Chapter 919 Not Much of a Chance
Sylas streaked across the skies, his eyes narrowed. His thoughts were still a bit scrambled and he hadn't quite pieced things together just yet, but what he was certain of was that Aki was probably just as much of a pawn as the rest of them.
But what exactly did it mean for the Africor Continent to have so much emphasis placed on it?
There was only one real answer.
The Mountains of Giza.
But more importantly than any of that… it was the reward given out as a result of it.
The Genesis Forge.
Sylas still couldn't understand it, though. Would this mysterious existence be so interested in such a thing?
Honestly speaking, whoever this was, they had to be a shockingly powerful individual. Even with all of his abilities and talent in Rune Mastery, he couldn't fathom how you could warp the time a world would experience.
While Sylas didn't have a good frame for what this meant on the grand scheme… if someone told him that this individual was only E-Grade, he wouldn't believe them in the slightest.
And there was very good reason for that. Weren't the Sylphs and E-Grade Race? And weren't they still being pulled on the strings of a puppet master? How could the one lording over them be at their level?
On top of that, the Genesis Forge, as far as he knew, could only get him to the E-Grade. He might have a chance at the D-Grade if he gathered all three pieces, but not only did he not know where that third piece even was as of now, even if he had it…
Would this individual even care about it?
So why? Why the emphasis on the Africor Continent? Why the Africor Monarchs? Why the Genesis Forge?
BANG!
Sylas came to a sudden and forceful stop, the air clapping like thunder around him and sparks of lightning radiating out from him.
The scene below was a crumpled mess. Craters had already filled the region, but Sylas was shocked by the outcome.
He had reacted quickly. So quickly that Nosphaleen had barely left over the horizon when he acted. How had so much happened without him even reacting to it first?
It looked almost as though they had been battling for hours. Nosphaleen stood in the midst of the three, huffing for breath on her very last legs.
Her scales were chipped in countless places; she was missing an ear and an arm. Both her wings barely drooped to her sides, unable to flare out in the slightest.
But the three Monarchs weren't in much better condition. In fact, all things considered, they should have long been dead.
Amara was missing a quarter chunk of her head. Thorian had a hole the size of the tip of Nosphaleen's tail right in the middle of his chest, pieces of his beating heart still sputtering with thick blood from time to time.
And then there was Roderic. He had already had a hole in his chest because of Sylas, but right now his inner organs spilled out like a mess of tied cords. They sagged to the ground, oozing with a black energy.
Yet none of the three of them showed a single sign of collapsing.
BANG!
Sylas collided with a barrier.
'What the hell is going on?'
There was a slight bit of agitation in Sylas' mind. Nosphaleen's abilities were too useful, but that wasn't the real reason he was so agitated.
He just didn't understand.
Why would they feel a need to use this sort of trick to corner his contract and not him? Was it because they knew they didn't stand a chance against him? But what difference would it make to kill Nosphaleen, then? He didn't need to fuse with her to crush them, and she was certainly not his strongest contract.
Though she had a great deal of potential, even that was inferior to the Basilisk King?
Were they trying to bait the Basilisk King out of him? Were they begging for death that badly?
Did they want to use Nosphaleen to force him to hand over the Genesis Forge? That was ridiculous. He'd rather let her die than do that. If they had been studying him for long enough, they would know he would never make such a foolish decision.
If that was the route they wanted to take, they were better off targeting Cassarae. But he would never make the same mistake twice. While it looked like he had left Cassarae unattended, the distance wasn't nearly far enough for that; he was confident he could protect both regions with ease.
In fact, he had already activated Beacon just in case.
That was when a memory hit Sylas.
Nosphaleen wasn't from Earth. She was born off Earth under the control of the Sylphs.
What exactly did that mean?
Sylas didn't know—that was why he had never thought much about it. But how had they even gotten those Clypsians off Earth? Why did they store them away like lab rats? Why use them in a training Dungeon like Frostbane?
What purpose did all of that serve? Why bother to go that far and raise such a dangerous Race right in the midst of elements they were quite in tune with?
Sylas' eyes bounced back and forth, his thoughts churning and churning.
There was something that he was missing here, something that he didn't understand. It wasn't a matter of not being intelligent enough; he quite literally didn't have enough experience in the world.
He punched at the barrier again, but failed. There wasn't even a health bar to follow like there had been against Professor Fembroise; it was like there was simply nothing he could do.
"Szorn!" Sylas called out.
"Yes, young master!" A flickering eye appeared.
There was no time to ask the Madness Key. The answer he needed had to come from a nimbler mind, not a device that could only answer straightforward questions. He could only hope that for once, Szorn's intelligence worked in his favor instead of against him.
"Why would someone raise a former Overlord Race off-world, and then allow them to return only to try and capture them again?"
Szorn's large, singular eye blinked.
"Ah, this. This is a common strategy, young master. A world teetering on the edge of a Summoning Failure, especially if it is the Ninth, will do whatever it can to survive. If that comes in the form of reviving a former Overlord Race and triggering a Race War, it will do so.
"This method, if the target has been born off-world especially, is particularly potent. That's because if an off-worlder becomes a member of a new world's Overlord Race, the world itself becomes more accepting to off-worlders.
"In this case, it makes the world easier to control and manage as it has become tainted. They call it the Trojan Bridge Method. It was a strategy created by a warlord race that I will not name as doing so is very dangerous. But if young master wants to hear the story, Szorn can happily oblige—."
"And what if you elevate that bridge's Race to beyond the limits of the target world?" Sylas cut the Familiar off.
"Ah, well, in that case. The world doesn't really stand much of a chance, young master."