Chapter 901 Statues [Top Five in Golden Tickets Bonus Chapter]
Sylas was beaten and battered around, but he didn't resist it in the slightest. If he was correct, then this was the only way forward.
He hadn't done all that work deciphering something as complex as tide patterns to fight against it now. These tides beating and battering him around now were doing exactly what they needed to do…
Bringing him to his destination.
Sylas closed his eyes and took a breath. The Water Aether seamlessly became air in his lungs. Rather than choking him to death, it soothed him, and the remnants of the injuries in his body were actually slowly being healed.
The rhythmic cadence of the waters lulled him to sleep before he even realized it.
Sylas wasn't the type to make such mistakes. His foolish act of not even checking the changes to Were-For-The-Invincible was almost certainly a one-time thing. Something like losing consciousness in the middle of a Dungeon, in the ocean's waters at that, when he had no idea what would be on the other side…
Well, he would certainly never do something like that on purpose no matter how tired or fatigued he was.
But there was something about the ocean that pulled him into that lull. Its soothing embrace was like the warmth of a mother…
Sylas couldn't help but think as he drifted to sleep… when was the last time he hugged his own mother in earnest? He truly… couldn't recall… at least not of his own volition…
Maybe he should do that more…
It was the last thought he had before he sank into the depths of darkness, his body being massaged by what felt like countless fluid hands.
…
Sylas' eyes snapped open, leaping to his feet with a single fluid motion. He was instantly on high alert, and almost didn't notice just how springy and relaxed he felt until he realized that there was no danger around him at all.
But he couldn't remember ever feeling so small in his life.
He felt like an ant in a world of giants. Statues that must have been half a kilometer tall at the very least lined a paved road before him. And as though that wasn't enough, the road itself was wide enough that any one of them could come to life and walk down it just fine without disrupting the rest.
However, it seemed that only the road and the statues were lit. Beyond them, there was nothing but a sea of endless blackness.
Sylas realized belatedly that he was actually still underwater. Luckily, while he was unconscious, he hadn't unfused with Nosphaleen, or else that would have certainly caused its own array of issues.
Choking to death would not have been a great way to go out. Though, he would have probably died to whatever ridiculous water pressure was in this region first.
Luckily, Nosphaleen's abilities allowed him to dodge that as well. The water was particularly kind and gentle around him, alleviating what should have been a great amount of accumulated pressure.
'No other way than to go forward.'
Behind him was darkness. Ahead of him was a road. The path was obvious.
Sylas tapped his foot on the ground and suddenly shot out like a rocket.
His senses were on high alert, not only looking for signs of danger, but also feeling out the differences in movement in the water.
Surprisingly, likely thanks to Nosphaleen, he hardly felt a difference at all. There was a slight uptick in density, but it wasn't enough to make a substantial impact.
'These statues…'
Sylas observed them as he ran. He couldn't see their faces, making their origins unclear. But each one looked vaguely human…
Then again, so did basically all the Races Sylas had come across in the bazaar.
There were some exceptions like the four-armed announcer, but even he was still vaguely human in most senses of the term.
Two legs, two arms, standing upright seemed to be the default of most non-beast creatures in the universe. So this observation honestly didn't tell him much at all.
Until he started noticing a few outliers.
Their arms were covered in thick layers of hair that seemed to form thick armors of their own, their feet splayed out far more than those of other humanoids would be.
They seemed to be apes of some sort, though they stood as ramrod straight as the others.
Sylas' mind couldn't help but drift to the Seventh Summoning Archibald had told him about. The Overlord Race back then had been the Great Apes. Was this related?
'Interesting…'
Some of the statues wielded weapons. Sylas took note, but he didn't find anything special about them until he came across one that wielded something truly peculiar.
He didn't know how else to describe it other than he was fairly certain that he was looking at a light saber.
In statue form, this shouldn't have been so obvious, except for the fact that the water around where the rod-shaped blade was churned as though it was boiling.
After seeing the first peculiar weapon, Sylas began to see more.
There was a man that had his hands up in a fighting stance, two rings hovering around his wrists.
There was a woman wielding a weapon that seemed to be half a net, half throwing shurikens. From the style she was chiseled into, it looked like it seamlessly transitioned between three forms, able to form a large shuriken half the size of her body, two dozen smaller shurikens, or slip into the form of a net.
The more Sylas took note of these weapons, the more often they began to appear. It was clear that, at least at the time, these weapons weren't peculiar at all. They were maybe as common as swords and spears were to them.
Sylas' steps came to a stop.
He had run to the end of the road, and ahead of him, five statues stood.
The one on the furthest left was shrouded in darkness. He could see nothing at all.
The one just to the right of it, Sylas could finally see the face for the first time.
A Clypsian.
The one to the right of it would have been clear to him even without the face given the adornments on its body.
A Dogon.
The one to the right of it, despite also being a humanoid, had a head…
A Dinosaur.
To the right of that, the last of them, was an ape-like man, covered in hair, having a slightly arched back, and bearing canines so long they nearly pierced through his chin.
A Great Ape.