"Why are you looking at me like that?!" Gwenu raged again less than a split second later. "Where's the surprise!? The rage?!"
Sylas wasn't surprised because he knew this would happen the moment he couldn't defeat Magnus. Of course, defeating Magnus wouldn't make things go their way with 100% certainty, but what it would do is make them second-guess their approach.
If he defeated Magnus, it would give them about a 30% chance of going another route entirely and giving up their attempted integration. That still left 70% odds that they'd try to find another way in, but about a third of a chance was better than no chance.
The reason for that is exactly because of what Gwenu mentioned about reallocation.
When there was a new Sanctum, territories had to be split, a new moon had to be prepared, and resources had to be redistributed.
