Chapter 579: Blackened Claw
Sylas rushed out of the city, coughing and wheezing. Veins of black and green crawled up his jaw and out of the corner of his eye.
Every time he hacked and wheezed, another large globule of poison would be coughed out, burning a hole through the ground between his feet.
That had been close.
He knew that the Shrine would be sturdy, but he hadn't wanted to destroy it before the Fortress was in place.
Who would have thought that such a mutation would occur?
It was truly too difficult to take into account every variable in a world like this one.
Luckily, in this case, Sylas was strong enough. The fact he was hacking and wheezing was actually a good sign. It meant his body was smoothly expelling the poison, and he would be fine very soon.
'So very odd. The number of Foundations of that Demonic Poison was only 40 or so, just like the Woodland Spider Queen. Yet, it was actually able to impact me so much. Just what is the difference?'
Sylas took heaving breaths.
He didn't have the time to waste.
Once his body had recovered enough, he summoned the peacock again. He had to unexpectedly restrain it, stopping it from rushing toward the Demonic Aether.
But ultimately, his Brand was too powerful.
'We'll start with those near the System City.'
Sylas made this decision for only one reason: Nosphaleen.
It would be an exceptionally tight race if he did all of this alone. He needed help.
If he didn't manage to clear all the Demon Cities in a week, the concentration of Demonic Aether would grow great enough that they would all begin to mutate. At that point, it would take far too long to deal with them all.
There was also a question of if they could evolve even further.
The bear demons had only benefitted for a few hours at most, yet they had grown so powerful. What if they had more time? What then?
He couldn't allow that to happen.
The return to the System City took extra time because Sylas was skipping over Demon Cities to make it back. But he felt the extra time wasted was worth it.
After communicating with Nosphaleen and giving her the task of the simpler cities to target, they split up, and the carnage began.
The cities had yet to truly benefit from the Demonic Aether, and Sylas' Woodland Warlord Title was still especially effective against them. As such, he ripped through many cities at an average of barely five minutes.
Many of the Demon Cities only had Level 11's as their strongest; even the medium-tier ones only had Level 15's.
With the main Demon City taken out, taking out these ones was a breeze in comparison. Sylas didn't struggle in the slightest. The recovery he got while on the Violet Rose Peacock's back was more than enough to deal with these small fry.
The only main worry would be the Demons he missed. Even if he destroyed all of those present in the villages that were easy to find on the map, there were bound to be hunting
parties and the like that had been away during his assault.
However, Sylas chose to deal with one problem at a time.
Ultimately, even if there were such survivors, their numbers would be few.
Plus... during his travels, he found something else that was very interesting.
[+300 000 coins]
[Blackened Claw (FFF+)]
[Genes Detected. Convert to Pure Aether?]
[Yes] [No]
Demons were the only existences that Sylas could kill that directly translated to Coins. He wasn't sure why, but it was likely that the system wanted to particularly incentivize their deaths.
But not only did they come with Coins, they sometimes spawned Treasures on top of Genes. As though that wasn't enough, you could even use their Demon Cores to Level up.
It could be said that the only thing more lucrative than killing a normal Demon was killing a
BOSS.
But even in comparison to that, this was on another level. It almost felt like the system wanted to give him Merits as well but felt that Balgros and Druvok still weren't quite worth that.
However, Sylas had a feeling that had he continued to allow them to evolve, the heads of these two would have certainly been worth at least a Hollow Merit.
But the Coins and the potential Merits weren't truly what caught his attention. Instead, it was something else.
[Blackened Claw (Demonic Treasure) (FFF+)]
[Level: 30]
[Soul Remnant of Druvok]
[+506 Strength]
[Durability: 30/30]
'Soul Remnant... Demonic Treasure...'
The normal Demons didn't spawn anything like this. In fact, only Druvok had. Even his
partner hadn't.
What was also different was that this Treasure didn't seem to have a physical form at all.
Instead, it was just a ball of fog.
Sylas touched it, feeling curious.
Everything had pretty much settled down now, and he was on his way to the next Demon City. Feeling the cool night air streaking against his skin, he felt that he might as well check this
out now.
It was the result that was out of his expectations.
The fog surged and then drilled into his finger, slipping past the Scorned Wraps.
SHIIIING!
All of a sudden, a set of four claws jetted out from the back of his hand. The Scorned Wraps
didn't interfere in the slightest.
Sylas looked at it with a bit of shock on his face, but this didn't last long.
The Scorned Wraps, as though only now finally sensing something, shuddered.
Sylas felt a tearing pain in the depth of his hands, and the Blackened Claws turned to ash
before his eyes.
His hands didn't escape the pain either; severe burn marks crawled up his arm and down the
tips of his fingers.
However, rather than reacting with pain, Sylas was instead enamored.
'That feeling...'
It was like Runes had been etched into his bone... Rune Flesh!
And with his memory, he remembered the process perfectly. He had already observed the
entire process.
He shook his injured hand, and a Rune began to take shape again.