Sylas held Sylviaa's neck in his hand, holding her up as though she weighed not much more than a straw doll. There was a look of calm in her eyes, but Sylas could tell the difference…
The difference between a woman who didn't fear death versus one that didn't think she would die in the first place.
He had intimately felt the difference before. Sometimes he even wondered if his own current indifference toward death was only because he was gaining more confidence in his own abilities rather than the fact he had truly gotten over that fear.
That difference seemed inconsequential, but it was all too important to him.
Sylviaa wasn't so calm because she was ready to die. She just thought that she was too valuable to fall here.
Honestly speaking, she was probably right. She was easily among the top ten talents of Earth, an existence that would be integral to their future rise.
Sylas, though, hadn't decided. The other question was if the choice was even in his hands. Did he have to kill everyone on the Quest Leaderboard for him to win?
The odd part about this Quest was that the end goal wasn't obvious. If it was to conquer the entire world, maybe even killing everyone wouldn't be enough, as he would need to raise a City Stele past the Empire level to do that.
But… Sylas didn't think that would be necessary. He had a pretty good guess as to what it would take, and if he was correct, he could do it even without killing these enemies first. It was just that killing them ahead of time would make things far easier on him, so it was only logical to do so.
Though he said all of this, it wasn't certain. He could very well be wrong, which was why killing someone he could kill ahead of time instead of dragging them around only seemed like the logical thing to do.
He shook his head. Earth had so few warriors, and given the challenges that were coming, he would be arrogant to believe that he could do it all on his own.
Sylas' hand squeezed down.
Sylviaa's eyes widened in shock, not believing it until she felt her own windpipe shatter to pieces, squeezed down and then skewered by her own spinal cord.
It seemed that he would just have to be arrogant, then.
He didn't even bother to have Nosphaleen take control of her. It would be a waste of resources.
With the situation Earth was in now, it was best if there was just one voice and no one he had to worry about.
Did he care about Sylviaa herself and the threat she posed to him? Not at all. But he wouldn't be able to be on Earth all the time, especially not with what he had planned very soon. The only way forward was a clean sweep.
Since Emperor Eurpeia had died, why not kill some more?
Sylas was about to leave when he paused. After some thought, he used Extricate on Sylviaa.
There was no way that he could risk pushing Taboo Bond to Level 50 for her Potential, but there was something else that he was interested in. After a while, he pulled it out.
A Unique Gene.
A Silver Unique Gene at that.
'Oh? This should have come from a Silver Gene Crystal. It gave her enough slots for 30 Silver Genes…'
The Unique Gene had been paired with the Gene Crystal. From what Sylas could tell, the Gene Crystal that Sylviaa had used must have had a Capacity of at least 300 or so.
But how did she gather 300 Silver Genes?
And how does she have a 30 Silver Limit, and yet only one Silver Gene?
Something wasn't adding up. It didn't make sense that she could do the former but not the latter.
One possibility was that unlike Sylas, who would freely swap his Genes as he pleased, others were locked into theirs, so Sylviaa was a lot more selective. But even then, with a 300 Silver Gene capacity, there was no doubt that she had to accumulate many different sorts of Silver Genes to make it.
There was no way that in all that variety she hadn't been able to find anything that suited her.
There were only three possibilities that Sylas could think of.
The first was that this was a very recent addition and she didn't even have the chance to accumulate others.
The second was that there was a secret method that she was working on that Sylas didn't understand. Maybe she was already near her Gene Stat Limit even with Silver Genes, and it was useless to waste more on her if she couldn't later take them out.
This second reason was the flimsiest of them. As for the third, Sylas felt that it was probably the correct answer and one that made his gaze blaze.
'… The Gene Crystal was something she traded for, maybe from a Nexus of Legacy, and it likely came preloaded with everything she needed…'
There was a good reason Sylas felt like this. This Silver Gene was so… generic. It didn't carry the, well, uniqueness that was so common of Unique Genes.
Maybe it was the hints his Rune Spark Mastery was giving him about it, but it smelled of mass production, as though it was slotted to be given to many people.
As for in this case, it was designed first and foremost to increase the slots of Silver Genes one could accept into their bodies, and the boost to Speed and Dexterity it gave was secondary.
This seemed like a Silver Gene perfectly designed for an assassin. Most Rune Masters would see it that way as well. Sylas, however, saw through it to a deeper level.
It wasn't special at all. But because it wasn't special, there was, ironically, something unique about it.
Sylas didn't have to bank on a 50% chance of integrating with it at all.
Without hesitation, he pressed it to his chest.