Sylas threw what remained of Ulrik's corpse into the Madness Key. He knew that there was no point in trying to use Extricate, not yet. He had experience trying to take Genes from the Sylphs, and that hadn't ended well.
Even a Race like the Sylphs could protect their Genes, let alone the Thryskai. The attempt wasn't worth the waste.
But, Sylas bet that if there was a way to place Gene Locks, then there was a way to remove them too. For now, though…
Sylas bent down and plucked out three balls of flesh. After observing them for a while, he crushed two of them and tossed them away. It seemed that at least for Ulrik, the only important eye was the third. The other two were too simple.
He would need this for his eye refinement method, which was the real reason he crushed Ulrik's skull. Otherwise, he wouldn't have even bothered to waste the energy.
Unfortunately, it was just one, and it was still just a single piece of what he needed as several resources needed to be compiled as well. But, it was a start.
Plus, unlike with the Genes… he wouldn't have to worry about unlocking it first.
It seemed that there was only one more enemy that he had to be wary of now.
The only real enemy that he had been gunning for from the very beginning.
As powerful as Ulrik's lineage was, Sylas had never cared much for him. If he hadn't pissed him off so much, Sylas would have only bothered to remember him in passing.
But at the time, the situation with Nyssa was already close to pulling him over the edge. Ulrik adding fuel to the flames was something he only had himself to blame for.
Now, though, Sylas felt much more relaxed. If he was facing off against Lorien alone, he was certain that she wouldn't stand a chance. But given the intelligence of that woman…
The odds that things would be so simple were low.
He had only just had the thought when he frowned.
His head snapped up to the skies. Reflected in his gaze, the Mesh of Reality appeared before him, dancing between the various Runes. His frown deepened.
'Something is restraining the world. It's almost whining… it's being oppressed by something…'
Flashes of insight connected the dots for Sylas.
"She's trying to take control of the world right now. I was right."
Sylas didn't move immediately.
A treasure powerful enough to do this, even if it was just a projected Quest world, wasn't something that could be taken so lightly.
If this treasure could have been used to become a Progenitor directly of any normal world, then why would she even bother to come here? However, because this was a world projected by the system, it had its flaws and it could be taken advantage of in this way.
Of course, Sylas only reached this conclusion because he assumed that everyone was here for a chance to become a Progenitor like he was. While he was right in a sense, it wasn't exactly as he assumed it to be.
Regardless, the conclusion was correct.
But what he didn't know was exactly how he should go about stopping it.
Like he had said, any treasure that could work on this level and scope would certainly have great power. He didn't have a city backing him like Ulrik did, and he somehow doubted that Lorien would have her city hanging in the sky for him to conveniently knock down either.
'What do I do?'
Sylas frowned, standing as he felt the world slowly bending as though it might collapse any moment now. If he waited any longer, he might not even be able to teleport to Lorien directly.
The World Scepter relied on the world itself to function. If the world was compromised too much, or under the control of someone else, the world wouldn't even have the authority to allow a World Treasure to work in the first place.
At that point, the scepter would become a useless pile of junk metal.
How was he going to counter a treasure like this one?
Once again, he was running into the same problem he always did.
Lack of information, lack of understanding. Would he really have to fly in blind and just hope for the best?
"No… I do have a method…"
Calculations danced in Sylas' mind, but he couldn't complete them in time. Or rather, he knew he wouldn't.
Summoning the World Scepter and City Stele once again, he poured Genes into it to activate the city once more and establish its foothold before he vanished once again.
…
Lorien stood in a room with her City Stele, a treasure in the shape of a single white feather with sparse furs of gold dispersed throughout hanging above it.
There was a sigh in her heart, but she knew that she was making the correct decision.
According to what she knew, the only way for Sylas to have accumulated so many Silver Genes at the same time was by having earned a Bronze City Stele.
She had no idea how he had managed to clear one so early on, likely all on his own, but what it told her was that she had vastly underestimated his strength.
But more important than that, if Sylas didn't choose a City Stele to start, he almost certainly chose the Gene Elixir. That meant that unlike the rest of them, he only needed to gather double the Genes to unlock what he needed.
Even after spawning an alchemist, she was still working with Inflexible Gene Elixirs, meaning she had to gather 10 times as much to unlock what she needed.
The conclusion was obvious. She would lose if she wasn't willing to make sacrifices.
This had to be her sacrifice whether she wanted it or not.
Her head snapped in a certain direction.
'… He's here.'
She had only just had the thought when her eyes opened wide.
'What is that? No, absolutely not.'
Lorien's gaze turned malevolent as her body disappeared in a cloud of pink mist.