A representative example of asymmetrical weapons in nature is 'poison'.
Poison is scary. As mentioned before, the fear of poisonous snakes is so great that Homo sapiens evolved cognitive abilities.
Poison is something that can be incredibly toxic when used defensively.
A prime example is the poison dart frog. Its venom is so strong that even a simple touch can paralyze and kill a creature as large as Homo sapiens within minutes.
Pufferfish poison is also famous. It was not intended for hunting, but rather to keep others from eating it.
So, the question is: why haven't poisonous creatures conquered the world?
It's a matter of resource allocation. Poisons are, after all, chemicals, and synthesizing them within the body—and evolving without being affected by them—is incredibly difficult.
Venom isn't exactly an offensive weapon there. Not many large predators are venomous. The Komodo dragon, for example, is venomous despite being a large creature. Honestly, even without the venom, it would still beat humans, right?
Some creatures actively use poison for hunting, but usually they use poison to overcome the limitations of their bodies.
As mentioned earlier, the venom of the Komodo dragon isn't particularly potent. It simply injects its venom once, and once its prey is somewhat weakened, it slowly stalks and hunts. This creature's prey is much larger than itself, so it's quite capable of inflicting venom.
Snakes have venom because they have no limbs and must paralyze their prey before swallowing them. The snail is the creature with the most powerful venom on Earth, but it is literally a snail-shellfish, so it developed a venomous stinger to survive as a predator.
And in fact, poison is not very useful even from the perspective of an 'individual' survival strategy.
"I can explain it with a simple analogy. If I died eating puffer fish alone, my colleagues would think that eating puffer fish would kill them and they would never eat puffer fish again, right?
'Oh, no. I don't know why I ate it when I shouldn't.' Anyway, that's why he's dying, and his colleagues are reluctant to eat puffer fish. But what about the dead puffer fish? It saved the lives of their kin with its deadly poison, but he himself is 100% going to die."
So, it is surprisingly difficult for a truly extremely lethal poisons to evolve.
If it is a poison so strong that even touching it can kill you, the information that you should not eat it is not even transmitted safely.
Even though humans are said to die if they ate it, they tried hard and figured out how to eat puffer fish, right?
To put it another way, once information is conveyed, you can decide whether to eat or not.
"That is the power of civilization."
"It's just madness…"
"To be honest, I think pufferfish is a bit like that.
That's why they say poisonous frogs are flashy. Poisonous frogs can't help but be flashy.
Because the poisonous ones are indistinguishable from other ordinary frogs.
"Huh? Is that so?"
They would all have died. Only the frogs with some unique characteristics survived.
"That sounds plausible."
And there's a similar, yet contrasting, strategy: the skunk.
Skunks are famous for squirting a foul-smelling substance from near their anus, which smells so bad that even by human standards, it lasts for a month even after thorough washing.
But this is actually intended to be used against wolves and bears. These creatures have a sense of smell literally 100,000 times stronger than humans. It's a truly terrifying smell.
This smell isn't particularly toxic, but it actually improves the individual's survival rate. Just seeing a skunk's stripes will scare them away and keep them from getting close.
If you think about it that way, the 'hate operation' is actually a more effective strategy than you might think.
"Then I have to ask another question here: Why hasn't something like the skunk strategy become mainstream?"
This is because birds of prey that hunt and eat skunks, do not rely on their sense of smell.
"Ah."
"There's no such thing as an invincible strategy in nature. Just like there are poisonous creatures that naturally build up resistance and eat them."
But magic is what helps us overcome this.
"Shin. Rain."
"Okay. From now on, I'll call you by your first name."
The small jelly I recently discovered can show "a disgusting scene to anyone" through a mystery that activates using the flow. A mystery that attacks the
It's a strategy not unlike that of a butterfly, which suddenly spreads its wings to reveal a pattern resembling the eyeballs of a bird of prey. However, because it attacks the mind itself, it's universally applicable to almost all living things.
It's not like it's a strategy that's effective against a specific creature, like a strong stimulus or poison… but this also has its drawbacks.
"It's the fundamental limit of mystery."
That's right. Unlike natural poisons that can never be cured without the proper antidote, a poison created through mystery can be cured with just one 'antidote', this mental attack, although it works on everyone, can be blocked by any treatment.
You could call it 'magic resistance'. Whether it's just having high level abilities, having defensive mystery, or even having something like magic armor, the effect isn't just weakened; it's completely reduced to 0.
But this isn't really a weakness. I don't want it to take down incredibly strong creatures, I just want to train low-level soldiers who can be eaten by the lower and middle classes.
Now that the work is done, let's move on to tuning. This little jelly… well, I guess it doesn't really need a specific name. Let's just call it the disgusting jelly.
In addition to the mechanism of accumulating the flow of gumdrops and releasing them as a giant mystery, I tried to evolve by accumulating the flow obtained from outside and using it myself.
It was ridiculously easy.
Perhaps it's because these creatures have a mechanism for accumulating flow but forcing them to consume only a specific flow felt a bit odd, so I made them consume a variety of flows, and soon the creature I wanted emerged.
"I guess the Gums are now a legitimate member of the dessert army."
"Oh. Is that all?"
The Gums, which take the toad as their model species, and other "gum" species that evolved from amphibians, all possess the same gigantic genes.
First of all, if they must live, they prefer environments with less magic pressure. They live longer, have a higher quality of life, and are more energy efficient.
However, when the surrounding magical pressure and flow exceeds a certain level, a switch is turned on. Now, to resist predators, it grows in size without thinking.
They convert a significant portion of what they eat into weight, and they grow in size until what would otherwise be a natural creature the size of a human palm or perhaps only 10 kilograms at most, grows monstrously large, reaching a diameter of three meters, large enough to swallow a Homo sapiens.
And there are some that don't just grow in size, but instead stop growing at around 1.5 to 2 meters and instead harbor other mysteries within their bodies.
These guys suck in magical weapons, magical creatures, and various other streams that exist in the air, and store them in their bodies.
As a result, you can handle various mysteries as if you have 'copying powers'.
If possible, it would be nice to use the abilities of the enemy they've eaten.
"Isn't this really amazing?"
However, this isn't omnipotent. Essentially, it's a mystery that can be learned and used. Martial arts and magic can't be copied with this. It simply becomes a creature that accumulates a lot of currents within its body.
So, these guys use the mysteries of jellies like disgusting jellies, fire jellies, and ice jellies to accumulate mysteries.
These are descendants of the Primal Jellies who protected themselves with mystery during the first conflict.
I originally thought they were all extinct, but they weren't. They were just barely surviving, out of sight.
A lower-class jelly type that overcomes the disadvantage of having to live in high magic zones and survives by gathering magic power in low magic zones and moving only once.
The Gum's main food source. The gums possess a higher magical resistance than expected, and because the primitive jellies they eat dangle between low and normal magical zones, gathering magical power in small spurts, the gums seek out magical zones where stronger predators reside, if only for their own survival.
Predators that eat gum also emerged naturally.
In addition to the snails, bats and birds also emerged as the {Great Nature} expanded, and all of them adapted to various environments and engaged in predatory activities while moving between low-magic zones and high-magic zones.
The gums that have no choice but to live in the swamps respond with various strategies, such as avoiding them and going to rivers or swamps that have no mystery at all, or going to high-power swamps to actively aim for giant size and prevent them from hunting.
I accelerated this habitat shift strategy. Some amphibians originally live in deserts, others in mountains, jungles, forests, and plains. They survive in all kinds of places, which greatly accelerates their evolution.
I also significantly increased the number of primitive jellies that serve as food for the gums. These creatures, which accumulate mysteries by consuming truly primitive lifeforms like syrup, gels, and toppings, are pitifully eaten by the gums.
The task of balancing the newly emerged species and ecosystem took an incredible amount of time and effort. Seven clones were dedicated to this task.
"I'm sorry to bother you, but a collision begin soon."
Damn. I have so many ideas, but time is the issue.
If so, it's a bit early, but instead of increasing habitat diversity, we change it into an unpleasant final form.
A species of frog that cries at 180db.enough to burst your eardrums if you listen without earplugs, but they do so without using magic, to find a mate from afar.
A salamander that constantly spits out mucus into the water it lives in, making it incredibly dirty.
A newt that releases a huge amount of sperm and eggs into the water right before being caught, and even if it dies, it will still make tadpoles.
A demonic being that emits poison, including feces and urine, before dying.
A large gumball that explodes before it dies, making it a waste of effort for the opponent to eat it.
A disgusting gum that suddenly releases the mystery of
A poisonous dart bug that eats naturally poisonous insects and produces a poison strong enough to kill a person if touched.
The ideas for creatures that are not difficult to deal with, but rather disgusting to deal with, just keep coming up. The gums aren't made to kill. Honestly, I don't expect much from them either.
Even a giant three-meter-tall toad would be within the reach of three average Homo sapiens males, each armed with a stone spear, objectively, it's not strong.
But, it's just dirty. Because it's 3 meters tall, it eats a lot, and it eats children. It also accumulates mystery, and even if you catch it, if you're not careful, you can get crushed to death due to its weight.
The fact that the opponent has to expend resources just to deal with these guys is a loss in itself.
A 180-decibel crying gumdrop? A guy who sprays shit, piss, semen, and poison when caught?
It's a problem if you touch it, so honestly, people will just leave it alone.
But, if these guys cry, they can't sleep, so they have to put on earplugs and grit their teeth and go take them out. If they left them alone, the wetlands will get polluted and become swimming pools for tadpoles, so they have to block them.
It's just that.
How can you care about anything else when monsters and wild beasts like this are fiercely attacking the camp?
And if you are paying attention to these guys, how are you going to stop the Sugar Lumps from spreading their consciousness and calling for Yogur-Thoth? If they were to stop them all, would they have the luxury to send troops into the dessert desert?
Ultimately, if the main plan is to destroy the opponent's foundation of survival, the sub-plan is to ruin the opponent's quality of life.
{Gum} isn't exactly unhealthy, but it can be quite sticky.
These amphibians, given that name, are sure to ruin their quality of life.
「The world collision will begin soon. Only the surviving players will advance to the next round.」
The community manager found a reasonably good opponent. So, who should we fight?
— — — — —