Sylas ate slowly, one bite after another. It wasn't until he finished the last, his stomach feeling heavy and dense, that he finally spoke again.
"What is this?" Sylas asked.
"The food?" Isolde asked as though she didn't know.
Sylas nodded.
"Nothing special. Just taking advantage of Earth's crops."
Sylas' gaze flickered. Earth's crops?
Earth was a heavily injured world. Even with Sylas' efforts, Earth was only about to fully bloom into a Grade 10 Silver World.
While this was shocking to much of the Milky Way Sector, the strongest world in the Sect was still Grade 8 Silver. The gap wasn't that far.
In truth, difference of even a single grade was enormous when directly comparing the worlds themselves. But that gap didn't manifest itself in such a way.
That was to say that there was nothing grown on Earth that Sylas shouldn't be able to get on the strongest world of the Milky Way Sector until now.
That world was probably controlled by the Leava, and they were exceptional in their own right. But still, there was absolutely no way that the Leava had resources that an F-tier like Sylas' mother could cook that would have such an effect on Sylas himself.
However, Isolde was just continuing to smile as though she had no intention of explaining anything.
Sylas looked toward Elara, but she still seed mad that he had given their mother the ability to keep a perfect eye on her at all tis.
"Interesting," Sylas said calmly. "You want to take the people of Earth more seriously?"
"There are many people here that could be of use if you gave them a chance," Isolde replied.
Sylas leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, his thoughts seemingly going elsewhere.
His mom had a tendency to do this. Well, lecturing him was commonplace. But most of the ti when she was lecturing, she was either speaking about things she didn't care much about or things she knew that he would listen to because it cost him nothing to do.
In the latter case, since it cost him nothing, and it was his mother's wishes, there wouldn't be a problem in listening. Like when his mother told him to care more about his image and how it was optically horrible the way he treated Professor Fembroise, she had probably been right.
Since then he hadn't exactly had a pristine record, but there had been other chances to be unusually cruel or at least flippant and he hadn't taken that opportunity.
Why? Because it cost him nothing to listen to mother in this case. Professor Fembroise wasn't a threat to him.
However, when it was sothing that his mother comprehended would need a risk and weighted assessnt by Sylas, her approach was always cleverer. It was always like this.
She would begin with irrefutable evidence, and then she would make her stance known.
Sylas was ignoring quite a number of things on Earth.
He was ignoring Nosphaleen's father and the rest of the Clypsians. He was ignoring Archibald's successor Nathan. He was ignoring the Celestial Empire, or the other governnts of Earth for that matter.
He hadn't even ntioned his sister's little crush.
In fact, he didn't even care much about his own family all that much. Sure, he helped the Grimblades to advance a great deal, but he wasn't expecting them on a battlefield anyti soon. He was fully expecting to weather every storm all on his own.
Even setting aside the idea of becoming so Emperor of Earth and ruling over all its citizens, there were certain pockets of Earth that might particularly well be invaluable to invest in.
Professor Fembroise's mutation was still sothing he didn't fully understand. The Celestial Empire certainly had a great number of talents considering how well they had done during the Summoning, and also how well they had done to form a relationship with the Clypsians.
Archibald was technically Sylas' own ancestor, while Nathan had taken up his mantle and was probably even better suited to the Omnimous' path than everyone but Sylas himself.
It wasn't like Sylas didn't know these things. Of course he knew them.
He just didn't care.
Whatever investnt he could make in these people would pale in comparison to the multiplicative effect of what it would an to invest in himself.
Every point of investnt he placed in them might return two, three, maybe even ten.
But if he invested that sa point in himself... let alone ten in return, even a hundred, a thousand, orders of magnitude more than even that might not cover it.
Sylas looked down at his plate.
His mother was the only one to use this tactic against him. His grandfather tended to do it a lot too.
Back when his grandfather wanted to convince him to go to the Grimblades, what was the question he had asked back then...
""The most powerful families in the world aren't just there for show. There will always be things they know that the common people will not. Do you agree with this, Sylas?""
The mory ca easily to Sylas as though he had wielded it to be such. But while his mother might have a point...
He didn't have the ti or care to deal with all of this.
Isolde didn't seem off-put by her son's silence. In fact, she was very much used to it. She had already stood up and begun to clear the table, snatching a plate Elara was digging into.
"That's enough food. You need to learn to control your impulses. Just because you can eat however much you want and burn it away later doesn't an you should."
Elara grumbled but didn't fight against her mother as the plates disappeared.
"You know why I say all of this, right?" Isolde appeared by Sylas and tapped her son's forehead with a finger thrice. "The people of Earth aren't the only ones you're forgetting. You're leaving your family and your wife behind, too. At that point, what is the point?"
As though on cue, there was a booming crash at the door.
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