Chapter 26
Chapter 26
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 26
Chapter Title: Intermission 1. Primordial Body
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When the seas had only just formed, and magma still surged across the newly shaped land,
"it" cleaved through the ocean of distant stars and settled upon this planet.
No one knew why it had come to this world out of the countless planets, but that astonishing coincidence granted this planet a uniqueness amid the vast multitude.
The lifeless planet Pyros was still a place where the oceans boiled furiously. The first organism to alight there shook the crust and roiled the seas, yet it caused no trouble at all.
With not a single creature living on the land, who would care if the crust crumbled?
With nothing alive in the seas to be swept away, who would notice if they overflowed or withered?
Only one solitary lifeform existed. That ancient thing, unharmed by quakes or tidal waves, bobbed upon the scalding waters, contemplating its future.
It possessed neither reason nor intelligence. Yet it had something that could be called thought.
There is nothing here for me to eat.
It wasn't pondering with intellect, but the instinct shared by all life reached its conclusion.
The planet Pyros held not a trace of organic matter. Nothing but inorganic substances filled the world—materials incapable of harboring or birthing life.
The Primordial Body could metabolize inorganics into organics, but it wasn't particularly impressive. That colossal entity had not evolved in such a manner.
Far in the future, the first primordial scholar, Gellie, would name it the Primordial Body, so let us call it that as well.
The Primordial Body employed its various sense organs to discern that this planet lacked any organics it could consume—like proteins, for instance.
It could draw energy from magma. It could even metabolize nuclear materials, devouring uranium and the like from the outer core to gain power through fission.
But while that allowed survival, it permitted no growth. Growth, of course, required building blocks to construct its body.
Those were substances obtained in minuscule traces from magma, no matter how much it consumed—things difficult to synthesize.
Proteins, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids... and so on. The so-called macromolecules that comprised life.
The Primordial Body was far too vast and sluggish to synthesize vast quantities of complex organics from inorganics.
It delved into its instincts, unearthing the solution imprinted in its genes. The Primordial Body began scattering portions of its cells across the planet.
Its cells, carried by the hot seas, mostly perished, unable to adapt to the environment—nine times out of ten, at least.
But one in a hundred, or one in a thousand,
even one in ten million,
some cells adapted to the surroundings and began to "live."
Drawing energy from hydrothermal vents on the seafloor, seizing nearby inorganics and metabolizing them into organics,
they mutated into the primordial lifeforms the Primordial Body desired. No longer mere parts of it, they began living as independent organisms.
At first, they numbered but a handful, yet life multiplies exponentially when conditions align.
A single cell dividing every twenty minutes yields 68.7 billion in twelve hours. Soon the cells blanketed the seas; some ventured onto land, others drifted through the air.
Yet no matter how they changed, their origin remained the Primordial Body.
Some cells devoured others and grew more complex;
some perished, leaving only self-replicating nucleic acids behind, becoming viruses. Some evolved to parasitize others; some became predators.
Certain ones, like their ancestor, advanced along the path of metabolizing inorganics. Others harnessed energy from the light descending from the sky, producing oxygen as a byproduct.
That oxygen slew countless cells of the Primordial Body, yet it allowed far more to flourish. The atmosphere stabilized, the seas cooled, the environment shifted, and truly complex organisms began to emerge.
But every beginning begets an end.
One day, the Primordial Body awoke. It did not refuse the feast so bountifully prepared during its slumber.
Every cell succumbed to the homing instinct and was consumed. All the organics they had amassed were duly offered up. The first mass extinction occurred dramatically—and ended just as abruptly.
Sated from gorging on organics, the Primordial Body slumbered once more, while some cells survived unclaimed.
They proliferated anew, reclaiming the seas,
blanketing the skies once again, evolving into even greater complexity this time.
Animals and plants beyond the microbial scale began to appear—crabs and snails spreading far and wide. Occasionally the Primordial Body would awaken and devour most of them, yet it always spared some. Those survivors repopulated, soon filling the emptied niches.
In time, beasts larger than elephants dominated;
at others, sharks dozens of meters long preyed on even vaster whales.
The mythos of all those creatures amounted to nothing more than a meaningless, hollow past. They left no record of their history, and as always, their end was the Primordial Body.
Yet the ceaselessly evolving cells selected a possibility even the Primordial Body had not foreseen.
By chance, a creature akin to the ancestor of monkeys was born with a developed brain. It discovered the use of fire and spread the method of cooking meat among its kin.
With less energy spent digesting cooked meat, the tribe evolved to invest that surplus in their brains.
This was no deliberate evolution. It was simply more rational for survival, propelled by natural selection.
At the pinnacle of that evolution bloomed the flower of intelligence. Lifeforms walked paths the Primordial Body neither had nor took.
"Why must we merge with that thing?"
The power to resist the cycle the Primordial Body imposed. The miracle shining against instinct. Intelligent life.
True intelligence defies the dictates of genes—that is what makes it intelligence. Some rejected the cycle, and the Primordial Body took notice.
To it, the advent of intelligent life was merely a glitch.
But glitches can be fixed. In the next cycle, "harvesters" appeared.
Vast organisms, crafted directly by the Primordial Body—like its own organs—incapable of being touched by any earthly force, devoured the resistors. Yet once kindled, the light of intelligence did not extinguish.
Even if civilizations fell, intelligence endured, persisting onward. When one era's intelligences went extinct, new intelligent species arose in the next.
"Ah."
This terrifying secret lay hidden behind profound veils, never to be unveiled,
until someone, for the first time, peeked beneath its vast shroud.
"The North Pole... isn't a continent after all."
The one who revealed that the vast icy expanse known as the North Pole was, in truth, a single organism.
More precisely, that it was merely ice and snow atop that organism's back.
The primordial scholar Gellie, studying ancient origins, realized this astonishing truth and shuddered.
The North Pole was no continent—nor was it the sea. It was a nightmare truth transcending all known common sense.
In the endless struggle between intelligences and the Primordial Body—no, the ceaseless predation—intelligent life at last identified its true enemy.
It was an unprecedented event across countless histories, one that could herald a reversal. Yet before he could share this revelation, intelligent life itself kicked away the opportunity.
"Gellie. Why did you kill the princess? She trusted you more than anyone!"
Deep malice and conspiracy ensnared Gellie.
The mastermind behind that vile plot might have deemed burying a single scholar a trivial matter, but in truth, it cleaved history and fate asunder. Unwittingly, that figure set all destinies in motion.
"We shall judge you as a traitor to the royal family."
No. You are not the ones to judge.
The barely escaped scholar returned to the North Pole, vowing vengeance upon the world.
Life that, like the Primordial Body, had crossed the sea of stars.
Before dragons arrived and departed this land, the Demon King had existed.
It was the moment of birth for the ancient Demon King, Grimudo.
*****
Long, long ago, in an age before an era even began,
there was a man wronged.
By this era's standards, he would be an ancient.
—But I didn't do it.
Framed and betrayed by comrades, he was abandoned by all.
He plummeted from the heights into the abyss. No one believed him.
By the time it was revealed that the charges were all lies, that one human had already become a devil.
—Have you finally come to apologize? When I longed for it most, you refused to take my hand. Now you extend yours and speak of forgiveness and mercy—what should I say?
—Gellie. Please, please don't. It's all our fault. Kill us instead.
—Too late. Far too late. I am Grimudo. Your apocalypse.
The most promising and greatest scholar.
The primordial scholar Gellie returned one day as the Demon King. Taking an ancient word for "apocalypse" as his name, he borrowed the power of the entity he discovered to topple civilization.
—Intelligence is bondage, thought is malice, and cognition is betrayal.
The power of the organism he himself had named the Primordial Body—one that existed before civilization stirred.
—Thus, only by discarding thought, ideology, even personality, and regressing to mere beasts, will humanity cease birthing malice and bring all tragedies to an end. I shall make it so. With the power of the Primordial Body, the mother who birthed us all!
All life stems from one ancestor and returns to one ancestor.
The primordial scholar seized upon this truth, betraying intelligence to side with the Primordial Body. Unaware though he was, he became a traitor in the long war called history.
In the end, the root of every cell and nucleic acid in this world was the Primordial Body's, so he developed a method to revert intelligences to non-intelligences by exploiting that fact.
The polymorph curse, derived from the Primordial Body's cells, turned every "human" of that era into beasts. Some became dogs, others fish.
"Behold this beautiful world. A savage world, honest for its lack of even a speck of malice!"
The Demon King spread his arms, worshiping the new world he had wrought.
When he realized it was meaningless madness, Grimudo fell silent.
As he desired, all intelligence was eradicated, ushering in an era of beasts not even worthy of the name savage. He succeeded, but that triumph crumbled one day.
The Primordial Body reclaimed its cells once more. Cataclysm engulfed the world.
A feat beyond even his utmost efforts. The Primordial Body achieved it effortlessly, merely by awakening.
When it slumbered again, its cells spread across the reverted primordial environment.
They co-evolved with survivors, birthing new life, and intelligence sprouted anew.
—We... weren't the first.
Grimudo shuddered. And despaired.
—Nor the last.
He had thought himself the user of the Primordial Body,
but in truth, it simply held no interest in him.
How many civilizations had risen on this star? He did not know.
Yet even one that flourished for thousands of years left traces obliterated by the relentless ages that followed.
Before time, the mightiest force in this world, all things crumbled equally—even ruins faded and decayed.
—How many times has this meaningless cycle repeated? Hundreds of millions of years? Billions? How many creatures... were born and vanished in that span? How can this world be so cruel?
The ancient human who called himself Demon King, Grimudo, recoiled in horror at the power of that mere mass of flesh—neither good nor evil.
He who prided himself on incomparable might was less than dust compared to the Primordial Body.
The Demon King knelt and despaired. From that day, he ceased calling himself Demon King.
A Demon King without purpose is no Demon King,
leaving only a single despairing scholar to wander the darkness.
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