"Pay your part of the deal now," Kayden did not wait for Han to recover from the verbal strike. Han didn’t answer immediately — in fact, he didn’t answer at all. It was Achilles who spoke.
"Most of the gods are at the edges of this world training unique individuals," Achilles began to explain, "but I advise you to be careful, Kayden. Most of them are insane mages with insane organizations backing them."
Achilles gave a few additional instructions, pointing out which people Kayden could go after and which ones he specifically asked him not to mess with. It was quite a long list for such a small planet. Kayden immediately began making plans on where to go — he could make insane leaps in his power if he managed to do this.
"I suppose we say our goodbyes here," Kayden stepped into a flow of space and vanished right before the three standing in front of him. None of them were able to comprehend how or where Kayden had gone.
"He really is different," Achilles commented as dozens of thoughts ran through his mind, while the other two gods were still trying to understand how Kayden had done that.
He had disappeared from their sight without them being able to move a single finger. They were gods, peak third-level gods, and they hadn’t been able to do a thing. They hadn’t felt mana flow, law flow, energy flow — absolutely nothing. Kayden had simply vanished without any explanation.
"What do you think?" Achilles resumed the conversation after a few minutes. In the end, this had been their purpose from the start — to make a rather complicated decision.
"I don’t know," Han was the first to respond. "He doesn’t seem strong enough to survive the Chaos Monarch. The power gap is just too great, but..." Han didn’t need to finish the sentence, as Atlas did it for him. Thɪs chapter is updatᴇd by 𝕟𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕝·𝘧𝙞𝙧𝙚·𝔫𝔢𝔱
"He is Kayden Heart," Atlas replied while drifting into thought. "If we give him time to grow, we might end up with an unpleasant surprise — but I don’t think he’s capable of facing the Chaos Monarch."
"The Chaos Monarch frightens me," Achilles admitted. "His strength and talent are far too terrifying — he was born to become a Divine King. As for Kayden..." He paused, thinking about how to phrase it. "He simply gives me a feeling of the unknown. I can’t form any opinion about him. He is not that strong — but he could be. He is not that talented — but perhaps he is."
Kayden was a mystery — someone who had appeared out of nowhere and achieved everything. Achilles was not from that universe and knew the chances of a mage like Kayden emerging. His strength and talent could have been seen before — but not in some random, dying-world universe. A genius like him was supposed to be born within great organizations.
"I vote that we just keep our distance from him," Achilles made his decision after hours of thought.
"I vote that we take his life right now," Atlas made his decision as well. Now only Han was left, and it took him days to make up his mind.
"I vote that we also keep our distance from him," Han finally decided after weighing every possible point.
Kayden once again used his technique of following the spatial flow and ended up in a completely random point of the planet, one of the farthest edges from where he had been before. His mission now was to find one of the gods present in this place.
Time passed slowly as he kept studying and searching for gods. It was not easy — these gods were terribly well-hidden somewhere on the planet. Kayden passed through dozens of cities and hundreds of thousands of laws. Everything was a learning experience, but the amount of information was too small — especially considering that the border cities were the weakest ones.
There were two reasons for this. The first was that there was a certain law and a certain barrier at the world’s edge. Kayden had not been able to sense it with his spiritual perception, which is why it took him a long time to even think of going there. Using his sixth sense, he only saw a kind of stone wall — but...
Space was completely shattered, as if it were a mirror broken into shards suspended in the void, and from it cracks emerged, releasing colossal lightning bolts in every direction. Each electrical explosion tore reality even further, carrying enough force to annihilate second-level gods as if they were nothing — turning the barrier into a living, merciless abyss where existence was reduced to dust at the mere glimpse of a flash.
The power of this barrier was utterly terrifying. This prevented mortals from building cities too close to the edge — many times, uncontrolled lightning storms would break loose and destroy trillions of kilometers around. Most living beings were simply incapable of ever reaching the level of strength necessary to resist it.
The second reason was the nature of the laws in this environment. They were even more fluid — practically liquid. There was no way for common mages to learn them. Only absolute geniuses could grasp anything from them, and even then, only if high-level gods were protecting them from the lightning.
This combination of factors meant that the edge of this world had almost no living beings — no cities, nothing even remotely close to civilization. At most, there were a few small clusters of mages running from the leadership and oppression of stronger mages.
"Incredible," Kayden lost himself in the barrier. In the blink of an eye, he spent years observing it. Every minute made his mind explode with new ideas, with laws he had never even heard of in his entire life, with applications of them he had never seen.
In a single instant, he was able to witness a physical manifestation of the karmamic law. Although there were many laws, this one was above them — extremely difficult to find, exceedingly rare. But this brief glimpse alone had been enough to grant him vast amounts of knowledge.
"Hey! What are you doing here?" Kayden heard a voice while he was lost in thought. Without his titles on display, he was just a mere mortal. Without even turning around, he could already feel who was speaking to him.
A brilliant mortal with extreme strength — he seemed to be on the level of a first-level god — and at his side was a genuine peak second-level god. It seemed that Kayden’s opportunity had arrived.