Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1497: Emotions

The sudden attack Sylas was expecting didn't come. Instead, he found himself in a hexagonal room of complete, pitch black.

'Oh?' Sylas raised an eyebrow.

The room was much smaller than the territories on the above floors.

Before, they were at least kilometers wide. But this room was small enough that Sylas could very clearly make out its shape.

That said, it was still about a hundred meters wide at its largest width, uniformly across all six sides. However, it had no obvious entrance or exit.

Sylas moved toward one of the walls and pressed a hand against it, but unexpectedly, his map didn't help him to pass through with ease like it normally did.

On top of that, even though his Visualization Range had extended far enough to see hundreds of kilometers, his map only showed him this singular room he was in.

There seemed to only be two possibilities. Either he was trapped, or there was a puzzle here.

Feeling the grooves in the rough wall with his palm and fingers, Sylas was pretty sure that it was the latter.

The walls felt like they had been forged out of cast iron, and looked the part as well. When you touched it, patterns hidden in the wall, not obvious usually, only became so.

'Hm...'

Sylas' eyes sharpened, and the restraints he put on his Tier Three Eyes lessened considerably. All of a sudden, he couldn't just feel the patterns, he could see them.

The moment he did, he saw a familiar notification that he hadn't experienced in all too long.

[Your Will has been influenced]

[-1 Will (Temporary)]

Sylas' eyes flashed.

[Your Will has resisted]

[+1 Will]

The last time Sylas had seen that notification... he had been in the Slithering Madness Dungeon, the very first Dungeon he had ever entered.

How long had it been since then? It truly felt like a lifetime ago.

Back then, he had gotten that notification because he was studying the patterns of the serpents on the barrier blocking his exit.

Now that he thought about it, that was probably also his first interaction with Runes.

'My first... interaction with... Runes?'

Sylas stood there in silence for a long while, his eyes completely lost.

There hadn't been a single Rune that day. He had watched those serpents, some of them dancing, some of them mating, some of them roaring to the skies with menace and fury.

But there hadn't been a single Rune.

So why had he said that that had been his first interaction with Runes?

Logically, it made sense. It was a barrier, and those barriers should be formed of Runes. There was no such thing as a barrier formed without one... Or was that truly the case?

Back in the last Dungeon Sylas entered in the Milky Way Galaxy, he had felt the life of Runes, their emotions. Nowadays, whenever he used Runes, he could feel how happy and obedient they were.

They were always happy to see him, to be used by him, to be one with him.

The more he learned about Runes, the more that line between Runes and Life became.

They were one and the same.

Sylas pressed his palm against the wall and his Will poured into it.

Chi.

The wall began to spin and it was suddenly opened wide.

[Territory Cleared]

[Reward]

[>Speed Gene (Legendary)]

Sylas took it for himself, pressing it into his body. But, unfortunately, he failed.

Extricate could boost his chances a small bit, but it couldn't make it 100%. His Gene State was still just Malleable.

But as though he hadn't even noticed, Sylas' body was filled with the sense for Speed. Even after failing, the connection he felt with a Gene was far superior to using the system to absorb it.

And then...

Sylas, in a daze, waved a hand and a new Speed Gene appeared. He pressed it into his body, his eyes staring out into space.

He shouldn't have been able to do this. Even for him, unless he fully succeeded in combining with a Gene, drawing it shouldn't have been possible.

But he had done it.

With absolute ease.

Sylas stepped into a new territory, another hexagonal room just a hundred meters across and made up of six black walls of cast iron.

He randomly pressed his palm against one, pouring his Will into it.

Chi.

Another gate opened.

He walked into the next, doing it again, and again, and again.

[Your understanding of <Glassvolt Throne> has deepened]

[<Glassvolt Throne> has reached Silver Mastery]

[Your understanding of <Glassvolt Throne> has deepened]

[<Glassvolt Throne> has reached Gold Mastery]

The third floor was so very... interesting.

It wasn't a test of Rune Mastery. It was instead a test of Will, of controlling one's emotions, of carrying the heart of a Champion even when faced with insurmountable odds or the rampaging crash course of one's

own mind.

And yet, to Sylas, it felt like the opposite side of the same coin.

Will and Runes... they felt like they went hand in hand.

Whenever you entered a territory, there was a hidden mural on the walls one first needed strong enough Will to detect in the first place. Then you needed strong enough Will to resist the emotion the mural tried

to trigger within you.

However, the greatest test of strength came not from resisting, but instead letting that emotion in.

Only by matching the aura of this emotion and fusing it into the wall would a door to the next territory open. But the trouble was that doing that would make you even more susceptible to being manipulated by the emotions of the wall.

How could you both resist something and accept it at the same time? That was the dilemma of this floor.

It took Sylas half a minute to figure it out, and after that, it took him no more than 10 seconds to clear every room he came across.

And every time he did so, every emotion he added to his arsenal and controlled, his Rune Mastery was actually what was becoming so much more powerful.

Emotion.

Sylas had understood it long ago, but he didn't know how to implement it. He wasn't a man with a wide range of emotions himself, and it was hard to put himself in those shoes.

But this third floor... it was like a buffet of emotions that he had never personally experienced before... Self-pity... guilt... inadequacy...

He was supposedly a Perfect Spark Master already.

And yet he still found himself improving.