Sylas quickly found Aurion's main city. Or, rather, the Sylph pointed out the direction to him.
If nothing else, Aurion was quite resilient. He hadn't made a sound after being captured, and he also accepted his fate—in part. It was clear that he was looking for ways to remain alive.
Aurion knew that Nosphaleen was in Sylas' possession, but he had no idea in what capacity. He also wasn't fully aware just how much Nosphaleen had grown into her Mesmeryx abilities.
In Aurion's opinion, there was no method Sylas could have to bring Nosphaleen here, so the thought of being coerced into answering questions in this way couldn't have been further from his mind.
Nosphaleen wasn't an Overlord of her World, so it was impossible that she would be invited here. Without understanding that she was now one of Sylas' Contracts, there was no way he could guess how things would turn out when he led Sylas to his city.
Not only did Sylas not question him about the city like he expected, but he directly destroyed the City Stele.
Unfortunately, this was only the first thing to catch Aurion off guard. Not only did Sylas waste a perfect opportunity to quickly gather Genes, but he then spent the large majority of it.
Having gained +150,000 Silver Genes from destroying the main City, and an additional +30,000 from the remaining Subsidiaries that were destroyed at the same time, Sylas almost shot back up to first place.
—
[Quest Leaderboard]
[1. Lorien Myst - 225,000]
[2. Sylas Grimblade - 195,360]
[3. Ulrik Vecunish - 98,025]
—
Using up 100,000 Silver Genes, Sylas used 50,000 to unlock Progenitor Professional and began to test things.
He ignored that Aurion was still in shock on the ground. Before, the Sylph had still been able to remain calm, thinking that if Sylas took over his city, there might be a chance to grab it back in the future and even take all the Genes that Sylas had gathered in that time.
But now, it was like he was facing the true weight of his failure. There was no coming back from this. There was no chance.
His face paled, and though his expression itself was still unreadable, the moving beat of his chest, his shallow breath, and the draining of his blood all spoke for itself.
Sylas, though, didn't seem to realize what he had done.
'It really does hinge on my understanding… Summoning my Contracts is very easy for me, almost negligible. This should be because of my Space Progenitor Ability. I have a strong grasp of shifts of space in the Mesh of Reality, so I can sense the Hibernation Realm quite easily, pull them out, and put them back in.
'But, when it comes to abilities like the Hibernation Realm's natural healing acceleration, that might as well still be at Level 0. I can only trigger it to the lowest level… that's still +100% to recover, but at this level, it's not good enough. Even with high Constitution, a broken bone would take hours to heal from. Even doubling that speed would still take quite some time left…
'Fusion for me is somewhere in the middle. I have a high understanding of my own body, but the layers of my Contracts' bodies are a different thing. I only have half of the equation, and even that half isn't complete and feels like it's always improving. So if I Fuse right now relying on Progenitor Professional, not only would it probably take me several minutes to do it successfully, I'd probably be lucky to gain 20% of their stats at best...'
Sylas went through the abilities of his Vipermancy Profession one by one. It was like he had a cheat sheet in front of him to find out exactly what his weaknesses were.
He knew that he was relying on the system heavily to make use of his Profession, but he hadn't truly realized just how much until now.
No… it wasn't a matter of how much, but in exactly what aspects. This was huge.
If he had the time, he would have liked to give even more time to figuring out exactly how much he could improve on his own.
But he had no choice but to move over to his Runeweaver Profession as well. Although he had done all of this just to summon Nosphaleen and his other Contracts, he couldn't ignore the usefulness of his second Profession.
When he looked over it, though, his eyes glowed fiercely.
His Runeweaver Profession… practically had no weaknesses at all. The only thing he was missing was the bridge between his Rune Spark and his ability to impose it onto the world.
Because he didn't have a Unique Gene related to this, nor was he born into a Race like the Thryskai that had a third eye capable of directly imposing their Will onto the world, Sylas had been limited in how he could make use of his Rune Spark mastery.
This was part of the reason why he had been so limited by Earth and its Rune situation. He was highly reliant on the state of the world around him and how it functioned. This could decide a great deal about the Effectiveness of his Rune Mastery.
But now, he had Runeweaver. Because of that, the amount of power he lost transferring his comprehension and control to impose his Will onto the world had been greatly limited.
All Runeweaver had really done was give him the eyes capable of withstanding his Will.
What did this mean?
All of this was to say that unlike Vipermancer…
Runeweaver didn't have the slightest limitations at all. The moment Progenitor Professional allowed him to use his Weaving Irises and Unravelling Pupils, it was all systems go.
Sylas clenched his fist. This was another advantage gained.
He took a breath and focused.
Several seconds later, he spoke.
"Nosphaleen."
A beauty with the tail of a snake appeared, looming overhead.
"I want information on him. This time, do it here."
"Yes, young master."
Nosphaleen ignored Aurion's shock, her eyes already glowing.
Sylas, though, was shocked by something else.
Nosphaleen's stats had been converted, but just like his own Will and Charisma…
They hadn't been suppressed.
—
[Nosphaleen Tideborn (FFF+)]
[Level: 10]
[Physical: 0.999]
>[Strength: 0.999]
>[Constitution: 0.999]
>[Dexterity: 0.999]
>[Speed: 0.999]
[Mental: 1.999]
>[Intelligence: 1.999]
>[Wisdom: 1.999]
>[Charisma: 1.999]
[Will: 0.999]
—
Did this mean that Gogo was also in the clear?
Sylas began to adjust his plans again…