Chapter 45: The Creature That Devours Despair

It is said that it happened a long time ago.

No living thing knows...how long ago the void was formed, and how it was formed.

Countless inferences and calculations, even direct observations of ancient times, have always failed to yield the true answer.

Some creatures believe that 'thought' is as old as the void.

'Thinking' itself is a void.

It is said that there is such a void...which itself is made up of thoughts.

It originally came from the imagination of some normal void creatures, and these imaginations, under some strange circumstances, formed the initial... prototype of an unpredictable land.

Then, it slowly grew and turned into a vast void.

At first, almost no normal void creatures knew about this place, but there were some creatures that knew about this place.

They believe that the unpredictable place is a pure imaginary void, mixed with the imaginations of countless creatures.

They just knew about this place before but had never been there.

Later they found a way to reach an unforeseen place and witnessed the environment there.

But they found that this place was different from what they thought it was... It had almost nothing to do with "imagination".

There is no environment imagined by various creatures here, but an environment that they have never guessed.

This environment is inhabited by various creatures that have no connection to normal void creatures, and they live entirely in an environment that belongs to them.

The group of creatures that came here were very surprised. They thought this place shouldn't be like this.

However, after a detailed investigation, they found some traces of the past.

They noticed something about 'imagination'.

Then, they thought that this place was once a place full of imagination, and perhaps something happened that caused changes in the creatures here, giving rise to the various creatures that exist here today.

Maybe it was "evolution", but there could be other reasons. In any case, the creatures they saw in unforeseen places were almost unrelated to their imagination.

So, they began to think of ways to make this place an imaginary place instead of the place it is now.

But no matter how long they studied or investigated, there was no way to turn this place back into a place made up purely of "imagination".

Finally, they fell into despair and died.

However, they did not die completely, and it is said that some new species were born from their corpses.

These species love the 'emotion' of despair.

………………

This seems to be... the original legend, the legend about creatures like the "boneless doll".

They are initially born in despair and then begin to devour despair.

Their meaning of 'despair' is that when a dream creature gives up all goals in life... and thinks that nothing is important anymore, they will generate a certain 'energy'.

And the doll feeds on this energy.

It can also be said that the despair of other dream creatures is a kind of nutrient for them.

The dolls were not very 'famous' at first, or their community was not very large.

At first, they will not harm other creatures, but instead look for creatures that may be in despair, and wait for them to die in despair, and then devour their despair.

Simply put, they are like scavengers, waiting for a creature to die and then eating their corpse.

This behavior can still keep them alive in unpredictable places.

Because, there are some creatures called "giant consciousnesses" there.

They are extremely large, resembling a giant brain floating in the void, and the creatures are said to be very 'sentimental'.

They often worry about things that have nothing to do with them, and their emotions fluctuate easily.

These giant consciousnesses have very long lives, and their life processes are usually spent wandering over a large area.

At the same time, they will also imagine and judge the situations of other creatures around them.

In the end, they will slowly become depressed, mainly because these consciousnesses always feel that there is no hope for the creatures around them.

At the end of their lives, they are usually disappointed with everything around them and die slowly in despair.

The dolls were waiting around it at that time, and only after the consciousness died did they begin to devour the "despair" it produced.

But life with other creatures is always unstable. Sometimes the giant consciousness does not despair, which leads to the death of many dolls who have been looking forward to their next meal.

Sometimes, they try to drive other creatures to despair, but it doesn't work very well.

They cannot influence the giant consciousness because the giant consciousness knows very well that they feed on despair and does not care what these dolls are doing.

A conscious being will only despair if it feels that it should despair.

As for other creatures...that’s not quite clear. At that time, the dolls mainly followed the giant consciousness.

But there was no special development for a long time, until... at some point they discovered this place, which is the Space of Hope.

I hope the despair in this space is even more "pure". When the consciousness inside is dying, the pure despair they create can give birth to a large number of...dolls.

Then, they began to devour the space of hope here.

And their behavior seems to have caused some damage to the edge of the unforeseen land.

Although the range of their damage was very small compared to the entire void, they still caused damage.

Some creatures noticed this and began to investigate.

The creatures that noticed this were mainly the wanderers.

However, they did not interfere too much and were just conducting research on the dolls.

Later, they tried to sneak into the group of dolls to investigate.

At first they didn't realize that these dolls were the small creatures like scavengers following the huge consciousness.

Because the way the dolls entered the Space of Hope was not by entering directly, but by allowing their "offspring" to be born in the Space of Hope, making the creatures that were originally produced in the space, that is, the escapees, become their offspring.

This is similar to an Ershi citizen using his nuclear information to influence another species, such as an orangutan, and then the orangutan's descendants become Ershi citizens and no longer orangutans.

In fact, the breakaways are no longer breakaways, but the descendants of this kind of creature... that feeds on despair.

And their actions have become completely different from before.

Previously they were passive, waiting creatures.

Now it is very active, as if constantly eroding these spaces.