The Monarch

Kayden took more than a millennium to read everything contained in Thoth's book. The amount of information was completely abnormal, a level of data utterly absurd—the actual number of pages in this book easily reached into the trillions. A book with trillions of pages was something unimaginable.Kayden was able to discover secrets and techniques that would have taken him at least hundreds of billions of years just to come remotely close to. Any value could measure the information that Kayden gained—it was something for which gods would sacrifice entire universes just to get near.The final conclusion after all this, for Kayden, was twofold. The first was that Thoth was a being of a superior level—not only that, but he was probably the highest-level mage Kayden would ever encounter in his existence. His level of strength and his discoveries beyond the divine level were a complete enigma to Kayden; he had no idea how powerful Thoth really was.The second discovery was that he was in the final phase of the universe, at the absolute apex of magic and knowledge. There would be nothing beyond this place; here, he should either establish himself as an absolute being, or die trying. The opportunities and treasures in this world were completely surreal.This was practically an infinite world. Even Thoth, with thousands of lives, was not able to set a visible limit to it or even map it out. His knowledge was laid out completely freely in his book—at least, it was until he simply left this place. After that, there was no more information about this world.Kayden took at least ten times longer than it took him to read the book just to digest all the information he had gained. He needed to solidify this knowledge in his mind—not only that, but he also needed to make all the possible connections that this opportunity was offering him. Something in his soul told him he was being guided toward something.During all this time, Kayden wasn't disturbed even once. His existence caused an irrational fear in all the irrational beings around him, as if they instinctively recognized a king of the jungle and prioritized their own survival above everything else, while the world was too vast for coincidences to occur easily.After digesting Thoth's entire story, Kayden set it aside and began thinking about his next steps. The first of these was to be able to force his power upon this world. He needed to be able to command the laws in this environment perfectly, and for that, he needed to study this universe completely.This process was long and laborious. Imposing his will upon a weak universe with basic laws was completely different from imposing his will on a universe like this, where even the most basic laws were fundamental low-level laws, where every centimeter of it was perfect. It was extremely difficult for Kayden to bypass this.The world didn't recognize his will—the world denied him his superiority. But that didn't matter. Kayden was superior; his path, his law, his will would be imposed one way or another. With each passing day, he learned more and was able to exercise a bit more of his control.One of the biggest problems he encountered was the lack of mana in this world. But this was something he had, in fact, already expected. The final strength of existence would come from the laws and his understanding of them; mana was simply a physical representation of those laws. This had been obvious to Kayden since his first steps on the path of the laws, and now he was finally completely confronted by this realization.Little by little, Kayden was able to exert his will over the laws around him. Little by little, he was able to cast his own lightning in a perfect form—a lightning that didn't use mana. His inspiration for this…"Was that celestial lightning?" Louran asked himself as he flew at high speed through the world. He was returning from a mission assigned by his sect a few decades ago and had come across a formless bolt of lightning imbued with some fundamental law that he was unable to understand.Louran had a form that couldn't be defined by human parameters. His appearance consisted of an ethereal body of pure condensed energy, his extremities stretching like golden threads of light that floated and molded themselves according to his will. In place of eyes were two black spheres that absorbed the light around them, like infinite voids threatening to devour everything. His skin—if it could even be called that—was composed of a translucent mantle pulsing with runic patterns impossible to comprehend by any being below the divine level. Around him, a halo of silver flames rotated slowly, not like fire but like living fragments of some primordial law. His presence distorted space and time around him, making reality itself seem to hesitate before touching him. Louran wasn't a being—he was a pure manifestation of divinity, completely detached from any trace of humanity or mortality.Processes of ascension weren't rare in this world, but the problem was the strength of the lightning that had struck and…The fundamental laws and all matter for tens of billions of kilometers vanished. Most living beings were completely consumed—their existences turned into pure laws floating in space, and then all those laws were consumed in the same way.At the center of that absolute void, where laws and matter had been erased, Kayden floated motionless, his silhouette merging with pure nothingness, while above his head rested a crown made from the pure manifestation of his will. The space around him bent infinitely, unable to sustain any form or energy. There was no light, no sound, no time—only him, isolated like a solitary king on the throne of an erased world.Some beings were still able to survive in that space—the surrounding gods were still able to continue their existence, at least partially. None of them were able to understand what had happened, and…"I am the Monarch," the voice echoed across billions of kilometers.