Gavren’s expression flickered when he saw Sylas’ action before it returned to normal. But this was still all the confirmation Sylas needed to know what was going on.
The spear of Ragnar’s right-hand man shot forward and suddenly multiplied, forming a net that made it look like he was trying to hold Sylas back.
With a sudden acceleration, Sylas’ pauldrons flared with life. His mirror image vanished, its services no longer necessary. He freed up more aspects of his mind, and his Will pressed down onto Gavren, shredding the illusion of his spears apart.
Sylas’ body swayed oddly, and an undetectable burst of ice appeared beneath his feet, sending him flashing to the side in a way that shouldn’t have been possible.
Gavren didn’t have the time to understand how Sylas could both be dodging and still accelerating at the same time. He tried to pull his spear back to defend, this time a light of panic flickering in his eyes, but Sylas’ fist was too fast.
BANG!
Gavren’s armor practically deformed as he felt his liver almost fly up and out of his throat. His entire body shut down, and he barely registered his spear being ripped out of his hands.
A wave of ash filled the air, only to be blown right into his eyes.
Gavren squinted for the last time in his life. He completely missed the follow-up elbow that drove right into his head.
The Constitution his armor gave him was surely tough. But with Sylas’ Muay Thai comprehension increasing by the day, a single elbow or knee strike already had no less than a 60% boost that his fists carried.
His nose was driven into his skull, and his frontal cortex began to be riddled with the fragments of his own bones.
Before he could even sway to the ground, Sylas had bolted by him, his tail swinging out once and sending his corpse spiraling toward half of the oncoming Ravenclaws.
Tail Whip.
The attack didn’t slow Sylas down in the slightest. His body was like a phantom, weaving in and out of the crowd of warriors with an unconscious speed and an effortless control over his body.
He felt like he could see all things, and his body reacted like a well-oiled machine.
Even if he was going to hop right into a trap… that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t make sure to make them suffer a great deal for it.
His body leapt up and landed on a dilapidated building.
A rain of arrows came at him from what seemed like all sides. In the chaos, it would certainly be easy for a person to mistake it for such. But with his visualization, Sylas practically had a bird’s-eye view of everything.
He could see that the arrows formed a very subtle funnel, giving him just one path that arched toward the portal.
In the not too far-off distance, the portal was no longer nearly as controlled. It looked like a wildly fluctuating amoeba. Tentacles of Aether extended out from it, sometimes randomly flinging items from inside of it, or sometimes randomly capturing those on the outside to be brought back to Earth.
It was disordered and seemed precisely like the kind of thing one would want to avoid at all costs. If the portal only caught part of your body, it was possible even to lose entire limbs to the violent teleportation process.
It was toward this portal that Ragnar was carried before he and his people escaped. However, Sylas, who they likely thought would follow after in the same direction, had other plans.
His body flickered, and he seemed to be caught off guard by one of the tentacles of the portal before his body was swallowed up.
…
Britt and Germaine Ravenclaw carried Ragnar to the other side, their gazes firm.
The region of the portal they had chosen to enter was one of the most stable and predictable. If they entered anywhere else, it was likely that things would spin out of their control.
As expected, though they were flung a few meters off course, it was manageable.
The other side of the portal was on the Africor Continent, and it was quite a dangerous region, known for its poisonous beasts. Since Ragnar had chosen to go all-in on his poison attributes, it was the perfect path for him.
There was a hot and humid air hanging. It said that hot air rose, but if that was the case, then it could only be said that the so-called “cool” air of this continent was enough to fry an egg on a regular stone.
The region was a mix of sand and sparse trees that extended as far as the eye could see. It seemed quite barren, but only to the untrained eye. In reality, the space was filled with pitfalls and, most importantly…
“There are still a couple of minutes left until the timer is up,” Britt said through gritted teeth.
“We can hold on that long. We won’t be the ones doing the distracting either.”
They rushed forward, their steps following a very particular pattern. If one looked closely, it didn’t seem like the sand they landed on compressed nearly as much as it should.
Ragnar’s eyes opened slowly to find that he was being jostled around. The pain made him grit his teeth and let out a hiss, but he forced himself to hold it together.
There was a sinister light flashing within his gaze as the black marbles retreated and his eyes returned to normal. However, he didn’t say a word, nor did he try to direct Britt and Germaine.
Murderous impulses pulsed all around him.
It was do or die now.
The trio stopped near the base of a tree and frowned when they didn’t notice Sylas. The plan was to let him see where they vanished to.
“Enter,” Ragnar said coldly.
Britt and Germaine hesitated slightly, but in the end, they nodded. If they just stood here like fools and only disappeared after Sylas came, it would make it all the more obvious that there was a trap laid here.
With a stomp, they fell through the sand and vanished.
What they didn’t know was that Sylas had already appeared on this side, and his visualization was shocked by the underground network beneath his feet.
