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> 怖い想像をするけど、僕にはこのダンジョンが下界にヒューマンと亜人{デミ・ヒューマン}を創造した神様達と同等のような **存在に思えてならない。**

Why is に used here and what does it do?
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2015-08-07T05:21:01.097
26239
2016-02-11T10:23:07.093
2016-02-11T10:23:07.093
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question
grammar
What does に do in this sentence?
に doesn't really have a particular meaning. It belongs together with verb 思える.
So it is always used as に思える. When it comes to the meaning of 思えてならない, I found
this older question from this site:

[What is meaning of
「〜ないように思えてなりません」?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/14090/what-is-
meaning-
of-%E3%81%AA%E3%81%84%E3%82%88%E3%81%86%E3%81%AB%E6%80%9D%E3%81%88%E3%81%A6%E3%81%AA%E3%82%8A%E3%81%BE%E3%81%9B%E3%82%93)
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2015-08-07T08:21:53.107
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2015-08-07T08:21:53.107
2017-04-13T12:43:44.740
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answer
## Correction due to the Choco san's recommendation for the correction at the
comment line and with the apology to the questioner

Kindly allow me to break your sentence into the parts of the speech.

> 存在 (Noun: meaning "existence")  
>  **に**  
>  思え (verb: meaning "to think", ア行下一段, 連用形)  
>  て (the conjunctive auxiliary)  
>  なら (verb basic なる, meaning "to become", 未然形)  
>  ない (auxiliary, used to be _deny_ the former part of speech, 終止形)  
>  。

The postpositional particle に, **[from this
link](http://people.ucalgary.ca/%7Exyang/kobun/6-2-4.htm)** , would fall into
the

> （七）内容・状態などを示す。「ーとして」の意。「ほうびにもらう」

Translation:

> To denote the circumstance, condition. It can be swapped by the word 「－として」.
> Example: "receive as a present"

Therefore, here, **に** can be swapped by として, thus it functions as English's
_as_ like you can see in the above example.

So since in your whole speech, the 存在 equals with ダンジョン and 神様, thus we can
translate the broken parts of the speech as the following:

> can not help but to think XXX as the existence (with ...)

## Conclusion

Here the postpositional particle に functions as **as** in English.

## The translation of the whole speech

> 怖い想像をするけど、僕にはこのダンジョンが下界にヒューマンと亜人を創造した神様達と同等のような 存在に思えてならない
>
> Though it might sound scary, I can not help but to think this dungeon seems
> to me **as** some same kind of the existence, the Gods, which created the
> Demi Humans underworld

Have a good luck.

Thank you.
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2015-08-07T15:26:03.990
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2015-08-08T14:26:45.653
2020-06-17T08:18:27.500
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answer