Sylas stared at Moose's movements for a long while.
This method of hacking the system was powerful, but there were limitations. The most important of them was mobility.
The World Scepter needed to be here, attached to the City Stele. That meant that if Sylas used it, he could teleport instantly to the location he wanted to be at, but if he wanted to use the World Scepter again, he would have to rush back to his city from however long the distance away was.
Sylas had come up with his own solutions to these problems, of course.
For one, he didn't care about leveling up his city at all; it was here for this purpose alone. He planned to personally kill off the competition and deal with them that way. That meant that he could just uproot his city.
The trouble with this method was that there was a penalty for moving cities, and it would also damage the Runes that he had laid down, and he would have to redraw them.
Redrawing the Runes was easy. The real issue was the energy that he used to activate them on a large scale. That energy was limited, and without finding another equivalent source, Sylas knew that he could only do this four more times.
This was the most flexible of the options.
The second option was finding the resources he would need to modify the Runes and make this a new, quasi-portable option. But he had no idea where he might find such resources.
The obvious answer was the Nexus. He bet that the access he had with a Bronze City Stele was on a whole other level compared to Cassarae's. But there was also a chance that much like Earth's Nexuses, this City Stele was limited to what the Quest could provide and what other City Lords here put up for sale.
Depending on the system's whims, this could either be a very, very good thing, or the exact opposite. However, that would require Sylas to survey the landscape personally before he could make a choice.
And, even if he did do that…
How?
He had no experience with picking out materials and using his Runes on them. Basically, his entire Rune Master journey was figuring out how to grow powerful enough so that he didn't have to rely on external items, whether that be because he couldn't afford them, didn't have time to gather them, or didn't want the Scorned Wraps to destroy them.
These thoughts were complex and seemingly endless, but Sylas knew that he was making a pivotal decision right now. Moose was certainly not in his plans…
He couldn't let this sort of anomaly just run around without being addressed because it would certainly come back to bite him. But it was precisely because he wasn't in his plans that Sylas didn't have an immediate answer for him.
Should he waste a teleportation on him or not?
The ultimate conclusion was simple.
Do it.
Since he would have to deal with Sylviaa anyway…
Why not two birds with one stone?
**
Moose trudged through a land of soil and grass, every step causing the ground to depress. As big as he was, it seemed that his weight was even more exaggerated as though his bones had been plated with steel.
His expression and face made him seem quite dull, but there were what looked almost like shooting stars in the depths of his eyes every time he completed a thought, his brain firing faster and faster these days.
Somehow, he was able to tell the exact location of each one of his enemies. From one, to the next, and then to the next, he moved smoothly and without hurry as though something was pointing him toward them.
And that was because that was exactly what was happening.
Before his eyes, an arrow only he could see pointed forward.
There were no fancy words or descriptions of a mission or Quest to complete. But just an arrow.
And it was enough.
Moose suddenly stopped.
There was a flash up ahead and a man appeared right across from him. The arrow that had been slightly skewed to the left suddenly veered back so violently it had to tremble into place once more, locking onto the man right in front of him.
Once black and foggy, the arrow began to solidify, glowing a deeper and deeper shade of red until this red began to outline the man himself.
…
Sylas stood across from Moose, his eyes narrowing. It was one thing to see the man behind a projected screen, it was another matter entirely to face him in person. The best word that could be used to describe Moose was…
Dense.
His body was just solid, thick as a brick wall and no less compact. He was massive, and yet not a single inch of his frame was wasted.
Then there was his forehead. Large, almost like a curved steel plate with the two small protrusions on it as though he had been bumped on the head in a perfectly symmetrical pattern. Or…
'He's growing horns.'
Sylas looked down at Moose's hands, each large enough to wrap all the way around his head and squeeze it to pulp as though a stress ball. The veiny patterns of coursing vascularity somehow seemed like the most obvious sign of strength to Sylas.
Powerful.
From Sylas' Will alone, disregarding any stats, he knew that the Effectiveness of Moose's Strength and Constitution alone somehow dwarfed even Gogo's.
"You shouldn't be here." Moose suddenly said, his face reddening slightly. It wasn't out of embarrassment, but instead like his engines were revving. Sylas could practically see his heart pumping out of his chest.
Sylas looked up from the man's hands. He shouldn't be here? Shouldn't Moose be dead? If there was one person who shouldn't be here, it was the man across from him.
"You're the one that killed Ragnar." Sylas suddenly realized something, looking at some of the markings that covered Moose.
BOOM!
The air in front of Sylas suddenly warped.