Sylas moved through the battlefield with three E-Grades as though he belonged. Each one of his movements was sharp and vicious, unrelenting in ways that were only possible for a beast, and yet carrying the elegance of someone with a martial arts path steeped in discipline and control.
The dichotomy played off of one another, pushing and pulling, tugging and resisting in an elegant dance…
One that sprinkled the blood of Sylphs to the earth as though fertilizing their graves.
Kaique was hit so hard that she shot dozens of meters into the air, giving the archer another clear line of sight at Sylas… one they unfortunately couldn’t take because the third of the Sylphs had already closed in the distance, hoping to pincer Sylas.
Seemingly knowing this, Sylas never bothered to look at the archer again, his body seamlessly shifting, the tips of his toes gliding across the slippery icy surface of his own creation to keep the body of the third Sylph between himself and the archer.
Sylas unleashed a combination attack, each of which Malopes blocked with expert twists of his wrist and a gliding sharpness of his sword.
Sparks flew as Sylas’ claws met blade, his furious assault of dozens of sweeping strikes coming so fast that Kaique was only now beginning to descend from above.
Sylas didn’t need to look to know that Kaique was completely unconscious. And that was why it was so easy for him to act again.
Malopes blocked yet another one of Sylas’ strikes, but this time they held, the latter’s claws holding onto the flats of the blade like sharp pincers.
Danger warning signs blared in Malopes’ mind, but it was too late.
Sylas’ telekinesis ripped Kaique’s spear out of her hand. She was too out of it to even resist. The fact she was still holding onto it at all was a miracle amongst miracles.
Especially for Sylas, who used it to drive a blade right through the top of Malopes’ mind.
At first, Malopes reacted as though a hammer had slammed onto the top of his head, a blunt pain ripping through his body and compressing his skull from the top down. But then the edge pierced right through, the sharpness of Kaique’s blade winning out and ripping right through him.
The strike was so perfect that one almost wouldn’t have noticed that Malopes had been run through at all, his body perfectly accommodating the spear… until it suddenly couldn’t anymore.
His face bulged, his skull split, his body ballooning in ways that were far from natural.
And then he collapsed.
An arrow came quickly afterward, but this time Sylas caught it right out of the air. It spun in his palm, but before he took full control of it, he let go, flicking a finger up toward the skies.
The tip ran right through Kaique’s skull. And then, in a fate no less tragic, she fell from above, her chest being impaled by the blunt side of her own spear and layering her on top of Malopes as though the two had become some sick, twisted kebab.
And then there was suddenly just Sylas and the archer. The latter was trying to nock another arrow, only to find that his hands were shaking far too much. He was the lowest leveled of the three of them, and watching two of his companions die like that, Charless found himself struggling to even think straight.
The more time he took to nock his next arrow, the heavier he felt the next second to be, and the closer to death he realized he was. It would come any time now, any moment his head would fly from his shoulders, or his chest would be impaled, or he would have his guts ripped out by those clawed hands.
Every thought was like another suppressive weight on his actions, making him slower and forcing him to struggle even more.
No matter what he did, nothing seemed to be working properly. His body felt as though it wanted to shut down.
He didn’t even realize that he was having all of these spiraling thoughts so quickly that not even a full second had passed.
BOOM!
The ground trembled and Charless fainted. He couldn’t even face his own death. However, he lost consciousness before he realized that it wasn’t Sylas that caused that, but rather his backup.
Sylas was swarmed by larger and larger numbers of Sylphs, each one growing increasingly more powerful.
Charless was lucky enough that he fainted just as they came, distracting Sylas from taking his life next.
Embroiled in another battle, Sylas could only continue to fight, his words echoing from time to time, again and again. He wanted the Sylphs to know that they were cowards, that he had come here specifically for the purpose of fighting and humiliating them.
But eventually, Sylas was drowned out. Wounds began to accumulate across his body until eventually, he couldn’t hold out anymore.
He was savagely beaten and eventually caught, dragged into the prison like a dog before being thrown into a dungeon and locked away.
“How many did he kill?” Cenk asked coldly.
“Thirty-seven guards, my lord…” a secretary with a lowered head spoke very slowly, hoping that the cadence of his words would soften the blow somewhat.
Logically speaking, if Cenk was so interested in keeping the number of casualties down, he should have acted himself. But which of them would dare say that to a D-Grade’s face? They were practically a deity amongst men compared to the rest of them.
However, Cenk’s reaction was out of the secretary’s expectations.
“An F-Grade that could kill thirty-seven E-Grades… Fascinating, so very fascinating. And we can’t read his stats?”
“We’ve tried, unless your lordship…”
Cenk waved a hand. He didn’t explain anything else, confusing the secretary further. Why would he reject this even if he knew he was probably the only one with the capabilities to see through Sylas’ stats properly?
“This is good. It seems like we’re closer than I thought… Prepare a few things for me. I want them ready within three days. Money is not a problem.”