Chapter 400: Icy Cave

Chapter 400: Icy Cave



The two women and their teams only got the chance to catch a glimpse of Sylas before their expressions changed completely. This wasn't because of Sylas' appearance himself, but rather the fact that they could already feel the teleportation kick in.

This only meant one thing...

Vayu's team was dead.

And the most likely culprit was Sylas himself.

Although there was a chance that Vayu and his people had died during the stair challenge... looking at Sylas right now, none of them would dare to guarantee such a thing.

...

Sylas vanished and when he reappeared, he was in a land of ice and snow. However, there was no opponent across from him.

The system detected this as well and Sylas was transported once again. His victory had been claimed and he earned a full 1000 points.

When Sylas' vision cleared once more, he was standing before four doors. Unfortunately, he didn't get the chance to choose this time.

He was last to appear, so between himself and the other two teams, Aerwyna would get to choose first, then Brisa, and only then would it be himself.

If he was lucky, in the time Aerwyna and Brisa spent fighting against one another in the team battle, he would get to recover. However, if he was unlucky...

A mere single minute later, Aerwyna and Brisa's teams appeared, their conflict having already been settled.

Sylas didn't react to this. He already expected as much.

If the two teams were equal, he could have hoped for a long, drawn-out battle. But, Aerwyna had clearly already asserted her dominance, so that made it easy for Brisa to give concessions.

As expected, he wasn't so lucky. His entire dungeon had been tampered with, and judging by the fact the other two teams had escaped unscathed, clearly theirs was not.

If he wanted to make it to the end, he would have to deal with this suped-up Dungeon all the way through.

His jaw set and his gaze became colder.

Sylas couldn't remember the last time he was angry. Or maybe it was that those memories had been mostly ignored or repressed by him. Even when people did wrong by him, he didn't react much, because he knew that in the end, he would come out on top.

Olivia was one example of this. The Grimblades were another, though a far more serious example—even when they indirectly threatened his family, his reaction was almost... indifferent.

It was a stoicism he prided himself on. He didn't believe that a disciplined person should mouth off or lose their temper at the drop of a hat, something that probably made his affection for Cassarae all the more amusing or ironic. In a lot of ways, she was everything that he was not.

Or maybe... she represented a part of him that he didn't allow free.

Staring at this mountain, and feeling his limbs and sinew being eaten into by this flesh- rending cold, there was a small flame of anger hiding in the depths of his heart, and it was

slowly growing.

Sylas didn't put his anger into words because he knew if he thought about it his control just might spiral. At that point, he really wasn't sure what he would do.

Instead, he put one foot forward after the next, feeling his mind wearing down as he battled against the cold with his Rune Soul, flicking away the dense Runes of Ice-Poison in a vain

attempt to keep himself warm.

Then, he entered the cave.

It was well lit and just as crystalline as everything else. Ahead were the stairs he thought would be missing this time around, but he simply couldn't see to the end of them.

There was just a long tunnel up to the top of the mountain... and he would have to walk it alone.