Sylas stood weakly. His arm was still a mangled mess, but at the very least, he was no longer oozing puss.
The fleshly wounds were a secondary problem. The main issue was the fragmented state of his arm. He couldn’t count the number of hairline fractures he had suffered, and worse than that, the Blackened Claws seemed to be in a state of limbo.
They had been somewhat saved by the Blood Essence it absorbed from the chimera. But as Sylas had already seen, Rotten creatures were basically living dead existences. They had no Will of their own, and they certainly didn’t have Blood Essence in spades.
As such, the Blackened Claws were in a state of dormancy, and for all intents and purposes, destroyed.
But what made the situation troubling was that in order to increase the Durability once more, Sylas needed to summon them to attack and kill something. How could he fix them if he couldn’t do that?
‘I will have to find time to see if I can use Extricate directly. But…’
This was the obvious solution, especially now that Sylas could use Extricate on Blood Essence as well. But there was a reason why the intelligent Sylas hadn’t thought of attempting to do this already.
Demons and Demonic things seemed to have an odd path of their own, one that the system didn’t seem compatible with.
It couldn’t be forgotten that Sylas didn’t drive his Profession Talents on his own, much like how he didn’t drive his Skills on his own.
It was the system that granted his Legendary Path Professions that he could make use of.
Unless he could supercede the system, it would be useless.
But Extricate was too complicated of a Talent, so much so that it made the Gene Skills Sylas had mastered feel insignificant. It would have to be to have controlling something as complex as Genes as its lowest level ability.
For now, it seemed that until he found a solution, or a work-around, the Blackened Claws would be out of commission. At the very least, they had played their crucial role well, giving him the boost to his Strength he needed in those final moments.
Sylas threw a gaze out at Cole and Alex who were nursing their wounds. Quite frankly, Alex seemed to be the only entirely uninjured one among them. Sylas had to remind himself that he truly couldn’t underestimate the members of Legacy.
‘There should be something else here…’
Even after blowing up so many golems, the platform was perfectly fine. The bits and pieces of the golems had scattered into the waters, leaving the platform, aside from the regions that had been circled by the chains, relatively clear.
Sylas walked to the diamond-etched Runes that lined the outer ring of the golden platform.
He frowned.
‘Very complex… but also very simple… it’s like the scorpion armor all over again…’
A single etching wasn’t the full story. Any one of them couldn’t even be considered a full Rune. They only had ten or so Foundations each, and though there were complete Runes that existed with that sort of low count of Foundations, these seemed purposely left incomplete.
It was another form of Rune Mastery that Sylas had never seen before.
‘I understand. This platform is only one half of the equation. There’s likely a connecting platform elsewhere that “completes” these Runes. If I look at it like that, then…’
Sylas’ gaze flashed and his visualization enveloped the platform, taking into account all the Runes at once.
There were exactly 100 of them, drawn particularly large as well. Beneath the lights, they shimmered with a rainbow of colors, their diamond structure refracting everything that came into contact with it.
Rune Essence whispered into Sylas’ ears. Once again, he found listening to Runes in this world was far easier. It was like he had been running with a 50-pound weight vest on that had suddenly dropped to 10.
Just seeing half the Runes, and knowing there was another side to it, his mind seemed to work on its own, understanding the Essence and filling in the gaps.
‘Most of these Runes are here to amplify… they project Will from one location to another, the other side presumably being where the Thryskai’s real body is…’
Sylas separated the Runes into three tiers. Amplification, location, and finally… odd vessel Runes that stored and transported the Will.
What was fascinating was that these transporting Runes had the ability to almost make Will more tangible.
Sylas forgot for a moment that he was supposed to be trying to find a mystery here. He was enraptured by this third tier of Rune.
They were only 20 or so Foundations, but they opened up an entirely new world to him.
Unlike the professionally trained Rune Masters on the list he had accidentally ended up on, Sylas had never received systematic training. He didn’t even know foundational Runes but had somehow jumped to have 70 Foundation Runes in his arsenal.
These 20 Foundation Runes, two halves of 10 Foundations, were like a lamp clicking open in his head.
They taught the foundations on how to guide his Will.
Contrary to what he had assumed, he didn’t need Aetherflow at all to guide his Will. It was just that that had been the only method he had.
Sylas’ gaze flashed, but this time, it wasn’t just a random act of his Will. Instead, a pair of 20 Foundation Runes appeared in his irises.
BOOM!
The air before Sylas’ face shuddered and almost seemed to crack apart.
Thin lines of green-violet filled the space around him, and Alex, who had just been trying to meditate to steady himself, coughed up a mouthful of blood that was presumably blocked by his mask and swayed in his seating position.
Sylas was stunned.
These lines that filled the skies as though a great gravitational weight was descending from above, like the world was about to crack apart beneath his presence…
Hadn’t these been the same that appeared from that statue?
