Ah, The Dessert Desert Is a Good Place to Live 3
Economic awareness isn’t exclusive to humans. Animals possess a clear understanding of the concept as well.
The most famous experiment involved two monkeys performing identical labor yet receiving vastly different rewards. The monkey given less reacted with obvious indignation, neatly proving that they recognize both “the injustice of exploitation” and “fair compensation for work.”
In short, even a monkey gets angry if it receives less than it earned. Of course, that only happens when a direct comparison stands right beside it.
When the relationship shifts into symbiosis, the act of giving and receiving becomes even more pronounced between different species. There are far too many examples to list.
Of course, some symbioses allow one side to benefit unilaterally. But is human commerce any different? It isn’t. Scams, status-based coercion, and power-driven exploitation exist abundantly among humans.
Cases where clearly superior intelligences trade with clearly inferior ones are also extremely common.
Livestock is the simplest example. People pity livestock, yet from a biological standpoint those animals have their absolute survival guaranteed by humans.
How many creatures, especially large ones, have gone extinct simply because they were “useless to humans”? Compared to them, horses and cows are extraordinarily lucky.
Hindus even worship cows and treat them with reverence. Throughout history, how many humans have been killed simply for stealing or harming livestock? Intelligence level has never been a reliable guarantee of survival.
And there are cases where humanity—whose intelligence sits at the absolute apex of the ecosystem—ends up exploited by organisms that possess no intelligence whatsoever.
Does that sound impossible? Think again. How many people throughout history have died or suffered because of “crops” or “farmland”?
It surely accounts for more than fifty percent of the causes behind history’s crimes and wars. Whether it reaches ninety percent, I cannot say.
The exploitation occurring on countless farms was meant to generate human wealth, but at its root, humans were exploiting other humans in order to make plants flourish.
Ask the plants if they intended any of it and the answer would be no, but that doesn’t matter. Humanity killed its own kind for the sake of plants.
Beyond mere exploitation, cases of worship and domination are also extremely common. What did humans turn “tobacco” and “opium” into? Well… let’s just say they exist as one of the sub-plans.
After considering all the above, my conclusion remains the same.
“Trade” is an extremely “natural” phenomenon. It is entirely possible even without high intelligence.
Moreover, whether one profits or loses in the process has almost nothing to do with the level of intelligence involved.
Nature is perfectly capable of exploiting humans.
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“Please, Shuc-rimmurath. We’ve already dug this much land. Shouldn’t it be enough? For the sake of your descendants, we have cultivated more than enough…”
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“Damn it!”
The Legion with the Long Name was plowing the earth with desperate effort for the sake of Shuc-rimmurath’s offspring—the breads, the dark rims, and the rest. They had reshaped their conch shells into crude plows and were pulling them themselves. The reason was simple: it created an ideal environment for the doughs to reproduce.
After laboring like slaves from dawn till dusk, Shuc-rimmurath would finally squeeze a little of her milk-like cream from the spiritual realm and share it.
The stuff was surprisingly nutritious. Normal creatures that ate it saw modest stat improvements, opening a path toward evolution. It wasn’t toxic, and it tasted good.
Thus the Legion with the Long Name lived by toiling in Shuc-rimmurath’s place in exchange for modest portions of cream. To be blunt, they were being exploited. No one could call it a sweet gig.
“Is this really a job for humans?”
“Soldiers aren’t human.”
Wow. The hermit crabs were capable of humor at that level?
At any rate, before they were soldiers they were industrial laborers, and they analyzed the current situation with exactly that mindset.
“More importantly, this energy source they call ‘cream.’ It has excellent shelf life, high nutritional value, and no apparent health risks. It’s basically perfect food. Couldn’t we mass-produce it and bring it back to our home world?”
It seemed the Long-Named ones were already contemplating the construction of a cream factory in this place.
The question of what to offer in return was tricky, since Wahando was already importing enormous quantities of bread shells from me. Those shells were also produced by Shuc-rimmurath’s descendants.
“Hmm. If we can keep Shuc-rimmurath happy, we should be able to supply our legion with incredibly durable shells and excellent provisions…”
“Shuc-rimmurath is a greedy fatso, but trade is still possible. In areas she likes, she can actually be rather generous.”
“This is insane. Under normal circumstances we’d simply hunt wild animals and gather resources, but those so-called wild animals are stronger than our elite superhuman troops…”
Of course, as civilization advances, the gap between monsters and individual soldiers narrows.
Tools alone prove the point. Homo sapiens hunted mammoths with nothing but thrown spears. Primitive humans using stone tools could process meat, shatter bones, and extract marrow without needing powerful jaws, fangs, or claws.
Bows allow trained humans to face beasts. Guns let even untrained humans hunt them.
Even in a world steeped in mystery the principle remains the same. Mystical beasts are certainly difficult opponents, but they ultimately lose to humans who possess both mystery and tools. The moment human civilization can reliably overwhelm natural great monsters using nothing but technology arrives around level 20.
We aren’t there yet. Wahando’s race—the hermit crabs (their species name is absurdly long and I never bothered memorizing it)—boasts high Industry and Technology, but only around level 13. They are still getting trampled like ordinary crabs by powerful monsters.
That was precisely why Wahando’s soldiers started using their heads.
No matter how hard they worked, they would never satisfy the labor quota Shuc-rimmurath demanded. Moreover, the dark rims digging the earth and raising doughs were clearly far more efficient than soldiers scraping at the ground with claws and plows. So they devised a simple solution.
“Shuc-rimmurath! We request an additional transaction! We shall craft tools for your descendants!”
TOOLS?!
Come to think of it, the hermit crabs were master craftsmen.
True to humanity’s reputation for creativity and dexterity, they quickly processed the abandoned shells littering the Dessert Desert into plows far more efficient than anything the dark rims could achieve with tentacles, jaws, or horns. They attached the new tools to the creatures.
Work efficiency skyrocketed several times over. As expected, using axial force for labor was naturally superior to human muscle.
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Shuc-rimmurath, being greedy, handed over more cream and urged them to produce even more. The Legion with the Long Name offered additional ideas.
“Their hooves seem to be wearing down painfully from all the digging. What if we fitted them with something like horseshoes?”
“They don’t appear to need houses, but perhaps we could build fences to protect their young from predators?”
“Shuc-rimmurath’s forces are powerful, yet they are consistently overwhelmed in clashes with the other legion commanders. It seems the carnivorous breads and dark rims are simply too ignorant. Couldn’t we become their brains?”
Were they doing this for the animals or for themselves? Instead of physical labor, they decided to leverage their intelligence and craftsmanship to curry favor with Shuc-rimmurath.
Rather than oppose an army of a thousand breads—including dark rims whose individual strength rivaled heroic entities—they chose full cooperation.
It was division of labor. Not taming beasts of overwhelming physical power, but surviving as symbiotic life forms that cooperated with them.
On the surface it looked like a humiliating transaction in which beasts and nature held the upper hand. In reality, these hermit crabs were living far more decent, far more humane lives than the meat lumps exploited by Nyaltartep and driven mercilessly onto the battlefield to die.
And then, without any of us intending it—neither me, nor Wahando, nor even Shuc-rimmurath—an absurd jackpot occurred.
“Shuc-rimmurath transforms the land into Creamland, yet she doesn’t seem to utilize Creamland efficiently. If we made it far more effective for her, wouldn’t she be incredibly grateful?”
“That’s true, but do you have an actual idea?”
“It doesn’t seem particularly difficult…? Some of our battalion members connected to Creamland and were eroded by its madness. Can’t we simply apply the same principle?”
Perhaps the pain of life and labor in the Dessert Desert had been too much. One of the mystical hermit crabs casually offered an idea and taught Shuc-rimmurath an extremely simple application of mystery.
As I watched the scene unfold, the angel drifted over and began chattering.
“That’s a composite mystery created by applying the ji-do-gong-bop further into the mental domain.”
“You can say that, but I still don’t get it. What does it mean?”
“Think of it as granting a spiritual tool, albeit a very crude one. In principle it’s not so different from attaching horseshoes or building fences… Still, that probably shouldn’t have been done.”
“Hm? Is there a problem?”
“No. It causes no issue for you, Lord Biin.”
“……?”
“Everything up until now consisted of the hermit crabs crafting finished tools and handing them over in exchange for compensation, correct? Neither Shuc-rimmurath nor her descendants could manufacture the tools themselves, so the crabs held the advantage in trade.”
“And?”
“What they just taught her wasn’t a finished product. They handed over the manufacturing method.”
Oh. Yeah, that’s definitely bad.
Still, after a little effort Shuc-rimmurath succeeded in learning the application. Her absolute intelligence might be low, but her Spirit and Charm stats were high enough to make it possible.
And then Shuc-rimmurath roared.
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The squelching liquid that poured from her began eroding the land. The mist seeped into her descendants, individual plants, and insects. Mouths sprouted across all of them and screamed in unison.
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They expanded Creamland with insane speed. Originally, even when Shuc-rimmurath encroached, other creatures would simply suck the cream dry and leave only a loose connection behind. Now the very terrain gained its own will and defensive power. It latched onto invaders, eroded any external life form lacking sufficient Spirit and Charm, drove them mad, squeezed them dry, and turned them into kin. The land had mutated into a vicious demonic realm.
“Success, Battalion Commander!”
“Ooooh!”
“We must have earned an enormous amount of favor with Shuc-rimmurath!”
“Indeed! It seems even that creature understands the meaning of gratitude!”
The hermit crabs were laughing and chatting happily until the erosion of Creamland spread at an unbelievable rate. When it began climbing their own claws and shells, gently prodding their minds with creeping madness, they fell completely silent.
Staring at the mouthed mists now devouring the Dessert Desert, at the encroaching erosion and the life forms being consumed, they thought the same thing.
What the hell have we done?
MORE!!! MORE!!! I WANT MORE!!! THE ENTIRE WORLD SHALL BE MINE!!!
“Uh…”
“Hmm…”
After rampaging for a while with her newly acquired mystery, Shuc-rimmurath approached the Long-Named ones.
From the vastly expanded territory she squeezed out a colossal quantity of cream and handed it over without hesitation.
COMPENSATION! THE TRADE WAS EXCELLENT! YOU GAVE MUCH! TAKE MANY RESOURCES! MORE! TAKE MORE!
Staring at the mountain of cream piled before them, the hermit crabs could only exchange awkward glances.
“We’ll write a report.”
“What should we write?”
Our battalion has successfully cooperated with the natives to establish an industrial foundation capable of continuously supplying top-grade assets such as cream and bread shells from the Dessert Desert.
“We cannot write falsehoods. An excellent judgment.”
As expected, Wahando’s hermit crabs really do have high Politics.