Chapter 2396: Didn’t Care

Sylas didn’t move.

One might have assumed that Ekear’s words had caught against his Pride, or that Sylas had finally begun wondering why Gralith’s eldest disciple was so much stronger than he had any right to be. Neither thought had occupied him for more than an instant, and he cared even less about the implication that Ekear might have been able to claim one of the five Wills whenever he pleased.

Honestly speaking, Sylas had a very, very difficult time caring about the opinions of almost the entirety of existence. There were only a handful of people whose thoughts genuinely mattered to him, and even with them, there were plenty of times he only listened because doing so made them happy, not due to some sudden belief that his own deductions had become invalid. Whatever opinion Ekear had of himself, inflated or otherwise, held almost no value to Sylas at all.

There was another reason he hadn’t moved.

Where had Ekear come from?

Sylas’ eyes slowly lifted toward the skies as the Heavenly Serpentes continued closing around them. He had been paying too much attention to the flow of Will around the Beast Emperor Sanctum for Ekear to simply arrive without being sensed long before he reached this battlefield, and if he had entered through the Sanctum itself, he should have appeared alongside Fanelei and the others. More importantly, he should have been frozen with the rest of the Spirit Beast Race Emperors under whatever influence had commandeered their Wills.

"Why aren’t you moving?" Ekear’s voice carried over the growing resonance of Serion and Thiel’s formation, irritation beginning to replace the lazy edge he usually carried. "I’m giving you the opening you need, youngest disciple brother. Take it."

Sylas continued looking upward, but that only irritated Ekear further.

He had made a genuine effort to get along with Sylas despite how difficult the man made it, yet there always seemed to be something in the way. Sylas wouldn’t even call Gralith Master as he should, and Ekear found that particularly grating considering he knew very well what his own origins could have allowed him to become.

"I don’t understand you," Ekear said, one of his seven blades rotating behind him as he redirected another Heavenly Serpent. "Even I give Master the respect he’s owed. Do you really think you’re the highest Heaven there is? Do you really believe there’s no one more competent than you? Now I’m standing here returning what I owe you, and you’re wasting it being a petty bastard."

Sylas heard him. He simply wasn’t interested responding.

Ekear’s origins were clearly far greater than they appeared, and Sylas could even guess that there had been more behind his absence when Gralith was trapped by the main Sanctum than he had understood at the time. Maybe Ekear had been holding himself back for reasons tied to his Clan, or maybe there were consequences he couldn’t afford to trigger without exhausting every other option first.

None of that changed anything for Sylas.

There were certain things that, if one truly cared enough about them, consequences stopped mattering. Maybe Ekear had already decided that if Gralith’s life genuinely reached the final line, he would throw everything away and save him, and Sylas had no particular reason to doubt that this was true.

The problem was what happened before that line.

If Sylas had died while saving Gralith, perhaps Ekear would have been furious, and perhaps he would have hunted down everyone responsible until there was no one left to kill. But that rage wouldn’t have done anything for Sylas’ parents, his wife, Elara, or Earth, and the people Sylas cared about would have been left to deal with the consequences of his death all the same.

Morality had never been black and white.

Ekear clearly loved Gralith, and Sylas doubted his feelings toward Gwenu and Khan were much weaker, but he barely knew Sylas. Expecting him to have thrown away everything for someone he hardly knew would have been ridiculous, even if he happened to be the greatest saint alive.

That went both ways.

For Ekear to now act as though Sylas owed all of them the same affection, respect, and attachment simply by virtue of being Gralith’s disciple was almost amusing. Sylas hadn’t saved Gralith for Ekear, and he had never considered that act a debt someone else needed to repay on his Master’s behalf.

He had saved Gralith because Gralith deserved to be saved. Whatever irritation Ekear felt now had nothing to do with him.

What did have something to do with Sylas was the fact someone had somehow placed Ekear here at exactly the right moment to throw another wrench into his plans.

Sylas’ eyes narrowed.

"Clever."

Ekear glanced toward him, frowning. For a moment, he had thought that Sylas was speaking to him, but it very quickly became obvious that this was not the case at all.

"Just not clever enough."

Sylas raised one finger and drew it slowly across the air.

A curved line of black formed beneath his fingertip, growing until it resembled the edge of a vast scythe sweeping through the sky. It passed through trees, mountains, Serpentes, and even the layered formations locking down space and time without leaving so much as a scratch behind, yet the sensation of cutting was so visceral that every Heavenly Serpent recoiled as though their bodies had already been split apart.

Then their Runes dimmed.

Serion’s expression changed first as the natural formations woven through his feathers flickered, while Thiel’s followed almost immediately. The resonance connecting the Heavenly Serpentes severed down the middle, and the suffocating pressure around Sylas weakened as though a blade had passed through something none of them had even realized could be cut.

Ekear’s irritation vanished. His eyes sharpened as he finally understood that Sylas hadn’t been hesitating at all.

The black scythe continued upward.

It sliced through the relationships between the Heavenly Serpentes, through the warped space surrounding them, and directly toward the portals hanging open to the God Plane. For several breaths nothing moved to stop it, almost as though whoever stood on the opposite side hadn’t expected Sylas to see through the arrangement this quickly.

Then a voice echoed from above.

"Not quite yet, Sylas Grimblade."

The tone was gentle, carrying the faint exasperation of a mother chiding a child who had reached for something he wasn’t supposed to touch.

A fair hand extended from one of the portals. Then delicate fingers closed around the enormous black scythe.

Crack.

The construct shattered.

Fragments of black Will dissolved through the skies while Sylas stared upward, his expression becoming colder as the woman on the other side continued speaking.

"If you don’t want to do this the easy way, we can do it the harder way, then."

The World of Spirits trembled.

The portal above them expanded violently, its edges stretching farther and farther apart as something enormous began forcing itself through. Scales appeared first, each one so vast that the Heavenly Serpentes surrounding Sylas looked almost insignificant beside them, while the mere movement of the creature’s body made space groan under its weight.

Sylas watched as more of it squeezed through.

A World Serpent was descending.