Chapter 684: Old friends
Time inside this world passed extremely quickly. Kayden was able to learn at a completely insane pace. With each year that went by, his knowledge of karmic rays increased, and with each new understanding he became more amazed by the complexity of this law.
It was not something an ordinary god would be capable of creating. In truth, it was not something even a fourth-level god could achieve. Jarvis had been accompanying him throughout this entire time, and even that god was a complete layman in this subject.
"The speed with which you grasp things is disproportionate. I have only seen this in mages who had a divine predestination for an area," Jarvis commented after seeing Kayden make an insane leap in knowledge just by watching a karmic ray fall. "What exactly did you do with your soul?"
Kayden and Jarvis had never touched on this point before. Up until now Jarvis had only seen Kayden as a genius—an insane genius who defied reality—but from this moment onward it seemed that Kayden was something more, almost as if he were a reincarnation.
"I am a true complete soul," Kayden told the same story he had repeated dozens of times. A small sense of nostalgia from the past passed through his mind as he remembered the time with his soulmate.
In the last millennia he had only been studying without drawing attention. Kayden had an insane talent for remaining invisible. Many times the council crossed his mind; the boy noticed them, but he was far too busy training. He had no reason to start a fight at that moment.
"What is your ceiling at this point?" Jarvis asked after a while, and Kayden began to enumerate a little.
"My path is the Monarch of oneself, but I am also the one who rules over all," Kayden felt his path in his mind. "I am one step away from eternalizing my law and placing it at a third level. I am stuck in a limbo between the peak of a fundamental law and a third-level law."
"How close are you to becoming a god?" Jarvis saw no reason for Kayden to continue waiting. His inability to place his law at the third level was probably because of that—at least that’s what the god thought.
"Very far," Kayden said no more and continued studying the laws of this world, while Jarvis returned to his recuperative sleep.
It was amusing how the god had been able to flee from the strongest karmic ray in all existence. But this had probably left him deficient for a terribly long time, a span that would probably outlast countless divine kings. Obviously, he had only been able to do this for one reason—Kayden had allowed him into his mind, for that simple reason alone.
"This doesn’t make sense," Kayden remarked after receiving a karmic ray directly into his body. He felt his entire arm disfiguring, at least visually.
The problem was that the sensation he had was of his body feeling every possible emotion—from heat to cold, from destruction to creation. He could feel his arm being rebuilt, he could feel mana remodeling it, but he could also feel the laws reshaping it. He could feel absolutely everything and at the same time nothing.
Kayden found himself incapable of defending against this attack. His mind was simply unable to process the karmic ray. It was not a matter of willpower; it was a matter of experience. Kayden was incapable of reasoning through such an attack. At that moment, his respect for Jarvis grew tremendously.
The god had not only been able to face something far above him but had also managed to dodge death from a karmic ray. Kayden placed him on an even higher pedestal in his mind at that point—not that the god wasn’t already at the highest level for him.
"Hello Master Kayden, it’s been a while." Kayden heard a voice and...
Han, Atlas, and... Achilles stood before him—mages he had never expected to see in his entire life, mages he had believed to be dead. But quite the contrary: before him stood two gods and a mortal.
Han and Atlas were at the peak of the third divine level. Their strength was latent, radiating power in a way that made no sense. They were above any god Kayden had ever seen at that tier, above practically all he had faced. These two should not be here. Something was wrong and...
Achilles was at the mortal peak, but his strength... it was strange. He was completely out of the curve. Kayden could not even feel his aura, but he could sense the forces of time and destiny intertwining around him, almost like servants to his will.
"It has truly been a long time," Kayden commented.
"Atlas Primum greets his first master.""Han Heart greets his first master."
The two showed a respect Kayden did not expect. His sense of time and events had been practically nullified because his perception of time had been completely broken. Spending trillions of years staring at a garden or a mountain made him function differently—his relationships simply faded from his mind over time.
"We are the council of this world," Achilles began. "In a few million years, a mortal will rise and become a divine king of this place. I have been moving small pieces for a long time, but you destroy any flow of destiny."
Achilles had become a true master in preventing the future, in weaving dozens of paths. The only problem was... Kayden simply toppled any decent flow of destiny in this world. He alone was able to scramble everything without any explanation.
"I do not plan on doing anything in this world," Kayden commented. "As long as it does not attack me directly, I see no problem."
"And if it does attack?" Han asked with curiosity. In truth, the three of them shared this curiosity—what was Kayden’s true level of strength after all these years? How much had he really grown?
"Then we will fight to the death," Kayden answered without thinking too much about his words. The mages before him did not take it as a joke. They knew Kayden. They had seen what this mage was capable of doing.