In this world, civilizations rose, changed, and multiplied, and Sentient Beings emerged one after another. Many intelligent races, clearly and fundamentally different from one another from the very origins of their evolution, lived side by side. On the Loren Continent alone, there were nearly ten sentient species—humans, elves, dwarves, goblins, the Spirit Race, and more—as well as even more "subspecies." Aside from the elves' subspecies, which might have been connected to some ancient division event, the other intelligent races were clearly products of independent evolution.
And if one looked to the distant stars, the number of civilizations born among them far exceeded Gawain's imagination, according to the intelligence provided by Enya. More than a hundred signals did not represent an exact number—it merely meant that, over the past million years, at least a hundred civilizations had mastered the technology to broadcast ultra-long-range signals between stars. In Gawain's view, there might have been even more civilizations living among those vast stars, ones that had never developed to such heights.
They were born, multiplied, and developed on their home planets. Immense astronomical distances concealed the lights of weak civilizations; their eyes could not see afar, nor could their voices carry into the distance. No one knew they existed. From birth to extinction, these civilizations might never have left even the faintest trace in the universe, just like the generations of transient civilizations that had arisen and perished on the planet beneath Gawain's feet.
These "lights" had clearly been excluded from Enya's calculations.
There had to be a reason behind such a high density of civilizations. Gawain had never seriously considered this question before. Even when doubts surfaced in his mind, he had not thought deeply about it. But today, he had come to Camil's laboratory and seen the Arcane Energy surging here,