The Last Journey
Jumito, who claimed to have found his answer, first turned to me with a request.
“Before I go, there is one thing I would ask of you.”
【I cannot grant your request to preserve this place. Once you leave, it will remain as it is, free for whatever creatures choose to inhabit it.】
“That is not what I ask. Instead, could you provide me with a map of this world?”
【A map?】
“Yes. From what I have seen, you can reshape the terrain at will. Because of that, my homeland has changed beyond recognition, and I have no idea what the outside world looks like now. Would you grant me a map?”
I considered the request for a moment.
【If I grant you a portion of my authority over this world, you could perceive its entirety without moving.】
“I wish to walk the world with my own feet.”
【Is that so? Then it suits me as well. I shall place the rough structure of the world—compiled by my location and terrain avatars—into your mind. You will also be able to edit it as you please.】
After infusing him with divine power and granting the knowledge, Jumito thanked me and began walking through the city he had tended.
The city’s inhabitants were not humans but beasts—wild creatures that had once harbored some intent to resist the Dessert Legion. He had built homes for them and reshaped the very structure of the city so they would not prey upon one another.
Through the fusion of Jumito’s own mysteries and the evolutionary direction I desired, the creatures living here existed in perfect symbiosis, save for the fact that they still required Jumito to build their shelters. Snakes, tigers, foxes, and birds—various predators—cooperated to hunt the Dessert Legion and share the meat.
Jumito surveyed the homes he had made, gathered his belongings, and departed.
He had wanted to take his slingshot, but too much time had passed; the rubber bands had hardened and crumbled. Perhaps that was why the first place he visited was the still-thriving rubber tree grove.
In Mitomok’s world, this had been an immensely important location, and the vast rubber tree forest remained. Only now it was home to Sugar Lumps.
“Uuuu! Intruder!”
The Sugar Lumps charged at the sight of Jumito, but when he glared at them they shrank back. Thanks to his mystery, which could subdue wild beasts, their aggression was suppressed even if they did not submit.
Jumito glanced around the rubber tree habitat filled with Sugar Lumps.
The Sugar Lumps had discovered the rubber tree sap. They chewed it out of boredom, applied it to wounds to prevent infection and bleeding, and even used it to reinforce weapons and armor. That, however, marked the limit of their technology. Neither they nor I knew how to harden the limp, temperature-sensitive sap.
But Jumito knew. Even I was aware that sulfur was added on Earth, yet Jumito mined sulfur and other minerals from a nearby mountain, mixed them, and succeeded in creating rubber as tough and elastic as he desired.
“Ooh! Ooooooh!”
“Amazing. Truly amazing.”
The Sugar Lumps marveled at the stretchy rubber. Jumito attached the new rubber bands to the slingshot frame he had brought from his homeland—the metal had not rusted even after centuries—and tested several shots.
Thwack! Thwack!
Birds fell from the sky, struck by the slingshot. As expected of a former slingshot soldier, his skill had not dulled.
Sugar Lumps gathered and tried to craft crude slingshots from rubber and branches, but their performance fell far short. They approached the tailless Jumito, knelt, and offered reverence—the same posture they used for Yogur-tosoth, though this was merely their own form of worship toward a great being.
“Tailless one. Make this. Give.”
The Sugar Lumps spoke in their crude tongue, clearly fascinated by the slingshot and rubber. Jumito could not understand them and asked me to translate, so I relayed their words.
“If I teach them, will they understand?”
【I cannot say for certain. A structure this simple, they might grasp. Metal smelting, however, would likely be beyond them.】
Jumito listened, then spent a long while gathering and splitting nearby stones.
On one side, he carved a hollow for the proper amount of rubber sap. On the other, he made several indentations for measured quantities of sulfur and other minerals.
He poured rubber sap into the larger section, added sulfur and stones into the smaller ones, mixed everything together, and demonstrated—through a process I did not focus on, as the details were unimportant—how to create the incredibly tough rubber he had first made.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!”
The Martial Sugar Lumps tried it themselves. Sugar Lumps possessed excellent memory—better than humans in that regard alone.
Simple steps. Precise counts of stones and exact amounts of rubber, mixed with identical motions…
The Martial Sugar Lumps succeeded in producing rubber bands.
They were astonished. While they crafted more bands using the mold, Jumito taught them how to make sturdy slingshot frames from the horns and branches of local creatures.
The Sugar Lumps followed his instructions, crafted slingshots, and fired them with great delight.
“Ukkiiiii!”
“Amazing! Amazing! Amazing!”
Praise poured over Jumito. He spread the knowledge to other Sugar Lump tribes nearby, but soon could only laugh bitterly. The Sugar Lumps, with their perfect memory, reproduced exactly what he had shown them—nothing more. No improvements, no innovations. Even mistakes that might have led to progress were suppressed; any Sugar Lump attempting something different was beaten down.
An intelligence capable of maintaining civilization but not creating one. That was what I saw in them.
Jumito spread the slingshot among the Sugar Lumps. As he walked, he noticed a large rock and carved something into it: an image of a tailless monkey spreading culture to tailed monkeys. It resembled a revelation. Just in case, he also inscribed the exact ratio of rubber sap to minerals beneath it.
Would the Sugar Lumps understand symbols? I did not know. They had language, so perhaps they could grasp symbols as well. Yet brains were complicated; some beings could speak and think well yet could not read. If the Sugar Lumps possessed a fundamental neurological issue like dyslexia or an inability to process symbols, they would never understand.
Jumito left the jungle and continued walking across the world.
As he walked, he left subtle traces of his passage. He treated wounded wild animals on the verge of death and rebuilt collapsed nests for the Gamchi. I honestly did not understand why he did these things. What concerned me was that the Sugar Lumps who had begun making slingshots from rubber trees had already split into specialized crafting and hunting castes, engaging in a form of currency exchange using suitable stones and meat.
Was that acceptable…? I had seen research indicating that primates understood the value of labor and goods, but these creatures were simply humans with no creativity, were they not…? Had they already reached a stage before Homo sapiens?
I did not know… If they continued this way, would they simply mass-produce smartphones and cannons through rote memory repetition?
It was not desirable. I wanted to exclude civilization, not have it imitated in some inefficient manner.
What reassured me was that the Sugar Lumps truly lacked creativity and even possessed a culture that rejected creative attempts. They made no effort to improve upon what Jumito had taught them.
Who could say? With enough generations, natural evolution might produce individuals equal to Homo sapiens. The Slingshot Sugar Lumps, branched from the Martial Sugar Lumps, naturally awakened slingshot martial arts and hunted other beasts freely.
Perhaps I would need to prepare powerful predators capable of culling them.
After thoroughly trolling my world, Jumito continued wandering, crafting tools, objects, buildings, and sculptures. He fashioned new blades from sharp fragments for a Tteok whose neck-blade had broken, and performed a makeshift surgery on a Gamchi with a shattered beak using rubber sap to reattach the upper beak. Things like that.
Even beasts understood gratitude. When a Tteok he had armed brought him a suitable Pudding as thanks, Jumito could not help but laugh.
He had tamed a Tteok. I had thought it impossible, yet through his mystery—or perhaps his virtue—he had succeeded.
Jumito roamed my vast world until the moment of collision. He built altars for the Lazy Sugar Lumps who worshipped Yogur-tosoth (much to Yogur-tosoth’s delight) and left them various sculptures.
He was somewhat surprised upon seeing Shuc-rimmurath boiling the desert and plains with life, yet he even used his mystery to control one of her creatures as a mount. He met Nyaltartep, who cultivated plants while scaling mountains connected to the Sky Garden, and for the first time engaged in an intelligent conversation with a being of my ecosystem.
“This garden appears somewhat disorderly. Would you like me to build fences or markers to make management easier?”
“Oh my. That would be wonderful.”
Jumito quarried stone from the mountain linked to the Sky Garden and carved it into fences. His stats were so high that even the immense labor of shaping stone came easily to him.
After tidying Nyaltartep’s garden, Jumito descended the mountain and continued wandering the Dessert Desert. He passed the Sky Garden, crossed wetlands, grasslands, and plains, traversed the grand Great Nature, and finally arrived at the Nectar Well—the first land of my world.
【This place may be dangerous even for your level.】
“That no longer matters at all.”
【Then tell me your answer before you die, just in case.】
At my words, Jumito smiled bitterly.
“I will answer once everything is finished.”
【Finished?】
“Yes. Finished. The end of my work. The end of the person called Jumito. The end of the god named Mitomok. I will hold a funeral for myself, for civilization, and for my god, perform their requiem, and bring it all to a close.”
I was slightly taken aback by the words of an immortal legendary being declaring he would go to die, but I chose to respect it.
Not because I viewed him as a profit-calculating player.
But because I wished to hear the answer reached by one human at the end of his long life.