Reconsulting 3
Evolution has no inherent direction. That’s why living things sometimes evolve in extremely inefficient and bizarre ways.
Take marine mammals, for example. When you really think about it, aren’t they all kind of weird?
Mammals are vertebrates, and vertebrates all started out as fish living in the sea. So why did some of them abandon the ocean, ditch their gills, crawl onto land, and then decide to go right back into the water without growing gills again?
Turtles are the same. Every land tortoise alive on Earth today is descended from sea turtles. Yet every sea turtle on Earth is descended from ancient land tortoises.
In other words, they went ancient land tortoise → sea turtle → modern land tortoise, bouncing back and forth between land and sea. But land tortoises are vertebrates too, right? So they were originally fish? What the hell are turtles even doing?
The Sugar Lumps are no different. They used to be human, so they started with high intelligence. But in their harsh environment, the species that once possessed generally high intelligence evolved into Magic Sugar Lumps and became beings that merely retained exceptional memory and calculation ability. Another brutal environment granted the Martial Sugar Lumps incredible reflexes and deductive reasoning, but stripped away their capacity for inductive thought.
Put another way, if the environment changed even slightly, they still carried the potential to revert to their original state. And I could help them do exactly that.
During the last collision, Umjeory’s plague had spread like wildfire and turned the Dessert Desert into a wasteland. The herbivorous Magic Sugar Lumps, faced with no edible grass and corpses lying everywhere, came to me and begged, “Please give us the ability to eat rotten meat.” So I did.
After that, the Magic Sugar Lumps began eating rotten flesh. While figuring out the best way to consume it, they discovered that cooking it over fire made it safer. Cooking increased their energy efficiency, so they ate even more. Once they developed resistance to the plague, they started actively hunting healthy creatures, roasting the meat, and devouring it.
As a result, they became highly intelligent, capable of eating almost anything, physically large, and exceptionally skilled at magic. They had surpassed the limits of ordinary Magic Sugar Lumps.
The Martial Sugar Lumps followed a similar path. These were the ones living in Mitomok’s jungle. They had passed down the art of making slingshots through generations and had largely avoided the worst effects of the infectious diseases.
But then, of all things, contagious mental illnesses swept across the world.
Contagious dementia, contagious memory loss, depression—these creatures evolved their brains in a direction that allowed them to continue living even if the diseases lowered their intelligence.
Combined with their original exceptional dexterity, memory, improved energy intake from eating meat, and now superior intelligence, they rapidly became true humans—tool-using, social beings that hunted every other creature in the Dessert Desert.
The two species had taken different evolutionary paths, but both now sat somewhere between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. In some aspects they surpassed modern humans, while in others they fell far behind—an alien form of intelligence had been born.
They possessed language. They could use tools. Through deductive reasoning, they could develop the mystic arts of magic and martial techniques in new ways. They had social structures, primitive political systems, and—most importantly—the intelligence to create “tools that make tools,” the very thing I had desperately wanted to exclude.
“If they can hunt Dark Lim and Caramel Camels, there won’t be any creature in my ecosystem they can’t take down… I haven’t seen them hunt Bisyakheet yet, but that’s probably because they aren’t reckless enough to challenge such dangerous prey. It doesn’t seem like they couldn’t do it. What do you think about taking them? One lineage could become a powerful yo-su race capable of standing against the bi-sa tribe, while the other could become skilled artisans among the yo-su.”
When I said that, Mihun tilted his head slightly.
“They are quite excellent lifeforms. Why don’t you raise them yourself?”
“I never said I’d give you all of them. I’ll keep some and raise them myself. Like you said, they’re already quite complete beings.”
Mihun tilted his head again.
“Creatures intelligent enough to build civilization… is it really acceptable to raise them?”
Looking at him, I suddenly realized something.
He wasn’t tilting his head because he genuinely didn’t understand.
The bastard was throwing out a topic. For me.
The moment I realized it, Mihun broke into an incredibly refreshing smile and spread his fan wide, covering his mouth.
“Kukuku…”
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because you seem to have found the answer. Biin. Have you now decided not on how to live, but on what kind of life to live?”
When I closed and opened my eyes again, I was no longer in my ecosystem clone but inside the meeting room.
It was still just the two of us. The enormous Tyrannosaurus immortal sat there holding his fan over his mouth, grinning so widely that anyone would notice.
“Biin. Since we last spoke, three more collisions have passed. Perfect timing. Back then, I told you this: Don’t decide how to live. Decide what kind of life to live.”
“And you also said that if I dropped out, you’d buy me out even if it meant spending every last point.”
“Haha! Yes, I did say that. That promise still stands. That’s why I’m asking.”
The Tyrannosaurus’s massive eyes stared straight at me. It wasn’t the gaze of a predator, but it was definitely looking down at me from above.
“Have you decided, Biin? What kind of life you will live?”
“…”
Mihun was waiting for my answer. And this perverted bastard had set the perceived time ratio to a strict 1:1, so no matter how long I stayed silent, he would wait with endless patience. If I didn’t speak, the conversation wouldn’t move forward.
So I had no choice but to answer.
“I have.”
Mihun simply drooled while waiting for my response.
“I thought I hated civilization and intelligent beings. But when I think about it, that wasn’t really what I hated.”
“Then what?”
“I hated the irrational. The unreasonable. Why do humans fight each other? Why do I have to suffer such irrational pain? I always carried those questions, and I had simply projected my dissatisfaction with this irrational society and civilization onto humanity and intelligent life…”
“Hoh. For a moment of self-reflection, that’s remarkably calm.”
Well. Maybe it is.
“But that hatred toward civilization and intelligent beings eventually turned into hatred toward myself. Why am I only capable of irrational and unreasonable judgments? Why do I feel these emotions, act this way, and then regret it afterward…?”
“Hmm.”
“The simplest example: Why do I annihilate other players? The Meteor Cartel only formed later. Before that, I wasn’t using strategy—I was simply erasing others with pure intent.
Why? I hated irrational disasters. I hated irrational suffering. So why?
Just as you pointed out, I was simply hoping for a fall. In this game where only one person can win, I was just hoping someone would kill me. That’s why I annihilated others so recklessly—to make everyone hate me, to ensure that whoever killed me would feel no guilt.”
The Tyrannosaurus demon immortal simply stared at me in silence. After a long pause, I took a deep breath and continued.
“Now it’s a little different.”
Drool…
“Right after the game ended, people started declaring war on me. They really seem to want me dead. Well, I did beg to be killed, so it makes sense. But here I am, still alive after pulling off all this crazy shit up to this round.
The moment I win, I feel an ecstasy like my entire body is melting. Even if the world hated me enough to make me an orphan and force me through all that irrational pain, even if everyone despises my actions, even if I hate myself… I can prove that I am right simply by winning.”
Come to think of it, it wasn’t purely self-hatred that drove me to kill others.
When I annihilated their souls, I felt pleasure.
“I love it when my ridiculous strategies make others feel wronged. I love crushing them with overwhelming force. I love exploiting their weaknesses. I love terrorizing my opponents and watching them go insane with rage. I love it when they finally break down and beg for mercy at the end.”
In short—
“This game is just too much fun. Not because of the way I win, or because I get to annihilate their souls. I will become the Demon King through the emotions I feel when I win. I will become a Demon King who offers the entire world as a sacrifice purely for my own enjoyment.”
“Oh-ho.”
“So I won’t forcibly cultivate civilization. I will win with an unconditionally low-intelligence, anti-intellectual build. Because if I don’t, I can’t make my opponents feel truly wronged. In a game where you’re supposed to win by building civilization, I want to humiliate my enemies by beating them with no civilization at all.”
Grin.
“So yeah. Um. Whatever. I’m going to raise them. Those highly intelligent Sugar Lumps. The ones that started as herbivorous Magic Sugar Lumps but evolved into massive carnivorous predators—I’ll call them Gghoul. And the ones that started as strong, agile carnivorous Martial Sugar Lumps and evolved even further by creating tools—I’ll call them Tcho-co. I’ll raise them so they can adapt to my ecosystem.”
Smirk.
Should I just leave? Why is he only laughing? At the very least, he could make the same face as the angel behind him—like he’s thinking, “Did you really have to name them something that stupid?”
“…Hey. Mihun. I’m here seriously declaring my life’s purpose and direction. Why are you just laughing without saying anything?”
The Tyrannosaurus leaned his massive face forward again and spoke with clear amusement.
“Then why are you crying?”
…
“Crying? Me?”
“Aren’t you?”
“No, sorry, but I’m not. There isn’t a single tear on my avatar.”
“Kukuku… There is nothing more foolish than trying to judge emotion through physical reactions, Biin… You still have a long way to go. You’ve decided on your destination, but you still don’t realize that the path you’re currently walking cannot lead you there.”
What the hell is he talking about right now?
“It is certainly true that you find this entertainment enjoyable. However, it seems you still haven’t properly looked at yourself.”
“Ah, no. Wait. How could you possibly know everything that’s in my—”
Mihun snapped his fan shut and leaned back. As if he no longer had any questions.
“Huhu… It’s fine. Now that your direction is set, you simply need to move forward. I will accept the lifeforms you offered. In return, I have prepared a few species of my own. Take a look and take whichever ones you like.”
Wait. Why is he ending the conversation on his own…? I still had a lot more I wanted to say.
“Oh. And. Are you perhaps interested in cultivation?”
“If it’s a cultivation method to teach my creatures, I’ll gladly accept…”
“No, not your creatures. You yourself. Through cultivation, you can elevate the rank of your soul and wield transcendent power.”
“…?”
Then Mihun dropped a bombshell.
“If you wish, after you drop out, I will accept you as my direct disciple. This immortal’s soul will never perish, so as long as you drop out, I can definitely take you in.”
“?!”
“Becoming the direct disciple of a True Immortal is not a common opportunity. It is a good chance. If you are interested, take it.”
I… didn’t know what to say. So, um. He was offering me a way to gain the kind of power that could destroy galaxies and rewrite history.
Honestly, it didn’t really hit me, and I didn’t particularly feel like doing it either…
“You may take your time considering that part. If you have no intention of dropping out anyway, it is a meaningless worry. Think of it as me simply returning the favor of the reconsultation you gave me. Just as you have done for my world.”
Hah.
Well, whatever. Then I should observe the ecology of the Gghoul and Tcho-co a little more before sending them to Mihun’s world.