Humans Are Trash
Long ago, in the forests of Africa, there lived tailless apes.
Among them, the ones dwelling in the richest, most abundant territories evolved into a species called bonobos. These are real animals—though they sound like something out of a fantasy—capable of resolving every conflict and dispute through “love” rather than violence.
Meanwhile, the apes living in the resource-scarce forests fought bitterly over what little they had and gradually turned violent. They came to relish war, slaughter, torture, and the oppression of the weak. Those were the chimpanzees.
And the weaker apes, unable to endure the chimpanzees’ persecution any longer, fled their painful forest and emerged onto the treeless plains.
Because they had to walk long distances, their bodies kept shedding fur to stay cool.
Walking on two legs was more energy-efficient, so they began to do that.
And with their hands now free, they made tools, lit fires, and built civilizations.
That is humanity. Do you understand what this means? Humans are, by birth, a trash-tier species that even lost to chimpanzees.
This race began its existence by getting beaten and driven out of a comfortable forest. They grow insidious toward anyone who seems weaker than themselves, and when they possess abundance, they strut arrogantly and never hesitate to trample others underfoot.
There’s no need to speak of good and evil. It’s simply how they were biologically designed.
Humans are trash. Not philosophically—biologically.
In a mere twenty thousand years they triggered a mass extinction that completely wrecked the ecosystem they lived in, yet they feel no remorse. Even now they continue to ravage the Earth in real time, leaving the future world to clean up their mess.
Born an orphan abandoned by his parents, I grew up enduring relentless persecution and humiliation. At some point I decided the source of my suffering wasn’t myself or the world, but the human species itself.
I’m human too, but if I had been born as a creature with significantly lower intelligence, I would have been freed from this pain and anguish. I would have lived pursuing only the simplest, most animalistic desires. Being born as one of those bonobos I mentioned earlier wouldn’t have been bad at all.
While analyzing humans out of hatred for them, I ended up earning tens of billions by cleverly using cryptocurrency—the very embodiment of human madness. That was when my loathing reached its peak. Even total strangers started showing up, claiming to be my biological parents and demanding I lend them money.
I wanted to kill them all, but civilization’s pesky invention called “law” set limits. So I simply quit my worthless job and went into seclusion in the countryside.
After all, in this era everything necessary for survival could be delivered via internet shopping, and my only hobby was gaming anyway.
The game I played was The Fantasy World Creator. A fairly standard simulation game. You create life forms and civilizations in a fantasy world full of magic and play around with them. You could fight other players, or simply enjoy building your own perfect world.
Someone might ask why a person with tens of billions would play a game that costs three hundred thousand won normally—or thirty thousand on sale. Well, what can I say? It is what it is.
I’m not sure if you’ve heard of the real-world project called Biosphere 2 that was carried out on Earth.
It was an attempt to create a closed artificial ecosystem in the Arizona desert that would recycle all its internal resources. (Incidentally, the biologists behind it failed because they didn’t realize that the lime in the concrete was absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide. What was supposed to last a hundred years collapsed in two.)
If I had hundreds of billions of dollars instead of won, that’s the kind of thing I would have done. Or maybe I would have bought a plot of land the size of a national park somewhere in Africa and spent my days observing animals. Or built an aquarium just for myself.
But since I didn’t, I satisfied myself through this game instead.
And so today, once again, I had created a single ecosystem that achieved perfect equilibrium without any humans in it. By this point my total playtime probably exceeded fifty thousand hours.
Suddenly the computer screen flashed. From it emerged a humanoid female figure radiating an unidentifiable holy light.
The being enveloped in that gentle radiance slowly opened her mouth.
“Huh?”
“Sorry. I’ve always been preparing for a moment like this, so I got a little impatient… Anyway, O God of the Otherworld who bestows the qualifications of an isekai deity upon neither a politician, a businessman, nor an ecology PhD, but specifically a gaming shut-in—may I take your place?”
I quietly waited for Her Angelic Highness to continue.
You will now become the god of an otherworld different from this Earth—the god of The Fantasy World Creator.
You will retain every authority, function, and interface you enjoyed as a player. In fact, you will be able to wield even freer and more daring powers.
All mechanisms that existed in the game will still apply, but because this is now real, some interactions may function differently.
You will begin with a small world containing only a single environment. By fighting and defeating players from other worlds, you will absorb their worlds and civilizations, gradually building a larger domain.
If you ultimately defeat all competitors and complete a colossal world, you will reign as its eternal god.
If you are defeated along the way, your soul will be annihilated and cease to exist.
Do you accept this proposal…
The angel shrugged.
“If I win, I become a god. If I lose, one less human in the world. Doesn’t matter either way.”
The angel’s hand slipped into my body. My physical form remained behind while only my soul was dragged into the otherworld inside the monitor.
My soul, which still retained a human shape, turned its head. I saw my human body collapse from the monitor and tumble onto the floor.
Leaving that sight behind, I followed the angel forward, looking forward to the life of a god that was about to begin.
When I opened my eyes, what I saw was a vast cosmos filled with a gigantic sun and countless worlds.
The worlds orbiting the enormous sun varied in size, reminiscent of planets. If I wasn’t mistaken, they weren’t perfectly spherical; some were flattened, others looked like plains with towering mountains—as if entire worlds had been sliced apart.
Billions of such planets—no, worlds—traced different orbits around the sun.
Welcome. This is the universe in which you must fight.
It’s exactly like the game interface.
Correct.
Huh? I didn’t say anything—ah. Right. I don’t have a body anymore…
Yes. I can now read your thoughts. Though not your deepest inner feelings. In any case, you will be assigned one world in this universe to manage. When worlds intersect and meet, a collision between the two begins.
You must then pit the races and civilizations of the colliding worlds against each other. Whoever seizes dominance over the opponent’s world wins… It’s exactly the same as the game rules, so it’s simple, right? The player who remains as the master of the last surviving world is the victor!
Hmm.
There are currently exactly 1,073,741,824 worlds. It may sound like a lot, but since half are eliminated each round, after thirty matches it will be “over.”
Are there that many players too? Where did they find a billion people?
They were gathered from every dimension, not just your world.
I see… So it’s an interdimensional world tournament. Must’ve been a pain to develop.
Hehe. Every world has a different environment, but they are all “balanced.” The world you receive is random. Is that acceptable?
Doesn’t matter. As long as it’s balanced. Wait, I can’t seem to think in polite speech anymore.
Why worry about such trivial details? You are a god now. Speak to a mere angel however you wish. I will continue to observe the game and provide answers and advice whenever you have questions. Please do as you like.
Then, I shall now guide you to the world you will manage.
After a blink of consciousness, I found myself looking down at the entire world I had been given.
It was a strange sight. Instead of focusing on any single thing, I was simultaneously concentrating on the whole world at once. A perspective impossible for human eyes—the true gaze of a god.
The world’s surface area was roughly ten square kilometers. In other words, a square of land about 3.16 kilometers on each side. If you reached the edge, you would emerge on the opposite side.
At first glance, the surface of this world was nothing short of despair.
The entire world was dark brown rock. There was no water. No grass. No trees, no insects, no soil.
And yet the surface temperature was horrifically high. Half the day was a scorching noon above fifty degrees, while the other half was a night cold enough to freeze you to death.
In a word, it was a desert.
A world score of twenty. There was no life at all, yet strangely there was a Mystery score. That meant something had to be here.
Searching, I found a single glass-mirror-like object on the desert surface. Focusing on it revealed a small spring about fifty meters in diameter. It was an inverted cone that narrowed as it descended, reaching a depth of roughly five meters.
When I examined it, an explanation appeared just like in the game.
Nectar: The pure essence containing the energy of life. Any organism can consume it, and it functions as the highest-efficiency resource for any organism.
Nectar Well LV.0: A terrain feature that produces Nectar. It continuously refines Nectar by absorbing ambient magical power.
Around the well, thanks to the life energy radiated by the Nectar, both temperature and humidity were moderate. Any creature should be able to thrive here successfully.
An interesting world. Most of it is a desert where life cannot survive, yet the area around that well is more bountiful than anywhere else.
In the game, Nectar had been an ultra-high-efficiency resource that almost nothing could match.
A world that continuously produced such a top-tier resource, yet contained no living creatures whatsoever. This grotesque world was where I would begin.
The game will begin the moment you create your first life form. Given your abundant experience as a gamer, the conventional strategy for a world like this would be to first establish an ecosystem around the Nectar Well, then build a magic-centered civilization from that foothold. Since the Nectar Well can be expanded indefinitely as long as there is sufficient magical power.
That was the normal approach. Without thinking, I was about to use the Creation ability that players—now gods—possessed to start making plants.
But then I remembered something the angel had said when she pulled me into this world.
“Wait a moment, Angel.”
Oh? You’re asking a direct question? Go ahead, ask me anything.
“You explained that because this is now reality instead of a game, the degree of freedom has increased. How much higher is it exactly? In the original game I could only create three categories—plants, animals, and monsters. Can I now create any living thing? In other words, are creatures that don’t fall into those three categories also possible?”
The angel made a mischievous face and nodded as if to say, “Go ahead and try.”
I don’t know what kind of powerful life form you’re planning to make, but you can create any creature so long as the world’s physical laws permit it.
“I see. Then I shall decide on the first life form to create. The bonus Trait that gets added to the very first creature you make is still in effect, correct?”
Of course.
The angel looked like she was mocking me. I could read that gaze.
She was probably thinking that plenty of people had already tried new strategies after hearing about the increased freedom, only to fail miserably. After all, the game had always presented only efficient and commonsense choices.
But I had always felt that even with dozens of mods installed, the game’s freedom was still too low to create the ecosystem I truly wanted. If I was going to make life, it should start with something like this.
I focused. The physical laws that composed the universe flowed naturally into my mind. I realized that the creature I wished to create did not contradict those laws, and so I created a single life form.
“Size: three to ten micrometers. A life form that consumes light, heat, minerals, and Nectar in order to grow and reproduce, while producing water and magical power as byproducts.”
Along with the angel’s bewilderment, divinity coalesced, and my first life form was created at the Nectar Well.