Sylas moved on without answering any of Faelan's questions. He didn't give a damn about this person from the very start. He was already itching, itching to learn more.
The top 10 C-tiers of a generation could have never imagined they would be swept through like this.
Sylas moved from their tenth to their ninth, and then their ninth to their eighth. Faelan was already the sixth ranked of them all, and he defeated him much the same.
When he faced the fifth, he realized that the gap between them was growing larger, and more prominent. However, Sylas had no idea he was facing one of the top 10 C-tiers of the generation. All he knew was that his enemies were growing stronger and that he had to increase it in kind.
But the moment the Runic Paths started fascinating him, Sylas found that he was starting to improve himself as well.
The first few Paths were interesting, but just enough to rouse his interest. He felt that he could easily create a Path as powerful if not more so.
But from the moment he met Faelan, each one that followed it was like another injection into his veins.
Sylas was rarely impressed, and these still weren't enough to quite impress him yet. But they were still clever enough to shift his path of thought and enlighten him to things he didn't think he would think of easily.
And as he grew, the gap that his Will could display between himself and the rest of the top ten only grew.
He crushed the fifth rank even more easily than he had the tenth, the insights of the refractory index Rune Path having shifted his mode of seeing Spark Mastery in the first place.
In fact, he felt that if he more actively used his Pride Seed in his casting and Will Priming, he could force some truly special results. If he went far enough, he could even hijack the Will Priming of another Rune Master.
But Sylas didn't do that. Between his Will and Temporal Delay, his advantage against them was already large enough. There was no need to beat a dead horse.
When he got to the fourth rank, the challenge ramped up another large measure.
The Rune that appeared before him was actually one of fire, and for a moment, Sylas actually couldn't see what was special about it at all, so much so he was so very close to losing.
He had to use Temporal Delay to slow everything to nearly stopping time entirely before he realized what he was looking at.
Combustion.
But it was an incredibly unique application, one Sylas had never thought of.
Combustion was a very specific scientific process. You used fuel, oxygen, and a spark, then you produced heat, light and byproducts. It needed oxygen as an activating agent. Snuffing out the oxygen meant there would be no fire.
It was as simple and straightforward as it got.
This Rune Path was changing the equation, not by changing the balance, but by changing the fundamental units in the first place.
It looked like it was using simple fire laws, but in reality it was using a concept that Sylas had faintly touched on while battling the Efivara but had been far too focused to actually break through… It was an incredibly complex path. More complicated than even Sylas' own.
But the short of it was that the user targeted something as its fuel and "oxygen". This target would be the exact polar opposite of the result it wanted.
For example, if it wanted more fire, it would use Will Priming to twist the laws until water became its combusting agent, thus using it to produce even more fire.
If it wanted light, it would devour darkness.
If it wanted the skies, it would devour the earth.
The sentiments were so lofty and grand, to scorch what stood in your way and bloom only what you desired as a result.
Sylas' heartbeat sped up.
This time… this time he was impressed.
It was such a grand ambition, and unlike the pathetic Old Man Webb, this person had succeeded. At the very least, they had made it much further than Webb could ever imagine.
That was when Sylas also came to understand something…
Maybe lofty sentiments were simply a dime a dozen when it came to Rune Creators. Every one of them thought themselves to be a god capable of overturning the skies with a palm… that was what they believed in their truest heart of hearts.
But what fascinated Sylas maybe the most was that this Rune Path didn't even seem that complicated at first blush. How many fire users were there in the world? Probably far too many.
But could any of them think to do this with flames?
This person wasn't just using the rawest sense of flames, but the deepest sentiments… its hidden mythos, the grand mythology that followed the first flames to ever exist.
Creation itself.
Hidden within the already lofty sentiments of the Rune Path was a sentiment even loftier still that it hadn't quite managed to reach, a sentiment that was still out of the reach of this master of Runes.
The moment Sylas saw it he crushed the fourth ranker.
His rapidly beating heart had stilled by now as he came to face the third. He understood what he was facing, and he could feel like his Runic Path was being scrutinized from all sides.
As grand as he thought his path was, the more he saw these other ones, the more it felt like his own had a veneer of grandiosity to it… but the core… the core was missing.
What were those hidden layers of his Rune Path, how much deeper did he still have to go?
The Fire Rune Master had dug quite deep, but even he was still a ways away.
But had Sylas even dug all that deep in the first place? Or had he stopped at the image of a grand idea and just let it rest there?
Had he been riding on the magic of space and time alone for too long? Even if he combined them, was he really maximizing them as much as these masters had maximized theirs?
They had taken just fire alone so far…
Why did his Archon Casting feel so shallow by comparison?
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