Israeal’s eyes were opened wide as his head rolled to the ground, his body convulsing once before he collapsed.
Runes swarmed, finally smashing past the cocoon of Scorned Wraps, only to find that the deed had long been done.
A roaring rage came from the Dungeon once again, but Sylas stood there in silence, coughing up blood before wiping his mouth. He retracted his Scorned Wraps, taking a deep breath as the heart-rending pain in his back threatened to bring him to his knees.
The wound was so bad that that entire side of his body had turned black with bruising, pooling strands of blood engorging the region in an attempt to quickly fix it.
The good news was that Sylas’ Healing Factor had grown again after he became a D-Grade Human Simioid.
The bad news was that his healing seemed particularly slow right now.
For once, this wasn’t because of the Dungeon—it couldn’t impact something like that; that would be too far. Instead, it was because of the rod Jala had attacked him with.
Back then, Sylas had planned to take the blow mostly to his arm, trying to take advantage of the Scorned Wraps to mitigate much of the damage as well. But in an odd twist, his hand ended up entirely uninjured, while his back and shoulder blade ended up in this state.
That had most definitely been an ability of the rod—the perfect control of momentum, shifting its focus from where Sylas could block to a point where he had no choice but to take on the full brunt of the attack.
The good news was that Sylas had still been able to execute his plan to take Jala off balance and snatch the rod away from his control to destroy it.
But the bad news was that the unique energies of the rod had entered Sylas’ body, and as a Legendary Path Treasure, clearly leveled to the extremes of the F Grade, it wasn’t something that Sylas could easily dismiss from his body.
It was quite frustrating. On the one hand, he could ignore the suppression of D-Grades, but on the other, he couldn’t pull F-Grade Aether out of himself?
’A Gold Grade Treasure is quite powerful indeed…’
Sylas hacked up another mouthful of blood as the sphere wrapped around him again, raising him up.
He ignored Jala and Voryx, his mind swirling around the events just now and wondering if he could get away with it again.
Compelling Gaze was one of Nosphaleen’s two Gene Talents. After observing it work before, Sylas had an understanding of how to maximize it.
Nosphaleen claimed that the more cognitive dissonance you could make a person experience, the worse it would be for them and the more difficult it would be for them to pull out of the suggestion.
The power of the compulsion grew stronger as a result.
Sylas didn’t use Compelling Gaze directly, however, despite the fact his eyes were more than strong enough. He couldn’t afford to take the chance.
If he directly took control of Israeal—assuming the latter could just counter it with his Skai Eye—the Dungeon would recognize that Israeal was helpless and then save him.
Sylas was actually quite sure that the Thryskai had the ability to counter, but even if he couldn’t, the end result would be even worse for Sylas, so he took a slower approach.
He used what he knew about Israeal to slowly attack his mind. Sylas would normally never talk so much in battle, not to mention gripe like a petulant child about the unfairness of the world.
Even if he felt that way on the inside sometimes, he was quite disgusted with that part of himself—far too disgusted to make it a common fixture of his speech…
Unless he had no other choice.
In the end, Israeal’s Will was slowly peeled away, leaving him weak to direct attacks on him and freezing him in place for just long enough.
Then, thanks to Glassvolt Throne and its ability to command Aether beyond what Sylas’ body could handle depending on his understanding of the world around him, he had been able to use his Scorned Wraps as a conduit to keep the Runes of the Dungeon at bay for long enough to kill Israeal.
But now, Sylas was sure that the next chance he got would be even more difficult to manage. If the Dungeon started using E-Grade Runes because he had stifled its best F-Grade ones…
Sylas took a breath and exhaled, slowly trying to expunge the Aether rampaging around in his back. He took every moment he could get to try and recover, knowing that he likely wouldn’t get any more time. His chances of—
Sylas’ sphere had only just formed when it shattered again.
His eyes snapped open to find that he was falling to the ground below with Voryx and Jala following in tow. The latter still seemed to be lost in a personal depression, but the former had his eyes locked onto Sylas like some sort of hawk.
The gentle, kind demeanor of Voryx was already gone, his Skai Eye opened as a radiant crimson light spread through the surroundings.
Dense and almost agonizing in its sharpness, it pierced through where Sylas fell and toward the location of where he was still falling. It was like it was spying, calculating, analyzing every little thing until Sylas finally hit the ground and the world went completely dark.
Sylas tried to catch himself with his telekinesis, only for his green glow to shatter on impact. He landed on his chest and then his face, his cheek being pressed so firmly into the ground it deformed, his jawbone nearly shattering on impact.
He tried to see his surroundings, but not only was his visualization and eyes worthless, he found that the Dungeon had actually found a way to counter his Progenitor Flame Ability.
All the Runes of the world had been dispersed. The Mesh of Reality was so sparse that there was nothing to see.
It was as though he had been thrust into a true void, one where he was a target for a Thryskai with murderous intent.