CHAPTER 693: TIME

"Holy shit." That was Kayden’s first thought after what felt like an infinite amount of time. It had been long enough for Jordan to become a god and abandon that place — something Kayden had no idea about.

Kayden had taken trillions, hundreds of trillions of years to recover even minimally. It took thousands of trillions of years before he could formulate sentences within his own mind.

All that time had been spent on an immense task — something unprecedented in all history. Kayden looked at himself; his soul was completely obliterated. At that moment, he had only thirty percent of what he had once been. It looked like a patchwork quilt compared to his prime.

His mind could think and form ideas, but he felt slow, lost. It was as if he were in a deep state of drunkenness; his thoughts were confused and constantly collided with one another. It was hard for him to follow a straight line of thought; at best, it lasted a few minutes before everything scattered again.

Kayden laughed to himself. Was this the state of a completely normal mage? He didn’t perfectly remember the first moments of his life — at least not the small, minute details. The state he was in was strange beyond words.

"I have to work," the young man said, beginning to move himself — in this case, to move his soul. He did not need to breathe or eat, and leaving where he was would be a tremendous risk at that moment.

His work would be long. His soul needed to recover from a damage of absurd magnitude. That made him focus entirely on that task, but it was like trying to drain the ocean with an ordinary sponge. There was too much water for too little material. Yet even in that pathetic state, Kayden’s will remained.

His obsession was the foundation of his life, the foundation of his soul. Every small fragment of him was built around it. Kayden had no other word to describe his life. From his birth until the last day he would breathe, it would always be his obsession that made him keep going, keep seeking more and more.

Kayden’s soul was being slowly rebuilt. In the past, his pace was comparable to removing sand grain by grain from a desert; now it was like trying to dry the sea with a sponge. Both were intensely difficult, but one of them was bizarrely faster.

Little by little, Kayden managed to get used to his dull mind. Ideas and thoughts came to him in fragments. Long ago, he could devise brilliant techniques within seconds, and now he only receives fragments without a head or tail. Putting those fragments together was difficult — it was the work of an entire lifetime for him to unite them.

Kayden felt like... a normal person. He had no form of talent. His mind was ordinary, his manipulation ordinary. Kayden was a pathetic, common man. His talent was the same as at the beginning of his life — in truth, it was even worse.

The process of mending his soul was done slowly. Kayden was in no hurry — he also had absolutely nothing better to do at that time. His only concern was to mend it in the best way possible. Unfortunately, it was something extremely time-consuming, but the results were coming little by little.

Gradually, he also managed to increase his sensitivity to the world. It was difficult — hundreds of times more laborious than before — but he was doing it piece by piece. He began with just a few meters, and after billions of years, it extended to a few kilometers.

Kayden was able to witness the birth and death of thousands of beings, the birth and death of thousands of organizations, countries, and kingdoms. He saw how everything developed in a certain pattern — one that was predictable, and yet not. No matter how much he could see everything, calculate each small event, understand each small mind in that enormous space, he was still unable to predict the future with one hundred percent certainty.

"Chaos." A small understanding appeared in Kayden’s mind — something insane, in truth. His comprehension of Chaos increased thousands of times during this period of time.

Many gods had done what he did. Many spent trillions of years observing closed worlds, trying to understand the lines of Chaos, but few were able to remain firm in that attempt. Not only that, but a tiny portion of them reached even a preliminary understanding.

That garden Kayden had visited so long ago had opened doors for him to make connections that would have been impossible before. Unfortunately, his broken mind made it impossible for him to form any concrete or well-organized thoughts; his learning was extremely slower than it should have been.

Time passed quickly. Kayden was completely disconnected from the events of the external world. In fact, he couldn’t even understand where he was. No one knew. His legend was merely passed down from generation to generation, but he himself had been declared dead. Not even Thoth had been able to find him.

"Time," Kayden thought, reflecting on his own history. "It can kill anyone — whether gods or celestials. Time is cruel. It is unstoppable. You can even alter the timeline, rewrite history, but even so, you are incapable of escaping it within your mind."

At some point, you will be defeated. Sooner or later, your existence will be erased. You are incapable of perpetuating yourself until the end of time. The Law of Time... it was not a basic law. Kayden felt like an idiot.

All his life, he had believed that Time was a strong but ordinary law. But he had been wrong. That law was on the same level as the Law of Chaos. He couldn’t even place it within a defined rank at that moment. The mere realization of that made him feel once more like a frog trapped in a well. The Law of Time was weak.

It was a law capable of being overcome, a law capable of being bent, a law capable of being completely altered. But... it was a law incapable of being destroyed. Even if a celestial removed all existence from the flow of time, his mind would continue thinking, and time would continue passing within it. Time was unshakable. It was like the waves of the sea — always present, whether strong or weak.

Kayden was now able to perceive the Law of Time in this world even more clearly. He was able to separate it into many facets. Not only that, but he could also minimally observe its interaction with the Law of Chaos and...

"How pathetic my existence is compared to this," Kayden thought, utterly astonished.