World Collision - The Fifth - 4

I had logged roughly fifty thousand hours in Planet Wars. Naturally, not all of that time went into building ecosystems.

In fact, you could say it was the exact opposite. I poured about forty thousand hours into constructing civilizations and designing ideal worlds.

If you asked me why, it was because I believed that the civilizations of beings called NPCs and the interactions they produced were, in themselves, unique biological ecosystems.

Just as human civilization is a natural ecological activity arising from the life form known as humans, I saw no real difference between raising human NPCs, non-human NPCs, or their species and decorating my own biosphere or aquarium.

Forty thousand hours invested in a single game—an unbelievable amount. Even at ten hours a day, that’s eleven years by the calendar alone.

It ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was entirely thanks to the game’s incredible depth. The base game was already cheap, but the expansion packs and DLCs were massive. Sales happened constantly, mod support was excellent, and I simply never got tired of it.

But around that forty-thousand-hour mark, after installing a new expansion themed around diverse ecosystems and bizarre creatures, I realized something by chance.

“This expansion doesn’t distinguish between regular creatures and people?”

In other words, the “people” you were forced to raise as your main species were simply highly intelligent entities capable of using tools and building civilizations. Livestock, monsters, or natural “creatures” were merely beings with low intelligence or, even if intelligent, incapable of using tools and thus unable to construct civilizations.

That was when the first thought struck me.

Since the main species could change anyway—immigrant races often became the meta, and I could still remain the master and god of the world—why couldn’t I play a game that completely excluded people and civilization?

What was advertised as an expansion was actually a bloated mess that everyone slammed with vicious reviews, calling it unusable. My concept for the anti-intellectualism build began with that trash-tier expansion.

Of course, back then I was limited to what a human computer could simulate, so the system had clear constraints. Still, I installed endless mods, developed my own, and ran tens of thousands of tests to see if this “non-civilization build” could work without breaking the existing rules.

And I reached a conclusion.

It was possible. You could clear the game’s highest difficulty without any sentient beings, and even maintain a meaningful win rate in multiplayer.

Second, it became much easier once I added the mods I had personally tweaked and tuned.

Third, the environment of the game I was currently participating in was far more favorable for this build than the mod-heavy environment back then.

The closer it was to reality, the easier it became.

The opposing player must have been completely baffled. How could someone without any civilization send a monster legion through the dimensional passage?

No civilization meant no society. No society meant Politics at zero. And zero politics meant my creations were so uncontrollable that they wouldn’t listen to a single word I said.

But absurdly enough, that premise was wrong.

My Politics was at two.

In other words, I could control my creations—just a little.

Which meant my ecosystem had society.

But it had no civilization.

“This is really interesting. So society can exist even without civilization.”

Exactly. People say “humans are social animals,” but more accurately, it’s “humans are one of the social animals.”

Society, rules, and systems are not exclusive to humans.

Look at those little things flying over there.

Gamchi. Small gamchi ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that occupy the ecological niche of “flocking birds” in my ecosystem.

Their diet consists of nectar seeping into the ground, scavenging dead jelly or pudding corpses, or nibbling on grass, dogtail millet, and small fruits near freshwater.

Survival strategy? They fly fast and flock in huge numbers. That’s how they avoid predators.

In short, they are the lowest-ranked consumers on the food pyramid. Many raptor-type gamchi hunt them by flying just a little faster and turning them into that day’s meal.

But these creatures have one truly fascinating trait.

Most flocking birds gather purely by instinct. These ones do it consciously.

From the moment I discovered them, it was obvious. On Earth, crows and parrots possess extraordinarily high intelligence. High enough to use tools, solve simple puzzles, and calculate cost-benefit to induce specific behaviors.

It seemed these gamchi had chosen intelligence as a survival mechanism alongside their small size and flocking behavior. At the very least, they were as smart as crows.

In other words, they could understand very simple revelations. I had only given one revelation to the leader of this particular flock of gamchi.

The other side of the passage has no predators. Cross over.

Then the gamchi that hunt them would follow. The jellies and puddings of my world would realize the gamchi were moving toward a food-rich area and evolve to react to their movements.

Then the gamchi that hunt those jellies and puddings would follow as well. The powerful predators strong enough to devour sheep or even kill humans when gathered in numbers.

Of course, to do this properly, I had to give the gamchi leader a bit of confusion. I needed to slightly distort the direction of the revelation so the flock would circle the world, drawing the predators’ attention before charging straight through.

That way, I could pour a massive number of the Dessert Legion into the enemy world with nothing but a single, tiny revelation.

“Does that alone change anything?”

“It changes everything. Because the gamchi are part of the Dessert Legion too.”

What I meant was that for our gamchi—who had survived in the hellish Dessert Desert by eating poisonous sap, moving thorns, flying predators, and grains as hard as stones—the enemy’s world was practically paradise.

First, the world’s surface area had doubled, so the chance of encountering a predator was cut in half.

Grain was everywhere.

The native birds and livestock here had far weaker bodies, laughably poor tenacity, and pitiful reproductive rates compared to the gamchi’s scaled membrane wings.

Year one of the dimensional passage. The enemy, unfortunately in the middle of harvest season, had their entire agriculture destroyed by the gamchi.

And the predatory gamchi, realizing that the people, livestock, and native wildlife here were even easier to hunt than the gamchi themselves, mercilessly ravaged the enemy world. The jellies and puddings were briefly confused before they simply began slowly nibbling on the soft, delicious grass and soil, gradually turning the enemy’s steppe plains into a Dessert Desert.

Those birds are harmful. You might want to say that, but ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠how exactly do you plan to control them?

Are you going to send shamans to catch each palm-sized gamchi one by one? Or should I have Yogur-tosoth toss a few Bisyakheet through the dimensional passage?

This is a plundering baptism by the gamchi legion. Scarecrows won’t be enough to stop them.

These bastards lived in the most fucked-up place in existence, so they’re filled with guts, tenacity, grit, and sheer stubbornness that fears nothing.

Let’s see if you can hold out until Yogur-tosoth arrives.

“Hold! Hold the line! They’re nothing but birds! If you don’t want to starve, squeeze out every last drop and exterminate them!”

Elguano and his fellow gods were already pouring every ounce of their divine power into training shamans.

Unlike magic, which required proper study and training, shamanism allowed gods to grant talent through divine power and awaken mysteries.

To be honest, I didn’t want to do this. Granting talent this way was extremely inefficient.

After all, Charm itself was a stat heavily influenced by talent. It wasn’t something you could just hand out to anyone.

But there was no choice. Their world had no other decent mysteries besides shamanism. The land was fundamentally desert-steppe, so there wasn’t even wood suitable for making bows. In the end, long-range attacks were impossible without shamanism.

That said, it would be unfair to call Elguano incompetent. Yes, his strategy had been all-in on the single hero called Sikadoz. But that one hero could handle ninety-nine out of a hundred situations.

Should he really be called incompetent just because he couldn’t handle one? And not even one out of a hundred, but one out of thirty-three million?

Still, that’s how meteor strikes work. If they come when you least expect them, you get hit.

I was anxious. Insanely anxious. Every single day, the cracks in the sky were widening little by little.

The enemy’s monstrous creatures couldn’t be infinite, but if things continued like this for two more years, the demon watching over their world from the sky would descend and sweep everything away. If that thing came down, there would be no chance of victory at all.

【O God! Can’t we call Lord Sikadoz back?!】

“No! If we pull Sikadoz back to defense now, we can never win! We must continue the terror attacks on the enemy world! While the demon’s attention is focused there!”

【But, but! Another demon has appeared!】

What the hell are you talking about? When I looked, an abnormally flashy bird was knocking over mud huts and single-handedly devouring all the straw used to build them.

No matter how much they hit it—even with hammers or spears—they couldn’t even scratch its massive body covered in tough shell.

It even counterattacked by spewing explosive shamanic spells from its mouth.

“What the…?”

Upon closer inspection, it was a Heroic Entity. It even had the title Great Red Crest.

“How the hell did a heroic entity appear?! What kind of culture does a world without civilization even have to produce a heroic entity?!”

Surprisingly, my Culture wasn’t zero. It was half of my Politics, but still only one point lower.

As I mentioned earlier, gamchi occupy almost the entire ecological niche of birds. And birds are incredibly cultural creatures.

Flashy feathers.

Prominent crests.

Abnormally long tail feathers or color patterns.

All of them are “adornments” and displays meant to seduce the opposite sex through Charm.

At first glance, both my Politics and Culture look low. But that’s entirely because of how this game calculates stats. It considers “quality,” “quantity,” and “average.”

Since I have an enormous number of creatures, but not many social ones and few with enough leisure to adorn themselves, the “average” is dragged down extremely low, making the numerical value itself appear low. In reality, certain species and individuals possess quite stable societies and very flashy presences.

And the game system judges all of them equally as having Politics and Culture.

“I see. So the anti-intellectualism build isn’t about abandoning all other stats to raise only Life?”

Correct. How could you win a game with eight stats by throwing away seven? It’s the opposite.

What is the most important stat in the game? As everyone knows, it’s Life.

So you raise Life to an extreme degree, then push the remaining stats with sheer “quantity” ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of creatures. You create specialized individuals through evolution to raise stats, level up with those raised stats, acquire traits through pure numbers, and gradually refine my creatures into elites.

That way, even without a single civilization, you can compensate for most stats and attack and occupy not the enemy’s civilization, but their ecosystem itself. After all, no civilization can completely abandon nature.

“Just from the explanation, it sounds incredibly powerful.”

Of course, even so, in the extreme late game the lack of civilization means you can’t accumulate Technology points, so it does weaken rapidly.

“Ah. I suppose that makes sense. After all, Technology itself is civilization.”

Even then, there are ways around it, and you can still maintain similar specs and weight class in the most important areas.

This is the anti-intellectualism build. A strategy that ends the world without a single civilization, and a strategy that destroys all civilizations.

And finally, after waiting so long, it had begun.

The dimensional rift opened. The ultimate weapon of my ecosystem, the apex predator Yogur-tosoth, finally flowed into the enemy world.

And as if to prove victory, insane surrender request messages began pouring in before my eyes.

“Please. Please accept my surrender…! Please! The elimination period is coming soon! I’ll give you Sikadoz or anything, just please…!”

Elguano’s vision went black.