"Kayden Heart is annihilating galaxies to train his spells," the messenger repeated with a bitter taste in his mouth. It seemed so absurd that he wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen this information being passed on to all the major organizations in the universe. "He’s destroying about a few dozen galaxies per day."
Terrifying. Kayden was killing several decillions of beings daily. In reality, the number was infinitely greater when considering all the variables and the different sizes of galaxies. This was the greatest genocide ever committed by a mage in history. Most of the time, the heavens would strike against any god committing such a massacre.
A god, indeed. The heavens would only attack gods who caused this level of slaughter because, hypothetically, no mortal should be capable of such a feat. This immunity to divine karma effectively made Kayden untouchable—his actions had absolutely no consequences.
Thousands of immensely powerful families began mobilizing to stop Kayden from continuing this madness, especially considering the impact this would have on the trade across zones. Whether they liked it or not, Kayden was wiping out entire galaxies—a completely astronomical scale.
As years passed, more and more mages joined the reckless campaign to confront Kayden. Power was something that instilled fear, and when rational beings became afraid, they lost most of their rationality. High numbers also gave courage to fools. This campaign managed to gather tens of millions of mages within a few decades.
But it wasn’t just about millions of mages—it was tens of millions of peak-level mages. These were ninth-realm mages with eight rays, and a few even with nine rays. Logically, the latter group was an absolute minority among the total, but their numbers were still significant—practically the concentration of an entire zone.
The campaign gathered at least ten full zones. This was monumental—an organization on this scale had never been seen before in the universe. Unfortunately, Kayden struck at the insecurities of both the weak and the strong. Moreover, he disrupted the wealth of countless individuals.
An ancient saying from Earth stated that a man would more easily forget the loss of a loved one than the loss of his wealth. This was one of the greatest truths ever spoken. A man’s riches were more important to him than a father’s love. Time had proven this in countless ways, and now again, in this campaign against Kayden.
On a random day, the mages finally managed to assemble semi-gods and a few tenth-realm Frost mages. It had been necessary to make outrageous promises to lure those fools… and all who accepted were individuals who had no direct contact with Kayden. On the day of his ascension, they had been occupied with personal matters.
Kayden was merely floating through the void, destroying galaxies without pause. He didn’t care where he was headed, instead relying on sensing variations in the law of balance. Using this, he could study the best paths and points to follow.
"What do you want?" Kayden asked, standing before millions of mages, including several at the semi-god level.
"Today marks the end of your slaughter, Kayden Heart. We know you’re strong, but we’ve gathered the absolute elite from various zones. Your actions do not align with the order of this universe," one mage raised his voice, prompting Kayden to laugh at the situation.
He didn’t even bother responding. Instead, he conjured a lightning bolt with only a few dozen conversions. In the blink of an eye, he summoned thousands of bolts of this magnitude. He didn’t wait for another response before obliterating the majority of them in a single move.
The only survivors were the semi-gods, though even they suffered medium to severe injuries. It didn’t take much for them to realize the disastrous mistake they had made. Most tried to flee immediately. Unfortunately for them, Kayden was far beyond their strength. In another instant, a single bolt eliminated each one of them.
In a single event, at least six semi-gods and eight tenth-realm mages perished. This represented nearly 10% of the entire high-level magical community across both sides of the universe. They died fighting a battle that wasn’t even theirs, over resources that were far from extraordinary.
Once again, Kayden’s name reverberated throughout the universe. This time, no one dared to pursue him. Not even the most reckless of the reckless could oppose someone capable of such feats. In the end, everyone had no choice but to accept that their lives could be snuffed out at random.
Millions of years passed with Kayden destroying an increasing number of galaxies daily. Fortunately, the universe was vast enough that this didn’t even make a dent in the grand scheme of things. Even if Kayden managed to destroy thousands of galaxies each day, he wouldn’t be able to alter the fundamental laws of balance.
During this time, he deciphered what Yan had done to manipulate time. It had been a masterful play, leveraging an excess of mana drawn from the universal laws of balance. The matter was far more complex than that, but the foundation was precisely this.
The great war continued its course as usual, with mages rising and falling. The number of semi-gods grew steadily during this period, while Frost mages maintained a state of equilibrium. Tenth-realm mages were infinitely rarer than semi-gods. Any nine-ray mage could potentially become a semi-god, but not all nine-ray mages could ascend to the tenth realm. The two were entirely different tiers.
Atlas continued to grow exponentially. He had reached the top five of his universe without significant difficulty. While there were mages stronger than him, none had greater potential. It was only a matter of time before he surpassed them all—something he was already doing gradually. Kayden’s display of power had placed Atlas into a state of frenzy for the pursuit of unmatched strength.
No one ever took Kayden’s power very seriously, even Atlas had this thought, even knowing that he had lost to Kayden in more than one battle, Atlas still thought that Kayden’s strength was only in the soul part, when he managed to resolve this defect in his technique he would be able to defeat Kayden, but after Kayden’s ascension presentation, his mind changed completely.
Author’s note: tomorrow or the day after I’ll release the chapters to make up for yesterday’s