Sylas sat in a Thryskai vessel, his mind still churning. The blood that had been on his hands had long been swallowed by the Scorned Wraps, and his gaze was focused on the sea of stars ahead.
He had never thought that he would have a time like this, riding through space as though driving his car down a highway, but amongst all the things he had done in the last few months, this felt like it was among the most mundane.
He had saved an entire world just a few weeks ago; this felt like chump change compared to that.
It was a beautiful scene nonetheless. It was just a shame that he couldn’t enjoy it because he was still trying to figure something out.
There were two possibilities for what had happened to him just now, one of which was alright and he could manage well enough, and the other of which was much more troublesome.
The first possibility was that the dissection ability was a root of the Greed Seed’s might. With the Greed Seed, Sylas was able to absorb Blood Essence to heal himself. He could see how, by extension, that could give him an ability to read and understand the body better than most would.
It had already been established for him that there were stages to being a Madness Disciple. The idea that Seeds could have more strength than he knew of right now would be the least of his surprises.
The other was more troublesome, and ironically more likely if just one of them had to be true, and that was that the Will of the Rat had hijacked his body.
There was a reason the Rat was going around leaving these Seeds in people, and it definitely wasn’t out of the kindness of his heart. There was a very good reason he had chosen this route. It seemed only natural that he had a failsafe in place to ensure that things didn’t go awry.
The most likely truth, though, was that it was a combination of the two. This ability had to come from somewhere, and it was unlikely that it came from the Thryskai alone.
Was it a Profession? An intuition of sorts that could manifest like a Profession, but wasn’t a true one? Something else?
If that was the case, what secrets was the Gluttony Seed hiding? This was the first thought Sylas had had, and he had tested it immediately.
The Gluttony Seed’s ability was quite straightforward to Sylas. He could use it to increase the efficacy of his telekinesis, increasing the amount of mass it could work effectively against.
But honestly speaking, he hadn’t used this ability in a while because it wasn’t all that useful to him. His telekinesis had grown to the point it could exert tens of thousands of kilograms of force, and the Gluttony Seed, by comparison, couldn’t boost it enough to make the Will drain worth it.
But this experience made Sylas wonder.
If he was upgrading his Madness Disciplehood, why wasn’t his Seed upgrading along with it? What was he missing?
And that voice that constantly came from the Madness Key as well. Sylas didn’t know what it was hiding, or why it was still so restricted, but he wanted to know more about it as well.
Was being a Tier 3 Madness Disciple not enough? How many Tiers were there, even?
Sylas looked down at the Madness Key and shook his head. One of the first questions he ever asked the thing was about other Madness Disciples and he immediately got hit with Taboo warnings.
Was that still the case now?
His Luck didn’t budge, but he also didn’t dare to carelessly ask even though that was the case. His Luck didn’t budge the last time too, but he ended up with a penalty so heavy he almost died.
And then there was the elephant in the room…
If the Thryskai had a Madness Disciple, did the entire race already know that he was a Madness Disciple? Or did only the Rat and his puppets know? Or was there even a significant minority?
Sylas looked down at his wrists as a planet slowly came into view below.
What did all of this have to do with the Scorned Wraps? They almost felt random at times, and yet they were clearly so important that they were the first to upgrade whenever he advanced, even though it felt like the Gluttony Seed should be advancing first.
Or could it be because he had two Seeds that the Madness Disciple System couldn’t upgrade his Seed like it usually might otherwise?
These thoughts of Sylas’ could have continued on into infinity. There was so much to consider, but when he felt his vessel slow down, he knew that he had run out of time.
The planet down below wasn’t one of the Thryskai’s or the Trakar’s.
It was a Sylph planet.
It wasn’t just any Sylph planet either, but a planet that Nosphaleen had once called home. This was none other than the planet Sylas had stepped onto the very first time he ever faced off against Sylphs—the location of the Frostbane Dungeon.
How had Sylas found it? It was honestly quite easy.
His memory couldn’t just be said to be photographic; it was something beyond that, though he had never cared to label it. Recalling the puzzle he had completed as a child, even down to those ridiculous squiggly lines, was a feat far more impressive than he cared to admit. But as his stats increased, his feats now were on a level even beyond that.
He recalled the teleportation and the feeling he got from being transferred from Earth to the Frostbane Dungeon. Then, relying on Astral Stutter and his sensitivity to the Mesh of Reality, he reverse-engineered the coordinates he would have had to have gone to.
Once he found Earth on the star map, finding the location of this planet was as easy as triangulating it based on the changes.
Just like that, a world that the Sylphs kept secret from even most of their population was right before Sylas.
As for why he was here at all… he believed that this world just might carry the secrets he needed to end all of this quickly.
No matter how powerful or knowledgeable he was now, if those two were protected by D-Grades, he stood no chance at all.
He would have to use his mind this time.
And that… he was more than adept at doing.