Enigma of Sin

As Kayn flew through the sky towards his next destination, Thor's temple, he felt that something was off. After halting his flight for a moment and paying attention to his surroundings more, he figured out what that feeling was, it was quiet.

Thor's temple was in the middle Europe and he was currently about halfway there from being up in Norway. When he flew over this area previously, there were explosions and the sounds of gunfire galore, but now there was just nothing.

As he was flying above the clouds, he decided to dip down through the storm clouds below him to check out the situation. He had been gone for over a year and a half, so it wouldn't be surprising if the front had moved one way or the other.

When he was below the cloud line, he shook his head with disappointment. There used to be a beautiful forested area here and now it was all scorched land and holes.

Kayn continued journeying through the battlefield and he eventually passed by two massive graveyards. It wasn't like they collected every body or body part that lay strewn on the ground, but they buried what they could from what Kayn noticed.

He shook the thoughts from his head as the situation on Earth wasn't his problem. Launching himself back above the clouds and to a comfortable speed, he continued to Thor's temple.

Once he arrived, he noticed a bunch of civilians gathered around the vicinity of the temple. He found it odd as they were keeping their distance from the temple, but still remaining close enough that their presence wasn't a coincidence.

There was a massive encampment surrounding the temple with thousands of people all surrounding this one building on the side of a mountain. Curiosity got the best of him, so he descended into the region and changed into some clothing he had purchased during his first couple weeks on Earth before meandering into the camp.

He kept his ears open to listen to the conversations happening around him, trying to figure out what was going on and why there were so many people surrounding this temple. However, the more he listened in on the conversation, the more annoyed he was becoming. It wasn't that he was annoyed the people were all around the temple, it was why.

Apparently about half a year ago, the war efforts escalated and larger bombs and missiles were starting to see use, including some nuclear warheads.

Millions perished with every nuclear strike, but a discovery was made during this time. Those who were within a 5 kilometer radius of an active Temple of the Gods, as they were now called, would be unaffected by the explosions.

However, specific temples had civilians keeping the start of their encampment at least half a kilometer away from the temple as some were deadly if one wandered too close. As a precautionary measure, the World Salvation Organization recommended that no matter the temple, a safety zone of one full kilometer should be kept from all temples.

Kayn was left with a moral dilemma now. While he didn't particularly care about the outcome of what happened on Earth, if he continued absorbing the temples, especially ones surrounded by citizens, it would probably lead to millions of deaths.

As much as Kayn wanted to get home, he didn't want the guilt hanging over his head for the rest of his life. Killing combatants and those with evil intentions was one thing, but indirectly causing the deaths of millions of innocent civilians was entirely different for him.

The thing was, he needed these temples in order to get home, so he couldn't just give up on them. He could take care of the ones with no one around them first, but the longer he took, the more temples that would be surrounded by refugees.

This left him with only one option that he wasn't particularly happy about. He would have to stop this war himself, but how to go about that was a complete mystery to him.

Kayn didn't know what sparked the war in the first place, so how was he supposed to resolve it? Was it a land grab? Resource grab? Someone hated someone else? Without figuring that out it would be hard to bring a resolution to Earth.

Though, he supposed that he could just go around eliminating all of the leaders of any aggressive countries and then threaten everyone with death if they didn't stop their bombardments so that the civilians could go back home.

He honestly couldn't be bothered to try stopping the entire war, he only needed them to keep the citizens and residential areas out of their fighting.

From what he overheard, a few of the countries had been launching warheads at the temples where people were residing nonstop in an attempt to kill the civilians of their opponents. Kayn decided to take care of these countries first.

There were also complaints of citizens being pushed out of the areas surrounding certain temples as they were strategic safety zones for the respective military of the area. Kayn was more than happy to drain those temples as the military was holding a tyrannical ownership of them and even kicking out their own citizens.

Thus, the next few months Kayn drained temple after temple at an astonishing speed as he was able to understand and absorb what they wanted to teach him much faster than he had before. Most of the knowledge going straight to his soul to be devoured by him later.

He avoided any temples with citizens currently taking refuge around them and only targeted the ones with military personnel holding them a safety zones. After so many temples began losing their safety net and militaries began being struck by attacks in what they thought was a safe area, the world began to become skeptical if they were truly safe around the temples.

None of the countries or alliances had a way to track him or which temple was being drained. Notably, the UNTA was at the biggest loss because any advantage they had by placing Roots throughout their allied nations were no longer able to be used due to Kayn destroying the Seed.

Regardless of the military's misfortunes, Kayn was elated with the progress he was making. The breadth of knowledge that he was gaining with each temple he went to was worth it by far, he couldn't wait to actually incorporate his new knowledge into his own daily life.

Not only did he learn more about the elements and what he could do with them, but he also learned various other useful things such as agriculture and farming, but sometimes less useful things like how to be more fertile. While a lot of the knowledge from these randomly selected temples didn't apply to his situation well, he was still learning a lot and expanding his horizons.

His core had only regressed to around the middle of the first stage though, even after about a dozen temples. It was evident that the closer he got to the start of the 1st stage, the longer it would take to get there.

He didn't mind though as he felt stronger than ever. He had a tiny mana capacity compared to what he had before, but he estimated that he would be able to last longer in a fight than before this whole thing started.

If he added on his ability to absorb mana while fighting, he would probably be able to go at full power for at least a day if not several at this point. Before, he probably could have lasted 12 or so hours at full power, minus using Wrath as that would drain him within minutes even now.

Wrath from what he could tell would always use his current knowledge and potential to the maximum output possible. With the advancements he made on Earth, he could only imagine how terrifying he would become if he released it as he did just before teleporting. Honestly, he was afraid it would be too much for him to handle and he would simply burn up in the aftermath.

Unfortunately, even with all the knowledge he had gained recently, how to get home was not among it. It seemed that the temple he was told about wasn't among the ones he visited. Putting together what he heard from Nyx about visiting her father and from Odin's hint, he assumed that it was probably the temple of Chaos that he needed to find.

However, no temple dedicated to Chaos had been uncovered yet and Kayn found that it was remarkably difficult to locate temples that were still hidden, even with his Mana Sense covering several kilometers above and below ground.

While Kayn was lost in his thoughts, he arrived at his next destination that was located in the middle of what used to be Italy, but was now just a war-stricken wasteland.

This temple was surrounded by military personnel as he expected, but oddly enough, he could tell that most of the people close to the temple were actually scientists and researchers as they resembled the ones who he interacted with at the first few temples after his arrival on Earth.

Kayn felt a little sad while looking at this temple. It was supposed to be dedicated to the Roman goddess of compassion, mercy, and gentleness; overall she represented kindness. Her name was Clementia, so he couldn't help but think of his deceased elder sister and her head rolling on the ground before his feet.

His anger and killing intent began to seep into his aura, but he quickly noticed and pulled his aura back into his body before it affected anyone in the surroundings.

Then in an amusing surprise, Kayn saw a familiar face among the crowd of researchers, it was Dr Elaine, the one who was quite the annoyance to him initially. Maybe now it was time to finally make contact with her and see what her true intentions were.