Chapter 671: Again [Bonus]
This only left a single mystery.
What had the Glass Monkey benefited from?
Sylas returned to the GlassWright Breeder's Facility, and his eyes landed on a region he had paid much attention to before. That was because it was nothing but an open space.
However, with the statues neatly lined up and organized by species, this open space was conspicuous... especially since there were exactly two of them.
One where Sylas assumed there had once been a monkey.
And the second where the shards of glass that had fallen from his new Glasirith Contract had already vanished.
The Glass Monkey must have found one of its kind here and devoured it.
Although Sylas couldn't sense the other Beasts here clearly, he was sure that they were all probably at around the same level.
'A dozen Bronze King Beasts... well, there are only ten now, but to think that this would just be one of the hubs of this city. Is this really just a Bronze City? Or is it something beyond that?'
Sylas didn't know if this was just a special Bronze City or if it was something above, but what was clear was one thing...
This city, he had to have it. Setting aside the Glasswright Breeder Facility and the obelisk, there was still the Aether Herb Center he couldn't even scan 90% of the plants within, Skill and Comprehension Training Facilities that blew the System Cities out of the water, and even an Aether Stone Mine Production Hub that Sylas could clearly sense produced far more powerful Aether Stones than his own in the Woodland Territory.
It was just that he knew he wasn't nearly strong enough to lay claim to it...
Yet.
-
Sylas appeared at another hub of the city, returning to it for the second time like he had with the Glasswright Breeder Facility.
Before him stood an obelisk, one that was an exact replica of the one he had seen the Genesis Forge jade. But unlike the obelisk in the latter, this one felt hollow, like it was lacking a spirit.
Something told Sylas that if he could conquer this city, maybe the secret of the Genesis Forge would open up to him.
Sylas went back to visit the City Stele one more time as though to sear it into his memory before he flashed back to the surface world, appearing at the location where Alex and the others were waiting for him.
"Let's return now," Sylas said.
He had no intention of going to conquer the System Cities. Even though he would receive three million Free Experience from them, setting aside the time it would take to travel to them all, conquering the System Cities would destabilize the Portal, and Sylas still had to return to the Woodland Territory first.
In addition, if he lost his understanding of where the Glass Desert Territory was, it would be a nightmare trying to figure out how to return.
There was a chance that the hidden underground network of the Africor Continent would be able to keep the portal in place even without the System Cities, but Sylas doubted that.
No matter how powerful the Africor Government, if circumventing the insidiousness of the System Cities was in their grasp, Earth wouldn't have failed eight Summonings.
...
The group set off from Cairith soon after leaving the Glass Desert and exiting the underground maze.
The city still seemed barren, so the exit was easy. After the cold of the Glass Desert, they embraced the heat of a real desert quite well, if for but a moment.
However, soon, something that Sylas had been expecting came.
Alex was leaving.
...
The two faced off against one another with the family of three waiting in the far-off distance.
By now, Sylas was pretty sure the reason Alex was still wearing his mask was to keep his face from Cole and the others. He had been quite cautious the moment he started acting against Legacy. It was clear that he took them very seriously despite the usual casual air of his personality.
"... If you attack any Legacy headquarters, you can pretty confidently find maps of the Zones in the regions. Most will only have general information about surrounding Portals, but there are also rarer ones that have what we call the Plus-One Policy. That essentially means that their maps go to a depth of one. They know of where the Portals go, and where the Portals in the surrounding 100 kilometers of the inside of said Portal also go, but not further than that.
"There are some headquarters that have a Plus-Two, and I know of one that has a Plus-Three. If you have the balls, you can go to that one," Alex laughed.
Obviously, the higher the Policy rating, the more confidence Legacy had in protecting that information, and thus the greater the danger.
It seemed that he had come back down from the serious tirade he had been on the last few days. But his voice was still being doubled by his mask, so it made his amused tone sound more sinister than it should.
Although he was joking around and definitely not recommending Sylas go to the headquarters with the Plus-Three Policy, Sylas still seriously considered it.
A Plus-Three Map would practically have the entire map system of Earth drawn out. In an exponential progression like that, you could very quickly cover a lot of land. If Sylas had that, he could conveniently travel from place to place across the whole of Earth.
Alex, though, only knew of one route from the United Coalition of Terranova to the Africor Continent. Other than that, he didn't even have a Plus-One understanding of the surrounding Portals, especially not after the Mountain of Giza shifted things.
"... That is everything I know about the region. Even if the portals have shifted, we found this one close enough, so most should still be in the general location they were found in."
Sylas nodded.
"Alright, I'm off. I gained a lot this time, I'll be sure to partner with you again in the future, Psycho Syl."