Chapter 517: Only the Beginning
SPLAT.
It was a grotesque, wet noise, one so resonating that the two Sylphs might have even heard it from the afterlife. They had both thought that they had taken Sylas more than seriously enough, but neither could have possibly imagined that they would actually die like this.
But there was no medicine for regret. And even if there was one, they weren't alive to take it. Sylas coughed up another mouthful of blood as he slowly stood, but there was the very same calmness to him. Even though that flame of rage was still flickering deep within his eyes, he was starting to understand more and more what this world needed from him.
It was still the same two words... Be Strong.
But for some reason, every time he survived a situation like this one, his understanding of those words would warp, ripple, and change as though it was becoming more tangible in a way that was hard to explain.
He reached up a hand and grabbed the branch that was ripping through his lung. Accumulating what small bits of Ice-Poison he had left, he poured it all in.
He was hesitant to do this earlier because he knew what it would come with. But there were some things that he could only face head-on... and right now, there was a surging confidence rolling through him.
Maybe it was foolhardy. Maybe it was him overestimating himself and the danger of the world.
And yet, his Will still felt so tangible coursing through him.
He had stepped through a threshold that few ever would, and somehow, though his Will seemed to not have changed, everything had changed at the same time.
Intangible Will... Flexible Will... Burning Will... Tangible Will...
They were all just stepping stones.
Neither was as real or formulaic as Rune Mastery, and two people who had both had Burning Will might have vastly different outcomes and strengths assigned to them.
Will was one of the most enigmatic stats that the system tracked. In fact, the truth was that before this current iteration of the system, Will was never something that was tracked because it was simply too difficult to.
Sylas' trouble with telekinesis and figuring out his quirks wasn't the only one of its kind. Many had faced the same struggles, and at best, the Will stat of the system could only be a general outline of your progress.
It was no wonder why even those so-called stat debuffs couldn't change the number on his stat screen.
But why was all of this so important now?
It was because Sylas had sensed something very particular when his Title evolved just now. His Will had taken a step beyond a threshold, but it wasn't the threshold itself that was so amazing... it was instead what it reminded him of...
A Progenitor Flame.
Was it truly one? No, of course not. Sylas had felt the real thing before, and the gap between his flickering flame of a Will and a real Progenitor Flame was worse than night and day. It might as well be like comparing the radius of a star and its size to a moon that could only reflect its light.
However, the slight similarities enlightened him to something important.
His Will wasn't meant to follow a designed, preordained structure like his Rune Mastery was. It was meant to forge its own path toward indomitability, a path that would be decided by his own hands, built on a foundation of his blood and flesh.
Sylas wouldn't realize for a while just how shocking it was for him to make such a revelation so early on, especially not without the guidance of a teacher or even a hint from the Madness Key. In fact, even if he were to ask the Madness Key, he would just end up stumbling into another Taboo.
But one thing was for certain.
This Greed Seed couldn't hope to control him.
Sylas' hold on the branch in his body tightened, and the wood suddenly shattered into a great number of pieces, leaving a gaping wound in his chest.
But even as he sensed his other enemies closing in, he only waved a hand and pulled on the Greed Seed.
The bloody remains of Kalden and Rylen convulsed before their Blood Essence was taken into his body.
A pulsing vitality ripped through him, and his injuries, in large part also thanks to his Dual Class Constitution that handled this sudden influx of energy far better than his original body could have, began to close at a speed visible to the naked eye. And, of course... his Lv12 Taboo Bond had something to say about all of this as well.
Sylas finally knew what it was that had been missing from the Arctic Emperor Cobra's body. Grin had stripped it of its Blood Essence.
The reason this didn't affect the Beast Transmutation Pill was that the Beast Skin only worked on surface-level Genes, pretty much wasting the rest of the product. It made no difference whether the Blood Essence was there or not.
But now that Sylas not only understood what the Greed Seed could do, he was on a level that Grin wouldn't even be able to look up to.
Greed had days and still didn't manage to fully absorb the Arctic Emperor Cobra's Blood Essence. When Sylas met him for a second time, the man still hadn't recovered his full stats. But between his Dual Class Constitution, the fact he didn't need to use a medium like Grin's blade, and the fact Extricate gave him a subconscious comprehension of Blood Essence and how it worked in his body...
Sylas had done what Grin couldn't do in days in a matter of a few dozen seconds...
Not just once...
But twice over.
The moment he began to use the Greed Seed, he could sense an attack on his mind, but it was rebuffed so easily it might as well have not been there at all.
'This is only the beginning. The more I strengthen it, the stronger that mental attack will become. But it doesn't matter... you won't be able to outpace my Will.'
Sylas looked up as his complexion slowly became more rosy.
There in the distance, Nosphaleen came closer, holding several bloody hands in her supposedly delicate fingers while a drizzle of blood dribbled down the corner of her cherry
lips.