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The subject of reaper extinction had been yet another area of interest for him at various points in his life. And he'd had his doubts about it, too. Reapers had a way of exaggerating their problems, of trying to elicit sympathy. Sometimes it helped them to acquire influence and power. Other times, it was just in hopes of receiving mercy.

Tricky devils, the lot of them.

Even now, their tricks were still somewhat effective on him, of all people. Just a bit. He was ever so slightly reluctant to actually take their lives. Reapers were a precious resource. So how much more convincing would their rhetoric be to those who weren't as enlightened as he?

A lot, was the answer.

The truth was, the world was almost certainly better off without more reapers in it. Sure, there was the ever present threat of feldeaths and the concerns over departed souls decaying endlessly into pure misery. But there were already quite a lot of feldeaths in the world. In fact, those stubborn jerks might actually be the ultimate end state of all life.

The supreme beings.

With regard to the geologic timescale, that was. It was hard to know for certain, of course, but feldeaths could very well be the destination that they were all headed toward, eventually. There wasn't even any real evidence that the "ferrying" of souls actually prevented new feldeaths from being born. It seemed to, but without knowing where all those souls were actually being ferried to, there was no way of knowing if the feldeaths weren't just yanking departed souls straight back into reality.

Morgunov didn't necessarily subscribe to that theory, himself, but he didn't entirely discount it, either. He was reasonably certain that departed souls were ferried into the Void.

But where did they go after that? Did they just stay there in the Void forever?

He doubted it.