Chapter 727: Failure
Linzie felt a weight on her heart finally fall.
Their orders were to capture Sylas if possible, but she had disregarded them immediately. Someone this dangerous couldn't possibly be caught. Giving him a chance to escape in the future or deal more damage to them was unacceptable to her.
The idea that the higher-ups wanted her to risk the life of her men more just for the sake of them getting a new shiny toy to play with was ridiculous.
Since they had said "if possible", she took creative liberties with her orders. Later, she would just write that it was impossible as the target was too uncooperative.
Her gaze shifted and it landed on the naked woman Sylas had dropped when he attempted his escape. Although Linzie had seen her before, she directly ignored Vesta. The reason for that was because she wasn't about to allow Sylas the chance to use a hostage to slip out of this matter, not to mention the fact that the government of now didn't work like it did before.
Anyone that was here was already ignoring the laws of the government, and were thus also targets to be killed.
However, when she saw the woman, her expression changed. Something was odd. She was floating very weirdly in the lava, almost as though that specific area of the world had forgotten how physics worked.
If Linzie had to describe it, it was like the AI craze of a few years ago... back then, AI artwork became a huge deal, and it could create a great many things, but sometimes, when it was forced to use logic humans took for granted, it failed at it miserably.
Just as she had this thought, the naked woman flickered and then faded away.
Linzie's eyes widened and a bad premonition hit her. Her head practically snapped up with such speed that her vision spun and her brain rattled in her skull.
She locked eyes with the location Sylas should be falling from, beaten and riddled with holes...
But he too began to vanish.
An illusion?!
Linzie's gaze turned red. "FIND HIM!"
Rumble.
The volcano shook.
...
Linzie had no idea that Sylas was right beneath her feet. At the moment <Ice Banned Shield> shattered, he used and split himself in two, hiding his real body beneath a large piece of falling ice.
Masked by the collapse of the hail of ice into the lava, he surged into the lake once again. In his hand, he dragged Vesta's paralyzed body with him, his gaze sharp.
This wasn't a battle he could win. Even if they didn't have guns, there were too many of them. He had only swept through them once, but not a single one was beneath Level 30. They were also elites that had been training both individually and alone for likely over a decade.
The only path was to run.
Sylas passed through the formation of the Sylphs with a frown on his face.
It was about to collapse.
He had thought about hiding out here until he recovered, but the eruption of the volcano was clearly on the verge of ruining everything here.
It wasn't just that, but without the Aether Stones that supported the formation, it was bound to lack the flexibility needed to survive this.
Running was the only way.
Sylas found the Basilisk King through their connection after he got close enough. It was still in a deep slumber and one would have never thought that it had just suffered an explosion in its mouth.
Even now, Sylas still didn't quite understand. Logically, the Basilisk King's head should have been blown to pieces, but there wasn't time to think about it.
With a touch, he pulled the Basilisk King into the Hibernation Realm.
Now, a second of time was equivalent to half a year of recovery. In that state, the Basilisk King would wake up very soon, but whether he would be in a state to make use of it with Fusion was another matter entirely.
Sylas landed by the Metarock and pressed a palm to it, trying to envelop it with his telekinesis to pull it into the Madness Key.
Failure.
The frown on Sylas' face deepened. He needed to be fast. If he was quick enough, he might be able to sneak a path beneath the portal and escape into it.
If he could manage it, he would prefer not to run away into the Ruby Territory. Not only would its exits still be guarded right now, but that would leave him stranded away from Casstle Main
again.
Just as Sylas was about to ask the Madness Key what to do, there was a pulse of light that came from it and the Metarock was instantly swallowed up.
Without the time to consider what happened, Sylas moved to the next Metarock cubes until he had gathered them all. Then, dragging Vesta by her foot, he rushed out.
Rumble.
The lava churned and the heat was beginning to pierce into Sylas' skin. Without his Scorpion Warlord Armor, he could only rely on his normal Constitution and Aether skin. If not for Fusion, he would have probably already been fried to ash.
Sylas' jaw set.
He would definitely make it out of here.
...
Linzie's eyes were practically blazing, like water sizzling in a pot of hot oil, she hardly knew
what to do with herself. Where could Sylas have possibly-
Her eyes widened. "THE PORTAL! PROTECT THE PORTAL!"
It was too late.
Sylas pierced out from the churning lava. They couldn't even aim their guns before he was already sucked into the vortex of the Portal.
"AFTER HIM!"
Rumble.
The volcano seemed to have finally had enough, its bubbling spilling over until an eruption exploded forth from its very heart.
...
Sylas coughed out another mouthful of blood, his inner organs churning thanks to the
violence of the ejection.
His vision hardly cleared before his expression changed once again.
Ahead, he could sense that he had been targeted by something dangerous once again and the
arrow was already loosed.
But what shook him was the eruption of the volcano.
What would happen if a portal was right above the sputtering mouth of an erupting volcano?
A pillar of lava shot out from the pulsing spatial warp, a rain of hellish fire falling from the
skies.