Chapter 774 Freeze and Slow [Ko-Fi Donation Bonus]
Sylas stood in silence.
It was hard to assess where to draw the line when you knew so little about the world. It was even more difficult when you had to make sure that you not only passed, but did so to a standard that would actually help you.
For a moment, Sylas wondered if he should simply fail on purpose and forget about helping the Bone-Tailed Lizard at all. Or, maybe he should pretend to join one of these factions with his Breath Master ranking as a lure.
Something told him, though, that it wouldn't be very easy to trick these Guilds. The moment you were bound to them, it would either be for life, or until you grew strong enough that you could wipe them out on your own—and even then they might have something in the cards that could hold you down for a while after.
Sylas made a decision.
There was a flash in his eyes and suddenly, the burden on his Mental went from a light breeze to a heavy mountain.
Rune Vitality was pushed to its extreme limits, and right then, from an expanse of cloudy white that looked plucked right out some dystopian depiction of heaven, Runes that Sylas shouldn't have even had the right to see began to dance before him.
These were the Runes of this world, or rather… the Runes that formed the body and foundation of the Secret Realm.
Veins popped across Sylas' forehead and cold sweat matted his brows.
It shouldn't have been so hard, but there were several things holding Sylas back.
The first was that Enchanted Scribe had long since stopped being able to keep up with his Rune Mastery. His Rune Mastery stood alone as a vague sort of unrooted extension of his mind, but without the supporting cast of his body to provide it a foundation, while it was still powerful, it wasn't able to reach its truest potential.
The reason Ulrik could seemingly form Runes with a breath of thought wasn't just because he was more experienced than Sylas, but also because he had the supporting structures within his body to manifest his Rune talent to shocking levels.
Whether that came from a Comprehension or a Gene.
The second and more potent reason here, though… was that these Secret Realms were designed to hide their Runes. If one could see through the Runes with their Rune Mastery, that would defeat the purpose. That would mean that one could easily cheat their way through.
Of course, Sylas wasn't trying to cheat. Even if he had the skill to do so, he would be caught for sure. What he was trying to do was to read the grading system of the Secret Realm, a task that was ironically even more difficult than cheating.
Cheating only required dealing with the surface level Runes that were already right before his eyes, just obscured by the clouds.
But reading the grading system meant going deeper, much deeper. It was like trying to reach the very kernel of this Secret Realm down to its root.
'It's… too difficult…' Sylas thought through gritted teeth.
He could feel that his Wisdom was already about to run out.
If he had to do this for every door moving forward, he would never reach the end. In addition, because he would lack the stamina, he wouldn't even be able to rank highly, so what would be the point of it all?
Sylas felt a bit frustrated. He had gone through so much already since coming here, but it seemed that the smartest choice now was to just leave with nothing.
Well, not nothing. He would go and check to see the prices of the Treasures he would need for the Genesis Forge next. If he could afford them, he would buy them instead. If not, he would return and buy up what he needed for the Bone-Tailed Lizard.
Just as Sylas was about to give up before he passed out, something in his mind clicked.
The world slowed and almost froze, crackles of ice and a chilly wind spreading out. For a moment, it looked as though reality itself had become like the fragmented black glass of that obscure realm in the pyramids, but instead of black, it was suffused with an endless white expanse thanks to the cloudy background.
'This feeling…'
Sylas recalled it intimately. It was the same feeling he had when he entered that daze under the effects of the Temporal Lock Point Treasure.
For some reason, Sylas could only vaguely recall what happened back then. But because he was on a time crunch, and had already used up a lot of the energy of his Gold Aether Stones, he couldn't slowly figure it out.
'This is it…'
At the very start of his journey, Sylas had chosen two Runes. The first was the Freeze Ice-Poison Rune. The second was the Slow Ice-Poison Rune.
He had felt something special between the two, because they felt like they connected to concepts much deeper and more flourishing than Sylas had the understanding to grasp at the moment. Most accurately, it felt like they had a path forward for the future that surpassed the others.
The Freeze Ice-Poison Rune… reminded him a lot of space. Its ability to lock things down, to secure them in space, to stop them from moving entirely.
And the Slow Ice-Poison Rune…
It reminded him a lot of time. Its ability to slow things to their very molecular structure, taking a snapshot of them in time and forcing them to move through the world while experiencing life much slower than everything else around them.
Of course, these two Runes, especially considering they had only been 40 or so Foundations back then, only touched the absolute faintest edges of these concepts.
As Sylas moved up in Foundations, though, he always found himself returning to these same exact two paths. He always chose one Freeze and one Slow, from his Advanced Freeze and Slow Ice-Poison Runes, to his now Freeze and Slow Glass Runes…