The two women and their teams only got the chance to catch a glimpse of Sylas before their expressions changed completely. This wasn’t because of Sylas’ appearance himself, but rather the fact that they could already feel the teleportation kick in.
This only meant one thing…
Vayu’s team was dead.
And the most likely culprit was Sylas himself.
Although there was a chance that Vayu and his people had died during the stair challenge… looking at Sylas right now, none of them would dare to guarantee such a thing.
…
Sylas vanished and when he reappeared, he was in a land of ice and snow. However, there was no opponent across from him.
The system detected this as well and Sylas was transported once again. His victory had been claimed and he earned a full 1000 points.
When Sylas’ vision cleared once more, he was standing before four doors. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the chance to choose this time.
He was last to appear, so between himself and the other two teams, Aerwyna would get to choose first, then Brisa, and only then would it be himself.
If he was lucky, in the time Aerwyna and Brisa spent fighting against one another in the team battle, he would get to recover. However, if he was unlucky…
A mere single minute later, Aerwyna and Brisa’s teams appeared, their conflict having already been settled.
Sylas didn’t react to this. He already expected as much.
If the two teams were equal, he could have hoped for a long, drawn-out battle. But, Aerwyna had clearly already asserted her dominance, so that made it easy for Brisa to give concessions.
The two were now vying for first and second place, and from their perspective, they couldn’t allow Sylas to have any time to rest.
He was clearly a danger if he could crush Vayu’s team, so they had to treat him as such. Looking down on him would only get them killed. The worse his condition, the better it would be for them.
Seeing Sylas still covered in blood and wheezing for breath, they knew they had made the right decision… especially when they felt the sharpness of his gaze. It felt to them that they were like a twin pair of green blades continuously piercing into their skin.
The two teams didn’t say a word, and as expected, Aerwyna moved forward to pick her door first.
What was a slight surprise was that she didn’t pick IV like one would have expected. It was the obvious choice, the door that had no opponent and would thus grant an easy win and a full slate of points in the upcoming team battle.
Instead… she chose III. Sylas’ door.
Once his door was chosen, Sylas obviously didn’t get a choice himself and he was immediately transported out. But, not before he gave Aerwyna a glance.
He could see through her thoughts. The more she dragged it out, the greater chance Sylas would have of reversing the situation. So… why not crush him as quickly as she could?
It was no wonder she got Brisa to agree so readily. She had essentially handed Brisa a free chance to catch up in points despite having far fewer people.
And, should things go optimally, Aerwyna would end up losing at least a few people at Sylas’ hand as well.
Aerwyna only had one goal… first place.
And Sylas was standing in the way of that.
…
Sylas appeared in a land of ice. There was a crystal clear sheen as far as the eye could see, and for the first time, there were no stairs. Instead… there was a cave entrance at the foot of a mountain.
The second Will challenge.
The first thing Sylas noticed, though, wasn’t all of this at all. It was the biting, frigid cold that seeped into his very bones.
As expected, he wasn’t so lucky. His entire dungeon had been tampered with, and judging by the fact the other two teams had escaped unscathed, clearly theirs was not.
If he wanted to make it to the end, he would have to deal with this suped-up Dungeon all the way through.
His jaw set and his gaze became colder.
Sylas couldn’t remember the last time he was angry. Or maybe it was that those memories had been mostly ignored or repressed by him. Even when people did wrong by him, he didn’t react much, because he knew that in the end, he would come out on top.
Olivia was one example of this. The Grimblades were another, though a far more serious example—even when they indirectly threatened his family, his reaction was almost… indifferent.
It was a stoicism he prided himself on. He didn’t believe that a disciplined person should mouth off or lose their temper at the drop of a hat, something that probably made his affection for Cassarae all the more amusing or ironic. In a lot of ways, she was everything that he was not.
Or maybe… she represented a part of him that he didn’t allow free.
Staring at this mountain, and feeling his limbs and sinew being eaten into by this flesh-rending cold, there was a small flame of anger hiding in the depths of his heart, and it was slowly growing.
Sylas didn’t put his anger into words because he knew if he thought about it his control just might spiral. At that point, he really wasn’t sure what he would do.
Instead, he put one foot forward after the next, feeling his mind wearing down as he battled against the cold with his Rune Soul, flicking away the dense Runes of Ice-Poison in a vain attempt to keep himself warm.
Then, he entered the cave.
It was well lit and just as crystalline as everything else. Ahead were the stairs he thought would be missing this time around, but he simply couldn’t see to the end of them.
There was just a long tunnel up to the top of the mountain… and he would have to walk it alone.
