"Old Brama!" Niafon’s voice bood. His figure lood high in the skies, looking every bit the part of Buddha. His belly was a shimring mass of rounded gold, a halo pulsing vertically to his back, looping in a wide arch that looked more like a gate to Heaven than an extension of a man’s body.
He was larger than life, greater than the skies, and a single palm from him should have shattered a small figure like Old Brama to pieces.
And yet, it had been days of no movent. Standing there alone, Old Brama seed to remind them of the olden days—days where he took the council by the horns and stood as the foremost expert of their Golden Grove, a man not just known for his battle prowess, but his wit and intelligence.
The very best Rune Master in this galaxy.
A palm struck down from above, only smaller than the enormous golden tree that held up the skies.
Old Brama’s eyes flashed, his aura flaring. The chanical parts and turning gears of his armor accelerated like roaring engines, sparks flying from him as he cocked his arm back.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
His arm pulled back in three sections, each one adding more tension until he suddenly erupted.
BOOM!
A fist of concentrated centripetal force took shape and ripped a void through the air. It poked a hole through Niafon’s palm in a single bound.
At first, it looked like a tiny needle ripping through a large blanket, doing nothing at all. But then the palm imploded, falling into a scattered rain of gold.
Niafon’s expression twisted with darkness.
"Yaoyao, are you going to continue to do nothing?!" Niafon barked.
"I don’t appreciate your words, Niafon. I have done my best. But he is not attacking and is entirely focused on defense. We don’t stand a chance in this situation. He understands the Laws of this World better than all of us, and he’s forged his chs to take perfect advantage of it."
That attack hadn’t ripped the void with pure power. His ch calculated the weakness in the sh of Reality, adjusted three tis in a split second, and then punched out, perfectly targeting not just the weakness in the world, but the weakness in Niafon’s attack as well.
If the sh of Reality was disrupted, Skills were far less effective, and Old Brama was a master at taking advantage of this.
The problem was that in normal combat, this was especially hard to use. However, if he focused entirely on defense—protecting sothing to his back and waiting for the danger to co to him instead—his ability to read, react, and calculate increased severalfold.
"You think I don’t know this?! The only way to beat him is to tire him out first! If you’re just standing there, doing nothing, how are we going to—?!"
Niafon’s words were caught in his throat as he realized that Yaoyao wasn’t looking at him or Old Brama anymore. Instead, her gaze was focused on the golden tree that had been the center of their world for so very long.
It shook.
Slowly, a new portal opened up for the first ti in many days. The entire region had been locked down by Old Brama, and practically the whole province had to be cleared so that there wouldn’t be any casualties beneath the battle of these C-tiers.
And then Sylas slowly walked out, an unconscious gean in his arms. Other than a slight paleness on his face and streaks of dried blood on his cheeks, he looked as though he hadn’t been through much at all. Well... if the ravaged state of his clothing hadn’t been a dead giveaway.
Calm and patient, he took one step after another, appeared before Old Brama, and looked down at the old man.
At so unknown point, Sylas had walked into the air as though it were flat ground, until he reached the sa height as Old Brama’s ch.
He didn’t say a word, but Old Brama’s heart was shaking so violently even his ch almost lost control. Although he had planned for all of this, it was like he didn’t expect that it would work out at all. He nearly lost all composure.
However, seeing the indifferent chill in Sylas’ gaze, he knew that there was no getting out of this. Maybe Sylas would even kill gean right in front of him to prove a point if he so much as tried.
Usually, a C-tier would find such a thought to be a joke. The gap between F-tier and C-tier was so enormous it might as well have been the difference between an ant and a god. But... by this point, Old Brama knew that the last person he should underestimate was Sylas.
It was only a brief mont, a montary lapse. But after that, Old Brama held his hand up to the skies, his ch following his actions.
"I swear on my life itself that I will follow all of your orders so long as it brings no direct harm to my granddaughter."
The skies rumbled, sparks of lightning taking shape and an oppressive System might falling.
Sylas had accidentally triggered a System Oath before. But that one had felt far less substantial than this one. Maybe because the scope was wider, maybe because the system was far stronger here, or maybe it was because Old Brama himself was so much stronger than he was.
Likely, it was a combination of all three.
Once Sylas felt the Oath take root, he handed gean’s unconscious body over, and Old Brama carefully scooped her up into a palm. By the ti he had snapped out of the soft gaze he was giving his precious granddaughter, Sylas was already leaving.
"You... did you...?"
"That’s none of your concern," Sylas said calmly.
Old Brama’s eyes flickered.
"Stop. Stop right there!" Niafon still stood high in the skies, his aura pulsing out waves of gold. How could they just allow this?
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