Chapter 2499: Death Wish

The Hollow Ship streaked through the void, its enormous body hidden beneath layers of Runes as it crossed the distance between worlds.

Sylas sat in meditation near the front of the vessel, his eyes closed and his expression as indifferent as ever. He hadn’t said a single word since they set off.

Alex had tried several times to get some kind of reaction out of him. However, the bastard was apparently perfectly happy to leave everything in his hands. A fucking disaster.

Alex rubbed his temples and looked over the group he had managed to scrape together.

The only good news was that Sylas hadn’t put any restrictions on who he could bring. That had let him recruit Nathan and a few others whose talents might come in handy once they reached the Nethum Clan.

Even Kael Darkmane had come along. Though, Alex suspected that was mostly because staying behind meant dealing with Elara Grimblade.

The poor bastard had spent years trying to escape the girl’s attention. Now that she was 19 and strong enough to make most of the Demi-God Plane tremble, his situation had probably only gotten worse.

Did he like the idea of a beautiful and powerful young woman chasing after him? Yes.

But Alex assumed the man would probably rather drag his balls through cut glass than have Sylas Grimblade as a brother-in-law. He might not even know how he died.

Unfortunately, that was where the good news ended.

Did Alex have plans for returning to the Nethum Clan? Of course he did. He wasn’t stupid enough to sit around waiting for his Gene Lock to shove him into the arms of people who might very well decide he was better off as a research specimen.

The problem was that those plans needed another 10 years to come together properly, and that was assuming everything went on schedule.

The Nethum’s rules were already quite strict. Once the first descendant of a generation returned, the others only had a limited window to follow. The first had arrived 3 years ago, which left Alex with only 2 more years, and which was also already far too little time.

Still, while it wasn’t much, it was still something he could have worked with. But, there was another rule.

If more than 50% of the generation returned before that window closed, everyone left would have their deadline cut down to 3 months.

Three fucking months.

Alex didn’t know exactly how many descendants had gone back already. Considering how competitive the Nethum were, though, the threshold could be crossed at any moment.

He had been banking on the others having enough common sense to realize that rushing back to the Clan wasn’t necessarily a good thing. But, expecting arrogant geniuses to act intelligently was too much to ask.

At this point, he had finished a fraction of a fraction of what he’d originally planned, and the group he’d gathered wasn’t exactly reassuring either.

They had just one S-tier and one A-tier.

The S-tier was Xarvenya, who was currently resting with Nosphaleen in one of the Hollow Ship’s private chambers.

Would Sylas let his pregnant wife fight on his behalf? Not even if the Nethum Patriarch showed up in person to drag them all to their deaths. As far as Alex was concerned, they might as well not have an S-tier at all.

As for their A-tier...

Alex looked over at Fanelei.

The woman had appeared out of nowhere right as they were getting ready to leave. By the time he’d started wondering where she came from, she had already claimed a spot near Sylas.

He didn’t know much about her. However, from what he’d seen so far, she was a lot more interested in finding her way into Sylas’ pants than in preparing for a potentially suicidal journey.

Even now, she stood a short distance from the meditating man, her eyes drifting over to him every so often. Alex was starting to wonder if she had some kind of Sylas tracker hidden in her underwear.

Where the hell had she even come from?

Alex sighed.

"I’m telling you, Nathan, we’re fucked. Completely and utterly fucked. I had a perfectly good plan, and now I’ve got to make it work with years of prep missing, an army that barely counts as an army, and a leader who refuses to actually lead."

Nathan glanced at Sylas before looking back at him. "Then why don’t you actually seem all that nervous?"

Alex turned to his friend with a flat look. "Are you saying I’m making my trauma up?"

Nathan gave him the same look back, without a shred of amusement.

Alex held his gaze for a moment, then chuckled.

"Fine, you got me. The way I see it, at some point whatever shitty preparations I’ve made are going to fall apart, and then Sylas will probably have to do something about it."

Nathan’s lip twitched. "That’s why you’re not worried?"

"Well, it’d be pretty stupid to bring along the strongest person I know and then pretend he wasn’t there, wouldn’t it?"

Nathan didn’t look all that entertained by the explanation. After hesitating for a moment, his face turned serious.

"Alex, I’ve been thinking about what happened to Cheri."

Alex’s smile faded.

"If it helped him, Sylas wouldn’t hesitate to kill you. I don’t think you understand just how little he cares about the people around him. You’re putting way too much faith in someone who doesn’t care about you at all."

Nathan glanced at the man sitting in meditation.

"We should slow this journey down. There’s no reason to rush into something this dangerous without—"

"Now you’re really trying to die." Alex cut him off, the last of the amusement gone from his face. "You want to delay Psycho Syl getting back to his wife? Be my guest. But if you’ve got a death wish, deal with that shit yourself. I’m not interested in joining you."

Alex reacted like he had been hit with a hot iron, glaring at Nathan.