Those words he couldn’t fully understand were like a ray of light piercing the endless darkness that had trapped Skyler for years.
For the first time, he saw a path he could actually walk. Without any hesitation, he stumbled out from behind the tree and shouted toward the middle-aged woman.
"How do I walk that path? Tell me!"
He clenched his fists.
"Please..."
The white-clad woman looked at him. Her students all frowned, demanding to know who Skyler was, only to be silenced by her.
The middle-aged woman stared at Skyler, her eyes filled with interest. She had felt his presence from the moment Skyler started following them. Also... he was a human.
"Are you sure you want that?"
Skyler’s eyes were resolute.
"I do. I don’t care if walking that path costs me my life. Because if I don’t walk it, death awaits me anyway. What’s the difference?"
She smiled and pointed toward his head.
"Then stop trying to create elemental crystals within your body. It will never be possible for someone like you. Instead, seek to comprehend the Divine Elements themselves. Once you truly grasp their essence, you will be able to wield them."
Her smile turned into a chuckle.
"But don’t blame me for what comes afterward, because I already warned you. The price of walking the path of Divine is far greater than most are willing to pay."
Skyler winced as the light flowing from her fingertips entered his forehead. In the next instant, a torrent of knowledge that did not belong to him suddenly flooded his mind, nearly overwhelming his consciousness.
The knowledge of the Divine Elements.
By the time he had fully absorbed all the knowledge, the woman and her students were long gone from the forest. Day had already given way to night, and countless twinkling stars glittered across the sky.
As he wiped the blood trickling from his nose and ears, Skyler hissed in pain, yet a bright smile still spread across his lips.
"That almost killed me. But I won’t forget this kindness. Even if she did it only out of amusement or pity, she still showed me a path forward... And that’s what matters."
Skyler left, and from that day onward, he devoted himself entirely to comprehending the Divine Elements. It took many years, yet he never admitted defeat. He struggled on, searching for even the faintest glimmer of light within an endless darkness blindly.
Eventually, he even left the bustling city behind, wandering in search of anything linked or related to the Divine Elements.
Years of persistence finally bore fruit.
The day he finally grasped his first Divine Element, he had laughed with unrestrained joy. It was also after that day that he found his body had stopped aging, as though the passage of time could no longer affect him.
All because the first element he grasped from nature was ’Time’. It became the first natural Divine Element Skyler ever wielded.
But as time passed, every time he wielded that element, his body—which had stopped aging yet stayed so weak—started cracking like glass, unable to withstand the burden.
Even so, with such a formidable element, one superior to most others, finally within his grasp, Skyler spent years mastering it, refining its use, and creating techniques of his own. Only then did he turn his attention to finding a way to enter the Battle Royal.
In the real world, his body had never been considered eligible to enter that place, so he couldn’t enter it here either. However, he knew that only by entering the Battle Royal could he hope to reach—or even set foot on the battlefield of the so-called Divine War.
During those long years of searching, he also accidentally awakened the dormant bloodline of the powerful Angel Race that he had inherited from his grandfather. He didn’t feel even the slightest hint of joy or happiness. Instead, there was only a faint sense of mock amusement in his heart.
But...
In the end, despite everything he had done, Skyler never found a way to enter the Battle Royal like everyone else, let alone reach the Divine War. However, before his body failed and he died, he discovered one final path. It was to forcefully enter the level that housed an artifact known as the Wheel of Time—a device capable of reversing time. It could give them another chance to clear the trial.
Fortunately, before he drew his last breath, he reached the Wheel of Time. Fortunately.
He could only hope it worked... And that was how his second life came to an end.
A life he never wanted to repeat.
No one could have understood the relief Skyler felt when he opened his eyes once more in the same place where his second life had begun—the place where, in his first life, his mother had slapped him and left.
In his third life, Skyler possessed something he had never had before.
Experience, and knowledge of the Divine Element he had grasped in his second life.
He was no longer the helpless boy who could do nothing but watch events unfold.
Skyler even awakened the dormant Angel Race he had inherited from his grandfather far earlier than he had in his last life. Only after that did he seek out Max once again.
Although he still couldn’t enter the Battle Royal because his body wasn’t eligible, he used everything he knew from his previous life to help them. He ensured they avoided every danger he remembered in the outside world, allowing them to focus on the Battle Royal and grow stronger so they could clear the trial and safely return to the real world.
The years passed as he watched them climb the Battle Royal and clear its levels one after another. Even though Jenny and many others on Max’s team still looked at him with scorn, Skyler now possessed the power of a Divine Element. Thus, no one dared to openly treat him with contempt.
With everything going smoothly and little left for him to do, Skyler couldn’t shake the uneasiness in his heart. One question kept lingering in his mind: How had they all died the first time... when he hadn’t been there?
No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t find an answer. So, he devoted himself to finding ways to strengthen his physique and grasp more Divine Elements.
The answer finally came on the day Max and his team cleared the 51st level of the Battle Royal, and Max absorbed a Divine Treasure, ascending to the Divine Rank.
It wasn’t the Battle Royal that had killed them. It was the calamity that suddenly descended upon Eldoria after someone from their planet reached the divine rank.