His control of divine mana was at the highest possible level of the fifth realm, but he had reached an invisible wall where his realm limited his manipulation. It was the second time he had faced this barrier in his life. He knew exactly what it was because when he was in the fourth realm he suffered the same limitation. While it was possible to break this wall, it would require many millennia of absolute focus, time he did not currently have.
His spiritual sense grew to the 2,000-kilometer mark, a surreal value, greater than that of many mages of the sixth realm. His path and divine mana were able to do this. For every day Kayden spent utilizing divine mana, he was impressed. Divine mana opened doors automatically; Wrong spells could be fixed just by using a little divine mana, it increased the strength of attacks or defenses to another level.
Kayden came to a bizarre conclusion about divine mana, something Julian called him crazy about and that was a ridiculous overcontrol problem: divine mana was great, but... a crutch. She was capable of fixing many mistakes and opening many paths impossible without her, but that was exactly the problem: you became a hostage to divine mana, and she began to perform functions that you didn’t even know about.
"How could you be a master of something if you didn’t have a full understanding of all the factors?" he thought.
Follow current novℯls on ƒгeewёbnovel.com.
Therefore, Kayden destroyed every single thing he didn’t understand in his spells and their base that was created by divine mana. Half the time he advanced his strength, and the other half he had to study what he improved and how he improved. That’s why Kayden took a long time all these years. At this moment, he was just waiting for the universal challenge.
"Why won’t you join?" Kayden asked Julian.
"My time has passed," Julian replied, well in his current situation, without any ambition, something Kayden couldn’t even understand.
The two were sitting under a giant tree, drinking some special tea made from centuries-old herbs. Every day, the challenge got closer, but Kayden didn’t understand why it happened in such a scattered period.
"It’s time," Julian commented.
Kayden couldn’t feel anything, at least for the first few minutes, but then something changed in the entire environment. The amount of divine mana changed slightly, but what changed was its quality; it was much more dense and complex, Kayden couldn’t manipulate it or even understand what its difference was.
"Who dares to prove himself to the heavens?" It wasn’t a voice or even words, it was like a meaning placed in the mind of every person on this planet and the entire universe. Kayden only had to express any positive wish and found himself somewhere else.
His new environment was an immense plain with golden grass that extended to a range greater than his spiritual sense. There were no other living beings or life in the environment, Kayden was impressed. Everything was too real to be some kind of illusion, which meant that every person had such an environment at their disposal or that it was an illusion so advanced that it fooled all of Kayden’s senses, both physical and spiritual. Both options were scary.
The density of divine mana and normal mana in this place was nil; Kayden could not feel any presence of mana, a situation he had never experienced in his more than 10 millennia of life.
"A soul without any fear, this is very rare, signs of serious problems in their personality," the same voice from the beginning said these words, and then Kayden was left alone in silence.
Kayden was just enjoying the atmosphere without knowing what to do. It was very strange to have only his body’s mana across thousands of kilometers. This feeling reminded him of when he was trapped in a hospital bed.
He found himself thinking about the lack of fear the voice attributed to him. Many centuries ago, his fear could have been mediocrity or dying like anyone else, but slowly the years of isolation took that fear away from him, as he truly put it into his bones to have no competition.
"The pressure is going to start," as soon as the voice finished, Kayden felt like he was in hell. Thousands of mouths and fingers began to pass over his body and an unimaginable weight began to climb onto his back.
The grass began to disappear, and his vision, as everything was burned to a ground littered with bones, appeared. In just a few seconds, Kayden saw all the thousands of kilometers turned into a huge plain of bones.
Kayden felt the muscles in his body being slowly devoured along with other parts of his body, but everything was being done slowly, at a snail’s pace. No matter how much he tried to move, nothing changed.
With each second, the pressure grew greater. Kayden found himself lying down and being swallowed by the bones. In just a few seconds, he no longer had access to sunlight in his body and his spiritual sense was destroyed.
For the first time in millennia, Kayden felt completely isolated from the world around him. He was completely blind, a unique sensation. Anyone would be feeling immense anxiety and negative emotions, but Kayden was just enjoying this rare opportunity to feel like a mere mortal again.
His body was sinking more and more and the weight was increasing. His entire skin was eaten by small teeth, an unbearable pain, being torn apart piece by piece. Still, Kayden was using this moment to reflect on what he was going through.
After a few minutes, Kayden grew tired of the painful sensations in his body. It was just physical pain without any purpose, logically painful, but that’s it. There was no magic behind this pain. At that moment, Kayden turned off any sensation from his mind and focused only on the pressure. It was quite different from anything he had ever seen in his life; It made any movement impossible and...
His thoughts were somehow weighing on his mind as if he were under the influence of a drug where it was difficult to articulate long and complex thoughts, but he was very weak. Therefore, he was able to continue studying this pressure and his body. Emotions like loneliness and sadness assaulted Kayden’s mind uncontrollably. For the first time in millennia, Kayden recognized the weight of not having even a helping hand within reach; not even the worst of the worst friends were available to him.
Kayden had no one.
The sadness of living a lifetime searching for something that wouldn’t make any difference in the end assaulted him. What purpose did all this searching have? What was the point of reaching the level of a god? In the end, everyone would die the same way. Unlike any normal person, Kayden embraced these feelings, accepted them as his own, and put them front and center in his mind. Was your search futile? Was power the end? Or was he the way? All these doubts appeared in his mind.
What was the point of being the most powerful man alive? Being able to shape reality and time to your own will without any consequences? All of this would drive a weak man to seek simple pleasures, but Kayden wouldn’t settle for that. So what would he look for? Escaping mediocrity was the answer Kayden had always given himself for years, but as the millennia passed, he felt less and less attached to that idea. Mediocrity did not exist.
All these things were the fruits of his head and his mentality. Mediocrity required that he have competitors or people to compare himself to and inspire, but the time in isolation showed him something else: the true meaning of facing only oneself. Kayden just had to be better than himself. It didn’t matter if he died right now; he had overcome mediocrity by trying to be better than the day before.
In the end, Kayden found the answer he was looking for, which forced him to cultivate day after day without any hesitation. It was something that moved many and at the same time no one. It wasn’t the power, it wasn’t the journey, it wasn’t the treasures. In truth...
It was nothing. Kayden didn’t have any goal or motivation for what he did. This was his life. His life was based on cultivating; there was no correct answer and it didn’t even matter. Kayden didn’t seek answers, he just cultivated them.
"Congratulations, Kayden Heart. Your principles are nebulous and don’t even exist solidly, but you’re right about them. What you just experienced is called ’The Questions of Destiny’," the mystical voice appeared to Kayden again.
In the blink of an eye, he found himself floating in the same place as before, but this time some golden trees looked like they were carved by hand. Their trunks were perfect, without any signs of wear. Its leaves seemed softer than velvet and perfectly innervated.