Void Evolution System
chapter-1786

'So, accumulating energy…'

According to Harold, it could be done in multiple ways.

The easiest aside from stealing was still stealing.

People died often in this realm. Sometimes, people would even commit suicide and erase their memories so they could be reborn as entirely different people.

No matter how they died, they would always revive. The concept of death didn't exist in this place, but one's existence could absolutely be wiped by the world itself. It didn't happen often, but if a practitioner tried to touch things they weren't meant to touch, it was a method the realm would occasionally enact.

If a practitioner died without having their existence erased, their energy would disperse into the world. The fifth island especially was filled with this energy. It was a battleground for the Ancients who apparently reached the level of Nonexistence easily.

This was where they killed each other and ruined the prosperity they had experienced until then.

To this day, as the environment remained unchanged as change was not a concept that could exist here, that energy remained.

Damien sat on the shore and looked out into the Sea of Nothingness because he believed that this place had the thickest energy across the entire island.

And, he wanted to see it for himself.

'Harold said that if I touch the water, I die.'

It was genuinely a manifested nothingness, so obviously anyone who had not dominated the concept would die if they came in contact with it. Even to leave the island they needed to use the energy they collected to fly across the sea, hoping they had enough to take them the entire way.

If their energy ran dry and they plummeted, they'd be wiped from the world. Most of those who stayed on the first island did so out of fear of that outcome.

Or so it was said, but Damien didn't buy it.

'Isn't this a place without convention? If even "change" doesn't exist, then why would "distance?"'

The Sea of Nothingness made sense. If it wanted to be separate from Existence yet still a concept that could be comprehended, then the Sea of Nothingness had to exist to give people a tangible thing to grab onto.

However, hypothetically, any amount of energy should have been enough to cross it.

'Isn't it just a matter of perception?'

If Damien had to pick what the core concept of Nonexistence that he'd learned in these few months was, it was "subjectivity."

Nonexistence changed based on one's position in life. One's experiences dictated what the concept could mean, and the concept responded by incorporating those aspects into its form.

To a child who never saw light, light did not exist.

To a person who did not perceive distance, distance did not exist.

Damien stood up somewhat subconsciously and hovered his foot over the sea.

His eyes dilated, and as the environment blurred, he saw the foot of the second island approaching him.

'Nonexistence…'

Damien frowned.

'...is it even a thing?'

Did it even exist?

It seemed like a stupid question, but if it didn't exist, then there was nothing to perceive.

'Then, Nonexistence is only what you make of it. It is the same kind of impossibility that Existence represents, but it fills in the gaps in its peer. It was never meant to just be the opposite of Existence, was it?'

They came into being at the same time. For one to exist, the other had to be present as well. Since Existence took everything that could be perceived and its weight increased so much, Nonexistence was forced to follow somehow.

In order to balance Existence, it took on everything that Existence considered impossible and turned itself into a true concept.

That kind of concept…

It was the hardest to understand, but the easiest to understand.

It was impossible to comprehend until the moment one realized just how simple everything was at its core.

'Huh, but that's not really simple, is it?'

It sounded easy saying it out loud, but how was one to come to that conclusion without context? It was simply impossible, just like everything else related to the concept.

For Damien to reach it this soon…perhaps he was just talented. Nevertheless, despite seeing the second island right in front of him, he didn't leave immediately.

'It may be useful to accumulate a little first.'

It may have been, but…

'...why don't I want to?'

Damien immediately took back his decision to accumulate. Something told him that it was the wrong thing to do.

As he thought back to the Nonexistence the bandits and Harold controlled and examined their differences, he realized that absorbing the energy of others would not be the best course of action.

It was fine for other people, as they just wanted to comprehend Nonexistence in any form.

They consumed it in any form they could find. By doing so, they got stronger much faster than they would have otherwise, but their paths would be constrained.

They would become like the Dark God, people who controlled both concepts separately because they refused to come together,

Damien wanted more than that. He wanted his own perfect Nonexistence that melded perfectly with his Existence.

After all, his goal was even grander than theirs. He didn't just want to control the two. His final goal was to control the Void itself and reach the potential he was birthed with.

Would he attain that by absorbing other people's energy and allowing their comprehensions to pollute his own?

Even in the past, he seldom made use of the comprehensions of the beings he devoured. When he did, he interpolated them into his own techniques.

This was the same. Instead of letting his power be a mesh of several other people, he wanted it to be purely his own.

'And if my theories about Nonexistence are correct, then accumulation is useless from the beginning.'

It was never a necessity.

Perhaps the mechanism was only put in place to help people reach the same conclusion Damien did.

He had retracted his foot before, but it was already hovering over the water again.

"Distance" didn't exist.

"Death" didn't exist.

As all of the things standing in Damien's way were banished into Nonexistence, the second island approached until there was no water separating him from it at all.

He took a step that the thirty people on the first island were unable to take.

And he left them behind.

The first island had been conquered in just a single day.

However, if that was the tutorial area, then this was the main game. The following four islands would be progressively more difficult until the trial was almost impossible.

Still, Damien stepped onto the second island with far more confidence than he had before.

Technically, he'd only realized one little thing.

That one little thing seemed small from an outside perspective.

Yet, that one little thing was more important than anything else the realm would teach him.

With it in his grasp, he felt like he could finally make use of Nonexistence.

And, as long as Damien Void had access to a concept, he would absolutely comprehend it.

That was the Legend he created as the Hegemon God.