, shouldn’t it have dried up a long time ago? Is it magic?”
“First of all, to be precise, the official term isn’t ‘magic.’ It’s ‘Mysticism.’”
Ma. Gic.
“Anyway, as for the answer... if you adjust your god’s-eye view and look underground, I think you’ll understand.”
So I lowered my viewpoint and looked underground.
And I couldn’t help being startled.
An oasis, in its natural form, is created when groundwater accumulated from rain over tens of thousands of years rises to the surface in the desert.
The scale differs, but the mechanism isn’t all that different from a spring or a hot spring.
And in Oswald’s world, there was an enormous groundwater layer.
《Aquifer LV.1: A terrain feature that stores the <Water> resource underground. It stores rain falling across the world, or water-aspect mana. It naturally grows as the world expands, but can also shrink if overdrawn.》
Huh.
Oswald really had gotten an incredible starting terrain.
He probably wouldn’t have had to worry about water for the entire duration of the game.
“You’re the one who ended his game in a single match.”
That wasn’t the point.
With this much water, it might be worth merging the nectar oasis and Oswald’s lake in the long term.
That would create an enormous wetland.
One side of it would be an ecosystem filled with nectar diluted almost to freshwater.
The other side would still be packed with relatively concentrated nectar.
So then.
Should I try to use the Rock Jelly line to break through the desert that physically separated the two?
Build a canal, in other words.
“If you raised a civilization, they could do that pretty quickly...”
Ah.
No, that wouldn’t work.
I had neither <Faith> nor <Politics> right now, which meant I had no way to issue commands to life-forms.
All I could do was wait for natural expansion to eventually merge the two isolated ecosystems on its own.
“Why not just create a devout, highly social species?”
Still, this had been a worthwhile discovery.
Satisfied, I surveyed my cramped little ecosystem.
There was still quite a bit of time left before the next world collision, so with a little more maintenance, it ought to be fine...
And then, suddenly, I had a strange feeling.
Oswald’s oasis had water rising to the surface because an aquifer existed underground.
Then by what mechanism did the 《Nectar Spring》 produce nectar?
Back in the game, it had just been one of those things that naturally leveled up, so I’d accepted it without thinking too hard about it.
But now that I considered it, it was an extremely unnatural terrain feature.
Using the function that let me see underground, I examined the source that produced the 《Nectar Spring》.
《Nectar Spring》 LV.4: A terrain feature that produces nectar. It continuously absorbs surrounding mana and refines it into nectar.》
Not this shallow explanation.
I wanted to know the actual mechanism by which this terrain produced nectar—a high-density energy source.
Unlike in the game, if there was a real mechanism behind it, then maybe I could make use of it.
I condensed <Divinity> and examined the principle.
And what I discovered was horrifying.
《Nectar Spring》 LV.4: A terrain feature that produces nectar. It continuously absorbs surrounding mana and refines it into nectar.
Detailed Explanation: A pure essence containing the energy of life. A terrain feature that produces nectar. It converts <Mana>, the purest energy in the world, into the energy called <Life>. A fragment of the being once called a god. Even now, with that god’s body shattered into pieces, it continues producing the energy that would have been supplied to the god’s body.》
“This is real?”
The Angel answered as casually as if it were nothing.
“Yes. It is a fragment of a god. Not only nectar, but many of the world’s mysteries and forms of divinity are like that. The player’s <Divinity> authority is nothing more than an imitation of that true god.”
No.
That wasn’t what I meant.
I didn’t care about the true god, its fragments, or any of that.
What mattered was that this meant the thing was basically an organ operating through a biological mechanism.
I used a technique on the 《Nectar Spring》 that had never once crossed my mind before.
“Huh? Wait a second. Player? What are you doing right now?”
<Evolution>.
Light burst out.
It felt like all the divinity I possessed was being sucked away.
The 《Nectar Spring》 greedily devoured my divinity, then began shining with even more light than I had poured into it.
Flash!
And then—
「This is not an appropriate target for <Evolution>.」
My divinity returned.
I was a little disappointed.
Behind me, the Angel started talking in a tone that suggested this should have been obvious to anyone with common sense.
“Of course it didn’t work. You can’t take an organ that’s been separated from the main body, evolve it, and turn it into a new organism.”
“You can propagate plants from cuttings.”
“Not this one.”
I was deeply disappointed.
I’d thought I might have stumbled onto a completely broken build.
“At that point, you’d be better off just creating an intelligent species—”
“Ah? Wait a second.”
“What is it? You suddenly look like you’ve had another terrible idea.”
What do you mean terrible?
I recalled a function I’d assumed I would never need for the entire game.
A function that could explain bizarre fantasy existences that couldn’t be accounted for by biological mechanisms alone.
The condition for using this technique was that the target had to possess <Mysticism>, or else <Life> or something equivalent to it.
Once again, I consumed a large amount of <Divinity> and activated the technique.
「You are using <Grant Intelligence> on 《Nectar Spring》.」
“Huh?”
Together with the Angel’s confusion, it felt like all my divinity was drained away again.
Throb—!
The 《Nectar Spring》 reacted to the divinity and began to pulse.