If I Were A Creator

The dark depths turn as cracks spread throughout the sea floor. The undisturbed depths were perturbed as the cracks widen, sending a flurrry of bubbles to rush out. A dim, fiery glow gradually emerged from the epicentre, growing larger and brighter.

Chimneys of smoke burst out of the rocks, sending nutrients and volcanic ash into the deep sea. Soon, the web of cracks transformed into a pool of magma, heating and lighting the cold, dismal depths. More cracks appeared, transforming into rivers of magma and chimneys of smoke burst from the rocks, bestowing fertility into the growing oasis.

A day passes without notice, for the sun's radiance cannot penetrate into the deep and dark sea floor. The expansion halts and the warm oasis now spans ten miles across, ready to provide for a diverse ecosystem of deep sea life.

A silhouette appears in the distance, stalking around the pools of magma and the spires of smoke. The figure was giant and as it moved with its six bulky legs, heaps of sand was lifted, blanketing large areas in clouds of sand. The beast moved slowly like the titan it was, walking towards the volcanic core of the deep sea oasis.

There, it entered the pool of eternally hot lava and bathed within, its warmth causing the titan to roar in satisfaction. Through the steam and bubbles, the form of the titan is revealed.

A 308 foot tall draconic behemoth reminiscent to an Ultralisk. It was a heavily armored titan with six thick legs and two pairs of draconic arms from its humanoid upper torso. Its face was like a black Tyrannosaurus Rex but with three pairs of glowing orange eyes and a large horn on its snout.

Blade like fins line down its armored back, crackling with violent sparks of auburn lightning. It was submerged halfway into the lava and snoring, sleeping comfortably inside the hot lava lake. As it snored, currents of water are drawn to the titan, causing a deviation in the tides and drawing deep sea life into the oasis.

The creator felt that it was time to set the world in motion, to bring his fantasy to life. Gaia obediently guided evolution to produce a wonderful collection of species and ecosystems that suit the three systems, magic, cultivation and psionics.

I feel a little tyrannical for doing so, considering that she had no rest and reprieve over the billions of years of guiding evolution. I guess letting her have near infinite free time is a good remedy, considering that she could do whatever she wants as long as the world isn't changed too drastically. I hope she has fun, I should've got assistants for her to guide evolution so it won't be a one woman show.

At least the fates and norns are having fun. Apparently, the fates have been writing Nethari and Fuxi history, inspired from reading some cultivation novels they discreetly snatched from Earth. They decided to mix every chinese myth and cultivation novel they like to write the Nethari and Fuxi history, making a massive mash up and a future age of countless heroes.

Apparently, the mash up plan was a plot making device they need in order to publish a series of s detailing the Nethari and Fuxi heroes. My expansion and tribulation lightning event is unexpectedly working in their favor, it would create a great catastrophe and thus a good cultivation world background for their stories. I've got to say, fate writing really makes you indifferent to reality, considering that you write reality in the first place.

If you think about it, reality sounds more like a fanfiction or an original now. Anyways, I'm the creator and this is my original world, so I have no worries of being anyone's clueless little puppet. With seven metaphysical fate deities, I'm pretty sure that it's impossible to control my destiny, my children would definitely detect that and wrestle for control.

I digress. What I should be talking about is this nice lava bath that feels better than warm water. It melts off your dead skin and cleans impurities like magic, melting your weakness and exhaustion away.

Not that I get tired, but relaxation has always been a nice experience. Whether you're a mortal or a God, a nice warm bath can really wash away the differences and contempt. You know what, I think everybody should just get a warm, refreshing bath in a hot tub and relax, it could really unite the world.

The creator turned his body and sunk deeper into the lava pool, letting his whole body be submerged and subsequently cleansed by the rising magma. He felt his pores open and all the parasites that come with this titan incarnation burned away, erasing all the itch he's been feeling thanks to those colony parasites nesting in the far reaches of the unscratchable portions of his shell. If you're wondering why he couldn't simply create an attack to wipe out the parasites, the creator was reluctant to remove the experience of being a itchy mortal again.

Surprisingly, the lack of itchiness just makes you feel a lot less alive than before, that would be the only things I envy about being mortal. Though the itch can go too far and annoy you, the lava bath just makes the itch removal process far more satisfying, especially if the itch is so strong and persistent.

Speaking of itches, hot baths and uniting the world, I should either found or modify a religion based on hot tubs. I think I'll call it Heaven's Bath and adherents worship by praying and communicating happily in hot baths that last at least 2 hours. I'll have a simple church system consisting of the supreme pontiff position who's title will be the Scrub Scrub and the priests will be known as the Dub Dubs.

I'll probably create people or bring people from earth who are willing to follow the bathtub faith. Let them live in a secluded valley far away from the wars and pointless struggles. Considering that a black labrador worshipping religion is in my list, this won't be the weirdest thing I make.

Well, I should start sprouting life down here. With the four closest currents controlled by my titan powers, I commanded them to converge above my location. Deviating from their normal route, four massive ocean currents carrying warm water and nutrients to the poles are redirected to this oasis.

In an hour, four rushing rivers of water converge and swirl above the oasis, forming a rotating torus that connects the four currents together. A new route is formed, a gateway that connects four sources of nutrients and warm water within the deep sea. Now, life will begin to crawl and drift its way to the vast oasis.

The first polyps from mass spawnings and drifting larvae of various creatures begin to enter the nutrient rich oasis, embedding themselves onto hospitable surfaces and absorbing the abundant resources from which life in the deep develops from. To accelerate the millennia long process of creating a thriving ecosystem, the creator unleashed a radiation field that accelerates growth and mutation activities by a thousand times. Animals are not affected and bacteria are limited in the effects, to prevent the ecosystem from destabilizing due to the lack of a food web.

According to his senses, filter feeders are several weeks away from the site and predators would not arrive until a few years later. He remarked on how slow it is for these creatures to notice and follow the changes but found it fruitful since the ecosystem would be stable by the time deep sea predators and prey arrived. Who knows, he might even attract a territorial titan to guard the Oasis.

If not, a hyper mutation event would suffice. If you can't get titan guards, then get an army of mini titans. Magic lifeforms would probably emerge after a few decades, considering that the magma cracks he made is emitting small but concentrated amounts of mana particles into the oasis. The mana would probably also expand the oasis, but the rate should be roughly equal to the expansion of life without the field.

Now, I will enter a century of dormancy before creating the first sentient race of this world. I curled myself into a ball and reached for my power, commanding it to collapse the field once I awakened from my slumber. I closed my eyes and entered the infinite realm of sleep, drifting deep into the void of thoughts.

Ten years later, coral colonies form in the oasis. Arches, columns and spires of orange and red coral colonies enrich the deep sea scenery, emphasizing the ever molten magma that sustains the oasis from the beneath. Colonies of giant tube worms rest upon the entrance of the ash chimneys, thriving near these hydrothermal vents.

Bacteria living near the hydrothermal vents transform the ejected hydrogen sulfide into chemical energy via a chain of chemical reactions. These bacteria are autotrophic and replace plants as the producers of this ecosystem. Mutated strains of these bacteria can use small amounts of mana to transform the geothermal energy coming from the boiling water to renew their energy.

These bacteria would drift near the lava and the vents to soak up the heat and the nutrients to grow and reproduce. Some strains have adopted a eukaryotic lifestyle by combining to produce spherical colonies that absorb heat and nutrients much more efficiently. These colonies would easily be mistaken as bubbles and like plants, they generate oxygen waste by absorbing carbon dioxide and biomolecules of decomposed creatures on the sea floor.

Another decade passes and deep sea fish begin to migrate to the oasis. The abundance of food and the current lack of predators drew them to this volcanic paradise. Though with the arrival of prey, predators would soon follow.

Gulper eels thrived, their black serpentine figure and pelican like mouths allowed them to ambush shoals of fish or swallow any unsuspecting prey. Angler fish would herd together in dark corners, adapting their bioluminescence to trick their prey into swimming into its fang filled jaws. Oarfish lurked around the coral spires and lava rivers, like a dragon overseeing its land.

Megamouth sharks and the elusive Helicoprion, sharks that were extinct for more than two hundred million years on earth, settled in the incandescent domain. As more prehistoric lifeforms settled, the oasis transformed into a hidden land of fire and ash.

Half a century later, the lava rivers and lakes have stopped their expansion, halting before the towering walls of stone. The end of the zone's expansion reveals its location to be within a 2,000 m deep trench, stretching forty miles wide and hundreds of miles long. In total, the land is located 5,000 m beneath the waves within a volcanically active region.

Even though the zone's initial expansion ends, the natural processes that form hydrothermal vents and undersea volcanoes will gradually expand the habitat over the course of millennia. Now, the land measures 40 miles wide and 120 miles long, covering a fourth of the trench's total area.

Despite the thriving environment, its location is unknown to the titans and most midnight zone lifeforms as the sea floor is barren for a thousand miles beyond the the trench. The currents do not fertilize the sea floor for they enter the trench through an underground passage teeming with caverns full of barnacles, plankton and corals.

In the final decade before the creator awakens from his hot tub slumber, magic lifeforms began to appear. Gulper eels with cloaking abilities, a filter feeding fish species that reproduces by rapid mitosis and a special kelp that eats darkness. The kelp would look like a vine of living fire when absorbing darkness to make its food but appears like a normal giant kelp tree when not doing so.

The field collapses and coral growth is reduced back into its sluggish pace. The creator's titan body begins to emerge from the lava, water vigorously reacting with the wall of lava thrust upwards with the behemoth body's emergence. Using its large, fish tail the titan propelled itself upwards and landed upon the mouth of the scorching lake.

There, he opened the design aid system that he had not used for a long while and began designing a race of sapient crabs to dwell in this land. He named them the Brachyen, derived from their scientific name of Brachyura. A matriarchal and warrior society where the massive females dictate society's laws and interests and males are mainly the servants of the females that spawned them.

Though so, this is not a hivemind but rather a genetically encoded tradition. Male Brachyen are subpar to an average man's intelligence but possess greater strength, durability and combat instincts rivaling the Earth's martial geniuses. If they trained, grenades will be nothing more than annoyances.

Male Brachyen appear as humanoid orange crabs with bulky upper bodies and walk on two bulky legs. Their arms end with pincers that can easily cut through steel. Their mouths are hidden within mandibles that will open voluntarily and their eyes are protected in a durable, helmet like structure.

Females on the other hand are giants compared to males. Females appear as a six to ten meters tall cross between a red coconut crab and a lobster. They possess six sets of limbs for movement, a main set of arms and a pair of auxiliary limbs that can be used to stab, shatter targets or to aid in movement.

They possess a pair of shrimp like eyes with significantly greater resolution and range than humans. Below these eyes are another pair of eyes that detect temperature and its fluctuations with a range of a few miles. Its armored back is full of microfilaments that weave a beautiful masterpiece of pigments that are distinct to each female individual.

These microfilaments also help them in determining the concentration of nutrients in the air for them to choose where to lay their eggs. Females lay thousands of eggs at a time and possess a very interesting method of mating. During mating season, willing and fertile males will enter an area designated as the ritual battlefield by the chosen female.

The battle commences after several minutes of preparation between the males. The female will attack and eat the males as they attempt to i.m.p.r.e.g.n.a.t.e her by inserting their genetic materials from their mouth to her v.a.g.i.n.a located on her lower back section. Until a male i.m.p.r.e.g.n.a.t.es her, the female will kill all males in the ritual battlefield and devour them as nutrients for her eggs, the amount of males killed is proportionate to the amount of eggs the female will lay.

In order to lay many eggs, females are trained to be deadly, vicious and intelligent in the ritual battlefields. Older females will spar with the younger females to teach them how to slay many males during the ritual battlefield but also allow herself to be i.m.p.r.e.g.n.a.t.ed so that their males won't be completely devoured. A female hatching is rare and only once several mating seasons or longer would a female emerge.

Females are incredibly durable and surprisingly agile for their size. Torpedoes could only crack or scorch a young female's shell and due to their immortality, the shell would only grow stronger with time. For a sufficiently ancient female, nuking her is not an exaggerated reaction.

Adaptations on their movement allow them to ride currents, achieving bullet train speeds when moving through currents. They also possess an affinity to water magic and psychic abilities. Females have varied psychic potential but will always be telepathic and telekinetic to a certain extent.

Which means that each female is a future threat and an arkship for the race. As long as a fertilized female lives, the whole race can make a comeback within a century. With that in mind, I shaped the first female, the one I name Echidna.

Echidna is a female with predominantly black and gold scheme. The image on her back is a simple diagram of the galaxy. This represents her race's heritage of ruling a significant portion of this galaxy.

Echidna was created to be pregnant with a hundred thousand eggs, two of them containing females. She will be laying them tomorrow night near the hydrothermal vents. The creator aided her in clearing the place for her eggs by dispersing the predatory wildlife.

"There, Echidna. Lay your eggs near the vent." The creator ushered her to the large but unclaimed vent, a perfect place for the first generation of the Brachyen to develop. The first female released the eggs from her back in the thousands, sending them drifting to the vent's immediate vicinity.

By the creator's hand, the eggs did not approach below a certain distance from the vent to ensure their survival. After all the eggs burst out of her v.a.g.i.n.a, the creator gave Echidna a blessing and then left to shallower water. On his way out, he sealed the trench with a cloud of hydrogen sulfide, ensuring the race's survival with a blanket of poison.