Chapter 316
Chapter 316
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 15
Chapter Title: Can One Who Has Seen the End of the World Plant an Apple Tree? (21)
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There’s a saying in the world called the “butterfly effect.” It comes from some guy named Edward Norton Lorenz, and it’s basically nonsense like “Can the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil cause a tornado in Texas?” In rough terms, it means that tiny changes in initial conditions can have massive effects on the whole system.
In GG, there’s a saying called the “dragon effect.” It means that if you piss off a dragon in the West Continent, a storm can rage in a straight line all the way to the East Continent, smashing everything to bits.
And the ones I’ve stuffed into my gut are exactly that—the dragon hatchlings, the most precious things in the world to those terrifying figures.
“Heh, hehehehe... Ottoman. The stars are... so beautiful...”
“Yeah... they sure are pretty. Truly pretty... It wouldn’t be such a bad thing to end up as one of them...”
“Right? Roh Haram will save us a good spot, won’t he?”
“From now on, use honorifics... We’ll be meeting him soon and paying our respects...”
And so, Ottoman and the Professor gazed endlessly at the night sky settling over the desert in darkness, wallowing in sorrow. They took solace in the fact that the finale for the hero of reversal, the Professor hero, would be the most spectacular death in the world.
Until Yggdrasil, having finished scouting, returned and slapped them across the cheeks as an act of kindness—they wandered aimlessly among the constellations.
****
“Thank you.”
“No need. Even in teaching, there are times when the teacher learns from the student.”
Yggdrasil’s affectionate slap shook the Professor’s skull so fiercely that he and Ottoman could finally calm down, their faces swollen to match. It was the kind of calm you’d expect from civilians isolated in the middle of a burning building.
“...Come on, Ottoman? We’ll get through this one too. Right?”
“O-of course! You bet! Who are you? The hero of the Great Church of Luminance, the one and only saint directly under Roh Haram’s gaze! Think of all the trials we’ve overcome! Wars! Ancient specters! Mad wizards and the champions of the steppes! Even a witch ascended to godhood! You’ve beaten back a legion of mighty foes with your bare hands! Just like always, we’ll pull through this time too! Absolutely! I trust you completely!”
“Thank you. Then... let’s sort this out. First, the Senika and Aldar siblings are the noblest beings in the desert, revered by all desert folk. The tribal lords want them in their camps for public support, and...”
....Gulp.
“They’re presumed to be the last descendants of the ancient Dragon Kingdom.”
“...”
“...”
“Cough.”
In the end, unable to bear the weight of the truth, Ottoman vomited his sedative and collapsed.
Dragons. Creatures where even encountering one makes you reflexively recite your last words, and there was a whole kingdom of them.
Whoa!
And down below on our deck, those two lizards clinging to Laxasha—they’re their descendants. Over 340 years old, the long-lived of the long-lived!
Whoa!!
And I had them right up against my side, called them lizards, buried them in my gut, pounded on my bloated belly, and made them a mess of tears and snot!
Whoa!!!!
Yggdrasil, catching the falling Ottoman, furrowed her brow—which never wrinkled even on the battlefield—and spoke.
“...Professor. I have a question.”
“What?”
“Do you... perhaps derive pleasure from bewildering those around you?”
Even the composed half-elf couldn’t accept this one; cold sweat beaded on her calm face.
“They’re dragons.”
“I know.”
“Dragons are transcendent beings so taboo that even uttering their name has been forbidden since ancient times.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know what records humans pass down, but even in little Carnean village, there are tales like the one where a dragon kidnapped a princess, found her unpalatable, and returned half of her—killing not just the princess but the queen from shock—or the one where it turned every living thing in a village into puppies and doomed it to ruin, or the one where it reshaped a mountain range, tangling borders and sparking war between two kingdoms...”
“...I feel like I’m gonna pass out, so can you stop?”
“Honestly, I have no idea why we’re still alive right now.”
“Me neither.”
Heavenly disasters. Calamities incarnate.
Dragons wield word-magic, commanding an enormous share of GG’s world. Word-magic means their spoken words become commands to the world itself. In a way, it’s the ultimate upgrade to magic.
If some god ordered a million followers to “scoop a shovelful of dirt and pile it before Turan’s gates,” soon a mountain of a million shovelfuls would rise there. That’s how divine miracles work—a million prayers converging to move the world.
A dragon does it alone. Their very existence equals the combined will of millions of humans.
Back in the day, I’d just go “Whoa, total cheat character~” but after seeing the World Tree and the underbelly of this world, I can accept it differently now.
Maybe dragons are like the admin’s “controllers” for emergencies? That kind of suspicion.
****
Let’s think about the World Tree.
The World Tree. Clearly a game entity, yet also an AI close to human with the admin ID “World Tree.” It was obviously an extraordinary being at a glance, yet even it conformed to the system’s format and compromised.
That means even admins can’t arbitrarily tweak or tune the world. They just have more authority, still operating under the world’s rules.
If I were a developer, wouldn’t I plant some device to control an overly bloated, freewheeling world to fit the “developer’s” taste?
And if such a tool existed, what could wield authority surpassing millions of free wills alone—better suited than dragons?
‘Admins are seen as the layer tuning players for Andrey Gedroits’s goal, to create what they call [Completers]. If admins manage players, then dragons might be the layer tuning the world? Like external admins/player managers and internal admins/world managers?’
A world built on purpose. Not a game for fun, but to create something. Two management tools for that: admins and dragons.
But like the World Tree, dragons—as records confirm—are free-willed, not mechanical. Many even acted against the world’s benefit.
Where did it go wrong? If it’s for creating something, is this level of irrational difficulty necessary? It’s been nearly eight years since the apocalypse— is GG’s stagnant progress really what Gedroits intended?
World Tree, dragons.
Dragon Kingdom, ancient gods.
Like stars in the night sky, the Professor connected the scattered points of doubt. Twisting, mismatched, tangled, knotted. There must be an answer somewhere. What picture do these dots form?
Players, NPCs.
Gedroits’s game and the wasteland.
Since meeting the World Tree, he’d clearly felt himself drawing closer to whatever was hidden in this world.
Player Professor and hatchlings.
.
.
.
.
.
‘Fuck it, seriously.’
Truth of the world be damned—where’s the time for that? A dragon crisis is right on his doorstep.
The chain of thoughts looped back to square one: “So what the fuck went wrong?” So. What now with these two nuclear bombs? How...
Splash. Chomp. Chomp. Splash—
Then, an odd sound reached the Professor’s ears. Something wet slapping the deck. The gasps—huh, heh—sounded like Ottoman and Yggdrasil.
Probably some lookout who’d been away too long, he brushed it off. His dragon-induced delusions were too vast and deep to focus on anything else.
So he stayed lost in thought even as it approached.
“What are you thinking so deeply about?”
“Oh, just... if dying to a dragon would be a good death or not?”
“My, such terrifying thoughts.”
.
.
.
.
“Gah! Dragon!”
“Grr, grrruk!”
The Professor, who’d answered thoughtlessly, startled when he realized the questioner was the very source of his torment.
Aldar, pretending composure as he climbed the mast, flinched at the sudden movement of the ‘predator’ twice his size.
“You two look awfully alike right now?”
As Laxasha, following Aldar, giggled at the Professor and Aldar stuck to opposite sides of the lookout.
Perhaps embarrassed at losing his dignity, Aldar—still wagging his tail—spoke first.
“Uh... I came because I felt bad about showing such a foolish side during the day and mistreating my life savior.”
“Oh, no, not at all. But... what about your... other sibling?”
“Mm. Sorry. That child still hasn’t recovered from the shock of being... inside your gut...”
“Ahahaha... I-is that so...”
“Ahem, ahem! Yeah... that’s how it is...”
.
.
.
.
An awkward silence fell. Aldar faced an opponent who still sparked faint fear; the Professor faced a monstrously terrifying nuke.
Under the darkening sky, from the lookout overlooking the desert, the muscled saint and one hatchling twisted uncomfortably—until the Professor spoke, thanks to his Confucian genes: “She’s 299 years older than me, so the junior should break the ice—”
“Uh... elder.”
“Y-yeah... sure...”
“If I may be so bold, with my limited knowledge...”
....Gulp.
....Grip.
“Are you... by any chance... a hatchling of the beings called... dr, dragons...?”
Clench!
He said it! He blurted it out!
As the Professor gritted his teeth unconsciously at the unbearable question, Yggdrasil and Ottoman gripped sweaty hands.
Aldar turned to Laxasha, nodded when she did, then tapped the floor shyly with his tail.
“To some extent... yes.”
“Huh, huuuh...”
Thud.
Ottoman finally collapsed under the pressure; the half-elf’s pupils shook like an earthquake, unshakable even in war.
Aldar’s voice grew smaller, as if embarrassed by their reactions.
“My ancestors and Senika’s were indeed called that. But now... we’ve lost all special powers, all great wisdom. We’re just long-lived reptiles, nothing more.”
“So that means...”
“We’re useless relics, only to be protected.”
“No, I’ve told you many times, you don’t need to blame yourself—”
“No, Laxasha. They need to know. That contrary to what they think, in this desert, I’m like a crown being traded around.”
The blue lizard coiled his tail gloomily, Laxasha alighting lightly beside him.
....Come to think of it.
They said after the ancient gods fell, they dwindled under human persecution until only these siblings remained.
If they were the natural-disaster dragons I’d feared, they’d have rampaged insanely instead of dying out. So... they had no power.
‘Dragon Kingdom. Once rulers of the entire desert, reduced to mere long-lived lizards...’
“A curse. Or a seal.”
Seconds after Aldar’s meek confession, the Professor’s response made his huge eyes widen.
“Did you tell him beforehand?”
“Nope. That’s just how he is.”
“How do you know our clan’s secret history, passed only among us...”
“It clicked when I thought about it. Even the legends. The ‘Sun enraged at losing its mate’ ‘hurling its own corpse at the kingdom.’ For myths, that’s awfully emotional phrasing? A god doing a suicide bombing. Sounds emotional. And myths are weathered by time, edges worn smooth—yet even in those eroded records, that shines through. On the day, centuries ago, the Sun God might’ve been roaring curses.”
Whether gods feel emotions is debatable.
Anyway, it meant the ancient gods and Dragon Kingdom clashed and mutually destroyed.
The Dragon Kingdom’s heirs lost physical prowess, innate world-rights, even symbol-wings, crawling as lizards.
Ancient gods—Sun and Moon—fell to dragon attacks: one went dormant, the other exploded with the kingdom.
Roughly that.
“The gods and dragons had a massive fight, both sides wiped out. The aftermath turned the desert into this harsh hellhole.”
Something itchy, on the tip of his tongue...
.
.
.
.
Ah. That.
Slap!
“Gerk!”
“Oh, sorry. Thought of a question.”
As Aldar—seemingly faint-hearted—rubbed his chest, the Professor carefully chose words.
“Elder. Do you happen to know... why the Dragon Kingdom and ancient gods fought?”
The link between pre-Aldar doubts and post-meeting ones.
Legends say the desert kingdom’s king coveted the moon and brought it down.
Meaning the world-tuners’ leader desired the moon-god’s authority/power/position—whatever—and attacked.
Why, why did those ancient super lizard-birds act against their created purpose, disrupting world harmony?
“....Grrr.”
Pinpointed by the Professor’s question, Aldar clamped his mouth. After fidgeting, the hatchling spoke firmly, resolute.
“Our clan... was fated to tune the world.”
“And?”
“And? That’s it.”
Aldar stated it firmly, as if it were obvious.
“When a dragon truly unleashes power, it means shattering world order. The moon couldn’t surpass its innate imperfection and went mad. A being of creation’s laws gripped by mania, forced to act. Our ancestors, world-tuners, failed to understand, got caught in the sun’s mania while tuning it, and perished together. That’s all.”
Aldar’s firm voice. Most legends are elliptical metaphors, hard to parse, but this was clear.
....Difference between dragons and World Tree. If World Tree is extrinsic—dev-made player manager—dragons are white blood cells. Intrinsic, injected to normalize the world.
‘Couldn’t surpass innate imperfection.’
Imperfection. Heard it before. World Tree’s self-description.
[Gedroits Company—Resilient Superintelligence ver.09 Completed Incomplete Consciousness Body. Official model unnamed.]
Completed incomplete consciousness. Perfect AI with unpredictable random circuits to constantly challenge machine perfection.
Thus, imperfection compromises into personality, humanity—yielding the near-human AI called World Tree.
....And World Tree said it succeeded amid many ‘failures.’
Gods mad from imperfection.
World’s self-correction.
A sigh escaped the Professor’s lips like an answer.
“The ancient gods... Sun and Moon... were AIs assigned tasks but never completed.”
AIs remaining machines, short of human.
In a world of countless lives interacting, rife with human variables. Gods without humanity.
Gedroits placed them as GG’s top-authority deities.
Intrinsic game entities. Dragons... killed them.
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