Genetic Ascension

Chapter 1504 Sloth (1)

The Sloth flipped through the air as his Scorned Wraps flared to life, pulsing out and forming a cone around his arm.

Pa. Pa. Pa.

The power of it all took Sylas off guard. Their Will clash took a completely different form, and Sylas suddenly found his own ankle wrapped in the Sloth’s Scorned Wraps.

Before Sylas had time to understand why his own had chains and the Sloth's didn't, he found the world spinning around him, a heat threatening to rip his life away from him. Sylas' expression sharpened, the scent of death pooling into his pores themselves. In that moment, he realized how all of the people who had experienced this death at his hands felt in their final moment.

But he wasn't them.

Sylas' Will activated as he was about to be slammed to the ground, his foot tapping against the air as though it was solid earth. He pushed against the direction the Sloth was sending him, and the feeling of death vanished as he landed on the hard cast iron of the room.

In that same instant, his own Scorned Wraps, too, expanded around his ankle, shattering the control the Sloth had had over him.

The two separated, expanding the distance between them by an entire kilometer. But they might as well have been face to face with their level of senses.

They both took deep breaths, though the Sloth's seemed to be formed far more of exasperation. He seemed like he would rather be doing anything other than this.

Sylas took a final deep breath and stabilized his heaving chest. He could feel that the Sloth was still too lazy to go all out, as though he was allergic to exertion. It could be said that if he was going to come across any True Madness Disciple to battle, this man was probably the best of them.

Against someone else, the gap would be more obvious.

The Sloth was completely uninterested in the obelisk and seemed to only want the Profession, which meant that the obelisk was of no use to him. Whatever his Race Grade was, it was far beyond Sylas' own.

However, what was odd was that this Sloth didn't have any obvious markers of a Race. He seemed completely human at first, but those odd claws were a lot more like a real sloth—though far longer.

The sloth wasn't the creature the Sloth Disciples followed in the first place. It was the tortoise. So the young man wasn't following a Beast Aura related to his Madness Seed either.

It was too... odd.

Sylas could tell that this Sloth's Will was extraordinary, but it didn't have any obvious markers of anything. It was too amorphous and hard to track, and Sylas didn't believe that this was by design.

This Sloth was... faceless.

The True Sloth Disciple stood to his full height, stretching out his back.

"You really are annoying. I don't know how a spring chicken like you can fight like this, but I'm going to guess it has something to do with your Wisdom working on overdrive. You see, I've always been too lazy for all of that. I much prefer my body to just react on its own. Don't you think that'd be much easier?

"But you're forcing my hand. I don't want to have to try so hard. I don't get why you can't just be more accommodating. Do you think all the treasures of the world are for you or something?"

The tinge of annoyance in the Sloth's tone was only growing.

"Fine," he said with a hint of finality.

The Sloth's skin began to... bubble. As though he was formed of wax, the skin tone blew out and his flesh began to pool as though it was liquefying.

However, rather than falling into a blob on the ground, he began to grow. It wasn't much, just a single foot or so, allowing him to go from an inch or two shorter than Sylas to towering over him.

"Two minutes."

The Sloth's voice echoed in a deeper hue.

“I can give you two minutes."

He said it again as though he were giving Sylas the greatest grace there was.

Blades began to protrude out from the Sloth's skin, odd scales and patches of fur as well. Then came the extra arm and the three tails that seemed completely out of place. Sylas had seen this aura before. It was just that when he had seen it last, it had been in a Rotten creature.

Chimera.

The Sloth took a step forward, and his foot rippled as though it didn't have a single bone init.

In a flash, he was before Sylas, the ripples that the latter had just seen overwhelming his vision.

This time, there was no warp in reality. The Sloth was just... that fast.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

Sylas' Morphic Silver Bearings were slapped out of the way one after another as though air balloons. They had grown to the size of small hills, weighing even heavier, and yet they were swatted like flies.

A palm with a blade protruding through it slammed into Sylas' chest.

His Scorpion Warlord Armor shattered on impact, the blade running all the way through him.

Sylas' eyes bulged and his body curved. He coughed up a mouthful of blood with such force it sprayed into a mist, his figure being sent flying.

impaled by the blade, Sylas was sent flying off of it even faster, slicing him twice in a single motion.

His heart ruptured, his lungs feeling as though they had been diced to pieces.

Pain. Untold, horrible pain.

It wasn't the blade, or even the strike, but the cancerous cells that bubbled and festered in the wound, growths that had nothing to do with his body latching onto him as though a poison.

Sylas roared and his chest exploded, a large force expelling the cancerous cells but taking with it a large amount of blood that left his body weak and feeble.

He took deep breaths, but the Sloth was already upon him again.