Chapter thirty three: human settlement
Within a second, a few patches of flowers materialized. And the moment their roots touched the soil, their colors changed from vivid red to pale blue.
"Pale blue looks way better than red," Caelum said, crouching to eye them more closely. He had set the flower to change color based on time, blue at night, red during the day.
He watched them switch hues, slowly adapting to the time of the night.
He rubbed his chin. "Should i have made them this color from the start… but then again—" He tilted his head, considering it.
Standing off, he brushed his knees, "The color change gives them a bit of character unique to them, so it's better this way."
He stepped back a few paces, scanning the open space. The patches weren't that big, but they would be growing fast.
"It's not even going to take a week," caelum recalculated with a thoughtful face, "I thought this whole field would need at least seven days to fill in but, now that i look at it again. It would barely take six days."
Originally, Caelum expected the flowers to multiply and fill the area in about seven days. But looking at how densely they'd taken root, That estimate felt off now.
Caelum shook of his thoughts, raised the quill and recreated the white-winged insects, his stroke made the air shimmer.
A soft hum filled the air as a small swarm of delicate creatures appeared. They hovered in the air for a moment, then took off toward the nearest cluster of trees without giving the flowers a single glance.
"So they're ignoring the flowers, huh?" Caelum watched as the cloud of white shimmer disappeared into the branches.
He nodded to himself. "Right. These flowers still need a full day to charge up. They probably looks like empty food plates to the insects right now."
He had defined the current batch of flowers to absorb light naturally over time, unlike the test versions which came into existence already filled with raw energy.
Not having energy to offer in there current state, there was no reason for the insects to approach them
"It'll take about twenty-four hours for the flowers to fully absorb and convert light," he said to himself. "Alright, now the birds."
Rising the quill again, he poured more willpower into the quill and made a sharper stroke.
In a blink, a flock of small birds materialized. They were sleek, hummingbird-sized creatures with sharp movements and vivid detail. As soon as they appeared, they too flew straight toward the nearby trees, vanishing into the night.
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Watching the birds vanish into the trees, Caelum looked up at the sky, then closed his eyes. 'Everything should go as planned… right?'
"Though In theory, more lifeforms should start showing up on their own over the next few years," he said while starting to walk again, his shoes crunching lightly against the forest floor.
"Since Dharti is modeled after Earth, and the mechanics here mimic Earth's systems, any natural evolution that happens should follow a similar path."
With the work he had aimed for being done, there wasn't anything urgent he had on him. So as usual, he started thinking about the future, guiding his through twords what this world could eventually become.
"The evolution shouldn't take long, not for me at least." He glanced up at the starless sky. "Due to the time dilation that exists between both Dharti and the outside world, it would probably take a week at best."
If he had tried to handcraft every single animal, plant, and microscopic organism from scratch, he would've drowned in the effort by now. But the world he created was built with Earth as its base. Similar atmosphere, and chemical composition, even same terrain.
And above all were the rules implemented through the world stabilizer. The rules of gravity, time and even the day-night cycle that made Dharti look like a copy of earth.
With all those conditions in place, it wasn't unrealistic to expect Earth-like creatures to emerge naturally.
Evolution didn't need him to push it along, after all, if the environment is the same, the outcomes won't be too different.
He kept walking through the quite forest, his eyes occasionally scanning the shapes between trees.
"…Huh?" after walking through the forest for thirty minutes straight, caelum saw something that caught his intrest.
He saw a faint light flickered through the branches ahead. A small distinct glow barely visible through the layeres of greens.
He squinted, taking a step closer.
"What the hell is that?"
'A light… humans?' Caelum's eyes sharpened. Not wanting to waste any more time on foot, his feet lifted off the ground instantly, and he floated above the forest, ignoring the law of gravity.
He headed straight towards the light, shooting through the air, moving between tree trunks and canopies at a faster rate.
'It has to be humans. But for me to be able to see the light from within the forest… what the hell are they burning.' His thoughts moved faster than him, as he went through all the possibilities he could think of.
'Nothing short of something massive could flicker light through this many trees.'
All the trees passed below in a blur, as caelum moved through the air quickly, 'If i had come on foot, it would've taken three times as long.' within minutes of caelum thinking so, the forest began to thin.
Soon the last row of trees finally gave way, opening up to a cliff, and the view came into focus.
"…Wow." caelum hovered at the edge of the forest, near the small cliff. Not far ahead from the cliff, A large fire blazed below, burning hot and tall.
Looking like a gigantic campfire. It threw sparks high into the air. It burned as if trying to fight the night itself.
It stood in the middle of a clearing, and people sat around it. The flame lit up their figures, casting long shadows that danced with the wind.
The bruning fire looked to be the size of a hut, and beyond that central blaze, like branches spreading from a trunk, the human settlement sprawled out in every direction.
Low rows of rectangular houses, made of sun-dried mud bricks lined dirt pathways, some connected by simple walls or shaded by thatched overhangs.
There were courtyards, fire pits, and storage spaces marked by stacked pottery. And all of it bathed in that deep orange glow, giving it a living atmosphere.
"This place…"
Caelum was baffled midair, glancing back at the dense treeline over his shoulder, before turning his gaze back to the settlement glowing softly in the night beneath the cliff.
He looked at the fire with narrowed eyes.
"This is the same spot, i think." he said, "Same place where I saw the primitive settlement last time, and met that old couple."
It didn't take long to recognize the terrain, the open clearing and the winding bend of the river near the forest, the familiar slope of the hill, the outline of the rocky ridge just beyond the clearing.
"The land itself hadn't much, but the people seems to have changed a lot." Caelum tried to reconcile what he was seeing.
"It's only been little more than a day… since i last visited this place." Taking the time dilation built into Dharti in mind, caelum ran mental calculation.
What had passed as a single day for him seem to stretch into more than years here.
"Eighty years? Or maybe a bit more."His lips pressed into a thin line. "They advanced this far… in just eighty years?"
He stared at the settlement that didn't look the one he saw in his last visit.
Unlike the primitive shelter that reminded him of prehistoric humans, now there were rows of homes built with mud bricks.
There were narrow streets, thin columns of smoke curling upward from the rooftops. He could even see tools, blades glinting faintly in the firelight.
'This no longer looks to be a gathering of stragglers. It's more like a beginning of some civilization..' Caelum exhaled through his nose, as he cleared his thoughts.
"Eighty years… and they've already reached this stage ha? "
Caelum could guess the reasoning of such rapid development, but he didn't want to admit it. 'Just because their brains are based of a monder human's brain, can they achieve this much in such a short time?'
He ones again realised how terrifying a modern-day human mind was, "They seems to be at the early stage of bronze civilization."
The breeze picked up, brushing past him as he floated a little lower. He descended from the cliff, landing on a huge slope of solid mud.
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"Tsk. Whatever it is, should i go visit them like the last time?" Caelum let out a dry click of his tongue.
"Ugh… but thinking back to how that kid screamed his lungs out, maybe flying straight there in isn't the best idea." Caelum slowed down, remembering the boy who lost it the last time he came near the settlement.
He stepped off the hard mud slope. As his feet touched solid ground, another thought hit him.
"Wait… eighty years?" His brow twitched. "All those people are probably long dead."
Back then, he had used the quill to turn the old couple young again. But that was just reversing their bodies back to middle-age.
"Heck, I'd be a miracle If that young boy still alive till now, let alone that old couple." His face tightened from how much he was thinking.
He looked up toward the faint lights in the distance.
"That means everyone here… they're no more than descendents of the first batch of humans."
He looked down at the settlement. The fire had died down a bit, but the village was still had the lively atmospher.
The heavy voices of the people from the settlement was carried out by the wind, making it possible for caelum to hear loud voices, "…What a pain."
He scratched his head and sighed. "So even if I show up now, there is no one who can recognize me. Hell, I probably can't understand them either."
Caelum stared at the quill in his hand intently.
'I was only able to talk to the old couple last time because I redefined them to understand me.' caelum thought as he felt a twinge of pressure behind his eyes.
He looked toward the settlement again, then back down at the quill.
"But their descendants… they're not part of my original creation. So they are effectively out of quill's influence."
His brows pinched together. The more he thought about it, the more his head started to throb.
But just then,"Ah—damn it. I'm an idiot." He rubbed between his eyebrows in annoyance.
Maybe it was the overthinking or stress that he forgot a important part. Either way, he let out a dry chuckle and gave the quill a side glance.
"…I could just make something that helps me talk to them."