There were more than just one or two paths from abyss lord level to Abyss Prince Level.
In fact.
There were quite a few paths to take!
But while those paths were open, whether anyone could actually reach the end was another matter. This was the difference between theory and reality...
On the whole, whether it was the path that counterpart intended to take, unifying all his counterparts.
Or the other path Orsaga himself wanted to take.
Each had its own advantages and disadvantages.
But.
Regardless, all those paths shared one problem.
The chances of success were incredibly slim!
The probability was practically nonexistent!
Countless times slimmer than the chances of advancing from great demon level to abyss lord level.
Take the path of unifying all one's counterparts to advance, for example.
The hardest part was not finding a particular counterpart and fighting him to the death.
It was figuring out how to eliminate every last counterpart.
The number of counterparts would keep increasing as the Multiverse expanded. That was a basic fact.
And their numbers grew far faster than an abyss lord could extend his own influence.
Much of the time.
There was no need to consider the entire Multiverse, or even a particular Time and Space Plane. A single plane, or even a single world, could contain billions upon billions of counterparts walking different paths...
As a direct result, for many, even unifying all the counterparts within their local region was already an immense undertaking far beyond their reach!
Let alone seeing beyond the confines of their plane and looking farther afield.
On top of sheer numbers, the flow of time varied wildly across the different regions of the Multiverse. That made the rate of progress of counterparts in each region relatively unpredictable. In the blink of an