-You don’t understand,- another God typed, countering Brutal. -While your algae is developing slowly, his algae will find different ways to evolve and survive with the help of that wisdom.-
Sunny’s thoughts echoed this sentiment, but he saw an even more terrifying aspect.
-They don’t understand the real threat of this talent,- he thought.
-While it is terrifying in the start, where the lifeforms will evolve and survive easily, it will become truly Godly when the wise races start developing.- A wise race, according to the System, possessed complex thought and the capacity for belief.
Imagine such a race with five times the normal wisdom.
-One genius will take 50 years to develop something, but one genius with wisdom x 5 can do it in 1 or 2 years. Isn’t it more terrifying than Kairos’s talent?- Sunny wondered, the implications of such accelerated intellectual development sending a chill down his divine spine.
This ‘Children of Wisdom’ talent wasn’t just about faster evolution; it was about compressed history, rapidly advancing his future towards sentience, technology, and formidable power.
Chapter 6: Ch 6 : The Subtle Plunge and the Genetic Hunt
Chapter 6 - Ch 6 : The Subtle Plunge and the Genetic Hunt
As the two-hour mark of God-time approached, a quiet sense of satisfaction settled over Sunny.
His divine interventions had paid off handsomely. Veridia, once a vast blue marble, was now a vibrant tapestry of life.
Greenery adorned every newly exposed landmass, a testament to the rapid proliferation of the mosses, lichens, and the burgeoning forms of plants, shrubs, and bushes.
In the aquatic realm, the multicellular algae had continued their relentless evolution. Small, rudimentary fish-like creatures now darted through the water, their primitive eyes scanning for sustenance.
Some of these early aquatic inhabitants had even developed rudimentary outer shells, a nascent defense against the emerging predators in the primordial soup.
-Even with divine intervention, I didn’t think it was possible to evolve lifeforms to such an extent in just two Godly hours,- Sunny mused, a genuine awe in his cosmic consciousness.
The 1000% faster evolution rate for the first 7 Godly days was truly a cheat code, accelerating eons of natural selection into a blink of his divine eye.
Having become a God, Sunny found himself with an abundance of -time- on his hands.
He had developed a new routine: leisurely observing the intricate dance of life on Veridia, monitoring his steadily climbing Faith points, and occasionally dipping into the chaotic, yet strangely comforting, stream of the God Chat.
It was during one of these routine checks, he found an anomaly.
-The faith points stopped increasing?- Sunny exclaimed in surprise, his mental voice echoing in the void.
His habit of checking his Faith points every few minutes had ingrained their rapid, almost rhythmic increase into his awareness.
Before, they had been surging, gaining roughly 1 Faith point every 2 minutes or so, a steady climb that had brought his current total to a comfortable 27.14 Faith points.
But now, the counter was stagnant. Utterly, unnervingly still.
-System, why are my Faith points not increasing?- Sunny demanded, a flicker of unease turning into a grim premonition. There was no reply, only the vast silence of the cosmic void.
-Is this a misfortune?- Sunny grimaced. The global notification from before had warned of daily misfortunes, and this sudden halt in Faith generation, coupled with the System’s silence, felt like a direct hit.
He had mentally prepared for grand, cataclysmic events ��� earthquakes, tsunamis, meteor showers ��� and had even mentally rehearsed solutions for each. But this was different, insidious.
He immediately began observing his world with heightened intensity, searching for any potential sign of the misfortune.
His gaze swept across the verdant landmasses and plunged into the depths of the oceans.
The dwindling number of lifeforms, though not yet catastrophic, was a clear indicator of a problem.
A huge loss of lifeforms would mean a huge loss of potential Faith, a blow he couldn’t afford.
It took approximately 1 month of planetary time (which, given the 10,000x time flow, was still just a few minutes of Sunny’s perceived time) for him to pinpoint the root cause of this silent catastrophe.
It wasn’t overtly dramatic, but it was relentless.
The vast colonies of algae, the very foundation of his aquatic ecosystem, were dying.
They were not being consumed by predators, nor were they suffering from a lack of light or nutrients.
Their demise was slow, pervasive, and utterly baffling at first glance.
The reason for their death, once he meticulously traced the subtle indicators, was horrifyingly simple: -Oxygen Depletion,- Sunny grimaced.
The massive, unchecked proliferation of life, particularly the rapidly growing multicellular algae and the new fish-like creatures, had consumed oxygen faster than it could be replenished.
The balance of his primordial world had been tipped.