James had observed all of this in silence, as though watching something beyond sacred. It was the creation of life. And among these various creatures, he picked one on whose evolutionary path James intervened directly, using one of his five free intervention chances.
It was nothing much, just a flat, sponge-like creature with just a hint of movement compared to the other stationary sponges and motionless algae around it. As such, James instantly used his chance to alter the evolution of this creature. He did not know what it would slowly evolve into, but by acting now, he forced it into evolving an early form of gills, such that it would survive on the oxygen produced by algae and dissolved into the ocean water.
And then he waited. But he was simply too focussed to notice that he was not doing anything other than waiting. Especially since time on the planet was incredibly sped up.
Thankfully, his interception had worked out greatly, as the species branched off into increasingly mobile creatures, moving more efficiently and getting more resources from the world around it.
Slowly, it took the form of early fish, but he did not intervene, and simply waited. He looked above the water, and the land had also been colonised by the immobile plants, but instead of the formless algae, the plants on land took the shape of grass and trees, though these were relatively small in height.
Turning his attention back to the ocean, he noticed that the species of fish that he had created had branched doff into hundreds of thousands of different mobile species, almost leading to an overcrowding of the ocean.
Then it happened, a few tried to escape onto land, and over the course of centuries, evolved their lungs to be able to breath oxygen from the air rather than from dissolved water, losing their gills in the process.
'But the star around them is still a problem. The planet is too small to protect the living creatures from the sun. The plants are somehow surviving, but the other creatures keep dying,' James mused as he watched the situation unfold.
After thinking for a bit, he decided it was time to utilise the free intervention chance he had. But he did not directly affect their biology like he did the first time he used this chance. Instead, he vaguely pushed the idea that the creatures would slowly evolve the ability to absorb the energy from the sun that was originally killing them, and use it as nourishment to survive and grow.
When he did this, he was given the sense that this would require two of his intervention chances, and without thinking much of it, he immediately used another one in unison to achieve his goal.
'…Why isn't anything happening?' James frowned as he noticed that the creatures in the oceans were still unable to come up on land.
And thus he waited. He could have used all four of his remaining chances to give a fixed 1% chance of all newborn creatures gaining this ability, but he chose to leave it at a far lower chance, and kept the two chances he saved for later use to further define the race he was creating.
While he waited for a creature to mutate with the ability, he turned his attention to the Chat features, as a new notification had appeared.
[Universe chat has been updated. Forum format has been initiated. The world has been divided into Galaxies and Star Clusters, and private forums for each have been created.]
James looked at the previously unlocked World Chat, but it was entirely empty, so he did not bother with it. Instead he looked up at the Star Cluster Chat which was the next smaller chat option.
[Unnamed Star Cluster #aaaDf21Rk21]
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Participants: 357,291 connected
Message rate: 60,000 per second.
Moderation: None
Heinrich Himmler (HH): So, what you are telling me is that the ability you got was to speed up time on your planet by a factor of 200, compared to the normal 100 we all have? This is preposterous!!
Lord bb Hokage: Forget that, I read someone had the ability to freely interact with their believers without spending any faith!
GankerFlankerItookyourDangler: OP
Slavic Golipoly_214: Jokes on you… I lost mine to the cold
59009OG: Justice for involuntary gender change
The_Real_Ye: Nein!
Heinrich Himmler (HH): 👀
…
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James read through the chat but there were still too many people talking in a language he understood, but whose contexts went right over his head. He turned to the universe chat, which had now been renamed to universe forum, and its format was truly different from all the other chats.
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