"Hello, Arin. How are you doing?" Ria asked aloud as she stepped out from beneath the canopy and approached the lake, whose surface looked beautiful beneath the surrounding trees. She paused beside the water and looked around, trying to determine whether she could spot Arin hiding somewhere nearby. However, she had little luck finding him, as he had left practically no signs of a human presence in the area. There was no campfire, no obvious set of footprints, and nothing else that could reveal where he had been resting, so she eventually resorted to simply asking him to come out of hiding.
"I'm doing well, Grandma. I take it the family has decided to share the discovery of the lotus?" Arin asked as he stepped out of the shadows of the trees to the right of the group. He had a bow and arrow in his hands, suggesting that he had been practising or keeping watch rather than simply sitting around waiting for someone to arrive. His appearance was calm, and he did not seem particularly surprised that Ria had managed to find her way to the lake. After all, he had known that the family would eventually send someone to speak with him once they had decided how to handle the discovery.
"Yes, we have," Ria replied, nodding as she turned her attention towards the lake. She had come here to speak with her grandson, but the sight of the lotus immediately captured her attention and made it difficult to look away. Its beauty was impressive enough on its own, yet the knowledge that it could continuously refine water mana made it even more extraordinary. "What can you tell us about the area?" she asked, eager to understand both the lotus and the natural environment that supported its growth.
Arin began explaining what he had discovered about the lake, the lotus, and the surrounding forest. He described the importance of the continuous water supply, the damage the plant had suffered when that supply was interrupted, and the measures he had taken to restore its condition. He also explained how the surrounding nature had responded to the return of the water, giving Ria a clearer understanding of why the area needed to be protected rather than treated as an ordinary resource. While the two of them discussed the discovery and its implications for the Sonnenberg family, Gaia was occupied with an entirely different problem elsewhere.
Having returned from probing the surrounding planets to determine whether she could establish trade with other civilizations, Gaia was in a rather poor mood. She had hoped that reaching out to other worlds would allow her to exchange information, acquire useful goods, and perhaps learn more about the universe beyond her immediate surroundings. Unfortunately, her investigation had produced considerably less encouraging results than she had anticipated. Half of the planets in her galaxy were already under the control of other civilizations, meaning that the local inhabitants lacked the authority to make independent decisions about trade and diplomatic relations.
The remaining planets presented a different problem, although the result was almost equally frustrating for Gaia. Their inhabitants were afraid that she might be attempting to trick them into revealing information or surrendering valuable goods, and they were therefore unwilling to cooperate with her. From their perspective, such caution was entirely reasonable, since the knowledge provided by the universe to each planet included information about extraterrestrial invaders and the methods those invaders might use. Even when Gaia approached them with the intention of establishing contact, the very knowledge meant to protect them encouraged them to view her as a potential threat.
The universe had provided that information largely to prevent planets from overlooking the Void's attempts to corrupt their inhabitants. Without such warnings, a planet might mistake an approaching invader for a friendly visitor and allow the corruption to spread before anyone understood what was happening. However, that protective measure also made peaceful contact between different worlds considerably more difficult, particularly when one planet approached another without an established relationship or a trustworthy intermediary. Gaia had quickly discovered that simply explaining her intentions was not enough to overcome the suspicion created by the universe's warnings.
As a result, she had been forced to stop her attempts at contact rather quickly. Continuing to push the issue might have caused the other planets to report her behaviour to the universe, which was a complication she had no desire to deal with. She had hoped that her status and the circumstances of her approach would make negotiations easier, but the inhabitants of those worlds were far more concerned with protecting themselves than listening to her explanations. Consequently, Gaia had returned to her room and begun sulking over her inability to grow up faster and handle such situations more effectively.
Nevertheless, her unsuccessful attempts had not been entirely pointless. The planets she had approached had provided her with quite a bit of information, even if that information had not been willingly handed over as part of a friendly exchange. Gaia was not particularly concerned about the distinction, since the knowledge was useful regardless of how she had acquired it. More importantly, her investigations had confirmed that humanity was in a considerably better position than the populations of many neighbouring planets, a discovery that made her feel rather pleased with herself.
After all, she had worked hard to ensure that humanity would be properly prepared for the arrival of mana. She had guided the transformation of humans into what she called mortals, a stage of existence that she wanted humanity to recognise and understand rather than dismiss as an insignificant change. However, when she compared humanity with the wider universe, she realised that the term mortal represented something more significant than she had initially considered. Humanity's mortals were not merely ordinary people who had gained a little supernatural strength; they had reached what could be considered the next step in the development of a civilisation.
That realisation filled Gaia with considerable pride, especially because humanity had not reached that position by accident. She had invested a substantial amount of energy into ensuring that the arrival of mana changed humans on a fundamental level. Rather than allowing humanity to receive the weakened starting conditions that many other civilisations appeared to have, she had worked to make sure that humans could be born with the proper foundations for handling mana. Such a transformation had required considerable effort, and she had only been able to accomplish it because this was humanity's first exposure to mana and because Earth had accumulated enough cultural energy for her to exchange with the universe.
Without those circumstances, Gaia would not have possessed the resources needed to maintain the transformation. Cultural energy had given her the means to negotiate with the universe and secure the changes required to prepare humanity for its new existence. She had used those resources to ensure that every human possessed the basic ability to sense and manipulate mana, something she had fought hard to make possible. To Gaia, this was one of the most important achievements of her work, since it provided humanity with a foundation that many other civilisations simply did not possess.
The benefits extended beyond the possibility of individual cultivation or the development of powerful warriors. When every human could sense and manipulate mana to some degree, the civilisation as a whole faced fewer complications associated with the uneven distribution of that ability. People would still differ in talent, discipline, resources, and the amount of power they could eventually acquire, but no one would be completely excluded from the most basic interaction with mana. It also meant that every human would at least have the potential to fight if circumstances demanded it, rather than being entirely helpless simply because they lacked the necessary foundation.
Of course, Gaia had not forgotten that the universe required every civilisation to install a System. That requirement created a common framework through which individuals could continue progressing, and it meant that talented people could still fight their way towards the highest levels of power. However, the existence of a System did not automatically guarantee that everyone could reach those heights. In many civilisations, the people who achieved extraordinary power remained rare exceptions, while the vast majority of the population struggled to advance because they could not sense mana properly or manipulate it at the levels required for further progress.
To Gaia, the situation resembled the spiritual roots commonly described in cultivation novels. In those stories, a person generally needed suitable spiritual roots to absorb spiritual energy and begin cultivating, while someone without them might remain an ordinary mortal for the rest of their life. The exact mechanisms in the real universe were not necessarily identical to those fictional examples, but the underlying limitation was similar. A System could provide guidance, information, and opportunities, yet it could not necessarily overcome a fundamental inability to interact with the energy required for advancement.
In that sense, Gaia had effectively given every human spiritual roots. She had made sure that humanity possessed the basic ability needed to begin progressing instead of leaving that opportunity to a fortunate minority. This did not mean that every human would become equally powerful or that individual talent had ceased to matter. Rather, she had removed one of the barriers that could permanently prevent an ordinary person from ever taking the first meaningful step towards cultivation.
Her investigations into neighboring planets had revealed just how important that distinction could be. Many of those civilizations faced a difficult obstacle because their populations had to overcome the equivalent of the initial body-refining stage before they could properly begin cultivating. In humanity's case, what Gaia regarded as Stage Zero served as a body-refining period that prepared people for genuine cultivation. The rest of the universe often required its inhabitants to struggle through that preliminary stage before they could even approach the point humanity would naturally reach as it grew into adulthood.
The difference was enormous, because the people of those other planets had to rely on individual talent to cross the barrier. Some inhabitants might possess the ability to manipulate mana at the necessary level, but many others would never develop that capacity, regardless of how hard they trained. As a result, a civilization could have a System and access to mana while still leaving most of its population unable to make meaningful progress. Gaia considered that a terrible limitation, since it meant that the majority of those inhabitants might remain trapped below the threshold required for further advancement.
She could not completely rule out the possibility that those civilizations possessed another method of overcoming the problem. Perhaps there were paths of development that she had not yet discovered, or techniques that allowed people to bypass the limitations she had observed. The universe was vast enough that assuming she understood every possible method of cultivation would have been foolish. Nevertheless, Gaia doubted that such an alternative was widespread, because she could not think of a convincing method that would solve the problem for everyone, and the information she had gathered did not give her much reason to believe that one existed.
Fortunately, humanity did not face the same predicament. Through the transformation she had arranged, humans would naturally progress through the initial body-refining stage as they grew, allowing them to reach the next level without requiring every individual to possess exceptional talent. Gaia had made certain that the foundation for cultivation would develop as part of their ordinary growth rather than becoming a barrier that only a select few could overcome. She was particularly proud of this achievement because it meant that humanity's future would not depend entirely on whether someone happened to be born with the right natural aptitude.
There remained one obvious question, however: why had Gaia not simply made every human be born at that higher level from the beginning? The first answer was straightforward, because such a transformation would have required considerably more energy than the one she had chosen. Although immediately granting every human the completed foundation might have produced benefits for humanity and potentially increased its cultural energy, the cost would have been far greater than what she could comfortably afford. She had to work within the resources available to her, and even with the cultural energy she had accumulated, she could not simply choose every possible improvement without considering its price.
There was also a more important reason for her decision. If humans were born already possessing the completed foundation, they would lose the opportunity to experience and develop through the stages that led to it. Gaia worried that removing those stages might interfere with their growth or limit their potential, even if it initially made them stronger. She did not know whether skipping that development would ultimately be beneficial or harmful, and she was unwilling to gamble humanity's long-term future on an assumption she could not verify.
In the end, she had chosen the path that she both understood and could afford. By allowing humans to grow naturally through the initial stage, she had given them a reliable foundation for cultivation without spending the immense amount of energy required to grant them that foundation at birth. It was not necessarily the perfect solution, and Gaia knew that there might be better methods waiting to be discovered. Still, until she learned more about the universe and the different paths available to its civilizations, it was the most reasonable choice she could make.