THE GOD EATER

He still doesn’t know how Ragnarok can use the Rewind Metac without his Divine Position, but he is fairly certain that Ragnarok will need to wait between 9 and 27 years before he can reverse time. This is because Ragnarok is rank 9.

If there is any error with this estimate, he is sure that the error is too small and Ragnarok will need to wait longer. This is because Ragnarok isn’t using a Divine Position of the pathway of time, so his reversal of time should be inefficient, and his ability to purge his entropy should be poor.

His conjecture that Ragnarok will need longer isn’t something he made out of thin air. It is something he is fairly certain of, if only for the fact that the limit of his time reversal is an hour of time.

By his estimate, it has only been one hour in the past since Ragnarok used the Rewind Metac. Since Ragnarok doesn’t have the accompanying Divine Metacs of the Time Pathway to help him determine where to stop in the River of Time during the time reversal, this one hour of time must be Ragnarok’s absolute limit.

For a rank 9 to be able to reverse time by only one hour, Ragnarok’s usage of the Rewind Metac must be very poor. So Ragnarok’s ability to prepare the Rewind Metac for another time reversal should also be poor.

After considering his estimates for a long while, he thought to himself, ’There is also the possibility that this is Ragnarok’s limit because this is the time he got the Rewind Metac, and there is the possibility that he initiated another Time Pathway, so my estimates might be wrong. But those two possibilities are also good for him.’

’If this point in time is his limit, because this was when he got the Rewind Metac, now that I know it, I can easily find him once I find the original person who awakened the Rewind Metac. Then taking the Rewind Metac back from him would be easier.’

’And if he has initiated another Time Pathway, so he doesn’t need my Divine Positions and has his own set of Time Pathway Divine Metacs, this will be even better because it means that my enemies will have another alternative to hunt other than me. If I grab him and offer him up, maybe I can use his life to buy my freedom.’

This last possibility gave him a lot of hope for the future. He knows that it is unlikely that another person will be able to open up a path to the Time Dao in this part of the world, but if it does happen, he will gain a lot of benefits from it.

The main benefit he will gain is to use Ragnarok as a sacrifice to buy his life. There are a lot of reasons why Dao Lords want to kill him and why he is in hiding, but the most important reason is that they want his Time Path. So if he can give them Ragnarok, they might be willing to leave him alone.

Not all Dao Paths are the same. They vary in quality from Minor Dao, Major Dao, Grand Dao, and Cosmic Dao. The Time Pathway is a Cosmic Dao.

Minor Daos are either skill-based or race-based. They are skill-based when the paths can be attained by someone spending a lot of their time doing a job or performing an action and becoming an expert in it.

Examples of this category of Minor Daos are the Dao of Farming, the Dao of Archery, the Dao of the Sword, and the Dao of Blacksmithing. This is why they are sometimes called occupational Daos.

Occupational Daos are such that even a mortal with no ounce of cultivation can meet the requirements to attain them. All that is needed is talent and a lot of experience.

Then there are race-based paths like the Human Dao, Giant Dao, Dragon Dao. These are also Minor Paths that any talented person can acquire based on an in-depth understanding of their race.

After Minor Daos are more advanced paths called the Major Daos. The Major Daos contain paths that have something to do with everyone regardless of their occupation or their race.

A category of Major Daos are the Dao of Strength, Dao of Speed, Dao of Vitality, Dao of the Mind, and the Dao of Defense. These are called the inner existence Daos.

Another category of Major Daos are the Dao of Fire, Dao of Earth, Dao of Wind, Dao of Water, Dao of Wood, and so on and forth. They are called outer existence Daos.

Above Major Daos are complex paths called Grand Daos. These are paths that encapsulate both inner existence and outer existence Daos.

Grand Daos are higher and complex derivatives of Major and Minor Daos created by the combination of these less complex Daos. For example, the Dao of Transformation combines the Dao of Strength, Dao of Speed, Dao of Vitality, Dao of the Mind, and the Dao of Defense with various racial Daos.

Another example is the Dao for Talisman, which encapsulates Major Daos like Dao of Fire, Dao of Earth, Dao of Wind, Dao of Water, and the Dao of Wood with Minor Daos like Dao of the Painter, Dao of the Paper maker, and Dao of the Scholar.

The combination of several minor and major paths gives Grand Daos a lot of complexity, variability, and power. But no matter how powerful Grand Daos are, they can’t match up with the power and complexity and rigor of Cosmic Daos.

Cosmic Daos determine the fundamental rules that the universe operates on. In most cases, one would need to reach the limit of the universe to stand a chance to comprehend them.

For the most talented people in the universe, they would need to attain strong cultivation on par with the level of Dao Lords or above before they can comprehend it.

Examples of Cosmic Daos are the Time Pathway, Space Pathway, Luck Pathway, and the Death Pathway.

There have been many pathways in the history of the Sea of Worlds that he is aware of, but he has only encountered five Cosmic Daos. Among the current eight Dao Lords, only one of them possesses a Cosmic Dao. This shows how rare Cosmic Daos are.

Dao Lords frequently attack each other for their Dao Paths. They can take each other’s paths and use them to become stronger.

Because of how rare and powerful the Cosmic Dao Paths are, he has no interest in taking Dao Paths of lower grades. But everyone else will be interested in taking his Dao Pathways. This is one of the main reasons every Dao Lord is ganging up on him and his brothers.

So if another person who has opened up the path to the Time Dao were to appear, at the very least, the pressure on him will fall by half. He will be able to breathe easy because the Dao Lords will be too busy hunting the other fellow.

If the Dao Lords have themselves too much in their hunt for the other fellow, they might not even have time for him. And he might be able to buy support and protection from the strongest Dao Lord if he can find that person and offer their Time Pathway to make a deal.

This made him chuckle and say inwardly, ’’Other Dao Lords won’t want competitors to appear in their Dao, but here I am, looking forward to a competitor. I must be the shame of every Dao Lord everywhere.’

Then he shrugged and thought, ’It is not as if the Dao belongs to us anyway. For now, it is there for everyone to find and use. As for who will gain final control of the Dao, that’s beyond my level of consideration. At least, I need to get back to being a Dao Lord before I can worry about something like that.’