Chapter 642: Stares
The illusory violet armor solidified over Sylas' body. It was still possible to see right through it, but the power it gave him was anything but intangible.
Sylas could feel the pieces of the armor working together to give him strength, but by the same token he felt that even if he lost any one piece, it would hardly impact its overall strength.
Not only did he feel his Physical shoot up by a full 1000, but beyond that, he felt a strong boost to his Aether skin.
The Scorpion Warlord Armor and his Aether skin worked seamlessly in tandem, taking an armor that was meant to be a blackened red and turning it into a dark violet instead.
As a result, his Aether Skin, which had 1000 Defense on its own, increased in strength by a further 50% to have 1500 Defense when the armor was active.
This was honestly not as impressive as Sylas thought it would be. But when he thought about it, it made sense.
It likely wouldn't be until the pieces of the armor truly linked together that it could begin displaying a strong defensive ability. Right now the bits and pieces were too disjointed even if it looked like a single unit.
Still, even if it was "just" a +1000 boost to Physical, Sylas would be more than content with that. But, there were two other things of interesting importance.
The +1000 boost only referred to what the Runes provided themselves. What it didn't account for was the Blood Essence that Sylas had used to draw them.
The Blood Essence itself seemed negligible, and only added what seemed to be an extra +50 to +100 Physical on top of the +1000 Sylas already received, but Sylas knew why this was.
For one, he had only used a small portion of the scorpion beast's overall Blood Essence, there was still a great deal remaining. Sylas bet that if he used all of it, or transferred it through a medium other than the air, it would be even more powerful.
And the second thing of great importance was that the Scorpion Warlord Armor didn't just provide a boost to Physical. It could be said that the most important part of the armor was the tail.
The tail had only one ability for now, and that was to infuse the Scorpion Warlord's Will into one's poison, strengthening it considerably.
The benefits to this weren't obvious immediately. What was the Scorpion Warlord's Will and how did it make poison more powerful?
But of course, Sylas also had a systematic breakdown of this as well.
At 40% perfected of the first layer, the Scorpion Warlord's Stinger was able to forcefully elevate all 40 Foundation and below Poison Runes to the same level of Mastery.
Meaning, if Sylas were to draw a 40 Foundation Poison Rune right now, he didn't have to worry about how perfectly he drew it at all. So long as it was successfully drawn and projected with his stinger as a medium, it would be able to display the same level of Mastery as his Scorpion Warlord Stinger.
If he mastered the second layer, he would be able to do this with 50 Foundation Poison Runes.
If he mastered the third, even up to 70 Foundation Poison Runes was possible.
This was absolutely massive.
As powerful as Sylas' 70 Foundation Runes were, he could only use an insignificant sliver of their power without the Mature Aether to power them. And even when he gained Mature Aether, the Runes would still scale to his Level instead of displaying their true might.
However, the stinger was capable of circumventing this to a large extent!
Sylas had been thinking about how much more effort he should put into raising the Mastery of his individual Runes ever since he learned about the dividing line that was Breath Mastery, but he just hadn't had the time. Not with the armor occupying all of his thoughts.
But now... even if the Scorpion Warlord Armor's Stinger only worked with Poison type Runes, this would be a huge boon for him.
The best part was that the armor was flexible. So long as Poison affinity was its foundation, it would work. Although Sylas Advanced Freeze Ice-Poison Rune wouldn't work with it, his Advanced Slow Ice-Poison Rune would!
Well, his weakened versions of them would.
At its current state, his Scorpion Warlord Armor wouldn't be able to use 70 Foundation Runes. But Sylas was confident he would be able to easily find 40 Foundation Runes for him to make use of.
And the instant he did, he would have poison even stronger than the Woodland Spider Queen. Yet, this was just the beginning.
That was because the Warlord Stinger didn't have a limit of just one poison type. What made it so powerful was that it could swallow several types of Poison Runes and emit something particularly powerful from the strengths of them all.
So right now, what Sylas was most interested in wasn't even his own Ice-Poison Runes. He wanted to see just how powerful he could make his poison from a collection of 40 Foundation Runes.
Sylas exhaled a breath and felt much lighter all of a sudden. A new path lay out before him.
Of course... what Sylas didn't know was that the use of Blood Essence to draw Runes wasn't a new path at all. There were some very powerful Rune Masters in the universe that did exactly that.
However, the ability to extract Blood Essence was rare and often hidden away in some very exclusive inheritances. It could be said that Sylas had just stumbled into something truly
shocking purely by accident.
Finally, Sylas awakened from his stupor and looked around him. The sand had finally settled down and he could lay eyes on the carnage.
What was unfortunate was that many of the carriages were destroyed in the attack, along with the camels that had been leading their way.
And yet, everyone seemed dead set on staring at him for some reason.