Day: 735
Kill Count: 210,000,000,000
Damien no longer needed to go to the frontlines himself.
His body clock marked the passing of 2 years, and in the past 370 days, he'd both perfected and mastered the technique of perfect cloning.
It was a simple matter, yet the most complex comprehension Damien had to grasp in his entire life.
After all, the answer was not in the clones themselves, but in the Void.
Damien realized one thing about the Void.
This entity absolutely had sentience.
It wasn't the kind of sentience a human possessed, but something greater and lesser at the same time.
It could be considered similar to the system.
The Apeiron Records had consciousness, but did not have feelings or free will. It was an entity with a single task, and its entire sentience was based around completing this task with no extra parts.
The Void, on the other hand, had complete control of its free will and could act as it liked, as seen by the several times it decided to stop helping Damien to test him, but its sentience was similarly lacking the fundamental component known as "ego."
The Void was the Void. Its sentience could not speak or think, but it had a will to exert for a specific purpose that Damien was yet to understand.
Therefore, when wielding its power, one didn't need to intrinsically understand every small detail as one did for a concept like Universal Law.
It was a matter of connecting with the Void. If the Void could understand his intentions, it could carry out anything he wished to happen.
There was no limit to this power.
The only limit was Damien himself.
Damien had been taking steps towards the Void for several years now, even diverting the focus he put towards his primary Laws for this purpose, but he barely scratched the surface.
Whenever he made great strides, it was because the Void itself aided him in doing so, with his personal comprehensions rarely reaching such grand conclusions.
He could easily define the Void in terms he knew, but those terms were too broad.
"Everything and nothing at all at the same time, the supreme power that is at the foundation of all things."
What could that be called?
Existence was all humanity understood. Nonexistence was a concept brought about by the observation of existence and thus represented everything that couldn't be understood.
These two abstractions, these grand words that Damien's mind inherently used to comprehend the Void…
Weren't these the hidden elements he'd recently learned about? The things that separated the Void from what he understood?
This was his first great realization.
The fact that "everything within the bounds of reality, and everything outside of it" was still beneath the Void.
That put this entity in a position that the human mind had no possibility of defining.
Because what else was there?
What could be greater than that?
It was titled the Void on its own, not due to the intervention of another force, but what was the energy above both existence and nonexistence?
As Damien pondered this, he slowly uncovered more and more about the Void.
No, rather, he built a connection with it like it was a living being rather than a concept.
And this allowed him to master what he'd been struggling with for so long.
That happened at the 7-month mark.
After gaining the ability to create a clone, all Damien had to do was practice until he perfected it.
In the remaining 4 months of the year, he tried and failed dozens of thousands of times before he finally got a grip on the process.
From there, it was just a matter of repetition.
The current Damien could create as many clones as his mana would allow, and each of them could be granted strength equivalent to a percentage of his strength.
He could share their sight, and even possess the body of a clone for a short period of time if he wished to. It was almost as if he'd actually created Avatars.
Naturally, he had to deal with the natural limitations of this technique. Not every clone could possess his full power, and none of them could tap into the Void's abilities.
They also severely strained his spiritual world since he had to maintain a mental connection with each and every one to keep them operational.
Yet, to deal with the current situation, these clones were more than enough.
Tens of thousands of Damiens populated No Return Pass. During idle times, they were like statues, motionless and without an ounce of life.
But when enemies came…
Well, it could be imagined what kind of catastrophe an army of Damien's would be, even without the Void.
What was surprising was that even the 4th class Higher Nox could be dealt with by these clones for the most part.
Those who were too strong would naturally meet Damien's true form, since he was always willing to entertain a good fight, but the rest were thrown away without mercy by his minions.
The only other time Damien took the time to visit the battlefield personally was to Devour the remains the Nox left behind.
Now, he had free time.
Not free time to sit and wallow about his situation; he wasn't so weak as to break down because of things like this anymore.
This was free time to get stronger.
SKREEEEEEE!
SKREEEEEEE!
SKREEEEEEE!
One thing that never changed was the incessant screeching that made one's ears bleed and one's veins pop from annoyance.
It was obviously a mental warfare tactic, but Damien treated it like white noise nowadays.
Plus, though it didn't have much effect, feeling the experience pouring into his body was great. At least these screeches had changed from a tactic to a true representation of the torture his enemies were receiving.
'Never mind. Focus.'
Damien shook away his thoughts, suppressing them with the Mind Prison, before returning to the task at hand.
He held several balls of differently colored light in his hand.
Of them, one was black with hints of white, flickering strangely, while the rest were bright, beautiful blue, pale green, earthy brown, and a more jade-like sparkling green.
These were only the ones he was holding now, but those he'd been practicing with were far more.
Fire, water, wind, earth, wood, lightning, light, darkness…
Damien wanted to master every foundational element this universe had to offer.
'The Void's processes are difficult to grasp, but trying to do so is putting the cart before the horse. If I want to get where I want to be, I need to focus on the basics.'
Damien always had a problem with rushing. The Blessing of Foundation only had so much effect because he'd been rushing through any and everything he'd done until that point.
He wouldn't be so foolish any longer.
The system gave him the roadmap when he was still a teenager with nothing to his name.
The five elements, life and death, space and time, creation and destruction, and…
'Existence and Nonexistence that stand above them all.'
It left that part out for the Damien who would only be overloaded by such information, but now that he knew it, the puzzle made complete sense.
He had Spacetime and he had Samsara.
He had control over lightning, fire, and water, but he'd ignored those elements until now. He never tried to delve into the wood element since he already had life, and the others never even entered his eyes.
This was the start of his problem.
Yes, they meant nothing in front of his power.
But that didn't make them less important.
As long as he wished to fulfill his grand ambition, he needed to bring these forces up to par and match them to his power level rather than ignoring him.
Thus, his task for the remaining time he had in No Return Pass changed.
The black and white Heavenly Lightning, the Void Flame he refused to raise, and the absolute control of water he was granted by the Azure Dragon; these were his foundation.
These were the elements he possessed already.
Mastering them was just a matter of effort.
The rest…
He needed to find the way.
He needed to completely figure out how to transmute the Void into any Law he wished to use, so he could eventually become its indisputable sovereign and controller!
