Gravis immediately realized why these Striders existed. With his knowledge, this wasn't difficult to discern. Obviously, such a high number of congregating level five Emperors that didn't fight each other wasn't the result of some normal beasts procreating. There was a deeper reason for their existence.
Normally, every beast strived for power, and this should include the Striders as well. Under normal circumstances, they should have long since battled each other or other level five Emperors to the death until one of them managed to ascend. Yet, they didn't.
So, why were they just here like that?
Obviously, they had been created by Heaven for a specific purpose. This reason was rather simple. These beasts acted as some kind of final exam for level five Emperors for their ascension.
Heaven created these Striders for two reasons. First of all, their above-average Battle-Strength would force every ascender to be powerful. If the ascending beasts were too weak, they would not even serve as tempering for humans as soon as they reached the highest world. Additionally, the chances were high that the average Emperor wouldn't even manage to get through the higher world.
Due to these Striders, only the Emperors that managed to become outstanding would reach the next world. Additionally, every Emperor that failed would get reabsorbed by this world. A level five Emperor had a terrifying amount of Energy inside them, and if their quality weren't high enough, it would be better to just directly recycle them.
The other reason was the terrifying amount that level five Emperors needed to reach the Immortal Realm. As far as Gravis knew, the required amount of eaten corpses didn't decrease with an increase of a Realm. Based on that, every level five Emperor would need to eat eight other level five Emperors.
How many beasts did someone have to eat to become a level five Emperor? How many beasts have the beasts that got eaten have eaten? By all intents and purposes, a level five Emperor needed eight times the amount of food as a level four Emperor.
This world was big, but Gravis wasn't sure enough if it was big enough to continually create level five Emperors one after the other. Maybe there weren't even eight level five Emperors in this world right now. If Heaven did nothing regarding this situation, there would only be one ascender after who knew how many years.
Heaven used its own Energy to create these Striders for that exact purpose. As soon as someone became a level five Emperor, they only needed to kill the Striders to ascend. Then, they would absorb the Energy and take it to the higher world, and the higher Heaven would send the same amount of Energy back to the middle world.
The middle Heaven didn't lose any kind of Energy during this process since it would just receive more Energy from the higher world.
This situation could be likened to the management of money. Pure Energy was a liquid asset for Heaven, and by creating these Striders, it converted these liquid assets into hard assets. The total amount of Energy for Heaven wasn't lowered. Most of it simply existed in a different form.
Due to that, a cycle appeared. Heaven transforms Energy into Striders. The Striders get eaten, and their Energy enters a different beast. The beast ascends. The higher Heaven gives Energy to the middle Heaven equal to the amount of Energy that the beast possesses. Heaven transforms Energy into Striders and so on.
This was a cycle that allowed the middle Heaven to increase the number of ascenders manifold. Gravis found this system quite impressive and thought-through.
"They are there to increase the number of ascenders without wasting a ridiculous amount of food," Gravis said to the Empress after he remained silent for a couple of seconds.
The Empress smiled and nodded. "That's what I thought," she confirmed. "A level five Emperor needs a terrifying amount of food to reach the next world. Everyone in the world thinks that these Striders are some sort of mighty overlords that want to live in peace and are afraid of the upper world, but apparently, that's not true."
Gravis nodded. "Has anyone ever managed to talk to one of these?" he asked.
The Empress shook her head. "No, they don't talk with anyone. Additionally, if someone attacks one of them, the others don't get involved at all. The common consensus is that these Striders are too proud to intervene in fights or talk to us. Yet, now I think that they simply don't have the mental capabilities to communicate with us. Maybe they are not even aware of their own existence."
Gravis agreed with what the Empress had said, and he also remembered another detail. His father had said that this middle world belonged to the top 10% of middle worlds in regards to power. This kind of genius method might be one of the reasons for the strong standing of the ascenders from this world.
As he thought about these things, Gravis also started thinking about other natural middle worlds. His father had also said that this world was over three times as big as the average middle world. A bigger world allowed for more beasts to appear inside it. Yet, even such a big world had issues with creating enough food for an ascender to appear.
What did the smaller natural middle worlds use to create their ascenders?
A smaller world had way fewer resources than a bigger world, obviously. So, in order to create some ascenders, these kinds of worlds needed to be micromanaged way more.
It often happened that corpses got destroyed, that a stronger beast killed a weaker beast and didn't eat the corpse, or that both combatants died, leaving both corpses uneaten on the ground. This world had enough resources to ignore these resource-wasting occurrences, but smaller worlds definitely didn't.
Gravis guessed that smaller natural middle worlds probably had their Heaven dictate the fights. This meant that these fights wouldn't be as unfair in order not to waste any resources. This might allow the smaller natural middle world to create just as many ascenders as this one, but the quality would be like night and day.
One ascender went through a ton of one-on-one battles against equally powerful opponents, while the other ascender had to deal with a ton of crazy and unfair fights. The harder the fight, the better the tempering. Because of the different environments, the Emperors in this world were probably much stronger than the average ones.
Gravis shook his head to regain his bearings. "Sorry, I was lost in thought," he said to the Empress after some seconds.
"It's no problem. I have also thought a lot about our world ever since you have finished your tale," the Empress said as she waved him off dismissively.
Gravis took a deep breath and closed his eyes to ready himself. The workings of other worlds weren't on the top of his priority list right now. He had delayed the moment for long enough, and it was finally time to go through with it.
Gravis turned to the Empress and looked her deep in the eyes.
"How and when will the procreation take place?" he asked seriously.
