Chapter 862: The Future Chosen by Providence
[Limiter (Unbound): Authority over the unbound. Your core baseline attributes cannot be suppressed or constrained by any ability. Depending on current active attributes, grants scalable multipliers (Current: Baseline 2x multiplier).]
(When abilities such as Kaio-Ken are engaged, altering baseline statistics, the Limiter's scaling increases in synchronized proportion.)
Listening to Amatsu's words, Kaito Shirogane pulled his focus away from the system interface. The yield from the unsealed Limiter was undeniably more formidable than before, yet it remained miles away from Saitama's unshakeable omnipotence.
Kaito understood why: Saitama's supremacy stemmed from a Vessel that had expanded to cosmic absurdity, whereas his own vessel had not yet reached that threshold.
Among Reincarnators, Kaito stood at the absolute zenith. Against rule-breaking plot entities, however, that foundation remained insufficient.
Stacking every trump card he possessed still failed to truly shake the likes of Saitama or Son Goku.
"And just what purpose does this so-called 'King of Men' serve?"
Kaito divided his attention effortlessly. He had absorbed everything Amatsu laid out earlier.
It was the usual doctrine peddled by the destiny branch: every choice branched into a divergent future. For instance, whether Kaito chose to stand up right now or remain seated birthed twin futures.
If he stood, the direction of his first stride would branch into dozens more.
Worldlines were woven in this exact manner: countless choices executed by countless individuals, tangling into an intricate, blinding web that ordinary minds could never trace.
Yet across those infinite branches, select anomalies cast massive shadows, leaving indelible marks across countless timelines.
Their conceptual weight upon the cosmos was simply heavier than that of ordinary men.
They were pivotal anomalies holding the authority to dictate the trajectory of a world.
From that theoretical foundation arose beings blessed with specialized destinies across the causal plane—figures gifted with extraordinary innate talents who would invariably rise to prominence under almost any condition.
In Amatsu's framework, the obscure, newly initiated Reincarnator, Dongjin, was precisely an anomaly of that caliber.
And his mantle was far from ordinary: the destiny known as the King of Men indicated that, like a destined protagonist, he would inevitably ascend across countless branches to become the supreme vanguard of the mortal plane, leading humanity to war and survive against the infinite dimensions.
A mortal endowed with monstrous talent and astronomical luck.
The King of Rats had clearly foreseen this, spending considerable effort to locate and recruit him, successfully shepherding him into the Infinite Dimensional Space during the previous cycle.
Now, the boy was steadily walking that prescribed path.
Furthermore, Amatsu considered Yoko Ekaterina to be another anomaly bearing the destiny of the King of Men—and an even more favored candidate. Her reasoning: Ryo, the King of Miracles, had intentionally chosen Yoko while completely ignoring Dongjin.
This led Amatsu to deduce that among the terminal horizons witnessed by the Supreme Three Kings, the timelines steered by Dongjin yielded disastrous ends.
Thus, the idealistic Ryo had abandoned him, seeking out a more capable New King of Men who might genuinely alter the final outcome.
Hence her designation of Dongjin as the Old King.
Kaito had never harbored much warmth toward destiny doctrines. He believed in neither fate nor preordained paths—whether his own or another's—let alone scripted worldlines.
His gaze settled on Amatsu. Within her irises spun a distinct, radiant golden halo; she had likely crossed the threshold into an authentic Empyrean, acquiring a specialized divine lineage.
"And in those worldlines of yours... what role do I play, Miss Amatsu?"
Kaito spoke with an easy smile, yet behind Amatsu, Wushang and Wuxin tensed on pure instinct.
Wuxin's senses had sharpened drastically since his Heart's Radiance began to manifest.
If he didn't actively strain his spiritual perception, he couldn't even detect Lord Mercenary Tao's presence, despite the man floating directly in the air before Miss Amatsu.
Golden Ki wrapped his frame, yet not a stray shred of energy leaked into the room.
The moment Wuxin focused his attention on Kaito, a crushing sense of biological helplessness seized his limbs, screaming at him to flee.
Wushang could not even register that level of dread; he braced his frame purely because intellectual discipline told him to. His senses were entirely blind to Kaito's depths.
Amatsu remained silent for a heartbeat before replying: "Across those branches, you do not exist, Lord Mercenary Tao."
Amatsu was far more composed than her escorts. She knew Kaito had long outgrown mindless butchery; rather, their current echelon had lost the capacity to ignite his predatory interest.
Like an apex tiger whose palate had grown accustomed to colossal beasts, he no longer saw the insects crawling beneath his paws.
Amatsu met those pitch-black, bottomless eyes, speaking with measured calm.
In her eyes, Kaito Shirogane's anomaly far eclipsed both Dongjin and Yoko Ekaterina.
He was an entity who seemed to have materialized out of thin air, shifting his parameters with violent unpredictability every cycle.
Across virtually every projected timeline, Mercenary Tao should have perished long ago.
The chains of Destined Death should have wrapped around his throat multiple times over.
Yet he remained standing, alive and thriving.
Originally, he should have died in the B711 world. He held a future bound to Fatalism, scripted to wage a ruinous war against an awakened Shigeo Kageyama, shattering the world only to be struck down by an arriving Saitama.
Yet Kaito survived, and Destined Death shattered instead.
Later, he should have perished in the Little Garden, facing a convergence of Destined Death so absolute that even Reincarnators of the Supreme Three Kings' caliber struggled to bypass it.
Amatsu had even prepared to cut her losses and shift her allegiance entirely to Yoko Ekaterina.
Yet Kaito returned alive once more, while Ryo, the King of Miracles, failed to escape the crucible, meeting his end in that realm.
Kaito repeatedly shattered Destined Death, bending worldlines to his will. That violent defiance had only deepened Amatsu's conviction.
If every foreseeable outcome led to ruin, betting on a branch whose terminus was completely invisible was the only rational gamble.
Thus, when the King of Destiny and the King of Souls intervened simultaneously in the Old King's awakening, she bypassed both and sought out Kaito.
She was granting Kaito the leverage to take his seat as a player at the board, rather than remaining an unhinged, runaway piece upon it.
Hearing her answer, Kaito merely gave a dismissive smirk, tapping his knuckles against empty air.
"If this Dongjin is so indispensable, why didn't those two ancients intervene in person?"
While the Paradise boasted a formidable roster—housing two Sovereign Monarchs and four or five top-tier combatants—if one of the Supreme Three Kings truly moved in person, Kaito knew neither Qiqi nor Shigure could hope to match them.
Amatsu shook her head.
"Both harbor constraints that forbid direct intervention."
"Across the futures I have parsed, records of either taking the field directly are practically nonexistent. Of course, it is equally possible those specific branches were pruned from reality."
"However, I lean toward the hypothesis that both suffer structural defects, barring them from acting openly in the mortal realm as Ryo once did."
"The King of Destiny appears to have splintered his existence into numerous fragments, causing a severe drop in operational tier. Therefore—"
Kaito recalled his skirmish in the Western Hemisphere, where he had casually obliterated an avatar of the King of Rats under the Kaio-Ken.
Yet that old creature's toolset was deeply troublesome: spacetime manipulation paired with destiny authorities made him the textbook definition of an elusive target.
Glancing at his own Lock of Destiny, a faint smile touched Kaito's lips. He could not verify whether that link was an intentional vulnerability left by the King of Rats.
Yet given the opening, he would exploit it without hesitation. The moment the entity crossed into his perimeter, Kaito would butcher him without second thought.
Avatars or spacetime variants, it made no difference; crushing them was merely a casual flick of the wrist.
"He is no match for me."
Kaito stated with flat certainty. Wuxin, Wushang, and the newly returned Li Qingzi and Dead of Night froze. They had heard whispers regarding the Supreme Three Kings, yet none truly comprehended the chasm separating those entities from ordinary Sovereigns.
Judging by available telemetry, that gulf was astronomical.
Yet Mercenary Tao declared that the King of Destiny could not rival him. Kaito never indulged in empty bravado, meaning:
Stripped of his peak tier, the King of Destiny was genuinely incapable of matching him!
At least, not within the physical world.
Li Qingzi's chest tightened, a spark of ambition flaring in her eyes.
Amatsu nodded, confirming the deduction; she shared the assessment that the King of Destiny held little hope of besting Kaito or Yoko in reality.
"As for the King of Souls—whom we shall provisionally refer to as Sosuke Aizen—his true identity remains obscured even to my sight," Amatsu continued.
"He is far more anomalous. I suspect he is not a mortal human like ourselves. He is likely... an entity far closer to the archetype of a Black King."
Her words widened Kaito's grin, his thoughts firing like high-voltage circuits. Viewed through that lens, countless disparate anomalies aligned into place.
If the man were merely a conventional Reincarnator, his historical footprint was far too sterile: virtually no top-tier operatives or Sovereigns had ever crossed paths with him in mission worlds, and records of his combat engagements were nonexistent.
He moved like a ghost.
Ryo, by contrast, had intervened across numerous mission theaters.
Among the Supreme Three Kings, the other two were profoundly bizarre.
An entity closer to a Black King...
Or perhaps: an entity holding foundational ties to the very genesis of the Black Kings.
Kaito recalled the mass cognitive interference documented in intelligence regarding the Black Kings—a method that reeked of Aizen's signature handiwork.
Amatsu kept the conversation from straying; data surrounding the Black Kings carried heavy metaphysical risks, details she was unwilling to expose to Kaito just yet.
Lowering her gaze, she concealed the tremor of dread provoked by memories of certain worldlines.
Mercenary Tao himself... might be an entity far closer to a Black King...
Yet regardless of Kaito's foundational nature, staring down an apocalyptic board devoid of hope, she had no alternative but to wager everything on this unknown variable.
Amatsu resolved to bury that specific future deep within her soul, subtly steering Kaito's choices away from that brink.
The vision of multiple Black Kings—with Kaito among their ranks—manifesting simultaneously across the mortal realm was a nightmare too horrifying to contemplate.
Hum~
Reality blurred as Gojo phased into the Black Tower, clutching two figures by their collars.
The defensive barriers here remained incomplete; while flight was strictly banned, direct spatial teleportation could bypass the perimeter.
Though given that this was Mercenary Tao's seat, few had the suicidal audacity to attempt it.
Dropping the two mortals, who were dry-heaving from the violent disorientation of long-range displacement, Gojo's form began to fade.
"Here you go~ This so-called Old King doesn't look like much to write home about~"
His airy voice brushed against Kaito's ear.
Dongjin's skull throbbed with vertigo, his vestibular system and sensory pathways heavily scrambled by the spatial transit.
He retched twice, fighting through the nausea to look up. Floating cross-legged in mid-air was a man in dark green, while across the room sat a golden-haired woman upon a brutalist obsidian throne.
Behind her, a tall woman wearing an eclipse mask leaned against the wall, flanked by two formidable Reincarnators.
Where is this...?
"M-M-Mercenary Tao?!"
Unlike Dongjin, who had deliberately shielded himself from spatial intelligence, Ruoxue was deeply attuned to the Reincarnator hierarchy, recognizing the floating figure instantly.
The Monster King of the East: Mercenary Tao!
Whispers claimed he was overwhelmingly superior to any living Reincarnator, a monster whom even Yoko of the West might struggle to check.
Before him, Sovereign Monarchs served as mere speed bumps rather than legitimate adversaries.
An anomaly who had shattered the established power metrics of the Space, ascending to this terrifying height within a single cycle!
Ruoxue's heart hammered against her ribs, torn between paralyzing dread and manic thrill.
"Oh?"
"You... are an operative of notable utility."
Hearing Kaito speak, meeting those bottomless black eyes, Ruoxue felt an electric chill pierce straight through her brain. She shivered violently, realizing every layer of her existence had been laid bare in an instant.
Belated panic seized her, and she hurriedly bowed her head.
"My Lord..."
Dongjin frowned, recalling the intelligence briefings he had parsed moments ago: this Monster King was one of the twin sovereigns currently dividing dominion over the physical world.
"My Lord... was this Spiritual Calamity truly your doing?"
The blunt inquiry made Ruoxue's heart leap into her throat. Dongjin was genuinely acting like an idealistic protagonist from a novel:
Equally naive, and equally fearless.
"And what if it was? What if it wasn't?"
Kaito answered with cold detachment. Across his senses, he registered numerous spiritual entities manifesting throughout the borders of Burma.
Deep within his core, the Myriad Tribulations Yin-Spirit Underworld Physique stirred with ravenous hunger, the yellow springs churning with violent turbulence.
A visceral urge whispered through his marrow, urging him to unleash that authority:
Every last one of them... was food.