Looking at the figure before him, the face hidden beneath a hood and those glowing eyes shining in the shadows, Caleb immediately recognized him.
"Saijax."
The moment the man stepped into the room, Caleb understood what was going on. As for the story of this Grandmaster at Arms, Caleb only needed to fill in a few blanks to reach one conclusion, this guy was absurdly strong.
When most Icathians were being crushed without mercy by the Ascended, Saijax was already taking pride in killing infamous god-warriors. Yes, that was his own claim, but that was Shurima at its absolute peak. Later, in the final war against the Void, Shurima was the side that won.
Who would have the nerve, back when all the surrounding lands belonged to Shurima's allies, to pretend to be an Ascended and play god? It was true that Shurima had a great many Ascended at the time, but precisely because of that, verifying whether someone was truly Ascended would have been very simple.
So Caleb leaned toward believing that Jax really had killed a genuine Ascended. Of course, there had to be gaps between the Ascended as well. Otherwise, Aatrox, a man who had killed almost every kind of creature imaginable, would lose far too much face.
The second point was that after fighting the Void, especially after going deep into the Void, a person would undergo a significant change. For humans, merely witnessing that kind of power was already a transformation in itself.
For Ashe and Sejuani, two sisters who had known each other since childhood, they had even less interest now in fighting over ideology. For both of them, there were so many enemies beneath the world, and on this same plane, an empire called Shurima possessed the power to turn humans into Ascended.
They had seen Kai'Sa's strength before, but compared to when she fought the Void alongside them in the abyss, it was like night and day.
It was precisely because the two Warmothers understood the gap in strength that they did not bring up the matter of the oathfather the moment they saw Caleb. Even if they were now wearing full armor and empowered by PROJECT, Kai'Sa, who had stepped into the T2 combat level long ago, still was not someone they could challenge.
Once an Ascended was corrupted by the Void, they would gradually lose their nearly immortal body. And Icathia itself had been devoured by the Void outright.
Aside from the remnants Zilean had protected inside the tower, and those who had lived in remote borderlands, the ancestors of people like Kai'Sa, Icathia as a whole had basically been wiped clean.
Jax's later resistance against the Void had probably involved him going deep behind enemy lines alone, only to realize that the strength of one person was limited after all. So he had set out on the road to find allies.
"A pleasure to meet you."
Caleb did not dare underestimate Jax's combat power at all. Even now, with Youmuu's Wraithblade, if he got careless, the other man might really beat him to death with that lamp post.
Not only that, Caleb had carefully looked at Jax's fingers. He really did have only three, while he had many eyes.
Caleb's own guess was that Jax had probably encountered something inside the Void as well, and in the end, he had chosen the same path as Kai'Sa, coexistence with the Void.
"This is the ally I brought with me."
As Jax spoke, he shifted slightly to the side.
What entered Caleb's view was an incredibly powerful lion, wearing a necklace that could only be described as gorgeous. In his two mismatched eyes, there was nothing but wariness toward Caleb.
"Rengar. You came here for a hunt."
This guy's ability in a straight fight was actually average, so Caleb was not especially afraid of dealing with him. For the sake of winning over this beast, Caleb did not mind using a little carrot and stick.
He even stated the creature the other man wanted to hunt outright.
"Kha'Zix."
You just want to hunt down the guy who clawed your eye blind, don't you?
Caleb had researched the grudge between this pair quite a bit as well. But Rengar showing up in Ixtal was actually the designers' fault.
When the map changed between two generations, a problem appeared, Rengar, who had originally been near the Freljord, had to go to Ixtal because Icathia had been moved to the south.
So Caleb really did not have much interest in this guy, who was not that strong and did not even have much to sell in the Sentinels of Light storyline.
If they were talking about the homeland of the Vastaya, then Karma's power would actually help him much more. Even Kennen, the little rat from the Kinkou Order, would be better.
With Slicing Maelstrom, or even the mowing-down skills of the brothers Yone and Yasuo, in any case, one more person meant one more source of strength, and that was never wrong.
"Do you need me to teleport you to the Sun Disc?"
To Caleb, although Jax's years were long, he was still ultimately an old man. With a lifespan this long, simply keeping up with the times was already difficult enough.
That was even more true considering Piltover's progress over these years, which was actually built on developments after the Rune Wars, including even the founding of a massive power like Demacia.
"No need."
Jax still carried resentment toward Shurima. After all, Icathia's Mage King and the army he led had not only suffered a crushing defeat, their corpses had also been left to rot beneath the sun.
It was also because of this that Icathia had been repeatedly denied a place among the Ascended. For all Icathians, that was no small blow.
When the surrounding nations all gained access to that kind of high-end combat power, how was Icathia supposed to see itself?
But according to Azir, the people of Icathia were hungry for glory and far too eager for quick success.
Empress Setaka certainly was not some mediocre ruler. Otherwise, how could she have called upon Aatrox, who guarded the west, and resolved the endless disaster brought by the Void? She had even died on the battlefield in the end, which did not sound like something a reckless and willful ruler would do.
So when Icathia failed to secure a place among the Ascended, then turned around and released a power that did not belong to them, a power they could not even verify they could control, it was fair to say they had brought the consequences upon themselves.
Think about it. If you could not even defeat the Ascended, what right did you have to covet that other power?
It was not like the dawn of the world, when the Three Sisters still had both the will and the strength to seize power from another plane.
But even then, Serylda and Avarosa lost their voices and hearing. Lissandra, standing before two armies, had both eyes completely clawed blind by that giant bear.
Even the power of that era had been so wild and impossible to tame. All that could be said was that the Icathians had acted far too recklessly.
Of course, it was enough for Caleb to understand these truths himself. There was no need to deliberately explain them to Jax.
"Master, I still have a question."
Caleb remembered that in the previous version of Jax's story, because the organization called the League of Legends forbade him from using any weapon, he simply pulled up a streetlamp and beat everyone under heaven with it.
It was like Paul Bunyan using an entire pine tree as a club, the thing was basically just a huge, heavy support column.
So what was the story behind this lamp now?
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