Chapter 668: Projecting
Sylas felt his vision blur for more reasons than stepping through the Portal. His gaze unconsciously narrowed as sand riding on heavy winds buffeted against his face and cheeks, making him feel as though hundreds of tiny needles were pelting against his skin.
The visibility of the region was low and goosebumps crawled over the length of his skin as the cold began to sink into his very pores.
Slowly, Sylas began to adjust the focus of his gaze to find that he was standing in the middle of maybe the most beautiful desert he had ever seen.
It felt odd to describe what was essentially a hellscape to most organisms like this, but it was hard to call it anything else when the sand dunes in the distance sparkled like hills of miniature diamonds.
When Sylas held up a palm, the silvery-blue beads of sand glided across it with a subtle touch. It felt like somewhere between a cross of snow and sand.
[Territory-Wide Message]
[The Glass Desert Territory has been claimed. Sylas Grimblade will be awarded the Title <Glass Desert Warlord>]
[Title Unlocked]
[Title: Glass Desert Warlord]
[The Glass Desert Territory is now your Territory. The land is your land, the rain is your rain, its blood is your blood]
[Glass Desert Curse Seal: Suppress the stats of any target within your Territory to 50%]
[Quasi King Crown: The Territory obeys you]
The Territory Key slowly vanished into motes of light around Sylas as he exhaled a breath. Behind him, Alex and the others had buffed up their Aether skin to the greatest extent they could, but it was clear that the cold was doing its number on them.
'I don't see anything particularly special about this location... whatever the Glass Monkey benefited from should be close, though. Unless it was a consumable item?'
All the while, Sylas was acting under the assumption that whatever the Glass Monkey benefited from was still here, but that might not necessarily be the case.
He closed his eyes and focused. In the worst case, he would go to one of the System Cities of the Territory to use their bird's eye view. But he also knew that this wasn't a perfect solution.
The City Stele Ability of the System Cities had many weaknesses of their own, namely that they couldn't be used to search very far underground if at all.
In a world where this silvery-blue sand was blowing everywhere, Sylas would bet good money that quite a number of good things were buried all the time.
'Hm?'
Sylas was expecting to get lost in another long sequence of deductions, but what he didn't expect was that he would find it immediately.
His eyes snapped open and he looked directly beneath his feet.
A crown flickered into existence above Sylas' head, making the others feel greatly pressured as <Glass Prism Arts> manifested, pushing away much of the sand that was around them.
In a small region around them, it looked as though an invisible wall had been formed and soon Sylas had dug three feet beneath them to reveal a smooth marble surface.
The marble was an icy blue with veins of white running through it. It almost seemed to have a subtle glow of its own, shimmering with its own internal light.
Sylas bent down and passed a hand over it, feeling that it was cool to the touch.
'How far does this extend?'
He began to clear away a larger area, but the strain on his mind was becoming substantial. Even with the support of his Quasi King status in this land, keeping up this level of Glass Elemental control over a large distance was too much of a drain.
But once again, Sylas didn't have to search for long. His hand suddenly ran over an engraving that wasn't quite visible to the naked eye. It was easy to overlook, but the bumps grazing across the high, calloused fingers caught Sylas' attention.
'A Rune.'
Sylas could feel the difference immediately. And then he ran into a second and a third until he had revealed what seemed to be the entire platform.
'This is...'
Sylas found his heart skipping a beat because he had seen a marble platform exactly like this already, albeit on a much larger scale. Those marble slabs had been over a hundred meters in diameter, and this one was barely five, but the Runes....
They were near identical.
Was this also a Thryskai summoning platform? Right in the middle of Earth's Aether Plane?
Sylas had never said it in so many words, but he had truly dreaded a potential fight with Aki. The man had unfathomable depths, and Sylas had known that the odds he would lose his life to the man were exceptionally high.
But the implications of such a Thryskai appearing on current day Earth as opposed to in a Split Realm Dungeon reflecting a semi-inaccurate retelling of the path held two completely different weights on the psyche.
'Wait... this isn't the receiving end... it's the projecting end.'
Sylas' gaze sharpened. This platform sent you somewhere. Or, more accurately, it sent your
Will somewhere.
Sylas only thought for a moment before he took a seat.
"I might be out of it for a moment. Keep a lookout."
The others nodded.
Sylas closed his eyes, but his attention was quite focused on his surroundings as he carefully stretched out his Will.
To his surprise, what he had expected to take a lot out of him only took a tiny strand of his abilities. And the result left him floored.
Sylas' mind immediately connected to not just one, but dozens of other locations. He could feel the network of connections between them, and like he was gazing at the map of a complex road map from above, he was given a choice of where to go.
That was when Sylas realized what he was dealing with. This wasn't a Thryskai projection
hub, it was a teleportation platform to yet another hidden city. One buried in these glassy,
sandy dunes.