It didn’t take long for both sides to destroy every planet in their path. Practically everything was annihilated in this battle of giants. Most of the geniuses had already perished, and in the end, everything was decided by a move orchestrated from within one of the sides. It was an extremely well-thought-out strategy that took about 900 years to come to fruition.
"Congratulations to all involved in this legendary battle," the voice echoed, waking many mages who had fallen asleep during the event. "Now we shall begin the true battle of geniuses. Everyone may enter, whether they represent a god or not."
This last statement took many mages by surprise, but they quickly realized it was just a polite formality from the organizers. There was simply no way for a mage to reach this level without being supported by a god—it was too absurd an idea to even consider.
"Only the top 100 will be visible to all. Until then, we will conduct thousands of individual battles until these 100 are declared." As the voice spoke, figures fighting appeared in the arena. Beings spanning tens of thousands of light-years simulated battles while the voice continued, "The gods will defy natural laws and conduct tens of millions of battles in this short period of time."
"How strong are you right now, Master?" Sombra asked Kayden, genuine curiosity in his voice. All of Kayden’s other vassals sharpened their senses to hear the response. This was an enigma none of them knew the answer to.
"I don’t know," Kayden replied as honestly as possible. They had no time to continue this conversation, as Hypnos summoned Kayden. The boy concealed all his monsters within his soul—he had created something truly insane during this period.
"Thoth and I left you free for a period of over ten trillion years. We only gave some guidance but silenced our senses to see how far you could go alone. I hope that time was useful to you." Hypnos purred his words, scratching himself with curiosity, eager to pry into Kayden’s strength. But this time, he resisted the urge completely.
"I think I reached something beyond what I expected," Kayden smiled and looked at his hands. "Come." He absorbed tens of thousands of monsters into his soul.
Considering the entire universe’s size… Kayden still possessed more monsters than the universe had ever been able to create. It was something utterly terrifying. Kayden alone carried a universe’s worth of high-level mages—something that defied all logic.
A universe could generate a few thousand, maybe tens of thousands, of tenth-realm mages or semi-divine level mages, with only a few hundred reaching the tenth-realm semi-divine level. But Kayden alone had tens of thousands of mages at that level of power.
It was completely insane, but at the same time, it meant almost nothing. He could dominate entire universes with this power—provided there were no mages in the superior tiers like Atlas. In that case, this army would be utterly useless. Atlas could easily crush hundreds of thousands or even millions of mages at that level.
"I don’t want to be presented. Leave me out of it," Kayden stated as soon as he sensed this was going to be a grand spectacle. His patron simply nodded and fulfilled his wish without question.
After hearing a million random names, Kayden was placed inside the arena for some reason he could not understand. His power was far beyond this average level, yet he was introduced into this grand battle. It didn’t take long for Kayden to remain still and simply wait. He chose to live completely normally, avoiding any unnecessary attention.
"Why is Kayden in there?" Thoth was the only god and mage able to recognize the boy. His words were spoken only to himself, a genuine question in trillions of years. It was incredibly rare for Thoth to have doubts about anything—he couldn’t even remember the last time he had been wrong…
Kayden—he had actually made a mistake when he chose Licht over Kayden long ago. That was the amusing part of all this. Once again, he found himself in a dilemma because of Kayden. His greatest desire was to tap into higher powers and understand what was happening, but he had made a vow with Hypnos not to interfere in any way, not even with information.
Kayden understood perfectly that this was some kind of mistake in the event’s organization, so he decided to simply remove himself from the battle and hide from everyone’s senses. Given his strength compared to the other mages here, it wasn’t a difficult task. He watched from afar as everything unfolded.
The boy was that one mage who always survived every battle yet remained irrelevant in all of them. Kayden was simply an invisible participant with no major significance. For this reason, no mage even thought to question his identity. In the end, he still ended up on the winning side—purely by a stroke of fate.
When Kayden heard the voice’s announcement, he realized he would have to fight in a large number of battles. He was no longer among the top 100 just by existing and breathing. Kayden would have to earn his place—not that it was a difficult task for him.
Kayden didn’t even participate in his battles. He simply let Sombra and his other monsters fight the mages while he cultivated, unconcerned with the world. It was amusing that his summons faced hundreds of mages and were never even killed. Their power was on a completely different level from what these mages could handle.
At least, that was the case in the beginning. Toward the end, Kayden had to release Sombra along with other mages to fight the final opponents. These were mages who had reached the tenth-realm semi-divine level. They were no ordinary beings; they were insane, unique mages. But even they could not withstand the great mana devourers.
Author’s note: sorry for the delay, I’ll try to recover the chapters I didn’t post little by little. Your adventure continues at FreeNovelHub