Coral Gummy
The protection period has begun. During this time, the player will not come into contact with any other player’s world. After the protection period ends, your world will collide with others.
Since I achieved victory in just one year—which counts as a pretty fast clear—my remaining protection period was still quite long. If a fight dragged on too long, worlds could collide in the middle of a battle.
That wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, so I’d deal with it when it did. For now, it was time to perfect my ecosystem even further.
“Looking back, insisting on calling it an ‘ecosystem’ is starting to piss me off a little.”
Whatever. I’ll just do my job.
The newly evolved lifeform, Coral Gummy, was a creature that had evolved from Sponge Pudding. It didn’t follow Earth’s biological taxonomy, but I named it that way, so just roll with it.
Sponge Pudding literally lived like a sponge. You know what a sponge is, right? That yellow guy in square pants? Yeah, that’s a sponge.
Actually, “sponge” is just the common name for the phylum Porifera. They attach themselves to the bottom, suck in water, eat the microorganisms inside, filter it clean, and pump it back out. They’re the most primitive form of animal.
Coral Gummy worked in a similar way. The main difference was that, as the name suggested, it was much harder. It also built tougher mineral structures out of sand, giving it the appearance of a plant rather than an animal.
But it was still an animal.
Even so, instead of hunting jellies, it obtained nutrients through nectar synthesis.
You might wonder what the point is, but real coral are animals too—they just host symbiotic algae and do photosynthesis. These guys were basically the same.
Unable to move, they grew rock-hard mineral structures that predators couldn’t easily tear apart, then housed Nectar Jellies inside their bodies.
In return, the Nectar Jellies produced nutrients for them and lived safely within the sturdy mineral structures the Coral Gummy had built.
“Wait, couldn’t you just make Nectar Jellies with hard structures instead?”
“That’s possible, and those creatures already exist. But think in terms of division of labor. A single organism trying to do both nectar synthesis and build sturdy structures ends up being mediocre at both.”
“Ah, I see. So having weak ones focus on nectar synthesis while tough ones protect them actually increases overall efficiency.”
“Exactly. And if you’re going to ask that, shouldn’t you first ask why the Puddings don’t just drink Nectar directly instead of hunting jellies?”
For the record, the answer was that Nectar lacked the minerals essential for the Puddings’ growth, and while Puddings had bodies that demanded massive amounts of minerals, they had no ability to absorb them directly.
Nectar provided only pure life energy and no inorganic matter.
Thanks to the Construction Expert trait, the Coral Gummies began spreading across the bottom of the Nectar Oasis at an incredible speed. Since they consumed minerals to build their structures, the bedrock of my world started eroding at a rapid pace.
Wait a second. Eroding the bedrock…?
“I’ve got a question. In the game resources were infinite, but what about now? This world is supposed to eventually return to its original state. If I keep digging all the way to the bottom, will I fall into the sky?”
“No. The world only appears flat for convenience. In reality, it is ‘spherical from every direction.’ If you dig straight down, you’ll eventually emerge upside-down from the opposite coordinate point on the other side of the world.”
“So even the resource called ‘ground’ has a limit?”
“It’s extremely unlikely to ever happen, but… yes. The same applies if you fly all the way to the edge of the sky—you’ll come out from the opposite side.”
I didn’t fully understand what “spherical from every direction” meant, but at least I didn’t have to worry about digging forever. So I kept digging.
After expanding in width, the lake now began expanding in depth. Coral Gummies filled the deeper areas, and various creatures seeking safety moved in between them.
On Earth, coral reefs made up only one percent of the ocean’s area yet supported twenty-five percent of all marine life. I was aiming for something similar.
Since Nectar was produced from a spring at the bottom and then diluted by the water created by Nectar Jellies above, with surface and land jellies sharing the rest, the Coral Gummies at the very bottom could consume the purest Nectar.
Despite that advantage, however, the Coral Gummies’ growth was slower than expected.
“They’re not growing as well as I thought.”
“The water is too deep. The desert’s sunlight is brutal, but the creatures in the upper layers are hogging all that heat and light. As a result, the water near the Nectar Spring at the bottom is actually quite cold.”
Of course, the evolution of the Nectar Jellies had already created some balance.
In short, Nectar Jellies at the surface received direct light and heat but drank the most diluted Nectar.
Those in the upper layers received plenty of light and heat but still fairly diluted Nectar.
Mid-layer creatures got moderate light, heat, and moderately concentrated Nectar.
Lower-layer ones received little light and heat but drank richer Nectar.
And the ones at the bottom received almost no light or heat but consumed the richest Nectar of all.
“My Nectar Oasis ecosystem has already split into five distinct layers based on depth. After accelerating evolution, they’ve each diverged in different directions. The upper ones barely release water and instead dump out massive amounts of mana, while the lower ones release a lot of water and almost no mana.”
And it wasn’t just depth—the ecosystem also changed depending on distance from the central Nectar Spring.
Right at the center, where Nectar still rose fairly strongly, dense clusters of jellies gathered. As you moved toward the edges, the dilution increased, so Rock Jelly-type creatures that consumed large amounts of water and rock while producing huge quantities of mana thrived there.
The larger the Nectar Spring grew, the more diverse the ecosystem would become.
Honestly, an oasis of this size shouldn’t have this much ecological diversity. I had forcibly increased mutation and variation using my Divinity, so it was a bit of an artificial push.
“Then what should we do?”
“Create a new lifeform.”
“Not a sentient one, right?”
“Correct.”
Another microorganism. Except this one could actually use magic.
“This should raise my Mystery score nicely.”
That’s right. Taxonomically, it was classified as a Magical Creature. A being that lived by consuming mana. While it would slow the growth of the Nectar Spring by consuming mana, from the perspective of the entire ecosystem, it was actually beneficial.
You have created a new lifeform! What will you name it?
“Topping.”
[Topping] has been created.
I then evolved the Toppings into other creatures. To this organism that performed “magic synthesis” by consuming mana to generate energy, I granted a new function.
[Topping] has evolved into [Sun Topping].
Resembling a stylized sun with numerous cilia for mobility, this creature consumed the pure mana and Water overflowing in the lake to generate energy. It formed its body from Earth, gained mobility from Wind, and released Fire-attribute mana and Light-attribute mana as filtered byproducts.
In short, it drank the surplus resources of Water and Mana to create currents within the stagnant lake, replenish minerals, and most importantly, produce the light and heat the ecosystem desperately needed.
“You really thought this through. Especially for someone from a world with low understanding of Mystery.”
As the Sun Toppings multiplied, the water level of the Nectar Lake dropped. But inside the lake, brilliant light began to shine and the water grew warmer.
Light and heat reached all the way to the bottom. The Nectar Jellies absorbed it and exploded in population. As the jellies multiplied, the Coral Gummies housing them grew larger and generated structures like crazy.
They devoured the deep bedrock that even Rock Jellies couldn’t touch, increasing the lake’s depth several times over. The volume grew. As volume increased, more Nectar Jellies poured out water and mana. Although some was consumed by Sun Toppings, the vast majority flowed back into the lake, causing it to expand many times over.
The level of 《Nectar Spring》 has increased.
The Nectar Spring was now level 4. Its diameter approached two kilometers, and its depth reached fifty meters.
Considering that even after swallowing another world, my ecosystem’s total surface area was only twenty square kilometers, this single Nectar Spring now occupied a whopping fifteen percent of the entire area.
When you included the wetlands created by its overflow, nearly forty percent of my world was under the Nectar Spring’s influence.
For reference, Oswald’s oasis was also quite large, occupying about twenty-five percent of his world.
Even though it was just plain water with no Nectar… looking at my ecosystem, it felt less like a desert and more like a wetland.
Well, deserts naturally form wetlands around rivers and oases, and rich ecosystems spread from there, so this was normal.
“Actually, isn’t it more normal for civilization to sprout in those rich desert wetlands?”
Anyway, the insane amount of life bursting from the Nectar Oasis supplied even more jellies to the surface creatures. The Puddings ate those jellies, got eaten by other Puddings that ate Puddings, and when those Puddings eventually died, they were torn apart by Gels. The Gels were then hunted by Pudding species that ate Gels and by jellies.
The world’s 〈Life〉 score has exceeded 926 points and risen to Level 4. You may now select a new trait.
Before I knew it, my Life score had reached the next level. I had only swallowed one world, yet the growth rate was monstrous.
“Haa… What the hell is this… How is it already level 4?”
I selected Carnivory as my new trait. The most aggressive, fast, and powerful Pudding species evolved into Meat-Eating Pudding. In addition to their existing jelly-and-rock diet, they could now tear into flesh as well.
The chicken-like, pig-like, and cow-like creatures that the previous world’s player, Oswald, had created for his own species would now have to desperately flee across the shrinking grasslands to avoid the Puddings’ attacks.
And the next world’s player would have to stop the carnivorous Puddings I sent their way. After easily wiping out these inefficient Meat-Eating Puddings, they’d eventually realize those were just bait. The real army—Freshwater Jellies, Soil Jellies, and Gravel Jellies—had been reproducing in the lakes from the start, turning farmland into desert and clean water into filthy masses of jelly.
The world’s 〈Military〉 score has exceeded 100 points and risen to Level 1. You may now select a new trait.
The world’s 〈Industry〉 score has exceeded 100 points and risen to Level 1. You may now select a new trait.
For Military I chose Aggression. For Industry I chose Expansive Construction. Aggression prevented my creatures from being easily intimidated even by stronger enemies, while Expansive Construction simply allowed buildings to be constructed on a much larger scale.
When going for a non-civilization build, the available traits were mostly just ones that strengthened living organisms, which wasn’t bad. Traits that couldn’t be selected at all simply didn’t appear.
“Could you call it an ‘anti-intellectualism build’ instead of a non-civilization build?”
“I’d prefer to call it an ‘anti-intellectualism build’ rather than a ‘mindless build.’”
“That’s not really how you use the term anti-intellectualism.”
“Same goes for ‘mindless.’”
Call it whatever you want.
So no matter what kind of civilization the next world’s player built, they’d get to experience hell courtesy of the jelly and pudding onslaught. For now, I figured I should check on the ecosystem around Oswald Oasis.
After all, the real offensive power of the Dessert Desert didn’t come from the carnivorous puddings—it came from the freshwater jellies that turned enemy land into desert and clean water into trash.