〖 The triggering emotion was clearly 'protect', but the derived product was a bunch of gargoyles 〗Negary commented as he observed the future results: 〖 Because the previous timeline collapsed, everything had been twisted, huh? 〗
Negary then conducted further experiments with various emotions on this timeline remains, as well as continuously undoing the twist to uncover that timeline's true appearance.
A normal timeline wouldn't only contain negative aspects, but the collapse of the timeline caused everything to become twisted like this. Evidently, the negative influence of this type of destruction was considerable.
Of course, the destruction alone wouldn't cause all emotions to become negative this way. The unspeakable 'something' that was hidden beneath the timeline remains surely must have been a decisive factor in twisting these remains.
And Negary was attempting to undo this twist in order to become accustomed to the unspeakable power.
When he observed the movement of the unspeakable 'something', a large volume of information rushed into his soul viruses, which forced him to cut off a large number of them. The viruses that contained the unspeakable information had also undergone an unknown mutation during this period.
What Negary needed to do now was to understand this twist, then reincorporate the cut-off viruses back into this body and analyze the unspeakable information they contained.
This entity had far surpassed the seven Gods, it was a being of a similar level to the likes of the White Light and Black Abyss. Even the information contained within a single movement of such an entity would greatly benefit Negary, almost as much as him fully infecting a world.
As he continued to research and modify it, the complete information of the timeline remains revealed itself to Negary.
…
An outer space asteroid descended upon the planet, bringing with it not only destruction but also a unique kind of lifeform, slightly changing the structure of the world.
Carbon-based lifeforms couldn't evolve, instead, it was rock-based lifeforms that obtained the opportunity to become living beings.
In another aspect of this world, rocks were actually living, breathing creatures. Here, they established contact with one another, giving birth to emotions; once an emotion had fully erupted within a rock creature, they would leave this aspect of reality, becoming full-fledged living statues.
The appearance and abilities of the living statues that carried different emotions were also dissimilar.
Each rock was a fetus of the world itself, their wills put in effort in the other aspect of the reality, but only the most excellent among them would be able to manifest in the 'real' world.
They did not have parents or siblings; they did not have the connection of blood.
Thanks to the abilities they manifested from emotions, the living statue civilization reached an age of prosperity.
They collected anomalies as strange and rare objects to be kept but didn't draft any sort of containment measures for them, so the inevitable happened. During a particularly harsh rebellion of anomalies, a change was stimulated in the world's temporal structure, the living statue civilization couldn't stop it, so the timeline that belonged to them simply collapsed.
The remains of this timeline sunk into the Inexistent world and gradually became twisted, then re-manifested as the Earthbound statue phenomenon in this world that no longer belonged to them thanks to the black sword.
…
After he obtained the general information of the living statue civilization, Negary didn't stop. The reason why a timeline ended up as remains in the Inexistent world was that the timeline didn't even have the ability to leave representations of themselves – anomalies – in the world.
Due to its unique way of conception, the living statue civilization had a large number of living statues that were all born with considerable power. At the same time, each living statue only contained a single emotion, which made the essence of the living statue civilization to be stiff and tasteless.
The living statues never became united even at the very end, the emotions that created these living statues also dictated their behaviors, limiting them in a stiff mold that wouldn't and couldn't be changed. In the end, the collapse of their timeline was nothing unusual.
They couldn't even detect the uniqueness of this world, which left them helpless to prevent the collapse of their timeline, unlike the Lizardmen and other species who could leave behind anomalies like the Lizardman's Head to plot for another timeline alteration.
Negary was currently infusing emotions into this bit of timeline remains.
From the very beginning, Negary had faced no shortage of enemies with extreme willpower, and thanks to them, Negary's grasp of human emotions were quite thorough.
〖 The unwillingness to see their timeline collapse, the desire to keep on living, the fear of death, and the stubbornness towards survival 〗Negary collected these corresponding emotions and continuously controlled the creation of the new phenomenon.
Leaving a piece of remains to take up a region of space and time would naturally hinder Negary's total infection of the world, so after Negary studied the living statue timeline as well as this piece of remains, he began to modify it.
In the end, a stone demon mask full of cracks appeared in Negary's hand. By Negary's personal craftsmanship, the mostly harmless phenomenon had been turned into an abnormal item capable of affecting the entire timeline; if the living statue lifeforms could take advantage of this, they could even revive their previous timeline.
The timeline alteration caused by this item would allow Negary to further observe a few things in that timeline, but whether or not they could revive their timeline was unclear to even Negary.
Casually dropping this stone demon mask, Negary turned back into a golden light that spread through the entire world.
…
A human who was on his way back from a hunt found this mask on the ground. He had a panicked expression on his face, even the bow he held was trembling nonstop. Just earlier, he had shot the foot of his comrade to draw the attention of the strange monster, then escaped with his life.
His entire body was still shivering. The feeling of being happy for surviving and the shame of betraying his comrade had left him unable to look properly at himself. He was feeling as if 'he' had become a foreign entity altogether, not knowing whether he should laugh out loud from the pleasure or cry from the sorrow.
Looking down at the stone demon mask in his hand, he put it on. He found himself extremely detestable, but didn't have the courage to commit suicide, perhaps wearing this mask and hiding his face behind it would make him feel a bit better?
In reality, everyone had such moments of self-contradiction, and no human was pure. This person wanted to survive, so he pushed his comrade to death, but wasn't cruel enough to not feel the guilt of his actions and instead suffered because of it.
The man under the mask slowly changed, continuing his returning trek to his tribe. His grip on the bow in his hand slowly became tighter and tighter.
Part of my shame was out of guilt from killing my comrade, but the other part was the fear of criticism from his family members and the cold eyes of the people in the village.
The man's face under the mask was growing increasingly morbid.
Because the Earthbound phenomenon had become this stone demon mask, this person didn't become petrified by his guilt, he was undergoing a different change from the changes of the mask instead.
The night before he made it back to his tribe, the man took off his mask. But now, the face under the mask carried a fake sense of panic, as if he had put on another mask.
Placing the stone demon mask into his leather bag, the man walked up to the entrance of the tribe with his panicked expression, drawing the attention of the guardsmen. Amid the flurry of questions from his tribesmen, he temporarily took refuge in this home.
Observing the accusing gazes of his own family members, the man lowered his head.
At midnight, he took out a sharp bone knife and slit all of their throats.
