Chapter 2397: Sylas Grimblade (1)

Sylas didn’t say anything as the World Serpent forced more of its enormous body through the portal above them, nor was he particularly surprised by the number of Gods descending into the World of Spirits.

Every one of them still fell within the new Level limit, including this creature, and while Sylas had never seen much of Gentrixaul beyond the inside of his body, he knew the petty serpent’s Will well enough to recognize immediately that this wasn’t him, or at least wasn’t entirely him.

That realization barely occupied Sylas’ attention, though, since his thoughts were still fixed on Ekear’s sudden appearance and the trap that had almost closed around him.

The mysterious woman behind the portal hadn’t simply sent the Heavenly Serpentes to delay him, and Ekear hadn’t appeared here by coincidence either. She had arranged all three pieces together in a way that would have turned whatever choice Sylas made into a weapon against him.

If Sylas had accepted Ekear’s opening and left, she would have attacked his Pride through the interpretation of that decision rather than through anything so crude as words.

Ordinary slander meant almost nothing to Sylas, especially when it came from people whose opinions he didn’t value, but this wasn’t meant to live and die as someone else’s belief. The surrounding Will had been curated so that the narrative could be forced inward until Sylas’ own Pride Seed began reacting to it.

Technically, that shouldn’t have been possible.

His Pride Seed was intensely personal, and Sylas had deliberately refused to connect it to the larger reservoir of Pride Will spread throughout the world. However, his experiences with the Fate Dragon and Phoenix had already shown him that personal belief could become irrelevant if enough outside Wills gathered around a different truth, especially when those Wills were arranged and reinforced by someone who understood exactly what they were doing.

There were three pieces to the assault, with Ekear acting as the trigger, the Heavenly Serpentes controlling the immediate battlefield, and the World Serpent supplying enough weight to make the surrounding interpretation difficult to reject.

If Sylas had taken the opening and left, they would have defined his decision as fear. Within an ordinary battle that conclusion would have meant less than nothing to him. Here, though, that belief would have been amplified until it became truth.

The curated Will around the battlefield would have pressed that interpretation into Sylas’ Pride Seed, forcing the contradiction deeper regardless of what Sylas himself understood about his decision. One more careless step and the Seed might have begun tearing him apart from within while the surrounding world insisted that the destruction had come from his own failure to live up to what Pride was supposed to mean.

It was a sadistic way to kill someone, and Sylas almost respected it.

That realization also explained the Heavenly Serpentes’ formation. Their Runes hadn’t only been locking down space and time or smothering Sylas’ ability to manipulate the surroundings, they had been narrowing the range of actions available to him while shaping the meaning attached to each one.

Once Sylas understood that structure, the Death Seal gave him a clean way to tear through the conceptual joints holding it together.

The entire situation reminded him of the Primus Titles he had once carried, and the comparison became clearer the longer he considered it.

The system had never cared about nuance, circumstance, or whether the conditions surrounding a challenge were fair, only whether the result fit the absolute standard it had established. Beat everyone in your Tier, stand above every Rune Master, prove yourself superior regardless of what had to happen along the way.

That all-or-nothing principle dictated far more than most people realized, and someone skilled enough with Will could abuse the same rigidity without needing the system to openly participate.

Even the correct choice could become the wrong one if the surrounding narrative was controlled tightly enough, and if that interpretation was then given enough weight to force itself into the target...

Sylas’ gaze shifted across the battlefield as several other pieces settled into place.

Januar had appeared first, hiding behind jokes and the title of grand disciple while making it obvious enough that the calligraphy brush interested him. He had asked for a gift almost immediately, lingered nearby after claiming he had no interest in fighting, and tried to learn as much about Sylas as he could while giving away almost nothing in return.

Tomoe had appeared after him and openly spoken about killing Cassarae, something that had already guaranteed Sylas would kill her eventually regardless of what happened here. Even now, her Will was closing in rapidly from the distance, carrying enough bloodlust that Sylas could feel it through the interference of the Heavenly Serpentes.

Now this third force had tried to place him inside a controlled world where every decision could be twisted into an attack against the foundation of his Pride.

His patience was running thin.

For most of his life, Sylas had seen no reason to care what the world thought of him. If someone wanted to believe that he was weak, cruel, arrogant, foolish, or anything else, they were free to carry that misunderstanding until reality corrected them.

This was different.

They weren’t merely trying to define him in their own minds, they were trying to make perception reality and use the collective weight of Will to decide what Sylas Grimblade was allowed to be. If that was the battlefield they had chosen, then Sylas saw no reason to continue treating the situation like an ordinary contest.

There was no better stage than this one to show the world what carrying the Grimblade name actually meant.

More importantly, there was no better place to show them what it meant to be Sylas Grimblade.

His palm opened and the scythe lifted from his back, spinning once through the air before settling firmly into his hand. Sylas reached out with the other, drawing the calligraphy brush toward him as well, and the moment both weapons entered his grasp their structures began reacting to one another.

The body of the scythe seemed to lose solidity first, phasing partially through the shaft of the brush while the long brush hairs extended and spread across the curved blade. Hundreds of dark strands wrapped around the weapon, weaving through its structure until the two objects stopped looking like separate tools and settled into a single form.

BOOM.

The air shook beneath the pressure of their union, while the Heavenly Serpentes nearest Sylas recoiled as though something much heavier than raw strength had suddenly entered the battlefield. Even Ekear’s expression sharpened, his earlier irritation fading as he looked toward the fused weapon and then back toward Sylas.

Sylas gave him a single casual glance.

"Protect yourself."

Then he stepped forward as a crown bloomed above his head.