When the sea had just formed and magma was shaping the land, “it” arrived on this planet after traversing the distant sea of stars.
Why it chose this planet among countless others is unknown, but that incredible coincidence granted this planet a special significance.
Pyros, a dead planet, was still a place where the seas boiled. The first lifeform to land there shook the crust and stirred the seas, but it didn’t matter.
There were no lifeforms on land, so what did it matter if the crust collapsed?There was no life to be swept away by the seas, so who cared if the seas overflowed or dried up?
Only one lifeform floated on the hot sea, pondering its future, unaffected by earthquakes or tsunamis.
It had no reason or intellect, but it had something akin to thought.
“There’s nothing here for me to eat.”
Though it didn’t think with intelligence, instinct led it to a conclusion.
Pyros had no organic matter. Only inorganic substances filled the planet, incapable of nurturing or creating life.
The Primal Body could metabolize inorganic matter into organic matter, but it wasn’t particularly impressive. It didn’t evolve that way.
Later, the primal archaeologist Gelié discovered it and named it the Primal Body.
The Primal Body realized through its sensory organs that there was no organic matter, like proteins, to consume.
It could gain energy from magma, metabolizing nuclear materials like uranium for power. But while it could survive, it couldn’t grow. Growth required materials to build its body, which it couldn’t obtain from lava alone.
Proteins, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, fats—complex organic molecules. The Primal Body was too large and clumsy to synthesize these in large quantities.
It searched its instincts and found a solution encoded in its genes. It began scattering its cells across the planet.
Most cells died, unable to adapt, but one in a thousand, or even one in a million, survived and began to thrive.
These cells drew energy from hydrothermal vents, metabolizing inorganic matter into organic matter, evolving into the first lifeforms as the Primal Body had hoped.
Life, though starting small, multiplies exponentially under the right conditions.
A single cell dividing every 20 minutes becomes 68.7 billion in 12 hours. Cells soon covered the seas, some moving to land, others floating in the atmosphere.
Some cells became more complex by consuming others, some evolved into viruses, and others parasitized or preyed on other cells.
Some metabolized inorganic matter, while others used sunlight for energy, producing oxygen as a byproduct. This oxygen killed many of the Primal Body’s cells but allowed others to thrive. The atmosphere stabilized, the seas cooled, and complex lifeforms began to emerge.
But where there’s a beginning, there’s an end.
One day, the Primal Body awoke and consumed the feast laid out during its slumber.
All cells, unable to resist the instinct to return, were devoured. The first mass extinction occurred dramatically and ended just as dramatically.
Satisfied, the Primal Body slept again, leaving some cells to survive and repopulate.
Life flourished once more, covering the seas and skies, evolving into even more complex forms.
Animals and plants emerged, crabs and snails spread. Occasionally, the Primal Body awoke and consumed most of them, but some always survived to repopulate.
At times, elephants and giant sharks dominated, but their myths were meaningless. They couldn’t record their history, and their end was always the Primal Body.
But one cell evolved in a way the Primal Body never anticipated.
An ancestor of monkeys was born with a developed brain. It discovered fire, cooked meat, and shared this knowledge.
As the cost of digesting cooked meat decreased, the tribe invested the saved energy into brain development.
This unintentional evolution led to intelligence, a path the Primal Body had never taken.
“Why must we merge with it?”
The power to resist the Primal Body’s cycle, the miracle of defying instinct. Intelligent life had emerged.
Intelligent beings don’t live by their genes alone. Some resisted the cycle, and the Primal Body took notice.
To it, the rise of intelligence was an error.
But errors can be corrected. In the next cycle, harvesters appeared.
Massive creatures, crafted by the Primal Body, devoured the resisters. Yet, the light of intelligence persisted.
Civilizations fell, but intelligence survived, passing from one species to the next.
“Ah.”
This terrifying secret remained hidden, until someone uncovered it.
“The Arctic… is not a continent.”
The one who discovered that the Arctic was a living being, its ice and snow merely covering its back.
Gelié, the primal archaeologist, trembled at this revelation.
The Arctic was not a continent, nor was the sea. It was a truth beyond all known logic, a nightmare.
For the first time, intelligent beings realized their true enemy.
But before Gelié could share this discovery, he was betrayed.
“Gelié. Why did you kill the princess? She trusted you more than anyone!”
Deep malice and conspiracy ensnared Gelié.
Though the conspirators thought silencing one scholar was simple, it was a pivotal moment in history.
“No. You are not the ones to judge.”
Fleeing to the Arctic, Gelié vowed revenge.
A lifeform from beyond the stars, like the Primal Body.
The birth of the Primal Demon King, Grimudo.
*
Long ago, before an era began,A man was wronged.By today’s standards, he’d be an ancient.
“But I didn’t do it.”
Framed and betrayed, he fell from grace.No one believed him. By the time the truth came out, he had become a demon.
“Now you come to apologize? When I needed you most, you turned away. Now you offer forgiveness and mercy? What should I say?”
“Gelié. Please, don’t do this. It’s all our fault. Just kill us.”
“It’s too late. I am Grimudo. Your end.”
The once-promising scholar, Gelié, returned as a demon king. Naming himself after an ancient word for “end,” he used the power of the Primal Body to destroy civilization.
“Intelligence is bondage, thought is malice, and ideas are betrayal.”
He wielded the power of the Primal Body, the being that existed before civilization.
“Only by abandoning thought, ideology, and personality, reverting to mere beasts, can humanity cease to breed malice and end all tragedy. I will make it so. With the power of the Primal Body, our mother!”
All life comes from one ancestor and returns to it.
Gelié, realizing this, betrayed intelligent life and sided with the Primal Body. Unaware, he became a traitor in the long war of history.
Using the Primal Body’s cells, he developed the Polymorph Curse, turning all “humans” into beasts. Some became dogs, others fish.
“Behold, this beautiful world! A world without malice, honest in its savagery!”
The demon king spread his arms, worshiping the new world he created.
When he realized it was meaningless madness, Grimudo fell silent.
As he desired, all intelligence perished, and an era of beasts began. He succeeded, but his success crumbled when the Primal Body reclaimed its cells.
The world faced mass extinction once more.
The Primal Body, simply by waking, achieved what Grimudo could not.
As it slept again, its cells spread across the planet, co-evolving with surviving lifeforms, giving rise to new life and intelligence.
“We… were not the first.”
Grimudo trembled. And despaired.
“We are not the last.”
He thought he was using the Primal Body,But in truth, it had no interest in him.
He didn’t know how many civilizations had risen on this planet.
But even a civilization that thrived for millennia would be erased by time.
In the face of time, the most powerful force, all things fall equally.
“How many times has this meaningless cycle repeated? Hundreds of millions? Billions of years? How many lives have been born and vanished? How cruel is this world?”
The self-proclaimed demon king, Grimudo, was awestruck by the sheer power of life.
The power he had amassed was nothing compared to the Primal Body.
The demon king knelt, despairing. From that day, he no longer called himself a demon king.
A demon king without purpose is no demon king.
Only a despairing scholar remained, wandering in the darkness.
