There were no strikes against Kayden before the tenth ray. The skies turned a light golden hue, and enormous thrones appeared, floating in space. He had already proven himself worthy of the nine rays; each step now was directly against the tenth. There was no chance Kayden would face anything weaker.
The pressure of the thrones was insane. No mage could feel comfortable in the presence of these chairs. All felt like ants. The most astonishing thing was that they could only sense the presence of the chairs; even the strongest gods observing felt like insects. They could not perceive the presence of the entities seated upon the thrones.
An immaterial, translucent, and golden figure appeared on one of the chairs, completely devoid of discernible features. No gender, no race, not even a perceivable aura could be identified. It was as if this being existed beyond any logic or comprehension. Paradoxically, the throne it occupied exuded a presence greater than its own—something beyond the understanding of most present.
The mere lift of the figure’s finger tore through space. Its body was stronger than the very fabric that held space together. As it raised its hand above its head, a lightning bolt was unleashed—a bolt without color or form. All that could be sensed was that it was lightning. It was a law, alive and pulsating. No one understood what the bolt truly was—not a single observing god could fathom it.
This time, Kayden understood far more than before. The bolt obliterated every Law of Balance in its path. It was beyond the law itself—a living, formless law, pure and inexplicable. It did not conform to the Laws of Balance because it transcended the very laws binding it to the world.
Time seemed to freeze as the lightning bolt raced toward Kayden. The surrounding space was shredded as if it were mere paper. The boy smiled once more under the weight of the attack. Any error, and he would die without even a chance to react. Kayden felt a profound longing for this sensation; it had been ages since he last risked his life.
And then, the universe understood why Kayden was a monster.
"Existence is my domain," he declared. For 30 billion kilometers, the universe plunged into absolute chaos. Mana and existence itself ceased to be. This time, unlike before when everything transformed into mana, all truly ceased to exist entirely.
A massive void, 30 billion kilometers in diameter, appeared in the universe, immediately summoning the Fundamental Law of Balance. The lightning bolt hurtling toward Kayden could split the spacetime continuum into an almost infinite number of realities, yet in every single one, Kayden’s actions were the same. Not a single variation occurred.
Just as he had advanced previously, he was doing so now. Kayden was a perfect soul; his movements would remain consistent across all timelines and realities. The perfection of his soul transcended any situation in which he was placed.
The Law of Balance restored everything instantly, only for Kayden to reconvert it all into mana once again. He repeated this at least a thousand times until he reached a point where he could no longer accumulate mana. The universe itself was limiting the amount Kayden could store in his spatial reservoir. That reservoir now held more mana than any mage in this universe could ever comprehend.
Kayden performed this accumulation almost without the passage of time. His basic understanding of the Law of Spacetime, combined with his mastery of a perfect Law of Balance, had turned him into the true monster of this universe. The mana he gathered was entirely transformed into a single bolt of lightning across all timelines. Just as the god moved his finger, Kayden moved his own, tearing through space with the concentrated mana. The sheer amount of mana altered the flow of time itself.
"Holy shit," Yan muttered, stunned by Kayden’s movement. This far exceeded even his wildest dreams. Many gods were seated, paralyzed by shock, as though they were mere mortals. And as for the mortals?
They could not even express fear on their faces. The quantity of mana Kayden wielded was beyond anything they had ever seen. It was so vast that their spiritual senses could only perceive a colossal sphere of energy extending for millions of kilometers around Kayden, as though he were a giant sun.
Kayden moved his finger, and a bolt of lightning erupted. Unlike before, his attack had reached another level, permeated entirely by the Law of Balance, which prevented it from dissipating. The two bolts collided in an insane clash of forces.
The sheer impact of the clash altered the galaxy’s spatial laws. Entire suns combusted and exploded under their weight. Millions of planets were shattered in space with no chance of salvation. Only a few mages at the level of demigods managed to protect most of the living beings in the region, but many still perished.
For hundreds of billions of kilometers, space fractured into countless shards, forming a vast web of cracks. The void and reality began to intertwine through these rifts. Time itself experienced distortions over tens of billions of kilometers. This time, every corner of space was affected. Reality and the void became a single environment, resonating with the force of the attacks.
In every timeline, Kayden faced something different, yet in all of them, he employed the same approach. He was a perfect soul. No matter how many fragments he was divided into, his actions remained identical. His lightning bolt transcended an incomplete law, becoming an attack capable of surpassing ordinary laws.
Slowly Kayden was overcoming the tenth ray in most timelines, the number of lines in which he died was ridiculously low this time, the amount of times he lost was less than 5% this time, in half he was able to fight an honest battle of long hours between the two attacks and triumph beautifully without any great difficulty other than a few near-fatal injuries, in the rest he won overwhelmingly without even suffering a single scratch.
Author’s note: Kayden is going to make a mess of the universe in the near future, suggestions and requests can be made dear readers.