There was something particularly eerie about Grin’s gaze.
His actual face was quite delicate, almost cut, in a way. It was hard to tell if he was a grown man or a 14-year-old youth, but he had a liveliness to him that couldn’t be denied.
Large hazel eyes, an almost innocent school-boy cut for his brown hair, and a peculiar sort of curiosity for everything he looked at.
However, no matter how disarming his appearance, it couldn’t be denied that he was still holding a bloody knife in his hand.
“You are?” Grin broke the silence.
Morgan took a breath and steadied himself.
“The snake will be under my protection from now on.”
He spoke strongly and assertively. Something about Grin made him feel as though he was having a staring contest with a wild beast. In such a situation, didn’t they always say to make yourself look big?
Grin blinked and looked back at the Basilisk King as though he was feeling sad about something.
Then, he simply slipped away without a single word.
However, it was precisely because he didn’t say anything that Morgan felt an eerie chill creep up his spine. This person was far too unpredictable.
He didn’t know what compelled him, but he rushed to the tent flaps and peeked out, only to find that only the soldier that had escorted him here was present, while Grin was nowhere to be seen.
A deep frown marred Morgan’s brows, an unsettling feeling welling up in his chest. However, he had no choice but to let it go. Even if he wanted to act… what could he do with his current strength?
…
General Song sat in silence after dismissing his tacticians. For now, Quicktime Event had become a battle of attrition, and with the other leader having vanished, there was nothing to worry about for the time being.
It should be an easy victory, and the only thing he had to guard against was a potential assassination plot. That man was too much of a variable, and it was hard to tell if he had such abilities or not.
“General Song, this situation…”
General Song waved a hand to stop the speaker.
The official was a woman, meticulously dressed in military garb that looked like thick cotton. A pair of glasses adorned her face, and she pressed what looked like a clipboard to her chest, but this so-called “clipboard” radiated an odd, inexplicable air.
“No need to speak, Darla. Since he’s chosen to act out, let him. If he’s telling the truth, good. If not, we can’t outsmart him anyway. It’s best to let Grin handle it.”
“You sent Grin ahead of time on purpose,” Darla said more confirming than asking.
“I did no such thing,” General Song replied indifferently.
Darla didn’t reply either, but she had her answer.
General Song was a man who was well aware of his limits, and he was the scariest of the Celestial Republic’s Generals for that very reason.
His strength wasn’t his intelligence.
It was in knowing when and how to use the people around him.
**
Sylas’ prestige was too much. The weight of not only the Hero Points but his Merit was too much to bear.
Sylas still didn’t have a full understanding of what Merit was, but he realized that whatever category it fell into, it made his job far easier. At least when it came to system-designed tasks, events, and locations like this one, his prestige couldn’t be matched by quite literally anyone else.
He had been expecting at least some resistance, but the result went smoother than he could have ever expected. He barely had a verbal spar with the Dukes before they took a step back.
Nothing about his age, nothing about his unknown status, they didn’t even ask if he knew how to govern at all.
Now he was facing just one problem: as the City Lord he couldn’t leave the city. At least not outside of the context of Quicktime Event.
As for how he would handle that in the future, maybe only he was aware. As for right now, his thoughts weren’t focused on this at all. Instead, the first thing he did other than leaving the defenses of the city to the Generals was head right into the City Lord’s residence. As for his target, it was none other than the Nexus.
Not having a Nexus was a huge problem for Sylas. He couldn’t maximize his wealth or his resources. And unfortunately, for obvious but different reasons, he couldn’t use Cassarae’s or Lucius’.
But now… he had his own.
Any Sylphs had long since vanished, not being stupid enough to remain. They had either gone to the other two System Cities, or they chose to strike it out on their own, maybe even trying to target another System City.
Now that Sylas thought about it, he was making the assumption that most if not all System Cities were under their control. But in practice, that was maybe not the case.
After all, just because the two System Cities he had come across had them, didn’t mean they were all issues. Maybe he was just particularly unlucky.
‘Wow…’
It wasn’t often that Sylas had such thoughts, but when he entered the core of the City Lord’s residence, this was his true reaction.
It felt as though he had entered the reactor core of a nuclear power plant. The place was enormous.
There was a railing that lined the curvature of the walls and slowly spiraled down to the bottom, but it was hard to tell just how deep it was.
Down below, there was a deep well of water so clear that Sylas didn’t even know it was there at first glance, and maybe would have never been able to tell if not for the fact there was a slight blue glow coming from it.
Then hovering above the surface of the water was a cube. It was a City Stele, but far more elaborate than any Sylas had ever seen.
For some reason… he got the feeling that he was seeing something that he wasn’t supposed to see much too early…
