Slowly, Locke’s iron heart, preparing to fight, began to melt. The final point was when he looked at Apollo and saw his brother with tears in his eyes.
"Grandpa isn’t to blame, he really couldn’t", his brother’s sentence, without any anger, broke Locke’s last barriers.
"Okay, I...", Locke didn’t know what to say. He didn’t expect something like this. "I can’t stay here long, I have a wife and two daughters to take care of ... but if you want you can visit me."
That day, Azir mourned the loss of a son, but he didn’t care about it. His son had been lost a long time ago. He also cried when he discovered he was a great-grandfather and acknowledged that his grandson had moved on decades ago.
**************
Meanwhile, Kayden was cultivating in his room in a reclusive manner. He hadn’t been out of there for over a year. The last time was to impregnate the next generation, something he was slowly losing motivation for, but discipline kept him on his goals. The cleaning of the weak continued to be done. The generation from the other city at that time was just the best of the best. The rest were killed by Kayden over time.
In the blink of an eye, Kayden was already witnessing the fourth-generation lightning test without any emotion. At that time, the majority got four rays and only a minority had three and five rays. Kayden only collected two people who showed any talent. The rest was left aside as usual. The city had already grown to something around 2 thousand people. It wasn’t much, but considering everyone there was the elite of the elite, it could be considered something incredible.
They had at this time the first third-realm wizards appearing in the city. Logically, they were enslaved by Kayden. Their talent was not very great and they belonged to the first city generation. Felix reached the peak of the third realm and could advance at any time, he was just waiting for the ideal moment, while Milena was at the eighth level. Julian was still only in sixth and didn’t seem to have the talent to go beyond that.
Kayden still managed to balance his battles against Felix within the 50% margin, and that was completely absurd considering all factors. Even after decades, Kayden still hadn’t reached his true limit of strength and it didn’t seem like something he would achieve anytime soon. He had already completely disconnected from all human factors. Through constant brainwashing, he no longer needed to promise to resurrect the dead or anything like that for the population. Milena continued to play the role of ruler.
The surrounding animals and fauna developed at a faster speed than humans, and where there were only five beasts from the third kingdom, it ended up becoming a collection with more than 15 that filled everything. Vegetation developed to support this new quantity of animals in kingdoms higher than normal. The amount of mana also stabilized at twice as much as before.
Kayden’s only problem was that he had no life-and-death struggles currently. This made him appear to be lazy in his combat training. Unfortunately, this was something he had no way of improving. He would have to wait to go to the surface in the future to train, and if he went out with the strength he had now, he would be destroyed by his enemies. He had to reach at least the fourth realm in here to be able to protect himself.
Sighing, Kayden turned his attention to the book he was reading and left everything else aside. Time would just pass anyway. Kayden just had to make the best of it.
"Father!" A knock on the door came a few years after these thoughts and brought Kayden out of his cultivation. As soon as he opened it, he came across Astolfo at the beginning of the third kingdom. He was at that moment the strongest human of all generations.
"In between!" Astolfo entered his father’s room for the first time and found himself in an empty room with Kayden in the center, on several soft-looking rugs. The incredible thing was that the amount of mana here was completely ridiculous and it was visible in the air.
"Say what you need," Kayden got straight to the point.
"I studied enough and put the pieces together. You’re not from that place, are you? We live in a prison, but an incredibly big prison. The examples given in library books are not capable of development here." Astolfo was quiet as he waited for Kayden’s response.
"Yes, this place is an abyss. Everyone is trapped inside. The real world with the strong magicians is all on the surface," Kayden said directly without any fear. In the end, Astolfo was bound by his will.
"Why are you here? Your strength should be enough to reign outside", Astolfo was not surprised by everything Kayden said, as he had already developed this idea over the years.
"I don’t have the strength to be relevant out there. You managed to escape my spell of influence, so I will reward you for your achievement." Astolfo wondered what this influence spell was, something he hoped he didn’t know, for as soon as Kayden started talking, he realized what a lie his life was.
This chapter is updat𝓮d by freēwebnovel.com.
"All these people who live here or have lived here are constantly being influenced by psychological spells on my part so that society develops correctly, my focus this entire time has been to produce someone capable of rivaling my power, every year I impregnate hundreds of women and I choose those with the most potential to cultivate" every word from Kayden made Astolfo look at him as if he was looking at a monster. "you’re the first one who managed to get out of this influence and reason at a minimum" Kayden finished his little speech and watched Astolfo’s reaction with an amused expression.
"How can you do this to all these people? What kind of monster are you?" The last sentence came out of Astolfo unconsciously and he immediately looked up and sighed in relief when he saw that Kayden wasn’t mad.