Moose spat out another mouthful of blood, chuckling out a gritty laugh. His voice really made one feel as though they were vibrating from the inside out.
“What? Do you want the same thing he did? Neither of you will get it.”
Sylas calmly stood above the giant man. The bear demons didn’t dare to move with their leader’s life in the hands of another.
However, this leader of theirs seemed like he was on the edge of breaking down. He was laughing quite calmly, but with Sylas’ sensitivity, he could tell that the man was on the verge of a mental breakdown.
He didn’t expect the giant to be so emotionally fragile.
Truthfully speaking, he obviously didn’t kill them because they were useful, but this man especially.
In a world of beasts mutated from their own homegrown animals, and humanoids that likewise evolved from Earth, the demons were sort of a curveball that didn’t quite fit anywhere.
Why were they here? And why did the system feel the need to spawn them in the first place?
If it was just about a challenge, weren’t the beasts and the Dungeons enough?
Come to think of it, the Dungeons were odd as well. Unlike the beasts on the outside, beasts within Dungeons didn’t come from Earth. The Basilisk King certainly wasn’t born on Earth; it should have been spawned by the system as well.
These were curious thoughts that were percolating in the back of Sylas’ mind. But anything related to the system’s quirks was almost certainly Taboo, and a slight intention toward the Madness Key proved that.
Moose was actually the first chance he had at looking into such a thing, and he would be lying if he said that he wasn’t curious.
The more he knew about the system, the better.
Who would have thought before he realized it that the System Cities, havens that everyone on Earth adored, were actually the hubs of their very own downfall?
Who knew how many other things there were lurking around just like this?
“So I take that to mean that whatever is so special about you is on your person.”
Moose froze for a moment when he heard this before he began to laugh once again, this time much less calmly and with far more of a manic flare.
Sylas didn’t know him, but he could understand his reaction. He could also quite clearly understand why Braxwell and Shah hadn’t dared to move a single inch despite the fact he hadn’t cast them a single glance.
The unfairness.
Moose was doing well. With his momentum, he was guaranteed to become the overlord of the Woodland Territory. All he needed was more time to gather up his power. Within three months, he felt that he could have done it.
And Sylas believed it. After all, there were no Sylphs in this region, at least not until Ragnar got here.
But then, just when he had everything in the palm of his hands, it all came crashing down.
Sylas claimed the Territory. The government came knocking at his door. And as though that wasn’t bad enough, Ragnar somehow exposed his greatest issues, feeding him a poison pill that left him without options to turn to.
Of course, this wasn’t a literal poison pill, but rather a figurative one. Only he knew the details for now, but Ragnar had certainly not allowed him to come here and interact with Sylas without contingency plans.
Moose couldn’t help but feel naive.
His simple mind wasn’t an act. At the very least, it hadn’t been for much of his life. That was why it came so naturally to him.
It wasn’t until after the Summoning that he underwent changes, and much of the ailments of his genetic disease eased, allowing him to see the world for what it truly was.
He thought that this would allow him to soar up in a single bound, and things had been going well.
But now it all felt utterly worthless.
He couldn’t help but revert back to his former mental state, wanting to call for his mother but knowing that she was already dead.
How could she not be? She had followed an idiot like him into the Trial because she knew that he was too foolish and would click [Yes].
He hadn’t been there at the time, but now that he was intelligent, he could play out that scene as though he had been there personally.
The giant began to laugh so hard that tears flooded out of his eyes.
It was over.
All of it was over.
Sylas watched from start to finish indifferently. Or maybe it couldn’t be said that he was entirely indifferent. Otherwise, he would have been pressing and questioning the man for the answers he wanted.
How many people had experienced these same exact things already? This world wasn’t fair. No, the world had never been fair in the first place.
All that mattered was growing strong enough that the odds being stacked against you simply didn’t matter.
The giant fell into a heaping pile, and Sylas seemed to have finally had enough.
A wave of suffocating Will descended, pressing down onto Moose.
Reaching down, Sylas picked him up by the collar of his armor until they were eye level. Considering Moose’s height, even with him being on his knees, he truly wasn’t too far away to begin with.
The man looked like a sniveling mess, but Sylas’ oppression seemed to have snapped him out of it.
“You have two options,” Sylas began calmly. “Either you can learn to follow my orders, or you can die. Which one will it be?”
Moose stared at Sylas with red eyes, a fiendish, almost demonic light sparking in their depths. He seemed about halfway between going all out even if he died here, and falling to his knees again.
But in the end, he said something unexpected.
“I told you already… neither of you are going to be able to get what you want…”
BOOM!
