Chapter 2485: No Survivors.

The next challenger came from the Cryst Heaven, a young Demi-God named Kethris whose crystalline Race possessed an exceptional affinity for Intelligence. His Rune Path focused on compressing Aether into increasingly smaller structures, allowing him to create formations that would ordinarily require far more space and resources than they occupied.

The first challenge was to stabilize an incomplete Rune whose internal energy had grown too concentrated for its supporting Strokes to withstand.

Kethris couldn’t have asked for a better puzzle.

He immediately began rearranging the supporting Strokes, compressing the unstable Aether into progressively smaller pockets until the pressure distributed itself evenly. His solution was excellent, and under ordinary circumstances, it would have secured him an easy victory.

Unfortunately, Sylas had been watching.

Rather than competing directly with his opponent’s Runes, Sylas allowed Kethris to finish before presenting a solution of his own. He achieved the same stability without compressing the Aether at all, instead altering the relationships between the supporting Strokes so that the excess energy no longer produced any harmful pressure.

Kethris lost, but he wasn’t particularly concerned. He had simply chosen an inferior solution, and that could be corrected.

However, when the next challenge appeared, Sylas demonstrated the same principle again, this time repairing a dying formation without needing to concentrate its remaining Aether.

By the fifth loss, Kethris was beginning to understand the implications. By the tenth, he was attempting to replicate Sylas’ methods, only to discover that he couldn’t maintain the necessary relationships without relying on compression.

What had always been his greatest strength was also the limitation preventing him from progressing.

Sylas continued challenging him until that realization became impossible to ignore.

Crack.

Kethris’ Rune Seed shattered, and his crystalline body collapsed before the Creation Tower transported him away.

—

[Challenge Complete]

[You Have Lost]

—

He never saw the message.

...

The next challenger was Elyssara of the Mesmer Heaven, a young woman belonging to a Race whose bodies existed in a state of partial illusion. Her exceptional Charisma had allowed her to develop a Fathomless Rune Creation Path that established false relationships between Runes, convincing formations to accept functions they shouldn’t ordinarily possess.

Her first challenge required her to complete a formation whose central Rune had been removed.

Elyssara excelled at such problems. Rather than creating an entirely new Rune, she altered the surrounding structure until the formation accepted another Stroke as though it were the missing component.

It was an ingenious solution, but Sylas recognized its weakness almost immediately.

When his own solution appeared, he hadn’t replaced the missing Rune either. Instead, he had redistributed its function throughout the formation, allowing the surrounding Runes to naturally produce the necessary effect without needing to deceive the Mesh of Reality.

Elyssara laughed off her first defeat, convinced that Sylas had simply stumbled upon a more elegant method.

But then the challenges continued, and Sylas repeatedly demonstrated that the effects she achieved through deception could be accomplished through legitimate relationships between Runes.

By the twentieth challenge, her laughter had disappeared.

If the functions she had spent her life learning to achieve through deception could exist without it, then what exactly was the purpose of her Rune Path?

Sylas gave her another puzzle, then another, allowing her to confront that question until she could no longer find an answer.

Her Rune Seed shattered before she could beg him to stop.

—

[Challenge Complete]

[You Have Lost]

—

She never saw the message.

...

The Sage Heaven sent Thaeris next, a four-eyed genius whose natural affinity for Mental Stats had allowed him to become one of the most promising Decoders of his generation.

His Rune Path focused on identifying the sequence through which a formation had been constructed, allowing him to reverse that process and dismantle even the most complicated structures.

The first challenge involved repairing a damaged formation, and Thaeris immediately began reconstructing the sequence of its creation to determine which portions had failed.

Sylas allowed him to work until he understood the foundation of his Path. Then he completed his own puzzle without bothering to determine the formation’s original construction sequence, instead identifying the relationships necessary for its current function and rebuilding it from there.

Thaeris frowned at the result, but the first defeat wasn’t enough to shake him.

The second was more troubling, and by the seventh, he had begun questioning how Sylas could repeatedly produce superior solutions without first understanding the original sequence of construction.

By the fifteenth, all four of his eyes had become bloodshot as he attempted to find the origin point of a Rune Sylas had completed through a circular arrangement of Strokes.

There was no meaningful beginning or end.

Thaeris understood what he was seeing, but that only made the problem worse.

If a formation didn’t require a fixed construction sequence to function, then what exactly was his Rune Path reversing?

Where was the true beginning of a Rune? And for that matter, where was the true end? When he reversed things to the beginning, was he even really looking at the start? Or just his own limited view of what a start might look like? Did he even understand his own path properly? Was his path even a path? Wouldn’t he need to understand what existed before life, the universe, the first Strokes of matter and atoms to understand the Rune Path he had given himself? Wasn’t he far too arrogant?

The questions continued haunting him, looping over and over again through another dozen defeats until the foundation of his comprehension finally gave way. He couldn’t tell where they started and ended either.

His Rune Seed cracked, and his body crumpled without another word.

—

[Challenge Complete]

[You Have Lost]

—

He never saw the messge.

Sylas didn’t bother watching him disappear, his attention already shifting toward the next challenger while another portion of his expanded mind continued analyzing the mysterious individual who had taken Cassarae.

The fourth challenger came from the Beast Heaven, a towering, six-armed Demi-God named Draskor whose Race possessed an exceptional Constitution.

His Rune Path treated formations as living structures, using the regenerative properties of his bloodline to create Runes capable of repairing themselves after sustaining damage.

His first challenge required him to restore a dying formation whose foundational Runes had deteriorated beyond their original state.

Draskor performed exceptionally well, restoring the damaged portions through a continuous process of destruction and regeneration.

But Sylas understood regeneration far better than his opponent could have imagined, but it was also why he found it so ridiculous anyone would choose such a path for Runes of all things.

The idea that Runes needed to regenerate suggested that they could be destroyed at all. It was never regeneration to reform a Rune, at most it was a reconstruction of what had once been. A body had to be regenerated because the life within the cells that had been destroyed had been wiped out. To do such a thing to a Rune was to suggest you or whatever problem the formation faced had the power to destroy the universe itself.

Draskor lost, then lost again when Sylas demonstrated that an unstable Rune could improve through the very process that threatened to destroy it.

By the tenth challenge, the six-armed genius had begun questioning whether regeneration should restore something at all, anything at all.

And by the twentieth, his comprehension could no longer reconcile itself with the limitations of his own Path.

Sylas completed another puzzle, and the final remnants of his certainty collapsed.

Crack!

Draskor died standing, his six arms hanging limp at his sides as the Creation Tower transported his corpse away.

—

[Challenge Complete]

[You Have Lost]

—

He never saw the notification.

More challengers followed.

Ithis, a non-gendered genius from the Skai Heaven, had developed a Rune Path that relied upon imposing absolute Will upon every Stroke of a formation. Unfortunately, the puzzles Sylas completed demonstrated that true authority didn’t require constant exertion, and once Ithis understood how much of its comprehension had revolved around compensating for imperfect control, its Rune Seed began to unravel.

A young woman from the Cryst Heaven attempted to solve the Tower’s puzzles through an immense network of calculations, only to discover that Sylas could identify the correct relationships without calculating every possible arrangement. Her Path depended on the necessity of those calculations, and after enough defeats, even her exceptional Intelligence couldn’t protect her from the contradictions accumulating within her Rune Seed.

Another Mesmer Heaven genius relied upon manipulating the perceived functions of Runes, but Sylas repeatedly presented solutions that achieved the same results without relying upon those perceptions at all.

Man or woman, humanoid or alien, gendered or not, it made no difference.

Sylas never rushed to complete the first challenge. He allowed each opponent enough time to reveal the principles upon which their Rune Path rested, then used the subsequent puzzles to demonstrate exactly where those principles failed.

Every defeat made the contradiction clearer, and every new challenge forced them to confront it again.

Until their Rune Seeds could no longer endure.

The notifications continued appearing, and the corpses continued returning to their respective Heavens.

Sylas’ expression never changed. He killed every single one of them without batting an eye.

**

Within the God Plane of the Poise Heaven, a young man stepped through the gates of an ancient Clan estate, drawing the attention of several elders who had been waiting for news of his arrival.

His name was Caelren Nethum.

The Nethum Clan had maintained an unusual tradition for countless generations, scattering its youngest descendants across distant worlds with their memories suppressed and requiring them to find their own way home.

However, the current generation wasn’t supposed to have returned yet.

According to the Clan’s calculations, it should have been many years before even the most talented descendants began finding their way back. Yet Caelren had accomplished it before anyone else, becoming the first of his generation to return to the Poise Heaven and setting into motion what would be a series of events that could no longer be stopped.

More importantly, he had done so with a speed that ranked third in the entire recorded history of the Nethum Clan.

Across countless generations of extraordinary geniuses, only two had ever returned faster.