Chapter 666: Realization
It wasn't long after Sylas made his decision that he found out that the glass pyramid they were in was precisely the heart of the Africor Government's power.
Unfortunately, there was nothing to rob.
It seemed that the Constitutional Monarchy wasn't as useless as they seemed. Though the city had been evacuated, it had likely been done systematically and with a set plan of retreat. Sylas wouldn't be surprised if they were already planning for a return. The only thing delaying these matters was the return of their monarchs.
With his new Class, Sylas was able to dismiss and move around the constructs of the Glass Monkey with ease. So the hidden infrastructure beneath didn't take much effort at all to make their way through.
As they dug and made it to the hidden quarters of the Africor Government, Sylas began to wonder if he should consider staying here. If he lied in wait for the return of the three monarchs, this den that the Glass Monkey had spent the effort to build would give him a huge advantage.
Sylas wasn't out for revenge, though that was a small tick at the back of his mind-after all, the Africor Government was responsible for the cities that targeted him back in the Woodland Territory. Still, his real purpose was their wealth. Killing the monarchs of this government would surely benefit him greatly in that riches department.
In the end, though, Sylas chose to shelve these thoughts for the moment.
It was easy to overextend yourself after so many successes. Over-leveraging could come to bite him in ways he wouldn't easily be able to deal with.
These governments were more powerful than he knew. It wouldn't be smart to underestimate them too much.
'Hm?'
Sylas was thinking about returning after they found nothing for such a long while, but then he felt a fluctuation of Aether.
'So hidden...'
He turned back to Alex, Cole, and the others, only to notice that they didn't seem to have noticed anything.
'These walls, they're Aether restraining...'
There were two reasons Sylas pressed forward. For one, the explosive growth of the Glass Monkey was still unexplained. A part of him thought that it was related to the Glass Pinecone, but he wasn't sure. The Glass Pinecone had been a reward of the system. Could it have existed on the Glass Monkey's person ahead of time?
The second reason he was pressing forward was because no matter how thorough the Africor Government was, it was impossible for them to truly escape with everything valuable.
This place was their headquarters. They likely planned to expand outward from here with this city of Cairith as their main core.
If it was so easy to pick up and leave, then it wouldn't be much of a stronghold, now would it? However, Sylas still hadn't found anything valuable. And what he sensed when he finally did find an oddity was out of his expectations.
They descended into an underground stone pathway with so many turns and winding passages that it felt like they were also in a maze. But Sylas' steps were steady and he took every turn confidently until he saw it.
There was a small opening in a random corner. The region was barely three by three meters and just enough for the five of them to stand with a small space of their own normally...
If not for the fact there was a Portal right in front of them.
Sylas felt the Territory Key in his possession tremble.
'The Glass Desert Territory, huh? Is this really all there is here? Could the Glass Monkey just have had a random boost in strength and power in such a short time? Or is it related to this Portal?'
But that explanation didn't make any sense. How could the Portal related to the Glass Monkey's growth be so carefully hidden away here?
The Level 22 version of the Glass Monkey should have been very manageable for those left behind, especially since it was still a Quasi-Bronze beast back then.
There was no way that version of the Glass Monkey could make it so deep into Africor Continent Territory to benefit from the Glass Desert with its previous level of strength. So this couldn't be the reason for its sudden spike in power.
'Non-overlord Races should have a great deal of trouble leveling up normally as well. Nothing is adding up...'
There was another problem on top of that.
When Sylas gained the Woodland Territory Key, it was from defeating the Woodland Spider Queen. All of that checked out properly and seemed to mirror this situation...
Until you realized that the Woodland Territory was perfectly mapped to that region of the Africor Continent. Meaning, that section of the Aether Plane was designed to be matched with that region of Earth.
But the Glass Desert, although it had the word desert in it, couldn't possibly map onto this region properly.
The Glass Path of the Mancer heavily relied on Ice Aether. Although they were firmly in the far north of the Africor Continent right now, and it got quite chilly at night, this still wasn't a region of the world you could expect snow from, let alone Ice Aether.
At the very least, when it did snow... it was very, very rare.
On top of all of that, the Glass Monkey wasn't even a resident of this region like the Woodland Spider Queen had been in its. Sylas and Alex had plucked it out of a Winking Portal it was
hiding in.
In fact, the very notion they found the Glass Monkey in a Winking Portal proved his point, because Winking Portals only appeared in regions where a point of connection between Earth and the Aether Plane was far too misaligned. In this case... a desert of heat and a desert of
cold...
The more Sylas thought about it, the more questions he had, but he stared at the portal before him like it would give him the answer he was looking for...
And then it suddenly hit him.