Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1365: Something Big

The breathing of the F-tier Rune Masters hitched as they saw Sylas actually step forward.

One after another, they had all given up on the chance to take on the Spark Mastery challenge. It was better to not participate than to humiliate themselves, especially given the fact they were so very fatigued.

Plus, there was another reason... each and every one of them wanted to see Sylas do it.

They had their own speculations, and by now the answer seemed obvious, but they wanted to see the proof right in front of them. Until they saw it, maybe it would never set in for them that they were seeing the birth of the first Spark Master of their entire Sector.

The weight of this matter was so great that just by stepping forward, it felt to them that Sylas had done the most shocking thing imaginable. Nothing more than a step felt like a hammer dropping down from the skies and smashing right onto their hearts.

And then the world shifted.

It felt like they became third-party observers as a long road of gold appeared before Sylas. He stood there, looking at it.

Everyone clenched their fists. They had seen this golden road before. Many Vitality Masters, even knowing they hadn’t stepped into the threshold of Spark Mastery, had entered this Secret Realm in hopes of capturing the faint corners of the ultimate realm.

However, the ending for every one of them had always been the same.

It wasn’t just failure, but not a single person managed to take a step forward onto this golden road without automatic failure. There didn’t even seem to be a chance to comprehend or understand—it was like the road disdained to even have them in its presence.

It had always been a complete enigma. It could be said that the closest anyone had come to grasping something from this Secret Realm was Fowler.

It was said that when the former Dominus Paragon Contested Title Holder took their attempt, they had managed to withstand the blowback of the road for a full three seconds before being expelled.

However, even then, no one had managed to find anything special about the road. It just looked like a normal expanse of gold, meaningless and not carrying the slightest hint of anything related to Rune Mastery in the first place.

It was the sort of thing that could drive a man mad with curiosity and frustration. To have the secrets of a realm you had pined for all your life, and yet be unable to take that final step no matter how hard you tried...

That was the pinnacle of regret.

But even after several seconds passed, Sylas didn’t move.

The elder hadn’t explained the rules of the Spark Realm because they had never been discussed. There was no time limit because it seemed ridiculous to even begin to impose one for a Realm no one should have reached.

Meaning, all Sylas needed to do was actually complete it to not only get Full Marks, but the rewards for the All-Time Record as well. After all... any time he set would be the only time to ever exist.

Sylas, however, didn’t seem to sense their eager discomfort. He stood there, his eyes unfocused as he stared out onto the road. His feet didn’t move, his hands still hanging loosely in his pockets. His gaze couldn’t even be seen behind his sunglasses, but everything about him seemed to paint a scene of absolute serenity.

Calm, unbothered, maybe even ignorant of the magnitude of what he was standing in front of.

...

"He’s so insufferable sometimes," Cassarae mumbled.

"You say that, but I can practically hear you dripping," Gwenu sneered.

Cassarae’s head whipped over, but Gwenu had already looked away, still clinging to Khan’s back like some sort of koala bear.

In the end, Cassarae surprisingly chose not to say anything, something that left Olivia the most surprised of them all. It was rare that Cassarae would let someone have the last word. That meant that her mind was occupied by something else.

But what could have her so worried at this point? Truthfully, even if the Scorpion Lineage lost today, Sylas’ cache was too high. There would still be a sliver of hope in changing things around.

The value of Sylas as a person alone was off the charts right now. If not for the fact he was already associated with the Sanctum, people would probably already be knocking down the doors of the Petals of the Seeing Thorn, trying to find out the best way to recruit him.

No matter how much Sylas fell short of his current Mastery level in the preceding Rune Mastery Tiers, it wouldn’t be much worse. No one with this sort of performance could possibly become anything worse than a Breath C-tier Rune Master.

And the value of such an existence was enough to turn an entire power’s fate around.

So what was Cassarae agonizing over?

Olivia took her hand, squeezing it. When Cassarae looked over, she mouthed the words she didn’t want to say out loud.

What’s wrong?

Cassarae blinked for a moment and then shook her head.

"I don’t know."

Olivia became even more confused when Cassarae replied like this.

"All I know is that... whenever he gets like this, it means he’s about to do something reckless."

If Sylas was going to show off, this wouldn’t be his style in doing it. That was because it would be a waste of his time.

Even when he was pausing for "effect" in the previous Mastery Secret Realms, Cassarae felt like something was off about it. Sylas would crush records, yes, but something like doing something for style points was very much not him.

Now, that truth was even more obvious.

He had been planning something from the very beginning. It was just that she didn’t understand enough about Rune Mastery to comprehend what was going on.

All she knew was that if Sylas was so focused on something else when his crushing victory was what was most important right now...

It was something big.

Something big enough that their fates probably hinged on it.