My contact with space-time opened new doors for me. I knew from the beginning about your torture and your path. Since the day I held you in my arms, I’ve had glimpses of your future.
I saw you being tortured, I saw you being betrayed and cornered by Eden, I saw you getting six lightning bolts, I saw you bending the impossible. But that’s something you’re still far away from.
And as much as I didn’t want one of my children to go through this, there was nothing I could do. It was his destiny, and fighting destiny is not something mortals can do easily. But don’t be fooled into thinking that your future has already been shaped. You only tend to a certain point in the divine plot.
Maybe you’re wondering why I exchanged my life for yours. This is something you will probably understand when you are a parent. I knew that my interference at that point was the only thing that would allow you to live. In any future I was alive, you would be dead. So I did what I had to do.
Make the most of my techniques and live your life as you wish. To the son I loved most, I leave here my goodbyes and my last words.
When Kayden finished reading, his eyes were watery. Without any fear, he began to cry and shed an absurd amount of tears. That was the most incredible thing anyone had ever done for him, but that wasn’t the reason he was crying.
He was crying in memory of Han and shedding his last real tears. From that day on, he killed all his feelings definitively. They were the last tears of the old Kayden.
It was long minutes before he stopped and calmed down. When this happened, a new look was in his eyes. Before, it was an emptiness and a deep abyss for anyone. Right now, it would be a little different. It would be like seeing a dead person’s eyeball.
"Han was a real monster," Kayden commented to himself. Before, he thought that the old man had reached the top twice. But this time, he understood the depth of the old man’s strength.
There were three times, and in one of them, with six rays. Furthermore, his second path was something beyond ridiculous, which enabled him to break any known parameter. Han probably slaughtered those three figures as if they were absolutely nothing.
Kayden promised not to let Han’s memory be forgotten. And when I got out of that hole, I would turn this book into something public. Everyone on the planet would recognize his name. This was his last favor to his father.
Leaving that aside, Kayden took out from his space ring the technique he would need most if something went wrong: the legendary technique called Coward’s Escape. It had been falling for a long time and it seemed like it was still far from over.
The technique was difficult and laborious, but Kayden put all his focus into it. It would be essential for their survival. Time had no meaning for Kayden at that moment. Everything was black, there was no way for him to identify anything around him.
Kayden could not test the technique freely and could only simulate it outside his body. But with just that, he managed to master the art of being launched like a rocket. The part about becoming invisible to others was still in progress.
It consisted of changing his presence to something in the environment, almost as if he were an inanimate being. It wasn’t particularly easy, as even his mana had to be exhaled differently. Furthermore, he couldn’t draw any mana into his body, even subconsciously.
He easily managed to master it with a little time. He just didn’t get the part about moving underground and blinding everyone around him. He didn’t have time, as he found himself falling into the real abyss.
A gigantic forest stretched out on all sides as far as Kayden could see. He exited the side of the ceiling, and as he looked up, he felt a ridiculously strong mana barrier preventing him from going back.
The ceiling was made of a crystal that illuminated the entire environment below even from a few dozen kilometers high. It was a shade of blue, nothing too strong, but it made the land look strange. The mana density was five times greater than on the surface.
"Crap?" Kayden used his technique to hide immediately as he sensed some aerial creatures in his range. They weren’t strong and only seemed to be in the first realm, but... Millions of them were flying over the region. Kayden could feel them feeding on the mana the crystals exuded.
Kayden began to descend quickly and discreetly. Even though they were weak individually, their joint strength was ridiculously high. The further Kayden went down, the more details of the forest he was able to see. And as far as he could see, there was no civilization at all. It was all bush and magical beasts.
Something he noticed was that there were no beasts above the second realm. This made Kayden relax a little. His first action was to find a cave to cultivate quietly and study the techniques. It didn’t take long, and after managing to clear the place of some animals, he returned to studying the Coward’s Escape technique.
During this time, he could see how the passage of day and night down there was similar to where he came from. The crystals darkened and there was a slight blue glow, just simulating dusk.
It took Kayden two full weeks to bring the technique to its best state. Moving underground was a little strange and uncomfortable, but he managed to maintain a good speed. Furthermore, the technique of blinding his opponents was also done successfully. It was similar to the flash he used at the apprentice level, the difference was that this time the element was light.
Once he achieved this, he mustered the courage to come out of his hiding place and look for treasure and beasts to face. This proved difficult. Kayden traveled several tens of kilometers and within a month did not encounter a single considerably strong beast.
He had to be content with facing weaker animals, but only to train his and Han’s spells. Unfortunately, this did not stimulate his sense of life and death and represented a minor gain. Slowly, the days began to pass.
Kayden began to accumulate some things he found, whether natural treasures or spoils from his prey. Fortunately, he always kept some books on different specialties with him. The natural treasures he found were being used by him to improve his alchemy.
The problem was that relying on books was ridiculously difficult and caused him to have dozens of spoiled and destroyed products. Kayden only dedicated one hour of his day to this project. The rest was divided into fighting, cultivating, and learning the techniques from Han’s book.
Other than that, his main objective at the moment was to learn the technique that would increase his life expectancy. Kayden didn’t find it too difficult considering his experience moving things that shouldn’t be touched.
His routine has also changed slightly. As he had a lot of time, Kayden began to eat meals more frequently to keep his body nourished, and the meat he ate was only from animals from the second kingdom. This would increase its strength slightly after a few years or decades.
A few weeks later, Kayden finally encountered the first beast in the third realm. He had to travel a lot to make it. As soon as his spiritual sense hit the animal, he recognized it as a huge dog. Kayden wasn’t an idiot and just kept his distance and ran away.
He was not yet ready for a confrontation on this scale. He would need to reach the peak of the second realm to have a real chance of leapfrogging an entire realm. Furthermore, he was far from being able to advance.
His goal was to advance only when he reached the perfect maximization of the first level. Even with the treasures he had in his possession, it should take at least two years per level. But he wouldn’t spend any treasures and would save them for when he hit a wall in cultivation.
Meanwhile, he would use the natural treasures he managed to plunder from the abyss, and there were many. Kayden has found world trees several times with seeds in the second realm and even more fruits and things in that realm. He harvested several but kept some so as not to break the balance of the system. Like it or not, he would spend several years here.
It took two months for him to learn the health increase technique. It was a ridiculously complicated process. Kayden thought it would be simple, but he was completely wrong in his thoughts. The infinite life technique took time, as it needed to be a change to the entire body.
As soon as he finished learning it, he felt as if he was overflowing with vitality and energy. Besides, your skin has lost any marks of wrinkles, stretch marks, or moles. Any type of tissue damage was undone.