Gods, Humans, Animals
In truth, it is not so strange for an intelligent being to become livestock to a far less intelligent creature. Homo sapiens alone provide countless examples, and the same thing happens all too easily even in civilized societies—indeed, in the modern world.
One word sums it up: cat. Humanity worships cats.
Why? Because cats look ridiculously cute by human standards. Truly. Historically, the hypothesis that humans domesticated cats simply because they were cute has gained considerable support.
People used to claim humans kept cats to catch mice,
but ferrets are excellent mousers too, and so are dogs. There are even domesticated ferrets, and small dogs were originally bred for that very purpose.
Cats, by comparison, do not hunt mice with particular zeal; they simply happen to catch them among other prey. They are far more notorious for devastating ecosystems by hunting small birds and eating eggs.
So why did humans keep cats? No one would seriously answer, “Because cats are such gentle and obedient animals.”
They are milder than wildcats or lynxes, yet still notoriously ill-tempered creatures.
Cat worship is an ancient tradition stretching back to predynastic Egypt. To this day, humans continue to portray their beloved cats as even cuter through countless works of fiction, spreading an overwhelmingly positive image.
Humans did not domesticate cats.
Cats domesticated humans.
“That may sound excessive, but considering the influence cats wield on Earth, it might not be entirely wrong.”
“Cats are not the only animals humans have worshipped. Such cases were common even in ancient societies.”
This, too, can be summarized in one word: totemism. The most famous of primitive faiths.
Humans worshipped large, powerful carnivores or herbivores. Sometimes they revered majestic birds of prey like falcons or eagles… or snakes, and so on.
Western culture’s view of humans as superior to animals is so well-known that people forget how major animal-worship religions have been throughout history and across every region.
Intelligent humanity is perfectly capable of worshipping animals—and has done so, and continues to do so, even now that civilization has advanced.
“By the same token, animal-hating faiths are equally widespread. Muslims do not eat pork because they consider pigs the filthiest animals in the world…?
While that claim lacks scientific basis, it differs in nature from the instinctive human aversion to snakes, which is thought to be genetically imprinted.”
“That makes sense.”
So what about the creatures of the Dessert Desert?
Are they irrationally worshipping beasts?
Or have they formed an efficient symbiotic relationship through biological instinct?
Perhaps there is no difference between the two. After all, religion and faith are not exclusive to humans.
With the disaster phase over, I set my other clones to community management and unfinished ecosystem restoration work while this clone investigates the phenomena currently unfolding in the Dessert Desert.
“Wow.”
“Your reaction lacks soul.”
“The ecology we are seeing right now seems so far removed from anything resembling civilization or primitive religion that I cannot help it.”
Well, that does seem to be the case. From my perspective, it is a good thing.
At any rate, the intelligent beings of the Dessert Desert have been domesticated by non-intelligent beings… or rather, they have established a dependent symbiotic relationship.
Let us examine it through the lens of the legion commanders.
Yogur-tosoth devoted himself throughout the disaster phase to stabilizing and expanding the Milky Way, and now rules over countless spirit lifeforms.
These dairy-named spirit creatures can be called “intelligent beings.” At the very least, they appear smarter than magic sugar lumps—roughly on the level of borderline-intelligent humans. They possess abstract and creative thinking, along with deductive reasoning comparable to dolphins… which is to say, they are little different from rather dim people.
They receive magical knowledge from Yogur-tosoth, teach it to the sugar lumps, and use the magic they have mastered to hunt and fight for survival.
The key point is that these dairy spirits worship the large, powerful jelly and bread lifeforms. Or perhaps “worship” is too strong—
“flattery” might be more accurate. Despite their considerable intellect, they behave as though currying favor with jellies and breads is the very purpose of their existence.
For an explanation of this phenomenon, let us hear from Marquis Sesaisa, expert on spirits and the arcane.
“Astonishing! While it is quite common for spirits to manage meat with such passionate devotion that it borders on worship, and I see no need to explain it, since you are unaware I shall impart this basic knowledge.
Spirits possess excellent intellect, self-awareness, and potent mystery, yet they are ultimately beings of unstable flow and struggle to interfere with the material world. To obtain stability and power, a spirit requires some form of material body.
In that regard, the jellies and breads of your Dessert Legion make excellent vessels.
They possess sturdy physiques, mental fortitude sufficient to house a spirit’s consciousness, and crude enough intelligence to make possession easy… It is only natural that spirits covet them.”
“Can sturdy minds and crude intelligence coexist?”
“Of course! There is little need for lengthy explanation— and exist as separate stats, do they not? is the size of the vessel that holds the flow, while is the strength of the flow that vessel can utilize.”
“Ah.”
While we were chatting in the group chat, Mihun chimed in as well.
“You may not realize it, and it was likely unintentional, but the creatures of your Dessert Legion possess an unbelievably harmonious balance of spirit and body. In this immortal’s eyes, aside from their intellectual capacity, they nearly possess immortal bones.”
“Is that so?”
“Do you know how many beings lack spiritual roots and thus cannot walk the path of cultivation? In that sense, even the lowliest creatures of the Dessert Legion possess spiritual roots sufficient to learn immortal arts, along with robust meridians, bones, and muscles. Truly, if not for their intelligence, they would be a blessed race.”
“I concur! Had I the choice, this Marquis Sesaisa would have taken your jellies as my retainers rather than the kogogi.”
It seems the jellies of the Dessert Legion are far more powerful in the realm of mystery than I had imagined.
More specifically, the genetic editing process that combines mineral components and protein structures to create the Dessert Legion is, by the standards of both Sesaisa and Mihun, an unbelievably advanced technique.
Well, from my perspective it was simply a matter of combining naturally evolved organisms and seeing what happened…
In short, jellies and dough possess sturdy bodies, sturdy minds, and outstanding mystical talent, yet lack intelligence—making them irresistible targets for spirits that desire physical forms.
When milk spirits possess jellies or puddings like yogurt sauce drizzled over them, the individual’s level rises by 2.
To put it in perspective, a creature with the strength of a medium-sized dog becomes as powerful as a bear. And the strongest lifeforms in my ecosystem far surpass the destructive power of mere dogs or bears.
However… the energy consumption is so intense that jellies and puddings are reluctant to fuse with spirits.
Thus, the milk spirits gather as many resources as possible and offer them up, waiting until the jellies reproduce and then requesting fusion.
Yet spirits have no way to gather resources themselves, lacking material bodies.
So they seduce the magic sugar lumps who serve Yogur-tosoth as intermediaries.
The magic sugar lumps crave powerful magic and must fight other legion factions, so they eagerly gather resources with the spirits’ help.
Assisting the jellies also benefits the sugar lumps.
Because puddings and jellies have evolved to threaten and extract resources from sugar lumps rather than hunt them outright.
It is far better to treat them well and send them off with a small offering, thereby maintaining an amicable relationship with these destructive beings.
However, sugar lumps possess such strong egos that spirits cannot possess them.
Thus, the most intelligent spirits assist the sugar lumps, while the sugar lumps in turn aid even less intelligent creatures—completing a hierarchy in which the intelligent grovel before the less intelligent.
Compared to Yogur-tosoth, the other legion commanders have simpler structures.
Shuc-rimmurath, as we have seen, commands hermit crabs and sugar lumps. They till the land, mine ore, and craft tools for the sake of Shuc-rimmurath’s bread offspring.
In return, Shuc-rimmurath provides bread shells far stronger than tempered steel and highly nutritious cream.
The milk spirits also consider dough-based bread lifeforms the ideal hosts rather than jellies, and prostrate themselves before them in worship. This is a case of intelligent beings groveling before less intelligent ones.
Nyaltartep has tamed the kogogi with drugs and the caramel camels and gamchi with plants and insects. The medium-to-large herbivores among the caramel camels and gamchi guard pastures and keep other creatures away from their territory in exchange for the delicious fruits, grasses, and insects Nyaltartep provides. This is a case of moderately intelligent beings completely subjugating non-intelligent ones.
Chaltteoggua raises rice cakes and martial sugar lumps. The rice cakes have gradually gained intelligence and developed social structures, now interacting with martial sugar lumps in a manner reminiscent of “wolves” and “humans.” They hunt powerful lifeforms with their formidable physical abilities—this relationship is evolving toward mutual coexistence rather than domestication.
Wafflach-Nacha, together with the waffles, commands the Mitomok biota in the jungle. It appears to be using mystery to coordinate hunting among non-Dessert Legion creatures, actively recruiting reptiles that were never part of the Mitomok group to increase collaboration frequency.
This jungle, where diverse creatures unite and cooperate, has already become a hell filled with hunters.
Broadly speaking, this is the situation, and other lifeforms have likewise established their own symbiotic relationships. For example, the sugar lumps that offer tribute to camels in exchange for food.
Candies have lifespans too short and gums have intelligence too low for such symbiosis to form…
Yet even creatures that serve only as prey, or those that survive alone without any symbiotic ties, can possess excellent strategies.
We can assume the candies are doing fine on their own. Some gums have now left the low-magic zone and crawled into the Nectar basin, so if these giant frogs evolve, perhaps another powerful lifeform will emerge.
And I wonder: why have highly intelligent beings submitted to less intelligent ones, resulting in the current inverted hierarchy?
“Is it not simply because the Dessert Legion is too strong?”
Honestly, that might be the correct answer.
People often say things like, “Homo sapiens are physically weaker than animals, yet through superior intelligence and sociality they built civilization and came to dominate nature.”
But that is nonsense. Homo sapiens are actually incredibly strong. Just look at their size—how common is a 60–80 kg creature in nature?
Beyond that, humans possess numerous physical advantages.
Exceptional vision supported by outstanding cognitive ability, shoulder muscles and precision specialized for throwing beyond any other species, and absurd endurance that allows running for over eight hours when determined.
Humans conquered nature through physical prowess, not intelligence. Mammoths? Giant ground sloths? All those massive creatures were simply torn apart by packs of Homo sapiens (plus Neanderthals) armed with throwing spears…
In my ecosystem, that is simply impossible.
Sugar lumps do use tools—more precisely, “some of them use tools.” A slingshot is certainly a formidable weapon beyond mere spears.
Yet even armed with slingshots, sugar lumps cannot catch bisyakheets. They cannot catch dark rims or caramel camels either.
Tools cannot close the gap with natural predators. Increasing their size would rob them of the dexterity needed to handle tools.
Still, high intelligence offers many advantages. In nature, intelligence reliably increases to a certain degree. Thus, they instead use their tool-making ability to become livestock or companions to predators, benefiting them while reaping gains.
“In the end, they never advanced toward civilization or society.”
“You were the one who mentioned an unusual form of civilization last time.”
Honestly, even I am starting to see this as a very peculiar civilization… but apparently the Angel does not.
“At the time, there was potential. But now there is none. Yes. They clearly use tools, possess societies, conduct diplomacy, and have culture… However, what we consider civilization is a state in which the entire world is unified under a single strategy and ideology. The creatures of the Dessert Desert are not integrating through coevolution; instead, they are specializing in individual survival.”
“Is not diversity a wonderful value?”
“That applies when a single system has multiple aspects. This is merely a collection of disparate elements coexisting in a haphazard manner.”
Hmm.
I thought that would be the end of it, but the Angel let out a truly deep sigh.
“Haa… Civilization is truly finished now. I will no longer tell you to create civilization as an angel. At this point, the possibility of forming a civilization has been completely uprooted. Even if an outstanding intelligent being emerges in the Dessert Desert, it will never develop into a civilization. It will merely end up serving powerful non-intelligent creatures.”
What is this? This is the first time I have seen this fellow display such deep emotion… Why is she like this?
The Angel looked at me with eyes filled with regret and made a request.
“Biin. I sincerely hope you win.”
“You say that even though civilization will never develop?”
“Precisely because of that. You are neither the strongest nor the best player at the moment. However, you are undeniably the most unique player. Because you are one of a kind, you could be considered the most important player in this game right now.”
Hmm?
Well, I understand. It is suspicious, but considering everything she has said so far, it is not particularly strange.
After all, the strategy that survives is the best strategy.
If they are conducting an experiment to determine the best strategy, then rather than denying an anomaly like me, the proper attitude would be to affirm it and analyze why this result occurred.