If a mage slept for at least eight hours every day of their life, from the first to the last realm, they would reach a completely purified soul by the end of their life. It was a trade of time for the quality of the soul. A soul without past lives was an utterly absurd advantage; in Kayden’s opinion, it was a relatively fair trade. Would he do it? It might be extremely beneficial for people without the ability to manipulate souls like he could.
It was a trade of a huge amount of time for a huge amount of strength. Kayden’s studies led him to learn much about sleep; our body typically induces it through many hormones and signals. The lack of sunlight wasn’t a barrier to sleeping, but it caused our daily cycle to stretch beyond the standard 24 hours. This was a negative in Kayden’s view, as it made things more erratic and without pattern.
Kayden raised several dozen children during this period in a far-from-ethical study where he distributed different amounts of sleep to each. It took only a few decades for him to witness something incredible. Those with less than six hours of sleep had almost no soul purification. This meant that all their strength came solely from their efforts. Compared to the group that slept eight hours… they were far behind.
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All of them were trained in the same technique and given the same resources; even their food and daily activities were standardized. Kayden tried to ensure that sleep was the only differentiating factor in their lives.
Another experiment Kayden conducted involved pregnant women. He varied their hours of sleep and also administered certain substances, one of which was alcohol. It took only a few years for him to understand the magnitude of the problem he had uncovered. Souls enter the body of the child around the third month of a normal human pregnancy. Most of the fetus’s life was spent sleeping, and when Kayden deprived the woman of sleep, almost nothing happened to the fetus’s future. However, when the woman consumed alcohol, things changed.
This small living being, organizing its soul within its own body, received a massive dose of a substance that prevented it from dreaming. This made the child incapable of placing its soul into its body perfectly. The soul became disconnected from the fetus’s body, similar to trying to fit a square object into a round hole. The more alcohol consumed, the higher the incidence of these disconnections.
When the child was born, it wasn’t possible to immediately understand the extent of the damage, but as years passed, they showed between 10 to 30% developmental delays compared to others of their age. Their life was practically destroyed because of an irresponsible mother, or in this case, because of Kayden.
Kayden also found himself unable to fix this disconnection simply by inducing sleep. He had to study the person’s soul deeply and then repair it over the years. It was ironic how much of your success was determined before you were even born.
After a few decades, Kayden became an expert in human sleep and dreams. He gathered dozens of insights through thousands of studies and concluded that 99% of mages didn’t get the minimum amount of sleep required to reap the benefits. Moreover, sleep was one of the most beneficial states for regulating both the body and mind of a mage. He observed a direct relationship between dreams and the overcoming of traumas: the deeper the sleep, the faster one could overcome intense trauma. It was a direct correlation.
Kayden had recruited a select group of mages to start sleeping eight hours a day and procreate among themselves. They would be one of his longest-running experiments, likely lasting a few thousand years. After drawing all these conclusions, Kayden set aside his focus on sleep for a while. He had learned everything he could during this period. The remaining information would require a colossal effort to uncover.
Author’s note: Believe it or not, all of this information is true. I got it from the book *Why We Sleep*. Of course, some things have been adapted for a magical world.
In the blink of an eye, a few centuries passed. During this time, Kayden’s organization grew terrifyingly. The Knights of the End expanded their numbers to a few dozen, and all of them were ridiculously strong mages. Each Knight of the End had at least eight rays, and one or two had reached nine rays. These last ones, unfortunately, were stuck in the lower realms, with the highest realm reached so far being the sixth.
Kayden knew he was merely increasing his numbers at the moment, so he didn’t care too much about the quality. He had more than enough time to turn his kingdom into a true monster in this universe. His kingdom also grew in power at an alarming rate. One of the craziest things Kayden did was something never seen before in the entire universe: he made all techniques available to the public.
Literally all techniques—some capable of creating entire organizations from scratch just by their power. Legendary techniques, insane techniques that could spark world wars, all of them were free to be learned in libraries throughout the cities. To prevent the information from leaking, everyone who entered the library had to sign a contract and take an oath. Additionally, he enlisted Yan’s help to monitor the mages entering and leaving his kingdom.
Kayden didn’t want spies entering to learn and then leaving to take the knowledge elsewhere. He needed people to use the techniques in his kingdom so that it could develop. This led to a terrifying number of people being executed for breaking the oath and an even larger number by Yan’s mages.
In return, the number of immigrants arriving in the kingdom increased at an enormous scale—billions arrived every year. Most were of low level, but a few were at an elevated stage and quickly adapted to the power dynamics of society. The number of cities multiplied rapidly during this period, and most were constantly at war for resources. During these few centuries, people spent at least 70% of their time at war, killing each other.