Time truly was a strange thing. Because Damien spent the majority of the years he'd gained since he last checked his status in his Baptism Space, his mentality didn't register those years at all. He didn't feel like it'd been almost 3 years since he exited the Primordial Undying Realm.
He was truly growing old.
On a universal scale, 30 years was nothing. Even geniuses like Atticus were well in their 40s despite looking no older than 20. Because high-intensity training usually caused one to lose track of the flow of time and the lifespan of an individual became increasingly longer with every rank up, 20 and 40 were essentially the same age.
Hell, even Damien's lifespan was, at the very least, well into the tens of thousands of years already.
Still, Damien was an earthling at heart. Turning 30…wasn't this the perfect age for a midlife crisis?!
Honestly speaking, he was doing well for himself as someone in their late twenties. He was never a teenager who viewed 30 as old. He'd seen the way 30-year-olds acted and the way people in their mid-twenties thought. While they were much more emotionally mature and experienced than any teenager, they still kept a spark of youth within them.
"Old" was a term that only applied to people who succumbed to their mortality. Even an 80-year-old could be described as young if their heart was young.
Nevertheless, Damien didn't like the age reflected in his status.
It had been a decade.
His fall into the first dungeon happened when he was 17.
And now…
27.
In that time, what did he accomplish?
Sure, he grew to an unparalleled level in 10 years, but did he live up to what his talent could achieve?
No.
Damien wasn't some country bumpkin from a beginner world who didn't know how the universe worked anymore. He was an accomplished rising star that many Holy Lands at the peak of the universe were paying attention to.
He'd seen the level of talent that came with this kind of position.
And frankly, he was disappointed.
Self-awareness was something Damien lacked for a long time. He could never see the ends of his talent and therefore used the talent of others to measure himself. This method only made him lower his expectations of what he could achieve.
And regardless of how one utilized mana, mentality remained the core of its use.
Regardless of how childish it sounded, imagination was incredibly important to a practitioner. To delve into the concepts and embody one's Law, one needed the imagination to expand one's comprehension and carve a spot for oneself inside that vast Law's bubble.
If one mentally limited themselves, how could they reach the epitome of their talent?
Damien always thought it was arrogance. He didn't want to cloud his mind with delusions of grandeur and end up like the overconfident enemies he'd killed numerous times already.
Recently, however, he'd realized the difference between him and them.
For him to think of himself highly wouldn't be arrogance. Simply because he deserved such a high evaluation.
He was the Bearer of the Void Physique, a truly unique existence among the endless beings existing in the universe and beyond it.
If he couldn't be considered heaven-defying, who could?
The realization of his sheer level of potential left Damien feeling wholly unsatisfied with his improvements. Rather than competing with people his own age, he should've been stomping them to the ground and thoroughly crushing them.
To do so, he could no longer underestimate himself.
His affinity was no longer space or time alone, but spacetime as a whole. The creation of the Space-Time River that resided in his domain was proof of this.
If he wanted to improve further, he couldn't keep limiting himself to being a mere spatial practitioner or temporal practitioner. Instead, he needed to truly control spacetime and become a master of the continuum. He needed to become a master of the universe's "flow."
'The flow…I've only just started realizing it, but this esoteric process is too intertwined in my destiny for me to ignore it. At the end of the day, what is the "flow" and what significance does it hold?'
He'd known it since he was young, but he'd never taken the time to truly think about it. Once he realized its existence, he took some time to relive his life and try to pinpoint it.
He once again realized how little time he'd had to rest.
From the beginning, Damien had always been forcefully thrust into the universe's most important events.
Apeiron's Eternal Secret Realm where he first learned of the Nox's existence and met Kurt Galloway's remnant soul, Earth's bout with invading forces of Niflheim and the Cloud Plane, becoming the Void Old Immortal's disciple, the 3000 Beast Mountain Range's Demigods and deep-rooted Nox influence, including the Elven Race and White Dragon King, encountering Wrath and the Fifth Primal Sovereign; the list was too long to even name all the events together.
These events were ongoing with or without his presence, and discounting a few, they would've reached their proper conclusions even without his aid.
If so, what was his purpose in being present?
Was he a mere observer watching the universe's gears turn? Or was he being purposefully led to these scenes to view them and grow from them?
At the root of everything was the Nox. The universe seemed intent on putting Damien against the invading race regardless of his own desires.
But…
'The Nox…is eradicating them the best solution?'
The Nox were Damien's main clue regarding the Void Physique and its origins. Even the Fifth Primal Sovereign's obsession with the Void Physique was related to the Nox.
And with how Wrath reacted to the "Seed," it was clear that the Nox had some sort of information that he direly needed.
In the event that the Nox were a race he could subordinate rather than eliminate, which path should he choose…?
'Haa…what am I doing when I should be training?'
Training was a time of solitude. It gave Damien time to think about the things he usually neglected in favor of completing the tasks at hand.
Whenever he trained, Damien's mind was always clouded with idle thought. Perhaps it was a result of his neurodivergence, but his train of thought would always shift away from the task at hand to contemplate matters that had no basis behind them, matters such as subordinating the Nox.
What was the use of thinking about it? Even if it was something that could happen in the future, how many years would it take for him to be powerful enough to even consider it?
Whenever Damien thought to the future, he'd always end up on tangents, creating situations in his head that would often never pan out.
It was dangerously distracting.
Thus, he liked to keep his mind in the present. He had a vague outline of the future he wanted to see. As long as he worked towards this outline, that was enough for him.
'Spacetime…I will conquer this concept before my training is over.'
He returned to the topic at hand. Every day he spent in a new training area was spending more of his contribution points, and he didn't have any time to waste.
There were now 8 months remaining until the progress assessment.
In that time, Damien was determined to become a completely different monster than he already was.
