Sylas sat across from the Bronze City Stele, his mind the picture of absolute focus. He recalled the information that Nosphaleen had gathered from Aurion and Phyrex, his World Scepter laid out across his lap.
The gist of it seemed simple enough.
Link the Runes of the Aether Treasure to that of the City Stele, and soon the Aether Treasure would gain the ability to bypass the limitation the system had placed on this Quest world and display its might properly.
Aether Treasures were different from normal Treasures in that they could interact with the world around them. The reason for the Aether prefix was that much of their abilities could be pulled from the external world.
In a lot of ways, Aether Treasures were to Treasures what Breath Mastery Runes were to lower-tier Runes.
At Breath Mastery, Runes could pull on the world and gather Aether on their own, allowing them to not need the support of other items like special herbs or dyes to give them power. This was the reason why Sylas could use his Scorpion Warlord Armor without the tattoos Ragnar had once had.
It was these Runes of the Aether Treasure that were the target, the very ones that communicated with the surrounding world.
Right now, Aether Treasures were suppressed because the system didn't want external items influencing this World War too much. This World War was supposed to be a measure of the talents of Worlds. The World that proved themselves more talented would gain the added support of the system.
This was only logical. The system was only interested in improvement. It didn't care through what means, and that was often why the wool could be pulled over its eyes.
The system wasn't interested in what was most fair. All it wanted was what could become the most powerful.
The irony of that, though, was that those that were already powerful would always have an advantage in that aspect. As heartwarming as it was to root for the underdog, that simply wasn't how the real world worked.
So the system needed to strike a balance between betting on the unlikely success and also supporting those that already had the power to, well, support themselves.
This was one such case of this.
Regardless, what was important was that the system's parameters, in this case, could be circumvented by using the City Stele.
Even so, this was far easier said than done.
Other than Lorien and Ulrik, there weren't just an endless supply of Rune Masters here, so how had they all succeeded in doing this?
The Runes of a City Stele weren't nearly as complicated as Gene Runes, but they were still substantially complex. These were treasures that Worlds would fight tooth and nail over. Their number of Foundations was uncountable.
City Steles, even in their weakest forms, were constructed of a mesh of Runes far more complex than even the Scorpion Warlord Armor.
Aether Treasures were somewhat simpler in this respect, but were still complicated nonetheless.
Saying that you were easily dealing with 50 Foundation Rune stacks atop one another wasn't an exaggeration at all. By comparison, the Foundations of the Runes of the City Steles were probably closer to 80, often even 90.
Even Sylas had never touched Runes of this level. He had been close and even touched 80, but 90? Absolutely not.
So how had the others done it?
Cheating.
Neither Aurion nor Phyrex had been able to explain it. That wasn't surprising. Neither was a Rune Master, and even if they were, Sylas doubted they'd have the depth of understanding needed.
What they were doing here was mimicking System Cities.
When Sylas first stepped into the depths of a System City, he was taken aback by the large cooling system within it. He thought he had stepped into the core of a large nuclear reactor.
This large cooling system provided the System City with a substantial amount of energy as well as support. When the time came, they would even be used to help leap a world over the hurdle, granting it the right to complete the Summoning.
In this case, all they had likely done was copy those Runes, the very ones allowing the City Steles to take advantage of the large pool of energy and connect its foundation to the World around it.
And by "copy," Sylas was actually being far too nice.
With a wave of a hand, a piece of something that had shattered landed in his hand. It was only a piece of what he had once been, but when the City Stele crumbled, not only had he lost Aurion's Aether Treasure, but what had supported it also collapsed.
They hadn't just copied, they had directly taken pieces of a System City to integrate into their contraption.
With this as a bridge between the Aether Treasure and City Stele, and a source of energy, the end result was obvious.
Now, understanding this was all well and good, but it wasn't useful to Sylas.
For one, a World Treasure was practically at the same level of complexity as a City Stele. Second, he didn't have a System City available to him here to dissect and form this sort of contraption. And, even if he did, the odds of it working as seamlessly were limited.
The reason this could work was because an Aether Treasure was far inferior to a City Stele. For this system to work properly, one had to be the "child" while the other had to be the "parent." If the two were too close in strength, the energy wouldn't know which way to flow.
That was because this was the definition of a janky system. There were too many things that could go wrong.
But as far as Sylas was concerned… that was because the Rune Masters that formed it were far too inferior. They were complete and utter jokes.
He squeezed his hand and the piece of System City shattered. Then, he flipped his palm again, and this time, large numbers of energy-filled bottles began to appear.
The ground sank.