Chapter 856 One Step
Sylas walked over and picked Astrid up by her collar. He didn't believe that she was the type to be so listless after a loss, and it certainly wasn't because she was so heavily injured that she was still lying in the same spot. But soon, it became quite obvious that she had taken some considerable backlash to her Will.
He had yet to look through the so-called Grimblade Inheritance, but what he did know was that it wasn't a simple matter of just busting out Blade Aura to sever someone else's Will.
Will was perhaps a person's most protected aspect. If not for this, Sylas would probably already be able to walk around one-shotting all of the opponents he came across. Attacking someone else's Will was a very involved process.
But, when two Will-related abilities clashed, it was obviously a different story.
Astrid had spent a lot of effort trying to protect her Blade Aura from a direct clash with him, only to be tricked at the last moment into a full-on clash. Right now, it was a miracle that she wasn't already a vegetable.
Sylas' gaze bounced between her eyes.
He remembered the first time he saw this woman. He wasn't very commonly impressed by people, but this woman had reminded him of his mother. All things considered, that was probably the highest form of compliment he could give a person.
In another life, given a different upbringing, his mother and Astrid could very well be as close as sisters.
Astrid had an edge to her that his mother simply didn't have—not because his mother wasn't capable of it, but because Isolde was very slow to adapt to this world, while Astrid had been raised for this moment all her life.
Sylas stared at this elder cousin of his for a long while, trying to make a decision.
Should he kill her? Or not?
There was no doubt that an ally like Astrid would be very useful, and she would certainly have knowledge that he didn't have about certain things. Maybe she could even help him figure out who Archibald was and what his goals were.
But Astrid… was also very dangerous.
—
[How long will it take her mind to recover most of its function?]
[Three days]
—
'Is that so…'
After some thought, Sylas tossed the woman over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, then stood to his full height.
The world around them flashed as though the system sensed that Sylas was finished.
…
Sylas' vision hadn't even cleared before he sensed danger. He frowned, and his telekinesis flared out, Madness blooming. A pulse of power came from his Will, smashing against an oncoming arrow.
He reached out with his free hand, snatching the tip out of the air just before it tore into his chest.
When he felt the heft of the arrow, his frown couldn't help but deepen.
'Heavy…'
It was too heavy, even. Not large enough to have come from some sort of siege weapon, yet far too heavy to have possibly come from a normal arrow.
Sylas looked up and realized that he wasn't back at Casstle Main at all.
'What is this?'
His gaze flickered, and his head snapped around.
'Alexander…'
Sylas saw a man in the far-off distance. He was the definition of sharpness, a man whose every expression was angled and every decision was decisive.
There was no way Sylas wouldn't remember who he was. Astrid's first draft pick.
He was a special forces member, handpicked out of Military College to join the Elite NIA, and evaluated to have an IQ of 147. He was cool under pressure, had experience in subterfuge and espionage, and, more importantly, he had an inside look into the current state of the government.
And right now, Alexander Grimblade was currently in the middle of directing battle against a group of giants.
Well, "giants" was a little exaggerated. However, these people, covered in golden chainmail and beast skins, were easily a head to a head and a half taller than normal humans.
Their bronzed skin was adorned with swirling clay-colored tattoos, and the weapons they wielded were proportional to the size of their bodies.
No one other than the archer who aimed for Sylas earlier seemed to realize the sudden oddity, while Sylas himself didn't like the situation. He thought he would be taken back to Casstle Main after the Destiny Quest was over, but he didn't expect to instead be taken to Astrid's City instead.
How far was he from Casstle Main? Was he about to be dragged into another Quest? Was Casstle Main being attacked like this right now too?
Suddenly, Alexander's gaze sharpened, and he looked back to meet Sylas' gaze. The man's body arched back out of the way of a sweeping long spear, his arm angling up from below to pierce a blade right up and through their jaw, out the back of their skull.
Even with his back originally to Sylas, he seemed to have felt the change.
'One step at a time.'
Sylas calmly analyzed his situation and realized that there was really only one thing to do here.
He took a step forward and off the city wall, stepping through the skies.
He raised a hand to the air, and one after another, dancing shards of Glass took shape before erupting into white-green flames.
Blazing trails took shape in the skies while Alexander tensed.
But then the blades descended.
CHI. CHI. CHI.
The hail of Blade Aura ripped through everything in its path. One after another, these mysterious people found themselves dying before they understood what had happened.
Holes to the chest, slices across the neck, piercing pains right through the forehead.
Sylas was a one-man army. Carrying a woman over his shoulder didn't seem to slow him down in the slightest. If anything, the false sense of security that gave the others only made them fall faster.
Suddenly, he landed on the ground at the head of the army, standing before a man wielding two enormous axes who must have been standing at almost eight and a half feet tall.