Sylas felt a world of possibilities swimming about in his mind. It was like he was experiencing something fascinating for the first time, only to realize that that wasn’t exactly what he was thinking.
This wasn’t the feeling of experiencing something new. No, it was the feeling of something that had once been an overly complicated, amorphous blob of everything in his mind suddenly finding a root in something tangible and very real.
The feeling of the Blackened Claw fusing into his body was very similar to what he had experienced with the Scorpion Warlord Runes.
The difference was that the Blackened Claw was far simpler, not just because its Runes were less complex, but also because it had taken a part of the process that Sylas struggled with—the integration portion—and executed it for him.
This was one of the biggest issues that Sylas faced with the Scorpion Warlord Rune Mesh system. He didn’t quite know how to integrate it into himself.
The first time he used it, during his battle with the Violet Rose Heart, he had integrated the Rune into his Aether skin.
Originally, he had wanted to try and etch it directly onto his body, but the slight attempt he made to do so was troublesome. He felt the Runes slipping away before they could succeed.
The Runes would only survive with a continuous flow of Aether to them unless he could etch them permanently. So the compromise ended up being using his Aether skin as a proxy.
This had its own obvious cascade of problems.
For one, the continuous flow of Aether was obviously an extra consumption, and second, it took a great deal of Wisdom to ensure that everything remained balanced.
Even worse than that, the benefits were there, but not as obvious as they should have been given the effort.
He was only able to inscribe a portion of what made up the scorpion tail, and it was only able to carry about 20% better defense than his usual Aether skin. And that was before his recent upgrade to 71 Foundation Runes.
Right now, it wasn’t even worth it to inscribe the tail at all other than for the stronger poison. But by now, he could draw Runes with stronger poison than it with ease.
Because of all of this, Sylas didn’t even use the scorpion tail during his battle with the demons. But this definitely felt completely different.
The Runes themselves he wasn’t sure if he could inscribe because his Rune Essence didn’t seem to work on these Demonic Runes.
But the process… he could learn from that.
Runes began to float around Sylas’ hand, gathering and reshaping themselves before collapsing.
Sylas shook his head. ‘These Demonic Runes truly don’t want to listen to me… but I also can’t see any real tangible difference between them and normal Runes other than a different coloration. Everything from the foundation of Strokes to Foundations seems the same. I can even guess their purpose and use. So why won’t they listen?’
This made Sylas very confused, an emotion he rarely experienced. Usually, an answer would be jumping out at him by now, but nothing was clicking.
The only explanation seemed to be that he couldn’t use them because he couldn’t use Demonic Aether.
The strength of Runes was inextricably linked to the Aether that formed them. If Sylas had mature Aether and leveled up continuously, his 71 Foundation Runes would probably already be enough to sweep all of Earth. This was how powerful 71 Foundation Runes were.
The likes of the Woodland Spider Queen were so powerful even with just 40 Foundation Runes, so one could imagine the sort of advantage Sylas was dealing with now.
Unfortunately, there was no easy way for Sylas to control Demonic Aether.
The system rejected it, and his body did as well. There was a reason he had struggled breathing so much. His body simply wasn’t built to accept Demonic Aether at all.
And when he turned his attention to the Madness Key to see if it could give him an answer, the question was unsurprisingly Taboo.
COOOO.
‘Hm?’
Sylas snapped out of his thoughts and looked toward the peacock beneath him. It wasn’t infrequent for it to make random sounds from time to time, but this felt different.
There was a sudden snap, and one of the long wooden branches that formed the spindles of the creature’s gorgeous tail shot up and snatched at the Demonic Aether in the air.
This was the lingering fog from Sylas’ failed fusion with the Demonic Treasure from earlier.
From the beginning, the Symbiote Mount had been doing its best to get closer to Demonic Aether, but Sylas had rejected its attempts. This time, it seemed to lunge at its opportunity.
Sylas caught the branch out of the air, stopping it again.
The peacock settled down, Sylas’ command over it still being absolute. But he did sense something peculiar.
‘This Demonic Aether listens to it.’
Sylas didn’t want the Symbiote to gain Demonic Aether not out of paranoia, but because he could clearly feel that if it did, his control over it would become much less sturdy.
Although the Symbiote and the peacock still seemed to be one creature right now, Sylas hadn’t forgotten that the Symbiote was technically its own existence.
The peacock itself wouldn’t do well with Demonic Aether, but the Symbiote, for whatever reason, seemed to be all over it.
‘Interesting… I wonder…’
Sylas still had no intention of allowing the Symbiote to have its way. But he felt that he could use this to his advantage.
Through the Symbiote, he forced it to control the Demonic Aether in his stead. It was clumsy, but it worked.
Between Sylas’ Rune Essence and the Symbiote’s natural affinity for Demonic Aether, they formed a resonance with the Runes that was just barely at the Rune Flesh level.
Although that was three tiers below Sylas’ current level, it was still enough.
The black fog was forced back into Sylas’ body, etching in the very same regions the pain was emanating from.
And then…
