Chapter 612: Wall
A sound akin to a hand smashing on the left end of a piano resonated. It was like all the blaring dark notes hidden in one's heart had come out all at once.
Red lines filled the skies like stretched droplets of blood, reality shaking and warping beneath its might.
Sylas coughed up a mouthful of blood and felt like his heart almost exploded. He could faintly feel the Gluttony Seed pulse for a moment to save him from that fate, but the action alone drained a considerable amount of his Will, something that he didn't even think could reach the end of its rope.
Lauren was sent flying off of her platform just as Jake slipped from Sylas' grasp.
Sylas was sitting on his platform and didn't suffer the same fate. But even he had to quickly tighten his core to regain his balance, almost falling as well.
Jake began to fall from the skies once more, this time even faster than before. It was almost as though another hand had forcefully destroyed the projection of Sylas' own, taken his body, and hurled him downward.
It only took a moment for Sylas to regain his bearings, but his first reaction wasn't one of shock; it was instead one of rage. A fury he couldn't quite understand bubbled up within him. He ruthlessly suppressed it, regaining his calm. Somehow, he felt that the rage was both entirely his own, and yet also had the influence of another. Until he could figure out which the true answer was, he had no plans of allowing such a thing to roam freely.
However, none of that stopped his reaction speed.
He pushed himself off his platform with a palm, backflipping off of it and kicking at the air.
That last action was hardly needed. The moment he lost the support of his platform, it was like he too had been hurled down from the skies. But Sylas immediately felt that it wasn't fast enough.
His Will felt like it was running on empty and his telekinesis was no longer working for him. As he soared down, he wasn't exactly sure how he would even come back up. All he knew was that he would save Jake.
It was one thing if the young boy had fallen off on his own and there was nothing he could have done to stop it. It was another matter if it was his fault that he had fallen and that he had even pushed him to such extremes.
If he allowed the boy to die now, it wouldn't just be a matter of saving himself; he would lose that kernel of himself that was still very much human.
A part of him that Sylas cherished more than he knew how to put into words.
When Sylas first met Lauren, they had a conversation about not allowing the changes caused to the world by the Summoning to warp who they were as people. The words Sylas had spoken then were quite profound, and even after he felt he had changed quite a bit, he didn't believe that he had fundamentally changed the kind of person he was. Instead, he only felt that he was becoming more and more of himself.
Now, he didn't feel like he was acting out of character at all.
He was a man who took responsibility for his actions. That's why he was so obsessed with controlling himself and his situation so perfectly. He hated to be put in a situation where he couldn't do that.
And now...
He found this to be nothing more than an extension of that.
Sylas kicked at the air again, and then again, the look in his eyes blazing. He no longer paid attention to just how far from the platforms he was; he didn't even pay attention to what had happened to Lauren after she too fell off.
All he cared about was the boy coughing up blood and falling from the skies.
'Come on. More.'
It felt like the red lines painting the skies had already pushed them to terminal velocity, and trying to accelerate beyond that forced Sylas to bear the weight of wind pressures and laws of reality that he wasn't ready to handle.
Even with his downward speed, the gap between them remained identical, and because he had been slow to react, it was just outside of his 100-meter range. Even if it hadn't been, he didn't know if his Will could even properly react in this dense mesh.
The dense coldness in Sylas' eyes only grew thicker as though he couldn't sense that his own life was on the line as well. He had sworn that he would never allow himself to feel such humiliation in the face of death again, and that promise was etched into his very heart even until this moment right now.
'Faster. Faster. I need to be faster.'
Sylas' Madness Key flickered and a lance appeared in his palm. The wind pressure at this pace was so much that his arm was ripped backward and almost came tearing out of its socket.
A flash of pain pulsed in Sylas' eyes for only a moment before he unleashed a roar, the distortions to the skin of his face being forcefully constrained by the flex of the muscles beneath. His jaw steeled, and then with everything he had, he launched the spear just as it began to crack and crumble to ash.
He had no choice in the matter. He knew this would happen the moment he touched the weapon, but in this sort of harsh wind, this was the only way.
Sylas' Aether exploded into a cone shape through the body of the lance, forming an upside- down dome that he hid behind.
With another kick at the air, he accelerated again and again beneath the force of his Aether, explosions of ice erupting beneath his feet.
He closed the distance.
From over a hundred meters to just 80, and then from 80 to 60, and then from 60 to 40, and
then 20.
But then...
BANG!
The cone of Aether shattered as the lance blew apart in a rain of ash.
A wall of wind slammed into Sylas.