Chapter 2476: Worth

Sylas remained silent while another challenge assembled around him. Rheos kept speaking from the other side of the formation, but the words had become little more than noise while Sylas followed what was happening on Earth.

Cassarae moved.

For a moment, Sylas thought the connection he sensed was only the remnant of her Sword Will refusing to disappear. Then blood, stone, and Aether around her began answering that Will, and the two halves of her body pulled themselves back together.

Nosphaleen noticed the change in Sylas’ focus, though whatever she expected to see afterward never appeared. His wife had just returned from being cut in half, yet the fractures running through Sylas’ hands and neck didn’t close.

Cassarae rose with the old sword in her hand and the Guardian Angel World Set reforming around her body. Her Sword Will spread through Earth with a freedom Sylas had never felt from her before, and within moments she was fighting Tomoe again.

Sylas should have felt relief. Instead, his attention settled on the empty space around Cassarae’s neck.

The necklace was gone.

He traced the sequence backward without taking his attention from the battle. The necklace shattered, Cassarae’s Sword Will changed almost immediately, and everything about her Path that had seemed disjointed for years suddenly began fitting together in a way Sylas should have noticed long ago.

He had gotten that necklace back for her. Cassarae had lost it, and Sylas had gone out of his way to return it without spending more than a passing thought on what it might actually be doing to her.

That realization cut even deeper than Tomoe slipping through Earth’s defenses. Sylas hadn’t lacked information this time. He had seen enough strange things around Cassarae’s necklace and Path to know there were questions worth asking, then simply decided those questions weren’t important.

Sylas had never cared whether Cassarae was powerful or weak. That had always felt simple to him, almost self-evident; Cassarae was Cassarae, and her value had nothing to do with whether she could keep pace with him.

There had been another thought beneath that one. So long as Sylas became strong enough, none of it would matter.

Cassarae didn’t need to stand at the same height. She didn’t need to understand every threat coming toward them or possess a Path capable of surviving everything the universe could throw at her, since Sylas had already decided that anything dangerous enough to reach her would first have to get past him.

So why investigate her inheritance? Why waste time pulling apart her Class, her sword, the necklace around her neck, or the strange Destiny connected to all of them when Sylas intended to become powerful enough to deal with whatever eventually emerged?

Another challenge ended, and Rheos immediately forced the next one to begin. Nosphaleen stepped closer to Sylas when a fracture reached farther across his wrist, but she stopped herself from speaking when she saw that his attention had never shifted.

The questions Sylas had failed to ask were painfully ordinary. Where had Cassarae’s inheritance come from, what happened when she first received it, why had the System reacted so strangely to her Path, and what exactly had the necklace changed when she put it on?

Cassarae would have answered him. She might have sworn at him for digging into her business first, but she would have answered.

Sylas had even seen the connection it all had to Madness.

His own life had become tangled with Madness Seeds, Madness Paths, Virtues, Sins, and the consequences hidden beneath all of them. He knew how easily they could offer enormous power while concealing something rotten underneath, and he had personally suffered enough from those structures that any connection between Cassarae’s Path and Madness should have demanded his full attention.

He hadn’t given it any.

If Cassarae’s inheritance touched Madness, why had Sylas assumed her Path would somehow escape the same problems that followed every other expression of it? All he had needed to do was ask the question once, then follow the answer as relentlessly as he followed every other problem placed in front of him.

Rheos laughed when another timer expired and immediately started the next challenge. "You’re making this almost embarrassing now, Grimblade. How many times do you plan to stand there and lose?"

Sylas still didn’t answer, though Nosphaleen’s gaze hardened before returning to him. She cared nothing for Rheos’ opinion, but every new crimson fracture made it harder for her to remain quiet.

What if he hadn’t ignored Cassarae’s Path entirely on his own?

The possibility wasn’t as absurd as it would have sounded months ago. Sylas had recently learned that entire civilizations could carry an understanding of Dragons and Phoenixes so deeply embedded that people treated those concepts as obvious truths despite Dragons never having existed at all.

He had carried those assumptions himself.

No voice had whispered them into his ear, and no foreign Will had seized his thoughts. The ideas had simply existed inside him, natural enough that Sylas never thought to examine them until something forced him to look.

A subtler influence would need even less. It wouldn’t have to command him to ignore Cassarae’s inheritance. It would only need to make the subject seem uninteresting, then allow Sylas’ own habits to finish the work.

Cassarae’s Path could wait until later. Sylas had more important problems to solve, and anything hidden inside her inheritance could be handled once it became dangerous enough to matter...

That would have been enough.

The thought didn’t absolve him in the slightest, and it didn’t make him feel better. An influence like that could only work so cleanly if it pushed in a direction Sylas already wanted to move.

His Pride had always decided what deserved his attention quickly. Once Sylas understood enough of something to judge it beneath him, boredom followed, and from that point onward it became difficult for the subject to hold his focus unless something changed dramatically.

He had always treated that boredom as part of himself. Now he wondered what that actually meant.

Was it Pride that made so much of the world feel dull to him? Was it some deeper trait he had never examined, or another influence so old and subtle that he had mistaken it for personality?

Another challenge locked around him while Rheos continued enjoying victories Sylas wasn’t even contesting. Nosphaleen remained beside him, her attention shifting between his face and the crimson fractures now spreading farther beneath his skin.

Sylas barely noticed either of them. For once, the problem in front of him wasn’t something he could dismantle by finding the right Rune, killing the right enemy, or becoming stronger than whatever stood in his way.

He knew remarkably little about himself.

Sylas had spent most of his life believing he knew exactly what he wanted and exactly what he was willing to do to reach it. Yet the more he learned about Will, Pride, Madness, hidden concepts, and the forces capable of shaping people without their knowledge, the harder it became to tell how much of Sylas Grimblade had ever been examined at all.

Cassarae fought on Earth with a freedom she might have possessed long ago if Sylas had asked one more question. He watched her old sword move with her and felt another crimson fracture open across his jaw.

Was it worth being like this?