"Are you telling me that my goal is to be able to convert the soul into mana?" Kayden thought about this frightening possibility but was like a frog in a well.
"Not only that, Kayden, but I am giving you a path that has never been done before in all of existence. You must be able to be a soulless existence." The cat said this and purred as if saying the impossible.
"Why?"
"This is one of the thousands of ways that exist for you to reach a completely new level, but there are an infinite number of paths you can follow. The chance of you finding someone capable of elevating you to this level is illusory, which is why you have been left aside all this time."
"What is the strength level of one of these candidates?" Kayden asked with genuine doubt.
"Nine rays from the first realm." This was downright scary, but Kayden had already expected something like this. They were beings of another level.
"What should I do next, in your view?" Kayden was humble enough to recognize when he was in the presence of someone who knew more than he did.
"I don’t know, I kicked you off, now it’s up to you." That was an answer he didn’t expect, but it made perfect sense.
Reaching divinity was not something that could be taught, much less at a level of strength capable of rivaling nine rays, it had to come from him. Kayden had to build his own story and he knew it.
"I’d like to get out of this place, then," Kayden asked. He could spend an infinite amount of time here and learn everything he needed, but that would be like growing up in a greenhouse, it wouldn’t make any sense.
"Any preference for a place for me to put it?" The cat asked Kayden.
"If you could place me near the Lichs, I would be grateful." Kayden didn’t have time to respond as he found himself standing in the middle of an ordinary market on a random void planet.
Hypnos didn’t even respond to him before sending him into the void again. Kayden had no idea where he was, but he only needed a few minutes to understand that it was an ordinary trading planet like all the others.
Even though 1 million years had passed, nothing had really changed in the void. To change the void, you had to have very high-level mages, and for them, 1 million years was just a blink of an eye. It took very little time for anything to change.
"It’s been a while, hasn’t it, sir?" a rock-skinned, aqua-haired attendant commented to Kayden as he asked for a room in her guild.
"A little." Kayden only needed to confirm his identity using a personal mana test. This was a bit funny to him, as he did not have personal mana and his techniques were based on having little mana in his body and using that of the environment.
He had a ridiculously large mana pool, but it was usually not full and ran on a very small amount. This meant that he had little pressure on his body to use his techniques quickly in an emergency.
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Kayden only stayed in the room for a day to organize everything he learned in his mind from the last conversation and also think about what he was going to do. It only took a few questions from certain people for him to discover that he was in a territory that paid taxes to the Lichs.
As this small window of time passed that Kayden was away, some things changed with the organization of the Disciples of the End. The first was that they began to expand their domains by enslaving owners of planets around them.
They also began to develop their organization in a vacuum, both on the commercial and political sides. Additionally, they began recruiting people with the potential to become Lichs.
As much as Kayden could end up being killed and enslaved, he had no other options. His lifespan was still relatively long, but with all the certainty in the world, it was not enough for him to take his strength to another level.
It was a risk he would have to take or he would spend the rest of his life trapped by something he could have done differently. Just moving forward with a generic incomplete law was not difficult, but it would greatly hinder their future gains.
"Hello! How can I help you today?" Kayden was at one of the recruitment points in front of a fifth-realm wizard.
The strength of this rank was relatively low and there was only a single Lich in the entire environment, and he was at the eighth realm, but just this being was already someone to be feared and respected. He could probably jump a realm of strength against ninth-realm mages without much difficulty.
"I would like to speak with Mister Lich," Kayden said looking directly at the wizard sitting in one of the armchairs. It was obvious that he was hiding his presence, but Kayden could easily identify an identity of that level.
The Lich was always paying attention to everything and looked at Kayden sizing him up. His spiritual sense passed through Kayden’s entire body and made it clear that he considered him inferior, but he was also not aggressive.
"Come." The Lich pointed to the chair in front of him. Someone capable of recognizing his presence should receive the least amount of respect from him. "What brings you here?" The undead was direct with his words.
"A few thousand years ago, I received an invitation from a nine-rayed Lich. I’m here to accept it." Kayden’s sentence caused the surrounding environment to change; Lich isolated everything with his mana.
He was not someone weak and would hardly fear even an eight-ray mage even though he only had seven lightning bolts. This was common in Liches; their age made up for their lack of strength in most cases, but Liches with nine lightning were few and far between. The organization didn’t even have five of them, and that was still a lot.