Chapter 2463: Arrogant

The God Plane’s Creation Tower was quiet enough that Sylas could hear the slow grinding of its mechanisms beneath the world, a deep, intermittent sound that traveled up through the streets and faded into the empty structures around him.

He had never expected the place to be crowded in the same way a city would be, but the absence here was different; broad roads, floating bridges, open courtyards, and towering buildings all carried signs that people had been here not long ago, from half-finished Runic inscriptions suspended above worktables to doors left open beneath formations that still pulsed with power.

Yet, no one remained.

Above Sylas and Nosphaleen, a notification followed them wherever they went.

—

[Creation Tower Authority Challenge]

[Time Remaining: 23:56:41]

[Failure to Accept will result in forfeiture of Authority]

—

Sylas looked at it once before continuing down the road.

Twenty-four hours was far too much time to worry about, especially when this was his first opportunity to see the God Plane’s portion of the Creation Tower for himself.

Whoever challenged him clearly expected him to spend most of that time preparing or working out some way to protect the authority that had fallen into his lap. But Sylas was more interested in the Tower itself.

Nosphaleen walked beside him, her eyes moving constantly between the buildings and Sylas, following his gaze whenever he stopped to inspect something she couldn’t immediately understand.

She had always been talented with Runes, but the gap between them had become so large that there was little point pretending otherwise, and Sylas doubted there was anything here she could see through that he couldn’t.

Still, bringing her had never been about needing a second pair of eyes.

"How far did you get with Rune Mastery?"

Nosphaleen’s expression stiffened for a moment. "I’m still an E-tier Spark Master."

She lowered her gaze almost as soon as she answered, clearly embarrassed by how little the number had changed. Nosphaleen had progressed enormously in almost every other direction since they last traveled together, and judging by the way she watched him from the corner of her eye, she was waiting to see whether he considered this some sort of failure.

"Why did you stop?"

"It wasn’t worth the time." She hesitated before continuing, as though afraid the explanation would sound like an excuse. "Improving my Race was faster, strengthening my Will was faster, and once the Envy Seed appeared, understanding that seemed more important than everything else."

"Reasonable."

Her shoulders loosened immediately, though only a little.

"What do you know about Rune Creation?"

"Almost nothing." Nosphaleen looked even more embarrassed now. "I wasn’t close to reaching it, so I didn’t study much about it."

Sylas nodded and continued walking. "Spark Mastery is still mostly comprehension. You study something that exists, understand why it works, then reproduce almost by calling its Will into the world and sparking its existence."

Nosphaleen’s attention fixed completely on him. "Then Rune Creation is making something that didn’t exist before?"

"Sometimes."

"Then what makes it different?"

"Eventually, understanding what exists stops being enough. You have to decide what should exist instead. Or how it exists."

Nosphaleen repeated the words quietly under her breath before looking up again. "How do you decide that?"

Sylas glanced at her. "If I answer everything, you’ll learn my Rune Path instead of finding your own."

"Oh."

She fell silent for perhaps three seconds.

"Can you give me a hint?"

A faint amusement touched Sylas’ eyes before fading. "Think about your Envy Seed. Not what it was designed to become, and not what the people behind it wanted Envy to mean, but what Envy means to you."

Nosphaleen’s expression slowly changed.

"Then ask yourself what that should change about your Rune Mastery."

This time she didn’t ask another question.

Her Rune Path had never been ordinary to begin with. When Sylas first pushed her toward Spark Mastery, the foundation naturally formed around the Mesmeryx bloodline and its strange relationship with perception and reality, especially after she realized sufficiently complex Runes could simulate things as difficult as Skills, bodies, and even approximations of Comprehensions.

For a Mesmeryx, the line between a sufficiently perfect imitation and reality itself had always been thinner. Nosphaleen’s early Rune Path grew from that idea, building false structures so complete that reality accepted them anyway, but that path had formed before the Envy Seed changed her and before she began defining herself outside what others expected her to become. Whether the same answer still suited her was something Sylas had no intention of deciding in her place.

Nosphaleen slowed without noticing as her thoughts pulled inward, and Sylas left her there mentally while they entered another hall lined with bookshelves that climbed until the upper rows disappeared into darkness. His eyes moved across the spines once before his hand rose, and a tome tore free from somewhere far above them and dropped neatly into his palm.

He tossed it toward Nosphaleen.

"Here."

She caught it and looked down.

[On the Separation Between Replication and Creation]

When she looked back up, Sylas had already moved several steps ahead with both hands resting in the pockets of his trench coat.

The hall opened into a vast circular lobby that reminded him of the first time he entered the Creation World, though everything here had been scaled upward until the comparison became almost ridiculous. Concentric galleries wrapped around the chamber and rose toward a ceiling hidden in shadow, while enormous doors lined every level beneath formations dense enough that even Sylas needed more than a casual glance to take them apart.

The timer followed him inside.

[23:48:22]

[23:48:21]

[23:48:20]

Sylas stepped onto the central platform and accepted the challenge.

Wind rushed through the chamber as the dormant formations came alive, snapping the tails of his black trench coat behind him while streams of light spread from beneath his feet and raced across the floor. The circular galleries began rotating one after another, and the deep machinery beneath the Tower answered with a grinding roar.

—

[Authority Challenge Accepted]

[Matching Challenger Parameters]

—

Far away, within the Sage Heaven’s Demi-God Plane, the Hell Ancestor of the Tera Clan stared at the notification with a deepening frown. He had once stood among the strongest foreign Rune authorities inside the Skai Heaven’s Creation World, right until Sylas Grimblade forced both him and Heaven Ancestor Oura out, and the Tera Clan had moved almost immediately when the new authority challenge appeared.

Even so, he had expected Sylas to bleed as much of the twenty-four hours as possible before responding.

Instead, barely any time had passed.

—

[Defending Authority: Sylas Grimblade]

[Creator Tier: C]

[Eligible Challenger Tier: C]

—

The Tera Ancestor’s brows rose while the elders around him exchanged looks. Sylas had inherited an authority he had barely had time to understand, yet rather than prepare against forces he knew nothing about, he had accepted almost immediately.

The same thought moved through the room.

Arrogant bastard.

The Tera Ancestor’s gaze shifted toward the younger generation gathered behind him until it settled on one of the Clan’s most promising C-tier Hell Creators, a Demi-God who had already distinguished himself among peers several times his age.

"Gros."

The young man rose.

The Tera Ancestor smiled. "Go teach him what a Demi-God Rune Master looks like."

**

At nearly the same moment, on the God Plane of the Poise Heaven, the current Clan Head of the Nethum Clan watched the same challenge form before him. The Nethum rarely cared about disputes between other Heavens, but the Creation Tower was different, and he had sent his challenge the moment he realized the Skai Heaven’s old authorities had vanished.

Someone had simply beaten him to it.

"Unfortunate..."

His disappointment lasted only a moment before curiosity replaced it, his attention settling on the unfamiliar name at the center of the challenge.

"But I guess it will be a good show to watch. I’d like to see who this Sylas Grimblade is, too."