Sylas stepped outside, curious about what sort of process this might be.
Part of Earth completing the Summoning was related to the Aether Plane successfully fusing into Earth. But it was hard to say exactly what this would mean.
The Woodland Territory was in a unique situation due to his interference. Not only were the Runes in the region rapidly healing, but without the tug from several different locations on the Aether Plane, a rubber banding effect had occurred.
The Woodland Territory had been trying to return to its appropriate coordinates for a long time now. When it was suddenly set free, it created a snap-back effect that caused its fusion to accelerate.
Sylas hadn’t deduced this. Instead, he asked the Madness Key directly because this was far above his paygrade. He still didn’t quite understand how things worked.
Why was an Aether Plane even necessary? Why not just directly evolve Earth itself? Where did the Aether Plane come from? Had it always been a part of Earth? Or was it added after the fact, maybe by the system?
All of these questions were apparently Taboos, though, so he could only speculate.
Hours later, the rumbling stopped and Sylas was surprised to find that not much had changed at all. Or, maybe everything had changed depending on your perspective.
The Aether Plane had just directly displaced the land of Earth. An abundance of Aether spilled forth, but this time, there was no beast tide effect.
‘This might be a good thing… the underground city shouldn’t have been destroyed I don’t think. It’s probably buried in the same location. The Madness Key claims that there should be efforts to preserve structures that are already there; it’s mostly the nature itself that’s been changed. So the Aether Stone mine should also be there.’
Sylas returned to the Nexus and found the bird’s eye view of a certain location.
As expected, in the original location, there were a horde of disoriented beasts, but they were already dispersing.
‘The odds that Ragnar is now in my Woodland Territory is also quite high.’
Sylas was still mulling over whether he should waste time cleaning up his territory or not.
As with basically every Territory of the Aether Plane, there were existences already here, various powers that had made it their own.
They were undoubtedly unhappy with his actions, understandably. But there also wasn’t much they could do to stop him.
Their movements were completely under his control thanks to his bird’s eye view of the entire region, his strength was on an untouchable level, and he had the ability to Curse them on top of that if it came to it.
On top of all of that, he had yet to conquer this last System City, so all the soldiers and Generals within were fully under his control. That included the current acting City Lord.
Meaning, if he really wanted to, he could order them to go raze a few cities to the ground.
Normally, a System City wouldn’t be allowed to interfere with people taking part in the Summoning like this. But Sylas was the one in effective control of them now, so it wasn’t a problem at all.
All of that made it a waste of time to think about clearing them out now. They simply weren’t a threat to him at all.
But on the other hand… he also wasn’t very comfortable with just leaving hidden dangers lying around.
‘Let’s play it by ear for now… Maybe doing things this way will force Ragnar to show his tail.’
The smart thing for Ragnar to do would be to just directly escape. However, Sylas had a feeling he wouldn’t do that.
The underground city was too important for him, and if he cut his losses now, he would be left with absolutely nothing.
Using these powers to try and lure Ragnar out might be exactly the sort of mouse trap he needed.
After making this choice, Sylas chose to enter the Nexus again.
First, he sent a connection request to Casstle Main, then he entered the stores again.
He still had millions of coins to spend and many things he needed.
Upgrading his knowledge of Runes, finding methods to accelerate his Comprehension improvement, and maybe finding a few ways to improve his method of training might be good as well.
The last of the three was probably the least necessary. There were many facilities to take advantage of in the System City that he had yet to, including gravity rooms and the like outside of the Skill improvement rooms.
So, Sylas mostly focused on the first two.
—
[World of Runes (Secrets)]
[Limited Access: Rune Visualization must be awakened]
[Cost: 30,000 (F) coins]
—
[Aether, Runes, and the Mind (Secrets)]
[Limited Access: Rune Enlightenment must be awakened]
[Cost: 100,000 (F) coins]
—
[The Life of Runes (Secrets)]
[Limited Access: Rune Breath must be awakened]
[Cost: 3,000,000 (F) coins]
—
Sylas bought them all. The first two he had seen before, but the last was a new addition only available in the Silver Nexus. Unfortunately, there was nothing for Rune Flesh and definitely nothing for Rune Soul, but maybe that was a good thing.
Considering the price for ‘The Life of Runes,’ even if there was, he certainly wouldn’t be able to afford it.
Although he had a feeling that he might not learn much from the first two, he still wanted to go through them. There was too much miscellaneous information about Runes that he didn’t understand, and he didn’t want to rely on Nosphaleen to get them.
It took him a while of poking around for Comprehension help before he found something he believed could help.
As was a pattern for him, he found it in an expected place.
There was a certain section of the Nexus designed for those with Professions to set up shop. They were housed by either those with Merchant Professions or those that got Templates for temporary usage.
These stalls weren’t very filled as one might expect. Sylas had to descend to the Bronze Nexus before he could find any at all.
Among them, there was someone with a Martial Arts Instructor Profession who had used a Template to set up a stall. He was selling general competency in combat, something that was invaluable to either City Lords who wanted to quickly build up the skill of their people or new Summons who had no idea what they were doing in this new dog-eat-dog world.
It was when Sylas saw this stall that he had a sudden flash of understanding.
He was trying so hard to build his Comprehension toward some holistic martial arts, but he was basing it all on memories of professionals he had seen fighting on television…
Why?
Sure, it had worked because his memory was excellent, and many of those professional fighters of old Earth were certainly powerhouses by now.
But… was that the best way?
He only had one fist Skill and one Gene Talent that could somewhat be used with his legs but was more designed to be used with a tail.
If he was really serious, he should be looking through more martial arts Skills.
So he made a decision.
Going back to the Skill libraries, he sorted by martial arts Skills and began a buying frenzy.
