"Because I believe the City Lady trusts you almost implicitly. It's because you never suspected me that she chose to show such trust in me. This opportunity is better than any I could have expected. So, thank you for that."
Sylas looked into Morgan's eyes. They were a deep brown and carried an inconspicuous amount of intelligence that Sylas had never noticed. He considered himself to be quite an astute person, but he had never seen this side of Morgan as well.
He realized then that there were more ways for a person to be dangerous outside of their stats. The informant never once showed their face… or maybe they did? Either way, how much trouble had they given him without raising a single finger?
Morgan wasn't likely a traitor, not in Sylas' opinion. If he was, he would have never shown Sylas this side of himself. It would have been far smarter to continue hiding it.
Sylas reached out a hand and shook Morgan's.
Later in the day, Sylas entered Cassarae's cabin and met her in her office.
"So what do you want to do?" Cassarae asked.
Sylas didn't need to question what she meant. She was obviously referring to the fact she had lied to everyone on his behalf when they both knew that he definitely couldn't come.
Right now, he was pretty well strapped to the Browns. There was little he could do.
"I don't believe that they'll truly restrict my movements, at least not completely. They will definitely do so in part, especially after they notice that I entered the Trial after they… let's say gently encouraged most not to.
"If I'm correct, after we return, they'll actually have no choice but to let us out."
"Because originally, their intentions were to use the Trial to decide who was most worthy of becoming the City Lord of their Bronze Stele. But now that the Trial's been cut short, the two lagging behind the current leader will definitely argue for another opportunity.
"That will be my chance."
"Your chance?" Cassarae's eyes squinted. "You're going to do something fucking stupid again, aren't you? I can see right through you, Sylas. All of this is just because you don't want to follow their orders, isn't it? They probably haven't even done anything bad to you."
Sylas cleared his throat. "There actually is a good reason to not trust them."
"Oh? Pray tell." Cassarae leaned back into her chair with an amused expression.
"Things aren't adding up," Sylas said. "They say they mixed races to give us the best chance at survival, so why are there still families? Why was my grandfather ostracized for marrying the 'wrong' woman? Why is this the first I've heard of this Summoning in my mid-twenties and not when I was old enough to read?
"If they really cared about the world, and not maintaining power for themselves, they would have disseminated this information long ago."
"You're missing something." Cassarae suddenly said.
Sylas waited for her to continue.
"If they didn't care to keep up pretenses even that much, then why force the races of the world to be homogenous in the first place?"
"I've been thinking about that as well, and I believe the answer is actually right in front of us."
Cassarae raised an eyebrow.
"Intelligence is difficult to grasp. All methods of measuring it have one weakness or another, and the markers are so multilayered and complex that they're impossible to pinpoint. There's a reason so many believe in the existence of a soul. It's hard to grasp that everything is related to a lump of meat in our skulls.
"However, physical gifts are different. If two tall people marry one another, their child will likely be tall. If two athletes marry one another, their child will likely be athletic."
"… You're saying that they mixed the races to benefit from the best of everyone…"
"Not just that," Sylas said softly. "If I'm correct, the 'fusion' of the races is likely a key to evolving our Race grade in the future.
"They never did it for the sake of harmony; these people don't care about that stuff. All they care about is maximizing their chances at being the ruling class once Earth makes it to the other side."
Sylas lay in the bed of his cabin. He took deep breaths, his thoughts running at inconceivable speeds.
Something Morgan said interested him.
Whether he was neurodivergent or not didn't matter to him. What did matter was that his mind had shifted back toward the scientific method for a moment.
Would it be possible to use his university as a foundation to help analyze the Basilisk King's genome better?
He couldn't analyze it all, but could a computer not? The question was whether he could make the transfer or not…
He lay there, watching as the timer slowly drifted down. Soon, there were only three seconds left and he felt himself relaxing.
[Time remaining: 00:00:00]
A blinding flash of white filled Sylas' eyes. He could have sworn that he would appear right back in his room, but to his surprise, he actually landed right back in the world of white he had entered before the Trial.
He looked around with hints of confusion before the world flickered and what looked like a slot machine appeared. It somehow seemed deeper and more profound than the usual slot machine, but ultimately, it couldn't be classified as anything else.
[Tickets: … Calculating…]
'Calculating? Ah… is it evaluating my Trial performance? The tickets, I assume, will let me use the slot machine? I haven't heard of this before…'
Sylas wondered what that number was based on, but he didn't really want to speculate so he ignored it for now.
He looked at the slot machine, wondering what secrets it would reveal to him.
[Would you like to sacrifice 10 Tickets for a higher grade slot machine?]
[Fragmented Slot Machine]