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Well, this is just about exactly what it says on the tin. I've finally mustered up the energy to write a full-length review of what's a plausible contender for my Favourite Novel Ever, Reverend Insanity. I'd reproduce it here too, but it's a better reading experience on Substack (let's ignore the shameless self-promotion, and the fact that I can't be arsed to re-do the markdown tags)
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Notes -
Yeah. I mean, it's possible that after achieving immortality and becoming the most powerful being anywhere ever, this guy will then kick back and devote the rest of eternity to drinking tea, writing poetry, and having pleasant salons to discuss literary and philosophical topics... but I wouldn't bet the house on it. Particularly if everyone else can now see that holy crap, it is indeed possible to achieve immortality, you just need to be a total asshole about it. A lot of wannabe gunslingers coming after him is the least bad outcome, because can you have more than one "most powerful being anywhere ever"? Won't they all strive to defeat each other to be the cock of the walk? Can people who have spent centuries scheming, plotting, and doing whatever it takes to get to that state really all live in harmony and peace alongside the knowledge that there are two/five/twenty others like them out there, all wanting to rule the world (or whatever)?
In the novel, in the past 3 million years, there were ten "invincible" rank 9 Venerables. During their reign, before they died of old age, literally nobody was able to contest their dominance or pose a threat. There's more to the story, which I can't discuss without massive spoilers.
If FY did achieve both becoming the strongest, and true immortality, then there's strong precedent that he could smack down any upstarts.
Being the one single strongest person might well content him, or he might find it boring after all that now he's achieved ultimate power and there's no place higher to go.
Were the Venerables vulnerable to one another, or was there only one at a time? If he proves that it is possible to become immortal, then that is a strong incentive for others who reach the highest ranks to keep on trying to reach that rank as well, and if there are two Immortals, can they co-exist? Will they be able to damage each other, or would that be impossible?
But that would be a whole other novel, I imagine.
I can't fully answer that question without major spoilers! In fact, this admission of my inability to do so itself constitutes a spoiler, but what else can I do since you asked?
To keep it as spoiler free as possible, each Venerable, while they were alive, were the only ones of their kind. They didn't overlap, and while dominant, prevented anyone else from having any hope of rising up. This has a proper mechanical explanation too, and not just for want of trying.
That's good, and that is the way it has to be for the world to work. So if our friend becomes the ultimate immortal, he can make sure there are no other wannabe ultimate immortals to challenge him, which leaves him as the sole dominant power. I do think he'd find it rather boring after a few centuries/millennia, unless he does have some master plan in mind for what he's going to do (and he might well decide he's going to remake the world or something equally catastrophic for everyone else).
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There was only one Venerable at a time, from what I recall. In addition to just how plain hard it is to become one, enough that their reigns were nowhere near consecutive (they collectively were only alive for no more than 10% of total known history), the first thing a Venerable would likely be doing at any given moment is making sure no one else is strong enough to become one.
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