The plan sounded simple enough, but without an actual method to execute, it was worthless. Where was he going to find a City Stele strong enough to support a World Treasure? And if his plan was to instead rely on the Metarock already in his possession… how was he going to use it?
Sylas had no idea how to use Metarock. Gralith had already said that he wouldn't be returning, he couldn't afford to ask the Madness Key questions, and even Szorn was now by Cassarae's side.
There were only two solutions in Sylas' mind.
The first was to find Ulrik. He was the one here with the highest chance at having a Gold Gene. Then, he had to hope this would be enough to get the Madness Key to answer his question.
The second… was to destroy as many cities as possible, observing the methods each one of them used to activate their Aether Treasures, and see if he could copy some of those methods for himself.
The first was easily the most straightforward of the two, but it had by far the most issues as well.
Not to mention the fact there was no guarantee that Ulrik even had a Gold Gene, without Extricate, Sylas wouldn't even be able to take it. In order to take a Gold Gene, he needed to be able to forcefully raise Taboo Bond to Level 5 at the very least. But he wasn't sure if that would be possible.
Then there was the fact that even if everything worked out, and he got everything he wanted… there were good odds that the price the Madness Key would ask for would be more than Ulrik could even provide.
After all, for a question related to things as valuable as World Treasures and Metarock, there was no guarantee the Madness Key would only ask for the current bare minimum of one Gold Gene.
All in all, the plan had too many holes in it.
But even though the second plan had fewer holes in it, it relied too heavily on a moment of serendipity.
Sylas was extremely confident in his Rune Spark Mastery. In fact, the more time he spent in a world not restrained by the machinations of others, the more he realized just how much strength he had already been missing out on.
But the main issue here was still the fact that there were no guarantees.
However… it was still his best choice. Because at least while he was trying to execute on it, he would be striving toward completion of this Quest as well.
After all, no matter what, he would have to destroy these cities one by one.
There was no obvious end goal of the Progenitor Quest, but it didn't take a genius to figure it out…
Defeat all enemies.
Sylas' gaze flashed. Now it was just a matter of finding them.
**
The task was harder than Sylas imagined. There was a reason the World Scepter had been such a valuable reward to him.
As great as his strength was now, it would take him days to round Earth one time. And that was if he never took a rest.
This Quest World was probably at least as big, and all of the participants were scattered far and wide. They weren't meant to come into contact with one another so easily, at least not yet.
Even after another half hour, Sylas could only watch himself slipping down the leaderboard once again with nothing to show for it.
Running around randomly certainly wasn't helping, but he also wasn't just dashing about, hoping for a good outcome.
As he ran, trying to strategically head toward locations that seemed to have well-defended terrain, as he knew that these places were more likely to house cities, his mind was also racing.
For one, he was analyzing the Runes he had seen connecting Aurion's City Stele and Aether Treasure, but he was also trying to decipher something else.
Beacon.
Before Sylas learned of this City Stele meta, his original goal was to awaken Progenitor Professional so that he could use Beacon. At its max range, Beacon worked across thousands of kilometers now. With it, he could use the Serpentes in the region as his eyes and ears, finding his enemies with much greater ease.
There was no reason to give up on this path as just having Beacon alone would be of great help, especially since his enemies were most definitely building armies by now.
However, it was more complicated than he had given it credit for.
It sounded simple enough, send out beams of energy that traveled across large regions to call forth creatures of a certain species…
But often, the simplest of things, that worked with the most ease, had deep foundations and complex configurations tweaked and tweaked again over countless generations before they could work so seamlessly.
Even with this said, the main sticking point Sylas kept running into wasn't even the technique itself, but rather the fact that it relied on his Beast Totem to activate.
The Beast Totem, manifesting in a pair of golden slit Serpentes irises, was exceptionally complex.
Even after running [Psychedelic Punch] ragged, Sylas had still yet to reach the limits of Beast Totem. Of course, this punch Skill that was somehow probably still his strongest method of attack to this day was just a mere FF+ Skill, so it was only natural that it hadn't found the limits of his Beast Totem.
But the fact that [Psychedelic Punch], despite its low Grade, was still able to progress so far went to show just how mysterious the Beast Totem was.
Sylas could just barely manage to activate the Beast Totem through Progenitor Professional to Level 1 without practice, but he realized that if Beast Totem wasn't raised in level, then even if he understood the concepts of Beacon well enough, his Beast Totem would always be the bottleneck.
This left Sylas at a dilemma…
That was because the Beast Totem represented all Serpentes. How was he supposed to grasp the essence of Serpentes so perfectly in such a short time frame?