As far as he was aware, Cassarae had moved away from home after high school. But her parents hadn’t. In fact, they often came over to Sylas’ home to spend time with his parents. Their families were close enough that he could call them aunt and uncle if he had a different personality. It was just that Cassarae had never come with them in all these years, and neither did Sylas go over when his parents went to visit.
Sylas hesitated for a moment, but he knew that he had already made a decision. The objective truth was that he was making this decision based on emotion, but that didn’t mean that there wouldn’t be other benefits.
This Portal was here, and yet there was no sign of the government. Much like Paradise, this was an open region without influence. And unlike Paradise… there was much greater potential here.
Paradise was a small city, but Alderon was more of a mid-sized city, though it was close to York City, a large cosmopolitan not much unlike Lone Star.
Veridian University was located in Alderon, and Alderon was a city that pretty much surrounded the existence of the top one university. It could be said that Alderon was more like a gated community. It’s just that it had grown so large because the university had its hands in too many pots.
While this city wasn’t nearly as large as Lone Star, it was a suburban utopia with a high concentration of elites. The prestige of the number one university in the world wasn’t something that could be explained in a few words.
But that was also why there was a nagging thought in the back of Sylas’ mind.
How could the government allow such an important place to be overrun?
It made sense in Paradise’s case because it was so insignificant in the grand scheme… but could they really be so short-handed here?
‘Let’s go.’
Sylas’ gaze became sharp and he adjusted himself to a peak. Before he understood if the government truly wasn’t here, he would have to check to see what was on the other side of his portal.
The Dire Wolf rushed forward and Sylas’ visualization remained sharp. He paid attention to every slight change as he placed the Basilisk King back into the Hibernation Realm.
Surprisingly, he got to the other side with great ease. The beasts didn’t mind him at all, and he felt himself relax slightly.
Technically speaking, there was no reason for the beasts to target him more than any one of the other beasts around him.
Usually, they reacted so poorly because he was entering their territory. This was a similar reason to why they would stop him from entering Dungeons as well. After all, they would settle down around the region and call it home.
In this case, they all had the same goal and he wasn’t obstructing any of them, so there was likewise no reason for them to target him in specific.
‘Now that I think about it, the aggressiveness of the beasts seems to all be artificially crafted…’
The Dire Wolf dove through the Portal and the sights on the other side made Sylas’ expression flicker.
There really was no government presence in this region as he thought, and as a result, what had once been a suburban paradise had been turned into…
Well, it couldn’t exactly be called a hell. Much of the damage was caused by Portals alone, not the beasts. They had yet to grow powerful enough to do things like plowing buildings down or cracking paved roads… Well, at least not most of them, and certainly not casually.
However, windows were knocked out, doors collapsed, beasts roamed in and out of homes as though they were the true owners and many more left into the distance, spreading out as though in search of something more.
Sylas was taken aback.
None of this made any sense. There didn’t even seem to be real signs of a struggle. It was as though the government had just directly given up on this place.
‘There has to be a reason for this.’
After having this thought, Sylas urged the Dire Wolf forward. Before he did anything, he had to check Cassarae’s family home.
It didn’t take long to reach there at all. The street sign had already been swallowed and spit out, so the portal wasn’t far from their region to begin with.
Sylas’ worry was that the Portal had already swallowed even their home up as well, but the street was a long one and the Portal wasn’t large enough just yet for things to get to that point. In fact, he made it to the house in just a few seconds.
Without entering, his visualization swept through first. On his way over here, he had done the same but he had yet to find any people. It was likely that the area had long been evacuated.
‘Maybe the government knew this would happen and decided to concentrate all their resources on York City. Lucius had been able to guess where a Portal would appear, so who is to say that the government can’t do the same? If they knew it would happen here in advance, then maybe they already vacated the region…’
After some thought, Sylas decided to enter the home. Maybe there were some clues that he could pick up on.
His visualization gave him a clear understanding of everything in a 30-minute range, but the issue was that it was like looking at a screen. No human could take in everything on a screen at once, more things were bound to be in the periphery.
Ultimately, he was still more used to scanning things with his own eyes.
He walked by the broken gate and entered the home. There were some beasts scurrying around, scavenging food from the refrigerator and building dens in the carpet. But these seemed to just be small creatures that didn’t bother with Sylas, and even outright avoided him.
Sylas didn’t find anything immediately, so after some hesitation, he went upstairs.
What he wanted to know was where he could find them.
Now that he knew that Cassarae’s parents weren’t necessarily in danger, he could relax. So his intentions had turned to another task.
If he could link up with Cassarae, that would make many things much easier. Then, they could start on the next phase of their plan.
But he needed to know where she was.
He didn’t find anything in her parents’ bedroom and was about to leave when his feet paused. His head turned toward a door with a “FUCK OFF” sign hanging on it.
Obviously, only Cassarae could have such a thing.
His hand reached forward and he was about to open the door when his gaze flickered.
His visualization caught something near its edges.
People.
