Gamchi

The ecosystem consulting business. In other words, the same kind of venture I ran with Sesaisa—offering advice to other players in exchange for points.

At four points per contribution point, all I need to do is raise someone else’s ecosystem score by 22,437 points. Sesaisa’s world had been so far in the gutter that it was easy to inflate, but even then I had pushed his score up by a full ten thousand. Factoring in the doubled world size, that meant extracting twenty thousand points—eighty thousand in actual currency—from a single player, or forty thousand from two, twenty thousand from four, or ten thousand from eight.

“Four points per contribution point is the current fixed market rate, so it isn’t unfair. And if the recipients can be certain their scores will actually rise, it shouldn’t be much of a problem either.”

Exactly. The real questions are whether I can actually deliver those gains, whether I can build enough credibility, and whether anyone will be willing to hire me in the first place.

The first one I’m confident about. The second should be fine too, since contracts mediated by the organizers are absolute. The third is the issue.

I opened the community and took a quick look around.

The Trait Shop event had split the players into two broad camps.

First, those desperate to earn points.

And conversely, those trying to sell their scores.

Only a handful of these posts were visible because my own war had ended relatively ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠early. In a little while, hundreds of thousands would probably flood the boards.

A Normal-grade trait cost 1,680 points. Most players could probably afford that, but if someone wanted to actually feel like a proper player, they needed an Elite trait at 7,409 or a Heroic one at 15,559.

In other words, a player sitting around the 10,000-point mark could hand over their 3,000 points to someone else and still have no hope of reaching Elite. Or, if they scraped together 5,000 more, they could buy a Heroic trait.

Considering that points only came in at the end of each collision and never rose again, that some players who valued cooperation had accumulated enormous point totals, and that both Sesaisa and I had reached the upper ranks despite barely interacting with anyone…

Most players had probably earned between fifteen and twenty thousand points from this collision alone, plus whatever they had gathered before. It was hard to say for certain.

Extracting twenty thousand from any single person seemed nearly impossible. They would want to spend thirty thousand on traits themselves.

But the reverse was also true: I could probably pull ten thousand points from a player holding forty thousand. At this stage, an Epic trait cost 32,000, a Legendary one 68,000, and a Mythic one 144,000.

Right. So the goal should be to extract ten or twenty thousand points from players sitting on forty to fifty thousand.

There were still 67 million players left. Surely I could find ten who met the criteria?

With that thought, I decided I first needed to raise my own credibility.

I should increase my life score even further.

“Why does credibility equal life score? You’re already at 12,328—far above the standard 926. You’re number one out of 67 million.”

Raising it now wouldn’t matter much since I had ended the collision too early. I needed to wait until more players had gathered, then reveal the highest possible number to build trust in my abilities.

Ah, but before that, I should reply first.

Conversation ended.

I would need to maintain a long-term relationship with Sesaisa. Still, he probably wouldn’t die in the next collision.

For now, I needed to work on promoting myself. That meant a large-scale tuning of my world and further development of its ecosystem.

I had to firmly integrate the newly acquired land into the Dessert Legion and, beyond that, carry out a massive overhaul of the existing terrain.

“A rational choice. So what will you do?”

First, I would remove the freshwater aquifer oasis that had merged with the Nectar Well.

I hadn’t been able to deal with it while managing Sesaisa’s world because the collision had approached too quickly. If a god fragment kept producing freshwater, it would cause problems.

The aquifer shared mana and leveled up, and as its level rose it stored even more freshwater, diluting the Nectar Well.

Perhaps that was exactly why Sesaisa had already moved the aquifer. The increased density of the Nectar Well was probably partly due to that.

He had placed it quite far away, yet it seemed to be exerting a positive influence on the world after all.

As expected, Sesaisa’s understanding of god fragments and magic far surpassed mine—far beyond what “far” could even describe.

He had probably chosen the optimal location to strengthen magic in his own way.

But to me, the ecosystem mattered more. Magic enhanced through feng shui could go eat dirt.

“Whoa. That’s harsh……”

The newly acquired world also had an oasis. A rather large one, in fact. Since it contained an aquifer, I merged my existing aquifer with it.

Nice. But because the aquifer had grown so enormous, roughly half of the newly acquired world was now submerged, swallowing and collapsing large portions of the former civilization’s territory.

Water overflowed in every direction, impossibly vast. The enemy world had apparently been well cultivated; their oases and rivers had been turned into wide fields and paddies, all of which were now flooded.

Good. Whether fields or paddies, agriculture only harmed ecosystems. In essence, farming meant “removing every species except one from an ecosystem and artificially modifying that species so it would die without constant human intervention.”

There was no way that could be healthy. The once-vast plains and lush forests of Mesopotamia had been completely ruined by thousands of years of human agriculture, turning into desert.

One could blame the technological limits of the time or unavoidable environmental factors, but fundamentally, the land would have remained fine if humans had never touched it.

More fundamentally, humans never needed to increase their population to the point of inventing agriculture in the first place.

Obsessed with reproduction and population growth, they destroyed nature through farming and hunting, built civilizations, and then, faced with low birth rates, decided they no longer wanted children—thereby destroying even the civilized world……

“Hey. How far are you going to take this? Stop.”

Anyway, the creatures that had done the most damage to Soon’s world’s environment were my people-killing candies.

“Why did you even dig up civilization in the first place?”

This was what happened when invasive species arrived. But now that the land was mine, I needed to make some adjustments.

The enemy hadn’t had an especially low life score either. Most of it had come from agriculture and population, but there had also been quite a few wild animals and livestock.

Above all, the enemy’s land possessed mountain and hill terrain, as well as plains where grass could grow even in the desert—neither pure sand nor gravel. There had also been one terrain type specialized purely in magic.

Perhaps the next opponent wouldn’t be desert nomads but plains nomads instead.

And there were an enormous number of birds. Or were they birds? ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Instead of feathers they had membranes, so they resembled bats or pterosaurs. Were they creatures from another world? Either way, they possessed flight and occupied the ecological niche of birds, so I would simply call them bat-birds.

“The players of this game gave them a different name. They were quite prosperous in their original ecosystem……”

Bat. Birds.

Did I really have to care about the names given by the extinct players? In proper academia, the official name was the scientific one assigned by scholars, not whatever the natives called them.

“Ah. Yes.”

Ecological niches were extremely important.

These bat-birds had thrived in the abundant environment, feeding on grain and insects. Some served as livestock, others as a kind of hunting falcon, allowing them to multiply in various ways.

The reason I was explaining this in such detail was because they were the only animals from the enemy world that had survived the great offensive of the people-killing candies.

Because they could fly, of course. The candies’ ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ultimate attack and hunting method was a final body slam, but the bat-birds were small and could simply ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠jump upward, so the less accurate candies had failed to hunt them.

And apparently the bat-birds had evolved a last-resort countermeasure: they could eat the candies.

Ah, wait. That wasn’t quite right. Because the candies had evolved to concentrate all mineral components into their shells, the jelly-like muscular flesh could apparently be digested normally.

It was like storks picking the meat out of clams and leaving only the shells. Some of the birds had even learned to draw a candy’s attention, let it charge, then tear apart the now muscle-torn candy. They had even begun teaching this hunting method to their kin, rapidly reducing the candy population. The smaller, immature candies were especially vulnerable to the birds.

“Interesting. If the enemy had held out a little longer, or deliberately used divine power to force evolution, perhaps……”

“Yogur-tosoth might have had to intervene.”

“Ah, well. That’s true. There was that option.”

This told me two things.

First, the biodiversity of the enemy world had already begun increasing, and its creatures were starting to develop their own countermeasures against my ecosystem.

Second, even without forming a civilization, the bat-birds possessed enough intelligence to potentially hunt the Dessert Legion.

Could I turn the bat-birds into members of the Dessert Legion? If I actively utilized them to seize air superiority and create an aerial force to support Yogur-tosoth……

“Ah.”

“What is it?”

A more entertaining idea had occurred to me.

Those creatures—neither bat nor bird—didn’t deserve a particularly good name within the Dessert Legion.

“Shameless.”

From now on, you are Gamchi. Sweet Tooth. The natural enemies of this Dessert Legion, the ones who devour desserts.

I would turn them into those natural enemies.

“Huh?”

They were no longer bat-birds. Furthermore, they would become the strongest evolutionary pressure of this era.