Ulrik's eyes widened. By the time he reacted, there were only the ninth and tenth formations left, but the city in the skies had already tilted far off to the side.
For some reason, his eyes locked onto Sylas one more time, just for him to finally look at him through the last formation. He didn't move a single inch, as though he couldn't see the city falling toward him from above.
BANG!
The last formation shattered.
The descent was almost slow at first… until it instantly wasn't. Like an anchor falling from above, it didn't just fall, it plummeted. Harsh winds lashed out, rushing to get out of its way, a whistling that sounded more akin to the howls of countless whales echoing across the distance.
Sylas' dense hair blew back, his pants pressing against his body so firmly that it seemed as though they might rip at the seams.
BOOM!
Sylas didn't take a single step as the earth beneath him collapsed, shattering to pieces and then riding up in tsunami-like waves. As though a nuke had gone off, the region for several kilometers was leveled to the ground, and yet…
There Sylas stood.
An abyss lay below him, but as though to prove a point, he hovered above it, the remains of the city having long since collapsed beneath him.
The once tall steel walls had collapsed. The structures, once defined and quite majestic despite the youth of the city, had no redeeming characteristics left. Endless rubble and scraps of silvery steel were the only outlines of what had once been, even a vast majority of them were in heaps of nothing.
Almost no one at all survived.
Ulrik had easily been half a kilometer in the skies, a distance that should have been enough for him to act with impunity. But it was also a height that, without other means, F-Grades couldn't possibly survive a fall from.
The number of people that could use their telekinesis to fly was limited. But worse than that, the further away from the surface of a world you were, the more difficult flight was.
Telekinesis worked by exerting your Will onto the world. If there was no world to exert your Will on, then how could you fly?
If you wanted to do something like that, you would need a Will so powerful that it could stand independent of outside influences, a Will not reliant on the relativity of its existence, but rather a Will in the truest sense.
But a Will of such a level… it was unfathomable even to the current Sylas.
That said, something like flying half a kilometer above the surface of a world was easy for the current Sylas. But attacking from a distance of half a kilometer was likewise well within his range.
With his current Luck, projecting his Will an entire two kilometers was more than within his capabilities.
What was half a kilometer worth to him?
Sylas took a step forward, walking across the air as though it was no different from flat ground. The echoes of a cough and shifting metal and brick panels echoed, but by the time the head producing said sounds appeared, they were only in time to find a clawed hand reaching down.
Ulrik's throat was snatched, his airways cut off.
His body was an absolute mess.
Without Will of a Forging level at the very least, flying half a kilometer above the surface was impossible. Ulrik had floundered for the first several hundred meters, and by the time his own telekinesis started working properly, he was going so fast that it was hard to exert the power he needed to slow himself down properly.
He barely managed to focus on slowing himself down enough that he didn't die on impact, only to be forced to withstand the equivalent of a nuclear bomb going off.
A meteor of this size, if falling from the highest stratosphere, could easily destroy a world. An F-Grade existence like him, especially with his stats restrained, was lucky to even be alive right now.
His body was in shambles, he didn't have a single bone that wasn't broken or a single piece of flesh that wasn't marred in some way.
Notifications about the destruction of his city rang out in his ears and flashed in his eyes continuously, and yet all he could see was that pair of emerald eyes right before him, staring down at him.
In that moment, for the first time in his life, Ulrik truly felt inferior in a way he couldn't describe.
He hadn't felt this way as a branch member of his family, he hadn't felt this way facing off against the powerhouses of his clan, he hadn't even felt this way while facing E-Grades or the rare D-Grades.
But right now, facing someone who should have been beneath his notice, he felt it more intimately than ever before, so much so that what was nothing more than a fraction of a second felt like a lifetime to him.
Crack.
Sylas wasn't staring at Ulrik alone, he wasn't wasting his time trying to assert dominance or prove who was correct all the while. He didn't even bother to mention his oath and how he was fulfilling it.
The instant he picked up Ulrik's neck, he snapped, crushing it to pieces so thoroughly and with such force that the Thryskai's flesh became pulp and he was decapitated.
Ulrik's head rolled off of the top of Sylas' fist, falling to the ground in a silent splat that echoed with a grotesque tinge to it.
Sylas was indifferent to it all, but it seemed that his Demonic Will was not.
There was a surge inside of him as though a chain had finally been broken. Unfettered and rumbling, his Will spread out, pressing down onto the world with a strength that exceeded 100,000 pounds of force.
'Interesting…'
Sylas thought. It seemed that System Oaths were a method of improving his Will rapidly. He didn't expect a reward for this, but he would surely take it.
He lifted a foot and smashed Ulrik's head to pulp.