Chapter 2419: Flaw

Sylas understood almost immediately that someone was interfering with him, but the realization didn’t bring much of a reaction beyond a slight narrowing of his eyes. Whatever had shattered his control of the Void understood what he was doing well enough to target the structure directly, which meant forcing the same method again would only waste time.

"Both of you, put your hands on my back." Sylas kept his attention on the rat knights surrounding them while the sea beneath continued to gather, their armor reflecting the red glow of distant lava.

Cheri hesitated for half a breath before moving, while Fanelei stepped forward without needing to be told twice. The moment their palms touched him, Sylas shifted his focus between them and began making preparations.

"Cheri, close your eyes and focus on me. Do nothing else, or I’ll kill you."

Cheri froze, but she had spent enough time around Sylas to know when there was room to play with his words and when there wasn’t. She closed her eyes and locked her attention onto his presence, forcing every wandering thought away even as the humanoid rats began tightening their formation around them.

"Fanelei, relax your mind."

Fanelei’s lips curved into a smile as she glanced toward Cheri. "No threat for me?"

Sylas didn’t answer, which only seemed to improve her mood as she closed her eyes and allowed the tension in her body to disappear. Almost immediately, something foreign slipped into her, passing through her flesh before sinking beneath it, moving through layers she couldn’t properly name until it felt like something was reaching for the foundation beneath it.

Her instincts surged in rejection and her Will almost snapped shut around the invading force, but Fanelei stopped herself before that response could take shape. Sylas could be cruel when he thought cruelty was useful, yet in all the time she had watched him, she had never seen him stab someone in the back after giving his word or accepting their trust.

If anything, he was too prideful for that.

Fanelei released the last of her resistance and allowed the foreign force to sink deeper, even when the sensation became uncomfortably similar to surrendering control of her own body. Whatever Sylas intended, she would see it through.

Cheri was having a considerably harder time.

She had spent too much of her life searching for ways to control her own future to calmly accept another person’s Will pushing through her defenses, and every part of her screamed to close herself off. Yet the pressure Sylas was laying into her made the truth obvious enough that even her instincts couldn’t ignore it.

If she resisted now, she wouldn’t accomplish anything other than forcing him to deal with her as another problem.

Between them, Sylas stood completely still while the strain slowly began to show across his face, faint lines appearing beside his eyes as his Will continued sinking through both women. Then Fanelei’s A-tier Aether surged through the connection, followed almost immediately by the distant, oppressive aura of the God Realm carried through Cheri, and the Genesis Forge Ore in Sylas’ hand began to rumble.

The Void returned around them in full force.

One of the rat knights moved first, its dark spear crossing several kilometers in an instant as it thrust toward Sylas’ head, but space folded before the weapon could reach him. The spear vanished into one distortion and emerged beside another knight, forcing the second creature to twist its body and parry its companion instead.

Sylas’ eyes flashed again as another two attacked from opposite directions, and the space between them curved until their paths crossed without either understanding how it had happened. Their weapons collided hard enough to send a wave through the air, yet neither was wounded, and Sylas caught the reason almost as quickly as he saw it.

They were adjusting.

The first attacks had forced them to react with one level of strength, but the next exchange was already heavier, faster, and more precise. It wasn’t simple growth, nor did it feel like the sudden amplification of a Skill, but more like their bodies were remembering strength they had already possessed once and pulling it back into the present.

Hell existed beneath everything, caught between Planes in a way ordinary worlds weren’t, and these creatures had likely spent ages trapped between rules that no longer agreed with one another. They had grown beneath the Madness System, persisted beneath the impotent system that replaced it, and now existed somewhere between Mortal, Demi-God, and God Plane laws without properly belonging to any of them.

Their strength reflected that confusion.

Sylas twisted space again, sending a descending axe into the shield of another rat knight, but the impact still failed to leave even a scratch. Every time he increased the pressure, their bodies answered by climbing just high enough to withstand it, and when he changed the nature of his attack, they seemed to relearn the appropriate response in moments.

He couldn’t move while maintaining the connection with Cheri and Fanelei, so every exchange had to happen through Rune Mastery alone. His eyes flashed continuously as space folded, stretched, compressed, and inverted, turning the battlefield around them into something the rat knights could no longer navigate normally.

A sword meant for Sylas emerged behind its owner’s ally, while a shield raised to block one distortion suddenly became the surface another spear slammed into from the opposite side. Sylas couldn’t injure them, but he didn’t need to if he could continuously redirect their strength into one another and keep every attack from reaching the three of them.

Fanelei could feel every calculation. The connection Sylas had established wasn’t merely pulling from her Aether, it was carrying faint impressions of the thoughts directing it, and the sheer speed made her forget the battle around them for several seconds.

Every shift in space required Sylas to account for the location, momentum, strength, reaction, and changing power of every rat knight at once, then recalculate all of it the instant even one variable moved.

Cheri felt the same thing, and whatever doubts she had carried about why Fanelei treated Sylas the way she did began to lose some of their weight. She had thought his greatest advantages came from the treasures and circumstances surrounding him, but there was nothing external about the mind she was feeling now. It was dizzying.

The rat knights pressed harder, their formation changing as they realized direct attacks weren’t working, and Sylas watched the new pattern take shape without changing expression. They were learning from him, adapting to him, and becoming exactly powerful enough to survive whatever he placed in front of them.

That was the flaw.

Sylas’ eyes flashed once more as several connections finally aligned in his mind, and for the first time since the battle began, the faintest trace of understanding settled across his expression.

He knew how to kill them.