Each second of his journey was marked by learning, Kayden barely flew a few kilometers and everything seemed to change, the laws organized themselves differently, yet they were always free. During this time, he saw some insane humans, some beings of other races that defied comprehension.
Kayden saw mortal mages who even managed to send a small chill down his spine, geniuses in their areas, but... all of them were brutally crushed by him. There was no mercy on his part, Kayden attacked them with full force after a friendly warning.
This warning was only so that he would not face incapable mages or those caught by surprise, but in the end the result was the same, Kayden completely destroyed them. He crushed any small resistance on their part with a single move, the best of them managing to survive two or three attacks, but not much more than that.
The closer he got to the imperial city, the stronger the mages and groups he encountered became. Dozens of cities appeared along his path, all filled with insane mages. Everyone here was ridiculously strong, but it was strange that there were simply no newborns anywhere.
Kayden saw no children or babies anywhere, it seemed that the birth of life was incompatible with this environment, the laws would simply suffocate any attempt for it to happen. This made some areas of this world rather dark.
Many mages came in seeking opportunities to grow in life, but almost all of them got stuck at the mortal peak, never managing to advance. Becoming a god inside here was far more difficult than becoming a god outside, in truth it was an utterly insane comparison of difficulty. Updates are released by 𝗇𝗈𝗏𝖾𝗅✦𝖿𝗂𝗋𝖾✦𝗇𝖾𝗍
This caused a good portion of people to remain trapped in a tiny world, where their only amusement was causing wars among themselves. There was simply nothing else in this small world; any mage could cross it in a few millennia.
The mages were literally doomed to be trapped without any hope of leaving, and so their only amusement became killing each other while they waited for the new generations to arrive in this world, something that happened every few days.
"Kayden Heart," Kayden heard a voice as soon as he got minimally close to the city. It belonged to a man with a peculiar appearance.
The emperor was a colossus of black flesh stitched together by living runes that writhed upon his skin. His eyes were bottomless craters, from which a suffocating red glow leaked. Upon his head, broken horns supported chains that echoed like laments.
"Emperor Valerian, I presume?" Kayden was not certain, but by the man’s strength before him, without a doubt, he was.
"You really did your studying," the emperor’s voice came out a little drawn out, as if he was speaking directly to Kayden’s soul. It was truly peculiar.
"Yes, I studied a little," Kayden smiled. "I’m going to attack you now, but you must have already realized that." Kayden did not wait for any word and began unleashing his rays moved by karmic laws.
Each ray was of meaningless strength, the absolute peak of power that Kayden had built throughout his life. Each of them made him feel his soul tremble, his mind grew heavier by the simple effort of conjuring a piece smaller than a trillionth of karmic law.
Kayden could not say at what true level of power this law really stood nor how strong he could become with it, but probably this would be the difference between becoming a god with the potential of a fourth-level mage and a god with the potential of a fifth-level mage or higher.
The emperor was already expecting this, his black blood boiled with excitement just like Kayden’s. It had been a long time since he had faced a mage of this caliber. This world lacked true opponents, in the end only a few, all already known, had this level of strength.
Kayden’s karmic rays tore through space while the emperor responded with living chains that crushed mountains, each impact made the world tremble as if it were far too fragile to withstand them. The runes stitched into Valerian’s body burned in fury, releasing creatures made of black blood that roared in his defense. Kayden advanced like a collapsing sun, each step bringing the sensation that reality itself would be consumed just to sustain his battle.
The two were fighting at their maximum strength, there was no holding back between them. Each clash of their attacks was insane, they could easily dominate a god at the absolute peak of the second level without any difficulty. The city below them would have been obliterated by the shockwaves if not for the continuous effort of some mages sustaining it.
The emperor’s chains were molded by living laws, rising and defending against Kayden’s attacks as if they were nothing. In truth, not as if they were nothing—each ray caused small cracks to appear, and little by little they began to break.
Meanwhile, he continued exhaling dozens of creatures of blood against Kayden. Each ray was able to kill thousands of them, yet they did not stop coming. It simply seemed like an infinite sea of creatures, each carrying some insane laws of death. Kayden could feel that any one of them reaching his body would probably make him explode completely.
It would be a completely pathetic death considering his entire life’s journey, but probably death was like that—there was no glory in a dead man, he just died. Kayden attacked without any hesitation, for each creature there were at least twice as many rays. His ease in conjuring them was truly frightening.
The shockwaves between the two caught the attention of most mages in this world, easily reaching trillions of kilometers. Not only that, they practically destroyed every city within this empire. It was a force far beyond what common mortals could withstand.
Only the high-level geniuses truly survived, the rest were all killed without even managing to resist. Just the shockwave alone was enough to do that. It had been a long time since Kayden faced someone in his same realm and with similar strength. The last time was before he ascended to a Monarch of Monarchs.