[2500 PSs bonus]

Sylas had been very cautious with his Madness since returning from the Trial. Cassarae told him that she had never seen anyone else with a Comprehension, but the moment he returned he sensed one from Bloom. So, he had chosen the conservative approach and hadn't really been able to improve in these last several weeks.

It could be said that his sudden breakthrough was more sheer dumb luck than anything else.

But now, it should help tremendously.

Sylas activated Madness, and his telekinesis began to move once again, encroaching onto the forcefield.

The feeling was slowly getting more and more peculiar. It was like his telekinesis was an extension of his mind, and as it dipped in further, it felt like his brain was being soaked in the same mysterious feeling. He could practically feel a cool wind enveloping the inside of his skull where his blood-brain barrier should have been.

'This is… interesting…'

When Sylas activated his Madness to improve his telekinesis, he always looked at it like just a boost in power. But this wasn't true.

Madness didn't improve his telekinesis directly; it improved the stats that telekinesis relied on. This was a different matter entirely.

This meant that it wasn't just some artificial boost. The very foundation of his telekinesis was improving. It wasn't just the strength increasing; it was an overall qualitative change.

The reason Sylas was thinking about this now was that what his telekinesis was doing didn't seem to have anything to do with Strength or any other Physical stat. The entire force field and disk were barely a couple of pounds.

Yet, he still needed Madness to make it this far.

Why was that?

He kept looking at telekinesis like it was just some external force he exerted, not much different from any Skill. But that wasn't true.

Telekinesis was what he conveniently called it, but it was actually the tangible representation of his Will. He was exerting force on the world with his thoughts, and that was very different from using a fist.

It was a subtle but meaningful difference, and it was that subtle change in his thoughts that gave Sylas an idea as to why the disk would have reacted like that to his telekinesis.

He hadn't just tried to pick up the disk; he had activated it by touching it with his Will.

But didn't that also mean that… if he formed his "telekinesis" into those runes again, he could elicit a similar response?

BANG!

As Sylas was lost in thought, the forcefield suddenly shattered.

He quickly crossed his arms in front of his body, but the force field didn't seem to touch him at all. Either that, or it had lost its potency.

The disk clattered to the ground. It flickered as though it was trying to power up again, but then failed to do so.

Sylas' gaze narrowed. What just happened?

He wasn't exactly trying to exert any strength just now; he was just trying to see what would happen if his telekinesis or Will fully saturated the force field. He hadn't expected it would collapse like that.

Taking a step forward, Sylas bent down by the disk. It looked fine, but considering its earlier reaction, that was unlikely to be true.

He took a deeper look at the engraved runes on its surface, trying to find a clue. But there was nothing. None of the runes triggered any memories or anything of the sort in him. They were completely foreign. He wasn't even sure what sort of discipline it was from.

Was it a secondary profession like his Vipermancy that created it? In that case, how did it work?

Sylas nudged the disk with his telekinesis, this time not enveloping it entirely. His only purpose was to flip it over.

The back of the disk was perfectly smooth and unscathed. There were no runes to be seen at all.

After some thought, Sylas' telekinesis moved again. This time, he only filled in one of the runes, just to see what would happen.

He didn't have many expectations, but to his surprise…

There was a ripple, and then everything stabilized.

Sylas blinked.

He tried again, moving to the next rune over and doing the same.

This time, he didn't feel a ripple, but it was as though something was trying to connect with him, like a bridge was being formed.

He moved on to the next rune. The reaction was once again different. This time, it was like an explosion in his mind, and his telekinesis spilled over, almost pooling into the other runes.

As Sylas tested the runes one by one, he realized something shocking.

Just by putting his Will into these runes, he could vaguely understand what they were meant to do, and likewise understand how they worked together.

Whatever this odd language was, it seemed to be another method of communicating with Aether. Except instead of relying on the system to trigger the Skill for him, he could use these runes instead.

However, Sylas found that doing so was incredibly draining. As he had told Mark, he could keep his base telekinesis up for hours without issue. It was just like breathing to him. Did you need to think to exert your Will onto the world? Only when he used Madness would there be a limit, and that was because of the Comprehension itself, not his telekinesis.

But after going around the disk and trying out all twelve inscribed runes, Sylas felt like he really wanted to rest. His mind was exhausted.

He was about to do exactly that when he had another thought.

While testing out the runes, he didn't use Madness because he was worried about the result. But what if he did?

Sylas tried again, this time with the most benign rune. The one that seemed to form connections.

The change was immediate.

The result was much more forceful, and Sylas didn't just feel a vague connection, but he rather felt like his mind had linked to the outside world.

He realized at that moment that he was indeed trapped in an odd spatial warp zone.