Chapter 4
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Chapter 4: How Could a God Poop?
“Listen, as a researcher, shouldn’t you always maintain wisdom and calmness?”
“What happened? You’re so flustered!”
…
Icarus endured the knight Sulya’s lecture as he dragged her twenty miles away from the mobile city.
Honestly, his persistence was remarkable.
“You…”
“Hey, did you hear me…”
Sulya’s words caught in her throat.
Suddenly, she felt the ocean currents warm, and a natural odor spread through the waters.
Though not sweet, it evoked a sense of the cycle of all things.
What drew Sulya’s eyes alongside the warmth was a massive mound radiating heat!
“This…”
“A miracle! This is a miracle!”
Sulya and Chief Technician Icarus knelt before the mound.
Sulya especially trembled with excitement, utterly forgetting her earlier lecture.
Icarus kept his composure as a scientist, explaining eagerly to the knight:
“We found this mound by chance. Its core consists almost entirely of a special substance holding incredibly pure, high-density radiative energy!”
“This could be perfect fuel for our mobile city—superior to anything before! Enough for all our trapped city-states to last ages!”
“We also discovered huge bones within the mound. Extremely resilient, like fragments of a ‘divine vertebrae’.”
“My blacksmiths could forge near-artifact weapons with them!”
…
Icarus continued his impassioned explanation without pause.
But Sulya had already begun praying.
“We thank you, great Giant God!”
The dawn of hope had arrived!
With these special materials and resources, the stranded mobile city-states could escape their fuel crisis, bolster their arms, and even break through the chaos demon’s fortress!
Sulya envisioned a mighty deity wisely watching all—sunlight piercing storm clouds, scattering chaos, granting new hope to exiles on the seabed.
He compassionately heard the desperate prayers and bestowed hope.
Sulya remained devout, yet others still questioned.
Like technician Icarus.
“Uh…”
"A powerful god as support was naturally good, but I thought he was no different from the previous ‘order gods.’"
"If he was truly all-knowing and all-powerful, why didn’t he come down himself and wipe out the chaos gods?"
"Instead, he left us weak ones…"
Mr. Icarus saw the anger in the female knight’s eyes and wisely shut up.
"I feel ashamed for my laziness and cowardice, for you and for myself."
The understanding shone in her heart like a lighthouse in the dark.
"I get it! This is a test, this is training!"
"The god wants us to use our own strength, to work hard and grow through fight after fight!"
"For kids, a little love is fine; too much spoiling just makes useless failures!"
"We won’t disappoint you!"
By then, her prayer had turned into strong will!
"Contact the other branches around here right away."
"This is the time to break through the siege of the chaos gods and fight our way out!"
Seeing the fired-up female knight Sulya, Mr. Icarus opened his mouth, "Uh, the only issue is…"
"What’s wrong?"
The female knight asked.
"Forget it, it’s nothing…"
The chief technician looked at Sulya’s devoted face and decided to keep the thought that "this pile of dirt looked like a big piece of poop" to himself.
Even he, who wasn’t big on gods, found it silly.
"Yeah, it’s too silly. A god? How could they poop?"
—-
Trilobite felt very happy.
During his "Abnormal Development" time, he had a nice dream.
He dreamt of a pretty lady.
Even better, he became an unseen force and hugged the lady for a bit…
"I hope dreams like this come a lot!"
"I want to hug that lady again!"
Of course, if it was just a dream, he wouldn’t be so happy.
Besides that, Trilobite found he could use his "system vision" to spot things with Chaos Energy—anything with Chaos Energy showed up red in the system vision!
Plus, he learned something big—"I seem pretty huge."
"I’m actually half a meter long!"
This made sense.
“That conodont was probably the beautiful Promisa conodont. According to fossil evidence, it was about one meter long, much longer than me, but too slender.”
“So, I was a half-meter long starfish!?”
“Ha ha ha, that was really big!”
Trilobite’s reasoning was too much for the system to take.
[Dear, I think…]
“System, I know what you think.”
Trilobite felt the system was about to mock him again. Unhappy, he spoke what the system wanted to say first, shutting it up.
“You think I was just half a meter long and feeling proud of myself, right?”
“But starfish are small creatures, so half a meter long was impressive.”
If Trilobite really was a starfish, that was true.
As one of the earliest vertebrates, starfish only reached about twenty centimeters in length; a half-meter long Trilobite was a giant among starfish.
“At this size, even among carp sold in markets, it would be seen as a big fish!”
“If I bought fish, I’d ask why it’s so big—was it given hormones?”
[No, dear, I meant…]
“System, I know what you mean.”
“You mean ‘So what if it’s big? It has a notochord but no vertebrae? It’s just a ‘pseudo-vertebrate’ in the end.”
“That’s right, so I’m weak. I need to be careful while eating and evolving! I found prey!”
“It’s that patch of ‘predatory crinoids’ ahead!”
Crinoids are echinoderms!
Everyone knows echinoderms grow however they want; they don’t care how they look, who they scare, or how many hairs paleontologists lose.
Crinoids are more orderly than other echinoderms, but echinoderms can be wild.
For example, the one before Trilobite wasn’t just ugly—it was fierce.
Unlike other filter-feeding crinoids, this one was predatory!
Its scientific name is “Ammonicrinus.” (Some call it ram’s horn crinoid, but the author isn’t sure.)
It had a broad crown at the front like an insect’s thorax, with hardened, spiky, limb-like arms; behind was a bendable stem that was strong and wide.
The stem thinned suddenly at the back, attaching to the seafloor.
It looked like a centipede with venomous fangs and limbs, but with a long root-like stem from its tail!
In short, it was so weird it seemed not of this world—a perfect example of random growth.
“Hmm, this ram’s horn crinoid is at the ocean basin’s bottom. If it were a fort, it’d be unbreakable.”
“Too bad you’re not a fort; you’re just a crinoid!”
“Ah, enough of that—I’m going in!”
[No, I wanted to say…]
“System, I know you think I’m useless, picking on things that don’t move.”
“But that’s nature’s rule! Even beasts only challenge the weak and old, right?”
“For a weak starfish like me, I must choose prey wisely!”
“This predatory crinoid is just right.”
“And it looks fierce, so it’s not weak.”
[……]
[Damn it, you fool!]
[Get better eyes, now!]
The system stayed silent for a long time, sulking.
“Ha ha!”
Trilobite felt proud.
He’d made that annoying system curse and drop the “dear.”
Thanks to that, the system’s mom could come back from the Oort Cloud.
“Hmm, quiet now—time to work!”
“Boom—!”
The starfish burst from the muddy sand, wiggling its notochord, and charged at the “ram’s horn crinoid!”
He only saw the prey, ignoring nearby creatures like big “hermit crabs.”
“Whoosh—hiss—!”
Water from his gill openings sprayed over the hermit crabs, but he didn’t eat them. They didn’t show on the system’s “food map.”
Trilobite didn’t care about things that didn’t boost his “Chaos Energy.”
