Chương 211: Chapter 287: Midlife Crisis

A newborn baby experienced a mid-life crisis, as it realized it would never amount to anything compared to William Oh. Jason Salazar What was that… thing? The Devourer thought as it huddled in a dark and narrow crack in the bark. The soldier ant had appeared to be a mishmash of strange netting, but there were anchor threads throughout that had given it a strong and sturdy net. Threads of fate similar to The Devourer's hunting threads ensured the soldier ant would not, could not die here.

There was a predetermined death for the soldier ant, but until it reached it, it could not be defeated. Fate and circumstance would simply rearrange itself to allow the soldier ant to survive. How am I supposed to survive such a thing? The answer was simple enough: never let it see The Devourer again. Hide in a dark crevice until the danger passed. That's what a mindless insect would do, and its effective enough, but for some reason, that doesn't sit well with me.

The thought of 'mindless insects' reminded The Devourer of Worlds of the strange hoots that transferred thoughts between these strange hairy creatures. These ants were not mindless. While The Devourer of Worlds had foolishly thought that it and only it had developed the supernatural power of 'thinking about things', these creatures had been doing it this entire time, and not only that, they had been sharing these thoughts with each other across vast distances using this… hooting.

I must take this forbidden technique for myself. What better way to convince them to let themselves be eaten than appeal to them in their own hoots? Surely that would have greater success. … Something about that didn't feel right, but it was still the best idea that The Devourer had in a while. I have a mind for thinking, and a mind for seeing. I need a mind for hooting. In order to make one, I need to get away from this soldier hunting me. And maybe grab a snack, if there's any of those big scaly worlds anywhere.

Travelling and growing one's mind so much was exhausting and made The Devourer hungry. Matter of fact… Now that The Devourer sat and thought about it, there were two different kinds of hunger going through It's mind. Hunger of the body, and hunger of the mind. The Devourer's body would've been perfectly content going many days without food… if it hadn't been running constantly, urged on by its mind. The body craved the yummy juice inside of other creatures on the same scale as it. A bland, basic nourishment.

The mind, however, craved more of those complex nets that these world-sized creatures seemed to carry inside them. But why? Solely to grow? Or did it require maintenance simply to continue working, like the body did? I suppose I'll know in a few days if I ignore it. Is there any reason I can't eat my own nets? Many times over its life, The Devourer had eaten its own nets to reset for a new day of hunting prey.

Now this commonplace behavior was being inspected, turned inward and examined with a mind far greater than it ever had been before, with a keen eye towards evading something with a similar 'mind' power, as well as several other unknown ones. Is there a way I could… make my own food? That's preposterous. But…

The Devourer had seen the ants of the swamps protecting the tiny green monsters as they sucked cursed miasma out of the gnarled plants, concentrated it down into tiny dewdrops of sweet suffering, which the ants would then eat… without harming the little green things. The Devourer didn't have a mind back then, so the memory was more of a vague flicker of an impression. That it was possible to make food. … somehow. The more ants I eat, the more soldiers are going to come after me.

If I could make my own food, then less soldier ants would be trying to kill me. Although that won't stop the ones that have already marked my scent. Once The Devourer was outside the range of the huge red glowing beetles, it set about experimenting with the flurry of new concepts that its powerful mind had uncovered. Need more mind. Need a mind for hooting. Need to experiment with making nets my mind can eat rather than getting it elsewhere. Use mind as a filter? Can my own mind construct its own nets?

More attacks? Decoys? Hooting? The Devourer of worlds carefully unpacked its mind, holding still for several seconds, watching for any sign that the soldier ant was going to come after it again. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. But nothing happened. I suppose it's out of range… for now. The Devourer had no idea what the range of this monster was.

The Devourer's sense of scale had been thrown off so hard by its expanded consciousness, that it was best to assume infinite range when dealing with these world-sized creatures. Temporarily convinced of its dubious safety, the devourer fully unfurled its mind, stretching in pleasure as a cramped, suffocating sensation it could barely parse faded away, sight and autonomy returning.

Eager to begin using its 'thinking' power, it placed its body in the center of its mind and used all eight eyes to look at its body from eight different angles. Inside its butt, was a curious, complex mechanism that took incoming blessed miasma the Devourer got from eating other creatures and teased it together with the curse miasma The Devourer created inside its own body, weaving them into gossamer threads far more powerful and versatile than they should've been.

Is there some way to make it so my mind can make its own nets? The Devourer thought. Now that it had a proper sense of scale, looking down at its own body… The tiny black speck seemed so… limiting. Let's begin. The Devourer began weaving nets, its mind directing its body to add more functionality to its mind. Surely if given the choice, having more intelligence to make better choices was the best choice. It only took a few days. The Devourer built itself a 'hoot' mind.

As of this moment it hadn't had a chance to operate, but it was primed to translate sounds to thoughts, feeding the meaning back to the primary ming, as well as recreate sounds from ideas. No one was getting the drop on The Devourer with their secret thought-noises. Other than that, The Devourer realized that Its mind's shape was a perfect funnel for filtering raw proto-food that drifted through the miasma realm.

With just a bit of engineering, The Devourer was able to design a protective coating it could apply to the outside of its mind. When lumps of miasma hit the coating and they caught burrs that caused the proto-food to to roll across the Devourer's mind, tickling its thoughts with a layer of floating ideas as they were shaped into strands through twisting and friction, carried to a pouch in the back where a recreation of the Devourer's butt-machinery would weave them into more coating and other necessities.

This change allowed The Devourer's mind to continue operating without needing to constantly gorge itself on scaled worlds and the four-limbed ants. It also had the unintended benefit of somewhat randomizing The Devourer's background thought process, allowing it to occasionally make leaps of logic that it otherize couldn't. Although I wouldn't turn down more ants. The amount gained from one single ant was still more than The Devourer estimated it could acquire through filtering proto-food in a week.

I suppose I should increase my size and efficiency. With a larger surface area I could bring in more proto-food and once I do that, I'll never have to… Never have to… do anything. What do I want for myself? In the pursuit of hiding from pursuit and acquiring food without effort, The Devourer had envisioned a future a where it didn't need to do anything to survive. Like a plant, it could just… exist. Stay in one place, drawing in the chunkier bits of miasma out of the atmosphere.

Past a certain point, there was really no need to move. No need to learn or grow. The devourer's existence would continue. But would that really be an existence worth having? What is this feeling? The devourer turned its thoughts inward. Its body only knew a handful of primitive directives. Hide, Hunt, Breed. It could do those forever and nothing would change. And one day, it would die, and its offspring would continue the cycle endlessly, accomplishing nothing more than…

The Devourer paused, blinking in shock at its sudden realization. I'm going to die! Time marched on endlessly into the future. There was no stopping it. Everything died eventually, whether it was from bad luck, predators, the weather, or simple old age. Shortly after it had gained it's mind, The Devourer had witnessed prey that only lived an exceptionally short time, being born, mating and dying of old age in a matter of days. Why would The Devourer be exempt? It couldn't possibly be.

If time was infinite, then eventually, regardless of what steps The Devourer took to prevent it… it WOULD die someday. It had to. Death was a foregone conclusion. The realization rocked The Devourer to the core, but it highlighted why simply staying in one place and peacefully filtering miasma from the environment felt… wrong. To simply stay in one place and exist for ages and then one day get old or unlucky and fade into nothing… it was an inexcusable waste of a mind.

The Devourer had the mind and the will to make changes that would last beyond the scope of its own demise. What form those changes would take… I have power. I can change the world. To throw that away and do nothing with it would be infuriating. But what do I want to do? The Devourer once again looked at its own mind. It was an intricate puzzle that it had created by sheer instinct. The package of instincts and drives that accompanied its main body could not comprehend the smallest fraction of its mind.

Any understanding of its own mind came from its own mind. It was a living puzzle that was currently trying to solve itself. I can think of nothing better. I will comprehend myself to the greatest degree possible. I will solve my puzzle. And then I will know what I am meant to do. With the satisfaction of a small portion of its own puzzle solved, The Devourer turned to other matters. When the ant had attacked the net between itself and its prey, the soldier had launched its own net.

Instead of the shape of a gossamer thread like The Devourer was used to, it had been an orb, a bit like a drop of water. How did it go? Try as it might, The Devourer struggled to recreate the self-propelled attack. I need to see more examples up close. I'll also need to give my hoot-brain something to decode. The section of The Devourer's mind that it had woven specifically to decode hoots was suffering from terrible boredom. It needed its own puzzle to work on.

I suppose I'll have to find the soldier ant and observe it for a while. The idea was dangerous. Possibly suicidal. But the other options seemed to lead it eventually toward becoming a mindless plant, avoiding all risk and simple being. The Devourer wanted to learn. The Devourer wanted to matter. In order to observe the soldier ant, The Devourer would have to enhance its senses in such a way that they wouldn't stick out, and create more space inside of itself to store its own mind.

That line of thought led it to considering an anchor, where it could store the majority of its mind separately while keeping just the senses attached to the body. Perhaps… Oh! That could work. THAT idea led to the more refined concept of making an entire decoy mind of miasma that was linked through interdimensional anchor-threads to the main mind. Yes! Observe the soldier ant. Learn and grow in relative safety while keeping my body out of harm's way. The best of both worlds. I need… a mind-weaving mind, then.

And to expand my inner space. And create and strengthen the anchors for my own nets. So much to do! Unaware that it had successfully navigated both its rise to full sapience and the associated crash of existential dread of the meaningless of existence, The Devourer of Worlds settled on mastering its own mind as the reason for its existence and got to work. Not a bad choice for a reason to live, as these things went.