THE GOD EATER

Then he clicked his tongue, saying, ”If I had more time to play around, I wouldn’t mind pretending to be a world and luring some Dao Lords into anchoring their Supreme Metacs in me so that I can borrow them.”

”Unfortunately, I am sure that such a thing won’t go on well. With those sharp eyes of theirs, I wouldn’t be able to deceive them.”

”In fact, I won’t be able to hide my plan from them,” he said in frustration. ”The luxury of being mysterious is not something I can afford in the presence of Dao Lords. What a drag.

But his eyes became bright and full of hope as he said, ”Fortunately, I won’t be so helpless anymore. I will become a Dao Lord soon. At that time, I will be able to play on the same level with them.”

”It is only a matter of time before I can talk to them face to face. It will be a nice change from being bombarded with secret messages whenever they want.”

”To achieve this, I won’t use the Time Pathway anymore. I’ll use something with more luck. Unfortunately, the Luck Pathway doesn’t have many tools for me to use. This leaves me with only one choice in the matter.”

He chose to use the Time Pathway in the previous timeline to see how the other Dao Lords would react and to see what they could do to deal with him. After witnessing how the Formation Pathway had been able to ban time travel using the Essence of Rules, he had learned that the Time Pathway is not invisible.

The entire experience had been a lesson in teaching him how Time Travelers could have fallen despite possessing one of the most powerful Cosmic Daos one could have. The most important lesson he learned is that raw power is king.

He has seen that without a doubt, the quality of the Cosmic Dao had an impact on the total output of raw power. But once a Grand Dao or Major Dao gets the advantage in raw power, the only thing the Cosmic Dao can do is accept defeat.

This is why one of his major goals for this pathway is to find ways to increase his raw power as much as possible before advancing to rank 10. That way, he will be much stronger as a Dao Lord and will be able to handle more unexpected things that might happen during the process of advancement and after advancing.

He was thinking about this and more when he reached the end of the road in the River of Time.

When he realized where he was, he said, ”Here already? I almost didn’t notice.”

Of course he noticed that he was reaching the limit. He hadn’t stopped earlier because he wanted to create as much distance in time as possible between him and the danger in the future.

He couldn’t sense the danger anymore, but he thought it was prudent to expect the worst. Seeing that time traveling wasn’t as invincible as it should be, he didn’t want to leave room for any accidents.

”Time to go,” he said as he dropped out of the River of Time.

The world blurred around him for a brief period without him being able to tell up from down. Then, all of a sudden, he was grounded with a body, and everything snapped into focus.

As soon as he fused with his body in the past, he began to break through to rank 9. This process needed more than the measly 40-odd years he possessed, so he activated the Devouring Ability.

With the activation of the Devouring Ability, a black force field flashed around his body. Then the black force erupted out of his body into the surroundings. It rushed out, submerging everything around him like water from an ocean flooding its shore.

As the black force invaded the world around him, everything it touched was broken down into its base elements. Then the energy of potential that was used to build lifespan was extracted from the base elements.

Next, the element of instructions used to make law fragments was also extracted. The rest of the components were discarded before the black force field moved on to find new things to deconstruct.

Everything the black force field touched, including living things, was deconstructed. In fact, living things were the preferred target for deconstruction.

While the black force field was devouring everything around him, it was also feeding the extracted lifespan back to him. It was like the roots of a tree feeding extracted water and minerals to the tree trunk for the development of the tree.

Loki was that tree, and like a healthy tree, he was growing nicely. At this point, he was used to the fire of his Divine Spark burning his body and reshaping it. In fact, the whole experience was pleasurable.

However, he didn’t let himself get lost in the pleasure just yet. He made sure to put a mark on Slav and seal the young master.

He also made sure not to get carried away with the destruction and preserved the sect grounds from violent ministrations of the black forcefield.

In this timeline, he planned to stay low as much as possible. Of course, he was going to do some things that would draw attention, but he didn’t plan to make Dao Lords appear until he had to.

Because of this, he didn’t waste any more time than necessary. As soon as his body was done reconstructing and he had stably advanced to rank 9, he put Slav away into his Cave Heaven. Then he took off into the second dimension.

Upon entering the second dimension, he rose to the second heaven. As for what he planned to do there, according to the divine beings who would be chasing him now, he was going to be hunted.

On the way to the second heaven, he activated the Power Identification Ability and used it to check the state of his existence.