Chapter 2480: No, No

The bloodthirst remained exactly where it was, but space formed around it, and for the first time since the crimson thoughts had begun surfacing, Sylas could examine one without immediately becoming immersed in it.

Kill.

He looked at the desire.

Why?

An obstacle stood in his way.

Was killing necessary?

No.

Then there was no reason to do it.

The impulse faded without Sylas having to crush it. Another replaced it almost instantly, then ten more followed, then a hundred, each rising from places Selfwrought Emperor had only just begun exposing. Some were violent, others possessive, while several carried such clinical indifference that Sylas could finally understand why the young boy who had dissected a corpse with his own hands had felt so little while doing it.

And then Sylas realized that he wasn’t just feeling impulses to murder and kill now because that was all his inner boy was capable of. He was experiencing these impulses now because he was infuriated, because he had to sit here and listen to Rheos’ incessant, obnoxious rambling while the lives of his wives hung by a string.

Maybe tomorrow it wouldn’t be violence and rage, maybe it would be lust, maybe it would a desire to do battle, maybe it would be an urge to pluck a star from the skies or reach for the core of a world.

Void Sovereign continued creating room, and within that space, distinctions Sylas had never needed to consciously make became obvious.

Impulse was not decision. Desire was not action. Wanting something did not mean obeying it. And with that realization, the final flaw became clear with the blooming clarity of a spinning lotus and a touch of dew beneath the early morning’s rays.

Willborne Crown had never been wrong. Sylas had simply been using it incorrectly.

A Crown was not a cage. It ruled, it commanded, it conquered.

Sylas gathered his Will once more, but this time he didn’t drive it downward in an attempt to bury everything that had surfaced. He allowed the crimson tendrils to rise freely into the space Void Sovereign had created, allowed Selfwrought Emperor to acknowledge each one as a legitimate piece of himself, then brought Willborne Crown down across all of it.

Not suppression. It wasn’t necessary. These were all things he already owned, things that were already as much a part of him as anything else he had gained command of. What he had to exercise wasn’t an active suppression, it was control, a natural one embedded deep within his bones...

Authority.

The murderous thoughts continued to appear. Some were as cold as before, while others were worse now that Selfwrought Emperor no longer filtered what it uncovered, but none of them moved without Sylas.

One crimson fracture disappeared from his cheek, followed by another along his neck.

The three Classes settled into a balance that felt so obvious in hindsight that Sylas almost found it irritating he hadn’t seen it sooner. Selfwrought Emperor defined more of the hidden Sylas and dragged it into the whole. Void Sovereign provided the capacity necessary to face all of it without being consumed by the sheer volume. Willborne Crown stood above them both and decided which impulses became reality and which remained nothing more than thoughts passing through his mind.

Sylas released a slow breath.

The world around him seemed to have slowed, though he knew after only a moment of observation that this wasn’t what had happened at all.

His mind had grown larger.

Even with Voidborn Wisdom and the absurdity of his Mental Stats, the difference was difficult to quantify. He could hold more thoughts at once without one interfering with another, follow branching possibilities while maintaining awareness of the whole, and feel instincts producing answers beneath his conscious reasoning before that reasoning had finished working through the first step.

The improvement was more than tenfold.

Sylas followed that change inward, searching for the extent of what Selfwrought Emperor had uncovered, only for the crimson fractures to stop receding.

His expression shifted. He hadn’t even reached one percent.

For several seconds, Sylas stared into the depths that remained sealed beneath him, aware now of just how much had been hidden there all this time. The realization should have been unsettling.

Instead, he felt the eyes in those depths staring back at him. And this time, neither looked away.

**

Xarvenya drove a hand forward, and the plains buckled beneath the pressure before her finger came anywhere close to Tomoe. Crimson power twisted around her arm while the swordswoman stood bloodied before her, the ruby blade she had attacked with already caught motionless in Xarvenya’s bare hand.

There was nothing left between Tomoe’s forehead and death.

Cassarae remained where she was. She understood the change in Xarvenya’s intent the instant the Demon moved. This was no longer about stopping Tomoe or protecting Cassarae from another strike. Xarvenya intended to kill her, and from the tightening of Tomoe’s blood-red eyes, she understood that just as clearly.

It didn’t matter.

There wasn’t enough time left for Tomoe to lift a hand, much less gather enough Sword Will to form another blade. Xarvenya’s finger crossed the final distance, crimson power compressing around its tip until even the air ahead of it began to cave inward.

But then it stopped.

Cassarae’s eyes narrowed.

No explosion shook the plains and no defensive formation appeared between them. She couldn’t sense another Will colliding with Xarvenya’s, nor did any new power descend from the skies.

Xarvenya simply couldn’t move her finger another inch.

"Now, now."

Cassarae’s eyes widened. She knew that voice.

"That’s a bit too much, don’t you think?"

Xarvenya’s crimson eyes snapped toward the empty space beside them, and in the same instant, whatever had restrained her disappeared.

BOOM!

The power Xarvenya had gathered erupted out of her control the moment the mysterious restraint released her, the crimson energy that had been concentrated into the tip of her finger suddenly losing the structure that held it together. Instead of surging forward into Tomoe’s skull as she had intended, the force expanded in every direction, tearing through the channels of power running along her arm before Xarvenya could regain control of it.

BOOM!

A violent explosion swallowed Xarvenya’s figure, crimson light bursting outward with enough force to rip apart the ground beneath her feet. Her arm snapped backward beneath the backlash, and her entire body followed, hurtling across the plains as the remnants of her own attack continued exploding around her. She struck the ground hard enough to carve out a deep trench, tearing through layers of earth and stone before another eruption of crimson energy sent her tumbling even farther.

By the time Xarvenya finally came to a stop, a cloud of dust and shattered rock had risen around her, obscuring the destruction left in her wake.