Chapter 276: The Footsteps of Civilization
As time passed, the Federation’s work proceeded smoothly. They trained the Lizardmen, excavated ancient artifacts, and efficiently managed all of their essential projects without missing a beat.
As scientists learned more about the ancient and lost Nix Civilization, the truth of its history was finally uncovered. Naturally, to understand them, they had to start from the very beginning...
"The first ’Great Sage’ of the Nix Civilization was an individual named Alden. During their primitive era, he drew the first star charts, invented writing and the hourglass, conceptualized the measurement of time, and ushered the Nyx into an age of sapience..."
"The second Great Sage, Brant, attempted to harness scorching magma to increase the civilization’s available energy output. He created various tools and risked his life attempting to extract magma from the volcanic zones..."
This information was being presented at a large-scale historical conference. Almost anyone with a certain level of clearance or status within the Federation was invited to attend.
The history of the Nyx Civilization served not only as an invaluable reference for humanity but also as a profound warning. After all... this civilization had gone completely extinct. Humanity could not afford to repeat their mistakes.
Naturally, Jason was deeply interested in the subject, eagerly taking a seat in the front row.
The title of "Great Sage" within the Nix Civilization was essentially equivalent to the most brilliant scientists in human history, figures on the level of Newton or Einstein. By understanding the achievements of these Great Sages, researchers could map out the entire technological trajectory of the civilization. Most importantly... they could discover how a civilization entirely devoid of fire managed to develop, and how it ultimately perished.
"No oxygen means no fire; no fire means no metal. Without metal, how can a higher level of civilization ever emerge?" asked Hazel, a cosmic sociologist and the moderator of the conference.
This was one of the most pressing questions on everyone’s minds. They only had magma left to work with, Jason thought to himself.
"The earliest generations of Great Sages lived during their most primitive, rudimentary stage," Hazel continued. "Lacking fire, they had to rely on magma, their only viable energy source..."
It made perfect sense. The universe was never short of life, and life always managed to evolve and adapt to its home planet’s environment to the fullest extent. "Intelligence" was, fundamentally, just another evolutionary manifestation of environmental adaptation.
If a planet’s environment was conducive to the evolution of large multicellular life, and if intelligence could indeed increase survival capabilities, then the probability of a sentient species emerging increased exponentially. This was the revised theory cosmic sociologists had established after observing the Nyx.
According to this principle, the emergence of sapience was a direct result of natural selection. In a way, it was an inevitable outcome. This explained why the universe was teeming with intelligent life, it was simply a macroscopic extension of natural selection.
The greater the biodiversity on a planet, the higher the probability that intelligence would emerge.
"However, ’intelligence’ is generally not found among the apex predators of a given planet," Hazel noted.
For apex predators, intelligence was far less critical for survival than raw strength. A tiger, for instance, sat at the top of its food chain and could hunt almost any creature. Therefore, its evolutionary path skewed heavily toward physical power. Among creatures of similar mass, a stronger and more agile predator would have a higher hunting success rate, allowing it to secure more food.
"Take note, this applies to creatures of similar mass! It doesn’t mean that being bigger and stronger is always better. A Tyrannosaurus Rex would starve to death if you dropped it into the middle of the African savanna!" Hazel’s analogy drew a burst of laughter from the audience.
The concept of natural selection, the survival of the fittest, applied not only to Earth but to all terrestrial planets, and perhaps even the entire cosmos.
Therefore, early primates, caught in the middle of the food chain, essentially dumped all their evolutionary attribute points into "intelligence." Through a series of astronomical coincidences, they eventually evolved into humans.
"...These evolutionary coincidences might seem like low-probability events initially," Hazel explained, "but over millions, or even tens of millions of years, the probability of them occurring approaches certainty. This explains the prevalence of advanced civilizations across the universe."
Following this logic, an emerging intelligent species would never be the strongest lifeform on its planet. It needed to contend with superior predators to generate sufficient survival pressure. Naturally, it couldn’t be the absolute weakest species either, or it would never survive long enough to develop its intellect.
This applied to humanity, and it also applied to the native Lizardmen. The Lizardmen were not apex predators; many larger, more dangerous beasts threatened their survival, but they weren’t at the bottom of the food chain, either.
The Nyx were similar. They weren’t the dominant species of their era; they had terrifying natural enemies, and their environment was exceedingly harsh. Crucially, they lacked fire—the universal tool early humans used to drive away predators. Under these conditions, species usually evolved to be stronger, faster, or stealthier. While the ’Intelligence’ attribute offered infinite potential, its early-game survival bonus was incredibly low.
Yet, the formidable Nyx Civilization, guided by their first Great Sage, encountered a rare evolutionary crossroads and stubbornly committed to the path of intelligence.
In the beginning, they harvested hard stones that had been corroded by the acidic secretions of native black wyrms, using them as crude tools to carve into volcanic rock walls. These grayish-black stones possessed an incredibly high melting point and extreme hardness, making them terribly difficult to shape. However, once shattered, their conchoidal fractures produced razor-sharp edges, functioning as the best available tools during the civilization’s infancy.
This era was essentially the Nyx equivalent of humanity’s Stone Age, with primitive tribes forming around bloodlines and kinship.
They began using these tools to hollow out caves for shelter. Because they built these settlements near active volcanoes, the interiors of the caves served as warm, comfortable sanctuaries. The artificial excavation of these "volcanic dens" was a remarkable innovation. While other subterranean creatures naturally dug burrows, the Nyx did so driven by conscious, subjective design rather than blind survival instinct. The two were fundamentally different.
Eventually, they learned to use magma to forge metals, transitioning into their own Bronze Age.
"Carbon can reduce copper oxide into elemental copper at extremely high temperatures. The process doesn’t require ambient oxygen, just sufficient heat," Hazel explained. "As a result, pure metallic elements could occasionally form naturally near magma flows. The Nyx discovered this phenomenon and exploited it. They realized they could use magma to smelt copper."
This undertaking was incredibly dangerous. It required them to work in close proximity to active magma to achieve the necessary temperatures. Although the Nyx possessed high natural heat resistance, they were still carbon-based organisms with biological limits. Smelting metals often came at the cost of lives; workers would frequently die from severe overheating as their bodily fluids literally boiled away.
For humanity, smelting basic metals was a trivial task. But for the Nyx Civilization, every single piece of forged metal was paid for in blood. This was not an exaggeration. Generation after generation of Great Sages dedicated their lives to improving the civilization’s harsh living conditions.
Their environment was so utterly unforgiving that even the strongest individuals could not fight nature bare-handed. Within this brutal crucible, intelligence gradually became revered. Knowledge was passed down and expanded upon, generation after generation.
Despite the horrific death tolls, the mastery of metal was a monumental leap forward. Armed with metal tools and weapons, the Nyx finally broke free from the terror of apex predators and gradually climbed to the top of their planet’s food chain.
But they did not stop there.
In the centuries that followed, they engineered massive underground canal networks.
"Of course, these canals didn’t transport water," Hazel said, her voice dropping. "They transported magma."
First, they painstakingly carved out the deep channels. Then, they breached the volcanic rock walls, allowing the churning lava to flood into the artificial rivers. The completion of these massive magma aqueducts finally provided the Nyx with a stable, abundant energy source. It allowed them to support a booming population and ushered in an unprecedented golden age.
This engineering marvel was the masterpiece of the Eleventh Great Sage, Carlyle!
"Naturally, constructing this was a suicidal endeavor," Hazel continued. "The project spanned over sixty years. A single misstep meant instant incineration. The vast majority of the manual labor was performed by slaves. Countless laborers simply dropped dead from heat exhaustion."
"Wars frequently broke out between competing tribes, driven by the need to capture prime territory and fresh slaves. The total population that the volcanic belts could support was strictly limited. Thus, their only method of population control was continuous, brutal warfare."
"Alternatively, tribes would attempt massive, large-scale migrations, crossing the freezing surface to reach distant volcanic zones. During these treks, thousands upon thousands would freeze to death."
"Their entire era of slavery was drowning in bloodshed and slaughter. We can only catch glimpses of the true horror through fragmented historical records."
"But even so, their civilization continued to claw its way forward, built step by step on a foundation of blood and lava," Hazel remarked softly.
