The world of Combatant Rune Masters was deep and fast. There were everything from what were called Weapon Rune Masters, to Talisman Rune Masters, to Mancer Rune Masters, to Beast Rune Masters.
The last of them was probably most similar to the Scorpion Warlord Armor that Sylas wore, but there was little in the way of what Sylas could take advantage of.
From what Sylas understood, there were probably other special methods in the Beast Warlord Sanctum that would make better use of his Scorpion Warlord Armor as it was now. But he obviously wasn’t there, and if the Golden Grove had the secrets of the Beast Warlord Sanctum here, they would be far more powerful than they seemed to act.
What Sylas was instead looking for was other methods, and mostly understanding, so that he could manipulate things on a battlefield and adapt to situations with a fluidity that his talent allowed.
As powerful as Sylas’ Scorpion Warlord Armor was now, in the vast majority of situations, he would only dare to use the First Layer. One could imagine that the drain of forming such an armor wasn’t low by any means. In fact, Sylas wasn’t entirely sure if he could even form it in the midst of battle like he usually did right now.
If he wanted to use it, until his Will stat was a lot closer to the six-digit mark than it was now, or until he could lug the UniForm around him everywhere he went, or hopefully translate some of the UniForm’s skills into his Progenitor Flame Abilities, he would be out of luck.
Even so, +65,000 Physical stat points that he could casually pull out whenever he so pleased was nothing to sneeze at.
If an opponent gave him time, or he had Gogo’s help in stalling, he could definitely deploy the Second Layer for +130,000 Physical stat points.
Whether he could deploy the Third… well, if he was facing an opponent he needed that against, Gogo would need to get a lot stronger than he was now to deal with such an enemy.
This is why Sylas wanted other methods, and of them all, Mancer Rune Masters intrigued him the most, mainly because he was already half of one. But he was far too casual with his training… in that he had none at all.
When he opened up this world, he saw a shocking array of methods. Runes to concentrate Aether, Runes to gather Aether with greater speed, Runes that stored Mancy Skills for quick deployment, or even Runes that lowered the Aether requirement for casting Mancy Skills…
The number of methods seemed endless, and Sylas found it hard not to go through them all.
Every Rune he so much as glanced at seemed to fuse itself into his psyche, becoming embedded and easily understood by him. Even without the UniForm, these 20, 30, to 40 Foundation Runes would have been easy pickings for him. But with the UniForm, he flew through them even faster.
He wasn’t even trying to grasp them all—he was seeing through them, and then building his own methods.
In an hour, he sat back and realized… he had already gone through all the Mancer Rune Master methods the Golden Grove had. At best, they went up to 70 Foundations, which to the current Sylas, might as well have been a casual flip of his palm.
There were more complex ones, but they instead formed Rune Networks, similar to how his Scorpion Warlord Armor worked.
But to Sylas… these didn’t take much time either. After studying so many Mancer Runes, he had such a solid understanding that deconstructing these Rune Networks and then putting them back together was as easy as breathing.
‘I guess… I have more time on my hands than I thought.’
Sylas chose to move on to Beast Runes afterward.
Beast Runes and Martial Runes were quite similar, just that the former used the essence of beasts as their emulation medium, while the latter focused on boosting the raw strength, speed, or flexibility of the Race in question.
Sylas didn’t find much in the Beast Runes at first, and he thought it was a useless endeavor. Between the Serpentes, Giant Apes, and Scorpions, he had too many different types of Beast Auras pulling him in all directions, and they took every chance they had to clash.
However, the Martial Runes were far more useful to him. Runes that could harden skin, Runes that could shrink the earth and make one step feel more like three, Runes that could act almost like Healing Elixirs to accelerate healing, Runes that could instantly slow him down or rev him up to his top speeds in the blink of an eye…
The world felt practically endless.
Sylas found it almost ridiculous just how much this could naturally increase his combat power even if he never brought out his Scorpion Warlord Armor at all. In fact, according to his research, there was a name for this.
They called it the Combat Matrix Index.
This was a measure of how many stat points on average a Rune Master gained by just relying on external Runes to boost their combat effectiveness.
Out of curiosity, Sylas looked into this more deeply to see just how far the rabbit hole went, and that was when he ended up stumbling into a list he had never heard of… a list that was precisely the reason so many feared his master and fellow disciples…
It was the Matrix Index Rankings—separate from the Rune Master and Combat Prowess Rankings, it was the purest fusion of the two.
Everyone spoke of the first, but the reason no one spoke of the latter was because it was already the default that those from the Beast Warlord Sanctum practically occupied the top of the list all on their own with just one or two other powers…
Sylas looked at the Combat Matrix Index for the current top three of the F-Grade, his eyes narrowing.
—
[Matrix Index Rankings]
[1. Furon Leava – 1013]
[2. Aira Venom – 997]
[3. Vidu Mancha – 994]
—
Sylas’ eyes spun, one calculation after another streaming through his mind as he completed the adjustments to the stats so that they’d reflect what he was most used to.
The result was shocking.
Vidu Mancha Combat Matrix Index… +4,970,000 average stats added.
Aira Venom Combat Matrix Index… +4,985,000 average stats added.
Furon Leava Combat Matrix Index… +5,006,500 average stats added.
Suddenly… +650,000 stat points added to Physical stats alone didn’t seem very impressive.
And yet, a fire lit in Sylas’ eyes.
Such improvements were possible based on Rune Mastery alone? In the F-Grade?