Love and Deepspace Sylus: How to unlock him, and his lore and backstory explained

If Love and Deepspace's original trio of love interests could all be described as falling somewhere on the "good guy" scale, then it seems that Infold Games is determined to let players have their pick of the bad boys with the post-launch additions to the roster. First up in Version 2.0 was Sylus, the sinister and charismatic leader of the criminal faction Onychinus.

Despite arriving fourth, at the time of writing Sylus is actually the last LaDS love interest you'll meet, thanks to Caleb making an early appearance as an NPC before joining the team. So it's natural to want to get to know Sylus, but also, the journey to meeting him is the longest one. To help you out, or simply tide you over, on this page we've assembled an overview of everything we know about Sylus in Love and Deepspace, including his lore and backstory, and how to unlock him.

On this page:

• Who is Sylus in Love and Deepspace?
• How to unlock Sylus in Love and Deepspace
• Sylus' lore and backstory explained (SPOILERS!)

Who is Sylus in Love and Deepspace?

Sylus is the fourth love interest introduced in Love and Deepspace, and the first new LI to be added to the game post-launch, making his debut with Version 2.0 in July 2024. As the leader of Onychinus, he's the most powerful individual in the N109 Zone, an exclusion zone outside of Linkon City plunged into an eternal night by the events of the Chronorift Catastrophe, and now home to the various criminal factions who operate from the shadows outside of direct government oversight.

Unlike most of LaDS' other love interests, Sylus' interactions with the heroine in the main storyline are ambiguous and occasionally fraught: after all, they meet for the first time when he kidnaps her and holds her prisoner for several days. Admittedly, this was all part of an undercover plan she'd initiated, believing at the time that Onychinus was behind the explosion that killed her family. But she clearly wasn't expecting Sylus to try to force her to resonate with him while being held captive, in some scenes that can come across quite uncomfortably. However, his attempts repeatedly fail, since it's established that the heroine can only resonate with the Evol of someone she's emotionally connected with and, unsurprisingly, she's not mad keen on him at that moment in time.

But there is, of course, a lot more to Sylus' relationship with the heroine than meets the eye, something even she herself is vaguely aware of from the start, thanks to an intrusive voice in her head that repeatedly insists that Sylus belongs to her, that despite appearances she holds the power during their interactions, and that she can do whatever she chooses with him – including, potentially, destroying him.

While the main story hasn't yet shown the heroine coming to fully trust Sylus, she is eventually willing to work with him to attain their common goals, recognising him as – at the very least – one of the lesser threats to her within the N109 Zone. There are also numerous hints from Sylus' side that he already has romantic feelings towards her, although the heroine either doesn't pick up on these or chooses to actively ignore them due to her lingering resentment of him. (Note that this doesn't apply in Sylus' date side-stories, where their relationship is just as overt and mutual as with any of the other love interests.)

It's established that Sylus has an Aether Core in his right eye similar to the one in the heroine's heart, which allows him to exert influence over the minds of others, in addition to his augmented strength and powerful regenerative and healing abilities. Sylus is shown to have an appreciation for expensive and high-end objects, as can be seen from the tastefully gothic decor throughout his mansion home base in the N109 Zone. He's also shown to be particularly fond of collecting music on vinyl, and has an extensive collection of motorcycles which he customises himself.

How to unlock Sylus in Love and Deepspace

If you're a newcomer to Love and Deepspace, you might have to wait a while before you can date Sylus, since he only becomes available as a love interest after you complete Chapter 1-8 in Long-Awaited Revelry, the new storyline added with Version 2.0. Before completing this story beat, you won't be able to go on dates with Sylus, encounter him at Destiny Café, view his information or make edits to his room decor under the With Him tab, or track your Affinity gains with him.

However, you can have Sylus as your combat partner as soon as you obtain some Memories of him, meaning you can begin levelling up his cards as soon as you begin the game. Unlocking him as a love interest will also immediately grant you all the banked up Affinity gains from pulling and levelling his Memories beforehand, so that's not wasted effort.

Love and Deepspace does also give you the option to skip to any storyline immediately once you've completed the prologue and basic tutorials, so you can just jump straight to Long-Awaited Revelry. However, doing this will drop you into the second "season" of story content without the context of everything that happened in Version 1.0, which is by far the longest storyline to date and introduces most of the key plot points (as well as pretty much every major character except Sylus). So even if you're dying to start romancing the bad boy, it'll probably pay off to wait and unlock him the recommended way.

Sylus' lore and backstory explained (SPOILERS!)

Like most of the love interests in LaDS, Sylus' past is interconnected with the history of the planet Philos. However, he isn't entirely human even by the genetically engineered standards of the Philosians, and is instead a descendant of a species of dragons found on that planet. After falling in love with a human sorceress sent to kill him – who was, of course, one of the heroine's many alternate incarnations – Sylus was cursed with a humanoid appearance that caused him to be shunned by others of his kind.

Furthermore, the dragon's curse dooms Sylus to eventually kill the heroine in every incarnation he meets her in. However, Sylus repeatedly fights against this fate, and even successfully forces at least one version of the heroine to kill him before he can doom her, although his functional immortality eventually revives him. This provides a lot of explanatory context around his actions towards the heroine in the main story, in which he casually dominates her into shooting him in the heart while holding her captive.

After his exile from the Philosian Dragons – who are now all extinct, with the exception of Sylus himself – he at some point managed to leave Philos and became an interstellar warlord, showing an aptitude for infiltrating and overtaking despotic regimes. Despite ending up imprisoned in the Supreme Interstellar Starship Tartarus for his crimes, Sylus became the only individual ever to escape from space-time prison, and the skillset he developed in his years operating outside of the law would come in handy when he finally arrived on Earth via the Deepspace Tunnel and undertook a similar coup in the N109 Zone.

Like most of the game's love interests, Sylus still remembers the other incarnations of the heroine that he's known; and his distress at learning that she retains no memories of her previous lives between reincarnations is the most pronounced. His attempts to force her to resonate with him when they meet is, therefore, a desperate bid to make her remember him again – conducted with Sylus' signature amorality, certainly, but nevertheless from his point of view justified by his devotion to her.