“I see.”
Sylas exhaled a breath, finally opening his eyes. Beads of sweat fell down his brows, the sound of his heartbeat finally reaching him. It was as though he had been holding his breath for hours on end and finally realized just how much oxygen his body had been lacking.
He took deep breaths, trying to regain his bearings, but his heart rate was only increasing, shooting through the roof with increasing pace.
It seemed that he had truly pushed himself too far.
He stumbled a bit as he got out of the UniForm, only to be caught by a surprising character.
Megean.
Sylas looked down on her, not caring much as his sweat basically sprayed her. But she didn’t seem to be in the mood to care very much at all either.
There was an odd, calm maturity to her right now as she hooked Sylas’ arm over her shoulder.
“Careful, or else you’ll poke your eyes out.”
She was obviously referring to the horn on her head. From the way Sylas was looking at her, it wouldn’t be impossible for him to do something like that, especially since he wasn’t in full control of his body right now.
“Let’s get you food.”
Though she said this, she didn’t move immediately, instead taking out some sort of needle injectable and piercing it right into Sylas’ shoulder.
Sylas didn’t react much to this as he knew what it was, and he could also see the Rune fluctuations within it. He might not be able to control Runes above F-Grade, but he would certainly be able to spot Poison Runes when he saw them.
Plus, his baseline knowledge had taken a significant leap upward, and he assumed that a cartridge of nutrition like this one was exactly the reason he had recovered so fast before.
After this, Megean practically carried him to a dining hall they ate in.
…
The so-called dining hall was just Megean’s personal dining room, though it was probably large enough to be called as such.
Sylas had been given a large spread of food, and his appetite seemed endless.
Megean couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow, wondering how a man could eat so savagely, and yet so cleanly, and with so much etiquette at the same time.
Well, the etiquette Sylas was using wasn’t the sort she was familiar with, but she knew a strict set of rules when she saw one.
It was many hours before Sylas stopped eating.
“This isn’t efficient enough. All of this food was of F-Grade quality, right? Next time, bring E-Grade. I’ll be fine.”
Megean frowned. “It would be even less efficient if I gave you E-Grade food.”
“Not if you have a Skill to use.”
Megean blinked. “You want an F-Grade Skill capable of digesting E-Grade food?”
For a moment, she wondered if Sylas was insane. Did he understand that something like that was impossible? Unless…
Wait, Sylas’ words didn’t seem to be asking for a Skill at all. He already had one? That was also impossible.
Sylas, though, didn’t seem keen on explaining anything else. All there was to say was that he had gotten more benefits from his Primal Lord Silver Gene Class than before.
He stood to his feet and was ready to return to the UniForm.
“Wait,” Megean called out.
“I don’t have time to waste,” Sylas replied without looking back.
“Just wait!” Megean’s steps flashed as she appeared before him.
Sylas looked down at her, his expression not changing much at all, but the oppression still very much there.
He didn’t say anything, but the deadpan nature of his eyes said everything.
“Please, tell me what I have to do to help my grandfather. He isn’t a bad person.”
“It wouldn’t matter to me whether he was or wasn’t—only that he’s useful.”
“My grandfather would rather die than hand over his legacy to someone he doesn’t want to hand it to.”
“Isn’t that why you’re so useful?”
The deadpan, unbothered answers left Megean feeling stifled. But the worst part was that she had no rebuttal to them at all, they were nothing but the truth, and the honest truth at that.
“I…”
“Don’t waste my time. I’m not interested in marrying you.”
Sylas was beginning to get annoyed by all of this. Very annoyed.
He understood that Genes were an important part of this world, but he felt like everywhere he went, women were either offering him their wombs, or trying to force him to fill them.
He didn’t like it the first time, and he didn’t like it this third time either.
Megean paled. “Th-that isn’t what I was going to say.”
“It isn’t? Then why did I wake up in your bed? Is that the only bed the Golden Grove has?”
There was a flash of darkness in Sylas’ eyes and he blinked, closing them.
He took a breath and fell into silence. His body had recovered, but that didn’t mean his mind had. The mental fatigue would crush him, and it would make his Demonic Will far more difficult to control. At that point, he would become far more impulsive.
Although he seemed to have control over the situation, he didn’t want to be in an impulsive state while in enemy territory.
After this thought, he turned and went in the opposite direction of his original intention.
“Get me anything you have that accelerates the effectiveness of sleep. I’m going to bed.”
Megean could only watch as Sylas entered her bedroom again and went to bed.
Her eyes drooped a bit. Was Sylas right? Yes. But she also didn’t know what else to do.
She felt like it was all her fault her grandfather was in a situation like this one, and there was nothing she could do to fix it.
Taking a breath, she grit her teeth.
In that case, there was only one thing left to do.
Later that day, there was another commotion raised in the Golden Grove. Someone had entered the Secret Realm… but there was a very big difference between the time Lorien had and this time.
These matters didn’t concern Sylas at all, though. Instead, he was dreaming of Andromeda and dimensions.
That was the secret of Andromeda’s power…
The Mesh of Reality layered over all that there was. In essence, before it, everything was a two-dimensional construct, capable of being laid out in a single plane, simplifying the entire world into one seamless horizon.
Everything about the world could be defined through the indents layered into this fine mesh, even the rotation of planets, their cycles, the length of time they took to complete, were all decided by the indents into the Mesh of Reality.
If you could simplify the world into interactions that took place on this two-dimensional surface, suddenly complex problems became incredibly easy to decipher.
And the two tools you needed to decipher these mysteries…
Were time and space.