Sylas sat across from the Bronze City Stele, his mind the picture of absolute focus. He recalled the information that Nosphaleen had gathered from Aurion and Phyrex, his World Scepter laid out across his lap.
The gist of it seemed simple enough.
Link the Runes of the Aether Treasure to that of the City Stele, and soon the Aether Treasure would gain the ability to bypass the limitation the system had placed on this Quest world and display its might properly.
Aether Treasures were different from normal Treasures in that they could interact with the world around them. The reason for the Aether prefix was that much of their abilities could be pulled from the external world.
In a lot of ways, Aether Treasures were to Treasures what Breath Mastery Runes were to lower-tier Runes.
At Breath Mastery, Runes could pull on the world and gather Aether on their own, allowing them to not need the support of other items like special herbs or dyes to give them power. This was the reason why Sylas could use his Scorpion Warlord Armor without the tattoos Ragnar had once had.
It was these Runes of the Aether Treasure that were the target, the very ones that communicated with the surrounding world.
Right now, Aether Treasures were suppressed because the system didn't want external items influencing this World War too much. This World War was supposed to be a measure of the talents of Worlds. The World that proved themselves more talented would gain the added support of the system.
This was only logical. The system was only interested in improvement. It didn't care through what means, and that was often why the wool could be pulled over its eyes.
The system wasn't interested in what was most fair. All it wanted was what could become the most powerful.
The irony of that, though, was that those that were already powerful would always have an advantage in that aspect. As heartwarming as it was to root for the underdog, that simply wasn't how the real world worked.
So the system needed to strike a balance between betting on the unlikely success and also supporting those that already had the power to, well, support themselves.
This was one such case of this.
Regardless, what was important was that the system's parameters, in this case, could be circumvented by using the City Stele.
Even so, this was far easier said than done.
Other than Lorien and Ulrik, there weren't just an endless supply of Rune Masters here, so how had they all succeeded in doing this?
The Runes of a City Stele weren't nearly as complicated as Gene Runes, but they were still substantially complex. These were treasures that Worlds would fight tooth and nail over. Their number of Foundations was uncountable.
City Steles, even in their weakest forms, were constructed of a mesh of Runes far more complex than even the Scorpion Warlord Armor.
Aether Treasures were somewhat simpler in this respect, but were still complicated nonetheless.
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