Chapter 787 True Member
It wasn't just the pain alone. Or rather, the pain was just too difficult to describe.
What did it feel like when one part of you felt like it was being electrocuted, while another part was being crushed in stone? What if one aspect drilled needles into your mind and another burned through your inner organs?
It felt like the worst sort of tug of war, violent, abrasive, and lacking in complete regard for his life and survival.
In just three attacks, Sylas found himself on the brink of death already. Without his Scorpion Warlord armor, his Constitution was far too inferior to the geniuses here, and even if it wasn't, he wasn't completely certain that it would make much of a difference.
As the Rune Monsters acclimated themselves to the laws around them, their firing became faster and sharper, their Rune Foundations slowly increasing from 10 to 11, and then from 11 to 12.
Aether swirled about in a tempestuous storm and formations were activated to protect the spectators from harm for the first time in the competition.
Sylas hacked up a mouthful of blood that came out in sparkling shards of rouge foggy mist, an attack of ice ripping up his throat and replacing the burning sensation he had just been experiencing. Suddenly, his breath became frosty enough to ice over his own blood.
The rapid changes in temperature, the sudden swapping of elements, the randomized ripping and shredding of his body down to its very cells and through his once sturdy bones.
The sudden reversal had been reversed once more and with a fourth attack flashing before Sylas even faster than the rest, the exclamation point on this event seemed already about to be drawn.
…
Erythra stood, but she was forcefully pulled down.
"What do you think you're doing?" she said to Nyssa, looking at her with a growl.
"Don't think I don't know what you're doing. I'll be the one to go."
"Are you aware of the danger of doing that? Don't worry your pretty little head. I'm going." Erythra said with a flick of her hair and a not so subtle adjustment of her breasts.
"Oh yeah, you're going? How are you going to save him, then? What good is your Nythseran Race at healing?"
Erythra froze. "—I'll just use an Advanced Healing Elixir. Don't stop me from saving my future husband."
"An Advanced Healing Elixir? Hoho, what an investment. Unfortunately for you, an Advanced Healing Elixir won't do anything to fix the injuries to his Will. In case you haven't noticed, he's suffering from both."
Erythra's expression twisted. "Are you really going to fight me for this?"
"Have I ever fought you for a man before? How many have I let you have until now already? It's my turn, don't you think?"
"What utter bullshit. You never wanted them to begin with!"
"How do you know that?" Nyssa said with a pleasant smile, her hair growing out slightly with weaving vines. She adjusted and fixed her hairstyle into something that went shifted away from seductress to obedient housewife.
The gauze-like dress she wore faded and was replaced by a white dress that clung to her curves and revealed her slender shoulders, but also had a high turtleneck collar. Then she completed her look with a pearl necklace.
Erythra found herself wearing a particularly nasty snarl.
The main problem wasn't that she feared Nyssa. They both knew that saving Sylas now would mean offending the exact person who was targeting him, and yet they didn't care either. They found that the value of Sylas as a prince consort was far beyond what price their families would have to pay to stave off Ulrik and Mospheral.
So, obviously, Erythra didn't fear Nyssa either.
The true issue was that Nyssa was right. She didn't have the methods on her to help Sylas properly. Even if she went, it would be Nyssa swooping in at the last moment anyway, and then it would be like she had prepared a wedding dress for someone else.
The Florineth Race definitely made up the best Healers in the Skai Galaxy. She simply couldn't compete with that.
Someone certainly wanted Sylas dead, and if Erythra insisted on going, before she could even think to save him, he would probably be at or even crossing death's door.
In the end, Nyssa was the only one here who could bridge the gap.
Then there was her mention of the other men… there was no need to explain things so deeply between the two of them.
Nyssa wasn't really trying to cash in on those favors. The real reason she mentioned that was to remind Erythra that if she insisted on fighting her for this, there was a lot that she could… unwittingly expose.
In a fight for a husband, that would set Erythra on her backfoot.
'The Florineth… they're truly a cult of bitches and witches.'
Erythra grit her teeth, but in the end, she didn't dare to fight it out with Nyssa so directly.
The weight of the best Healer title was heavy to bear and worse to go against. She might not fear Nyssa, but it would have to be under the assumption that she actually had a fighting chance. Taking on such risk for what was likely nothing in return wasn't nearly worthwhile enough.
The number of connections, the weight such a family could pull, their value to the galaxy… it was all off the charts.
Nyssa swayed her hips, her violet eyes popping in the blacks that should have been the white of her eyes. She flashed an award-winning smile and prepared for the perfect moment to go down as though she couldn't feel the daggers staring into her back at all.
It was said that the women of Petals of the Seeing Thorn were the most sought after women in the whole of the galaxy, but there were levels to them.
A ripple came from Nyssa's white dress and a tattoo hidden beneath its back shone.
This wasn't a mere apprentice of the order. This was a true member.