Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1482: King Serpent (1)

Sylas felt waves of danger pinging him continuously, but he didn't move a single inch— not out of fear, but instead a different sort of pride he couldn't describe. That, and the feeling that taking a step back might actually be what cost him his life.

His heart skipped just a single beat before it returned to normal, relaxing to a steady, calming rhythm.

The King Serpent continued to look at the Madness Key for a long while. It seemed as though the creature had forgotten about Sylas' existence itself, only caring about him insofar as he related to the treasure hanging from his neck.

When it finally did look back at Sylas, finding those cold and indifferent eyes, its own slit narrowed just the slightest bit.

The creature exhaled a breath for seemingly the first time in what may have been hours just as easily as it could have been years.

The rainforest remained in complete silence, and yet a hot wind spread along the entire forest floor, causing trees that had stood for thousands of years to sway heavily, their large bodies threatening to snap in two.

Sylas, though, continued to stand in the very same spot, the chains on his Scorned Wraps rattling.

"Arrogant."

The voice was deep and ancient in ways that were hard to describe. It practically growled, but its Will was so powerful that Sylas could feel its thoughts projecting out into the world.

The air in front of Sylas exploded as though a cannon had slammed into his chest. There was a ripple across the air, his hair dancing so violently it almost felt as though it might rip free from his scalp.

Yet, he still remained unmoved, an equally powerful ripple of emerald dancing across his exposed skin.

It was just a single word the King Serpent had spoken, but Sylas could feel it all. Every ittle bit of intent behind it.

It was angry about something, and it wasn't the Madness Key. It was something else. Gogo. It was calling him arrogant because it could smell the scent of Gogo on him.

Now Sylas understood.

He had come all this way, but he had still not been able to sense anything about this King Serpent. All he knew was that the evolutionary trigger for Gogo was hidden here and related to this thing.

But the moment he had approached, it was like all the senses his Vipermancy had given him had been stripped away. The serpent was like a bottomless hole, swallowing up everything in its path and violently oppressing it.

Was this King Serpent related to Gogo?

Sylas didn't actually believe so. If this was another Basilisk, he would know. No matter how good this serpent was at hiding its origins, Sylas' connection with Gogo was too strong for an F-tier of its kind to be right before him and for him to be unaware. However... it seemed to be following a similar path to Gogo... somehow.

A King of some sort. A monarch that embodied all the same sorts of things Gogo's ancestors had.

"Gogo." Sylas called out.

There was a change to the air and a large black-scaled serpent appeared. Gogo was over 50 meters from head to tip of tail, his golden eyes radiating menace as he looked ahead.

Wrapping his body around Sylas, he practically covered up all there was of Sylas, his head rising high into the skies.

Sylas remembered the Gogo of long ago, the Gogo that had just come out of the Basilisk Dungeon. Beaten and broken, every ounce of arrogance the latter had once had had been stricken away, rubbed away in humiliation and destitution.

But now, facing against a creature much stronger than himself, he stood boldly. Surprisingly, when the King Serpent saw this, the unhappiness in its eyes actually faded into something entirely unreadable.

Sylas pressed a palm onto Gogo's heated scales and activated Fusion. In a warp of Aether, his body was suffused with Gogo's aura, black scales appearing across his body until his eyes reflected in golden slits.

Power radiated from him that was mostly his own. And yet, he focused on amplifying the Will that came from Gogo himself.

A Basilisk with Infinite Will.

Sylas had always focused so much on what it could mean for a powerful Serpent to fuse with him... what power it could give him... what boost in Strength or Speed or Wisdom... But he had never thought about it in the reverse until now.

Gogo's Foundation was that of a Gold Beast. He was a True Beast.

It was hard to understand what this meant because Beasts didn't seem to follow the same grading system as humanoid Races that went from F to S.

Though there were beasts that used the system, the system was mostly a construct used to help elevate humanoids. Beasts were retrofitted in after the fact—something else that was a huge weakness of the impotent system.

Much like the system had a hard time properly rating Will, it likewise had a hard time rating beasts. And this was ironically also related to Will.

Just like Gralith had said. The Beast Warlord Sanctum wasn't a Sect of Rune Masters, it was a Sect of Will Grandmasters, people who focused on Will.

Much of the power of beasts, their potential, how they could progress was built on the Will passed down to them from their Ancestors.

At best, the system could try and grade this Will and how powerful it was, but it wasn't perfectly accurate.

Gogo was a Gold Beast, an existence that would be the equivalent to a B-Grade humanoid at worst, and even equivalent to some A-Grade humanoids at best. And yet... Gogo's stats were in the double digits, averaging around just 50 stat points.

This was completely misaligned.

So what happened when the potential of an A-Grade Race was fused into the body of someone with Wil as powerful as Sylas?

it completely changed everything.

Who was to say that Fusion only had to help in one direction?