The Monarch-Chapter 695: Just me

Chapter 695: Just me
It took an immense amount of time and a bizarre amount of effort for Kayden to finally remove every last trace of Athena’s soul from his own. In the end, only a hollow shell of what he once was remained — Kayden had become a mere fragment of his former self. His potential had dropped practically to zero, his strength wasn’t even comparable anymore. He couldn’t perform even a hundredth of what he once could. Yet, despite all of this, he stayed true to his decision. Kayden removed every last part of Athena from within his soul.
A certain nostalgia arose in his mind whenever he remembered Athena. Even though an unfathomable amount of time had passed, that woman had once been an ever-present figure in his life, and she would continue to be a precious memory for the rest of his existence.
In the end, Kayden felt utterly incomplete. It had been eons since his soul had been in such a state — more specifically, he had spent less than one percent of his entire life like this. In that moment, Kayden had to think about what exactly he would do next. A new path had to be forged, a new road explored. He had completely burned the ships that could take him back to his old life.
Athena no longer existed in this reality. That meant there was no chance of him ever being whole again. There were no half-measures in his choices; there was no going back under any circumstance. Kayden might have just condemned his entire existence to nothingness. Hundreds of ideas raced through his mind, but he was unable to put most of them into practice. He lacked both the means and the talent. One of his ideas, for example, was to devour random souls to strengthen his own — but that was impossible at the moment.
He wouldn’t be able to properly integrate them into his soul; he didn’t have the talent to formulate something that complex, nor the knowledge. That idea was quickly discarded, and thousands — even millions — of others began to pass through his thoughts. It was almost funny how much this resembled the early days of his life, when he was forced to constantly manipulate his own soul in search of more power. It was very similar — and yet his situation now was entirely different.
After a long time, Kayden made a decision that seemed, to him, the most correct: he would expand his own soul as if it were a kind of gelatin, stretching and thickening it to make room for more of itself. The issue was that he was, quite literally, creating pieces of a soul from nothing.
Across the entire universe, this had probably never been done — but if there was anyone who could succeed, it would be Kayden. The simple reason was that he was one of the very few mages who had ever possessed a complete soul. Kayden knew exactly where to place, where to construct, where to strengthen. He knew every centimeter of his soul, and not only that — he knew every piece of his former one. That gave him an almost concrete blueprint to follow. The real problem was that the process was truly insane — there were too many stages, and each one took a ridiculously long time to complete due to the low potential he currently possessed.
Once again, civilizations began to arise in Kayden’s world. He regained the ability to observe mortals, which granted him a small amount of knowledge about laws. In addition, he began studying these souls — all of them had something unique, even if it was small and seemingly insignificant. This place was capable of producing unique mortals, some with abilities far above average. Kayden’s presence itself was somewhat peculiar; after a while, he began to notice his own influence.
The mere act of Kayden existing in that world made it susceptible to unconscious changes caused by his presence. The first of these was that the world’s general laws began to bend slowly toward him. Kayden could feel them becoming more obedient, more docile in his presence — almost as if they feared being erased.
This made it so that ordinary laws could no longer express their full strength within that world; only the more complex ones, capable of resisting Kayden’s presence, could prevail. Indirectly, this caused only the strongest to be favored in that realm. The civilizations that arose also had an obsession with power and domination. There was an endless pursuit of an emperor who could rule over all mages — but it was an incredibly complex goal, and so far, no mage had appeared capable of subjugating every nation at once.
There had been some, but those mages quickly left that world. They rarely remained more than a few dozen million years before ascending to the higher realm — a place no one knew the meaning of or where it truly was.
Kayden slowly managed to expand his soul steadily. It wasn’t fast — it took trillions of years for even the smallest progress — but he persisted. His potential grew with each passing second, and his mind became increasingly clear. The problem was that each step became harder and harder to perform.
After a certain point, he fully regained his consciousness. Not only that, but he could now move freely through this world. Kayden felt strange doing so after such an immense time — he had practically become a fixed entity within it. His presence was now as certain as the sky itself, especially after he began subtly altering and shaping the empires.
It didn’t take long before Kayden became known as
the Devil
— a being who dealt favors on all sides, one who sold dreams and, at the same time, delivered them.
"The same as before," Kayden murmured when he finally recognized where he was — the endless walls he had once used to kill gods and study karmic lightning. It was almost amusing that a practically infinite amount of time had passed, and yet fragments of those memories still flickered through his deteriorated mind. Many points and fragments of his memory were blurred, faded beyond recovery.
Kayden didn’t have much to do besides studying this world and continuing to modify his soul. His progress was extremely fast — in just a few years, he managed to solidify his soul and his presence within that world. But still, his strength was absurdly below what he had once been.