The Second Disaster: Malice and Mercy
Surprisingly, the “malice” trait the disaster had inflicted on my ecosystem only flickered for a moment before naturally dying out. It never truly flourished. In the end it only survived in a handful of individuals who acted like opportunistic little shits, and that was it.
I hadn’t even done anything.
“In a sense, it’s no different from how a high Politics score makes criminals easy to catch. The causes are exact opposites, of course. The disaster section isn’t posing any real threat at all.”
“Evil” is usually defined as harming others to benefit oneself.
The problem is that in nature this happens far too often. Countless carnivores commit assault, murder, and robbery all at once. Exploitation and parasitism are already the specialty of parasites. As for wicked reproduction, I only mentioned marital relations earlier, but there are plenty of far more coercive examples.
Surprisingly, the natural world commits many crimes that closely resemble those in human society.
We just looked at the gamchi, but flies and spiders also have males that present females with gifts during mating.
Yet some species wrap trash in silk instead of food and present it as a cocoon. The females respond by shaking the gift to determine whether it’s real or fake.
Strictly speaking, this goes beyond simple fraud and could easily be called counterfeiting. The form is different, but the principle is the same.
Even camouflage, protective coloration, flower mantises mimicking other species, or non-venomous frogs that look exactly like poisonous ones could, in a broad sense, be accused of running deepfake or identity-forgery scams.
“Hmm. That does feel a bit forced.”
“In the end, the natural world and human world never correspond one-to-one.”
In that regard, the “malicious” mindset that appeared in my ecosystem was either absorbed into existing strategies or naturally culled as inefficient behavior that didn’t even qualify as strategy.
Still, since the opportunity is here, let’s examine a few particularly vicious strategies that exist in the Dessert Desert ecosystem.
The first one mentioned—brood parasitism. Famous on Earth thanks to cuckoos, right? The principle is simple.
First, lay your eggs in someone else’s nest.
Second, the chick that hatches first instinctively shoves every other egg out of the nest.
Third, it grows fat on the food provided by foster parents too naïve to recognize it isn’t their own offspring.
Apply human standards and it becomes an absolutely horrific crime. Even by nature’s standards it’s repulsive. Creatures that fall victim to cuckoos naturally evolve countermeasures, and when the parasite is discovered it is, of course, killed brutally. Since this never evolved naturally in my ecosystem, I artificially selected one species and forced the evolution.
“Whoa.”
And here’s a crime you’d think would never occur in nature but does: arson. Surprisingly, Earth has similar creatures. In Australia, certain birds actually spread wildfires to catch insects fleeing the flames.
Those birds don’t start the fires themselves, but in my ecosystem I have jelly creatures that deliberately ignite blazes to nicely brown the grasslands before digging in to feast. These jellies somehow formed a symbiosis with Toppings and acquired their own mysteries—evolving into full-blown pyromaniacs.
“That could be militarily useful.”
“Indeed.”
Another crime you’d think impossible in nature but isn’t: real-estate usurpation. Invading a jelly’s burrow, either moving in uninvited or spreading feces to create a stench that drives the original owner out. On Earth this is a common strategy among burrowing creatures.
Surprisingly, homeowners sometimes tolerate these freeloaders. Not because they’re pushovers, but because the tenants live near the entrance. When predators dig in, the tenants get eaten first. The homeowner never allows them deeper inside, though.
Of course, besides these mild methods, there are creatures that openly beat the owner, eat them, and claim the burrow. In my ecosystem, digging strategies are quite useful given how hard the shells are… Maybe I should create some dedicated home-invading species while I’m at it.
“It seems feasible within limits. Creatures that occupy burrows or private dwellings, for example.”
“Something like that.”
Maybe it’s because so many creatures use mysteries? Looking closer, there really are quite a few bizarre ones.
There are organisms that bury magic explosives or landmines and detonate them when stepped on.
The gum-crawlers that aggressively employ mental mysteries like hallucination and hypnosis are gradually turning more vicious.
Shuc-rimmurath’s offspring are trying more effective ways to exploit the remaining hermit crabs, but the crabs seem too intelligent and keep foiling them.
And the kogogi working under Nyaltartep are particularly dramatic…
They’ve fallen victim to psychoactive drugs.
“What?”
In nature, psychoactive substances are simply chemical compounds that happen to produce strange effects on certain species.
But Nyaltartep seems to have deliberately created and supplied herbs that hit the kogogi’s minds especially hard—addictive, pleasure-inducing, and capable of making them do anything for the plant.
“Wasn’t that one of the sub-plans?”
“Correct. However, the addiction strategy has some problems if I want to use it properly as a sub-plan.”
The biggest issue is that the same chemical affects every species differently.
After all, it’s common knowledge that dogs can’t eat chocolate. Catnip drives certain felines into ecstasy while doing nothing for Homo sapiens.
Humans have too narrow a gene pool, so effects are generally uniform. But with a wider gene pool, even members of the same species can react differently to the same substance.
“Still, closely related species often share similar reactions. Alcohol, for example. There’s also the famous bear Voittech who lived among soldiers and acquired a taste for cigarettes. Species diversity in this game is extreme… but since many creatures across worlds evolved similarly, or even seem to share the same roots despite originating in completely different realms, it should be fine to prepare some.”
“Incidentally, the reason creatures with identical ancestors appear in different worlds is that life forms recorded in the god fragments all have similar origins. Truly unique beings with completely different roots—like Lord Dindinaron’s species—were created directly by their respective god.”
“I see.”
Anyway, the Level 10 Culture trait was actually Plant Utility, and Level 11 was Addiction Culture. (Level 12 went to increased warrior-type hero generation.) Since Nyaltartep is already cultivating every possible variety of plant that secretes different chemical compounds across countless environments, we should see results within the second round.
“What will you do with the addicted kogogi?”
“Hmm… Given the contract with Sesaisa, developing anything with excessively strong addictive properties would be unwise. I’ll have to adjust the dosage when supplying them.”
Maybe I could turn it into a signature product of the Dessert Desert… though that might be pushing it.
While I was pondering, some of the drugged kogogi awakened to the psychokinesis line of mysteries—something they had never been able to use before. It was purely the herbs’ effect.
“Did it function like some kind of spiritual elixir?”
“Oh… This is something I should discuss with Sesaisa.”
In that case, producing it as a specialty product might actually work. I should check whether anything affects the hermit crabs too. Wait, those guys only eat meat… Still, they don’t completely avoid spices and aromatics, so it’s worth considering.
When I brought it up in the meeting room, Sesaisa and Wahando—who were eager to do business—seemed lukewarm, but Mihun reacted with surprising enthusiasm. Hmm… Well, there’s no reason not to sell it. The more species it works on, the better.
Anyway, let’s return to examining the crimes in my ecosystem. This one is in a completely different context from the previous examples.
Torture. After choosing the Cultural Sadism trait as the tenth collision reward, this behavior naturally developed in my ecosystem.
The pudding in front of me is currently tearing a small jelly in half for no reason whatsoever, watching it writhe with clear enjoyment. The slight rise in the Culture score is impressive.
“In a sense, that might be true ‘evil.’”
“It could be.”
In an ecosystem, killing, threatening, stealing, and scamming can all be explained as strategy. They are matters of survival with no room for moral criticism.
Yet living creatures strangely torment smaller beings for fun, deriving pleasure from ripping them apart and killing them. Not to eat them—purely as play.
Cats are somewhat famous for it, but the behavior appears frequently in primates, dolphins, and above all, humans.
Why? If I force a rational explanation, it would be that in order to possess active aggression as a creature, the brain evolved to find pleasure in attack, which manifested as sadism—the enjoyment of tormenting others.
But from a common-sense perspective, isn’t that a waste of energy? Even if it’s fun, is it wise to torment weak creatures you aren’t going to eat, derive pleasure from it, and expose yourself to predators?
Furthermore, is it acceptable for highly intelligent individuals to be unable to restrain their sadistic impulses—or worse, become addicted to them—and commit atrocities against others?
I understand it’s a biologically real phenomenon, but still…
“You’ve become strangely emotional.”
“Ah, well. There was an incident.”
Anyway, I was the one who chose Cultural Sadism and induced torture behavior. If the goal is to relieve individual stress in the Dessert Desert and raise the Culture value a little more, there’s no reason not to. In the end, it’s simply a gamer’s choice and strategy. No need to get sentimental.
Even so.
The appearance of sadistic creatures in the natural world was an unavoidable choice because the other options were too terrible…
Still, the fact that beings in my ecosystem are suffering this kind of “unnecessary” pain means I cannot blame civilization. These creatures are suffering solely because of me.
The moment I thought that, something strange caught my attention.
“?”
“What is it?”
Shifting my viewpoint, I saw the pudding that had been tormenting a weak jelly for “fun” suddenly get struck by a newly arrived jelly and collapse.
At first I thought it was a food robbery. But jellies aren’t carnivorous like puddings.
That large jelly had rescued the weak one—which wasn’t even the same species—and simply left.
The small jelly wobbled away, tapping the large jelly’s shell a few times in gratitude before weakly returning to its burrow.
This wasn’t a one-time event. The large jelly appeared whenever a pudding tried to torment or hunt smaller jellies and stopped the attack.
Even though they weren’t the same species. Even though it gained nothing from saving them. Even though there was no reproductive benefit whatsoever.
Moreover, my ecosystem has no trait that grants advantages for performing “good deeds.”
“Why is it doing that?”
Biologically, one could say affection for its own kind evolved into interspecies altruism. Or conversely, a strong aversion to being hunted reversed into interfering with others’ hunting through a form of inverted sadism.
Surprisingly, such creatures exist. Elephants. Whales. Enormous beings with extremely high intelligence.
And Homo sapiens is also one of the species that occasionally displays this interspecies altruism. Extremely rarely, there are intelligent beings who consider the survival of completely unrelated species.
“I see.”
But is there really any need to attach such a rational explanation?
There is no good or evil in nature. Only strategy exists.
Yet there are biologically irrational actions that transcend strategy. There is even “wickedness” deliberately granted through artificial concepts like traits or disaster sections.
And beyond even that, there existed something natural. Something that would willingly waste its own energy to save other creatures. A noble compassion that could not tolerate the suffering of the weak.
“Humans possess it too.”
“Some of them, at least.”
That’s precisely why I hate them even more.
Why won’t this damn species even let me hate them properly?
In any case, the [Malice] disaster was resolved this way.
Some individuals could not overcome nature’s efficient strategies and were culled. Others survived by deriving pleasure through sadism.
The rewards were increases in both Culture and Politics.
“Overcoming the disaster is good, but I’m glad it seems Lord Biin received some redemption as well.”
“What kind of redemption is that.”
Now I just need to cleanly resolve [Racism].
I thought it would be an easy problem, but it’s proving unexpectedly stubborn.