One of the things that always fascinated Sylas was actually something someone who would usually be far beneath his notice had done. That being Ulrik.
Ulrik had been able to use Runes so casually that the very ground he walked on had become like a moving sidewalk. It was such a simple ability, and yet it had always felt so much more profound to Sylas.
The dead Thryskai had used it for everything from just casual day-to-day walking, all the way up to accelerating himself in battle.
Logically speaking, this was probably just some application of a Combatant Rune Master Path. But it wasn’t the method itself that intrigued Sylas so much, but the ease, the fluidity, the naturalness…
It was even more shocking because Ulrik was definitely nowhere near being a Rune Spark Master, and logically, by the definitions of the tiers of Mastery, one would have to reach that level to display such might.
There was so much about it all that even bordered on confusion for Sylas, and he didn’t quite understand.
It was at this point, like he said, that he began running into more fascinating topics. Like Genes, Unique Genes, Bloodlines, and various bolstering effects that they could have on Rune Mastery.
The closest Sylas had ever been to using Runes with as much ease as Ulrik was not long ago when he had fallen asleep, and the Runes around him had helped him maintain an upright position so he didn’t fall over.
But if one measured Sylas’ Mastery, his Will, his Charisma, and then put it up against Ulrik…
It felt almost ridiculous that it had taken him so long to be capable of such a thing. It was almost like a grown man still needing training wheels on his bike.
By the same token, though, Sylas had been in the Golden Grove for a while, but he hadn’t seen anyone else just casually walking around like Ulrik already.
That was when he learned of the importance of what you were born with.
There were several factors at play.
First, Ulrik was a member of a D-Grade Race, the lowest Tier of Thryskai there was, the Mortal Thryskai. Because of that, basically any world he stepped onto in the Skai 11331 Galaxy was subservient on touchdown.
Then there was the actual Lineage of this specific D-Grade Race in particular. The Skai Eye of the Thryskai was an exceptional tool in increasing influence on the world. It made Charisma and Will many times more effective. As such, the Thryskai didn’t need to reach as high a level of Mastery to display the skills and abilities of those far beyond them.
All of these things felt like simple concepts that Sylas would be able to understand if he just sat around and thought about it for long enough, but it really framed things well for him.
The world wasn’t fair, and he shouldn’t be wasting his time moping about how much it wasn’t. It pissed him off from time to time, but it was his duty to be better than that.
His path forward, then, would be in figuring out methods to mitigate all of this.
The first and maybe most important tools he had toward that end were four in number, and fell into two categories.
The first category was his eyes, the two things that fell under it being his Unravelling Pupils and his Weaving Irises.
The second category was his so-called Will Abilities, as everyone liked to mistake them, or more accurately, his Progenitor Flame Abilities. The two things that fell under it obviously being Temporal Delay and Astral Stutter.
If he was going to raise his effectiveness in using his Rune Mastery, and truly display the might that he had earned rather than what he was given, these two would be absolutely crucial.
The first, there was little Sylas could do about right now. He had already scoured the UniForm’s information stores for things related to the eyes of his and what organization they might have come from, but there was nothing.
This could only mean that the place was likely very, very far from here. He would just have to accept that for now.
But what he did find were paths of Rune Mastery, specifically in the Formation Rune Master Path, and even more specifically in the so-called Sealer and Decoder Rune Master Paths that were very much in line with the abilities of his eyes.
He would definitely study those.
But in terms of ranking priority, he placed his Progenitor Flame Abilities first, and that was because he knew that Andromeda had exactly the foundation he needed to figure them out a great deal.
There was an enormous elephant in the room, one that had been there ever since Sylas stepped foot into this UniForm.
How did Andromeda work? And why did it require someone with both time and space Will Abilities to function?
If Sylas could figure this out, then not only would he be able to understand his own Progenitor Flame Abilities to a far deeper extent, but would he be able to maybe improve Andromeda in the future so that it would continue to be useful to him even when he far surpassed Old Brama? Or maybe…
He might be able to reach a state where Andromeda was superfluous to him because he would be able to replicate its abilities with his own mind alone.
The thoughts were intriguing. The execution… well, it wasn’t nearly as easy.
All Sylas could really feel about Andromeda was that it somehow had the ability to make his mind stretch further, so to speak. He needed less time to digest the same amount of information, and he could also manage to keep hold of that information even after he disconnected, which was a true rarity and where the greatest strength of the UniForm lay.
But there was no telling if Sylas already had the full picture or not, and extrapolating what this meant and how it related to time and space abilities was exceptionally difficult when you only really had one data point to work with.
Sylas spent an entire day on the problem.
He found his answer.