Heartless had originally been one of the endless Nightmare Creatures belonging to the Nightmare Wizards.
Modern wizards had used the rule of selecting wizard apprentices with mental power above ten to limit the parasitism of Nightmare Creatures upon the Wizard World. Then came the birth of the Tricolor Sprites and the Judgment Staff Stigmata Wizard Tooth Fairy Tale's promotion of the Tricolor Sprite rules. After the passage of long years, the Nightmare Creatures had been weakened beyond recognition. As illusory beings under the wizards' surveillance, they could only scrape out a miserable existence.
Yet even so, wizards, accustomed to controlling everything, had never let down their guard in the slightest. They had never ceased their control over the Nightmare World; every so often, Stigmata Wizards would enter the nightmare illusion and slaughter recklessly.
The end of the Nightmare World's threat to the Wizard World had originated with the birth of the Nightmare Wizard rules.
The One-Ring True Spirit Wizard had used Tooth Fairy Tale to promote the Tricolor Sprite rules, thoroughly suppressing at the source those illusory beings parasitizing the Wizard World. With her own power, she had opened a circle between the Nightmare World and the Wizard World, linking illusion and reality. Its significance was precisely what the Saint Ancestor Wushi of the Dark Great World had sought: connect illusion, enslave illusion!
This circle was a simplified version of the Dark Gate of the Dark Sacred Ancestor Wushi.
The difference was that the One-Ring True Spirit Wizard enslaved Nightmare Creatures, transforming the power of fright into the most fundamental energy of the Nightmare Wizard system. The Dark Sacred Ancestor Wushi, meanwhile, hoped to open the Dimensional Esophagus, spread his own dark rules, and release the despairing monsters within the Dimensional Esophagus to become his followers!
Heartless had been the