The First Catastrophe - Part Three
Why can sexual reproduction solve the three disasters of beauty, culture, and parasites all at once?
The answer is surprisingly simple. It is a biological law of nature.
The story traces all the way back to Charles Darwin, the founder of evolutionary theory. That man had many achievements besides evolution. Like the scholars of his era, he researched an astonishing range of subjects.
He studied carnivorous plants. He researched barnacles and proved they were not mollusks but crustaceans related to shrimp, lobsters, and crabs. He was also the one who discovered that earthworms enrich the soil.
Among the concepts he proposed, there was one truly brilliant idea.
Sexual selection. A theory about sex that was taboo in its time. In short, organisms evolve through competition to appeal to the opposite sex and to overpower same-sex rivals. As a result, organs that seem inefficient at first glance can develop.
The easiest example is the peacock. The spectacular one is the male. The female looks like an ordinary bird. Even chickens—only the roosters are flashy while the hens are plain. Only male deer grow antlers.
And though it is somewhat removed from human aesthetics, male orangutans develop puffy oil sacs on their faces, male gorillas grow tall cranial crests covered in silver fur, and there are creatures like the stalk-eyed fly whose eyes are spread grotesquely far apart on either side of the head.
The deer’s antlers are easy to understand. Males slam them together when they fight.
But what possible use could a peacock’s brilliant feathers, an orangutan’s cheek pouches, or a stalk-eyed fly’s splayed eyes actually have?
In the peacock’s case, scholars interpret it as a fitness display: “I can survive just fine despite these cumbersome, extravagant feathers.”
The orangutan’s oil sacs exist simply because female orangutans have a collective fetish for bloated faces.
Gorillas ended up that way because the females all have a fetish for tall skulls.
In a word, these are organs that evolved for no practical reason other than looking impressive. They exist purely to appear magnificent.
But why on earth does that look magnificent? And surprisingly, aren’t humans the same?
Why do human monarchs adorn themselves with such flashy and unnecessary ornaments and wear pointed crowns?
Why pin on medals, wear ornate uniforms, and style their hair in extravagant ways—even though it will look tacky a few decades later?
Because humans have civilization. Instead of evolving physical structures on their faces or skulls, they could simply create those flashy structures or acquire them as property.
Other creatures without civilization lack the skill to manufacture such things, so they evolved them directly onto their own bodies.
“So once we begin sexual reproduction, the development of those unnecessary structures is inevitable. And as we saw in the previous game, they all become Charm, which then develops into Culture, correct?”
Exactly. The gamchi already practice sexual reproduction. That is why they sing, perform courtship dances, and decorate their bodies with brilliant feathers, crests, claws, and every possible color pattern.
Even the bisyakheet do it. To court females, they perform deranged courtship rituals—cutting off Abhojuth’s tentacles and vomiting up the nutrients stored in their bellies (a surprisingly common form of food sharing).
If they fail? They die to Abhojuth. If they succeed? Congratulations. You’re a father. A bisyakheet can only succeed in breeding if it brings back at least some of Abhojuth’s tentacles.
But the overwhelming majority of my ecosystem consists of jellies. Simply teaching the concept of sexual reproduction to these asexually reproducing jellies will cause my world’s culture to skyrocket.
“Then why didn’t you introduce sexual reproduction until now? It seems like they’re all still reproducing through fission or budding…”
“Because asexual reproduction is obviously far more convenient for multiplying numbers.”
“Huh?”
Why the surprise? It’s obvious. Just consider how many resources are wasted trying to catch the opposite sex’s attention. Flashy structures? Fierce same-sex competition? Beautiful songs and dances, appearance, clothing, wealth?
The majority of male creatures on Earth die without ever gaining a single breeding opportunity.
It is not much different for females.
Once the males have attracted attention and brought food, the females must handle the enormously difficult, resource-intensive tasks of pregnancy, egg incubation, and so on.
There are species where males actively help raise the young, but that only proves how burdensome pregnancy is for the females.
For asexually reproducing organisms, none of those steps are necessary.
They simply eat, live well on their own, and one day when they have gained enough mass they tear open their bellies and a smaller copy of themselves is born.
If you raise that smaller self properly, a biologically identical copy will continue living your life in your place.
“It sounds kind of horrifying, but also kind of cool?”
Right. Asexual reproduction is genuinely convenient. You spend zero resources on mate competition and can eat and live entirely for yourself.
For the Dessert Legion, asexual reproduction was far more advantageous. We needed to increase numbers quickly, and I was evolving them artificially anyway.
“But isn’t sexual reproduction an extremely common mechanism? If asexual reproduction is so convenient, why did sexual reproduction become dominant?”
Because of parasites.
“Eh? That’s where the connection is?”
Well… it is not one hundred percent because of parasites, but it is one of the causes.
In short, asexual reproduction is ultimately just copying the same self. It produces clones with identical genes. Of course mutations sometimes occur and a slightly different self is born… but that is the baseline.
And identical individuals are, naturally, equally vulnerable to the same diseases. Think of the potato blight that devastated Ireland, or the banana crops that were all genetically identical and wiped out when a plague spread.
How do you overcome that? You change the genes. One method is to produce many offspring and hope a useful mutation appears.
But the generation time of parasites and bacteria is far faster than that of their hosts. While a human goes through one generation, parasites go through dozens and bacteria go through tens of thousands, evolving all the while.
How can you compete in that evolutionary arms race? However, if you use sexual reproduction to meet a different partner and exchange genes, the problem is partially solved.
“Because the genes get mixed.”
Exactly. When genes are mixed with another individual, the offspring come out somewhat different. That allows resistance against organisms like parasites and bacteria whose generation turnover is insanely fast.
“Ah… So parasites practice sexual reproduction too?”
They do. Because if they fall behind in the evolutionary race, they go extinct as well.
“......”
Anyway, by adding a sexual reproduction mechanism to my jelly-type creatures, we can roughly break through both Culture and Beauty. The parasite problem is solved as well.
Therefore, the moment the disaster section began, I and my many clones threw ourselves into the task of simultaneously evolving every jelly in my ecosystem.
Sexual reproduction also has stages.
It begins with hermaphroditism—simply exchanging genes with one another.
Second is hermaphroditism where, during the actual reproductive act, one individual functions as male and the other as female. Here “female” means the one that lays eggs or becomes pregnant—the one that directly produces the offspring.
In such cases they may fight because neither wants to be female (producing offspring consumes an enormous amount of energy), and the winner takes the male role.
Third is gonochorism—distinct males and females. Even this has tremendous variety when examined closely. Some plants bear both male and female flowers on the same individual, some fish can change sex, and some are fixed from birth like humans.
In any case, the concept of “gender” that humans treat as monumentally important is not actually that significant from a biological viewpoint.
This is essentially a very unhealthy habit that arose because humans cannot change their sex, leading to distinctions and discrimination…
Among fish, the ability to change sex according to circumstances is quite common. Certain mushrooms are said to have tens of thousands of sexes. In other words, within the same species there can be tens of thousands of different mating types.
“Then at which stage are the jellies starting?”
Hermaphroditism, obviously. Beginning with the stage where they simply exchange genes. After that they will sort themselves into male and female.
The jellies originally reproduced through fission, sporulation, budding, and so on.
From there I devised a mechanism in which jellies would meet and exchange portions of their bodies containing reproductive cells.
Whether the spores tangle to form eggs, or they incubate them internally like mammals, or use budding while inserting another’s genes to create a clone that is only partially from another individual—I tested various approaches.
I injected the hermaphroditic sexual reproduction methods I knew into many different jellies all at once, in various forms, and evolved them. Among them, the most popular and competitive mechanism would survive and advance to the next stage.
“Wait. You’re not applying sexual reproduction to the candy and nectar jellies?”
“Ah… Those two are better off staying asexual.”
Candy expends all the energy of its lifetime in a single body slam, and its generation turnover is fast. There is no need to adopt a massively energy-wasting mechanism like sexual reproduction or sexual selection.
Nectar Jelly is essentially a microorganism. Their generation turnover is already insanely fast through simple division, so there was no point adding sexual reproduction.
That left the ground-crawling jellies, the ground-leaping jellies, the shell-forming jellies, the puddings, the gumi trees—those kinds of creatures—to practice sexual reproduction.
I also set Bread and Yogurt to sexual reproduction, but those guys evolved a headache-inducing mechanism where two or three individuals clump together to produce a single offspring. It was rather bewildering. They can figure that one out themselves.
The important thing was that the ecosystem was growing healthier. My stagnant life points began rising rapidly. It looked like my level would increase again soon.
It had only been 36 the last time I checked, but as the average level rose it had climbed all the way to 56. Things were proceeding smoothly.
While I quietly observed the evolution, however, I witnessed something truly strange.
“Hm? What is that?”
“What’s wrong?”
As I explained earlier, there were practically no size restrictions on my jelly-type creatures.
When that trait combined with sexual reproduction, a bizarre phenomenon occurred.
Small jellies would burrow into larger jellies and fuse with them completely, as if becoming a literal part of their body. Then, like parasites, they absorbed nutrients and began producing offspring as though they themselves were reproductive organs.
“Whaaaaaat?!”
“It reminds me of the anglerfish. The much smaller male anglerfish, after mating, is absorbed into the female’s body and reduced to an external terminal that does nothing but supply sperm for the rest of its life.”
“It does?!”
“No, wait. That’s not the real problem here, is it?”
It seemed the jelly types were far more closely related than I had realized.
Just as similar species can breed and produce fertile offspring, jellies, puddings, and gumi—the life forms I had given different names—began hybridizing freely with one another.
It was an unexpected outcome. Probably because I had unified the reproductive cell transfer mechanism into something similar and evolved them collectively. As a result, grotesque changes appeared: shells growing on gumi trees, tentacles and shells sprouting on upside-down running puddings, and so on.
“The Life points are plummeting!”
“Are the offspring infertile? Or is this simply the result of inefficient hybridization?”
“The Life points are dropping and you’re not even paying attention?!”
Wait a moment. Just watch.
The jelly-type life forms that had almost no gene exchange while reproducing asexually were now engaging in frantic sexual reproduction and rapid generation turnover. Grotesqueness increased, most went extinct or were weeded out, but… somehow, ideal individuals emerged.
Those ideal individuals continued reproducing among themselves.
Different survival strategies activated. The ecosystem around the Nectar Lake became a true demonic realm where plants and animals intermingled. I guided that evolution in specific directions together with my other clones, while leaving some parts to run wild, and continued to observe.
In the process, a truly bizarre life form was born.
This creature was a hybrid of no fewer than four different life forms.
Its body was that of a pudding—the body of the most powerful predators such as the Anomalocaris Pudding.
Its internal organs, however, were jelly—quick, elastic, performing nectar synthesis and mineral digestion.
Its shell, horns, and other internal structures came from coral gummies and gumi trees, which create hard and beautiful frameworks.
Furthermore, syrup flowed through its body, so magical power wriggled throughout its gel and topping composition.
Not only was it a hybrid of four life forms, but the four types of creatures possessed genes “separately” and existed within the body. No matter which jelly-type creature it mated with, only that corresponding part would reproduce sexually, exchange genes, and give birth to a separate life form.
“It is like the Portuguese man o’ war. What appears to be a single jellyfish is actually many polyps fused into one organism. It is not quite as independent or extreme as that, however.”
“It’s surprising such a creature exists on Earth. But… isn’t there something more important?”
Yes. There was something more important.
“From now on, that thing is a yanggaeng.”
“Not the name!”
“Oh? The culture score has already passed 100 points and reached level 1? Show me the new traits. It will hit level 2 soon.”
“I mean… um… Never mind. I’ll show you the traits.”
Beauty truly is a magnificent thing.
Beauty Category: 2
337 points? A heroic individual had already appeared. Outstanding.
Among these hideous hybrids, at least one beautiful specimen would emerge.
Even if not, we had Yogur-tosoth and the coral reefs, so there was no need to rely on these creatures for honey-trap tactics. What mattered now was the overall rise in cultural level across the board.
Ordinary jelly-type creatures, yanggaeng, bread and yogurt, gamchi. There was much to examine. I would scatter my clones and check them one by one, carefully.