[Malik Uidah]
[Level: 51]
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[Physical: 51 373]
[Mental: 67 458]
[Will: 34 111]
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“It’s him. He is here!”
“Send out the—.”
“What vehicle did you use to get here?” Sylas asked calmly. “Vessels or teleportation?”
At first, the few of them down below found the question ridiculous. Why would they even bother to answer this?
Until one of them was suddenly compelled to. There was only the slightest flash in Sylas’ gaze as he borrowed an ability from Nosphaleen. The target’s Will was crushed before they could even understand what was happening.
“Vessels…” Malik answered in a trance.
“How fast?”
“… Using transport channels, we can travel to any point in Skai Galaxy within three days.”
“Send me a map of the transport channels.”
Sylas no longer needed to ask about these sorts of details. He knew that transport channels were akin to wormholes connecting two points like a highway.
“Yes, right—.”
Malik shook awake, his eyes widening as his third eye opened up on his forehead.
“You…”
Sylas’ figure flashed, Runes dancing around him. One magic circle after another formed as a streak of emerald lightning tore a path forward. Every time it passed through one, it somehow became even faster.
Everything happened so fast that Malik, who had just snapped awake, couldn’t even react before a fist landed on his chest.
The crackling of bone echoed, the man’s eyes bulging before he was sent flying back with such shocking speed that the air around him exploded into concentric circles.
Sylas looked down at his fist and shook his head. That one blow should have killed him immediately, but he was wearing armor. Now his fist was broken.
He hardly reacted to it, clenching his fist and snapping the bones back into place. His healing factor kicked in, and just as attacks came in from all sides, he had already recovered completely. It wasn’t even necessary to cast any Healing Runes.
He took a step forward, but found himself trapped in some sort of odd quagmire. Three of the Thryskai had activated the same Skill all at once while the remaining two pincered him from the left and right, slashing down toward his head with their polearm weapons.
[Unbridled Counter].
Sylas was patient, waiting until just before the attacks hit him to activate his Skill, following up with [Glassvolt Shift] once again.
The weapons passed right through him as though he was as difficult to grasp as capturing lightning in a bottle.
BANG!
The weapons slammed into the ground.
Sylas pressed a foot onto the middle of one’s pole. The Thryskai let go too late, the sudden change in momentum causing his body to fall forward even faster than it already was, right into an uppercut from Sylas.
The timing was perfect, the intent even more vicious than the speed and sharpness. Runes twirled around Sylas’ Scorned Wraps, wrists and forearm, his arm moving so fast you could practically hear the roar of a beast coming from it.
Sylas’ knuckles tore into his jaw, shattering it to pieces, and yet it continued… continued until the man’s head was torn from his shoulders as though a giant had twisted it off.
As much power as Sylas had put into the strike, his momentum came to a stop in a single instant of time, more Runes swirling around him.
This was the first time he had battled like this, but as he moved, he went from using Runes with just 10 Foundations to 20, and then from 20 to 30, and then seamlessly to 40.
The more he moved, the more fluid one action slid into the next.
His foot flexed and the polearm beneath it was severed to pieces by the claws on his feet.
Without even looking back, he sent out a straight kick toward the head of the second Thryskai.
A heel drove through his nose, but before he could fly away, walls of fluttering Runes appeared to his back, becoming akin to an immovable wall the back of his skull slammed into.
His head was turned to pulp.
Sylas exhaled a breath, his body finally feeling a bit limber. Everything happened in the briefest of instances, so fast that the Thryskai left around him didn’t even know how to react or if they even could.
Sylas would make that decision for them.
He moved like the wind. The more fluid his movement became, the stronger the connection between his mind and Runes. He could feel his Combat Matrix Index increasing not based on his skill, but his own familiarity with the style of combat.
And it was intoxicating in ways he couldn’t even describe.
His claws ripped into a chest, pulling out a heart. He threw the corpse to the side, slamming out a palm that became a large crystal wall of shimmering emerald.
[Glassvolt Prism Arts].
He had no need to use it. It was complete overkill.
But this would just be the beginning. After what the Thryskai had already put him through, this was just the very tip of his wrath.
BANG!
The Thryskai shattered into a blood rain the moment the palm hit him, the earth exploding, long trenches of dirt and carnage vanishing into the distance and wiping out large stretches of city.
Sylas’ body flashed again, and suddenly he realized the only one that was left was Malik. Beaten and weak, the Thryskai was holding onto his chest as he held out a hand. It was the treasure in his hand that had just fired, but he had missed all of Sylas.
With his visualization range still being over two kilometers…
How could Sylas be so easily caught off guard?
Standing high in the air, Sylas pointed a clawed finger down.
The sound of choking echoed and Malik found his neck bound by bolts of Glassvolt. The shift from solid to plasma and then back made him feel as though he was being tortured in the most expert of ways.
“Now… are you going to answer my question properly?”
