The Birth of the King in Yellow

I am the avatar tasked with the Great Firmament. While my fellow clones consult on existing ecosystems, mingle in online communities, study on their own, or sit at Mihun’s feet absorbing cultivation techniques, I remain here—constantly shaping and controlling this vast, expanded no-man’s-land known as the Great Firmament.

Now that I can touch the region directly instead of seeing it through the game’s simplified interface, I feel as if I’ve finally begun to understand it.

“Oh. Is that so?”

“I’m not a native, but staring at it long enough ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠reveals the outlines.”

My world contains 2,048 god fragments. Some, like the Nectar Well, have grown so enormous they swallow every other terrain type. Others have lost all their power. Yet because of the no-man’s-lands, these fragments can now expand their domains without invading one another. Each piece can fully express its own nature.

That fact taught me something important: no two god fragments are ever completely identical.

For example, Ogolraeot’s world obviously contained an overwhelming amount of grassland. Yet every ten square kilometers of that grassland grew different vegetation, possessed subtly different climates, and held distinct soil compositions.

If someone asked, “Isn’t it normal for regions to differ?” I would answer by flipping the question: any ten-square-kilometer patch containing only a single god fragment will always have identical vegetation, climate, and soil. That is what is abnormal.

I believe this happens because each fragment borders a slightly different no-man’s-land.

Some grasslands resonate deeply with the Great Nature. Others connect more strongly to the Great Firmament. Still others link to the Great Boundary.

Even within the Great Nature, vegetation varies. Even within the Great Firmament, the resources each celestial sanctuary stores are different.

The no-man’s-lands act as bridges between these distinct sanctuaries. The Great Nature that arises between two sanctuaries with incompatible vegetation allows both plant types to coexist. When one side overwhelms the other, that is what we call a rise in “terrain level.”

The same principle applies to the Great Firmament. Certain skies gather lightning mana to form thunderheads. Others remain perpetually cold. Some burn with equatorial sunlight while others cycle through four distinct seasons.

Therefore, the spiritual terrain of the skies must be assembled like a puzzle, just as carefully as the material terrain of the earth. Only now do I understand why Sesaisa’s world suffered ecological collapse after every single collision.

That elephant bastard really did build his sanctuaries by looking only at the sky.

Of course the flow and condensation of mana became effortless. But because he never paid attention to the ground, his ecosystems were disasters.

I did the opposite—I built everything while staring only at the land. My ecosystems are healthy, yet my mana flows are a mess.

Mihun simply lets each sanctuary exist naturally and focuses on nurturing growth. Wahando exploits terrain for raw resources.

Normal players study the shape of their world and arrange land and sky for maximum efficiency, or else they focus on one and compromise on the other. That is the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠standard approach.

I have no need to follow it.

Even when Ogolraeot used it, I learned he could shrink or expand the “sky’s” volume. But the fact that earth and sky could be torn apart separately seemed to be something even he had never realized.

World Shaping is a trait that lets me rip away only part of a sanctuary and attach it elsewhere. In other words, I can fragment not just terrain but the sky itself and edit it into the most ideal form.

I cannot be certain, but I suspect that even Ogolraeot—the original owner—never considered this application. He seemed to possess almost no knowledge of the spiritual realm, just like me. If more than a hundred lesser gods existed and none of them thought of this, it would be entirely possible.

Once I reshaped not only the earth but the sky according to my will, the result was a truly magnificent world.

“Hah.”

The clouds always gather in the same places. The wind always blows in the same direction. Lightning follows suit. The floating islands move in fixed orbits, cycling endlessly, accompanied by rain clouds, wind, fire, and light.

Countless cheeses living in that sky grow, reproduce, and adapt as they please. Thanks to them, both the earth and the sky have become impossibly rich.

Nyaltartep, master of the Sky Garden, was delighted. I even granted her partial authority over climate control.

Using her avatars, she cultivates different plant species across the floating gardens and breeds the most vicious, ecosystem-destroying horrors in the climates best suited for them.

The sky-sanctuary power plants—those spiritual structures—are running properly too. Their design is admittedly crude and simple, like someone who played a factory-building simulation game and only cared about getting the machines running, ignoring production lines and worker efficiency. When Sesaisa returns I’ll have him consult on optimizing them.

“Once again, Sesaisa truly was an overwhelming expert in the spiritual realm.”

“A sudden burst of worship, I see.”

“When I knew nothing, I simply thought he was a magic specialist. But it’s different. The undergraduate-level biology and ecology I possess, even the ten-thousand hours of practical experience I gained in the game—his knowledge dwarfs all of it. Only now that I’ve acquired some learning of my own can I truly appreciate how remarkable he is.”

If I don’t want to fall behind the other meteors, I’ll have to study biology even harder.

Fortunately I have many avatars, unlimited access to knowledge I can purchase, and plenty of time. Becoming an expert through sheer effort is not that difficult.

“By the way, have Sesaisa and Wahando still not finished their collision?”

They seem to be fighting an incredibly powerful enemy. I believe they’ll win, but… who knows.

If both of them fall, it will become troublesome—

The moment I thought that, Wahando finished his collision and returned. I left him to speak with the gathering-room avatar.

It was finally time to create a new legion commander using the cultivation method I learned from Mihun.

──Consciousness shifts to the newly acquired ecosystem-editing avatar.

Since the Dessert Legion had already occupied a significant portion of the enemy world during the collision, there was almost nothing left for me to interfere with. My only role was to analyze the terrain and hand the world fragments to the terrain specialist.

Yet during the process of creating the new legion commander, I was given a truly critical task. I turned my gaze toward the ruined demonic construct and the blocked hole leading underground.

“!♠(●↓#≒▽★^◆◎.”

There, a mass of mental entities had fallen into an abyss-like state.

They were Umjeory’s demons. The creatures who had built an underground city for convenience of material-plane access and base defense had been swept away by the enormous torrent of pain, emotion, and madness that flooded downward from the surface. They had lost even their original forms and now drifted as a single writhing mass.

Most were dead. The rest existed in a state closer to paralysis from overfeeding.

I located one individual and used divine power to lift its consciousness.

“Dwyero. Are you there?”

Dwyero, the demon of madness. The strongest individual in the enemy world.

And precisely because he was the strongest, he had been swallowed by that overwhelming power and sunk. Yet he had continued to clutch the consciousnesses of what might have been his family, comrades, or simply his kin. Among them, he remained relatively intact.

“Is that what you called me back then? Well. Correct. I am the Demon King. I annihilated your god, Umjeory.”

Dwyero spoke his demands with surprising calm.

“Oh. How heroic. As expected, biology and personality really have nothing to do with each other.”

Even though it must have been excruciating, Dwyero continued transmitting his will.

“Anything?”

The words made me chuckle. Just how far did this creature’s “anything” extend?

After winning a world collision, recruiting high-ranking individuals from the enemy side is quite difficult. At minimum, such beings always demand the survival of their own race.

Accepting them has the advantage of gaining powerful assets. The downside is that you suddenly acquire a small but politically troublesome minority whose loyalty is questionable.

I had accepted enemy individuals several times before, but their forms had always been altered.

“Dwyero. I hold no personal grudge against your kind. However, in my ecosystem where neither civilization nor sentient beings should exist, accepting civilized creatures like you is extremely difficult.”

“Still, since you say you will do anything to survive, I have one proposal. You will lose your original forms, but you may keep your identity and continue to exist. Listen to my offer. If you like it, tell me.”

“You can. In that case I will simply erase all of your egos and insert new ones to suit my taste. Your cooperation would be appreciated, but it is not required.”

I explained in detail what I intended to do with Dwyero and his demonic kin. He listened in silence, then looked at his collapsing people being swept away by the immense current and spoke a single sentence.

“As you wish.”

With Dwyero’s permission secured, I began the preliminary work.

I reached out toward the boundless Great Universe that lay beyond the Great Firmament.

The sources of my faith are fourfold.

First, myself—the player who already possesses divine power.

Second, the enormous spiritual realm that continuously generates faith using the flows of the Great Firmament.

Third, Creamland, built upon the sanctuaries on the ground.

Fourth, the faith of the Dessert Legion commanders and the lesser lifeforms that worship them.

I drew faith from all four sources and amplified it enormously through Deity-World Oneness, creating a force so vast it could tear the world apart. I seized the satellites beyond the Milky Way.

That was not the end. At my command, Yogur-tosoth manipulated the broken satellites using the celestial magic Mihun had taught him, spinning them and reshaping them into new landmasses.

I used World Shaping once more to draw the newly forged domain not into the Great Universe but into my own ecosystem.

The celestial bodies screamed as they were subjected to insane dimensional pressure, since they could not exist outside the Great Universe.

It did not matter. I simply used that dimensional pressure as fuel for further development.

I mixed the five shattered celestial bodies and their fragments with the sky’s spiritual realm that Sesaisa had provided, fused them again using Mihun’s technique, then floated the result into the Great Firmament and stabilized it. I placed it far higher than the existing Sky Garden, at the boundary between the Great Universe and the Great Firmament.

This place is called Cariccotta. Originally a site that drew in Nectar from the sky to produce cream, it now condenses the flows of both sky and cosmos, endlessly generating resources that create nutrition far richer than ordinary cream and immense magical power.

Only creatures that can swim through the sky itself—cheeses, flying Gamchi, birds, bats, and other aerial species—can reach this place overflowing with resources. They flock here and flourish. Even the Bisyakheet abandon the Nectar below and ascend into the heavens.

But this was only the beginning. This place was merely the residence for the new legion commander.

Having established a foothold in the sky, it was time for the earth. I poured divine power endlessly into the underground, stirring the clumped mass of Dwyero and Umjeory’s demons.

“~~~~~~~!”

Dwyero and the Umjeory demons emitted another incomprehensible shriek. It was fine. The hero-class entities, including Dwyero, endured. Composed purely of flow, they desperately wove their mental matrices together to hold onto the crumbling egos of their kin.

In the end, all their egos, memories, and mental matrices were gathered into a single clump of yellow matter. With the framework complete, I used World Shaping to rip it free, hurled it into the sky, and slammed it into Cariccotta.

Cariccotta received the immense current and forged it into new resources. Following the incantations Mihun had taught me, I operated divine power, inserted Dwyero’s entire race into the five celestial bodies, and captured every flying creature I could reach to fill the insufficient vessels so their minds could be contained within living forms.

Then I crammed into it all the knowledge of wind and climate that Yogur-tosoth had abandoned.

Twitch—!

The clumped yellow mental entity was sealed inside flesh and formed a gigantic, pulsating mass upon Cariccotta.

That was merely the main body created to stabilize Cariccotta. The avatar that would actually move in the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠world took a very different form.

Something that resembled my own avatar yet contained a writhing mass beneath yellow robes manifested upon the earth.

“Come forth! Sixth Commander of the Dessert Legion! You who wear an indescribable yellow hide and play the unholy, blasphemous finale of civilization! Hasturd! I have a command for you! Descend now!!!”