Chapter 2497: I Won’t Lose

Elara’s attacks only grew more vicious.

Her 4 bodies converged on Sylas from different angles, while the Runes around them constantly rebuilt their flesh.

There wasn’t much technique left to speak of, at least not in the usual sense. She was relying entirely on her overwhelming strength and her peculiar Rune Path, using her ability to create and manipulate organic matter to throw attacks no ordinary body could have pulled off.

Sylas blocked another punch.

The instant his forearm met Elara’s fist, however, the muscles in her shoulder reorganized themselves, and a second burst of force erupted from her arm.

CRACK!

His already fractured bone split even further.

Before he could lower his guard, another Elara appeared behind him and drove her knee into his spine. The remaining two closed in from either side.

BOOM!

The collision sent Sylas hurtling across the sky. He had barely steadied himself before Elara caught up to him again.

Her fist shot toward his face. When he raised an arm to intercept it, she shifted the structure of her elbow and redirected the strike into his ribs.

A dull crack sounded from his chest.

"What’s wrong? Did sitting around for three years make you forget how to fight?"

Sylas looked at her calmly. His eyes followed the subtle shifts of the Runes inside her body as she prepared her next attack.

He had to admit, his sister’s Rune Path was quite ingenious.

Most people would have used Aether to reinforce their physical strength. Elara, on the other hand, was manipulating the very structures that produced that strength, letting her generate force in ways that ignored the usual limits of muscle and bone.

Even Sylas would have struggled to pull that off without his current understanding of the Mesh of Reality. The fact that Elara had developed it this far at only 19 years old spoke volumes about her talent.

Unfortunately, the more she attacked, the more shortcomings he noticed.

She was leaning too heavily on how naturally superior her Genes were. On top of that, while her control over organic Rune Creation was exceptional, she was still treating her 4 bodies as separate people rather than parts of a greater whole.

Of course, Sylas had no intention of pointing any of that out right now.

Elara appeared in front of him again, her leg sweeping toward his head while another of her bodies drove a fist at his abdomen.

Sylas took the kick on his shoulder and caught the fist with his palm. Even so, the impact forced several more fractures through his bones, and the third Elara used the opening to slam both hands into his chest.

"Stop looking at me like that!"

Sylas slid backward through the air, blood running from the corner of his mouth as the damage to his organs piled up.

His Healing Factor had already started repairing the worst of it. However, Elara seemed determined to hurt him faster than he could recover.

"You’re always like this! You disappear whenever you want, do whatever you want, and then come back acting like the rest of us are supposed to be happy you bothered to show up!"

Another fist crashed into his guard. This time, Elara didn’t even bother pulling her arm back.

She rebuilt the flesh around her shoulder instead, forming a second joint. That let her twist her body and land another strike from an angle that should have been physically impossible.

Sylas’ arm gave way under the pressure.

Elara’s eyes flashed. Rather than stopping, though, she gritted her teeth and pressed forward.

Her 4 bodies grew more and more aggressive, and the skies filled with the echoes of their collisions.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Sylas kept retreating, letting his sister push him farther and farther away from Sky Roaming. For a while, it almost looked like she really meant to beat her elder brother to death.

However, just as another 4 fists closed in on him, Sylas’ eyes flashed.

A layer of Runes appeared across his body.

Their intricate glyphs swam over his skin so fluidly that it was hard to tell where one ended and the next began. The Runes were so fine they almost looked like part of his flesh, nothing like any defense or construct Elara had seen from him before.

She barely paid them any attention before her fist landed. The instant it did, though, her expression changed.

The force she’d built up collapsed before it could reach Sylas.

She felt the muscles in her arm contract, and the joints she had rebuilt worked exactly the way they were supposed to. Yet, somehow, the connection between the force they produced and where it was meant to go had simply vanished.

Before she could figure out what had happened, Sylas caught her wrist and gave it a slight tug. Her own momentum sent her tumbling into one of her other bodies.

Elara recovered almost immediately, but her expression wasn’t the same.

"What the hell was that?"

Sylas didn’t answer.

When the other two Elaras attacked from behind him, he didn’t even bother turning around. The glyphs flowing across his skin shifted, and with two careless-looking movements, he caught their wrists and sent their attacks into each other.

This time, Elara understood a bit more of what was happening.

Sylas wasn’t using his Runes to strengthen his body or reinforce his defenses. He was altering the relationships between the Runes that produced her attacks, pulling apart their foundations before the force could ever reach him.

She had never seen Rune Mastery used like that before. Worse yet, his movements were so small that it was hard to believe he was fighting at all.

Elara clenched her teeth and attacked again.

No matter how she rearranged her flesh or how much strength she built up, Sylas seemed to know what she meant to do before she could finish doing it.

Sometimes, he caught her wrists. Other times, he simply put a palm against her forehead and pushed her away.

When she tried to surround him with all 4 bodies, he slipped through the gaps between them, tapping each one on the shoulder as he passed.

The last tap sent her spinning through the air. She caught herself before losing her balance, but the humiliation was far worse than any injury he could have given her.

"Asshole!"

Elara rushed forward again. Her attacks grew wilder and wilder as Sylas took them apart one after another.

She had spent years refining her Rune Path and fought countless battles. She had pushed herself all the way to B-tier, at an age when most people were still struggling with the basics of Aether.

And yet, her brother was treating her like she was still the little girl who used to challenge him to wrestling matches in their living room.

"Do you have any idea how worried everyone was?!"

Sylas caught her fist. She yanked it free and immediately threw another.

"Mom keeps pretending everything is fine, and Dad barely says anything anymore! Cassarae is gone, Nosphaleen and Xarvenya have been waiting for you, and you just sat in that stupid laboratory for three years!"

Her voice grew more and more strained. The power behind her attacks hadn’t dropped in the slightest, but the precision that had made them so dangerous was starting to fall apart.

"You think you can just fix everything whenever you feel like it?! What about the rest of us?!"

Sylas caught her wrist again.

This time, Elara didn’t try to pull away.

Her other bodies kept attacking a moment longer before their movements slowed. As the Runes holding them together came undone, they dissolved back into the surrounding Aether.

Elara stood in front of him with her head lowered, her shoulders trembling as she fought to steady her breathing.

"Why can’t you just stay home for once?"

Sylas let go of her wrist.

For several seconds, Elara didn’t move. Then, she stepped forward and buried her forehead against his chest.

The tears came almost immediately.

Sylas raised a hand and rested it on the back of his sister’s head, letting her clutch his robes as her sobs slowly grew louder.

He didn’t try to comfort her with empty words, and he didn’t offer any explanation for the 3 years he’d spent in seclusion. He understood how she felt well enough.

Cassarae was still alive, and nothing had happened that Sylas considered beyond his ability to undo. However, Elara wasn’t looking at it from where he stood.

To her, Cassarae was as much an elder sister as Sylas was an elder brother, and with both of them gone, there was a gaping hole in their family.

Their father had changed as well. Sylas had noticed it during their brief meeting, and whatever Cedric had decided, it clearly wasn’t something a few words could undo.

Their mother would suffer because of it. There seemed to be no end to the problems piling up around them.

For as long as Elara could remember, Sylas had been the one she could rely on no matter what happened. In her eyes, her elder brother had always been something of a superhero. He could do anything he set his mind to, and she had never once seen him face a problem he couldn’t eventually overcome.

Now, even he seemed to have been pushed into a corner. And after waiting 3 years for him to come home, she’d found out he was already getting ready to leave again, with no telling when she would see him next.

Sylas held her in silence, his palm resting on the back of her head as the last of his injuries healed.

Then, after a long while, he opened his mouth. "I won’t lose."

Elara’s sobs slowed.

"Within one year, I’ll bring them all back."