The humans of this world sank into despair. The entire "city" was swallowed by hopelessness.
The consciousness linked by Heart Gold should have helped them share their pain, but now it was like wooden boats chained together and burned clean by a single fire.
They had clearly achieved enough "evolution," and their civilization had not suffered any devastating blow. It still stood upon the earth, yet they were lost.
"Without Heart Gold, what can we do?"
Having depended on something for too long, they could no longer break free of it.
Humanity's technology had all been built upon Heart Gold. They had long since abandoned their physical bodies, and even creating new descendants required Heart Gold. Everything they had belonged to Heart Gold. Now that Heart Gold was gone, it was like ancient humanity losing carbon—everything would cease to exist.
It seemed that all things had reached their end. Life continued so that genetic fragments could endure, yet these new "Heart Gold humans" had even had their genetic material transformed into Heart Gold.
Now that Heart Gold was gone, they could only cling to this fixed amount of Heart Gold and sustain a population with no potential for further development.
Even so, with Heart Gold's immense power, they could still continue toward the sea of stars. They merely had to reduce its consumption and use their limited Heart Gold in the proper directions.
But going from luxury to frugality was difficult. They had evolved into "higher" life-forms—how could they possibly tighten their belts until even their basic needs could not be met?
The evolution of life brought higher intelligence, but also more needs. It was like humans and ants: ants only needed to think about eating and drinking, while humans thought about far more, from the food before their eyes