Enigma of Sin

The majority of the extra rooms in the Wanderer's Villa were unavailable to Kayn at the moment due to there being no atmospheric mana here, which included his mana gathering room where he usually meditated and circulated the Void Star technique.

He decided to instead use his bedroom since he didn't have access to the mana gathering room. But before he meditated, he wanted to take a relaxing bath. The water didn't function for the shower aspect of the wash room, so Kayn had to fill the tub with his own water mana, heating it up himself as well.

Once Kayn was immersed in the warm water, he closed his eyes with the intent to relax for the first time in several months.

Being stuck in meditation as he was in the temples wasn't actually very restful. While he felt refreshed after most of the temples, his mind was slowly but surely accumulating massive amounts of exhaustion. As soon as his eyelids shut, his mental exhaustion took over and he instantly fell asleep.

As his eyelids finally opened, he noticed that the water had gone cold. Thinking at least a few hours had passed, he drained the tub and washed himself with some soap and water mana before drying himself off and getting dressed in casual attire.

He looked at the watch and to his surprise he had slept for almost 40 hours, but at least now his mind felt free from stress and exhaustion. As tempted as he was to get back into temple exploration, he was determined to stick to his plan of taking a bit of a break first.

After the two weeks he would spend traveling, he promised himself that aside from sleeping on occasion, he would relentlessly pursue any options to get back home.

Kayn had even thought about just flying off into space, but quickly scrapped the idea. He was a living breathing organism that needed oxygen still. He could mostly survive on his mana sure, but what if there was no mana in space either? How could he replenish his own reserves?

Eventually he would run out of mana and the ability to create air for himself to breathe, so he would surely die. Not to mention, even back when he lived on Earth, they hadn't discovered any intelligent life as far as their scopes could see.

So, the worlds and realms he heard about most likely existed several galaxy clusters or even superclusters away. He would definitely die before he got that far as his traveling speed was not fast enough.

Pushing aside his thoughts of getting home, he focused on his own body and cast Void Eye. It was time to figure out what exactly had changed.

He knew about his blood becoming infused with mana now, so he essentially had two mana systems that circulated through his body. The temple of Zeus had also cleansed him of some impurities, but otherwise he had no clue what had changed since he hadn't sat down and examined himself until now.

His first focus was on his Demonic Dragon Heart. The part of it functioning as his mana core had indeed gone through changes aside from being able to store less mana. Now, there were clouds of six different colors surrounding a black abyss.

As Kayn progressed through the stages, he noticed that he was gaining another cloud color for each stage, but he had only reached the first part of the 4th stage so far, so his core should still only have the four colors.

However, maybe it just represented his affinities for the elements and the higher the affinity elemental colors would appear first? Now that all of his affinities had significantly increased, his core adapted to it.

Or there was also the possibility that he gained colors for his affinities as his mana's prowess increased and he had already reached the minimum standard for a 6th stage mage. Everything was only a conjecture at this point, but it was an interesting change and one that he was going to keep track of as he visited more temples.

Next, he examined his skeletal structure as he had a feeling something about it had been changed at Geb's temple, and he was right. His bones were several times denser and his marrow, where blood was created, was functioning far more efficiently, producing his new mana infused blood cells at incredible speeds.

Kayn couldn't help but think back to his fist fight with Maneet. What if he had the bone strength he does now when he fought him? With the power he would be able to use now without worrying about his bones breaking, surely he would just shattered Maneet's bones to pieces.

The only downside to the increased density was that, whatever the process was, ended up introducing several impurities that Kayn could visualize with his Void Eye spell. He had never actually been able to see impurities before and it had always been a mystery to him, but he definitely knew that he was correct in his assessment.

He lamented having gone to Zeus's temple first as he could have been cleansed of these, but maybe another lightning type or otherwise inheritance would be able to purify him again.

Kayn tried to push the impurities out himself, but nothing he tried worked, so he could only assume that he had to go through some kind of qualitative change or run across another cleansing inheritance.

It's not like the impurities bothered him, but from what he had gleamed about them so far, they acted like blockades to his full strength. He always felt that his mana dispersed through his body easier whenever he extruded some of the black substance. He assumed that it would be no different with his improved bones once they were cleaned out.

He didn't notice any changes to his muscles or other internal tissues, but his skin was changed in a similar fashion to his bones. It wasn't that it was thicker or anything of the sort, his skin cells were just much more durable.

The elasticity of his skin didn't change, and neither did his outward appearance or the black lines that ran along his arms, but even after trying to chop his own finger off with a rare grade knife, it didn't leave a mark on his skin. In fact, the knife broke in half!

He didn't try using the Akikani as he instinctively knew that he would be injured by it, but he also didn't want to risk damaging it just in case as it was his favorite weapon. Not only was it powerful, but it looked cool as well, why potentially ruin something he liked?

At this point, Kayn couldn't help but think that he was becoming almost too overpowered for his level. He knew that he already had several advantages and could be considered overpowered before, but now he was just a monster!

After learning everything that he could about himself, he packed up the Wanderer's Villa and took off into the skies using his wings with mana as a support. He didn't think just flying for two weeks would empty his mana reserves, but it was always better to be safe than sorry.

Moving a little slower was just fine with him as his flying speed was still faster than most commercial airplanes at the moment. If he used all he had, including the new ability to fly without his wings using wind mana, he could probably reach Mach 2 or maybe 3.

However, with his current speed that he would call leisurely, it would take him maybe three to four hours or so to reach the United States coast. Then it would take another few hours to travel to the west coast assuming he didn't run into trouble along the way.

Kayn realized that he forgot something crucial when he reached the east coast of the United States though, he forgot to change back into the Garments of the Shadow Phoenix and he wasn't using his concealment spells.

It didn't take long once he began crossing over land for missiles to start approaching him. When he noticed them, Kayn flicked his finger creating simple lightning bolts that caused the missiles to explode upon impact.

Kayn then paused in the air for a moment to stare into the distance where he could see a few fighter jets flying his way at incredible speeds, much faster than he remembered they could fly before he died.

Knowing they had only tracked him because he appeared as an unidentified flying object on their radars, he simply cloaked himself with the light element and absorbed his aura back into his body just in case.

If he was an overbearing individual like some mages, he would just blast them to smithereens, but he wasn't and he didn't want to kill these humans for no reason.

Kayn waited in the air to see if they could still see or track him somehow after he activated his spells, but just as he expected they flew straight by him in the direction he had been heading.

His appearance and subsequent disappearance on their radars was probably causing a storm at their center of operations right now, but he couldn't care less. Keeping his spells active he continued his flight to the west.

Kayn ended up spending an entire week exploring the United States and the tourist attractions it had. He mainly wanted to try various famous restaurants, so he was visiting several of them every day as he could eat quite a lot without feeling full.

Once he finished with the United States, he moved south through Mexico and then the various South American countries, ensuring that he visited the various points of interest, like Machu Picchu. He made sure to stop in each country to try out whatever food they called their specialty before moving on to the next. Rather than a scenery trip, this was more a food eating world tour for him.

He then flew down to Antarctica and explored it with his Mana Sense. He was surprised to find a temple still hidden deep underneath the land and ice, so he decided to pay it a visit to see who it was dedicated to. If the related element was interesting, maybe he would pause his food eating trip for bit.

Odd enough, Kayn discovered the temple was dedicated to Skadi, a goddess of winter and mountains. He had done some reading up on the various gods recently, so it wasn't exactly a surprise that he found her temple all the day down south as Skadi was known for her love of freedom and exploration.

Deciding that learning more about the element of ice was worth it, he ended up spending the next 15 days inside of the temple he dug to himself. It was exceedingly cold when he entered, but he eventually got used to the cold and when he exited it was only cold by normal people standards.

He didn't really gain much for his core or body, but his knowledge of the ice element and the various ways to utilize it improved quite a bit. Surprisingly, he even gained knowledge of how to utilize the ice element into bow skills. He didn't use the bow himself, but he was could pass on this knowledge to Kinzie and help her apply her own element to it.

Kayn continued his tour of the world flying north up to Africa, eventually ending up at Abu Dhabi where he visited an amusement park with one of the fastest roller coasters in the world.

To Kayn's disappointment, roller coasters and amusement park rides just weren't as fun as they used to be. The adrenaline rush and excitement he got from a good battle, especially when he took on the horde, was by far better than the rides. Plus, he could fly several times faster than the roller coaster, and freely at that, so it was quite lackluster.

He then ventured through Europe and Russia before going down through China and India into the Indonesian Islands. After these areas he traveled Australia and New Zealand, visiting a few scenic areas that were in a movie trilogy he loved as a teenager.

Lastly, he flew past Japan and visited South Korea to try various restaurants before he ended his tour thoroughly exploring the cuisine in Japan.

While none of the food provided nourishment for his body like rune beast meat or the mana saturated plants of Talgonoth would, it still tasted delicious. Taking a break to explore the various cultural foods of different places was 100% worth it in his mind, even he took more than two weeks to complete his trip.

Now that his adventure was finally completed, it was time to get back to work. The two temples he wanted to go to in Japan consisted of shrines for Takemikazuchi and Kagutsuchi. The closest of the two was Kagutsuchi's shrine, so he stopped there first.