Lucius gave Sylas a deep look. He was already aware that he had been out-maneuvered. There was no getting out of this. The Quest was too important to him. So…
He smiled.
“I’m glad that we have been able to come to an understanding, and equally as glad that you managed to make it back from such a difficult Dungeon. We can iron out the details later.”
Lucius looked over the wall and toward those manning the gates.
“Open up the gates. Be prepared for battle.”
The subtle words seemed to be a signal to everyone else. This, of course, wasn’t a green light to attack Sylas, but rather implied that he was letting things go because they were in a precarious situation and needed to be a single unit without internal strife.
It wasn’t long before Sylas was escorted into Lucius’ city, and though he wasn’t given any official positions just yet, judging by his accommodations, it was less because Lucius wouldn’t and more that it just wasn’t the right time.
His new living abode was simple, but it had the first instance of running water that Sylas had seen outside of System Cities on the Aether Plane, and it was almost too big for just a single person, being over 500 square feet.
Sylas had many things he wanted to do, but he chose to wait. And as expected, it wasn’t long before he was escorted to see Lucius once more. This time… in a much more private setting.
The meeting was too surface-level to bother to recount. Lucius spent much of the time hedging and beating around the bush, but Sylas gave nothing away at all.
However, the two of them weren’t naive men. They realized that this situation hardly made them allies, and it was likely that the both of them would be watching their backs from now on.
Right now, Sylas seemed to have Lucius by the balls, but any intelligent person would see that it was far more even than it seemed… that was because Lucius’ pull in the real Grimblade family was much greater than anything Sylas could manage. In fact, Sylas had no presence in the real Grimblade family at all.
Because of this, Sylas had no idea how much Lucius’ word could impact his family. While he held Lucius’ future in his hands, Lucius likewise had cards that were difficult for him to see through.
Who knew what kind of improvement Lucius had made in this time?
Sylas had to find a way to get in touch with a Nexus soon, because that was the only way he could both claim his accumulated rewards and check to see the current state of the world.
He would just have to hope for now that Cassarae could hold out on her own.
That said… the meeting wasn’t entirely fruitless.
…
Sylas returned to his living abode and began preparing to set out once again. It was already time to complete the next leg of the Multi Quest, but Sylas had insisted on having a method of contacting his family first.
Now he had one.
That was the good news.
The bad news was that Lucius would obviously place limiters. This device could only be used to connect with one other person’s system and it was permanent. In addition, it cost a large number of Aether Stones to use properly.
For just a one-minute call, it required ten Aether Stones. And to make matters worse, this amount couldn’t be replaced with Aether. It specifically required the refined state of Aether Stones to work unlike his Transmutation Beast Skin.
Sylas wasn’t sure what the difference was, and he didn’t want to particularly find the time to find out. Right now, it wasn’t at the top of his priority list.
He fiddled around with the device in his hands a bit, realizing that it was a bit more complicated than he thought.
For example, how would he pick out the system he wanted to connect to in a sea of people? This seemed to be a bit of a double-edged sword. Either he would fail to contact his family and that would be a positive for Lucius, not to mention an extra card. Or he would succeed and expose more of his strengths.
Right now though…
He didn’t care because he simply didn’t fear Lucius.
Although he hadn’t scanned Lucius’ stats… he felt next to no pressure standing before him, and he trusted his Will.
Once Sylas started using Rune Soul, the process was even easier than expected. All he had to do was sort by name.
The good thing about the system having everybody’s name was that it likewise documented it all. On top of that, Grimblade was a unique family name tied to their Genes, making it so that there were only a few thousand people in the world with this name.
‘So many Grimblades, huh… I guess their reserves run deeper than I even previously assumed…’
Soon, Sylas found the names of his family and double-checked that there was no one else who shared the same name. After some further thought, although it was a bit silly, he chose to connect with his little sister first.
His thought process was simple: she was probably the last person Lucius thought he would use this opportunity on… and Lucius also had no idea how smart his little sister was either.
She was far less disciplined than himself, but Sylas had a feeling that his little sister’s raw IQ might be higher than his own.
Unfortunately, the little munchkin took the world even less seriously than her elder brother did.
Soon, there was a flicker and an image formed in Sylas’ eyes. Much like his notification pop-ups, he was fairly sure that he was the only one that could see it. In fact, he should be the only one that could hear it too.
“Sylas?” Elara’s little face blinked in surprise and then her eyes lit up. “Sylas!”
