"What would the message be?" Kayden laughed like a madman.
"You." Kayden severed the demigod’s two arms in the blink of an eye. The mage barely managed to raise a barrier before being sliced apart. As the arms were cut off and completely evaporated, Kayden vanished.
The demigod spent long minutes screaming in agony. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt such excruciating pain, nor the last time he had been utterly destroyed in a battle—both physically and mentally. He couldn’t even comprehend what had happened. The message Kayden wanted to send was glaringly obvious.
The demigod himself was the message. Kayden had returned to the universe, and the best way to communicate that was by showing he wasn’t someone weak who could be intimidated. The demigod’s arms would never heal—not in his lifetime—because Kayden had cut directly through his soul alongside the physical limbs. This made recovery impossible through conventional means. Only an absolute peak-tier healer could possibly restore them.
The message was crystal clear: someone capable of wounding a demigod at that level wasn’t just anyone. Within days, Kayden’s name was on the lips of every being across the universe. The demigod sought help from everyone he knew to heal him, even consulting his enemies in exchange for substantial offers. Yet, despite his efforts, he couldn’t restore his arms. Another problem lingered: constant, unrelenting pain.
"Who is he?" Atlas stood before an old man holding a wooden staff with a mystical appearance. This seemingly harmless elder was, in fact, one of the strongest demigods to ever exist. Not only that, but he was also among the oldest. Atlas knew he had no chance of defeating him in battle and was fully aware of this fact. Fortunately, he was still within the peace period granted by the heavens as a reward for his last fight.
"He is known as Kayden Heart, one of the oldest mages in our universe and one of the most insane we’ve ever seen. We don’t know the limits of his strength, nor do we fully understand his true abilities." Atlas spoke with complete honesty. The elder didn’t seem to harbor any malicious intentions toward them.
"Between the two of you, who is stronger?" Atlas’s pride took a hit, but he knew lying now would squander one of the best opportunities to forge new connections in his life.
"In our last fight, I couldn’t even touch his robes, and he wasn’t even trying." Atlas felt a bitter taste in his mouth as he uttered those words. The old man raised an eyebrow.
"What is your relationship with him? Could you arrange for me to meet him?" The elder was deeply intrigued by Kayden’s peculiar powers. As one of the wisest and most ancient beings, he was a researcher by nature.
"He’s my former master. We don’t have a friendly relationship at this point." A faint tone of hatred could be heard in Atlas’s voice.
"What else can you tell me? How dangerous is he?" The old man’s question wasn’t limited to raw strength but extended to other types of threats.
"I think he’s the most power-obsessed person to have ever existed." The elder smiled, his ego swelling. He had pursued strength for billions of years with little success and doubted that Kayden could be more determined than him.
"I doubt that, boy." Atlas looked at the elder with a sly smile and shared one of the universe’s most infamous atrocities.
"Kayden planned to kill his soulmate while living with her for millions of years. He took her life as if it meant nothing." The elder’s smile vanished. This was too much, something he could never imagine doing, even in his wildest dreams. It wasn’t something any being should be capable of. "He can alter souls as easily as someone changes clothes. He spent billions of years in the same realm and the same location in space, simply cultivating. He has no emotional attachments to anything or anyone. His path is an enigma, but it seems to be an elevated version of the monarchs’ path, on a level far superior to anything we’ve ever seen. He could convert reality itself into mana on a scale of hundreds of millions of kilometers; today, that scale must be in the billions."
The more Atlas spoke, the more the elder grasped the weight of a ten-ray mage’s power. Despite being a demigod himself, he wasn’t a ten-ray mage. His strength was incredibly high, but it was consistent with his rank and his lifespan. In contrast, Kayden and Atlas were mere mages without any of those advantages.
Atlas continued divulging everything he knew about Kayden. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much. Kayden was a true mystery—his origins unknown, his strength immeasurable, and his goals a complete enigma.
"Thank you for this information, Mage Atlas. My name is Netero Hayashida. Consider us indebted to one another." With that brief introduction, the elder vanished, leaving Atlas deep in thought.
The boy felt even more determined to train and surpass Kayden. To this day, he still hasn’t resolved the issue from their last fight. He understood that the problem lay in Kayden’s soul manipulation technique, but he could not fix it for now.
Kayden was merely traveling through the void and reality, searching for something to aid his progress. Throughout this time, he never stopped cultivating. Doing both simultaneously had become second nature to him. Dividing his consciousness into multiple parts, each performing a different task, didn’t strain his mind in the slightest.
The conclusion he eventually reached was that he would have to venture into another universe. Unfortunately, such opportunities were exceedingly rare. There was simply nothing left in his current realm of strength—no treasures to pursue, no events significant enough to capture his attention.
"Hello, Kayden." A voice echoed from a distance, emanating from a peculiar talking stone.
"Hello, Thoth. How are you?"
"How did you recognize me?" Thoth was astonished. Kayden’s growth rate was utterly insane. With every encounter, the boy’s strength had increased terrifyingly. It was amusing, considering Thoth had never picked Kayden as his first choice.