Chapter 2484: The Weight that Matters

Rheos’ mistake was never in his comprehension of Graveweight Hell. The Rune Path itself was quite impressive, and Sylas could appreciate the ingenuity of using conceptual weight to determine the importance of individual Runes within a formation.

The problem was that Rheos had become so obsessed with identifying the perfect anchor that he had forgotten something far more fundamental.

Why did the most important Rune have to remain the most important?

Graveweight Hell worked by assigning conceptual weight to certain Runes, anchoring them to the Mesh of Reality and forcing the surrounding structure to reorganize around them. Rheos had spent hundreds of years refining his ability to identify the most important Rune and use it to stabilize everything else.

But what if the circumstances changed? What if a Rune that had been vital to a formation’s creation became a hindrance to its continued operation? Was the solution to keep increasing its weight, or was it to transfer that significance elsewhere?

To Sylas, the answer was obvious.

He could assign weight just as Rheos could, but he wasn’t limited to doing so only once. Even after a formation had anchored itself to the Mesh of Reality, Sylas could alter the distribution of conceptual weight at will, allowing one Rune to surrender its importance while another assumed it.

Rheos treated conceptual weight as something that had to be established and protected. Sylas treated it as something that could change from one moment to the next, flowing between Runes according to the needs of the formation.

And that was what had ultimately shattered Rheos’ confidence.

It wasn’t that Sylas had demonstrated some incomprehensible technique that Rheos might spend another thousand years studying. He had simply shown that he was better at deciding which Runes deserved weight, and more importantly, when that weight should change.

The worst part was that Rheos understood the difference. He could see what Sylas was doing, could follow the logic behind it, and knew that the fluidity required to accomplish such a thing was something he could never match.

That realization planted the first seed of doubt, and from there, everything Rheos had built began turning against him.

His Graveweight Hell had always relied upon finding the perfect foundation, but what if the foundation he had chosen for his own Rune Path wasn’t perfect at all?

What if he had spent thousands of years anchoring himself to the wrong thing?

By the time Rheos found himself asking those questions, his Rune Seed had already begun to fracture. And once his certainty collapsed, the foundation that depended upon it followed.

**

[A/N: I used Oura yesterday, that was wrong.]

The Tera Clan’s ancestral hall was filled with laughter, several generations of descendants having gathered to celebrate Rheos’ victory.

Even those elders who would normally spend centuries in seclusion had made an appearance, and the discussions had already shifted from whether Rheos would win to what sort of rewards he deserved upon his return.

"Ancestor, shouldn’t we prepare another banquet for Rheos? This victory deserves more than a simple celebration."

"Haha! Of course! We should invite the other branches as well. Let them see what sort of genius our Tera Clan has produced!"

Several elders nodded in agreement, while Ancestor Tera listened from his seat at the head of the hall, occasionally taking a sip of wine.

He had already dismissed the concerns surrounding Rheos’ delayed return. That child had always enjoyed displaying his superiority, and considering how thoroughly he had dominated the earlier challenges, there was no reason to believe anything had changed.

It was at that moment that the space in the center of the hall began to ripple.

The conversations quieted as a familiar teleportation formation appeared, and several descendants rose from their seats with smiles spreading across their faces.

"He’s back! Haha! Rheos, you’ve certainly taken your time. Were you planning to make us wait until the wine ran dry?"

The laughter faded when the golden light disappeared.

Rheos lay face down upon the polished floor, his robes stained with blood and his limbs twisted beneath him without the slightest sign of movement.

For several seconds, nobody approached him, the gathered descendants struggling to reconcile the sight before them with the triumphant return they had been expecting.

One of the younger descendants gave an awkward laugh.

"Rheos? What sort of joke is this? Come on, get up already."

When no answer came, an elder stepped forward and extended his Will toward the motionless body. His expression changed almost immediately, and by the time his senses reached the depths where Rheos’ Rune Seed should have been, he staggered backward.

"His... his Rune Seed..."

Another elder pushed past him, refusing to believe what he had heard, but his reaction was even worse when he discovered that not only had Rheos’ Rune Seed shattered, but his Will had collapsed along with it.

"Impossible! How could this happen?! The Creation Tower wouldn’t allow someone to kill a challenger! There must be some mistake!"

The cries spread through the ancestral hall, but none of them seemed capable of reaching Tera, who remained seated with his cup of wine suspended before his lips.

His gaze rested upon Rheos’ corpse, and for several seconds, the Ancestor appeared to be searching for something that might explain what had happened.

Then the cup shattered in his hand.

A terrifying pressure descended upon the ancestral hall, forcing several descendants to their knees as the surrounding formations began trembling beneath the weight of Tera’s Will. His fury grew so overwhelming that the younger members of the Clan struggled to breathe, cracks racing across the polished floor beneath Rheos’ corpse.

"SYLAS GRIMBLADE!"

His roar tore through the ancestral hall, shaking the foundations of the Tera Clan’s ancestral grounds.

**

Sylas stood before the Creation Tower’s next challenge, his expression completely unreadable.

There was no coldness in his eyes, nor was there any trace of the rage that had overwhelmed him earlier. In fact, someone looking at him now might have struggled to determine whether he felt anything at all.

He had already dealt with Rheos, and whatever satisfaction might have come from destroying his Rune Seed had failed to register. Compared to what had happened on Earth, the man’s death was so insignificant that Sylas had dismissed it from his thoughts almost as soon as Rheos’ body disappeared.

He raised his hand and accepted the next challenge.

Originally, he had intended to send a message to the people who had dared to challenge the Creation Tower, making certain they understood exactly what consequences awaited them for attempting to interfere with something under his protection.

But before that message could even be sent, someone had already sent a message to him instead.

Someone he didn’t even know had reached into his world, bypassed the protections he had established, and taken away the people who mattered most to him.

His wife was gone, and along with her, the child she carried, his mother-in-law, and his father-in-law. All of them had disappeared into the hands of someone whose identity Sylas didn’t even know, and the bastard responsible had spoken as though he were doing everyone a favor.

Sylas could still see the golden formation closing around Cassarae, the way she had pushed Xarvenya away, and the final expression on her face before she disappeared. He knew that she had made the correct decision, that allowing Xarvenya to expose her True Blood any further would have placed everyone on Earth in danger.

But understanding the reasoning behind her actions did nothing to lessen what he felt.

Within his expanded mind, countless possibilities were already unfolding, each one concerning the identity of the mysterious individual, the methods he had used to bypass Earth’s defenses, and the locations to which he might have taken his family.

Sylas would examine every possibility, eliminate every incorrect assumption, and eventually find the answer. He had no doubts about that, and he refused to waste even a fraction of his attention entertaining the possibility of failure.

But beneath those calculations, there was something else, something so immense that even his newly expanded mental capacity seemed insufficient to contain it.

Words couldn’t begin to describe the fury gathering within his chest, but Sylas made no attempt to suppress it. He allowed it to exist alongside everything else, neither indulging it nor denying it, because he no longer needed to choose between feeling something and controlling himself.

His Will remained perfectly steady as the next challenge began to take shape, and his expression never changed.

Someone had taken his family, and Sylas intended to make them pay for it.

No. Everyone would pay for it.