The Birth of the Sugar Lumps
The god of Tademoira had spoken nothing but perfect truth. For some reason, I could tell.
“Hah, but this isn’t the change I wanted. We’ve been reduced to animals.”
Tademoira was at a loss for words.
“I never asked for our species to remain animals.”
“That’s sophistry! You knew this would happen, didn’t you?”
The god of this world spoke with cruel honesty.
“!”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Tademoira agonized over the choice.
Mugite’s species had already split into two branches. One was slow, grass-grazing herbivorous primates. The other was agile omnivorous primates that hunted birds and bats and ate the vegetables he cultivated.
Only the herbivorous primates had truly fallen to the level of animals. The nimble primates that hunted birds and bats still maintained high intelligence and a decent level of civilization.
The hero entities were the same. They still possessed extremely high intelligence, cultural sophistication, and powerful willpower.
“I want their intelligence raised higher.”
“Uh… how? Well. Um.”
While Tademoira was an expert in flowers and horticulture, he was no expert on beasts. When he looked to the higher entities in his group, they pondered hard before answering.
“Please allow us to wield magic.”
“Not some other mystery—‘magic.’ The kind you study and use. Grant my species the talent for mysteries so they can learn, master, develop, and wield magic.”
“Uh… why?”
The answer that came back surpassed imagination.
Tademoira was stunned.
“But Yogur-tosoth uses magic!”
“The spiritual realm here is of astonishing perfection—don’t lie to me!”
“Then I wish to learn magic from Yogur-tosoth.”
This request received a noticeably delayed reply.
Tademoira fell into despair.
His mystery as a flower spirit was based on Charm. In short, without talent it could not be learned. It didn’t seem likely the god would grant that talent, and it wasn’t Intelligence-based either.
In the end he would have to entrust it to his species’ epic-class mages, but the problem was that the magic this being used was heavily influenced by traits and stats. In other words, this god had no idea how to teach magic to idiots.
“I… I understand. Then at the very least, I want support for magic research.”
Of course Tademoira knew the god wasn’t the type to hand out favors for free.
“I will pay a price.”
“In this world…”
“……There must be things in this ecosystem that require our help. Give us your commands, and we will obey.”
The god of this world’s eyes flashed.
“?!”
“What… what level of predator are we talking about?”
Tademoira looked with trepidation at those who trusted him. He could sense their deep anguish.
Should they accept this god’s proposal?
Even in their current state, things weren’t absolutely terrible. Their species could still eat and survive, and the god had not broken any promises so far.
He might be a villain, but he was the kind who wrote tricky contracts rather than the kind who lied outright.
In the end, they reached a consensus.
“Very well. With mana support, learning magic will become easier. That should allow us to rebuild our civilization. We accept the deal.”
What exactly is intelligence?
Earth’s Homo sapiens are incredibly smart. As the only species to consciously succeed in building civilization, these clever Homo sapiens naturally believed they were the smartest creatures on the planet.
In a way, they were right. Overall, Homo sapiens possess higher intelligence than any other Earth creature. Both their peak and their average are higher. When intelligence falls too far below that average, it is labeled a “disability.”
These brilliant humans once believed every animal on Earth was beneath them and slaughtered and hunted them without restraint.
But because their heads were too good, after studying this and that, they discovered the truth was more complicated.
Elephants, whales, apes—highly intelligent beings existed alongside them.
And the more they researched, the more surprising the facts became.
On average, chimpanzees possess far superior instantaneous memory than average humans.
Spread out a set of cards, show them for a split second, then cover them again. A chimpanzee’s accuracy when rearranging the cards in the exact order they just saw is dramatically higher than a human’s.
Of course, trained humans perform better. But chimpanzees can be trained too, and a trained chimpanzee is clearly superior to a human.
At that point, Earth’s researchers reached a conclusion.
Intelligence comes in many forms.
Chimpanzees live in dense forests where they must instantly see, remember, and recall details. That is why their instantaneous memory surpasses that of Homo sapiens, who evolved on open grasslands.
In other words, the direction of their intelligence is different.
Which means this:
Even a life form with plenty of intelligence may still be incapable of building civilization.
Civilization does not require high intelligence. It requires specific intelligence.
Specifically, the intelligence to create “tools that create tools.”
Not merely using a stone hand-axe, but the intelligence to carry the core stone used to make hand-axes and modify it further. The intelligence to make needles in order to make clothes. The intelligence to understand that making a sword requires mining iron, heating a furnace, and tempering the blade.
Without that kind of deductive reasoning, civilization cannot be built—no matter how intelligent the species is.
Many primates can use human tools for their intended purposes, including advanced ones like smartphones. They may not understand how a smartphone is made or how it works, but they use it anyway. Truthfully, very few humans actually know how to build one either.
So, to conclude.
“Why…?”
The species of Mugite that Tademoira had tried so hard to advance had all fallen to the level of very clever animals.
The herbivorous monkeys could learn and use magic. They handled mysteries and mana flow with high efficiency, and their previously degenerating intelligence had risen considerably.
But they had only become good at memorization. In the academic field of magic they were the lowest, worst kind—foolish mages who cast spells by rote without understanding.
They were astonishingly good at memorizing and casting, yet they desired nothing more, and seemed incapable of wanting more. They grazed on grass, repelled intruders with magic when necessary, then returned to their leisurely lives.
The same fate had befallen the hunting-type monkeys who had maintained their humanity through relatively high intelligence. Their intelligence had also regressed significantly.
To be precise, their intelligence remained high. But in order to survive constant stealthy venomous insects, giant birds, and rapidly charging bats, their sensory organs had become terrifyingly acute.
And their senses had developed in a way entirely different from simply improving “vision” or “hearing.”
Consider the mantis shrimp, which can see twelve distinct colors. Humans only perceive three—red, green, and blue—and most animals are red-green colorblind, seeing only two. Yet humans actually perceive tens of thousands of colors because our powerful brains interpret combinations as entirely new hues.
The mantis shrimp, with its poorer brain performance, evolved vision by distinguishing twelve individual colors.
Primates can distinguish many colors (most mammals are colorblind) and possess extremely high object-recognition ability—possibly to quickly detect snakes.
This isn’t because their eyes are superior. It’s because their brains are. Rather than raising raw sensory power, they dramatically increased sensory processing power.
The hunting-type monkeys had evolved exactly that way.
Every day they faced venomous insects and predators. The moment they detected any sound, shape, light, or vibration, they instantly analyzed what it was.
That is why their heads are large. Their nervous systems are enormously developed; their reflexes are unbelievable. At thirty meters they can “see” a pistol trigger being pulled, twist aside, and dodge the bullet. A human punch appears to them in slow motion.
They also possess excellent memory and precision when imitating physical techniques. In other words, they can learn martial arts and use mysteries in their own fashion.
Yet in acquiring these abilities, their capacity for deductive reasoning had been completely exhausted.
They do not “judge” stimuli. They “react.”
The brutal environment where failing to respond instantly could mean death had trained them to focus on “What am I sensing right now?” rather than “What will happen next?”
As a result, Mugite’s monkeys had become incredibly clever—transcendent monkeys far beyond ordinary primates—but the ability to build civilization had been stripped from them.
“Tademoira. Don’t cry.”
“It hurts us when you cry.”
They could even speak. Their intelligence was high, and unlike Earth primates their larynx was positioned low enough for proper pronunciation.
But now they spoke only in clumsy, limited vocabulary. It was no different from a gorilla using sign language.
“Ughhh… I’m sorry… Mugite… my creator…”
Tademoira sobbed. The hero-rank and epic-rank entities around him wept as well. They were experts in combat, religion, politics, and magic. The fatal flaw was that none of them had been an ecology specialist.
“Ugh…”
“What is it, Angel? Why are you crying too?”
“To see even the high-intelligence humans we barely obtained reduced to animals… the sheer ruthlessness of it brings tears to my—”
Ah, shut up.
Anyway, the monkey species flourished. The herbivorous ones became magic-type, the hunting ones became martial arts-type.
And now they were preparing to leave the Sky Garden and descend.
It seemed they thought there were too many predators here.
I respected the decision. Go live in the mountains. Go live even further down. That’s how real speciation happens.
I should give them a proper name besides “monkeys.” Hmm. They live to eat, devouring everything in sight. They’re gluttons, fatties, and especially love sweet things, so…
“You are now Sugar Lumps.”
I would call them Magic Sugar Lumps and Martial Sugar Lumps. I’d have to experiment with all sorts of things using these two races as the foundation.
“The fact that civilization is absent from all those experiments you’re planning is already bringing tears to my eyes.”
I decided to ignore the angel’s commentary.
Some of the Magic Sugar Lumps approached Yogur-tosoth, seemingly intending to worship him and receive instruction in magic.
Yogur-tosoth was delighted that he finally had worshippers. Good. I’m glad he’s happy.
Meanwhile the Martial Sugar Lumps—especially their leader, the combat-type epic-rank entity—seemed to have reached a decision. He shouted:
His fellow kin immediately questioned him.
“Are you insane?”
I laughed. At last, someone who understood my philosophy had appeared.
“As you wish.”
I poured overwhelming divine power into him. His body transformed. The already formidable fighter’s physique was remade with the insane reflexes and sensory processing power of a Martial Sugar Lump.
His Intelligence stat itself had not decreased—in fact it rose—because the stat encompassed both sensory and intellectual ability.
“I. Now meet family.”
Yet what people commonly call “intelligence” had clearly fallen. Seeing this, most of the heroic entities who had learned martial arts from him, and even the political officers, declared that they too had originally trained in swordsmanship and combat arts, and transformed into Martial Sugar Lumps.
Then the mages and priests decided to become Magic Sugar Lumps as well…
“Congratulations, Tademoira. The creatures created by your master shall continue their lives forever within my ecosystem.”
Only the flower spirit Tademoira screamed amid the Sugar Lumps whose intellects had been altered in an entirely different direction.