Chapter 2398: Sylas Grimblade (2)

Sylas’ next step seemed to shake the world around him, and the pressure rolling off the fused scythe and calligraphy brush made even the rainbow-lit skies distort around its edge.

Tomoe appeared almost immediately afterward, her wild grin stretching wider the moment she realized Sylas had become stronger again. Whatever else was happening around them clearly meant nothing to her.

She howled along with her blade and thrust forward, Sword Will compressing into a single screaming point that tore through the air toward Sylas’ chest.

The blade passed straight through him.

An afterimage flickered apart a heartbeat later as Sylas appeared high above, already turning toward the enormous body of the World Serpent still squeezing its way through the portal. His weapon swept through the air, bristles and curved blade moving as one, and the strike carried more than simple force as his Will spread ahead of it like the beginning of a world trying to impose itself over another.

The World Serpent finally turned toward him and roared.

Its voice rolled through the World of Spirits with enough weight to flatten forests in the distance, but the true pressure came from the world it projected along with it. Sylas’ own domain met that pressure in the air, emerald, amethyst, black, and gold crashing against something far older and heavier, and for an instant his world nearly shattered beneath the difference in foundation.

His Will wasn’t weaker. That wasn’t the problem.

The World Serpent carried the accumulated weight of its bloodline, its ancestors, its Race, and whatever history had allowed beings like it to stand near the peak of the universe for so long. Everything about its existence came with reinforcement Sylas simply didn’t possess, and the collision made that difference brutally clear as cracks spread through the world he had projected around himself.

Sylas’ expression barely changed.

A calm indifference settled over his face as he looked toward the enormous creature, the Heavenly Serpentes, the portals, and the countless geniuses now watching from every direction. If they wanted to play games with narratives and curated Will, then Sylas would give them a narrative strong enough that they would never be able to twist it again.

Sylas had never cared about the opinions of others, and that wasn’t only due to his belief that his own judgment was superior. Most of the time, other people’s thoughts were simply worthless to him, incapable of changing what he understood, what he could do, or what he intended to accomplish. Caring would have been little more than a waste of time.

That calculation had changed. In this world, if enough people believed something strongly enough, belief itself could become a weapon. The thoughts of others were no longer harmless noise, and if Sylas refused to account for them now, he wasn’t being principled, he was simply allowing someone else to decide what those thoughts would become.

So he would show them.

No one here understood where he had come from, what he had survived, or how many times he had been forced to rebuild himself from circumstances that should have broken anyone else. They didn’t know his temperament, couldn’t grasp the kind of person he was, and had no right to fill those gaps with whatever story best suited them.

Sylas would write the story himself.

One stroke at a time.

The bristles of the fused weapon trembled and Sylas drew the first line across the air.

Reality bent under it.

The stroke wasn’t complicated, yet the moment it formed, the portals to the God Plane shook while the World Serpent’s projected domain recoiled for the first time. A single word appeared in the skies, written in a script that seemed to bypass language entirely and press its meaning directly into the minds of everyone watching.

Human.

The World Serpent’s descent stopped.

From the moment it had begun forcing its way through, it hadn’t spoken a single word, carrying itself with the sort of disdain that suggested conversation itself was beneath it. Even now, the majority of its body remained beyond the portal, and it had focused almost entirely on completing that descent as though the battle would end the instant it fully arrived.

Sylas’ first word halted it.

The meaning spread farther than the letters themselves, carving into the awareness of every participant throughout the World of Spirits. Who didn’t know humans? Who hadn’t seen them scattered across countless worlds, one of the most ubiquitous Races in existence and, more often than not, among the weakest?

Xiburn’s expression shifted first.

Januar’s flat gaze sharpened.

Even Tomoe, who had been preparing to attack again almost immediately, slowed for half a heartbeat as her blood-red eyes fixed on the word hanging in the sky.

Sylas spun the fused scythe once.

His hair billowed around him as he took another step forward and struck again.

This stroke was simpler. No word formed this time, only a number.

The number rang through the battlefield harder than the World Serpent’s roar.

For several seconds, confusion spread through the watching geniuses, then understanding struck one after another. Vaelith’s eyes widened somewhere in the distance, Xiburn’s grip tightened around his halberd, and Januar’s expression finally broke enough for genuine interest to appear across his face.

Twenty-nine.

The realization spread almost visibly through the accumulated Will surrounding the battlefield, and the moment it did, the pressure of the World Serpent’s projected reality shuddered again. The narrative Sylas was writing wasn’t complicated, and that simplicity made it harder to reject.

Human.

Twenty-nine.

A member of one of the weakest, most common Races in the universe, standing here before Gods before reaching thirty years of age.

Sylas stepped forward again.

The next swing was different.

Layers of Runes folded through the stroke before it completed, denser and more abstruse than anything he had written so far, yet when the meaning finally appeared, it was still nothing more than another number.

The World of Spirits seemed to hold its breath.

This time, no understanding followed.

Januar’s brows drew together slightly while Xiburn stared at the number as though trying to force meaning out of it through sheer concentration. Even the Heavenly Serpentes faltered for a moment, their attention caught between Sylas and the strange sequence he was carving into reality.

Three what?

Three years? Three lives? Three victories?

No interpretation was clear enough to become truth.

But Sylas didn’t explain. He simply took another step forward, raised the fused weapon once more, and began the next stroke.