Chapter 2379: Boat

Sylas suddenly found himself grinning.

It wasn’t a large expression, but it was wide enough that Vaelith immediately looked toward him in surprise, as though she hadn’t even been aware that his face could make such a shape. Even Yamero pursed his lips at the sight, his earlier amusement fading into something closer to anticipation as one thought settled naturally into place.

There was about to be chaos.

It had been too long since Sylas felt anything resembling real pressure. The two S-tiers of the twin Guilds hadn’t managed it, Gentrixaul throwing the weight of a God around hadn’t managed it, and even the Heavenly Serpent ancestor didn’t even phase him.

This, though, felt different. Rhykan had surprised him. Again.

That alone was enough to make the grin remain.

Nosphaleen watched him from the side with an expression that gradually became more heated the longer she looked. The Clypsians had never been a gentle Race, having grown through generations of war against the Dogons, and many of the customs both Races considered ordinary would have looked barbaric to outsiders. Strength, aggression, the willingness to seize what one wanted and defend it afterward, these were hardly qualities that frightened her.

If anything, this was the Sylas she had always known was buried somewhere beneath that cold exterior. He simply didn’t show it often.

Nosphaleen pressed her thighs together without consciously realizing she had done so, her gaze tracing the faint curve of Sylas’ smile as an almost embarrassing warmth spread through her.

Then a hint of melancholy followed closely behind it, since she also knew exactly what happened whenever Sylas became like this. There was no chance he would let anyone interfere with his fun.

If the world was collapsing ahead of him and there was something powerful waiting at the center of it, Sylas would rather walk directly into that chaos alone than allow anyone to dull the edge of the experience.

Sylas lifted a hand and summoned the Hollow Ship.

Space folded around them as its enormous structure appeared, and within moments Vaelith, Nosphaleen, and Yamero had been transported inside. Sylas didn’t waste time explaining what he intended to do, nor did anyone bother asking once the ship lurched forward and accelerated toward the Skai Heaven with everything it had.

There was no point in planning now. Rhykan had already moved first.

Sylas had been outmaneuvered, and pretending otherwise would only waste more time. Whatever preparations Rhykan had made, whatever Slovenly Madness had become, and whatever role the rising Beast Emperor Sanctum played in all of it, none of those answers would change what mattered next.

The board had shifted into something simple. Whose fist would be larger in the end?

Sylas had no intention of allowing that answer to be anyone but him.

**

Far away, somewhere beyond the routes most warships would have dared travel, a small boat drifted through the stars. There was no water beneath it. ℴ

The darkness itself behaved like a river, flowing in long currents around the narrow hull while distant starlight bent along the surface like reflections cast across black glass. Galaxies passed beneath the boat as though they were stones at the bottom of a stream, their colors stretching and smearing gently whenever the strange current carried the vessel forward.

A woman lay inside. She possessed the sort of beauty that seemed too quiet to notice at first and too overwhelming to look away from once seen.

Her skin held the pale clarity of distant moonlight, her features carrying none of the sharp exaggerations common to great beauties, yet somehow achieving something far more difficult through simple balance.

Her eyes remained closed. Long hair spilled beneath her in a spread so vast that it filled most of the boat before continuing over its edges, strands disappearing into the darkness until it became impossible to tell where her hair ended and the starry currents began.

Every so often, distant lights caught within those strands and traveled along them, making it appear as though pieces of the night sky had been woven directly into her hair.

She wore only a white gown. The cloth was neither thin enough to expose what lay beneath nor heavy enough to disguise the shape of her body, settling naturally across her curves as though it had been made specifically to follow them.

Her bare feet hung beyond one end of the boat, toes floating inches above the river of darkness while the endless cosmos slid underneath her.

A sword rested against her chest. It was her only adornment.

The hilt sat perfectly between her breasts while the sheath extended down the length of her body, yet she showed no discomfort from its weight or position. Perhaps she trusted the weapon too much to fear being cut by it, or perhaps the thought that it could ever harm her had simply never occurred to her.

Then the yawn reached her. Its echo rolled through the cosmos and brushed across the strange river carrying her boat, causing faint ripples to spread through the darkness. Her eyelids opened slightly, revealing eyes that seemed to contain the same distant light as the stars above her.

For a moment, the boat slowed. For a while, she simply stared into the endless black sky without any obvious focus, as though whatever had awakened her wasn’t important enough to warrant sitting up.

"Mm..." Her fingers shifted faintly against the sword. "I guess I will go too, then..."

The current beneath her changed.

There was no explosion, no violent distortion of space, and no obvious gathering of power. The boat simply accelerated until it vanished, crossing light years so quickly that even its fading outline disappeared almost before the surrounding stars had time to twinkle.

Had Sylas been there to observe her, he would have noticed two things almost immediately.

The first was that she had no tier.

This wasn’t a matter of her being so powerful that her strength had become impossible to read, nor was there some concealment technique hiding her level. She simply didn’t possess one at all, and even calling her Level 0 would have been inaccurate.

She was completely untouched by the system. In that respect, she resembled an ordinary mortal who had never participated in a Summoning more than any cultivator Sylas had ever seen.

The second anomaly would have drawn his attention even faster.

The sword resting against her chest looked eerily similar to Cassarae’s. No, similar wasn’t the right word.

They were identical.

Even that failed to describe the relationship properly, since appearance alone could always be copied.

But... their Wills were the same.

It was almost as though the sword lying against this strange woman’s chest and the blade carried by Cassarae were not two weapons at all.

It was almost as though they were the same blade.

The same exact blade.