This time, what seemed to be passing through his body was not liquid mana, but solid mana. It was an indescribable feeling, it felt like he was walking through a wall with his body, but at the same time, there was nothing.
His curiosity was immense, but his will to live was much greater. If he had succumbed to curiosity, he would have seen one of the most incredible scenes that few mortals would be able to witness in their entire lives.
His hypothesis that mana was not the answer and only one path would be confirmed, as Merlin was manipulating tens of thousands of kilometers of mana like it was nothing. If this were put into an aura-cutting spell, for example, Kayden could make it travel across the entire solar system. But that was exactly the point: sis shouldn’t be able to do it alone.
It only took Merlin a few seconds to manipulate the immense amount of mana needed. The black hole began to turn white and slowly its tone changed from black to white.
"You can go back to normal now," said the god, and everyone opened their eyes and saw the black and white ball floating in space. Her pulsars ceased to exist, and she was just floating.
"In a few minutes, you will be able to enter. First, I will make a copy of all your current memories, as being isolated for so long can change your personality and cause disconnection with your current family members. When you leave the time room, you will review these memories and they will be placed first in your chronological order." Merlin tossed a small clock to each person.
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"Put it on for a few seconds." Kayden did as the old man asked and felt his mind go blank. When he regained consciousness, he no longer had the watch on his wrist.
"Remember to focus your time on advancing the realm first, otherwise you will die when you leave. In five minutes, you will be automatically teleported to the room." With that, Merlin fell silent as he waited.
The atmosphere was a mixture of fear and anxiety: fear of not being able to reach the peak of his kingdom and anxiety about the opportunity to advance so much in such a short time.
"Good luck, I’ll miss you every day that passes." Kayden took Triz’s hands and squeezed. Even though he was the weakest in the situation, his calmness and words calmed the woman down a little. She didn’t have time to respond, as Kayden timed the exact time they would be teleported.
Kayden found himself in a white space without any depth. He walked a few meters and found himself in the same place. It was exactly as they had told him, the mana around him did not exist and his spiritual sense was also null in this place.
Every time he tried to use mana, it came to him, no matter how much he drew, the mana came. The mystery was that he couldn’t feel where it was coming from.
"First, we will reach the peak." Kayden sat on the floor, ready to spend decades in that position if necessary.
****************
"That was quick." It took Kayden three years to reach the peak of the sixth level and maximize it. The process could have been faster, but he decided to do the perfect maximize and look for all the errors he could find.
At this moment, he was going through the process of changing the density of the mana within his body. Very similar to the other times, he had an easy time reaching five-folds, only the sixth was difficult on his body.
The seventh fold exploded several veins in his body and broke some bones because of the pressure, but only when he tried eightfolds did it become a life-and-death situation.
"That was crazy," Kayden commented as he saw one of his arms explode into pieces from the mana pressure. Even his ridiculously strong body wasn’t able to handle it, but he wasted no time and continued the process.
Eightfold was an impossible dream, but eightfold was entirely possible. The more he forced the folds, the closer he felt to dying. After his arm, one of his legs also exploded.
The situation seemed grim to Kayden, but he didn’t even have a worry line on his forehead. The minutes continued to pass. Saying minutes was a strange word.
Kayden had already lost track of time. Minutes and seconds seemed unrealistic to him, the years he spent here were just an estimate on his part, it could be months or decades and he would have no idea.
After a few minutes, he managed to stabilize eight folds. The only problem was that he lost a lot in this situation, his two arms and his two legs were no longer there. He was currently on the ground bathed in his blood and flesh.
A macabre situation that would make anyone automatically get up to clean themselves or try to heal, but Kayden just plugged the bleeding and started cultivating again. He didn’t want to waste even a second of his time.
"You’ve already lost everything, why don’t you kill yourself?"
"There’s no way out of here, just end your life."
A few voices appeared in his mind, but Kayden didn’t even hear what they were saying, they just sounded like whispers trying to reach him. The situation, coupled with the voices, would have destabilized many people, but Kayden didn’t care.
The parts of his body, at that moment, were not important. Kayden took this so literally that it wasn’t until six years later that he began to heal his body. Only when he reached the peak of the third realm and had nothing left to improve did he turn to healing.
The healing process was slow and would probably take a few years, but he didn’t care. At that moment, Kayden began to think about the concepts of the third realm that he would learn. Much like the second realm, he just started looking for any concept he could learn.
As they were all concepts more focused on your path, some of them complemented each other and facilitated understanding. The third realm was a place where he would just try to maintain the quality grade of advancement, it was not time to reinvent the wheel.
Any concept that had to do with your path was learned. Something he also did was try to learn as much as possible about each concept. After Triz’s talk, he understood something fundamental: every concept he learned was now considered strong.
This increase in quality came at a price, and Kayden needed to learn the concept and still spend a lot of time on it. Each concept took a year to learn with third-realm depth and another six months to elevate to high quality.
It would probably take a lot less time if Kayden had the information and resources to utilize, but nothing was allowed in this room other than his body. In the end, it wouldn’t make that big of a difference either.
A few decades later, Kayden began to accumulate a large number of concepts. He could advance at any time, but to maintain seven lightning bolts was still not enough; it would need a lot more stacked concepts.
"Would that be the way to go? Piling thousands of concepts together?" Kayden had been repeating this question to himself for a few decades. No matter how strong he got, no matter how much he grew, his instinct seemed to tell him something was wrong.
"What’s the point of just piling on concepts?" Kayden struggled with this every day. Only after decades of piling concepts into the third realm did he come up with an answer.
"My way is the way, concepts are not the way." It took Kayden ages to understand this. Concepts would make him strong and superior to everyone, but only his path would make him superior to everything.
This small paradigm shift caused Kayden to completely abandon learning new concepts. Right now, he was doing something a little different: his path was his priority. He turned to ancient concepts that suited his path perfectly. Having learned so many, he still had a few dozen perfectly aligned with his trajectory. Kayden decided to spend time bringing them all up to a high level of quality.
This was a last-minute gamble. Kayden could be doing the right thing or just wasting time. If it was the last option, he would not be able to maintain the seven rays, but, if he was right, he would maintain the seven rays and open doors to a much greater level of strength.
The decades slowly began to pass. Kayden’s strength hung in the balance as he pushed useless concepts out of his way and improved the ones he already had. There were years and years without any improvement, just a strange balance of strength gain, and loss.
"Dumb," Kayden mentally cursed himself every day. He traded one of his biggest pillars just to gain strength. Probably, on this path, he would be stuck in some realm without any chance of moving up.
There was no point in increasing their concepts indiscriminately. Its greatest pillar was the absolute mastery of something. There was no master of all things; there could be good people in different areas, but a master? No, that didn’t exist.