The Ecological Trade

The chat opened with our terms.

When you mess with the other side’s ecosystem you use your own divine power instead of theirs. Since whatever I spent the other side could also spend, we first negotiated the initial pool each of us was allowed to burn.

This much divine power felt about right. Time to start remodeling the ecosystem.

First thing: the only living things in that world were the elephant people. A single species possessing colossal brains, overwhelming physical strength, and absurd amounts of mystery.

Sesaisa’s elephant race had clearly been modified from some native creature; their ecology really did mirror real elephants.

What exactly is an elephant’s ecological role? In nature, elephants exist to eat trees.

That’s why the African savanna has so few of them. Elephant herds march through, knocking everything down and devouring it. The savanna is so vast that by the time the herd moves on, the trees have already started growing back.

Incidentally, the thick forests of North America only exist because humans wiped out the ground sloths and other megafauna that used to fill the same niche.

“Ah. Yes. I see.”

In short, these creatures were herbivores. The kind that ate trees and slowly digested them in enormous stomachs. Plant matter is hard to break down, but if you can manage it, you can grow fat on nothing but wood.

Yet Sesaisa had mindlessly multiplied the species until the natural balance collapsed and the forests were literally pulverized. Once everything edible vanished, Sesaisa—who knew jack shit about biology—arbitrarily evolved the elephant people and rewired their guts so they could eat bugs and meat. That only made their energy efficiency even worse.

After they had stripped the forests, the bushes, the ground cover, and every last insect and beast, the only thing left was to pray to their god and beg for food.

So I started with the environment.

I examined the remaining seeds and god fragments, restored their genetic information, and resurrected the oak trees that had once dominated the forest. They appeared to be organisms that grew to gigantic size and produced truly ridiculous numbers of acorns.

The elephant people’s role had been to clear overly dense growth. The scattered bones told me the forest had once supported rodents that gorged on acorns, herbivorous mammals, reptiles (species ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that definitely didn’t exist on Earth), birds, and the medium-to-large carnivores that preyed on all of them.

The knowledge that anyone could ruin an ecosystem this perfect made my blood boil in the worst way, but I still had a job to do.

I poured divine power into the restored oaks, overcharging them until they grew larger and denser. In one go I covered roughly fifteen square kilometers with nothing but oak trees.

I rushed back to my own world and frantically adjusted the water and jelly that had flooded the valley. Meanwhile Sesaisa was trying to let his elephants devour the oak forest I had just created, so I had to physically restrain him.

So that’s how it was. There had to be a reason they needed to be huge. Looking at the brain, nervous system, and whatever he’d done to their souls—stuff I didn’t fully understand—it made a twisted kind of sense.

Fine. I’d change tactics.

More clauses were added to the list of things we were forbidden to do. I continued tuning the ecosystem.

“Oak” is a catch-all term for any tree that produces acorns. Even in another world, convergent evolution would have created something similar.

Acorns are incredibly nutritious; you can survive on them alone. Their only real flaw is that they taste like absolute garbage. Humans find them inedible, and even squirrels will choose peanuts if given the option.

But the sheer quantity is insane. In autumn an oak forest can drop millions of acorns—more than enough to sustain an entire ecosystem.

I rewrote the elephant people’s diet, shifting them from wood-eating omnivores to dedicated acorn lovers. Their population was still low, so the modification was easy.

I lengthened their stubby, inefficient arms and hands—structures that could still grip tools and perform magic gestures—until they became long and powerful. Their legs grew longer and thicker while their abdomens became slim; they no longer needed gigantic stomachs for a wood-based diet.

I kept the skull size and brain capacity the same but softened the bone slightly. They transformed from “elephant” humans into something closer to elephant-like humans. I reshaped the trunk into a shovel-like scoop and added internal cheek-pouch structures so they could vacuum up acorns with their trunks while their hands remained free for tools or for ripping trees apart with raw grip strength.

The acorn-eating elephants exploded in population. The once-a-year acorn harvest became their breeding season. They gorged themselves, stored fat, and gave birth. During the rest of the year they used their long fingers and arms to gather leaves, fallen foliage, and branches.

Most of their time seemed to be spent on magic research, training, or meditation. I put the ones who could actually use magic to work expanding the forest further.

I restored other life forms as well—squirrels first, then the birds that ate them, then foxes.

I deepened and widened the oak roots and made the trees produce truly obscene amounts of acorns—so many that the elephants could eat nothing else year-round if they wanted.

In response the elephants learned to store the acorns, built houses from the wood, crafted tools, and began to cook. The Culture, Tech, and Industry scores shot up dramatically even though that hadn’t been my goal.

What? He raised the Nectar Well another level?

We both stared at each other’s worlds in shock.

What the hell had this madman done? The Nectar Well was now level 7. The oasis itself was exactly the same size, yet the magic density had precisely doubled. He had only used divine power as fuel—so how?

I had only used common-sense methods. Apparently Sesaisa had done the same.

He explained that the spiritual flows around the god fragments had been a chaotic mess because of the ecosystem below, so he restored the proper circulation. Then he used simple magical principles to concentrate the world’s ambient magic into the Nectar Oasis. With Yogur-tosoth’s power, nothing was impossible.

I still had no idea how he’d actually done it.

With our available resources suddenly doubled, I continued the ecosystem overhaul.

Not every inch of land needed to be oak forest. The primary zone was perfect for acorn-producing oaks, but the lakeshores, valleys, and hills could support entirely different creatures.

I’m not some blind environmentalist chanting about harmony. I only play that way because it suits my style. I fully understood that Sesaisa’s world should be an elephant’s world built exclusively for elephants.

Therefore I reshaped the entire planet into ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a form that served the oak forests and the civilization that would rise within them. This was the work of ecological civilization.

“Wow… The Lord of Mass Extinction is capable of this kind of play while still running an anti-intellectualism build?”

“As for Sesaisa… ha. Don’t even get me started. He’s the type who would bulldoze an entire forest that existed thanks to his own knowledge of mystery.”

Whatever the angels were muttering, Sesaisa and I took turns inspecting each other’s worlds. We checked for sabotage or mistakes while continuing to develop one another’s ecosystems and magical environments.

These days the oak forests were managed not by the elephants but by trained squirrels. The squirrels buried acorns everywhere like living planters. Birds ate the acorns and spread the seeds through their droppings across even wider territories.

I modified every oak so it could adapt to any environment in Sesaisa’s world, yet I left their biological imperative to spread acorns untouched. No matter how numerous the elephants became, they would always be able to find acorns and oak trees anywhere on the planet.

Since they also seemed to enjoy fruit and grass as occasional treats, I added those plants too. I dramatically increased biodiversity, fused monsters with flora to create magical life forms, and used them to support every aspect of the elephants’ culture, technology, and industry.

The elephant people cut down colossal trees, shared the wood, and held festivals. Because I had tuned the acorns to scatter on different schedules throughout the year, simply following their designated pilgrimage route let them celebrate an acorn festival every single day.

With their outstanding intelligence they built villages, developed commerce and tools, cultivated oak groves, and began producing cuisine and medicinal herbs from acorns and other plants.

There were still many things I wanted to tweak, but this was enough.

Rejoice in it. In this beautiful ecosystem.

He had completely lost it.

Sesaisa had strengthened my world in the simplest, most brutal way possible. He had raised the Nectar Well, pushed Abhojuth all the way to level 7, and elevated Yogur-tosoth to level 5.

Then he had insanely increased the overall magic pressure across the entire planet. Abhojuth and the jellies devoured that power, causing the world’s life force and combat potential to explode. The surge was still ongoing.

I could only say one thing.

What the hell did he actually do? I still didn’t understand.

“I will now settle the points for both sides.”

Right. We only calculated contribution for the scores we had personally raised. Any growth that happened on its own didn’t count.

Damn. This was going to be bad. The other side had done so much that I was probably about to lose tens of thousands of points.

“Sesaisa will transfer 344 points to Biin.”

Whoa. I was actually receiving points. Hadn’t he contributed more?

Still, when everything was calculated, the difference was razor thin.

It wasn’t an alliance offer but a non-aggression pact. He was openly suggesting we settle things in the later rounds. Until then he planned to suck every last drop of ecological knowledge out of me.

But I needed his magical knowledge just as badly. The stuff I’d learned in-game wasn’t enough.

If I had to become the best out of a billion players, I needed to understand magic well enough that no one could deceive me. Help from the greatest expert who had come from an actual magic-using world was essential.

I accepted Sesaisa’s proposal. The next collision. He would probably win. I also had a very high chance of victory.

We could continue the conversation after that.

“A moment of silence for the player about to face the Lord of Mass Extinction… and for the player about to face his legion of magical elephants…”

Well, meteors are supposed to fall without warning, after all.