Global Gods : Skill-Resonance Awakened Chapter 6: Ch 6 : The Subtle Plunge and the Genetic Hunt

As the two-hour threshold in God-time drew near, a subtle wave of contentment enveloped Sunny.

His godly actions had yielded impressive dividends. Veridia, formerly a sprawling azure orb, had blossomed into a lively mosaic of vitality.

Fresh foliage blanketed all the recently revealed continents, showcasing the swift spread of mosses, lichens, along with emerging plants, shrubs, and bushes.

Within the watery domains, the multicellular algae kept pushing their unyielding advancement. Tiny, basic fish-like beings now zipped through the currents, their simple eyes hunting for food.

Certain among these initial sea dwellers had even formed basic protective casings, an early shield against the rising threats lurking in the ancient broth.

"Even with divine intervention, I didn't think it was possible to evolve lifeforms to such an extent in just two Godly hours," Sunny reflected, true wonder filling his vast awareness.

The 1000% accelerated evolution speed for the initial 7 Godly days acted like a true shortcut, compressing ages of natural progression into a mere instant of his godly sight.

Upon ascending to godhood, Sunny discovered himself blessed with plenty of "time" to spare.

He had established a fresh habit: casually watching the elaborate ballet of existence on Veridia, tracking his Faith points as they rose consistently, and now and then joining the wild but oddly soothing flow of the God Chat.

During one such regular scan, he spotted something unusual.

"The faith points stopped increasing?" Sunny burst out in astonishment, his inner voice resounding through the emptiness.

The routine of glancing at his Faith points every couple of minutes had etched their quick, nearly steady rise deep into his mind.

Previously, they had been leaping upward, adding about 1 Faith point every 2 minutes or thereabouts, a reliable ascent that lifted his present count to a solid 27.14 Faith points.

Yet now, the tally remained frozen. Completely, disturbingly motionless.

"System, why are my Faith points not increasing?" Sunny pressed, a spark of worry morphing into a dark foreboding. No answer came, just the endless quiet of the starry expanse.

"Is this a misfortune?" Sunny winced. The worldwide alert from earlier had cautioned about everyday calamities, and this abrupt pause in Faith accrual, paired with the System's muteness, struck like a precise strike.

He had braced himself mentally for epic, world-shaking disasters – quakes, tidal waves, asteroid barrages – and even practiced countermeasures in his thoughts for each. Yet this felt otherwise, sneaky.

He promptly started scrutinizing his realm with sharpened focus, hunting for any hint of the looming trouble.

His vision roamed over the lush terrains and dove into the ocean's profound abysses.

The shrinking count of living beings, while not yet disastrous, signaled trouble ahead.

A massive die-off of creatures would spell a massive drop in possible Faith, a setback he simply couldn't endure.

It required roughly 1 month in planetary time (which, thanks to the 10,000x time dilation, amounted to only a handful of minutes in Sunny's own sense of time) for him to identify the core issue behind this quiet disaster.

It lacked flashy drama, yet persisted without mercy.

The enormous clusters of algae, the bedrock of his marine food web, were perishing.

Predators weren't devouring them, nor did they face shortages of sunlight or nourishment.

Their end crept in gradually, widespread, and initially puzzling.

The cause of their fading, after he carefully followed the faint clues, turned out to be terrifyingly straightforward: "Oxygen Depletion," Sunny scowled.

The enormous, unregulated boom in life, especially the fast-expanding multicellular algae and the fresh fish-like entities, had used up oxygen quicker than it could regenerate.

The equilibrium of his early world had been disrupted.

His "Basic Knowledge of Life," the mystical parchment he had integrated, now revealed its true worth.

It offered more than abstract insights; it held hands-on techniques for world stewardship.

It described methods to elevate oxygen concentrations on a planet.

One approach involved straight godly action: he might employ his divine energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, then link the oxygen units into usable O2, and infuse this oxygen straight into the sea.

This stood as a potent, instant fix, though it demanded a heavy toll.

A feat of such magnitude would drain over one-third of his existing 27.14 Faith points, stranding him perilously short for upcoming woes.

The alternative involved harnessing the advancement of creatures to breed beings that could proficiently generate oxygen.

Though the recent land-based plants and shrubs were helping, they weren't the main sources.

Sunny recalled from his Blue Planet recollections that even there, land vegetation and forests produced just around 29% of the oxygen; most originated from the seas. Depending only on terrestrial flora for this emergency wouldn't work as a lasting fix.

Sunny's choice was evident: he favored the second route, the path of evolution, to preserve his vital Faith points.

Still, he grasped that guiding evolution wasn't straightforward. A single error, a wrong push, might trigger botched mutations, widespread extinctions, and the total breakdown of his budding biospheres.

The danger loomed large.

He pondered his choices, the hushed, fading orb of Veridia weighing on his expansive mind.

He sought a fix that proved both potent and enduring, tackling the pressing danger while fostering strength against what lay ahead.

He settled on a blended strategy, merging both paths to safeguard Faith points and hasten the growth of oxygen-generating species at once.

His scheme seemed straightforward in theory, intricate in practice: allocate a modest sum of Faith (he aimed mentally for 4-6 points) to enhance the oxygen yield of particular algae varieties, and speed up the development of better oxygen traits throughout his sea life.

This proved less costly than outright oxygenation, but demanded waiting – in planetary spans – which could claim more lives if the issue dragged on.

Yet Sunny stood firm. He accepted the hazards fully.

He figured that at worst, a few hundred million of his beings – a notable but minor slice of his billions – would perish.

A deliberate trade-off for enduring balance.

The "Basic Knowledge of Life" had supplied him with essential insights on genetic structures and how to shape them via divine force (Faith).

That said, Sunny, for all his fresh godly insight, wasn't a specialist in genes.

He lacked an instinctive grasp of each precise DNA strand.

His sole path lay in a grueling cycle of attempts and errors.

He dove his awareness back into Veridia, zeroing in on the tiny realm of algae.

He started directing his Faith, a gentle, glowing force emanating from within.

He would psychically "nudge" a particular DNA segment in an algae organism, watch the tiny shifts, then loop the effort, millions upon millions of instances, over endless specimens.

It resembled fumbling in the dark for one vital lever amid a huge, tangled dashboard, guided by faint signals from the System and the struggling life itself.

He sought the DNA element that would render them ultra-effective at photosynthesis, at dismantling CO2 and emitting O2.

The task dragged on, requiring vast concentration and sapping his psychic stamina alongside the Faith drain.

He devoted what seemed endless stretches, steadily, precisely, testing genetic variation after variation.

The withering algae served as a perpetual, somber nudge of the need for speed.

Following 3 planetary days of this unyielding, heavenly gene quest – spans that registered as hours of deep immersion to Sunny – he sensed a sharp change at last.

A rush of clarity, a sharp, irrefutable signal from the System. Success.

The exact genetic pattern that would turbocharge oxygen output in a certain algae lineage.

He had located the vital piece. Now, the true effort of propagating its growth and effects could commence.

The urgent threat lingered, but a route to healing had suddenly appeared.